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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14518 ***
+
+                           HANDBOOK
+                              OF
+                          HOME RULE
+
+                            BEING
+               _ARTICLES ON THE IRISH QUESTION_
+
+                              BY
+             THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
+        THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P., LORD THRING
+               JAMES BRYCE, M.P., CANON MACCOLL
+              E.L. GODKIN, AND R. BARRY O'BRIEN
+
+                      _WITH PREFACE BY_
+              THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G.
+
+                          EDITED BY
+                      JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+                        SECOND EDITION
+
+                            LONDON
+       KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., I, PATERNOSTER SQUARE
+                             1887
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S NOTE.
+
+
+Of the articles contained in this volume, those by Mr. Gladstone, Mr.
+E.L. Godkin on "A Lawyer's Objections to Home Rule," and Mr. Barry
+O'Brien appear for the first time. The others are reprinted from the
+_Contemporary Review_, the _Nineteenth Century_, and the _New Princeton
+Review_, to the proprietors and editors of which periodicals
+respectively the thanks of the several writers and of the editor are
+tendered. In most of these reprints some passages of transitory interest
+have been omitted, and some few additions have been made.
+
+The object of the writers has been to treat the difficult questions
+connected with the Government of Ireland in a dispassionate spirit; and
+the volume is offered to the public in the hope that it may, at a time
+of warm controversy over passing events, help to lead thoughtful men
+back to the consideration of the principles which underlie those
+questions, and which it seeks to elucidate by calm discussion and by
+references to history.
+
+_October_, 1887.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+PREFACE. BY THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G.
+
+AMERICAN HOME RULE.
+BY E.L. GODKIN
+
+HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS.
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY.
+BY LORD THRING
+
+THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL AND THE IRISH LAND BILL.
+BY LORD THRING
+
+THE "UNIONIST" POSITION.
+BY CANON MACCOLL
+
+A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE.
+BY E.L. GODKIN
+
+THE "UNIONIST" CASE FOR HOME RULE.
+BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN
+
+IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES.
+BY LORD THRING
+
+THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION.
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.
+BY THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P.
+
+LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
+BY THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The present seems an excellent moment for bringing forward the arguments
+in favour of a new policy for Ireland, which are to be found in the
+articles contained in this volume.
+
+We are realizing the first results of the verdict given at the election
+of 1886. And this I interpret as saying that the constituencies were not
+then ready to depart from the lines of policy which, up to last year,
+nearly all politicians of both parties in Parliament had laid down for
+their guidance in Irish affairs.
+
+We have had the Session occupied almost wholly with Lord Salisbury's
+proposals for strengthening the power of the central Government to
+maintain law and order in Ireland, and for dealing with the most
+pressing necessities of the Land question in that country.
+
+It is well, before the policy of the Government is practically tested,
+that the views of thoughtful men holding different opinions should be
+clearly set forth, not in the shape of polemical speeches, but in
+measured articles which specially appeal to those who have not hitherto
+joined the fighting ranks of either side, and who are sure to intervene
+with great force at the next election, when the Irish question is again
+submitted to the constituencies.
+
+I feel that I can add little or nothing to the weight of the arguments
+contained in these papers, but I should like to give some reasons why I
+earnestly hope that they will receive careful consideration.
+
+The writers have endeavoured to approach their work with impartiality,
+and to free themselves from those prejudices which make it difficult for
+Englishmen to discuss Irish questions in a fresh and independent train
+of thought, and realize how widely Irish customs, laws, traditions, and
+sentiments differ from our own.
+
+We are apt to think that what has worked well here will work well in
+Ireland; that Irishmen who differ from us are unreasonable; and that
+their proposals for change must be mistaken. We do not make allowance
+for the soreness of feeling prevailing among men who have long objected
+to the system by which Ireland has been governed, and who find that
+their earnest appeals for reform have been, until recent times,
+contemptuously disregarded by English politicians. Time after time
+moderate counsels have been rejected until too late. Acts of an
+exceptional character intended to secure law and order have been very
+numerous, and every one of them has caused fresh irritation; while
+remedial measures have been given in a manner which has not won the
+sympathy of the people, because they have not been the work of the Irish
+themselves, and have not been prepared in their own way.
+
+Parliament seems during the past Session to have fallen into the same
+error. By the power of an English majority, measures have been passed
+which are vehemently opposed by the political leaders and the majority
+of the Irish nation, and which are only agreeable to a small minority in
+Ireland. This action can only succeed if the Irish can be persuaded to
+relinquish the national sentiments of Home Rule; and yet this was never
+stronger or more vigorous than at the present time. It is supported by
+millions of Irish settled in America and in Australia; and here I would
+say that it has often struck me that the strong feeling of
+dissatisfaction, or, I might say, of disaffection, among the Irish is
+fed and nurtured by the marked contrast existing between the social
+condition of large numbers of the Irish in the South and West of Ireland
+and the views and habits of their numerous relatives in the United
+States.
+
+The social condition of many parts of Ireland is as backward, or perhaps
+more backward, than the condition of the rural population of England at
+the end of last or the beginning of this century. The Irish peasantry
+still live in poor hovels, often in the same room with animals; they
+have few modern comforts; and yet they are in close communication with
+those who live at ease in the cities and farms of the United States.
+They are also imbued with all the advanced political notions of the
+American Republic, and are sufficiently educated to read the latest
+political doctrines in the Press which circulates among them. Their
+social condition at home is a hundred years behind their state of
+political and mental culture. They naturally contrast the misery of many
+Irish peasants with the position of their relatives in the New World.
+This cannot but embitter their views against English rulers, and
+strengthen their leaning to national sentiments. Their national
+aspirations have never died out since 1782. They have taken various
+forms; but if the movements arising from them have been put down, fresh
+movements have constantly sprung up. The Press has grown into an immense
+power, and its influences have all been used to strengthen the zeal for
+Irish nationality, while, at the same time, the success of the national
+movements in Italy, Hungary, Greece, and Germany have had the same
+effect. Lastly, the sentiment of Home Rule has gained the sympathy of
+large bodies of electors in the constituencies of Great Britain, and,
+under the circumstances, it is difficult to suppose that, even if the
+country remains quiet, constitutional agitation will vanish or the Irish
+relinquish their most cherished ambition.
+
+We hear, from men who ought to know something of Ireland, that if the
+Land question is once settled, and dual ownership practically abolished,
+the tenants will be satisfied, and the movement for Home Rule will no
+longer find active support in Ireland. Without going into the whole of
+this argument, I should like to say two things: first, that I do not
+know how a large scheme of Land Purchase can be carried through
+Parliament with safety to Imperial interests without establishing, at
+the same time, some strong Irish Government in Dublin to act between the
+Imperial Government and the tenants of Ireland; and, second, that the
+feeling for Home Rule has a vitality of its own which will survive the
+Land question, even if independently settled.
+
+Home Rule is an expression of national feeling which cannot be
+extinguished in Ireland, and the only safe method of dealing with it is
+to turn its force and power to the support of an Irish Government
+established for the management of local Irish affairs. There are those
+who think that this must lead to separation. I cannot believe in this
+fear, for I know of no English statesman who looks upon complete
+separation of Ireland from Great Britain as possible. The geographical
+position of Ireland, the social and commercial connection between the
+two peoples, renders such a thing impossible. The Irish know this, and
+they are not so foolish as to think that they could gain their
+independence by force of arms; but I do not believe that they desire it.
+They are satisfied to obtain the management of their own local affairs
+under the _ægis_ of the flag of England. The papers in this volume show
+how this can be done with due regard to Imperial interests and the
+rights of minorities.
+
+I shall not enlarge on this part of the subject, but I wish to draw
+attention to the working of the Irish Government, and the position which
+it holds in the country, for it is through its administration that the
+policy of the Cabinet will be carried out. At the outset I feel bound to
+deprecate the exaggerated condemnation which the "Castle" receives from
+its opponents. It has its defects. Notwithstanding efforts of various
+ministers to enlarge the circle from which its officials are drawn, it
+is still too narrow for the modern development of Irish society, and it
+has from time to time been recruited from partisans without sufficient
+regard to the efficiency and requirements of the public service. But, on
+the whole, its members, taken as individuals, can well bear comparison
+with those of other branches of the Civil Service. They are diligent;
+they desire to do their duty with impartiality, and to hold an even
+balance between many opposing interests in Ireland. Whatever party is in
+office, they loyally carry out the policy of their chiefs. They are,
+probably, more plastic to the leadership of the heads of departments
+than members of some English offices, and they are more quickly moved by
+the influences around them. Sometimes they may relapse into an attitude
+of indifference and inertness if their chiefs are not active; but, on
+the other hand, they will act with vigour and decision if they are led
+by men who know their own minds and desire to be firm in the government
+of the country.
+
+When speaking of the chiefs of the Irish Civil Service, who change
+according to the political party in office, we must not overlook the
+legal officers, who exercise a most powerful influence on Irish
+administration. They consist of the Lord Chancellor, the Attorney and
+Solicitor General, and, until 1883, there was also an officer called the
+Law Adviser, who was the maid-of-all-work of Castle administration. In
+England, those who hold similar legal offices take no part in the daily
+administration of public affairs. The Lord Chancellor, as a member of
+the Cabinet, takes his share in responsibility for the policy of the
+Government. The law officers are consulted in special cases, and take
+their part from time to time in debates in the House of Commons. In
+Ireland, however, the Chancellor is constantly consulted by the
+Lord-Lieutenant on any difficult matter of administration, and the
+Attorney and Solicitor General are in constant communication with the
+Lord-Lieutenant, if he carries out the daily work of administration, and
+with the Chief and the Under Secretary.
+
+Governments differ as to the use they make of these officials. Some
+Governments have endeavoured to confine their work to cases where a mere
+legal opinion has to be obtained; but, when the country is in a
+disturbed state, even these limited references become very frequent, and
+questions of policy as well as of law are often discussed with the law
+officers. It is needless to say that, with their knowledge of Ireland
+and the traditions of Castle government (it is rare that all the law
+officers are new to office, and, consequently, they carry on the
+traditions from one Government to another), they often exercise a
+paramount influence over the policy of the Irish Government, and
+practically control it.
+
+They are connected with the closest and most influential order in Irish
+society--the legal order, consisting of the judges and Bar of Ireland.
+This adds to the general weight of their advice, but it has a special
+bearing when cases of legal reform or administration are under
+consideration; it then requires unwonted courage and independence for
+the law officers of the Crown to support changes which the lay members
+of the Government deem necessary.
+
+I have known conspicuous instances of the exercise of these high
+qualities by law officers enabling reforms to be carried, but as a rule,
+particularly when the initiative of legal reform is left to them, the
+Irish law officers do not care to move against the feeling of the legal
+world in Dublin. The lawyers, like other bodies, oppose the diminution
+of offices and honours belonging to them, or of the funds which, in the
+way of fees and salaries, are distributed among members of the bar; and
+they become bitterly hostile to any permanent official who is known to
+be a firm legal reformer. It would be impossible for me not to
+acknowledge the great service often done to the Government by the able
+men who have filled the law offices, yet I feel that under certain
+circumstances, when their influence has been allowed too strongly to
+prevail, it has tended to narrow the views of the Irish Government, and
+to keep it within a circle too narrow for the altered circumstances of
+modern life.
+
+The chief peculiarity of the Irish Administration is its extreme
+centralization. In this two departments may be mentioned as typical of
+the whole--the police and administration of local justice.
+
+The police in Dublin and throughout Ireland are under the control of the
+Lord-Lieutenant, and both these forces are admirable of their kind. They
+are almost wholly maintained by Imperial funds. The Dublin force costs
+about £150,000 a year. The Royal Irish Constabulary costs over a million
+in quiet, and a million and a half in disturbed times. Local authorities
+have nothing to do with their action or management. Local justice is
+administered by unpaid magistrates as in England, but they have been
+assisted, and gradually are being supplanted, by magistrates appointed
+by the Lord-Lieutenant and paid by the State.
+
+This state of things arose many years ago from the want of confidence
+between resident landlords and the bulk of the people. When agrarian or
+religious differences disturbed a locality the people distrusted the
+local magistrates, and by degrees the system of stipendiary, or, as they
+are called, resident magistrates, spread over the country. To maintain
+the judicial independence and impartiality of these magistrates is of
+the highest importance. At one time this was in some danger, for the
+resident magistrates not only heard cases at petty sessions, but, as
+executive peace officers, to a very great extent took the control of the
+police in their district, not only at riots, but in following up and
+discovering offenders. Their position as judicial and executive officers
+was thus very unfortunately mixed up. Between 1882 and 1883 the Irish
+Government did their utmost to separate and distinguish between these
+two functions, and it is to be hoped that the same policy has been and
+will be now continued, otherwise grave mischief in the administration of
+justice will arise. The existence of this staff of stipendiary
+magistrates could not fail to weaken the influence of the gentry in
+local affairs, and, at the same time, other causes were at work to
+undermine still further their power. The spread of education, the
+ballot, the extension of the franchise, communication with America, all
+tended to strengthen the political leaning of the tenants towards the
+National party in Ireland, and to widen the political differences
+between the richer and poorer classes in the country. The result of this
+has been, that not only have even the best landlords gradually lost
+their power in Parliamentary elections and on elective boards, but the
+Government, which greatly relied on them for support, has become
+isolated.
+
+The system of centralization is felt all over the country. It was the
+cause of weakness in the disturbed years of 1880 and 1881, and, although
+the Irish Executive strengthened themselves by placing officers over
+several counties, on whom they devolved a great deal of responsibility,
+they did not by these steps meet the real difficulty, which was that
+everything that went wrong, whether as to police or magisterial
+decisions, was attributed to the management of the Castle.
+
+In this country, local authorities and benches of magistrates, quite
+independent of the Home Office, are held responsible for mistakes in
+police action or irregularities in local justice. The consequence is
+that there is a strong buffer to protect the character and power of the
+Home Office.
+
+The absence of such protection in Ireland obviously has a very
+prejudicial effect on the permanent influence and popularity of the
+Irish Government. But as long as our system of government from England
+exists, this centralization cannot be avoided, for it would not be
+possible to transfer the responsibility of the police to local
+representative bodies, as they are too much opposed to the landlords and
+the Government to be trusted when strong party differences arise; nor,
+for the same reason, would it be possible to fall back on local men to
+administer justice. The fact is, that, out of the Protestant part of
+Ulster, the Irish Government receives the cordial support of only the
+landed proprietors, and a part of the upper middle classes in the towns.
+The feeling of the mass of the people has been so long against them that
+no change in the direction of trust in any centralized government of
+anti-national character can be expected.
+
+It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find any Municipal
+Council, Boards of Guardians, or Local Boards, in Leinster, Munster, or
+Connaught, whose members do not consist of a majority of Nationalists.
+At nearly all such assemblies, whenever any important political movement
+takes place in the country, or when the Irish Government take any action
+which is displeasing to the Nationalists, resolutions are discussed and
+carried in a spirit of sharp hostility to the Government.
+
+In Parliamentary elections we also find clear evidence of the strength
+of the Nationalists, and the extreme weakness of their opponents. This
+is a test which those who accept popular representative government
+cannot disregard, particularly at an election when for the first time
+the new constituencies were called upon to exercise the privileges
+entrusted to them by Parliament. Such was the election of 1885, followed
+in 1886 by another General Election. In 1885 contests took place in most
+of the Irish constituencies. They were between Liberals allied with
+Conservatives, and Parnellites. In 1886 the contests were between those
+who called themselves Unionists and Parnellites, and the Irish policy of
+Mr. Gladstone was specially referred to the electors.
+
+In regard to the number of members returned on the two sides, the result
+of each election was almost identical, but in 1886 there were fewer
+contests. We may, then, assume that the relative forces of Parnellites
+and Unionists were accurately represented at the election of 1885. If we
+take the votes at the election of 1885 for candidates standing as
+Nationalists, we shall find, roughly speaking, that they obtained in
+round numbers about 300,000 votes, and candidates who stood either as
+Liberals or Conservatives about 143,000. But the case is really stronger
+than these figures represent it, because in some constituencies the
+contests were between Liberals and Conservatives, and there can be no
+doubt that in those constituencies a number of Nationalist votes were
+given for one or both of such candidates--votes which, therefore, would
+have to be deducted from the 143,000, leaving a still heavier majority
+on the Nationalist side.[1]
+
+If we look at individual constituencies, we find that in South Kerry
+only 133 persons voted for the "Unionist" candidate, while 2742 voted
+for the Nationalist. In six out of seven constituencies in Cork where
+contests took place 27,692 votes were given for the Nationalists, and
+only 1703 for their opponents. In Dublin, in the division which may be
+considered the West End constituency of the Irish metropolis, the most
+successful man of commerce in Ireland, a leader of society, whose
+liberality towards those in his employment is only equalled by his
+munificence in all public works, was defeated by over 1900 votes. He did
+not stand in 1886, but his successor was defeated by a still larger
+majority. These elections show the numbers in Ireland on which the
+Government and those who oppose Mr. Parnell's policy can count for
+support.
+
+It is absurd to say that these results are caused by terrorism exercised
+over the minds of the electors by the agitators in Ireland; the same
+results occurred in every part of three provinces, and in part of
+Ulster, and the universality of the feeling proves the dominant feeling
+of the Irish electors. They show the extreme difficulty, the
+impossibility, of gaining that support and confidence which a Government
+needs in a free country. As it is, the Irish Government stands isolated
+in Ireland, and relies for support solely on England. Is a policy
+opposed to national feeling, which has been often, and by different
+Ministers, tried in Ireland, likely to succeed in the hands of a
+Government such as I have described, and isolated, as I think few will
+deny it to be? It is impossible in the long run to maintain it. The
+roots of strength are wanting.
+
+If we turn from Dublin to London, we do not find greater prospects of
+success. Twice within fourteen months Lord Salisbury has formed a
+Government. In 1885 his Cabinet, on taking office, deliberately decided
+to rule Ireland without exceptional laws; after a few months, they
+announced that they must ask Parliament for fresh powers. They resigned
+before they had defined their measures. But within six months Lord
+Salisbury was once more Prime Minister, and again commenced his
+administration by governing Ireland under the ordinary law. This attempt
+did not continue longer than the first, for when Parliament met in 1887,
+preparations were at once made to carry the Criminal Law Amendment Act,
+which occupied so large a portion of the late Session.
+
+This is not the action of men who have strong faith in their principles.
+Nor can it be shown that the continuous support so necessary for success
+will be given to this policy. No doubt it may be urged that the
+operation of the Act is not limited in duration; but, notwithstanding
+that, few politicians believe that the constituencies of Great Britain
+will long support the application of exceptional criminal laws to any
+part of the United Kingdom.
+
+This would be wholly inconsistent with past experience In relation to
+these measures, which points entirely the other way; and the publication
+in English newspapers and constant discussion on English platforms of
+the painful incidents which seem, unfortunately, inseparable from a
+rigid administration of the law in Ireland, together with the prolonged
+debates, such incidents give rise to, in Parliament, aggravate the
+difficulties of administration, and lead the Irish people to believe
+that exceptional legislation will be as short-lived in the future as it
+has been in the past.
+
+It was this evidence of want of continuity of policy in 1885, and the
+startling disclosure of the weakness of the anti-national party in
+Ireland at the election in the autumn of that year, which finally
+convinced me that the time had come when we could no longer turn to a
+mixed policy of remedial and exceptional criminal legislation as the
+means of winning the constituencies of that country in support of our
+old system of governing Ireland. That system has failed for eighty-six
+years, and obviously cannot succeed when worked with representative
+institutions. As the people of Great Britain will not for a moment
+tolerate the withdrawal of representative government from Ireland, we
+must adopt some new plan. What I have here written deals with but a
+fragment of the arguments for Home Rule, some of which are admirably set
+forth by the able men who have written the articles to which this is the
+preface. I earnestly wish that they may arrest the attention of many
+excellent Irishmen who still cling to the old traditions of English
+rule, and cause them to realize that the only way of relieving their
+country from the intolerable uncertainty which hangs over her
+commercial, social, and political interests and paralyzes all efforts
+for the improvement of her people, will be to form a Constitution
+supported by all classes of the community. I trust that they will join
+in this work before it is too late, for they may yet exercise a powerful
+and salutary influence in the settlement of this great question.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: There was one case--North Louth--in which two Nationalists
+opposed one another, and I have left that case out of the calculation.]
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN HOME RULE
+
+BY E.L. GODKIN
+
+
+American experience has been frequently cited, in the course of the
+controversy now raging in England over the Irish question, both by way
+of warning and of example. For instance, I have found in the _Times_ as
+well as in other journals--the _Spectator_, I think, among the
+number--very contemptuous dismissals of the plan of offering Ireland a
+government like that of an American State, on the ground that the
+Americans are loyal to the central authority, while in Ireland there is
+a strong feeling of hostility to it, which would probably increase under
+Home Rule. The Queen's writ, it has been remarked, cannot be said to run
+in large parts of Ireland, while in every part of the United States the
+Federal writ is implicitly obeyed, and the ministers of Federal
+authority find ready aid and sympathy from the people. If I remember
+rightly, the Duke of Argyll has been very emphatic in pointing out the
+difference between giving local self-government to a community in which
+the tendencies of popular feeling are "centrifugal," and giving it to
+one in which these tendencies are "centripetal." The inference to be
+drawn was, of course, that as long as Ireland disliked the Imperial
+government the concession of Home Rule would be unsafe, and would only
+become safe when the Irish people showed somewhat the same sort of
+affection for the English connection which the people of the State of
+New York now feel for the Constitution of the United States.
+
+Among the multitude of those who have taken part in the controversy on
+one side or the other, no one has, so far as I have observed, pointed
+out that the state of feeling in America toward the central government
+with which the state of feeling in Ireland towards the British
+Government is now compared, did not exist when the American Constitution
+was set up; that the political tendencies in America at that time were
+centrifugal, not centripetal, and that the extraordinary love and
+admiration with which Americans now regard the Federal government are
+the result of eighty years' experience of its working. The first
+Confederation was as much as the people could bear in the way of
+surrendering local powers when the War of Independence came to an end.
+It was its hopeless failure to provide peace and security which led to
+the framing of the present Constitution. But even with this experience
+still fresh, the adoption of the Constitution was no easy matter. I
+shall not burden this article with historical citations showing the very
+great difficulty which the framers of the Constitution had in inducing
+the various States to adopt it, or the magnitude and variety of the
+fears and suspicions with which, many of the most influential men in all
+parts of the country regarded it. Any one who wishes to know how
+numerous and diversified these fears and suspicions were, cannot do
+better than read the series of papers known as "The Federalist," written
+mainly by Hamilton and Madison, to commend the new plan to the various
+States. It was adopted almost as a matter of necessity, that is, as the
+only way out of the Slough of Despond in which the Confederation had
+plunged the union of the States; but the objections to it which were
+felt at the beginning were only removed by actual trial. Hamilton's two
+colleagues, as delegates from New York, Yates and Lansing, withdrew in
+disgust from the Convention, as soon as the Constitution was outlined,
+and did not return. The notion that the Constitution was produced by the
+craving of the American people for something of that sort to love and
+revere, and that it was not bestowed on them until they had given ample
+assurance that they would lavish affection on it, has no foundation
+whatever in fact. The devotion of Americans to the Union is, indeed, as
+clear a case of cause and effect as is to be found in political history.
+They have learned to like the Constitution because the country has
+prospered under it, and because it has given them all the benefits of
+national life without interference with local liberties. If they had not
+set up a central government until the centrifugal sentiment had
+disappeared from the States, and the feeling of loyalty for a central
+authority had fully shown itself, they would assuredly never have set it
+up at all.
+
+Moreover, it has to be borne in mind that the adoption of the
+Constitution did not involve the surrender of any local franchises, by
+which the people of the various States set great store. The States
+preserved fully four-fifths of their autonomy, or in fact nearly all of
+it which closely concerned the daily lives of individuals. Set aside the
+post-office, and a citizen of the State of New York, not engaged in
+foreign trade, might, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, have passed
+a long and busy life without once coming in contact with a United States
+official, and without being made aware in any of his doings, by any
+restriction or regulation, that he was living under any government but
+that of his own State. If he went abroad he had to apply for a United
+States passport. If he quarrelled with a foreigner, or with the citizen
+of another State, he might be sued in the Federal Court. If he imported
+foreign goods he had to pay duties to the collector of a Federal
+Custom-house. If he invented something, or wrote a book, he had to
+apply to the Department of the Interior for a patent or a copyright. But
+how few there were in the first seventy years of American history who
+had any of these experiences! No one supposes, or has ever supposed,
+that had the Federalists demanded any very large sacrifice of local
+franchises, or attempted to set up even a close approach to a
+centralized Government, the adoption of the Constitution would have been
+possible. If, for instance, such a transfer of both administration and
+legislation to the central authority as took place in Ireland after the
+Union had been proposed, it would have been rejected with derision. You
+will get no American to argue with you on this point. If you ask him
+whether he thinks it likely that a highly centralized government could
+have been created in 1879--such a one, for example, as Ireland has been
+under since 1800--or whether if created it would by this time have won
+the affection of the people, or filled them with centripetal tendencies,
+he will answer you with a smile.
+
+The truth is that nowhere, any more than in Ireland, do people love
+their Government from a sense of duty or because they crave an object of
+political affection, or even because it exalts them in the eyes of
+foreigners. They love it because they are happy or prosperous under it;
+because it supplies security in the form best suited to their tastes and
+habits, or in some manner ministers to their self-love. Loyalty to the
+king as the Lord's anointed, without any sense either of favours
+received or expected, has played a great part in European politics, I
+admit; but, for reasons which I will not here take up space in stating,
+a political arrangement, whether it be an elected monarch or a
+constitution, cannot be made, in our day, to reign in men's hearts
+except as the result of benefits so palpable that common people, as well
+as political philosophers, can see them and count them.
+
+Many of the opponents of Home Rule, too, point to the vigour with which
+the United States Government put down the attempt made by the South to
+break up the Union as an example of the American love of "imperial
+unity," and of the spirit in which England should now meet the Irish
+demands for local autonomy. This again is rather surprising, because you
+will find no one in America who will maintain for one moment that troops
+could have been raised in 1860 to undertake the conquest of the South
+for the purpose of setting up a centralized administration, or, in other
+words, for the purpose of wiping out State lines, or diminishing State
+authority. No man or party proposed anything of this kind at the
+outbreak of the war, or would have dared to propose it. The object for
+which the North rose in arms, and which Lincoln had in view when he
+called for troops, was the restoration of the Union just as it was when
+South Carolina seceded, barring the extension of slavery into the
+territories. During the first year of the war, certainly, the revolted
+States might at any time have had peace on the _status quo_ basis, that
+is, without the smallest diminution of their rights and immunities under
+the Constitution. It was only when it became evident that the war would
+have to be fought out to a finish, as the pugilists say--that is, that
+it would have to end in a complete conquest of the Southern
+territory--that the question, what would become of the States as a
+political organization after the struggle was over, began to be debated
+at all. What did become of them? How did Americans deal with Home Rule,
+after it had been used to set on foot against the central authority what
+the newspapers used to delight in calling "the greatest rebellion the
+world ever saw"? The answer to these questions is, it seems to me, a
+contribution of some value to the discussion of the Irish problem in its
+present stage, if American precedents can throw any light whatever on
+it.
+
+There was a Joint Committee of both Houses of Congress appointed in
+1866 to consider the condition of the South with reference to the safety
+or expediency of admitting the States lately in rebellion to their old
+relations to the Union, including representation in Congress. It
+contained, besides such fanatical enemies of the South as Thaddeus
+Stevens, such very conservative men as Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Grimes, Mr.
+Morrill, and Mr. Conkling. Here is the account they gave of the
+condition of Southern feeling one year after Lee's surrender:--
+
+"Examining the evidence taken by your committee still further, in
+connection with facts too notorious to be disputed, it appears that the
+Southern press, with few exceptions, and those mostly of newspapers
+recently established by Northern men, abounds with weekly and daily
+abuse of the institutions and people of the loyal States; defends the
+men who led, and the principles which incited, the rebellion; denounces
+and reviles Southern men who adhered to the Union; and strives
+constantly and unscrupulously, by every means in its power, to keep
+alive the fire of hate and discord between the sections; calling upon
+the President to violate his oath of office, overturn the Government by
+force of arms, and drive the representatives of the people from their
+seats in Congress. The national banner is openly insulted, and the
+national airs scoffed at, not only by an ignorant populace, but at
+public meetings, and once, among other notable instances, at a dinner
+given in honour of a notorious rebel who had violated his oath and
+abandoned his flag. The same individual is elected to an important
+office in the leading city of his State, although an unpardoned rebel,
+and so offensive that the President refuses to allow him to enter upon
+his official duties. In another State the leading general of the rebel
+armies is openly nominated for Governor by the Speaker of the House of
+Delegates, and the nomination is hailed by the people with shouts of
+satisfaction, and openly endorsed by the press....
+
+"The evidence of an intense hostility to the Federal Union, and an
+equally intense love of the late Confederacy, nurtured by the war is
+decisive. While it appears that nearly all are willing to submit, at
+least for the time being, to the Federal authority, it is equally clear
+that the ruling motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will
+be derived from a representation in Congress. Officers of the Union army
+on duty, and Northern men who go south to engage in business, are
+generally detested and proscribed. Southern men who adhered to the Union
+are bitterly hated and relentlessly persecuted. In some localities
+prosecutions have been instituted in State courts against Union officers
+for acts done in the line of official duty, and similar prosecutions are
+threatened elsewhere as soon as the United States troops are removed.
+All such demonstrations show a state of feeling against which it is
+unmistakably necessary to guard.
+
+"The testimony is conclusive that after the collapse of the Confederacy
+the feeling of the people of the rebellious States was that of abject
+submission. Having appealed to the tribunal of arms, they had no hope
+except that by the magnanimity of their conquerors, their lives, and
+possibly their property, might be preserved. Unfortunately the general
+issue of pardons to persons who had been prominent in the rebellion, and
+the feeling of kindliness and conciliation manifested by the Executive,
+and very generally indicated through the Northern press, had the effect
+to render whole communities forgetful of the crime they had committed,
+defiant towards the Federal Government, and regardless of their duties
+as citizens. The conciliatory measures of the Government do not seem to
+have been met even half-way. The bitterness and defiance exhibited
+towards the United States under such circumstances is without a parallel
+in the history of the world. In return for our leniency we receive only
+an insulting denial of our authority. In return for our kind desire for
+the resumption of fraternal relations we receive only an insolent
+assumption of rights and privileges long since forfeited. The crime we
+have punished is paraded as a virtue, and the principles of republican
+government which we have vindicated at so terrible a cost are denounced
+as unjust and oppressive.
+
+"If we add to this evidence the fact that, although peace has been
+declared by the President, he has not, to this day, deemed it safe to
+restore the writ of _habeas corpus_, to relieve the insurrectionary
+States of martial law, nor to withdraw the troops from many localities,
+and that the commanding general deems an increase of the army
+indispensable to the preservation of order and the protection of loyal
+and well-disposed people in the South, the proof of a condition of
+feeling hostile to the Union and dangerous to the Government throughout
+the insurrectionary States would seem to be overwhelming."
+
+This Committee recommended a series of coercive measures, the first of
+which was the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution,
+which disqualified for all office, either under the United States or
+under any State, any person who having in any capacity taken an oath of
+allegiance to the United States afterwards engaged in rebellion or gave
+aid and comfort to the rebels. This denied the _jus honorum_ to all the
+leading men at the South who had survived the war. In addition to it, an
+Act was passed in March, 1867, which put all the rebel States under
+military rule until a constitution should have been framed by a
+Convention elected by all males over twenty-one, except such as would be
+excluded from office by the above-named constitutional amendment if it
+were adopted, which at that time it had not been. Another Act was passed
+three weeks later, prescribing, for voters in the States lately in
+rebellion, what was known as the "ironclad oath," which excluded from
+the franchise not only all who had borne arms against the United States,
+but all who, having ever held any office for which the taking an oath of
+allegiance to the United States was a qualification, had afterwards ever
+given "aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." This practically
+disfranchised all the white men of the South over twenty-five years old.
+
+On this legislation there grew up, as all the world now knows, what was
+called the "carpet-bag" _regime_. Swarms of Northern adventurers went
+down to the Southern States, organized the ignorant negro voters,
+constructed State constitutions to suit themselves, got themselves
+elected to all the chief offices, plundered the State treasuries,
+contracted huge State debts, and stole the proceeds in connivance with
+legislatures composed mainly of negroes, of whom the most intelligent
+and instructed had been barbers and hotel-waiters. In some of the
+States, such as South Carolina and Mississippi, in which the negro
+population were in the majority, the government became a mere
+caricature. I was in Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, in 1872,
+during the session of the legislature, when you could obtain the passage
+of almost any measure you pleased by a small payment--at that time seven
+hundred dollars--to an old negro preacher who controlled the coloured
+majority. Under the pretence of fitting up committee-rooms, the private
+lodging-rooms at the boarding-houses of the negro members, in many
+instances, were extravagantly furnished with Wilton and Brussels
+carpets, mirrors, and sofas. A thousand dollars were expended for two
+hundred elegant imported china spittoons. There were only one hundred
+and twenty-three members in the House of Representatives, but the
+residue were, perhaps, transferred to the private chambers of the
+legislators.
+
+Now, how did the Southern whites deal with this state of things? Well, I
+am sorry to say they manifested their discontent very much in the way
+in which the Irish have for the last hundred years been manifesting
+theirs. If, as the English opponents of Home Rule seem to think,
+readiness to commit outrages, and refusal to sympathize with the victims
+of outrages, indicate political incapacity, the whites of the South
+showed, in the period between 1866 and 1876, that they were utterly
+unfit to be entrusted with the work of self-government. They could not
+rise openly in revolt because the United States troops were everywhere
+at the service of the carpet-baggers, for the suppression of armed
+resistance. They did not send petitions to Congress, or write letters to
+the Northern newspapers, or hold indignation meetings. They simply
+formed a huge secret society on the model of the "Molly Maguires" or
+"Moonlighters," whose special function was to intimidate, flog,
+mutilate, or murder political opponents in the night time. This society
+was called the "Ku-Klux Klan." Let me give some account of its
+operation, and I shall make it as brief as possible. It had become so
+powerful in 1871 that President Grant in that year, in his message to
+Congress, declared that "a condition of things existed in some of the
+States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the
+carrying of the mails and the collecting of the revenue dangerous." A
+Joint Select Committee of Congress was accordingly appointed, early in
+1872, to "inquire into the condition of affairs in the late
+insurrectionary States, so far as regards the execution of the laws and
+the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of the United
+States." Its report now lies before me, and it reads uncommonly like the
+speech of an Irish Secretary in the House of Commons bringing in a
+"Suppression of Crime Bill." The Committee say--
+
+"There is a remarkable concurrence of testimony to the effect that, in
+those of the late rebellious States into whose condition we have
+examined, the courts and juries administer justice between man and man
+in all ordinary cases, civil and criminal; and while there is this
+concurrence on this point, the evidence is equally decisive that redress
+cannot be obtained against those who commit crimes in disguise and at
+night. The reasons assigned are that identification is difficult, almost
+impossible; that, when this is attempted, the combinations and oaths of
+the order come in and release the culprit by perjury, either upon the
+witness-stand or in the jury-box; and that the terror inspired by their
+acts, as well as the public sentiment in their favour in many
+localities, paralyzes the arm of civil power.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The murders and outrages which have been perpetrated in many counties
+of Middle and West Tennessee, during the past few months, have been so
+numerous, and of such an aggravated character, as almost baffles
+investigation. In these counties a reign of terror exists which is so
+absolute in its nature that the best of citizens are unable or unwilling
+to give free expression to their opinions. The terror inspired by the
+secret organization known as the Ku-Klux Klan is so great, that the
+officers of the law are powerless to execute its provisions, to
+discharge their duties, or to bring the guilty perpetrators of these
+outrages to the punishment they deserve. Their stealthy movements are
+generally made under cover of night, and under masks and disguises,
+which render their identification difficult, if not impossible. To add
+to the secrecy which envelops their operations, is the fact that no
+information of their murderous acts can be obtained without the greatest
+difficulty and danger in the localities where they are committed. No one
+dares to inform upon them, or take any measures to bring them to
+punishment, because no one can tell but that he may be the next victim
+of their hostility or animosity. The members of this organization, with
+their friends, aiders, and abettors, take especial pains to conceal all
+their operations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Your committee believe that during the past six months, the murders--to
+say nothing of other outrages--would average one a day, or one for every
+twenty-four hours; that in the great majority of these cases they have
+been perpetrated by the Ku-Klux above referred to, and few, if any, have
+been brought to punishment. A number of the counties of this State
+(Tennessee) are entirely at the mercy of this organization, and roving
+bands of nightly marauders bid defiance to the civil authorities, and
+threaten to drive out every man, white or black, who does not submit to
+their arbitrary dictation. To add to the general lawlessness of these
+communities, bad men of every description take advantage of the
+circumstances surrounding them, and perpetrate acts of violence, from
+personal or pecuniary motives, under the plea of political necessity."
+
+Here is some of the evidence on which the report was based.
+
+A complaint of outrages committed in Georgia was referred by the general
+of the army, in June, 1869, to the general of the Department of the
+South for thorough investigation and report. General Terry, in his
+report, made August 14, 1869, says[2]--
+
+"In many parts of the State there is practically no government. The
+worst of crimes are committed, and no attempt is made to punish those
+who commit them. Murders have been and are frequent; the abuse, in
+various ways, of the blacks is too common to excite notice. There can be
+no doubt of the existence of numerous insurrectionary organizations
+known as 'Ku-Klux Klans,' who, shielded by their disguise, by the
+secrecy of their movements, and by the terror which they inspire,
+perpetrate crime with impunity. There is great reason to believe that in
+some cases local magistrates are in sympathy with the members of these
+organizations. In many places they are overawed by them and dare not
+attempt to punish them. To punish such offenders by civil proceedings
+would be a difficult task, even were magistrates in all cases disposed
+and had they the courage to do their duty, for the same influences which
+govern them equally affect juries and witnesses."
+
+Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Merrill, who assumed command (in Louisiana) on
+the 26th of March, and commenced investigation into the state of
+affairs, says (p. 1465)--
+
+"From the best information I can get, I estimate the number of cases of
+whipping, beating, and personal violence of various grades, in this
+county, since the first of last November, at between three and four
+hundred, excluding numerous minor cases of threats, intimidation, abuse,
+and small personal violence, as knocking down with a pistol or gun, etc.
+The more serious outrages, exclusive of murders and whippings, noted
+hereafter, have been the following:--"
+
+He then proceeds with the details of sixty-eight cases, giving the names
+of the parties injured, white and black, and including the tearing up of
+the railway, on the night before a raid was made by the Ku-Klux on the
+county treasury building. The rails were taken up, to prevent the
+arrival of the United States troops, who, it was known, were to come on
+Sunday morning. The raid was made on that Sunday night while the troops
+were lying at Chester, twenty-two miles distant, unable to reach
+Yorkville, because of the rails being torn up.
+
+Another witness said: "To give the details of the whipping of men to
+compel them to change their mode of voting, the tearing of them away
+from their families at night, accompanied with insults and outrage, and
+followed by their murder, would be but repeating what has been described
+in other States, showing that it is the same organization in all,
+working by the same means for the same end. Five murders are shown to
+have been committed in Monroe County, fifteen in Noxubee, one in
+Lowndes, by the testimony taken in the city of Washington; but the
+extent to which school-houses were burnt, teachers whipped, and outrages
+committed in this State, cannot be fully given until the testimony taken
+by the sub-committee shall have been printed and made ready to report."
+
+There are about eighty, closely printed, large octavo pages of this kind
+of testimony given by sufferers from the outrages.
+
+Something was done to suppress the Ku-Klux by a Federal Act passed in
+1871, which made offences of this kind punishable in the Federal Courts.
+Considerable numbers of them were arrested, tried, and convicted, and
+sent to undergo their punishment in the Northern jails. But there was no
+complete pacification of the South until the carpet-bag governments were
+refused the support of the Federal troops by President Hayes, on his
+accession to power in 1876. Then the carpet-bag _régime_ disappeared
+like a house of cards. The chief carpet-baggers fled, and the government
+passed at once into the hands of the native whites. I do not propose to
+defend or explain the way in which they have since then kept it in their
+hands, by suppressing or controlling the negro vote. This is not
+necessary to my purpose.
+
+What I seek to show is that the Irish are not peculiar in their manner
+of expressing their discontent with a government directed or controlled
+by the public opinion of another indifferent or semi-hostile community
+which it is impossible to resist in open warfare; that Anglo-Saxons
+resort to somewhat the same methods under similar circumstances, and
+that lawlessness and cruelty, considered as expressions of political
+animosity, do not necessarily argue any incapacity for the conduct of an
+orderly and efficient government, although I admit freely that they do
+argue a low state of civilization.
+
+I will add one more illustration which, although more remote than those
+which I have taken from the Southern States during the reconstruction
+period, is not too remote for my purpose, and is in some respects
+stronger than any of them. I do not know a more orderly community in the
+world, or one which, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, when
+manufactures began to multiply, and the Irish immigration began to pour
+in, had a higher average of intelligence than the State of Connecticut.
+Down to 1818 all voters in that State had to be members of the
+Congregational Church. It had no large cities, and this, with the aid of
+its seat of learning, Yale College, preserved in it, I think, in greater
+purity than even Massachusetts, the old Puritan simplicity of manners,
+the Puritan spirit of order and thrift, and the business-like view of
+government which grew out of the practice of town government. A less
+sentimental community, I do not think, exists anywhere, or one in which
+the expression of strong feeling on any subject but religion is less
+cultivated or viewed with less favour. In the matter of managing their
+own political affairs in peace or war, I do not expect the Irish to
+equal the Connecticut people for a hundred years to come, no matter how
+much practice they may have in the interval, and I think that fifty
+years ago it was only picked bodies of Englishmen who could do so. Yet,
+in 1833, in the town of Canterbury, one of the most orderly and
+intelligent in the State, an estimable and much-esteemed lady, Miss
+Prudence Crandall, was carrying on a girls' school, when something
+happened to touch her conscience about the condition of the free negroes
+of the North. She resolved, in a moment of enthusiasm, to undertake the
+education of negro girls only. What follows forms one of the most famous
+episodes in the anti-slavery struggle in America, and is possibly
+familiar to many of the older readers of this article. I shall extract
+the account of it as given briefly in the lately published life of
+William Lloyd Garrison, by his sons. Some of the details are much worse
+than is here described.
+
+"The story of this remarkable case cannot be pursued here except in
+brief.... It will be enough to say that the struggle between the modest
+and heroic young Quaker woman and the town lasted for nearly two years;
+that the school was opened in April; that attempts were immediately made
+under the law to frighten the pupils away and to fine Miss Crandall for
+harbouring them; that in May an Act prohibiting private schools for
+non-resident coloured persons, and providing for the expulsion of the
+latter, was procured from the legislature, amid the greatest rejoicing
+in Canterbury (even to the ringing of church bells); that, under this
+Act, Miss Crandall was in June arrested and temporarily imprisoned in
+the county jail, twice tried (August and October) and convicted; that
+her case was carried up to the Supreme Court of Errors, and her
+persecutors defeated on a technicality (July, 1834), and that pending
+this litigation the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to
+isolate the school from the countenance and even the physical support of
+the townspeople. The shops and the meeting-house were closed against
+teacher and pupils, carriage in the public conveyances was denied them,
+physicians would not wait upon them, Miss Crandall's own family and
+friends were forbidden, under penalty of heavy fines, to visit her, the
+well was filled with manure and water from other sources refused, the
+house itself was smeared with filth, assailed with rotten eggs and
+stones, and finally set on fire" (vol. i. p. 321).
+
+Miss Crandall is still living in the West, in extreme old age, and the
+Connecticut legislature voted her a small pension two years ago, as a
+slight expiation of the ignominy and injustice from which she had
+suffered at the hands of a past generation.
+
+The _Spectator_ frequently refers to the ferocious hatred displayed
+toward the widow of Curtin, the man who was cruelly murdered by
+moonlighters somewhere in Kerry, as an evidence of barbarism which
+almost, if not quite, justifies the denial of self-government to a
+people capable of producing such monsters in one spot and on one
+occasion. Let me match this from Mississippi with a case which I
+produce, not because it was singular, but because it was notorious at
+the North, where it occurred, in 1877. One Chisholm, a native of the
+State, and a man of good standing and character, became a Republican
+after the war, and was somewhat active in organizing the negro voters in
+his district. He was repeatedly warned by some of his neighbours to
+desist and abandon politics, but continued resolutely on his course. A
+mob, composed of many of the leading men in the town, then attacked him
+in his house. He made his escape, with his wife and young daughter and
+son, a lad of fourteen, to the jail. His assailants broke the jail open,
+and killed him and his son, and desperately wounded the daughter. The
+poor lad received such a volley of bullets, that his blood went in one
+rush to the floor, and traced the outlines of his trunk on the ceiling
+of the room below, where it remained months afterwards, an eye-witness
+told me, as an illustration of the callousness of the jailer. The
+leading murderers were tried. They had no defence. The facts were not
+disputed. The judge and the bar did their duty, but the jury acquitted
+the prisoners without leaving their seats. Mrs. Chisholm, the widow,
+found neither sympathy nor friends at the scene of the tragedy. She had
+to leave the State, and found refuge in Washington, where she now holds
+a clerkship in the Treasury department.
+
+Let me cite as another illustration the violent ways in which popular
+discontent may find expression in communities whose political capacity
+and general respect for the law and its officers, as well as for the
+sanctity of contracts, have never been questioned. Large tracts of land
+were formerly held along the Hudson river in the State of New York, by a
+few families, of which the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons were the
+chief, either under grants from the Dutch at the first settlement of the
+colony, or from the English Crown after the conquest. That known as the
+"Manor of Rensselaerwick," held by the Van Rensselaers, comprised a
+tract of country extending twenty-four miles north and south, and
+forty-eight miles east and west, lying on each side of the Hudson river.
+It was held by the tenants for perpetual leases. The rents were, on the
+Van Rensselaer estate, fourteen bushels of wheat for each hundred acres,
+and four fat hens, and one day's service with a carriage and horses, to
+each farm of one hundred and sixty acres. Besides this, there was a fine
+on alienation amounting to about half a year's rent. The Livingston
+estates were let in much the same way.
+
+In 1839, Stephen Van Rensselaer, the proprietor, or "Patroon" as he was
+called, died, with $400,000 due to him as arrears from the tenants, for
+which, being a man of easy temper, he had forborne to press them. But he
+left the amount in trust by his will for the payment of his debts, and
+his heirs proceeded to collect it, and persisted in the attempt during
+the ensuing seven years. What then happened I shall describe in the
+words of Mr. John Bigelow. Mr. Tilden was a member of the State
+Legislature in 1846, and was appointed Chairman of a Committee to
+investigate the rent troubles, and make the report which furnished the
+basis for the legislation by which they were subsequently settled. Mr.
+Bigelow, who has edited Mr. Tilden's _Public Writings and Speeches_,
+prefaces the report with the following explanatory note:--
+
+"Attempts were made to enforce the collection of these rents. The
+tenants resisted. They established armed patrols, and, by the adoption
+of various disguises, were enabled successfully to defy the civil
+authorities. Eventually it became necessary to call out the military,
+but the result was only partially satisfactory. These demonstrations of
+authority provoked the formation of 'anti-rent clubs' throughout the
+manorial district, with a view of acquiring a controlling influence in
+the legislature. Small bands, armed and disguised as Indians, were also
+formed to hold themselves in readiness at all times to resist the
+officers of the law whenever and wherever they attempted to serve legal
+process upon the tenants. The principal roads throughout the infected
+district were guarded by the bands so carefully, and the animosity
+between the tenants and the civil authorities was so intense, that at
+last it became dangerous for any one not an anti-renter to be found in
+these neighbourhoods. It was equally dangerous for the landlords to make
+any appeal to the law or for the collection of rents or for protection
+of their persons. When Governor Wright entered upon his duties in Albany
+in 1845, he found that the anti-rent party had a formidable
+representation in the legislature, and that the questions involved were
+assuming an almost national importance."
+
+The sheriff made gallant attempts to enforce the law, but his deputies
+were killed, and a legal investigation in which two hundred persons were
+examined, failed to reveal the perpetrators of the crime. The militia
+were called out, but they were no more successful than the sheriff. In
+the case of one murder committed in Delaware County in 1845, however,
+two persons were convicted, but their sentence was commuted to
+imprisonment for life. Various others concerned in the disturbances were
+convicted of minor offences, but when Governor Young succeeded Governor
+Seward after an election in which the anti-renters showed considerable
+voting strength, he pardoned them all on the ground that their crimes
+were political. The dispute was finally settled by a compromise--that
+is, the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons both sold their estates,
+giving quit-claim deeds to the tenants for what they chose to pay, and
+the granting of agricultural leases for a longer term than twelve years
+was forbidden by the State Constitution of 1846.
+
+This anti-rent agitation is described by Professor Johnston of
+Princeton, in the _Cyclopædia of Political Science_, as "a reign of
+terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law
+and the payment of rent throughout the district." Suppose all the land
+of the State had been held under similar tenures; that the controversy
+had lasted one hundred years; that the rents had been high; and that the
+Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons had had the aid of the Federal army
+in enforcing distraints and evictions, and in enabling them to set local
+opinion at defiance, what do you suppose the state of morals and manners
+would have been in New York by this time? What would have been the
+feelings of the people towards the Federal authority had the matter been
+finally adjusted with the strong hand, in accordance, not with the views
+of the people of the State, but of the landholders of South Carolina or
+of the district of Columbia? I am afraid they would have been terribly
+Irish.
+
+
+I know very well the risk I run, in citing all these precedents and
+parallels, of seeming to justify, or at all events to palliate, Irish
+lawlessness. But I am not doing anything of the kind. I am trying to
+illustrate a somewhat trite remark which I recently made: "that
+government is a very practical business, and that those succeed best in
+it who bring least sentiment or enthusiasm to the conduct of their
+affairs." The government of Ireland, like the government of all other
+countries, is a piece of business--a very difficult piece of business, I
+admit--and therefore horror over Irish doings, and the natural and human
+desire to "get even with" murderers and moonlighters, by denying the
+community which produces them something it would like much to possess,
+should have no influence with those who are charged with Irish
+government. It is only in nurseries and kindergartens that we can give
+offenders their exact due and withhold their toffee until they have
+furnished satisfactory proofs of repentance. Rulers of men have to
+occupy themselves mainly with the question of drying up the sources of
+crime, and often, in order to accomplish this, to let much crime and
+disorder go unwhipped of justice.
+
+With the state of mind which cannot bear to see any concessions made to
+the Irish Nationalists because they are such wicked men, in which so
+many excellent Englishmen, whom we used to think genuine political
+philosophers, are now living, we are very familiar in the United States.
+It is a state of mind which prevailed in the Republican party with
+regard to the South, down to the election of 1884, and found constant
+expression on the stump and in the newspapers in what is described, in
+political slang, as "waving the bloody shirt." It showed itself after
+the war in unwillingness to release the South from military rule; then
+in unwillingness to remove the disfranchisement of the whites or to
+withdraw from the carpet-bag State governments the military support
+without which they could not have existed for a day; and, last of all,
+in dread of the advent of a Democratic Federal Administration in which
+Southerners or "ex-rebels" would be likely to hold office. At first the
+whole Republican party was more or less permeated by these ideas; but
+the number of those who held them gradually diminished, until in 1884 it
+was at last possible to elect a Democratic President. Nevertheless a
+great multitude witnessed the entrance into the White House of a
+President who is indebted for his election mainly to the States formerly
+in rebellion, with genuine alarm. They feared from it something
+dreadful, in the shape either of a violation of the rights of the
+freedmen, or of an assault on the credit and stability of the Federal
+Government. Nothing but actual experiment would have disabused them.
+
+I am very familiar with the controversy with them, for I have taken some
+part in it ever since the passage of the reconstruction Acts, and I know
+very well how they felt, and am sometimes greatly impressed by the
+similarity between their arguments and those of the opponents of Irish
+Home Rule. One of their fixed beliefs for many years, though it is now
+extinct, was that Southerners were so bent on rebelling again, and were
+generally so prone to rebellion, that the awful consequences of their
+last attempt in the loss of life and property, had made absolutely no
+impression on them. The Southerner was, in fact, in their eyes, what Mr.
+Gladstone says the Irishman is in the eyes of some Englishmen: "A _lusus
+naturæ_; that justice, common sense, moderation, national prosperity had
+no meaning for him; that all he could appreciate was strife and
+perpetual dissension. It was for many years useless to point out to them
+the severity of the lesson taught by the Civil War as to the physical
+superiority of the North, or the necessity of peace and quiet to enable
+the new generation of Southerners to restore their fortunes, or even
+gain a livelihood. Nor was it easy to impress them with the
+inconsistency of arguing that it was slavery which made Southerners what
+they were before they went to war, and maintaining at the same time that
+the disappearance of slavery would produce no change in their manners,
+ideas, or opinions. All this they answered by pointing to speeches
+delivered by some fiery adorer of "the lost cause," to the Ku-Klux
+outrages, to political murders, like that of Chisholm, to the building
+of monuments to the Confederate dead, or to some newspaper expression of
+reverence for Confederate nationality. In fact, for fully ten years
+after the close of the war the collection of Southern "outrages" and
+their display before Northern audiences, was the chief work of
+Republican politicians. In 1876, during the Hayes-Tilden canvass, the
+opening speech which furnished what is called "the key-note of the
+campaign" was made by Mr. Wheeler, the Republican candidate for the
+Vice-Presidency, and his advice to the Vermonters, to whom it was
+delivered, was "to vote as they shot," that is, to go to the polls with
+the same feelings and aims as those with which they enlisted in the war.
+
+I need hardly tell English readers how all this has ended. The
+withdrawal of the Federal troops from the South by President Hayes, and
+the consequent complete restoration of the State governments to the
+discontented whites, have fully justified the expectations of those who
+maintained that it is no less true in politics than in physics, that if
+you remove what you see to be the cause, the effect will surely
+disappear. It is true, at least in the Western world, that if you give
+communities in a reasonable degree the management of their own affairs,
+the love of material comfort and prosperity which is now so strong among
+all civilized, and even partially civilized men, is sure in the long run
+to do the work of creating and maintaining order; or, as Mr. Gladstone
+has expressed it, in setting up a government, "the best and surest
+foundation we can find to build on is the foundation afforded by the
+affections, the convictions, and the will of men."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: Report of Secretary of War, 1869-70, vol. i. p. 89.]
+
+
+
+
+HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS.
+
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+
+In the Home Rule contest of the last eighteen months no argument has
+been more frequently used against the Liberal party than the charge of
+sudden, and therefore, it would seem, dishonest change of view. "You
+were opposed to an Irish Parliament at the election of 1880 and for some
+time afterward; you are not entitled to advocate it in 1886." "You
+passed a Coercion Bill in 1881, your Ministry (though against the
+protests of an active section of its supporters) passed another Coercion
+Bill in 1882; you have no right to resist a third such Bill in 1887,
+and, if you do, your conduct can be due to nothing but party spite and
+revenge at your own exclusion from office." Reproaches of this kind are
+now the stock-in-trade, not merely of the ordinary politician, who, for
+want of a case, abuses the plaintiff's attorney, but of leading men,
+and, still more, of leading newspapers, who might be thought bound to
+produce from recent events and an examination of the condition of
+Ireland some better grounds for the passion they display. It is
+noticeable that such reproaches come more often from the so-called
+Liberal Unionists than from the present Ministry. Perhaps, with their
+belief that all Liberals are unprincipled revolutionaries, the Tories
+deem a sin more or less to be of small account. Perhaps a recollection
+of their own remarkable gyrations, before and after the General
+Election of 1885, may suggest that the less said about the past the
+better for everybody. Be the cause what it may, it is surprising to find
+that a section commanding so much ability as the group of Dissentient
+Liberals does, should rely rather on the charge of inconsistency than on
+the advocacy of any counter-policy of their own. It is not large and
+elevated, but petty, minds that rejoice to say to an opponent (and all
+the more so if he was once a friend), "You must either be wrong now, or
+have been wrong then, because you have changed your opinion. I have not
+changed; I was right then, and I am right now." Such an argument not
+only dispenses with the necessity of sifting the facts, but it fosters
+the satisfaction of the person who employs it. Consistency is the pet
+virtue of the self-righteous, and the man who values himself on his
+consistency can seldom be induced to see that to shut one's eyes to the
+facts which time develops, to refuse to reconsider one's position by the
+light they shed, to cling to an old solution when the problem is
+substantially new, is a proof, not of fortitude and wisdom, but rather
+of folly and conceit.
+
+Such persons may be left to the contemplation of their own virtues. But
+there are many fair-minded men of both political parties, or of neither,
+who, while acquitting those Liberal members who supported Home Rule in
+1886 and opposed Coercion in 1887 of the sordid or spiteful motives with
+which the virulence of journalism credits them, have nevertheless been
+surprised at the apparent swiftness and completeness of the change in
+their opinions. It would be idle to deny that, in startling the minds of
+steady-going people, this change did, for the moment, weaken the
+influence and weight of those who had changed. This must be so. A man
+who says now what he denied six years ago cannot expect to be believed
+on his _ipse dixit_. He must set forth the grounds of his conviction. He
+must explain how his views altered, and why reasons which formerly
+satisfied him satisfy him no longer. It may be that the Liberal party
+have omitted to do this as they ought. Occupied by warm and incessant
+discussions, and conscious, I venture to believe, of their own honesty,
+few of its members have been at the trouble of showing what were the
+causes which modified their views, and what the stages of the process
+which carried them from the position of 1880 to that of 1886.
+
+Of that process I shall attempt in the following pages to give a sketch.
+Such a sketch, though mainly retrospective, is pertinent to the issues
+which now divide the country. It will indicate the origin and the
+strength of the chief reasons by which Liberals are now governed. And,
+if executed with proper fairness and truth, it may, as a study in
+contemporary history, be of some little interest to those who in future
+will attempt to understand our present conflict. The causes which
+underlie changes of opinion are among the most obscure phenomena in
+history, because those who undergo, these changes are often only half
+conscious of them, and do not think of recording that which is
+imperceptible in its growth, and whose importance is not realized till
+it already belongs to the past.
+
+The account which follows is based primarily on my own recollection of
+the phases of opinion and feeling through which I myself, and the
+friends whom I knew most intimately in the House of Commons, passed
+during the Parliament which sat from 1880 till 1885. But I should not
+think of giving it to the public if I did not believe that what happened
+to our minds happened to many others also, and that the record of our
+own slow movement from the position of 1880 to that of 1886 is
+substantially a record of the movement of the Liberal party at large. We
+were fairly typical members of that party, loyal to our leaders, but
+placing the principles for which the Liberal party exists above the
+success of the party itself; with our share of prepossessions and
+prejudices, yet with reasonably open minds, and (as we believed)
+inferior to no other section of the House of Commons in patriotism and
+in attachment to the Constitution. I admit frankly that when we entered
+Parliament we knew less about the Irish question than we ought to have
+known, and that even after knowledge had been forced upon us, we were
+more deferential to our leaders than was good either for us or for them.
+But these are faults always chargeable on the great majority of members.
+It is because those of whom I speak were in these respects fairly
+typical, that it seems worth while to trace the history of their
+opinions. If any one should accuse me of attributing to an earlier year
+sentiments which began to appear in a later one, I can only reply that I
+am aware of this danger, as one which always besets those who recall
+their past states of mind, and that I have done my utmost to avoid it.
+
+The change I have to describe was slow and gradual. It was
+reluctant--that is to say, it seemed rather forced upon us by the
+teaching of events than the work of our own minds. Each session marked a
+further stage in it; and I therefore propose to examine its progress
+session by session.
+
+Session of 1880.--The General Election of 1880 turned mainly on the
+foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government. Few Liberal candidates
+said much about Ireland. Absorbed in the Eastern and Afghan questions,
+they had not watched the progress of events in Ireland with the
+requisite care, nor realized the gravity of the crisis which was
+approaching. They were anxious to do justice to Ireland, in the way of
+amending both the land laws and local government, but saw no reason for
+going further. Nearly all of them refused, even when pressed by Irish
+electors in their constituencies, to promise to vote for that
+"parliamentary inquiry into the demand for Home Rule," which was then
+propounded by those electors as a sort of test question. We (_i.e._ the
+Liberal candidates of 1880) then declared that we thought an Irish
+Parliament would involve serious constitutional difficulties, and that
+we saw no reason why the Imperial Parliament should not do full justice
+to Ireland. Little was said about Coercion. Hopes were expressed that it
+would not be resorted to, but very few (if any) pledged themselves
+against it.
+
+When Mr. Forster was appointed Irish Secretary in Mr. Gladstone's
+Government which the General Election brought into power, we (by which I
+mean throughout the new Liberal members) were delighted. We knew him to
+be conscientious, industrious, kind-hearted. We believed him to be
+penetrating and judicious. We applauded his conduct in not renewing the
+Coercion Act which Lord Beaconsfield's Government had failed to renew
+before dissolving Parliament, and which indeed there was scarcely time
+left after the election to renew, a fact which did not save Mr. Forster
+from severe censure on the part of the Tories.
+
+The chief business of the session was the Compensation for Disturbance
+Bill, which Mr. Forster brought in for the sake of saving from immediate
+eviction tenants whom a succession of bad seasons had rendered utterly
+unable to pay their rents. This Bill was pressed through the House of
+Commons with the utmost difficulty, and at an expenditure of time which
+damaged the other work of the session, though the House continued to sit
+into September. The Executive Government declared it to be necessary, in
+order not only to relieve the misery of the people, but to secure the
+tranquillity of the country. Nevertheless, the whole Tory party, and a
+considerable section of the Liberal party, opposed it in the interests
+of the Irish landlords, and of economic principles in general,
+principles which (as commonly understood in England) it certainly
+trenched on. When it reached the House of Lords it was contemptuously
+rejected, and the unhappy Irish Secretary left to face as he best might
+the cries of a wretched peasantry and the rising tide of outrage. What
+was even more remarkable, was the coolness with which the Liberal party
+took the defeat of a Bill their leaders had pronounced absolutely
+needed. Had it been an English Bill of the same consequence to England
+as it was to Ireland, the country would have been up in arms against the
+House of Lords, demanding the reform or the abolition of a Chamber which
+dared to disregard the will of the people. But nothing of the kind
+happened. It was only an Irish measure. We relieved ourselves by a few
+strong words, and the matter dropped.
+
+It was in this session that the Liberal party first learnt what sort of
+a spirit was burning in the hearts of Irish members. There had been
+obstruction in the last years of the previous Parliament, but, as the
+Tories were in power, they had to bear the brunt of it. Now that a
+Liberal Ministry reigned, it fell on the Liberals. At first it incensed
+us. Full of our own good intentions towards Ireland, we thought it
+contrary to nature that Irish members should worry us, their friends, as
+they had worried Tories, their hereditary enemies. Presently we came to
+understand how matters stood. The Irish members made little difference
+between the two great English parties. Both represented to them a
+hostile domination. Both were ignorant of the condition of their
+country. Both cared so little about Irish questions that nothing less
+than deeds of violence out of doors or obstruction within doors could
+secure their attention. Concessions had to be extorted from both by the
+same devices; Coercion might be feared at the hands of both. Hence the
+Irish party was resolved to treat both parties alike, and play off the
+one against the other in the interests of Ireland alone, using the
+questions which divide Englishmen and Scotchmen merely as levers
+whereby to effect their own purposes, because themselves quite
+indifferent to the substantial merits of those questions. To us new
+members this was an alarming revelation. We found that the House of
+Commons consisted of two distinct and dissimilar bodies: a large British
+body (including some few Tories and Liberals from Ireland), which,
+though it was distracted by party quarrels, really cared for the welfare
+of the country and the dignity of the House, and would set aside its
+quarrels in the presence of a great emergency; and a small Irish body,
+which, though it spoke the English language, was practically foreign,
+felt no interest in, no responsibility for, the business of Britain or
+the Empire, and valued its place in the House only as a means of making
+itself so disagreeable as to obtain its release. When we had grasped
+this fact, we began to reflect on its causes and conjecture its effects.
+We had read of the same things in the newspapers, but what a difference
+there is between reading a drama in your study and seeing it acted on
+the stage! We realized what Irish feeling was when we heard these angry
+cries, and noted how appeals that would have affected English partisans
+fell on deaf ears. I remember how one night in the summer of 1880, when
+the Irish members kept us up very late over some trivial Bill of theirs,
+refusing to adjourn till they had extorted terms, a friend, sitting
+beside me, said, "See how things come round. They keep us out of bed
+till five o'clock in the morning because our ancestors bullied theirs
+for six centuries." And we saw that the natural relations of an
+Executive, even a Liberal Executive, to the Irish members were those of
+strife. Whose fault it was we were unable to decide. Perhaps the
+Government was too stiff; perhaps the members were vexatious. Anyhow,
+this strife was evidently the normal state of things, wholly unlike that
+which existed between Scotch members, to whichever party they belonged,
+and the executive authorities of Scotland.
+
+Thus the session of 1880, though it did not bring us consciously nearer
+to Home Rule, impressed three facts upon us: first, that the House of
+Lords regarded Ireland solely from the point of view of English
+landlords, sympathizing with Irish landlords; secondly, that the House
+of Commons knew so little or cared so little about Ireland that when the
+Executive declared a measure essential to the peace of Ireland, it
+scarcely resented the rejection of that measure by the House of Lords;
+thirdly, that the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons were a
+foreign body, foreign in the sense in which a needle which a man
+swallows is foreign, not helping the organism to discharge its
+functions, but impeding them, and setting up irritation. We did not yet
+draw from these facts all the conclusions we should now draw. But the
+facts were there, and they began to tell upon our minds.
+
+SESSION OF 1881.--The winter of 1880-81 was a terrible one in Ireland.
+The rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill had borne the
+fruit which Mr. Forster had predicted, and which the House of Lords had
+ignored. Outrages were numerous and serious. The cry in England for
+repressive measures had gone on rising from November, when it occasioned
+a demonstration at the Guildhall banquet. Several Liberal members (of
+whom I was one) went to Ireland at Christmas, to see with our own eyes
+how things stood. We were struck by the difficulty of obtaining
+trustworthy information in Dublin, where the richer classes, with whom
+we chiefly came in contact, merely abused the Land League, while the
+Land Leaguers declared that the accounts of outrages were grossly
+exaggerated. The most prominent, Mr. Michael Davitt, assured me, and I
+believe with perfect truth, that he had exerted himself to
+discountenance outrage, and that if, as he expected, he was locked up by
+the Government, outrages would increase. When one reached the disturbed
+districts, where, of course, one talked to members as well of the
+landlord class as of the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged
+from the medley of contradictions was that, though there was much
+agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity, the disorders were
+not so bad as people in England believed, and might have been dealt with
+by a vigorous administration of the existing law. Unfortunately, the
+so-called "better classes," full of bitterness against the Liberal
+Ministry and Mr. Forster (whom they did not praise till it was too
+late), had not assisted the Executive, and had allowed things to reach a
+pass at which it found the work of governing very difficult.
+
+When the Coercion Bill of 1881 was introduced, many English Liberals
+were inclined to resist it. The great majority voted for it, but within
+two years they bitterly repented their votes. Our motives, which I
+mention by way of extenuation, not of defence, were these. The Executive
+Government declared that it could not deal with crime by the ordinary
+law. If its followers refused exceptional powers, they must displace the
+Ministry, and let in the Tories, who would doubtless obtain such powers,
+and probably use them worse. We had still confidence in Mr. Forster's
+judgment, and a deference to Irish Executive Governments generally which
+Parliamentary experience is well fitted to dissipate. The violence with
+which the Nationalist members resisted the introduction of the Bill had
+roused our blood, and the foolish attempts which the Radical and Irish
+electors in some constituencies had made to deter their members from
+supporting it had told the other way, and disposed these members to vote
+for it, in order to show that they were not to be cowed by threats.
+Finally, we were assured that votes given for the Coercion Bill would
+purchase a thorough-going Land Bill, and our anxiety for the latter
+induced us, naturally, but erringly, to acquiesce in the former.
+
+When that Land Bill went into Committee we perceived how much harm the
+Coercion Bill had done in intensifying the bitterness of Irish members.
+Although the Ministry was fighting for their interests against the Tory
+party and the so-called Whiggish section of its own supporters, who were
+seeking to cut down the benefits which the measure offered to Irish
+tenants, the Nationalist members regarded it, and in particular Mr.
+Forster, as their foe. They resented what they deemed the insult put
+upon their country. They saw those who had been fighting, often, no
+doubt, by unlawful methods, for the national cause, thrown into prison
+and kept there without trial. They anticipated (not without reason) the
+same fortune for themselves. Hence the friendliness which the Liberal
+party sought to show them met with no response, and Mr. Forster was
+worried with undiminished vehemence. In the discussions on the Bill we
+found the Ministry generally resisting all amendments which came from
+Irish members. When these amendments seemed to us right, we voted for
+them, but they were almost always defeated by the union of the Tories
+with the steady Ministerialists. Subsequent events have proved that many
+were right, but, whether they were right or wrong, the fact which
+impressed us was that in matters which concerned Ireland only, and lay
+within the exclusive knowledge of Irishmen, Irish members were
+constantly outvoted by English and Scotch members, who knew nothing at
+all of the merits of the case, but simply obeyed the party whip. This
+happened even when the Irish members who sat on the Liberal side (such
+as Mr. Dickson and his Liberal colleagues from Ulster) joined the
+Nationalist section in demanding some extension of the Bill which the
+Ministry refused. And we perceived that nothing incensed the Irish
+members more than the feeling that their arguments were addressed to
+deaf ears; that they were overborne, not by reason, but by sheer weight
+of numbers. Even if they convinced the Ministry, they could seldom hope
+to obtain its assent, because the Ministry had to consider the House of
+Lords, sure to reject amendments which favoured the tenant, while to
+detach a number of Ministerialists sufficient to carry an amendment
+against the Treasury Bench, the Moderate Liberals, and the Tories, was
+evidently hopeless.
+
+At the end of the session the House of Lords came again upon the scene.
+It seriously damaged the Bill by its amendments, and would have
+destroyed it but for the skill with which the head of the Government
+handled these amendments, accepting the least pernicious, so as to
+enable the Upper House without loss of dignity to recede from those
+which were wholly inadmissible. Several times it seemed as if the
+conflict would have to pass from Westminster to the country, and, in
+contemplating the chances of a popular agitation or a dissolution, we
+were regretfully obliged to own that the English people cared too little
+and knew too little about Irish questions to give us much hope of
+defeating the House of Lords and the Tories upon these issues.
+
+An incident which occurred towards the end of the session seems, though
+trifling in itself, so illustrative of the illogical position in which
+we stood towards Ireland, as to deserve mention. Mr. Forster, still
+Chief Secretary, had brought in a Bill for extinguishing the Queen's
+University in Ireland, and creating in place of it a body to be called
+the Royal University, which, however, was not to be a real university at
+all, but only a set of examiners plus some salaried fellowships, to be
+held at various places of instruction. Regarding this as a gross
+educational blunder, which would destroy a useful existing body, and
+create a sham university in its place, and finding several Parliamentary
+friends on whose judgment I could rely to be of the same opinion, I gave
+notice of opposition to the Bill. Mr. Forster came to me, and pressed
+with great warmth that the opposition should be withdrawn. The Bill, he
+said, would satisfy the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and complete the work
+of the Land Bill in pacifying Ireland. The Irish members wanted it: what
+business had an English member to interfere to defeat their wishes, and
+thwart the Executive? The reply was obvious. Not to speak of the
+simplicity of expecting the hierarchy to be satisfied by this small
+concession, what were such arguments but the admission of Home Rule in
+its worst form? "You resist the demand of the Irish members to legislate
+for Ireland; you have just been demanding, and obtaining, the support of
+English members against those amendments of the Land Bill which Irish
+members declare to be necessary. Now you bid us surrender our own
+judgment, ignore our own responsibility, and blindly pass a Bill which
+we, who have studied these university questions as they affect both
+Ireland and England, believe to be thoroughly mischievous to the
+prospects of higher education in Ireland, only because the Irish
+members, as you say, desire it. Do one thing or the other. Either give
+them the power and the responsibility, or leave both with the Imperial
+Parliament. You are now asking us to surrender the power, but to remain
+still subject to the responsibility. We will not bear the latter without
+the former. We shall prefer Home Rule." Needless to add that this
+device--a sample of the petty sops by which successive generations of
+English statesmen, Whigs and Tories alike, have sought to win over a
+priesthood which uses and laughs at them--failed as completely as its
+predecessors to settle the University question or to range the bishops
+on the side of the Government.
+
+The autumn and winter of 1881 revealed the magnitude of the mischief
+done by making a Coercion Bill precede a Relief Bill. The Land Bill was
+the largest concession made to the demands of the people since Catholic
+Emancipation. It was a departure, justified by necessity, but still a
+departure from our established principles of legislation. It ought to
+have brought satisfaction and confidence, if not gratitude, with it;
+ought to have led Ireland to believe in the sincere friendliness of
+England, and produced a new cordiality between the islands. It did
+nothing of the kind. It was held to have been extorted from our fears;
+its grace and sweetness were destroyed by the concomitant severities
+which the Coercion Act had brought into force, as wholesome food becomes
+distasteful when some bitter compound has been sprinkled over it. We
+were deeply mortified at this result of our efforts. What was the malign
+power which made the boons we had conferred shrivel up, "like fairy
+gifts fading away"? We still believed the Coercion Act to have been
+justified, but lamented the fate which baffled the main object of our
+efforts, the winning over Ireland to trust the justice and the capacity
+of the Imperial Parliament. And thus the two facts which stood out from
+the history of this eventful session were, first, that even in
+legislating for the good of Ireland we were legislating against the
+wishes of Ireland, imposing on her enactments which her representatives
+opposed, and which we supported only at the bidding of the Ministry;
+and, secondly, that at the end of a long session, entirely devoted to
+her needs, we found her more hostile and not less disturbed than she had
+been at its beginning. We began to wonder whether we should ever succeed
+better on our present lines. But we still mostly regarded Home Rule as a
+disagreeable solution.
+
+SESSION OF 1882.--Still graver were the lessons of the first four months
+of this year. Mr. Forster went on filling the prisons of Ireland with
+persons whom he arrested under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, and
+never brought to trial. But the country grew no more quiet. At last he
+had nine hundred and forty men under lock and key, many of them not
+"village ruffians," whose power a few weeks' detention was to break, but
+political offenders, and even popular leaders. How long could this go
+on? Where was it to stop? It became plain that the Act was a failure,
+and that the people, trained to combination by a century and a half's
+practice, were too strong for the Executive. Either the scheme and plan
+of the Act had been wrong, or its administration had been incompetent.
+Whichever was the source of the failure (most people will now blame
+both), the fault must be laid at the door of the Irish Executive; not of
+Mr. Forster himself, but of those on whom he relied. It had been a
+Dublin Castle Bill, conceived and carried out by the incompetent
+bureaucracy which has so long pretended to govern Ireland. Such a proof
+of incompetence destroyed whatever confidence in that bureaucracy then
+remained to us, and the disclosures which the Phoenix Park murders and
+the subsequent proceedings against the Invincibles brought out, proved
+beyond question that the Irish Executive had only succeeded in giving a
+more dark and dangerous form, the form of ruthless conspiracy, to the
+agitation it was combating.
+
+When therefore the Prevention of Crime Bill of 1882 was brought in, some
+of us felt unable to support it, and specially bound to resist those of
+its provisions which related to trials without a jury, and to
+boycotting. It was impossible, on the morrow of the Phoenix Park
+murders, to deny that some coercive measure might be needed; but we had
+so far lost faith in repression, and in the officials who were to
+administer it, as to desire to limit it to what was absolutely
+necessary, and we protested against enacting for Ireland a criminal code
+which was not to be applied to Great Britain. Our resistance might have
+been more successful but for the manner in which the Nationalist members
+conducted their opposition. When they began to obstruct--not that under
+the circumstances we felt entitled to censure them for obstructing a
+Bill dealing so harshly with their countrymen--we were obliged to
+desist, and our experience of the stormy scenes of the summer of 1882
+deepened our sense of the passionate bitterness with which they regarded
+English members, scarcely making an exception in favour of those who
+were most disposed to sympathize with them. Many and many a time when we
+listened to their fierce cries, we seemed to hear in them the
+battle-cries of the centuries of strife between Celt and Englishman from
+Athenry to Vinegar Hill; many a time we felt that this rage and mistrust
+were chiefly of England's making; and yet not of England's, but rather
+of the overmastering fate which had prolonged to our own days the
+hatreds and the methods of barbarous times:
+
+            hêmeis d' ouk aitioi esmen
+    Alla Zeus kai Moira kai êerophoitis Herinus.
+
+So much of the session as the Crime Bill had spared was consumed by the
+Arrears Bill, over which we had again a "crisis" with the House of
+Lords. This was the third session that had been practically given up to
+Irishmen. The freshness and force of the Parliament of 1880--a
+Parliament full of zeal and ability--had now been almost spent, yet few
+of the plans of domestic legislation spread before the constituencies of
+1880 had been realized. The Government had been anxious to legislate,
+their majority had been ready to support them, but Ireland had blocked
+the way; and now the only expedient for improving the procedure of the
+House was to summon Parliament in an extra autumn session. Here was
+another cause for reflection. England and Scotland were calling for
+measures promised years ago, but no time could be found to discuss them.
+Nothing was done to reorganize local government, to reform the liquor
+laws, to improve secondary education, to deal with the housing of the
+poor, or a dozen other urgent questions, because we were busy with
+Ireland; and yet how little more loyal or contented did Ireland seem to
+be for all we had done. We began to ask whether Home Rule might not be
+as much an English and Scotch question as an Irish question. It was, at
+any rate, clear that to allow Ireland to manage her own affairs would
+open a prospect for England and Scotland to obtain time to attend to
+theirs.[3]
+
+This feeling was strengthened by the result of the attempts made in the
+autumn session of 1882, to improve the procedure of the House of
+Commons. We had cherished the hope that more drastic remedies against
+obstruction and better arrangements for the conduct of business, might
+relieve much of the pressure Irish members had made us suffer. The
+passing of the New Rules shattered this hope, for it was plain they
+would not accomplish what was needed. Some blamed the Government for not
+framing a more stringent code. Some blamed the Tory and the Irish
+Oppositions (now beginning to work in concert) for cutting down the
+proposals of the Government. But most of us saw, and came to see still
+more clearly in the three succeeding sessions, that the evil was too
+deep-rooted to be cured by any changes of procedure, unless they went so
+far as to destroy freedom of debate for English members also. The
+presence in a deliberative assembly of a section numbering (or likely
+soon to number) one-seventh of the whole--a section seeking to lower the
+character of the assembly, and to derange its mechanism, with no further
+interest in the greater part of its business except that of preventing
+it from conducting that business--this was the phenomenon which
+confronted us, and we felt that no rules of debate would overcome the
+dangers it threatened.
+
+It is from this year 1882 that I date the impression which we formed,
+that Home Rule was sure to come. "It may be a bold experiment," we said
+to one another in the lobbies; "there are serious difficulties in the
+way, though the case for it is stronger than we thought two years ago.
+But if the Irishmen persist as they are doing now, they will get it. It
+is only a question of their tenacity."
+
+It was impossible not to be struck during the conflicts of 1881 and 1882
+with the small amount of real bitterness which the conduct of the Irish
+members, irritating as it often was, provoked among the Liberals, who of
+course bore the brunt of the conflict. The Nationalists did their best
+to injure a Government which was at the same time being denounced by the
+Tories as too favourable to Irish claims; they lowered the character of
+Parliament by scenes far more painful than those of the session of 1887,
+on which so much indignation has been lately expended; they said the
+hardest things they could think of against us in the House; they
+attacked us in our constituencies. Their partisans (for I do not charge
+this on the leaders) interrupted and broke up our meetings.
+Nevertheless, all this did not provoke responsive hatred from the
+Liberals. There could not be a greater contrast than that between the
+way in which the great bulk of the Liberal members all through the
+Parliament of 1880 behaved towards their Irish antagonists, and the
+violence with which the Tory members, under much slighter provocation,
+conduct themselves towards those antagonists now. I say this not to the
+credit of our temper, which was no better than that of other men heated
+by the struggles of a crowded assembly. It was due entirely to our
+feeling that there was a great balance of wrong standing to the debit of
+England; that if the Irish were turbulent, it was the ill-treatment of
+former days that had made them so; and that, whatever might be their
+methods, they were fighting for their country. Although, therefore,
+there was little social intercourse between us and them, there was
+always a hope and a wish that the day might come when the Liberal party
+should resume its natural position of joining the representatives of the
+Irish people in obtaining radical reforms in Irish government. And the
+remarkable speech of February 9, 1882, in which Mr. Gladstone declared
+his mind to be open on the subject, and invited the Nationalists to
+propound a practicable scheme of self-government, had encouraged us to
+hope that this day might soon arrive.
+
+SESSION OF 1883.--Three facts stood out in the history of this
+comparatively quiet session, each of which brought us further along the
+road we had entered.
+
+One was the omission of Parliament to complete the work begun by the
+Land Bill of 1881, of improving the condition of the Irish peasantry and
+reorganizing Irish administration. The Nationalist members brought in
+Bills for these purposes, including one for amending the Land Act by
+admitting leaseholders to its benefits and securing tenants against
+having their improvements reckoned against them in the fixing of rents.
+Though we could not approve all the contents of these Bills, we desired
+to see the Government either take them up and amend them, or introduce
+Bills of its own to do what was needed. Some of us spoke strongly in
+this sense, nor will any one now deny that we were right. Sound policy
+called aloud for the completion of the undertaking of 1881. The
+Government however refused, alleging, no doubt with some truth, that
+Ireland could not have all the time of Parliament, but must let England
+and Scotland have their turn. Nor was anything done towards the creation
+of new local institutions in Ireland, or the reform of the Castle
+bureaucracy. We were profoundly disheartened. We saw golden
+opportunities slipping away, and doubted more than ever whether
+Westminster was the place in which to legislate for Irish grievances.
+
+Another momentous fact was the steady increase in the number of
+Nationalist members. Every seat that fell vacant in Ireland was filled
+by them. The moderate Irish party, most of whom had by this time crossed
+the floor of the House, and were sitting among us, had evidently no
+future. They were estimable, and, in some cases, able men, from whom we
+had hoped much, as a link between the Liberal party and the Irish
+people. But they seemed to have lost their hold on the people, nor were
+they able to give us much practical counsel as to Irish problems. It was
+clear that they would vanish at the next General Election, and
+Parliament be left to settle accounts with the extreme men, whose
+spirits rose as those of our friends steadily sank.
+
+Lastly: it was in this session that the alliance of the Nationalists and
+the Tory Opposition became a potent factor in politics. Its first
+conspicuous manifestation was in the defeat of the Government by the
+allied forces on the Affirmation Bill, when the least respectable
+privates in both armies vied with one another in boisterous rejoicings
+over the announcement of numbers in the division. I do not refer to this
+as ground for complaint. It was in the course of our usual political
+warfare that two groups, each hating and fearing the Ministry, should
+unite to displace it. But we now saw what power the Irish section must
+exert when it came to hold the balance of numbers in the House. Till
+this division, the Government had commanded a majority of the whole
+House. This would probably not outlast a dissolution. What then? Could
+the two English parties, differing so profoundly from one another,
+combine against the third party? Evidently not. We must, therefore, look
+forward to unstable Governments, if not to a total dislocation of our
+Parliamentary system.
+
+Session of 1884.--I pass over the minor incidents of this year,
+including the continued neglect of remedial legislation for Ireland to
+dwell on its dominant and most impressive lesson. It was the year of the
+Franchise Bill, which, as regards Ireland, worked an extension, not
+merely of the county but also of the borough franchise, and produced,
+owing to the economic condition of the humbler classes in that country,
+a far more extensive change than in England or Scotland. When the Bill
+was introduced the question at once arose--Should Ireland be included?
+
+There were two ways of treating Ireland between which Parliament had to
+choose.
+
+One was to leave her out of the Bill, on the ground that the masses of
+her population could not be trusted with the franchise, as being
+ignorant, sympathetic to crime, hostile to the English Government. This
+course was the logical concomitant of exceptional coercive legislation,
+such as had been passed in 1881 and 1882. It was quite compatible with
+generous remedial legislation. But it placed Ireland in an unequal and
+lower position, treating her, as the Coercion Acts did, as a dependent
+country, inhabited by a population unfit for the same measure of power
+which the inhabitants of Britain might receive.
+
+The other course was to bestow on Ireland the same extended franchise
+which the English county occupiers were to receive, applying the
+principle of equality, and disregarding the obvious consequences. These
+consequences were both practical and logical. The practical consequence
+was the increase in numbers and weight of the Irish party in Parliament
+hostile to Parliament itself. The logical consequence was the duty of
+complying with the wishes of the enfranchised nation. Whatever reasons
+were good for giving this enlarged suffrage to the Irish masses, were
+good for respecting the will which they might use to express it. If the
+Irish were deemed fit to exercise the same full constitutional rights
+in legislation as the English, must they not be fit for the same rights
+of trial by jury, a free press, and all the privileges of personal
+freedom?
+
+Of these two courses the Cabinet chose the latter, those of its members
+whom we must suppose, from the language they now hold, to have then
+hesitated, either stifling their fears or not apprehending the
+consequences of their boldness. It might have been expected, and indeed
+was generally expected, that the Tory party would refuse to follow. They
+talked largely about the danger of an extended Irish suffrage, and
+pointed out that it would be a weapon in the hands of disloyalty. But
+when the moment for resistance came, they swerved, and never divided in
+either House against the application of the Bill to Ireland. They might
+have failed to defeat the measure; but they would have immensely
+strengthened their position, logically and morally, had they given
+effect by their votes to the sentiments they were known to entertain,
+and which not a few Liberals shared.
+
+The effect of this uncontested grant to Ireland of a suffrage
+practically universal was immense upon our minds, and the longer we
+reflected on it the more significant did it become. It meant to us that
+the old methods were abandoned, and, as we supposed, for ever. We had
+deliberately given the Home Rule party arms against English control far
+more powerful than they previously possessed. We had deliberately
+asserted our faith in the Irish people. Impossible after this to fall
+back on Coercion Bills. Impossible to refuse any request compatible with
+the general safety of the United Kingdom, which Ireland as a nation
+might prefer. Impossible to establish that system of Crown Colony
+Government which we had come to perceive was the only real and solid
+alternative to self-government. To those of us who had been feeling that
+the Irish difficulty was much the greatest of all England's
+difficulties, this stood out beyond the agitation of the autumn and the
+compromise of the winter as the great political event of 1884.[4]
+
+Although this sketch is in the main a record of Parliamentary opinion, I
+ought not to pass over the influence which the study of their
+constituents' ideas exerted upon members for the larger towns. We found
+the vast bulk of our supporters--English supporters, for after 1882 it
+was understood that the Irish voters were our enemies--sympathetic with
+the Irish people. They knew and thought little about Home Rule,
+believing that their member understood that question better than they
+did, and willing, so long as he was sound on English issues, to trust
+him. But they pitied Irish tenants, and condemned Irish landlords.
+Though they acquiesced in a Coercion Bill when proposed by a Liberal
+Cabinet, because they concluded that nothing less than necessity would
+lead such a Cabinet to propose one, they so much disliked any
+exceptional or repressive legislation that it was plain they would not
+long tolerate it. Any popular leader denouncing coercion was certain to
+have the sentiment of the English masses with him, while as to
+suspending Irish representation or carrying out consistently the policy
+of treating Ireland as a subject country, there was no chance in the
+world of their approval. Those of us, therefore, who represented large
+working-class constituencies became convinced that the solution of the
+Irish problem must be sought in conciliation and self-government, if
+only because the other solution, Crown Colony Government, was utterly
+repugnant to the English masses, in whom the Franchise Bill of 1884,
+completing that of 1867, had vested political supremacy.[5]
+
+Session of 1885.--The allied powers of Toryism and Nationalism gained in
+this year the victory they had so long striven for. In February they
+reduced the Ministerial majority to fourteen; in June they overthrew the
+Ministry. No one supposed that on either occasion the merits of the
+issue had anything to do with the Nationalist vote: that vote was given
+simply and solely against the Government, as the Government which had
+passed the Coercion Acts of 1881 and 1882--Acts demanded by the Tory
+party, and which had not conceded an Irish Parliament. At last the Irish
+party had attained its position as the arbiter of power and office. Some
+of us said, as we walked away from the House, under the dawning light of
+that memorable 9th of June, "This means Home Rule." Our forecast was
+soon to be confirmed. Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, formed upon the
+resignation of Mr. Gladstone's, announced that it would not propose to
+renew any part of the Coercion Act of 1882, which was to expire in
+August. Here was a surrender indeed! But the Tory leaders went further.
+They did not excuse themselves on the ground of want of time. They took
+credit for their benevolence towards Ireland; they discovered excellent
+reasons why the Act should be dropped. They even turned upon Lord
+Spencer, whose administration they had hitherto blamed for its leniency,
+and attacked him in Parliament, among the cheers of his Irish enemies.
+From that time till the close of the General Election in December
+everything was done, short of giving public pledges, to keep the Irish
+leaders and the Irish voters in good humour. The Tory party in fact
+posed as the true friends of Ireland, averse from coercion, and with
+minds perfectly open on the subject of self-government.
+
+This change of front, so sudden, so unblushing, completed the process
+which had been going on in our minds. By 1882 we had come to feel that
+Home Rule was inevitable, though probably undesirable. Before long we
+had asked ourselves whether it was really undesirable, whether it might
+not be a good thing both for England, whose Parliament and Cabinet
+system it would relieve from impending dangers, while leaving free scope
+for domestic legislation, and for Ireland, which could hardly manage her
+affairs worse than we were managing them for her, and might manage them
+better. And thus, by the spring of 1885, many of us were prepared for a
+large scheme of local self-government in Ireland, including a central
+legislative body in Dublin.[6]
+
+Now when it was plain that the English party which had hitherto called
+for repression, and had professed itself anxious for a patriotic union
+of all parties to maintain order and a continuity of policy in Ireland,
+was ready to bid for Irish help at the polls by throwing over repression
+and reversing the policy it had advocated, we felt that the sooner
+Ireland was taken out of English party politics the better. What
+prospect was there of improving Ireland by the superior wisdom and
+fairness of the British Parliament, if British leaders were to make
+their Irish policy turn on interested bargains with Nationalist leaders?
+Repression, which we clearly saw to be the only alternative to
+self-government, seemed to be by common consent abandoned. I remember
+how, at a party of members in the beginning of July, some one said,
+"Well, there's an end for ever of coercion at any rate," and every one
+assented as to an obvious truth. Accordingly the result of the new
+departure of the Salisbury Cabinet in 1885 was to convince even doubters
+that Home Rule must come, and to make those already convinced anxious to
+see it come quickly, and to find the best form that could be given it.
+Many of us expected the Tory Government to propose it. Rumour declared
+the new Lord Lieutenant to be in favour of it. His government was
+extremely conciliatory in Ireland, even to the recalcitrant corporation
+of Limerick. Not to mention less serious and less respected Tory
+Ministers, Lord Salisbury talked at Newport about the dualism of the
+Austro-Hungarian Monarchy with the air of a man who desired to have a
+workable scheme, analogous, if not similar, suggested for Ireland and
+Great Britain. The Irish Nationalists appeared to place their hopes in
+this quarter, for they attacked the Liberal party with unexampled
+bitterness, and threw all their voting strength into the Tory scale.
+
+As it has lately been attempted to blacken the character of the Irish
+leaders, it deserves to be remarked that whatever has been charged
+against them was said or done by them before the spring of 1885, and
+was, practically, perfectly well known to the Tory leaders when they
+accepted the alliance of the Irish party in the House of Commons, and
+courted their support in the election of 1885. To those who remember
+what went on in the House in the sessions of 1884 and 1885, the horror
+now professed by the Tory leaders for the conduct and words of the Irish
+party would be matter for laughter if it were not also matter for just
+indignation.
+
+Why, it may be asked, if the persuasion that Home Rule was certain, and
+even desirable, had become general among the Liberals who had sat
+through the Parliament of 1880, was it not more fully expressed at the
+election of 1885? This is a fair question, which I shall try to answer.
+
+In the first place, the electors made few inquiries about Ireland. They
+disliked the subject; they had not realized its supreme importance.
+Those of us who felt anxious to explain our views (as was my own case)
+had to volunteer to do so, for we were not asked about them. The Irish
+party in the constituencies was in violent opposition to Liberal
+candidates; it did not interrogate, but denounced. Further, it was felt
+that the issue was mainly one to be decided in Ireland itself. The
+question of Home Rule was being submitted, not, as heretofore, to a
+limited constituency, but to the whole Irish people. Till their will had
+been constitutionally declared at the polls it was not proper that
+Englishmen or Scotchmen should anticipate its tenour. We should even
+have been accused, had we volunteered our opinions, of seeking to affect
+the result in Ireland, and, not only of playing for the Irish vote in
+Great Britain, as we saw the Tories doing, but of prejudicing the
+chances of those Liberal candidates who, in Irish constituencies, were
+competing with extreme Nationalists. A third reason was that most
+English and Scotch Liberals did not know how far their own dispositions
+towards Home Rule were shared by their leaders. Mr. Gladstone's
+declaration in his Midlothian address was no doubt a decided intimation
+of his views, and was certainly understood by some (as by myself) to
+imply the grant to Ireland of a Parliament; but, strong as its words
+were, its importance does not seem to have been fully appreciated at the
+moment. And the opinions of a statesman whose unequalled Irish
+experience and elevated character gave him a weight only second to that
+of Mr. Gladstone--I mean Lord Spencer--had not been made known. We had
+consequently no certainty that there were leaders prepared to give
+prompt effect to the views we entertained. Lastly, we were not prepared
+with a practical scheme of self-government for Ireland. The Nationalist
+members had propounded none which we could either adopt or criticize.
+Convinced as we were that Home Rule would come and must come, we felt
+the difficulties surrounding every suggestion that had yet been made,
+and had not hammered out any plan which we could lay before the electors
+as approved by Liberal opinion.[7] We were forced to confine ourselves
+to generalities.
+
+Whether it would have been better for us to have done our thinking and
+scheme-making in public, and thereby have sooner forced the details of
+the problem upon the attention of the country, need not now be inquired.
+Any one can now see that something was lost by the omission. But those
+who censure a course that has actually been taken usually fail to
+estimate the evils that would have followed from the taking of the
+opposite course. Such evils might in this instance have been as great as
+those we have encountered.
+
+I have spoken of the importance we attached to the decision of Ireland
+itself, and of the attitude of expectancy which, while that decision was
+uncertain, Englishmen were forced to maintain. We had not long to wait.
+Early in December it was known that five-sixths of the members returned
+from Ireland were Nationalists, and that the majorities which had
+returned them were crushing. If ever a people spoke its will, the Irish
+people spoke theirs at the election of 1885. The last link in the chain
+of conviction, which events had been forging since 1880, was now
+supplied. In passing the Franchise Bill of 1884, we had asked Ireland to
+declare her mind. She had now answered. If the question was not a
+mockery, and representative government a sham, we were bound to accept
+the answer, subject only, but subject always, to the interests of the
+whole United Kingdom. In other words, we were bound to devise such a
+scheme of self-government for Ireland as would give full satisfaction to
+her wishes, while maintaining the ultimate supremacy of the Imperial
+Parliament and the unity of the British Empire.
+
+Very few words are needed to summarize the outline which, omitting many
+details which would have illustrated and confirmed its truth, I have
+attempted to present of the progress of opinion among Liberal members of
+the Parliament of 1880.
+
+1. Our experience of the Coercion Bills of 1881 and 1882 disclosed the
+enormous mischief which such measures do in alienating the minds of
+Irishmen, and the difficulty of enlisting Irish sentiment on behalf of
+the law. The results of the Act of 1881 taught us that the repression of
+open agitation means the growth of far more dangerous conspiracy; those
+of the Act of 1882 proved that even under an administration like Lord
+Spencer's repression works no change for the better in the habits and
+ideas of the people.
+
+2. The conduct of the House of Lords in 1880 and 1881, and the malign
+influence which its existence exerted whenever remedial legislation for
+Ireland came in question, convinced us that full and complete justice
+will never be done to Ireland by the British Parliament while the Upper
+House (as at present constituted) remains a part of that Parliament.
+
+3. The break-down of the procedure of the House of Commons, and the
+failure of the efforts to amend it, proved that Parliament cannot work
+so long as a considerable section of its members seek to impede its
+working. To enable it to do its duty by England and Scotland, it was
+evidently necessary, either to make the Irish members as loyal to
+Parliament as English and Scotch members usually are, or else to exclude
+them.
+
+4. The discussions of Irish Bills in the House of Commons made us
+realize how little English members knew about Ireland; how utterly
+different were their competence for, and their attitude towards, Irish
+questions and English questions. We perceived that we were legislating
+in the dark for a country whose economic and social condition we did not
+understand--a country to which we could not apply our English ideas of
+policy; a country whose very temper and feeling were strange to us. We
+were really fitter to pass laws for Canada or Australia than for this
+isle within sight of our shores.
+
+5. I have said that we were legislating in the dark. But there were two
+quarters from which light was proffered, the Irish members and the Irish
+Executive. We rejected the first, and could hardly help doing so, for to
+accept it would have been to displace our own leaders. We followed the
+light which the Executive gave. But in some cases (as notably in the
+case of the Coercion Bill of 1881) it proved to be a "wandering fire,"
+leading us into dangerous morasses. And we perceived that at all times
+legislation at the bidding of the Executive, against the wishes of Irish
+members, was not self-government or free government. It was despotism.
+The rule of Ireland by the British Parliament was really "the rule of a
+dependency through an official, responsible no doubt, but responsible
+not to the ruled, but to an assembly of which they form less than a
+sixth part."[8] As this assembly closed its ears to the one-sixth, and
+gave effect to the will of the official, this was essentially arbitrary
+government, and wanted those elements of success which free government
+contains.
+
+This experience had, by 1884, convinced us that the present relations of
+the British Parliament to Ireland were bad, and could not last; that the
+discontent of Ireland was justified; that the existing system, in
+alienating the mind of Ireland, tended, not merely to Repeal, but to
+Separation; that the simplest, and probably the only effective, remedy
+for the increasing dangers was the grant of an Irish Legislature. Two
+events clinched these conclusions. One was the Tory surrender of June,
+1885. Self-government, we had come to see, was the only alternative to
+Coercion, and now Coercion was gone. The other was the General Election
+of December, 1885, when newly-enfranchised Ireland, through five-sixths
+of her representatives, demanded a Parliament of her own.
+
+These were not, as is sometimes alleged, conclusions of despair. We were
+mostly persons of a cautious and conservative turn of mind, as men
+imbued with the spirit of the British Constitution ought to be. The
+first thing was to convince us that the existing relations of the
+islands were faulty, and could not be maintained. This was a negative
+result, and while we remained in that stage we were despondent. Many
+Liberal members will remember the gloom that fell on us in 1882 and 1883
+whenever we thought or spoke of Ireland. But presently the clouds
+lifted. We still felt the old objections to any Home Rule scheme, though
+we now saw that they were less formidable than the evils of the present
+system. But we came to feel that the grant of self-government was a
+right thing in itself. It was not merely a means of ridding ourselves of
+our difficulties, not merely a boon yielded because long demanded. It
+was a return to broad and deep principles, a conformity to those
+natural laws which govern human society as well as the inanimate
+world--an effort to enlist the better and higher feelings of mankind in
+the creation of a truer union between the two nations than had ever yet
+existed. When we perceived this, hope returned. It is strong with us
+now, for, though we see troubles, perhaps even dangers, in the immediate
+future, we are confident that the principles on which Liberal policy
+towards Ireland is based will in the long run work out a happy issue for
+her, as they have in and for every other country that has trusted to
+them.
+
+One last word as to Consistency. We learnt in the Parliament of 1880
+many facts about Ireland we had not known before; we felt the force and
+bearing of other facts previously accepted on hearsay, but not realized.
+We saw the Irish problem change from what it had been in 1880 into the
+new phase which stood apparent at the end of 1885, Coercion abandoned by
+its former advocates, Self-government demanded by the nation. Were we to
+disregard all these new facts, ignore all these new conditions, and
+cling to old ideas, some of which we perceived to be mistaken, while
+others, still true in themselves, were out-weighed by arguments of far
+wider import? We did not so estimate our duty. We foresaw the taunts of
+foes and the reproaches of friends. But we resolved to give effect to
+the opinions we slowly, painfully, even reluctantly formed, opinions all
+the stronger because not suddenly adopted, and founded upon evidence
+whose strength no one can appreciate till he has studied the causes of
+Irish discontent in Irish history, and been forced (as we were) to face
+in Parliament the practical difficulties of the government of Ireland by
+the British House of Commons.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 3: I may mention here another fact whose significance
+impressed some among us. Parliament, which usually sinned in not doing
+for Ireland what Ireland asked, occasionally passed bills for Ireland
+which were regarded as setting very bad precedents for England. By some
+bargain between the Irish Office and the Nationalist members, measures
+were put through which may have been right as respects Ireland, but
+which embodied principles mischievous as respects Great Britain. We felt
+that if it was necessary to enact such statutes, it would be better that
+they should proceed from an Irish Legislature rather than from the
+Imperial Parliament, which might be embarrassed by its own acts when
+asked to extend the same principles to England. The Labourers' Act of
+July, 1885, is the most conspicuous example.]
+
+[Footnote 4: At Easter, 1885, I met a number of leading Ulster Liberals
+in Belfast, told them that Home Rule was certainly coming, and urged
+them to prepare some plan under which any special interests they
+conceived the Protestant part of Ulster to have, would be effectually
+safe-guarded. They were startled, and at first discomposed, but
+presently told me I was mistaken; to which I could only reply that time
+would show, and perhaps sooner then even English Liberals expected.]
+
+[Footnote 5: My recollection of a conversation with a distinguished
+public man in July, 1882, enables me to say that this fact had impressed
+itself upon us as early as that year. He doubted the fact, but admitted
+that, if true, it was momentous. The passing of the Franchise Bill made
+it, in our view, more momentous than ever.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Some thought that its functions should be very limited,
+while large powers were granted to county boards or provincial councils.
+But most had, I think, already perceived that the grant of a merely
+local self-government, while retaining an irresponsible central
+bureaucracy, would do more harm than good. It seemed at first sight a
+safer experiment than the creation of a central legislative body. But,
+like many middle courses, it combined the demerits and wanted the merits
+of each of the extreme courses. It would not make the country tranquil,
+as firm and long-continued repression might possibly do. Neither would
+it satisfy the people's demands, and divert them from struggles against
+England to disputes and discussions among themselves, as the gift of
+genuine self-government might do.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Some of us had tried to do so. I prepared such a scheme in
+the autumn of 1885, and submitted it to some specially competent
+friends. Their objections, made from what would now be called the
+Unionist point of view, were weighty. But their effect was to convince
+me that the scheme erred on the side of caution; and I believe the
+experience of other Liberals who worked at the problem to have been the
+same as my own--viz. that a small and timid scheme is more dangerous
+than a large and bold one. Thus the result of our thinking from July,
+1885, till April, 1886, was to make us more and more disposed to reject
+half-and-half solutions. Some of us (of whom I was one) expressed this
+feeling by saying in our election addresses in 1885, "the further we go
+in giving the Irish people the management of their own affairs (subject
+to the maintenance of the unity of the empire) the better."]
+
+[Footnote 8: Quoted from an article contributed by myself to the
+American _Century Magazine_, which I refer to because, written in the
+spring of 1883, it expresses the ideas here stated.]
+
+
+
+
+HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY
+
+BY LORD THRING
+
+
+The principal charge made against the scheme of Home Rule contained in
+the Irish Government Bill, 1886, is that it is incompatible with the
+maintenance of the unity of the Empire and the supremacy of the Imperial
+Parliament. A further allegation states that the Bill is useless, as
+agrarian exasperation lies at the root of Irish discontent and Irish
+disloyalty, and that no place would be found for a Home Rule Bill even
+in Irish aspirations if an effective Land Bill were first passed. An
+endeavour will be made in the following pages to secure a verdict of
+acquittal on both counts--as to the charge relating to Imperial unity
+and the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, by proving that the
+accusation is absolutely unfounded, and based partly on a misconception
+of the nature of Imperial ties, and partly on a misapprehension of the
+effect of the provisions of the Home Rule Bill as bearing on Imperial
+questions; and as to the inutility of the Home Rule Bill in view of the
+necessity of Land Reform, by showing that without a Home Rule Bill no
+Land Bill worth consideration as a means of pacifying Ireland can be
+passed.
+
+The complete partisan spirit in which Home Rule has been treated is the
+more to be deplored as the subject is one which does not lend itself
+readily to the trivialities of party debates. It raises questions of
+principle, not of detail. It ascends at once into the highest region of
+politics. It is conversant with the great questions of constitutional
+and international law, and leads to an inquiry into the very nature of
+governments and the various modes in which communities of men are
+associated together either as simple or composite nations. To describe
+those modes in detail would be to give a history of the various
+despotic, monarchical, oligarchical, and democratic systems of
+government which have oppressed or made happy the children of men. Such
+a description is calculated to perplex and mislead from its very extent;
+not so an inquiry into the powers of government, and a classification of
+those powers. They are limited in extent, and, if we confine ourselves
+to English names and English necessities, we shall readily attain to an
+apprehension of the mode in which empires, nations, and political
+societies are bound together, at least in so far as such knowledge is
+required for the understanding of the nature of Imperial supremacy, and
+the mode in which Home Rule in Ireland is calculated to affect that
+supremacy.
+
+The powers of government are divisible into two great classes--1.
+Imperial powers; 2. State powers, using "State" in the American sense of
+a political community subordinated to some other power, and not in the
+sense of an independent nation. The Imperial powers are in English law
+described as the prerogatives of the Crown, and consist in the main of
+the powers of making peace and war, of maintaining armies and fleets and
+regulating commerce, and making treaties with foreign nations. State
+powers are complete powers of local self-government, described in our
+colonial Constitutions as powers to make laws "for the peace, order, and
+good government of the Colony or State" in which such powers are to be
+exercised.
+
+Intermediate between the Imperial and State powers are a class of
+powers required to prevent disputes and facilitate intercourse between
+the various parts of an empire or other composite system of States--for
+example, the coinage of money, and other regulations relating to the
+currency; the laws relating to copyright, or other exclusive rights to
+the use and profits of any works or inventions; and so forth. These
+powers may be described as quasi-Imperial powers.
+
+Having arrived at a competent knowledge of the materials out of which
+governments are formed, it may be well to proceed to a consideration of
+the manner in which those materials have been worked up in building the
+two great Anglo-Saxon composite nations--namely, the American Union and
+the British Empire--for, if we find that the arrangements proposed by
+the Irish Home Rule Bill are strictly in accordance with the principles
+on which the unity of the American Union was based and on which the
+Imperial power of Great Britain has rested for centuries, the conclusion
+must be that the Irish Home Rule Bill is not antagonistic to the unity
+of the Empire or to the supremacy of the British Parliament.
+
+In discussing these matters it will be convenient to begin with the
+American Union, as it is less extensive in area and more homogeneous in
+its construction than the British Empire. The thirteen revolted American
+colonies, on the conclusion of their war with England, found themselves
+in the position of thirteen independent States having no connection with
+each other. The common tie of supremacy exercised by the mother country
+was broken, and each State was an independent nation, possessed both of
+Imperial and Local rights.
+
+The impossibility of a cluster of thirteen small independent nations
+maintaining their independence against foreign aggression became
+immediately apparent, and, to remedy this evil, the thirteen States
+appointed delegates to form a convention authorized to weld them into
+one body as respected Imperial powers. This was attempted to be done by
+the establishment of a central body called a Congress, consisting of
+delegates from the component States, and invested with all the powers
+designated above as Imperial and quasi-Imperial powers. The expenses
+incurred by the confederacy were to be defrayed out of a common fund, to
+be supplied by requisitions made on the several States. In effect, the
+confederacy of the thirteen States amounted to little more than an
+offensive and defensive alliance between thirteen independent nations,
+as the central power had States for its subjects and not individuals,
+and could only enforce the law against any disobedient State by calling
+on the twelve other States to make war on the refractory member of the
+union. A system dependent for its efficacy on the concurrence of so many
+separate communities contained in itself the seeds of dissolution, and
+it soon became apparent that one of two things must occur--either the
+American States must cease as such to be a nation, or the component
+members of that union must each be prepared to relinquish a further
+portion of the sovereign or quasi-sovereign powers which it possessed.
+Under those circumstances, what was the course taken by the thirteen
+States? They perceived that it was quite possible to maintain complete
+unity and compactness as a nation if, in addition to investing the
+Supreme Government with Imperial and quasi-Imperial powers, they added
+full power to impose federal taxes on the component States and
+established an Executive furnished with ample means to carry all federal
+powers into effect through the medium of federal officers. The
+government so formed consisted of a President and two elected Houses
+called Congress, and, as a balance-wheel of the Constitution, a Supreme
+Court was established, to which was confided the task of deciding in
+case of dispute all questions arising under the Constitution of the
+United States or relating to international law. The Executive of the
+United States, with the President as its source and head, was furnished
+with full authority and power to enforce the federal laws. The army and
+navy were under its command, and it was provided with courts of justice,
+and subordinate officers to enforce the decrees of those courts
+throughout the length and breadth of the Union. Above all, a complete
+system of federal taxation supplied the Central Government with the
+necessary funds to perform effectually all the functions of a supreme
+national government.
+
+The nature of the Constitution of the United States will be best
+understood by considering the position in which its subjects stand to
+the Central Government and their own State Governments. In effect, every
+inhabitant of the United States has a double nationality. He belongs to
+one great nation called the United States, or, as it would be more aptly
+called to show its absolute unity, the American Republic, having
+jurisdiction over the whole surface of ground comprised in the area of
+the United States. He is also a citizen of a smaller local and partially
+self-governing body--more important than a county, but not approaching
+the position of a nation--called a State.
+
+It is no part of the object of this article to enter into the details of
+the American government, its advantages or defects. This much, however,
+is clear--the American Constitution has lasted nearly one hundred years,
+and shows no signs of decay or disruption. It has stood the strain of
+the greatest war of modern times, and has emerged from the conflict
+stronger than before. Even during the war the antagonism of the rebels
+was directed, not against the Union, but against the efforts of the
+Northern States to suppress slavery, or, in other words, to destroy, as
+the Southern States believed (not unjustly as the event showed), their
+property in slaves, and consequently the only means they had of making
+their estates profitable. One conclusion, then, we may draw, that a
+nation in which the Imperial powers and the State powers are vested in
+different authorities is no less compact and powerful, as respects all
+national capacities, than a nation in which both classes of powers are
+wielded by the same functionaries; and one lesson more may be learnt
+from the American War of Secession--namely, that in a nation having such
+a division of powers, any conflict between the two classes results in
+the Supreme or Imperial powers prevailing over the Local governmental
+powers, and not in the latter invading or driving a wedge into the
+Supreme powers. In fact, the tendency in case of a struggle is towards
+an undue centralization of the nation by reason of the encroachment by
+the Supreme authority, rather than towards a weakening of the national
+unity by separatist action on the part of the constituent members of the
+nation.
+
+In comparing the Constitution of the United States with the Constitution
+of the British Empire, we find an apparent resemblance in form as
+respects the Anglo-Saxon colonies, but underlying the surface a total
+difference of principle. The United States is an aggregate of
+homogeneous and contiguous States which, in order to weld themselves
+into a nation, gave up a portion of their rights to a central authority,
+reserving to themselves all powers of government which they did not
+expressly relinquish.
+
+The British Empire is an aggregate of many communities under one common
+head, and is thus described by Mr. Burke in 1774, in language which may
+seem to have been somewhat too enthusiastic at the time when it was
+spoken, but at the present day does not more than do justice to an
+Empire which comprises one-sixth of the habitable globe in extent and
+population:--
+
+"I look, I say, on the Imperial rights of Great Britain, and the
+privileges which the colonies ought to enjoy under those rights, to be
+just the most reconcilable things in the world. The Parliament of Great
+Britain sits at the head of her extensive Empire in two capacities: one
+as the local legislature of this island, providing for all things at
+home immediately and by no other instrument than the executive power;
+the other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what I call her Imperial
+character, in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all
+the several Legislatures, and guides and controls them all without
+annihilating any. As all these provincial Legislatures are only
+co-ordinate with each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her,
+else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual
+justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance."[9]
+
+The means by which the possessions of Great Britain were acquired have
+been as various as the possessions themselves. The European, Asiatic,
+and African possessions became ours by conquest and cession; the
+American by conquest, treaty, and settlement; the Australasian by
+settlement, and by that dubious system of settlement known by the name
+of annexation. Now, what is the link which fastens each of these
+possessions to the mother country? Surely it is the inherent and
+indestructible right of the British Crown to exercise Imperial
+powers--in other words, the supremacy of the Queen and the British
+Parliament? What, again, is the common bond of union between these vast
+colonial possessions, differing in laws, in religion, and in the
+character of the population? The same answer must be given: the joint
+and several tie, so to speak, is the same--namely, the sovereignty of
+Great Britain. It is true that the mode in which the materials composing
+the British Empire have been cemented together is exactly the reverse of
+the manner of the construction of the American Union. In the case of the
+Union, independent States voluntarily relinquished a portion of their
+sovereignty to secure national unity, and entrusted the guardianship of
+that unity to a representative body chosen by themselves. Such a union
+was based on contract, and could only be constructed by communities
+which claimed to be independent. Far different have been the
+circumstances under which England has developed itself into the British
+Empire. England began as a sovereign power, having its sovereignty
+vested at first solely in the Sovereign, but gradually in the Sovereign
+and Parliament. This sovereignty neither the Crown nor the Parliament
+can, jointly or severally, get rid of, for it is of the very essence of
+a sovereign power that it cannot, by Act of Parliament or otherwise,
+bind its successors.[10] This principle of supremacy has never been lost
+sight of by the British Parliament. Their right to alter or suspend a
+colonial Constitution has never been disputed. Contract never enters
+into the question. The dominant authority delegates to its subordinate
+communities as much or as little power as it deems advantageous for each
+body, and, if it sees fit, resumes a portion or the whole of the
+delegated authority. The last point of difference to be noted between
+the American Constitution and the Constitution of the British Empire is
+the fact that as Minerva sprang from the brain of Jupiter fully
+equipped, so the American Constitution came forth from the hands of its
+framers complete and, what is of more importance, practically in
+material matters unchangeable except by the agony of an internecine war
+or some overwhelming passions. The British Empire, on the other hand,
+is, as respects its component members, ever in progress and flux. An
+Anglo-Saxon colony, no less than a human being, has its infancy under
+the maternal care of a governor, its boyhood subject to the government
+of a representative council and an Executive appointed by the Crown, its
+manhood under Home Rule and responsible government, in which the
+Executive are bound to vacate their offices whenever they are out-voted
+in the Legislature. Changes are ever taking place in the growth, so to
+speak, of the several British possessions, but what is the result?
+Nobody ever dreams of these changes injuring the Imperial tie or the
+supremacy of the British Parliament, that alone towers above all,
+unchangeable and unimpaired; and, what is most notable, loyalty and
+devotion to the Crown--that is to say, the Imperial tie--so far from
+being weakened by the transition of a colony from a state of dependence
+in local affairs to the higher degree of a self-governing colony, are,
+on the contrary, strengthened almost in direct proportion as the central
+interference with local affairs is diminished. On this point an
+unimpeachable witness--Mr. Merivale--says: "What, then, are the lessons
+to be learnt from a consideration of the American Constitution and of
+our colonial system? Surely these: that Imperial unity and Imperial
+supremacy are in no degree dependent on the control exercised by the
+central power on its dependent members." Facts, however, are more
+conclusive than any arguments; and we have only to look back to the
+state some forty years ago of Canada, New Zealand, and the various
+colonies of Australia, and compare that state with their condition
+to-day, to come to the conclusion that the fullest power of local
+government is perfectly consistent with the unity of the Empire and the
+supremacy of the British Parliament. Under the old colonial
+Constitutions the Executive of those colonies was under the control of
+the Crown; and Mr. Merivale says "that the political existence consisted
+of a series of quarrels and reconciliations between the two opposing
+authorities--the colonial legislative body and the Executive nominated
+by the Crown." England resolved to give up the control of the Executive,
+and to grant complete responsible government--that is to say, the
+Governor of each colony was instructed that his Executive Council (or
+Ministry, as we should call it) must resign whenever they were out-voted
+by the legislative body. The effect of this change, this relaxing, as
+would be supposed, of the Imperial tie, was magical, and is thus
+described by Mr. Merivale:[11]
+
+"The magnitude of that change--the extraordinary rapidity of its
+beneficial effects--it is scarcely possible to exaggerate. None but
+those who have traced it can realize the sudden spring made by a young
+community under its first release from the old tie of subjection,
+moderate as that tie really was. The cessation, as if by magic, of the
+old irritant sores between colony and mother country is the first
+result. Not only are they at concord, but they seem to leave hardly any
+traces in the public mind behind them. Confidence and affection towards
+the home, still fondly so termed by the colonist as well as the
+emigrant, seem to supersede at once distrust and hostility. Loyalty,
+which was before the badge of a class suspected by the rest of the
+community, became the common watchword of all, and, with some
+extravagance in the sentiment, there arises no small share of its
+nobleness and devotion. Communities, which but a few years ago would
+have wrangled over the smallest item of public expenditure to which they
+were invited by the Executive to contribute, have vied with each other
+in their subscriptions to purposes of British interests in response to
+calls of humanity, or munificence for objects but indistinctly heard of
+at the distance of half the world."
+
+The Dominion of Canada has been so much talked about that it may be well
+to give a summary of its Constitution, though, in so far as regards its
+relations to the mother country, it differs in no material respect from
+any other self-governing colony. The Dominion consists of seven
+provinces, each of which has a Legislature of its own, but is at the
+same time subject to the Legislature of the Dominion, in the same manner
+as each State in the American Union has a Legislature of its own, and is
+at the same time subject to the control of Congress. The distinguishing
+feature between the system of the American States and the associated
+colonies of the Dominion of Canada is this--that all Imperial powers,
+everything that constitutes a people a nation as respects foreigners,
+are reserved to the mother country. The division, then, of the Dominion
+and its provinces consists only in a division of Local powers. It is
+impossible to mark accurately the line between Dominion and Provincial
+powers, but, speaking generally, Dominion powers relate to such
+matters--for example, the regulation of trade and commerce, postal
+service, currency, and so forth--as require to be dealt with on a
+uniform principle throughout the whole area of a country; while the
+Provincial powers relate to provincial and municipal institutions,
+provincial licensing, and other subjects restricted to the limits of the
+province. As a general rule, the Legislature of the Dominion and the
+Legislature of each province have respectively exclusive jurisdiction
+within the limits of the subjects entrusted to them; but, as respects
+agriculture and immigration, the Dominion Parliament have power to
+overrule any Act of the provincial Legislatures, and, as respects
+property and civil rights in Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick,
+the Dominion Parliament may legislate with a view to uniformity, but
+their legislation is not valid unless it is accepted by the Legislature
+of each province to which it applies.
+
+The executive authority in the Dominion Government, as in all the
+self-governing colonies, is carried on by the Governor in the name of
+the Queen, but with the advice of a Council: that is to say, as to all
+Imperial matters, he is under the control of the mother country; as to
+all local matters, he acts on the advice of his local Council. The
+result of the whole is that the citizenship of an inhabitant of the
+Dominion of Canada is a triple tie. Suppose him to reside in the
+province of Quebec. First, he is a citizen of that province, and bound
+to obey all the laws which it is within the competence of the provincial
+Legislature to pass. Next, he is a citizen of the Dominion of Canada,
+and acknowledges its jurisdiction in all matters outside the legitimate
+sphere of the province. Lastly, and above all, he is a subject of her
+Majesty. He is to all intents and purposes, as respects the vast company
+of nations, an Englishman, entitled to all the privileges as he is to
+all the glory of the mother country so far as such privileges can be
+enjoyed and glory participated in without actual residence in England.
+One startling point of likeness in events and unlikeness in consequences
+is to be found in the history of Ireland and Canada. In 1798 Ireland
+rebelled. Protestant and Catholic were arrayed in arms against each
+other. The rebellion was quenched in blood, and measures of repression
+have been in force, with slight intervals of suspension, ever since,
+with this result--that the Ireland of 1886 is scarcely less disloyal and
+discontented than the Ireland of 1798. In 1837 and 1838 Canada rebelled.
+Protestants and Catholics, differing in nationality as well as in
+religion, were arrayed in arms against each other. The rebellion was
+quelled with the least possible violence, a free Constitution was given,
+and the Canada of 1886 is the largest, most loyal, and most contented
+colony in her Majesty's dominions.
+
+Assuming, then, thus much to be proved by the Constitution of the United
+States that national unity of the closest description is consistent with
+complete Home Rule in the component members of the nation, and by the
+history of Canada and the British colonial empire that an Imperial tie
+is sufficient to bind together for centuries dependencies differing in
+situation, in nationality, in religion, in laws, in everything that
+distinguishes peoples one from another, and further and more
+particularly that emancipation of the Anglo-Saxon colonies from control
+in their internal affairs strengthens instead of weakening Imperial
+unity, let us turn to Ireland and inquire whether there is anything in
+the circumstances under which Home Rule was proposed to be granted to
+Ireland, or in the measures intended to establish that Home Rule, fairly
+leading to the inference that disruption of the Empire or an impairment
+of Imperial powers would probably be a consequence of passing the Irish
+Government Bill and the Irish Land Bill. And, first, as to the
+circumstances which would seem to recommend the Irish Home Rule Bill.
+
+Ireland, from the very commencement of her connection with England, has
+chafed under the restraints which that connection imposed. The closer
+the apparent union between the two countries the greater the real
+disunion. The Act of 1800, _in words and in law_, effected not a union
+merely, but a consolidation of the two countries. The effect of those
+words and that law was to give rise to a restless discontent, which has
+constantly found expression in efforts to procure the repeal of the Act
+of Union and the reestablishment of a National Parliament in Dublin. How
+futile have been the efforts of the British Parliament to diminish by
+concession or repress by coercion Irish aspirations or Irish discontent
+it is unnecessary to discuss here. All men admit the facts, however
+different the conclusions which they draw from those facts. What Burke
+said of America on moving in 1775 his resolution on conciliation with
+the colonies was true in 1885 with respect to Ireland:--
+
+"The fact is undoubted, that under former Parliaments the state of
+America [read for America, Ireland] has been kept in continual
+agitation. Everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, if
+it did not produce, was at least followed by an heightening of the
+distemper, until, by a variety of experiments, that important country
+has been brought into her present situation--a situation which I will
+not miscall, which I dare not name, which I scarcely know how to
+comprehend in the terms of any description."[12]
+
+At length, after the election of 1885, Mr. Gladstone and the majority of
+his followers came to the conclusion that an opportunity had presented
+itself for providing Ireland with a Constitution conferring on the
+people of that country the largest measure of self-government consistent
+with the absolute supremacy of the Crown and the Imperial Parliament and
+the entire unity of the Empire. A scheme was proposed which was accepted
+in principle by the representatives of the National party in Ireland as
+a fair and sufficient adjustment of the Imperial claims of Great Britain
+and the Local claims of Ireland. The scheme was shortly this. A
+Legislative Assembly was proposed to be established in Ireland with
+power to make all laws necessary for the good government of Ireland--in
+other words, invested with the same powers of local self-government as a
+colonial Assembly. The Irish Assembly was in one respect unlike a
+colonial Legislature. It consisted of one House only, but this House was
+divided into two orders, each of which, in case of differences on any
+important legislative matter, voted separately. This form was adopted in
+order to minimize the chances of collision between the two orders, by
+making it imperative on each order to hear the arguments of the other
+before proceeding to a division, thus throwing on the dissentient order
+the full responsibility of its dissent, with a complete knowledge of the
+consequences likely to ensue therefrom. The clause conferring on the
+Irish Legislature full powers of local self-government was immediately
+followed by a provision excepting, by enumeration, from any interference
+on the part of the Irish Legislature, all Imperial powers, and declaring
+any enactment void which infringed on that provision. This exception (as
+is well known) is not found in colonial Constitutional Acts. In them the
+restriction of the words of the grant to Local powers only has been
+held sufficient to safeguard the supremacy of the British Parliament and
+the unity of the Empire. The reason for making a difference in the case
+of the Home Rule Bill was political, not legal. Separation was declared
+by the enemies of the Bill to be the real intention of its supporters,
+and destruction of the unity of the Empire to be its certain
+consequence. It seemed well that Ireland, by her representatives, should
+accept as a satisfactory charter of Irish liberty a document which
+contained an express submission to Imperial power and a direct
+acknowledgment of Imperial unity. Similarly with respect to the
+supremacy of the British Parliament. In the colonial Constitutions all
+reference to this supremacy is omitted as being too clear to require
+notice. In the case of the Irish Home Rule Bill instructions were given
+to preserve in express words the supremacy of the British Parliament in
+order to pledge Ireland to an express admission of that supremacy by the
+same vote which accepted Local powers. It is true that the wording by
+the draftsman of the sentence reserving the supremacy of Parliament was
+justly found fault with as inaccurate and doubtful, but that defect
+would have been cured by an amendment in Committee; and, even if there
+had not been any such clause in the Bill, it is clear, from what has
+been said above, that the Imperial Legislature could not, if it would,
+renounce its supremacy or abdicate its sovereign powers. The executive
+government in Ireland was continued in the Queen, to be carried on by
+the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of her Majesty, with the aid of such
+officers and Council as to her Majesty might from time to time seem fit.
+Her Majesty was also a constituent part of the Legislature, with power
+to delegate to the Lord Lieutenant the prerogative of assenting to or
+dissenting from Bills, and of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving
+Parliament. Under these provisions the Lord Lieutenant resembled the
+Governor of a colony with responsible government. He was invested with a
+double authority--first, Imperial; secondly, Local. As an Imperial
+officer, he was bound to veto any Bill injuriously affecting Imperial
+interests or inconsistent with general Imperial policy; as a Local
+officer, it was his duty to act in all local matters according to the
+advice of his Council, whose tenure of office depended on their being in
+harmony with, and supported by, a majority of the Legislative Assembly.
+Questions relating to the constitutionality of any particular law were
+not left altogether to the decision of the Governor. If a Bill
+containing a provision infringing Imperial rights passed the
+Legislature, its validity might be decided in the first instance by the
+ordinary courts of law, but the ultimate appeal lay to the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council, and, with a view to secure absolute
+impartiality in the Committee, it was provided that Ireland should be
+represented on that body by persons who either were or had been Irish
+judges. Not the least important provision of the Bill, as respects the
+maintenance of Imperial interests, was the continuance of Imperial
+taxation. The Customs and Excise duties were directed to be levied, as
+heretofore, in pursuance of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament,
+and were excepted from the control of the Irish Legislature, which had
+full power, with that exception, to impose such taxes in Ireland as they
+might think expedient. The Bill further provided that neither the
+Imperial taxes of Excise nor any Local taxes that might be imposed by
+the Irish Legislature should be paid into the Irish Exchequer. An
+Imperial officer, called the Receiver-General, was appointed, into whose
+hands the produce of every tax, both Imperial and Local, was required to
+be paid, and it was the duty of the Receiver-General to take care that
+all claims of the English Exchequer, including especially the
+contribution payable by Ireland for Imperial purposes, were satisfied
+before a farthing found its way into the Irish Exchequer for Irish
+purposes. The Receiver-General was provided with an Imperial Court to
+enforce his rights of Imperial taxation, and adequate means for
+enforcing all Imperial powers by Imperial civil officers. The Bill did
+not provide for the representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament
+on all Imperial questions, including questions relating to Imperial
+taxation, but it is fully understood that in any Bill which might
+hereafter be brought forward relating to Home Rule those defects would
+be remedied.
+
+An examination, then, of the Home Rule Bill, that "child of revolution
+and parent of separation," appears to lead irresistibly to two
+conclusions. First, that Imperial rights and Imperial powers,
+representation for Imperial purposes, Imperial taxation--in short, every
+link that binds a subordinate member of an Empire to its supreme
+head--have been maintained unimpaired and unchanged. Secondly, that, in
+granting Home Rule to discontented Ireland, that form of responsible
+government has been adopted which, as Mr. Merivale declares--and his
+declaration subsequent events have more than verified--when conferred on
+the discontented colonies, changed restless aspirations for separation
+into quiet loyalty.
+
+That such a Bill as the Home Rule Bill should be treated as an invasion
+of Imperial rights is a proof of one, or perhaps of both, the following
+axioms--that Bills are never read by their accusers, and that party
+spirit will distort the plainest facts. The union of Great Britain and
+Ireland was not, so far as Imperial powers were concerned, disturbed by
+the Bill, and an Irishman remains a citizen of the British Empire under
+the Home Rule Bill, with the same obligations and the same privileges,
+on the same terms as before. All the Bill did was to make his Irish
+citizenship distinct from his Imperial citizenship, in the same manner
+as the citizenship of a native of the State of New York is distinct
+from his citizenship as a member of the United States. Now it has been
+found that the Central power in the United States has been more than a
+match for the State powers, and can it be conceived for a moment that
+the Imperial power of Great Britain should not be a match for the Local
+power of Ireland--a State which has not one-seventh of the population or
+one-twentieth part of the income of the dominant community?
+
+One argument remains to be noticed which the opponents of Home Rule urge
+as absolutely condemnatory of the measure, whereas, if properly weighed,
+it is conclusive in its favour. Home Rule, they say, is a mere question
+of sentiment. "National aspirations" are the twaddle of English
+enthusiasts who know nothing of Ireland. What is really wanted is the
+reform of the Land Law. Settle the agrarian problem, and Home Rule may
+be relegated to the place supposed to be paved with good intentions. The
+Irish will straightway change their character, and become a law-abiding,
+contented, loyal people. Be it so. But suppose it to be proved that the
+establishment of an Irish Government, or, in other words, Home Rule, is
+an essential condition of agrarian reform--that the latter cannot be had
+without the former--surely Home Rule should stand none the worse in the
+estimation of its opponents if it not only secures a safe basis for
+putting an end to agrarian exasperation, but also gratifies the feeling
+of the Irish people as expressed by the majority of its representatives
+in Parliament? Now, what is the nature of the Irish Land Question? This
+we must understand before considering the remedy. In Ireland (meaning by
+Ireland that part of the country which is in the hands of tenants, and
+falls within the compass of a Land Bill) the tenure of land is wholly
+unlike that which is found in the greater part of England. Instead of
+large farms in which the landlord makes all the improvements and the
+tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the land and receives
+the produce, small holdings are found in which the tenant does the
+improvements (if any) and pays a fixed rent-charge to the owner. In
+England the tenant does not perform the obligations or in any way aspire
+to the character of owner. If he thinks he can get a cheaper farm, he
+quits his former one, regarding his interest in the land as a mere
+matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Not so the Irish tenant. He has
+made what he calls improvements, he claims a quasi-ownership in the
+land, and has the characteristic Celtic attachment for the patch of
+ground forming his holding, however squalid it may be, however
+inadequate for his support. In short, in Ireland there is a dual
+ownership--that of the proprietor, who has no interest in the soil so
+long as the tenant pays his rent and fulfils the conditions of his
+tenancy; and that of the tenant, who, subject to the payment of his rent
+and performance of the fixed conditions, acts, thinks, and carries
+himself as the owner of his holding. A system, then, of agrarian reform
+in Ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of
+putting an end to this dual ownership--that is to say, of making the
+tenant the sole proprietor of his holding, and compensating the landlord
+for his interest in the ownership. The problem is further narrowed by
+the circumstance that the tenant cannot be expected to advance any
+capital or pay an increased rent, so that the means of compensating the
+landlord must be found out of the existing rent.
+
+The plan adopted in Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill was to commute the
+rent-charges, offering the landlord, as a general rule, twenty years'
+purchase on the net rental of the estate (that is to say, the rent
+received by him after deducting all outgoings), and paying him the
+purchase-money in £3 per cent. stock taken at par. The stock was to be
+advanced by the English Government to an Irish State department at 3-1/8
+per cent. interest, and the Bill provided that the tenant, instead of
+rent, was to pay an annuity of £4 per cent. on a capital sum equal in
+amount to twenty times the gross rental.
+
+The notable feature which distinguished this plan from all other schemes
+was the security given for the repayment of the purchase-money: hitherto
+the English Government has lent the money directly to the landlord or
+tenant, and has become the mortgagee of the land--in other words, has
+become in effect the landlord of the land sold to the tenant until the
+repayment of the loan has been completed. To carry into effect under
+such a system any extensive scheme of agrarian reform (and if not
+extensive such a reform would be of no value in pacifying Ireland)
+presupposes a readiness on the part of the English Government to become
+virtually the landlord of a large portion of Ireland, with the attendant
+odium of absenteeism and alien domination. Under a land scheme such as
+that of 1886, all these difficulties would be overcome. The Irish, not
+the English, Government would be the virtual landlord. It would be the
+interest of Ireland that the annuities due from the tenants should be
+regularly paid, as, subject to the prior charge of the English
+Exchequer, they would form part of the Irish revenues. The cardinal
+difference, then, between Mr. Gladstone's scheme and any other land
+scheme that has seen the light is this--that in Mr. Gladstone's scheme
+the English loans would have been lent to the Irish Government on the
+security of the whole Irish revenues, whereas in every other scheme they
+have been lent by the English Government to the Irish creditors on the
+security of individual patches of land.
+
+The whole question, then, of the relation between Home Rule and agrarian
+reform may be summed up as follows:--Agrarian reform is necessary for
+the pacification of Ireland; agrarian reform cannot be efficiently
+carried into effect without an Irish Government; an Irish Government can
+only be established by a Home Rule Bill: therefore a Home Rule Bill is
+necessary for the pacification of Ireland. It is idle to say, as has
+been said on numerous platforms, that plans no doubt can be devised for
+agrarian reform without Home Rule. The Irish revenues are the only
+collateral security that can be obtained for loans of English money, and
+Irish revenues are only available for the purpose on the establishment
+of an Irish Government. Baronial guarantees, union guarantees, county
+guarantees, debenture schemes, have all been tried and found wanting,
+and vague assertions as to possibilities are idle unless they are based
+on intelligible working plans.
+
+The foregoing arguments will be equally valid if, instead of making the
+tenants peasant-proprietors, it were thought desirable that the Irish
+State should be the proprietor and the tenants be the holders of the
+land at perpetual rents and subject to fixed conditions. Again, it might
+be possible to pay the landlords by annual sums instead of capital sums.
+Such matters are really questions of detail. The substance is to
+interpose the Irish Government between the tenant and the English
+mortgagee, and to make the loans general charges on the whole of the
+Irish Government revenues as paid into the hands of an Imperial Receiver
+instead of placing them as special charges, each fixed on its own small
+estate or holding. The fact that Mr. Gladstone's land scheme was
+denounced as confiscation of £100,000,000 of the English taxpayers'
+property, while Lord Ashbourne's Act is pronounced by the same party
+wise and prudent, shows the political blindness of party spirit in its
+most absurd form. Lord Ashbourne's Act requires precisely the same
+expenditure to do the same work as Mr. Gladstone's Bill requires, but in
+Mr. Gladstone's scheme the whole Irish revenue was pledged as collateral
+security, and the Irish Government was interposed between the ultimate
+creditor and the Irish tenant, while under Lord Ashbourne's Act the
+English Government figures without disguise as the landlord of each
+tenant, exacting a debt which the tenant is unwilling to pay as being
+due to what he calls an alien Government.
+
+An endeavour has been made in the preceding pages to prove that Home
+Rule in no respect infringes on Imperial rights or Imperial unity, for
+the simple reason that the Imperial power remains exactly in the same
+position as it was before, the Home Rule Bill dealing only with Local
+matters. At all events, Burke thought that the Imperial supremacy alone
+constituted a real union between England and Ireland. He says--
+
+"My poor opinion is, that the closest connection between Great Britain
+and Ireland is essential to the well-being--I had almost said to the
+very being--of the three kingdoms; for that purpose I humbly conceive
+that the whole of the superior, and what I should call Imperial
+politics, ought to have its residence here, and that Ireland, locally,
+civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look up to
+Great Britain in all matters of peace and war. In all these points to be
+joined with her, and, in a word, with her to live and to die."[13]
+
+How strange to Burke would have seemed the doctrine that the restoration
+of a limited power of self-government to Ireland, excluding commerce,
+and excluding all matters not only Imperial, but those in which
+uniformity is required, should be denounced as a disruption of the
+Empire!
+
+It remains to notice one other charge made against the Gladstonian Home
+Rule Bill, namely, that of impairing the supremacy of the British
+Parliament. That allegation has been shown also to be founded on a
+mistake. Next, it is said that the Gladstonian scheme does not provide
+securities against executive and legislative oppression. The answer is
+complete. The executive authority being vested in the Queen, it will be
+the duty of the Governor not to allow executive oppression; still more
+will it be his duty to veto any act of legislative oppression. Further,
+it is stated that difficulties will arise with respect to the power of
+the Privy Council to nullify unconstitutional Acts. But it is hard to
+see why a power which is exercised with success in the United States,
+where all the States are equal, and without dispute in our colonies,
+which are all dependent, should not be carried into effect with equal
+ease in Ireland, which is more closely bound to us and more completely
+under our power than the colonies are, or than the several States are
+under the power of the Central Government.
+
+To conclude: the cause of Irish discontent is the conjoint operation of
+the passion for nationality and the vicious system of land tenure, and
+the scheme of the Irish Home Rule Bill and the Land Bill removes the
+whole fabric on which Irish discontent is raised. The Irish, by the
+great majority of their representatives, have accepted the Home Rule
+Bill as a satisfactory settlement of the nationality question. The
+British Parliament can, through the medium of the Home Rule Bill and the
+establishment of an Irish Legislature, carry through a final settlement
+of agrarian disputes with less injustice to individuals than could a
+Parliament sitting in Dublin, and, be it added, with scarcely any
+appreciable risk to the British taxpayer. Of course it may be said that
+an Irish Parliament will go farther--that Home Rule is a step to
+separation, and a reform of the Land Laws a spoliation of the landlords.
+To those who urge such arguments I would recommend the perusal of the
+speech of Burke on Conciliation with America, and especially the
+following sentences, substituting "Ireland" for "the colonies:"--
+
+"But [the Colonies] Ireland will go further. Alas! alas! when will this
+speculating against fact and reason end? What will quiet these panic
+fears which we entertain of the hostile effect of a conciliatory
+conduct? Is it true that no case can exist in which it is proper for the
+Sovereign to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects? Is
+there anything peculiar in this case to make it a rule for itself? Is
+all authority of course lost when it is not pushed to the extreme? Is it
+a certain maxim that the fewer causes of discontentment are left by
+Government the more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel?"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 9: Burke's Speech on American Taxation, vol. i. p. 174]
+
+[Footnote 10: This is the opinion of both English and American lawyers.
+See Blackstone's Comm., i. 90; Austin on Jurisprudence, i. 226. As to
+American cases, see Corley on Constitutional Limitations, pp. 2-149.]
+
+[Footnote 11: "Lectures on the Colonies," p, 641.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Burke, vol. i. p. 181.]
+
+[Footnote 13: "Letter on Affairs of Ireland," i. 462.]
+
+
+
+
+THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL AND THE IRISH LAND BILL
+
+BY LORD THRING
+
+
+A mere enumeration or analysis of the contents of the Irish Government
+Bill, 1886, and the Land (Ireland) Bill, 1886, would convey scarcely any
+intelligible idea to the mind of an ordinary reader. It is, therefore,
+proposed in the following pages, before entering on the details of each
+Bill, to give a summary of the reasons which led to its introduction,
+and of the principles on which it is founded. To begin with the Irish
+Government Bill--
+
+The object of the Irish Government Bill is to confer on the Irish people
+the largest measure of self-government consistent with the absolute
+supremacy of the Crown and Imperial Parliament and the entire unity of
+the Empire. To carry into effect this object it was essential to create
+a separate though subordinate legislature; thus occasion was given to
+opponents to apply the name of Separatists to the supporters of the
+Bill--a term true in so far only as it denoted the intention to create a
+separate legislature, but false and calumnious when used in the sense in
+which it was intended to be understood--of imputing to the promoters of
+the Bill the intention to disunite or in any way to disintegrate the
+Empire. Indeed, the very object of the measure was, by relaxing a little
+the legal bonds of union, to draw closer the actual ties between England
+and Ireland, in fact, to do as we have done in our Colonies, by
+decentralizing the subordinate functions of government to strengthen the
+central supremacy of natural affection and Imperial unity. The example
+of the effects of giving complete self-government to our Colonies would
+seem not unfavourable to trying the same experiment in Ireland. Some
+forty years ago, Canada, New Zealand, and the various colonies of
+Australia were discontented and uneasy at the control exercised by the
+Government of England over their local affairs. What did England do? She
+gave to each of those communities the fullest power of local government
+consistent with the unity of the Empire. The result was that the real
+union was established in the same degree as the apparent tie of control
+over local affairs was loosened. Are there any reasons to suppose that
+the condition of Ireland is such as to render the example of the
+Colonies applicable? Let us look a little at the past history of that
+country. Up to 1760 Ireland was governed practically as a conquered
+country. The result was that in 1782, in order to save Imperial unity,
+we altogether relaxed the local tie and made Ireland legislatively
+independent. The Empire was thus saved, but difficulties naturally arose
+between two independent legislatures. The true remedy would have been to
+have imposed on Grattan's Parliament the conditions imposed by the Irish
+Government Bill on the statutory Parliament created by that Bill; the
+course actually taken was that, instead of leaving the Irish with their
+local government, and arranging for the due supremacy of England, the
+Irish Legislature was destroyed under the guise of Union, and Irish
+representatives were transferred to an assembly in which they had little
+weight, and in which they found no sympathy. The result was that from
+the date of the Union to the present day Ireland has been constantly
+working for the reinstatement of its National Legislature, and has been
+governed by a continuous system of extraordinary legislature called
+coercion; the fact being that between 1800, the date of the Act of
+Union, and 1832, the date of the great Reform Act, there were only
+eleven years free from coercion, while in the fifty-three years since
+that period there have been only two years entirely free from special
+repressive legislation. So much, therefore, is clear, that Irish
+discontent at not being allowed to manage their own affairs has
+gradually increased instead of diminishing. The conclusion then would
+seem irresistible, that if coercion has failed, the only practical mode
+of governing Ireland satisfactorily is to give the people power to
+manage their local affairs. Coming, then, to the principle of the Bill,
+the first step is to reconcile local government with Imperial supremacy,
+in other words, to divide Imperial from local powers; for if this
+division be accurately made, and the former class of powers be reserved
+to the British Crown and British Parliament, while the latter only are
+intrusted to the Irish Parliament, it becomes a contradiction in terms
+to say that Imperial unity is dissolved by reserving to the Imperial
+authority all its powers, or that Home Rule is a sundering of the
+Imperial tie when that tie is preserved inviolable. Imperial powers,
+then, are the prerogatives of the Crown with respect to peace and war,
+and making treaties with foreign nations; in short, the power of
+regulating the relations of the Empire towards foreign nations. These
+are the _jura summi imperii_, the very insignia of supremacy; the
+attributes of sovereign authority in every form of government, be it
+despotism, limited monarchy, or republic; the only difference is that in
+a system of government under one supreme head, they are vested in that
+head alone, in a federal government, as in America or Switzerland, they
+reside in the composite body forming the federal supreme authority.
+Various subsidiary powers necessarily attend the above supreme powers;
+for example, the power of maintaining armies and navies, of commanding
+the militia, and other incidental powers. Closely connected with the
+power of making peace and war is the power of regulating commerce with
+foreign nations. Next in importance to the reservations necessary to
+constitute the Empire a Unity with regard to foreign nations, are the
+powers required to prevent disputes and to facilitate intercourse
+between the various parts of the Empire. These are the coinage of money
+and other regulations relating to currency, to copyright or other
+exclusive rights to the use or profit of any works or inventions. The
+above subjects must be altogether excluded from the powers of the
+subordinate legislature; it ceases to be subordinate as soon as it is
+invested with these Imperial, or quasi-Imperial, powers.
+
+Assuming, however, the division between Imperial and local powers to be
+accurately determined, how is the subordinate legislative body to be
+kept within its due limits? The answer is very plain,--an Imperial court
+must be established to decide in the last resort whether the subordinate
+legislature has or has not infringed Imperial rights. Such a court has
+been in action in the United States of America ever since their union,
+and no serious conflict has arisen in carrying its decisions into
+effect, and the Privy Council, acting as the Supreme Court in respect to
+Colonial appeals, has been accepted by all the self-governing colonies
+as a just and impartial expositor of the meaning of their several
+constitutions.
+
+Next in importance to the right division of Imperial and local powers is
+a correct understanding of the relation borne by the executive of an
+autonomous country to the mother country. In every part of the British
+Empire which enjoys home rule the legislature consists of the Queen and
+the two local legislative bodies. The administrative power resides in
+the Queen alone. The Queen has the appointment of all the officers of
+the government; money bills can be introduced into the legislature only
+with the consent of the Queen. The initiative power of taxation then is
+vested in the Queen, the executive head, in practice represented by the
+Governor. But such a power of initiation is of course useless unless the
+legislative body is willing to support the executive, and grants it the
+necessary funds for carrying on the government. What, then, is the
+contrivance by which the governmental machine is prevented from being
+stopped by a difference between the executive and legislative
+authorities? It is the same in the mother country, and in every British
+home-rule country, with this difference only--that beyond the limits of
+the mother country the Queen is represented by a governor to whom are
+delegated such a measure of powers as is necessary for the supreme head
+of a local self-governing community. The contrivance is this in the
+mother country:--the Queen acts upon the advice of a cabinet council; in
+home-rule dependencies the Governor acts on the advice of a local
+council. If this cabinet council in the mother country, or local council
+in a dependency, ceases to command a majority in the popular legislative
+body, it resigns, and the Governor is obliged to select a council which,
+by commanding such a majority, can obtain the supplies necessary to
+carry on the government. The consequence then is, that in a home-rule
+community, if a serious difficulty arises between the legislative and
+executive authority, the head of the executive, the governor, refers the
+ultimate decision of the question to the general body of electors by
+dissolving the popular legislative body. It has been urged in the
+discussion on the Irish Government Bill that the powers of the executive
+in relation to the legislative body ought to be expressed in the Bill
+itself; but it is clear to anybody acquainted with the rudiments of
+legislation that the details of such a system (in other words, the mode
+in which a governor ought to act under the endless variety of
+circumstances which may occur in governing a dependency) never have been
+and never can be expressed in an Act of Parliament. But how little
+difficulty this absence of definition has caused may be judged from the
+fact that neither in England nor in any of her home-rule dependencies
+has any vital collision arisen between the executive and legislative
+authorities, and that all the home-rule colonies have managed to
+surmount the obstacles which the opponents of Home Rule argued would be
+fatal to their existence. The main principles have now been stated on
+which the Irish Government Bill is framed, and it remains to give a
+summary of the provisions of the Bill, the objects and bearing of which
+will be readily understood from the foregoing observations. The first
+clause provides that--
+
+"On and after the appointed day there shall be established in Ireland a
+Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and an Irish legislative
+body."
+
+This is the first step in all English constitutional systems, to vest
+the power of legislation in the Queen and the legislative body. Such a
+legislature might have had conferred on it the independent powers vested
+in Grattan's Parliament: but the second clause at once puts an end to
+any doubt as to the subordination of the Irish legislative body; for
+while on the one hand it confers full powers of local self-government,
+by declaring that the Legislature may make any laws for the peace,
+order, and good government of Ireland, it subjects that power to
+numerous exceptions and restrictions. The exceptions are contained in
+the third clause, and the restrictions in the fourth. The exceptions are
+as follows:--
+
+"The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws relating to the
+following matters or any of them:--
+
+"(1.) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession to the
+Crown, or a Regency;
+
+"(2.) The making of peace or war;
+
+"(3.) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval
+forces, or the defence of the realm;
+
+"(4.) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the
+relations between the various parts of Her Majesty's dominions;
+
+"(5.) Dignities or titles of honour;
+
+"(6.) Prize or booty of war;
+
+"(7.) Offences against the law of nations; or offences committed in
+violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between Her
+Majesty and any foreign State; or offences committed on the high seas;
+
+"(8.) Treason, alienage, or naturalization;
+
+"(9.) Trade, navigation, or quarantine;
+
+"(10.) The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this Act
+mentioned with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in
+Ireland;
+
+"(11.) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks;
+
+"(12.) The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal tender; or weights
+and measures; or
+
+"(13.) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use or
+profits of any works or inventions."
+
+Of these exceptions the first four preserve the imperial rights which
+have been insisted on above, and maintain the position of Ireland as an
+integral portion of that Empire of which Great Britain is the head. The
+remaining exceptions are either subsidiary to the first four, or relate,
+as is the case with exceptions 10 to 13, to matters on which it is
+desirable that uniformity should exist throughout the whole Empire. The
+restrictions in clause 4 are:--
+
+"The Irish Legislature shall not make any law--
+
+"(1.) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or
+prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
+
+"(2.) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account
+of religious belief; or
+
+"(3.) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain
+any place of denominational education or any denominational institution
+or charity; or
+
+"(4.) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school
+receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at
+that school; or
+
+"(5.) Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty in Council
+first obtained on an address presented by the legislative body of
+Ireland, or the consent of the corporation interested, the rights,
+property, or privileges of any existing corporation incorporated by
+royal charter or local and general Act of Parliament; or
+
+"(6.) Imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties of excise, as
+defined by this Act, or either of such duties, or affecting any Act
+relating to such duties or either of them; or
+
+"(7.) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared to be
+alterable by the Irish Legislature."
+
+These restrictions differ from the exceptions, inasmuch as they do not
+prevent the Legislature of Ireland from dealing with the subjects to
+which they refer, but merely impose on it an obligation not to handle
+the specified matters in a manner detrimental to the interests of
+certain classes of Her Majesty's subjects. For example, restrictions 1
+to 4 are practically concerned in securing religious freedom;
+restriction 5 protects existing charters; restriction 6 is necessary, as
+will be seen hereinafter, to carrying into effect the financial scheme
+of the bill; restriction 7 is a consequence of the very framework of the
+Bill: it provides for the stability of the Irish constitution, by
+declaring that the Irish Legislature is not competent to alter the
+constitutional act to which it owes its existence, except on those
+points on which it is expressly permitted to make alterations.
+
+Clause 5 is an exposition, so to speak, of the consequence which would
+seem to flow from the fact of the Queen being a constitutional part of
+the Legislature. It states that the royal prerogatives with respect to
+the summoning, prorogation, and dissolution of the Irish legislative
+body are to be the same as the royal prerogatives in relation to the
+Imperial Parliament. The next clause (6) is comparatively immaterial;
+it merely provides that the duration of the Irish legislative body is to
+be quinquennial. As it deals with a matter of detail, it perhaps would
+have more aptly found a place in a subsequent part of the Bill. Clause 7
+passes from the legislative to the executive authority; it declares:--
+
+(1.) The executive government of Ireland shall continue vested in Her
+Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of Her
+Majesty with the aid of such officers and such council as to Her Majesty
+may from time to time seem fit.
+
+(2.) Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by
+Her Majesty, the Lord Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of
+Her Majesty to bills passed by the Irish legislative body, and shall
+exercise the prerogatives of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning,
+proroguing, and dissolving of the Irish legislative body, and any
+prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her
+Majesty.
+
+Bearing in mind what has been said in the preliminary observations in
+respect of the relation between the executive and the legislative
+authority, it will be at once understood how much this clause implies,
+according to constitutional maxims, of the dependence on the one hand of
+the Irish executive in respect of imperial matters, and of its
+independence in respect of local matters. The clause is practically
+co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local
+powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers
+to the Imperial Legislature. The governor is an imperial officer, and
+will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny,
+and to veto any bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the
+other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided
+by the advice of the Irish executive council. The system is, as has been
+shown above, self-acting. The governor, for local purposes, must have a
+council which is in harmony with the legislative body. If a council,
+supported by the legislative body and the governor do not agree, the
+governor must give way unless he can, by dismissing his council and
+dissolving the legislative body, obtain both a council and a legislative
+body which will support his views. As respects imperial questions, the
+case is different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and
+in the last resort a determination of the executive council, backed by
+the legislative body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act
+of rebellion on the part of the Irish people, and be dealt with
+accordingly.
+
+The above clauses contain the pith and marrow of the whole scheme. The
+exact constitution of the legislative body, and the orders into which it
+should be divided, the exclusion or non-exclusion of the Irish members
+from the Imperial Parliament, indeed, the whole of the provisions found
+in the remainder of this Bill, are matters which might be altered
+without destroying, or even violently disarranging, the Home-rule scheme
+as above described.
+
+Clauses 9, 10, and 11 provide for the constitution of the legislative
+body; it differs materially from the colonial legislative bodies, and
+from the Legislature of the United States. For the purpose of
+deliberation it consists of one House only; for the purpose of voting on
+all questions (except interlocutory applications and questions of
+order), it is divided into two classes, called in the Bill "Orders,"
+each of which votes separately, with the result that a question on which
+the two orders disagree is deemed to be decided in the negative. The
+object of this arrangement is to diminish the chances of collision
+between the two branches of the Legislature, which have given rise to so
+much difficulty both in England and the colonies. Each order will have
+ample opportunity of learning the strength and hearing the arguments of
+the other order. They will therefore, each of them, proceed to a
+division with a full sense of the responsibility attaching to their
+action. A further safeguard is provided against a final conflict between
+the first and second orders. If the first order negative a proposition,
+that negative is in force only for a period of three years, unless a
+dissolution takes place sooner, in which case it is terminated at once;
+the lost bill or clause may then be submitted to the whole House, and if
+decided in the affirmative, and assented to by the Queen, becomes law.
+The first order of the Irish legislative body comprises 103 members. It
+is intended to consist ultimately wholly of elective members; but for
+the next immediate period of thirty years the rights of the Irish
+representative peers are, as will be seen, scrupulously reserved. The
+plan is this: of the 103 members composing the first order, seventy-five
+are elective, and twenty-eight peerage members. The qualification of the
+elective members is an annual income of £200, or the possession of a
+capital sum of £4000 free from all charges. The elections are to be
+conducted in the electoral districts set out in the schedule to the
+Bill. The electors must possess land or tenements within the district of
+the annual value of £25. The twenty-eight peerage members consist of the
+existing twenty-eight representative peers, and any vacancies in their
+body during the next thirty years are to be filled up in the manner at
+present in use respecting the election of Irish representative peers.
+The Irish representative peers cease to sit in the English Parliament;
+but a member of that body is not required to sit in the Irish Parliament
+without his assent, and the place of any existing peer refusing to sit
+in the Irish Parliament will be filled up as in the case of an ordinary
+vacancy. The elective members of the first order sit for ten years;
+every five years one half their number will retire. The members of the
+first order do not vacate their seats on a dissolution of the
+legislative body. At the expiration of thirty years, that is to say,
+upon the exhaustion of all the existing Irish representative peers, the
+whole of the upper order will consist of elective members. The second
+order consists of 204 members, that is to say, of the 103 existing Irish
+members (who are transferred to the Irish Parliament), and of 101
+additional members to be elected by the county districts and the
+represented towns, in the same manner as that in which the present 101
+members for counties and towns are elected--each constituency returning
+two instead of one member. If an existing member does not assent to his
+transfer, his seat is vacated.
+
+A power is given to the Legislature of Ireland to enable the Royal
+University of Ireland to return two members.
+
+The provisions with respect to this second order fall within the class
+of enactments which are alterable by the Irish Legislature. After the
+first dissolution of parliament the Irish Legislature may deal with the
+second order in any manner they think fit, with the important
+restrictions:--(1) That in the distribution of members they must have
+due regard to population; (2) that they must not increase or diminish
+the number of members.
+
+The transfer to the Irish legislative body of the Irish representative
+peers, and of the Irish members, involves their exclusion under ordinary
+circumstances from the Imperial Parliament, with this great exception,
+that whenever an alteration is proposed to be made in the fundamental
+provisions of the Irish Government Bill, a mode of procedure is devised
+for recalling both orders of the Irish legislative body to the Imperial
+Parliament for the purpose of obtaining their consent to such alteration
+(clause 39).
+
+Further, it is right to state here that Mr. Gladstone in his speech on
+the second reading of the Bill proposed to provide, "that when any
+proposal for taxation was made affecting the condition of Ireland, Irish
+members should have an opportunity of appearing in the House to take a
+share in the transaction of that business."
+
+Questions arising as to whether the Irish Parliament has or not
+exceeded its constitutional powers may be determined by the ordinary
+courts of law in the first instance; the ultimate appeal lies to the
+Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. An additional safeguard is
+provided by declaring that before a provision in a Bill becomes law, the
+Lord Lieutenant may take the opinion of the Judicial Committee of the
+Privy Council as to its legality, and further, that without subjecting
+private litigants to the expense of trying the constitutionality of an
+Act, the Lord Lieutenant may, of his own motion, move the judicial
+committee to determine the question. With a view to secure absolute
+impartiality in the committee, Ireland will be represented on that body
+by persons who are or have been Irish judges (clause 25).
+
+The question of finance forms a separate portion of the Bill, the
+provisions of which are contained in clauses twelve to twenty, while the
+machinery for carrying those enactments into effect will be found in
+Part III. of the Land Bill. The first point to be determined was the
+amount to be contributed by Ireland to imperial expenses. Under the Act
+of Union it was intended that Ireland should pay 2/17ths, or in the
+proportion of 1 to 7-1/2 of the total expenditure of the United Kingdom.
+This amount being found exorbitant, it was gradually reduced, until at
+the present moment it amounts to something under the proportion of 1 to
+11-1/2. The bill fixes the proportion at 1/15th, or 1 to 14, this sum
+being arrived at by a comparison between the amount of the income-tax,
+death-duties, and valuation of property in Great Britain, and the amount
+of the same particulars in Ireland. The amount to be contributed by
+Ireland to the imperial expenditure being thus ascertained, the more
+difficult part of the problem remained to provide the fund out of which
+the contribution should be payable, and the mode in which its payment
+should be secured. The plan which commended itself to the framers of the
+Bill, as combining the advantage of insuring the fiscal unity of Great
+Britain and Ireland, with absolute security to the British exchequer,
+was to continue the customs and excise duties under imperial control,
+and to pay them into the hands of an imperial officer. This plan is
+carried into effect by the conjoint operation of the clauses of the
+Irish Government Bill and the Irish Land Bill above referred to. The
+customs and excise duties are directed to be levied as heretofore in
+pursuance of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament, and are excepted
+from the control of the Irish Legislature, which may, with that
+exception, impose any taxes in Ireland it may think expedient. The
+imperial officer who is appointed under the Land Bill bears the title of
+Receiver-General, and into his hands not only the imperial taxes (the
+customs and excise duties), but also all local taxes imposed by the
+Irish Parliament are in the first instance paid. (See Clauses 25-27 of
+the Land Bill.) The Receiver-General having thus in his hands all
+imperial and local funds levied in Ireland, his duty is to satisfy all
+imperial claims before paying over any moneys to the Irish Exchequer.
+Further, an Imperial Court of Exchequer is established in Ireland to
+watch over the interests of the Receiver-General, and all revenue cases
+are to be tried, and all defaults punished in that court. Any neglect of
+the local authorities to carry into effect the decrees of the Imperial
+Court will amount to treason, and it will be the duty of the Imperial
+Government to deal with it accordingly.
+
+Supposing the Bill to have passed, the account of the Exchequer in
+Ireland would have stood thus:--
+
+                         RECEIPTS.
+
+1. _Imperial Taxes_:
+   (1) Customs . . . . . . . . . . £1,880,000
+   (2) Excise  . . . . . . . . . .  4,300,000
+                                    --------- £6,180,000
+
+2. _Local Taxes_:
+   (1) Stamps . . . . . . . . . . .   £600,000
+   (2) Income-Tax at 6_d_. in £ . .    550,000
+                                     --------- £1,150,000
+
+3. _Non-Tax Revenue_:
+   (Post Office, Telegraph, etc.) . . . . .    £1,020,000
+                                               ----------
+                                               £8,350,000
+
+                       EXPENDITURE.
+
+1. _Contribution to Imperial Exchequer_ on basis of
+     1/15th of Imperial Expenditure, viz.:
+   (1) Debt Charge . . . . . . . .  £1,466,000
+   (2) Army and Navy . . . . . . .   1,666,000
+   (3) Civil Charges . . . . . . .     110,000
+                                     --------- £3,242,000
+2. _Sinking Fund_ on 1/15th of
+      Capital of Debt . . . . . . . . . . . . .   360,000
+3. _Charge for Constabulary_[14]  . . . . . . . 1,000,000
+4. _Local Civil Charges_
+      other than Constabulary . . . . . . . . . 2,510,000
+5. _Collection of Revenue_:
+      (1) Imperial Taxes . . . . . .   £170,000
+      (2) Local Taxes  . . . . . . . .   60,000
+      (3) Non-Tax Revenue  . . . . . .  604,000
+                                        -------   834,000
+6. _Balance_ or Surplus . . . . . . . . . . . .   404,000
+                                                 --------
+                                               £8,350,000
+
+The Imperial contribution payable by Ireland to Great Britain cannot be
+increased for thirty years, though it may be diminished if the charges
+for the army and navy and Imperial civil expenditure for any year be
+less than fifteen times the contribution paid by Ireland, in which case
+1/15th of the diminution will be deducted from the annual Imperial
+contribution. Apart from the Imperial charges there are other charges
+strictly Irish, for the security of the payment of which the Bill
+provides. This it does by imposing an obligation on the Irish
+legislative body to enact sufficient taxes to meet such charges, and by
+directing them to be paid by the Imperial Receiver-General, who is
+required to keep an imperial and an Irish account, carrying the customs
+and excise duties, in the first instance, to the imperial account, and
+the local taxes to the Irish account, transferring to the Irish account
+the surplus remaining after paying the imperial charges on the imperial
+account. On this Irish account are charged debts due from the Government
+of Ireland, pensions, and other sums due to the civil servants, and the
+salaries of the judges of the supreme courts in Ireland.
+
+Some provisions of importance remain to be noticed. Judges of the
+superior and county courts in Ireland are to be removable from office
+only on address to the Crown, presented by both orders of the
+Legislative body voting separately. Existing Civil servants are retained
+in their offices at their existing salaries; if the Irish Government
+desire their retirement, they will be entitled to pensions; on the other
+hand, if at the end of two years the officers themselves wish to retire,
+they can do so, and will be entitled to the same pensions as if their
+office had been abolished. The pensions are payable by the
+Receiver-General out of the Irish account above mentioned.
+
+The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament over all parts of the Empire is
+an inherent quality of which Parliament cannot divest itself, inasmuch
+as it cannot bind its successors or prevent them from repealing any
+prior Act. In order, however, to prevent any misapprehension on this
+point clause 37 was inserted, the efficacy of which, owing in great
+measure to a misprint, has been doubted. It is enough to state here that
+it was intended by express legislation to reserve all powers to the
+Imperial Parliament, and had the Bill gone into Committee the question
+would have been placed beyond the reach of cavil by a slight alteration
+in the wording of the clause. This summary may be concluded by the
+statement that the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords over
+actions and suits arising in Ireland (except in respect of
+constitutional questions reserved for the determination of the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council as explained above), and with respect to
+claims for Irish Peerages, is preserved intact.
+
+The object of the Land Bill was a political one: to promote the
+contentment of the people, and the cause of good government in Ireland,
+by settling once and for ever the vexed question relating to land. To do
+this effectually it was necessary to devise a system under which the
+tenants, as a class, should become interested in the maintenance of
+social order, and be furnished with substantial inducements to rally
+round the institutions of their country. On the other hand, it was just
+and right that the landlords should participate in the benefits of any
+measure proposed for remedying the evils attendant upon the tenure of
+land in Ireland; and should be enabled to rid themselves, on fair terms,
+of their estates in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes,
+or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves
+from the responsibilities of ownership. Further, it was felt by the
+framers of the Bill that a moral obligation rested on the Imperial
+Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending
+the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a question so
+fraught with danger, and so involved in difficulty, to be determined by
+the Irish Government on its first entry on official existence. Such were
+the governing motives for bringing in the Land Bill.
+
+To understand an Irish Land Bill it is necessary to dismiss at once all
+ideas of the ordinary relations between landlord and tenant in England,
+and to grasp a true conception of the condition of an Irish tenanted
+estate. In England the relation between the landlord and tenant of a
+farm resembles, with a difference in the subject-matter, the relation
+between the landlord and tenant of a furnished house. In the case of the
+house, the landlord keeps it in a state fit for habitation, and the
+tenant pays rent for the privilege of living in another man's house. In
+the case of the farm, the landlord provides the farm with house,
+farm-buildings, gates, and other permanent improvements required to fit
+it for cultivation by the tenant, and the tenant pays rent for the
+privilege of cultivating the farm, receiving the proceeds of that
+cultivation. The characters of owner and tenant, however long the
+connection between them may subsist, are quite distinct. The tenant does
+no acts of ownership, and never regards the land as belonging to
+himself, quitting it without hesitation if he can make more money by
+taking another farm. In Ireland the whole situation is different:
+instead of a farm of some one hundred or two hundred acres, the tenant
+has a holding varying, say, from five to fifty acres, for which he pays
+an annual rent-charge to the landlord. He, or his ancestors have, in the
+opinion of the tenant, acquired a quasi-ownership in the land by making
+all the improvements, and he is only removable on non-payment of the
+fixed rent, or non-fulfilment of certain specified conditions. In short,
+in Ireland the ownership is dual: the landlord is merely the lord of a
+quasi-copyhold manor, consisting of numerous small tenements held by
+quasi-copyholders who, so long as they pay what may be called the
+manorial rents, and fulfil the manorial conditions, regard themselves as
+independent owners of their holdings. An Irish Land Bill, then, dealing
+with tenanted estates, is, in fact, merely a Bill for converting the
+small holders of tenements held at a fixed rent into fee-simple owners
+by redemption of the rent due to the landlord and a transfer of the land
+to the holders. Every scheme, therefore, for settling the Land question
+in Ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of paying
+off the rent-charges due to the landlord. The tenant cannot, of course,
+raise the capital sufficient for paying off the redemption money; some
+State authority must, therefore, intervene and advance the whole or the
+greater part of that money, and recoup itself for the advance by the
+creation in its own favour of an annual charge on the holding sufficient
+to repay in a certain number of years both the principal and interest
+due in respect of the advance.
+
+The first problem, then, in an Irish Land Bill, is to settle the
+conditions of this annuity in such a manner as to satisfy the landlord
+and tenant; the first, as to the price of his estate; the second, as to
+the amount of the annuity to be paid by him, at the same time to provide
+the State authority with adequate security for the repayment of the
+advance, or, in other words, for the punctual payments of the annuity
+which is to discharge the advance. Next in importance to the financial
+question of the adjustment of the annuity comes the administrative
+difficulty of investigating the title, and thus securing to the tenant
+the possession of the fee simple, and to the State authority the
+position of a mortgagee. Under ordinary circumstances the investigation
+of the title to an estate involves the examination of every document
+relating thereto for a period of forty years, and the distribution of
+the purchase-money amongst the head renters, mortgagees, and other
+encumbrancers, who, in addition to the landlord, are found to be
+interested in the ownership of almost every Irish estate. Such a
+process is costly, even in the case of large estates, and involves an
+expense almost, and, indeed, speaking generally, absolutely prohibitory
+in the case of small properties. Some mode, then, must be devised for
+reducing this expense within manageable limits, or any scheme for
+dealing with Irish land, however well devised from a financial point of
+view, will sink under the burden imposed by the expense attending the
+transfer of the land to the new proprietors. Having thus stated the two
+principal difficulties attending the Land question in Ireland, it may be
+well before entering on the details of the Sale and Purchase of Land
+(Ireland) Bill, to mention the efforts which have been made during the
+last fifteen years to surmount those difficulties. The Acts having this
+object in view are the Land Acts of 1870, 1872, and 1881, brought in by
+Mr. Gladstone, and the Land Purchase Act of 1885, brought in by the
+Conservative Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Lord Ashbourne). The Act of
+1870, as amended by the Act of 1872, provided that the State authority
+might advance two-thirds of the purchase-money. An attempt was made to
+get over the difficulties of title by providing that the Landed Estates
+Court or Board of Works shall undertake the investigation of the title
+and the transfer and distribution of the purchase-money at a fixed
+price. The Act of 1881 increased the advance to three-quarters, leaving
+the same machinery to deal with the title. Both under the Acts of 1870
+and 1881 the advance was secured by an annuity of 5 per cent., payable
+for the period of thirty-five years, and based on the loan of the money
+by the English Exchequer at 3-1/2 per cent. interest. These Acts
+produced very little effect. The expense of dealing with the titles in
+the Landed Estates Court proved overwhelming, and neither the Board of
+Works, under the Act of 1872, nor the Land Commission, under the Act of
+1881, found themselves equal to the task of completing inexpensively the
+transfer of the land; further, the tenants had no means of providing
+even the quarter of the purchase-money required by the Act of 1881. In
+1885 Lord Ashbourne determined to remove all obstacles at the expense of
+the English Exchequer. By the Land Act of that year he authorized the
+whole of the purchase-money to be advanced by the State, with a
+guarantee by the landlord, to be carried into effect by his allowing
+one-fifth of the purchase-money to remain in the hands of the agents of
+the State Authority until one-fifth of the purchase-money had been
+repaid by the annual payments of the tenants. The principal was to be
+recouped by an annuity of 4 per cent., extending over a period of
+forty-nine years, instead of an annuity of 5 per cent. extending over a
+period of thirty-five years. The English Exchequer was to advance the
+money on the basis of interest at 3-1/8 per cent., instead of at 3-1/2
+per cent. Though sufficient time has not yet elapsed to show whether the
+great bribe offered by the Act of 1885, at the expense of the British
+taxpayer, will succeed in overcoming the apathy of the tenants, it
+cannot escape notice that if the Act of 1885 succeeds better than the
+previous Acts, it will owe that success solely to the greater amount of
+risk which it imposes on the English Exchequer, and not to any
+improvement in the scheme in respect of securing greater certainty of
+sale to the Irish landlord, or of diminishing the danger of loss to the
+English taxpayer.
+
+Such being the state of legislation, and such the circumstances of the
+land question in Ireland in the year 1886, the Irish Government Bill
+afforded Mr. Gladstone the means and the opportunity of bringing in a
+Land Bill which would secure to the Irish landlord the certainty of
+selling his land at a fair price, without imposing any practical
+liability on the English Exchequer, and would, at the same time,
+diminish the annual sums payable by the tenant; while it also conferred
+a benefit on the Irish Exchequer. These advantages were, as will be
+seen, gained, firstly, by the pledge of English credit on good security,
+instead of advancing money on a mere mortgage on Irish holdings, made
+directly to the English Government; and, secondly, by the interposition
+of the Irish Government, as the immediate creditor of the Irish tenant.
+The scheme of the Land Purchase Bill is as follows:--The landlord of an
+agricultural estate occupied by tenants may apply to a department of the
+new Irish Government to purchase his estate. The tenants need not be
+consulted, as the purchase, if completed, will necessarily better their
+condition, and thus at the very outset the difficulty of procuring the
+assent of the tenants, which has hitherto proved so formidable an
+obstacle to all Irish land schemes, disappears. The landlord may require
+the department to which he applies (called in the Bill the State
+Authority) to pay him the statutory price of his estate, not in cash,
+but in consols valued at par. This price, except in certain unusual
+cases of great goodness or of great badness of the land, is twenty
+years' purchase of the _net_ rental. The _net_ rental is the _gross_
+rental after deducting from that rent tithe rent-charge, the average
+percentage for expenses in respect of bad debts, any rates paid by the
+landlord, and any like outgoings. The _gross_ rental of an estate is the
+gross rent of all the holdings on the estate, payable in the year ending
+in November, 1885. Where a judicial rent has been fixed, it is the
+judicial rent; where no judicial rent has been fixed, it is the rent to
+be determined in the manner provided by the Bill.
+
+To state this shortly, the Bill provides that an Irish landlord may
+require the State Authority to pay him for his estate, in consols valued
+at par, a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount of the annual sum
+which he has actually put into his pocket out of the proceeds of the
+estate. The determination of the statutory price is, so far as the
+landlord is concerned, the cardinal point of the Bill, and in order
+that no injustice may be done the landlord, an Imperial
+Commission--called the Land Commission--is appointed by the Bill, whose
+duty it is to fix the statutory price, and, where there is no judicial
+rent, to determine the amount of rent which, in the character of gross
+rental, is to form the basis of the statutory price. The Commission also
+pay the purchase-money to the landlord, or distribute it amongst the
+parties entitled, and generally the Commission act as intermediaries
+between the landlord and the Irish State Authority, which has no power
+of varying the terms to which the landlord is entitled under the Bill,
+or of judging of the conditions which affect the statutory price. If the
+landlord thinks the price fixed by the Land Commission, as the statutory
+price inequitable, he may reject their offer and keep his estate.
+
+Supposing, however, the landlord to be satisfied with the statutory
+price offered by the Land Commission, the sale is concluded, and the
+Land Commission make an order carrying the required sum of consols
+(which is for convenience hereinafter called the purchase-money,
+although it consists of stock and not of cash) to the account of the
+estate in their books after deducting 1 per cent. for the cost of
+investigation of title and distribution of the purchase-money, and upon
+the purchase-money being thus credited to the estate, the landlord
+ceases to have any interest in the estate, and the tenants, by virtue of
+the order of the Land Commission, become owners in fee simple of their
+holdings, subject to the payment to the Irish State Authority of an
+annuity. The amount of the annuity is stated in the Bill. It is a sum
+equal to £4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount
+of the gross rental of the holding. The illustration given by Mr.
+Gladstone in his speech will at once explain these apparently intricate
+matters of finance. A landlord is entitled to the Hendon estate,
+producing £1200 a year gross rental; to find the net rental, the Land
+Commission deduct from this gross rental outgoings estimated at about 20
+per cent., or £240 a year. This makes the net rental £960 a year, and
+the price payable to the landlord is £19,200 (twenty years' purchase of
+£960, or £960 multiplied by 20), which, as above stated, will be paid in
+consols. The tenants will pay, as the maximum amount for their holdings,
+£4 per cent. for forty-nine years on the capitalized value of twenty
+years' purchase of the gross rent. This will amount to £960 instead of
+£1,200, which they have hitherto paid; a saving of £240 a year will thus
+be effected, from which, however, must be deducted the half rates to
+which they will become liable, formerly paid by the landlord. This £4
+per cent. charge payable by the tenants will continue for forty-nine
+years, but at the end of that time each tenant will become a free owner
+of his estate without any annual payment. Next, as to the position of
+the State Authority. The State Authority receives £960 from the tenants;
+it pays out of that sum £4 per cent., not upon the gross rental, but
+upon the net rental capitalized, that is to say, £768 to the Imperial
+Exchequer. The State Authority, therefore, receives,£960, and assuming
+that the charge of collecting the rental is 2 per cent., that is to say,
+£19 4_s._, the State Authority will, out of £960, have to disburse only
+£787 4_s._, leaving it a gainer of £172 16_s._, or nearly 18 per cent.
+The result then between the several parties is, the landlord receives
+£19,200; the tenantry pay £240 a year less than they have hitherto paid,
+and at the end of forty-nine years are exempt altogether from payment;
+the gain of Irish State Authority is £172 16_s._ a year. Another mode of
+putting the case shortly is as follows: The English Exchequer lends the
+money to the Irish State Authority at 3-1/8 per cent. and an annuity of
+4 per cent. paid during forty-nine years will, as has been stated above,
+repay both principal and interest for every £100 lent at 3-1/8 per
+cent. On the sale of an estate under the Bill, the landlord receives
+twenty years' purchase; the tenant pays £4 per cent. on twenty years'
+purchase of the gross rental; the Irish State Authority receives £4 per
+cent. on the gross rental; the English Exchequer receives 4 per cent. on
+the net rental only. The repayment of the interest due by the Irish
+Authority to the English Exchequer is in no wise dependent on the
+punctual payment of their annuities by the Irish tenants, nor does the
+English Government in any way figure as the landlord or creditor of the
+Irish tenants. The annuities payable by the tenants are due to the Irish
+Government, and collected by them, while the interest due to the English
+Government is a charge on the whole of the Irish Government funds; and
+further, these funds themselves are paid into the hands of the Imperial
+officer, whose duty it is to liquidate the debt due to his master, the
+Imperial Exchequer, before a sixpence can be touched by the Irish
+Government. It is not, then, any exaggeration to say that the Land
+Purchase Bill of 1886 provides for the settlement of the Irish Land
+question without any appreciable risk to the English Exchequer, and with
+the advantage of securing a fair price for the landlord, a diminution of
+annual payments to the tenant with the ultimate acquisition of the fee
+simple, also a gain of no inconsiderable sum to the Irish Exchequer. In
+order to obviate the difficulties attending the investigation of title
+and transfer of the property, the Bill provides, as stated above, that
+on the completion of the agreement for the sale between the landlord and
+the Commission, the holding shall vest at once in the tenants: it then
+proceeds to declare that the claims of all persons interested in the
+land shall attach to the purchase-money in the same manner as though it
+were land. The duty of ascertaining these claims and distributing the
+purchase-money is vested in the Land Commission, who undertake the task
+in exchange for the 1 per cent. which they have, as above stated,
+deducted from the purchase-money as the cost of conducting the complete
+transfer of the estate from the landlord to the tenants. The difficulty
+of the process of dealing with the purchase-money depends, of course, on
+the intricacy of the title. If the vendor is the sole unencumbered
+owner, he is put in immediate possession of the stock constituting the
+price of the estate. If there are encumbrances, as is usually the case,
+they are paid off by the Land Commission. Capital sums are paid in full;
+jointures and other life charges are valued according to the usual
+tables. Drainage and other temporary charges are estimated at their
+present value, permanent rent-charges are valued by agreement, or in
+case of disagreement, by the Land Commission; a certain minimum number
+of years' purchase being assigned by the Bill to any permanent
+rent-charge which amounts only to one-fifth part of the rental of the
+estate on which it is charged, this provision being made to prevent
+injustice being done to the holders of rent-charges which are amply
+secured.
+
+It remains to notice certain other points of some importance. The
+landlord entitled to require the State to purchase his property is the
+immediate landlord, that is to say, the person entitled to the receipt
+of the rent of the estate; no encumbrancer can avail himself of the
+privilege, the reason being that the Bill is intended to assist solvent
+landlords, and not to create a new Encumbered Estates Court. The
+landlord may sell this privilege, and possibly by means of this power of
+sale may be able to put pressure on his encumbrancers to reduce their
+claims in order to obtain immediate payment. The Land Commission, in
+their character of quasi-arbitrators between the landlord and the Irish
+State Authority, have ample powers given to enable them to do justice.
+If the statutory price, as settled according to the Act, is too low,
+they may raise it to twenty-two years' purchase instead of twenty years'
+purchase. If it is too high, they may refuse to buy unless the landlord
+will reduce it to a proper price. In the congested districts scheduled
+in the Bill the land, on a sale, passes to the Irish State Authority, as
+landlords, and not to the tenants; the reason being that it is
+considered that the tenants would be worsened, rather than bettered, by
+having their small plots vested in them in fee simple. For the same
+cause it is provided that in any part of Ireland tenants of holdings
+under £4 a year may object to become the owners of their holdings, which
+will thereupon vest, on a sale, in the Irish State Authority. Lastly,
+the opportunity is taken of establishing a registry of title in respect
+of all property dealt with under the Bill. The result of such a registry
+would be that any property entered therein would ever thereafter be
+capable of being transferred with the same facility, and at as little
+expense, as stock in the public funds.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 14: Any charge in excess of one million was to be borne by
+Imperial Exchequer.]
+
+
+
+
+THE "UNIONIST" POSITION.
+
+BY CANON MACCOLL
+
+
+Is it not time that the opponents of Home Rule for Ireland should define
+their position? They defeated Mr. Gladstone's scheme last year in
+Parliament and in the constituencies; and they defeated it by the
+promise of a counter policy which was to consist, in brief, of placing
+Ireland on the same footing as Great Britain in respect to Local
+Government; or, if there was to be any difference, it was to be in the
+direction of a larger and more generous measure for Ireland than for the
+rest of the United Kingdom. This certainly was the policy propounded by
+the distinguished leader of the Liberal Unionists in his speech at
+Belfast, in November, 1885, and repeated in his electoral speeches last
+year. In the Belfast speech Lord Hartington said: "My opinion is that it
+is desirable for Irishmen that institutions of local self-government
+such as are possessed by England and Scotland, and such as we hope to
+give in the next session in greater extent to England and Scotland,
+should also be extended to Ireland." But this extension of local
+self-government to Ireland would require, in Lord Hartington's opinion,
+a fundamental change in the fabric of Irish Government. "I would not
+shrink," he says, "from a great and bold reconstruction of the Irish
+Government," a reconstruction leading up gradually to some real and
+substantial form of Home Rule. His Lordship's words are: "I submit with
+some confidence to you these principles, which I have endeavoured to lay
+down, and upon which, I think, the extension of Local Government in
+Ireland must proceed. First, you must have some adequate guarantees both
+for the maintenance of the essential unity of the Empire and for the
+protection of the minority in Ireland. And, secondly, you must also
+admit this principle: the work of complete self-government of Ireland,
+the grant of full control over the management of its own affairs, is not
+a grant that can be made by any Parliament of this country in a day. It
+must be the work of continuous and careful effort." Elsewhere in the
+same speech Lord Hartington says: "Certainly I am of opinion that
+nothing can be done in the direction of giving Ireland anything like
+complete control over her own affairs either in a day, or a session, or
+probably in a Parliament." "Complete control over her own affairs," "the
+work of complete self-government of Ireland, the grant of full control
+over the management of its own affairs:" this is the policy which Lord
+Hartington proclaimed in Ulster, the promise which he, the proximate
+Liberal leader, held out to Ireland on the eve of the General Election
+of 1885. It was a policy to be begun "in the next session," though not
+likely to be completed "in a day, or a session, or probably in a
+Parliament."
+
+Next to Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington the most important member of
+the Liberal party at that time was undoubtedly Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr.
+Chamberlain's Irish policy was proclaimed in the _Radical Programme,
+which was published before the General Election as the Radical leader's
+manifesto to the constituencies. This scheme, which Mr. Chamberlain had
+submitted as a responsible minister to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone in
+June, 1885, culminated in a National Council which was to control a
+series of local bodies and govern the whole of Ireland. "His National
+Council was to consist of two orders; one-third of its members were to
+be elected by the owners of property, and two-thirds by ratepayers. The
+National Council also was to be a single one, and Ulster was not to have
+a separate Council. As the Council was to be charged with the
+supervision and legislation about education, which is the burning
+question between Catholics and Protestants, it is clear that Mr.
+Chamberlain at that time contemplated no special protection for
+Ulster."[15] Moreover, in a letter dated April 23rd, 1886, and published
+in the _Daily News_ of May 17th, 1886, Mr. Chamberlain declared that he
+"had not changed his opinion in the least" since his first public
+declaration on Irish policy in 1874. "I then said that I was in favour
+of the principles of Home Rule, as defined by Mr. Butt, but that I would
+do nothing which would weaken in any way Imperial unity, and that I did
+not agree with all the details of his plan.... Mr. Butt's proposals were
+in the nature of a federal scheme, and differ entirely from Mr.
+Gladstone's, which are on the lines of Colonial independence. Mr. Butt
+did not propose to give up Irish representation at Westminster." It is
+true that Mr. Butt did not propose to give up Irish representation at
+Westminster; but it is also true that he proposed to give it up in the
+sense in which Mr. Chamberlain wishes to retain it. Mr. Butt's words, in
+the debate to which Mr. Chamberlain refers, are, "that the House should
+meet _without Irish members_ for the discussion of English and Scotch
+business; and when there was any question affecting the Empire at large,
+Irish members might be summoned to attend. He saw no difficulty in the
+matter."[16]
+
+There is no need to quote Mr. Gladstone's declarations on the Irish
+question at the General Election of 1885, and previously. He has been
+accused of springing a surprise on the country when he proposed Home
+Rule in the beginning of 1886. That is not, at all events, the opinion
+of Lord Hartington. In a speech delivered at the Eighty Club in March,
+1886, his Lordship, with his usual manly candour, declared as follows:
+"I am not going to say one word of complaint or charge against Mr.
+Gladstone for the attitude which he has taken on this question. I think
+no one who has read or heard, during a long series of years, the
+declarations of Mr. Gladstone on the question of self-government for
+Ireland, can be surprised at the tone of his present declarations....
+When I look back to those declarations that Mr. Gladstone made in
+Parliament, which have not been unfrequent; when I look back to the
+increased definiteness given to those declarations in his address to the
+electors of Midlothian, and in his Midlothian speeches; I say, when I
+consider all these things, I feel that I have not, and that no one has,
+any right to complain of the tone of the declarations which Mr.
+Gladstone has recently made upon this subject."
+
+So much as to the state of Liberal opinion on the Irish question at the
+General Election of 1885. The leaders of all sections of the party put
+the Irish question in the foreground of their programme for the session
+of 1886. We all remember Sir Charles Dilke's public announcement that he
+and Mr. Chamberlain were going to visit Ireland in the autumn of 1885,
+to study the Irish question on the spot, with a view to maturing a plan
+for the first session of the new Parliament.
+
+What about the Conservative party? Lord Salisbury's Newport speech was
+avowedly the programme of his Cabinet. It was the Conservative answer to
+Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian manifesto. He dealt with the Irish question
+in guarded language; but it was language which plainly showed that he
+recognized, not less clearly than the Liberal leaders, the crucial
+change which the assimilation of the Irish franchise to that of Great
+Britain had wrought in Irish policy. His keen eye saw at once the
+important bearing which that enfranchisement had on the traditional
+policy of coercion: "You had passed an Act of Parliament, giving in
+unexampled abundance, and with unexampled freedom, supreme power to the
+great mass of the Irish people--supreme power as regards their own
+locality.... To my mind the renewal of exceptional legislation against a
+population whom you had treated legislatively to this marked confidence
+was so gross in its inconsistency that you could not possibly hope,
+during the few remaining months that were at your disposal before the
+present Parliament expired, to renew any legislation which expressed on
+one side a distrust of what on the other side your former legislation
+had so strongly emphasized. The only result of your doing it would have
+been, not that you would have passed the Act, but that you would have
+promoted by the very inconsistency of the position that you were
+occupying--by the untenable character of the arguments that you were
+advancing--you would have produced so intense an exasperation amongst
+the Irish people, that you would have caused ten times more evil, ten
+times more resistance to law than your Crimes Act, even if it had been
+renewed, would possibly have been able to check." Lord Salisbury went on
+to say that "the effect of the Crimes Act had been very much
+exaggerated," and that "boycotting is of that character which
+legislation has very great difficulty in reaching." "Boycotting does not
+operate through outrage. Boycotting is the act of a large majority of a
+community resolving to do a number of things which are themselves legal,
+and which are only illegal by the intention with which they are done."
+
+Next to Lord Salisbury the most prominent member of the Conservative
+party at that date was Lord Randolph Churchill. On the 3rd of January,
+1885, when it was rumoured that Mr. Gladstone's Government, then in
+office, intended to renew a few of the clauses of the Crimes Act, Lord
+Randolph Churchill made a speech at Bow against any such policy. The
+following quotation will suffice as a specimen of his opinion: "It comes
+to this, that the policy of the Government in Ireland is to declare on
+the one hand, by the passing of the Reform Bill, that the Irish people
+are perfectly capable of exercising for the advantage of the Empire the
+highest rights and privileges of citizenship; and by the proposal to
+renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously declare, on the other hand,
+that the Irish people are perfectly incapable of performing for the
+advantage of society the lowest and most ordinary duties of
+citizenship.... All I can say is that, if such an incoherent, such a
+ridiculous, such a dangerously ridiculous combination of acts can be
+called a policy, then, thank God, the Conservative party have no
+policy."
+
+Within a few months of the delivery of that speech a Conservative
+Government was in office, with Lord Randolph Churchill as its leader in
+the House of Commons; and one of the first acts of the new leader was to
+separate himself ostentatiously from the Irish policy of Lord Spencer
+and from the policy of coercion in general. Lord Randolph Churchill, as
+the organ of the Government in the House of Commons, repudiated in
+scornful language any atom of sympathy with the policy pursued by Lord
+Spencer in Ireland; and Lord Carnarvon, the new Viceroy, declared that
+"the era of coercion" was past, and that the Conservative Government
+intended to govern Ireland by the ordinary law. Lord Carnarvon, in
+addition, and very much to his credit, sought and obtained an interview
+with Mr. Parnell, and discussed with him, in sympathetic language, the
+question of Home Rule. In his own explanation of this interview Lord
+Carnarvon admitted that he desired to see established in Ireland some
+form of self-government which would satisfy "the national sentiment."
+
+It is idle, therefore, to assert that the question of Home Rule for
+Ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the country as a surprise
+by Mr. Gladstone in the beginning of 1886. The question was brought
+prominently before the public in the General Election of 1885 as one
+that must be faced in the new Parliament. All parties were committed to
+that policy, and the only difference was as to the character and limits
+of the measure of self-government to be granted to Ireland; whether it
+was to be large enough to satisfy "the national sentiment," as Lord
+Carnarvon, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Gladstone, and others desired; or
+whether it was to consist only of a system of county boards under the
+control of a reformed Dublin Castle. There was a general agreement that
+the grant to Ireland of electoral equality with England necessitated
+equality of political treatment, and that, above all things, there was
+to be no renewal of the stale policy of Coercion until the Irish people
+had got an opportunity of proving or disproving their fitness for
+self-government, unless, indeed, there should happen to be a
+recrudescence of crime which would render exceptional legislation
+necessary. The election of 1886 turned almost entirely on the question
+of Irish government, and it is not too much to say that Conservatives
+and Liberal Unionists vied with Home Rulers in repudiating a return to
+the policy of coercion until the effect of some kind of self-government
+had been tried. Of course, there were the usual platitudes about the
+necessity of maintaining law and order; but there was a _consensus_ of
+profession that coercion should not be resorted to unless there was a
+fresh outbreak of crime and disorder in Ireland.
+
+Such were the professions of the opponents of Home Rule in 1885 and in
+1886. They have now been in office for eighteen months, and what do we
+behold? They have passed a perpetual Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the
+question of any kind of self-government has been relegated to an
+uncertain future. In his recent speech at Birmingham (Sept. 29), Mr.
+Chamberlain has declared that the question is not ripe for solution, and
+that the question of disestablishment, in Wales, Scotland, and England
+successively, as well as the questions of Local Option, local government
+for Great Britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take
+precedence of it. That means the postponement of the reform of Irish
+Government to the Greek Kalends. What justification can be made for this
+change of front? No valid justification has been offered. So far from
+there having been any increase of crime in the interval, there has been
+a very marked decrease. When the Coercion Bill received the royal assent
+last August, Ireland was more free from crime than it had been for many
+years past. Nothing had happened to account for the return to the policy
+of coercion in violation of the promise to try the experiment of
+conciliation. The National League was in full vigour in 1885-1886, when
+the policy of coercion was abandoned; boycotting was just as prevalent,
+and outrages were much more numerous.
+
+Under these circumstances it is the opponents of Home Rule, not its
+advocates, who owe an explanation to the public. They defeated Mr.
+Gladstone's Bill, but promised a Bill of their own. Where is their Bill?
+We hear nothing of it. They have made a complete change of front. They
+now tell us that the grievance of Ireland is entirely economic, and that
+the true solution of the Irish question is the abolition of dual
+ownership in land combined with a firm administration of the existing
+law. England and Scotland are to have a large measure of local
+government next year; but Ireland is to wait till a more convenient
+season. A more complete reversal of the policy proclaimed last summer by
+the so-called Unionists cannot be imagined.
+
+Still, however, the "Unionists" hope to be able some day to offer some
+form of self-government to Ireland. For party purposes they are wise in
+postponing that day to the latest possible period, for its advent will
+probably dissolve the union of the "Unionists." Lord Salisbury, Lord
+Hartington, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Chamberlain cannot agree upon any scheme
+which all can accept without a public recantation of previous
+professions. Mr. Bright is opposed to Home Rule "in any shape or form."
+Mr. Chamberlain, on the other hand, is in favour of a great National
+Council, on Mr. Butt's lines or on the lines of the Canadian plan;
+either of which would give the National Council control over education
+and the maintenance of law and order. Latterly, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain
+has advocated a separate treatment for Ulster. But the first act of an
+Ulster Provincial Assembly would probably be to declare the union of
+that Province with the rest of Ireland. Ulster, be it remembered,
+returns a majority of Nationalists to the Imperial Parliament. To
+exclude Ulster from any share in the settlement offered to the other
+three Provinces would therefore be impracticable; and Mr. Bright has
+lately expressed his opinion emphatically in that sense. In any case,
+Lord Hartington could be no party to any scheme so advanced as Mr.
+Chamberlain's. For although he declared, in his Belfast speech, that
+"complete self-government" was the goal of his policy for Ireland, he
+was careful to explain that "the extension of Irish management over
+Irish affairs must be a growth from small beginnings." But this "growth
+from small beginnings" would be, in Lord Salisbury's opinion, a very
+dangerous and mischievous policy. The establishment of self-government
+in Ireland, as distinct from what is commonly known as Home Rule, he
+pronounced in his Newport speech to be "a very difficult question;" and
+in the following passage he placed his finger upon the kernel of the
+difficulty:--"A local authority is more exposed to the temptation, and
+has more of the facility for enabling a majority to be unjust to the
+minority, than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and
+extends its jurisdiction over a wide area. That is one of the weaknesses
+of local authorities. In a large central authority the wisdom of several
+parts of the country will correct the folly or the mistakes of one. In a
+local authority that correction to a much greater extent is wanting; and
+it would be impossible to leave that out of sight in the extension of
+any such local authority to Ireland."
+
+This seems to me a much wiser and more statesmanlike view than a system
+of elective boards scattered broadcast over Ireland. A multitude of
+local boards all over Ireland, without a recognized central authority to
+control them, would inevitably become facile instruments in the hands of
+the emissaries of disorder and sedition. And, even apart from any such
+sinister influences, they would be almost certain to yield to the
+temptation of being oppressive, extravagant, and corrupt, if there were
+no executive power to command their confidence and enforce obedience.
+Without the previous creation of some authority of that kind it would be
+sheer madness to offer Ireland the fatal boon of local self-government.
+It would enormously increase without conciliating the power of the
+Nationalists, and would make the administration of Ireland by
+constitutional means simply impossible. The policy of the Liberal
+Unionists is thus much too large or much too small. It is too small to
+conciliate, and therefore too large to be given with safety. All these
+proposed concessions are liable to one insuperable objection; they would
+each and all enable the Irish to extort Home Rule, but under
+circumstances which would rob it of its grace and repel gratitude. Mill
+has some admirable observations bearing on this subject, and I venture
+to quote the following passage: "The greatest imperfection of popular
+local institutions, and the chief cause of the failure which so often
+attends them, is the low calibre of the men by whom they are almost
+always carried on. That these should be of a very miscellaneous
+character is, indeed, part of the usefulness of the institution; it is
+that circumstance chiefly which renders it a school of political
+capacity and general intelligence. But a school supposes teachers as
+well as scholars; the utility of the instruction greatly depends on its
+bringing inferior minds into contact with superior, a contact which in
+the ordinary course of life is altogether exceptional, and the want of
+which contributes more than anything else to keep the generality of
+mankind on one level of contented ignorance.... It is quite hopeless to
+induce persons of a high class, either socially or intellectually, to
+take a share of local administration in a corner by piecemeal as members
+of a Paving Board or a Drainage Commission."[17]
+
+Mr. Mill goes on to argue that it is essential to the safe working of
+any scheme of local self-government that it should be under the control
+of a central authority in harmony with public opinion.
+
+When the "Unionists" begin, if they ever do begin, seriously to
+deliberate on the question of self-government for Ireland, they will
+find that they have only two practicable alternatives--the maintenance
+of the present system, or some scheme of Home Rule on the lines of Mr.
+Gladstone's much misunderstood Bill. And the ablest men among the
+"Unionists" are beginning to perceive this. The _Spectator_ has in a
+recent article implored Mr. Chamberlain to desist from any further
+proposal in favour of self-government for Ireland, because the
+inevitable result would be to split up the Unionist party; and Mr.
+Chamberlain, as we have seen, has accepted the advice. Another very able
+and very logical opponent of Home Rule has candidly avowed that the
+only alternative to Home Rule is the perpetuation of "things as they
+are." Ireland, he thinks, "possesses none of the conditions necessary
+for local self-government." His own view, therefore, is "that in
+Ireland, as in France, an honest, centralized administration of
+impartial officials, and not local self-government, would best meet the
+real wants of the people."
+
+"The name of 'Self-government' has a natural fascination for Englishmen;
+but a policy which cannot satisfy the wishes of Home Rulers, which
+may--it is likely enough--be of no benefit to the Irish people, which
+will certainly weaken the Government in its contest with lawlessness and
+oppression, is not a policy which obviously commends itself to English
+good sense."[18]
+
+Well may this distinguished "Supporter of things as they are" declare:
+"The maintenance of the Union [on such terms] must necessarily turn out
+as severe a task as ever taxed a nation's energies; for to maintain the
+Union with any good effect, means that, while refusing to accede to the
+wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every
+fair demand from Ireland; must strenuously, and without fear or favour,
+assert the equal rights of landlords and tenants, of Protestants and
+Catholics; and must, at the same time, put down every outrage and reform
+every abuse."
+
+What hope is there of this? Our only guide to the probabilities of the
+future is our experience of the past And what has that been in Ireland?
+In every year since the Legislative Union there have been multitudes of
+men in England as upright, as enlightened, as well-intentioned towards
+Ireland, as Professor Dicey, and with better opportunities of
+translating their thoughts into acts. Yet what has been the result? _Si
+monumenlum requiris circumspice_. Behold Ireland at this moment, and
+examine every year of its history since the Union. Do the annals of any
+constitutional Government in the world present so portentous a monument
+of Parliamentary failure, so vivid an example of a moral and material
+ruin "paved with good intentions"? Therein lies the pathos of it. Not
+from malice, not from cruelty, not from wanton injustice, not even from
+callous indifference to suffering and wrong, does our misgovernment of
+Ireland come. If the evil had its root in deliberate wrong-doing on the
+part of England it would probably have been cured long ago. But each
+generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has
+protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and
+then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to
+some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish
+problem. The generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of
+British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had
+become of the prosperity and contentment which the promoters of the
+Union had promised to Ireland. The next generation made vicarious
+penance, and preferred the enactment of Catholic emancipation to the
+alternative of civil war; and then wondered in its turn that Ireland
+still remained unpacified. Then came a terrible famine, followed by
+evictions on a scale so vast and cruel that the late Sir Robert Peel
+declared that no parallel could be found for such a tale of inhumanity
+in "the records of any country, civilized or barbarous." Another
+generation, pluming itself on its enlightened views and kind intentions,
+passed the Encumbered Estates Act, which delivered the Irish tenants
+over to the tender mercies of speculators and money-lenders; and then
+Parliament for a time closed its eyes and ears, and relied upon force
+alone to keep Ireland quiet. It rejected every suggestion of reform in
+the Land laws; and a great Minister, himself an Irish landlord,
+dismissed the whole subject in the flippant epigram that "tenant-right
+was landlord-wrong." Since then the Irish Church has been
+disestablished, and two Land Acts have been passed; yet we seem to be as
+far as ever from the pacification of Ireland. Surely it is time to
+inquire whether the evil is not inherent in our system of governing
+Ireland, and whether there is any other cure than that which De Beaumont
+suggested, namely, the destruction of the system. It is probable that
+there is not in all London a more humane or a more kind-hearted man than
+Lord Salisbury. Yet Lord Salisbury's Government will do some harsh and
+inequitable things in Ireland this winter, just as Liberal Governments
+have done during their term of office. The fault is not in the men, but
+in the system which they have to administer. I see no reason to doubt
+that Sir M. Hicks-Beach did the best he could under the circumstances;
+but, unfortunately, bad is the best. In a conversation which I had with
+Dr. Döllinger while he was in full communion with his Church, I ventured
+to ask him whether he thought that a new Pope, of Liberal ideas, force
+of character, and commanding ability, would make any great difference in
+the Papal system. "No," he replied, "the Curial system is the growth of
+centuries, and there can be no change of any consequence while it lasts.
+Many a Pope has begun with brave projects of reform; but the struggle
+has been brief, and the end has been invariably the same: the Pope has
+been forced to succumb. His _entourage_ has been too much for him. He
+has found himself enclosed in a system which was too strong for him,
+wheel within wheel; and while the system lasts the most enlightened
+ideas and the best intentions are in the long run unavailing." This
+criticism applies, _mutatis mutandis_, to what may be called the Curial
+system of Dublin Castle. It is a species of political Ultramontanism,
+exercising supreme power behind the screen of an official infallibility
+on which there is practically no check, since Parliament has never
+hitherto refused to grant it any power which it demanded for enforcing
+its decrees.
+
+There is, moreover, another consideration which must convince any
+dispassionate mind which ponders it, that the British Parliament is
+incompetent to manage Irish affairs, and must become increasingly
+incompetent year by year. In ordinary circumstances Parliament sits
+about twenty-seven weeks out of the fifty-two. Five out of the
+twenty-seven may safely be subtracted for holidays, debates on the
+Address, and other debates apart from ordinary business. That leaves
+twenty-two weeks, and out of these two nights a week are at the disposal
+of the Government and three at the disposal of private members; leaving
+in all forty-four days for the Government and sixty-six for private
+members. Into those forty-four nights Government must compress all its
+yearly programme of legislation for the whole of the British Empire,
+from the settlement of some petty dispute about land in the Hebrides, to
+some question of high policy in Egypt, India, or other portions of the
+Queen's world-wide empire; and all this amidst endless distractions,
+enforced attendance through dreary debates and vapid talk, and a running
+fire of cross-examination from any volunteer questioner out of the six
+hundred odd members who sit outside the Government circle. The
+consequence is, that Parliament is getting less able every year to
+overtake the mass of business which comes before it. Each year
+contributes its quota of inevitable arrears to the accumulated mass of
+previous Sessions, and the process will go on multiplying in increasing
+ratio as the complex and multiform needs of modern life increase. The
+large addition recently made to the electorate of the United Kingdom is
+already forcing a crop of fresh subjects on the attention of Parliament,
+as well as presenting old ones from new points of view. Plans of
+devolution and Grand Committees will fail to cope with this evil. To
+overcome it we need some organic change in our present Parliamentary
+system, some form of decentralization, which shall leave the Imperial
+Parliament supreme over all subordinate bodies, yet relegate to the
+historic and geographical divisions of the United Kingdom the management
+severally of their own local affairs.
+
+I should have better hope from governing Ireland (if it were possible)
+as we govern India, than from the present Unionist method of leaving
+"things as they are." A Viceroy surrounded by a Council of trained
+officials, and in semi-independence of Parliament, would have settled
+the Irish question, land and all, long ago. But imagine India governed
+on the model of Ireland: the Viceroy and the most important member of
+his Government changing with every change of Administration at
+Westminster;[19] his Council and the official class in general
+consisting almost exclusively of native Mussulmans, deeply prejudiced by
+religious and traditional enmity against the great mass of the
+population; himself generally subordinate to his Chief Secretary, and
+exposed to the daily criticism of an ignorant Parliament and to the
+determined hostility of eighty-six Hindoos, holding seats in Parliament
+as the representatives of the vast majority of the people of India, and
+resenting bitterly the domination of the hereditary oppressors of their
+race. How long could the Government of India be carried on under such
+conditions?
+
+Viewing it all round, then, it must be admitted that the problem of
+governing Ireland while leaving things as they are is a sufficiently
+formidable one. Read the remarkable admissions which the facts have
+forced from intelligent opponents of Home Rule like Mr. Dicey, and add
+to them all the other evils which are rooted in our existing system of
+Irish government, and then consider what hope there is, under "things as
+they are," of "sedulously doing justice to every demand from Ireland,"
+"strenuously, and without fear or favour, asserting the equal rights of
+landlords and tenants, Protestants and Catholics," "putting down every
+outrage, and reforming every abuse;" and all the "while refusing to
+accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen" for a fundamental change
+in a political arrangement that has for centuries produced all the
+mischief which the so-called Unionist party are forced to admit, and
+much more besides, while it has at the same time frustrated every
+serious endeavour to bring about the better state of things which they
+expect from--what? From "things as they are!" As well expect grapes from
+thorns, or figs from thistles. While the tree remains the same, no
+amount of weeding, or pruning, or manuring, or change of culture, will
+make it bring forth different fruit. Mr. Dicey, among others, has
+demolished what Lord Beaconsfield used to call the "bit-by-bit"
+reformers of Irish Government--those who would administer homoeopathic
+doses of local self-government, but always under protest that the supply
+was to stop short of what would satisfy the hunger of the patient. But a
+continuance of "things as they are," gilded with a thin tissue of
+benevolent hopes and aspirations, is scarcely a more promising remedy
+for the ills of Ireland. Is it not time to try some new treatment--one
+which has been tried in similar cases, and always with success? One only
+policy has never been tried in Ireland--honest Home Rule.
+
+Certainly, if Home Rule is to be refused till all the prophets of evil
+are refuted, Ireland must go without Home Rule for ever. "If the sky
+fall, we shall catch larks." But he would be a foolish bird-catcher who
+waited for that contingency. And not less foolish is the statesman who
+sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has been
+mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild prediction falsified
+by the event; for that would ensure his never moving at all. _Sedet
+æternumque sedebit_. A proper enough attitude, perhaps, on the part of
+an eristic philosopher speculating on politics in the silent shade of
+academic groves, but hardly suitable for a practical politician who has
+to take action on one of the most burning questions of our time. Human
+affairs are not governed by mathematical reasoning. You cannot
+demonstrate the precise results of any legislative measure beforehand as
+you can demonstrate the course of a planet in the solar system.
+"Probability," as Bishop Butler says, "is the guide of life;" and an
+older philosopher than Butler has warned us that to demand demonstrative
+proof in the sphere of contingent matter is the same kind of absurdity
+as to demand probable reasoning in mathematics. You cannot confute a
+prophet before the event; you can only disbelieve him. The advocates of
+Home Rule believe that their policy would in general have an exactly
+contrary effect to that predicted by their opponents. In truth, every
+act of legislation is, before experience, amenable to such destructive
+criticism as these critics urge against Home Rule. I have not a doubt
+that they could have made out an unanswerable "case" against the Great
+Charter at Runnymede; and they would find it easy to prove on _à priori_
+grounds that the British Constitution is one of the most absurd,
+mischievous, and unworkable instruments that ever issued from human
+brains or from the evolution of events. By their method of reasoning the
+Great Charter and other fundamental portions of the Constitution ought
+to have brought the Government of the British Empire to a deadlock long
+ago. Every suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, every Act of Attainder,
+every statute for summary trial and conviction before justices of the
+peace, is a violation of the fundamental article of the Constitution,
+which requires that no man shall be imprisoned or otherwise punished
+except after lawful trial by his peers.[20] Consider also the magazines
+of explosive materials which lie hidden in the constitutional
+prerogatives of the Crown, if they could only be ignited by the match of
+an ingenious theorist. The Crown, as Lord Sherbrooke once somewhat
+irreverently expressed it, "can turn every cobbler in the land into a
+peer," and could thus put an end, as the Duke of Wellington declared, to
+"the Constitution of this country."[21] "The Crown is not bound by Act
+of Parliament unless named therein by special and particular words."[22]
+The Crown can make peace or war without consulting Parliament, can by
+secret treaty saddle the nation with the most perilous obligations, and
+give away all such portions of the empire as do not rest on Statute. The
+prerogative of mercy, too, would enable an eccentric Sovereign, aided by
+an obsequious Minister, to open the jails and let all the convicted
+criminals in the land loose upon society.[22] But criticism which proves
+too much in effect proves nothing.
+
+In short, every stage in the progress of constitutional reform has, in
+matter of fact, been marked by similar predictions falsified by results,
+and the prophets who condemn Home Rule have no better credentials;
+indeed, much worse, for they proclaim the miserable failure of "things
+as they are," whereas their predecessors were in their day satisfied
+with things as they were.[23]
+
+It is, high time, therefore, to call upon the opponents of Home Rule to
+tell us plainly where they stand. They claim a mandate from the country
+for their policy. They neither asked nor received a mandate to support
+the system of Government which prevailed in Ireland at the last
+election, and still less the policy of coercion which they have
+substituted for that system. Do they mean to go back or forward? They
+cannot stand still. They have already discovered that one act of
+repression leads to another, and they will find ere long that they have
+no alternative except Home Rule or the suppression of Parliamentary
+Government in Ireland. Men may talk lightly of the ease with which
+eighty-six Irish members may be kept in order in Parliament. They forget
+that the Irish people are behind the Irish members. How is Ireland to be
+governed on Parliamentary principles if the voice of her representatives
+is to be forcibly silenced or disregarded? Could even Yorkshire or
+Lancashire be governed permanently in that way? Let it be observed that
+we have now reached this pass, namely, that the opponents of Home Rule
+are opposed to the Irish members, not on any particular form of
+self-government for Ireland, but on any form; in other words, they
+resist the all but unanimous demand of Ireland for what "Unionists" of
+all parties declared a year ago to be a reasonable demand. No candidate
+at the last election ventured to ask the suffrages of any constituency
+as "a supporter of things as they are." Yet that is practically the
+attitude now assumed by the Ministerial party, both Conservatives and
+Liberal Unionists. It is an attitude of which the country is getting
+weary, as the bye-elections have shown. But the "Unionists," it must be
+admitted, are in a sore dilemma. Their strength, such as it is, lies in
+doing nothing for the reform of Irish Government. Their bond of union
+consists of nothing else but opposition to Mr. Gladstone's policy. They
+dare not attempt to formulate any policy of their own, knowing well that
+they would go to pieces in the process. Their hope and speculation is
+that something may happen to remove Mr. Gladstone from the political
+arena before the next dissolution. But, after all, Mr. Gladstone did not
+create the Irish difficulty. It preceded him and will survive him,
+unless it is settled to the satisfaction of the Irish people before his
+departure. And the difficulty of the final settlement will increase with
+every year of delay. Nor will the difficulty be confined to Ireland. The
+Irish question is already reacting upon kindred, though not identical,
+problems in England and Scotland, and the longer it is kept open, so
+much the worse will it be for what are generally regarded as
+Conservative interests. It is not the Moderate Liberals or Conservatives
+who are gaining ground by the prolongation of the controversy, and the
+disappearance of Mr. Gladstone from the scene would have the effect of
+removing from the forces of extreme Radicalism a conservative influence,
+which his political opponents will discover when it is too late to
+restore it. Their regret will then be as unavailing as the lament of
+William of Deloraine over his fallen foe--
+
+    "I'd give the lands of Deloraine
+    Dark Musgrave were alive again."
+
+The Irish landlords have already begun to realize the mistake they made
+when they rejected Mr. Gladstone's policy of Home Rule and Land
+Purchase. It is the old story of the Sibyl's books. No British
+Government will ever again offer such terms to the Irish landlords as
+they refused to accept from Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand, Home Rule
+is inevitable. Can any reflective person really suppose that the
+democracy of Great Britain will consent to refuse to share with the
+Irish people the boon of self-government which will be offered to
+themselves next year? Any attempt to exclude the Irish from the benefits
+of such a scheme, after all the promises of the last general election,
+would almost certainly wreck the government; for constituencies have
+ways and means of impressing their wills on their representatives in
+Parliament even without a dissolution. If, on the other hand, Ireland
+should be included in a general scheme of local Government, the question
+of who shall control the police will arise. In Great Britain the police,
+of course, will be under local control. To refuse this to Ireland would
+be to offer a boon with a stigma attached to it. The Irish members
+agreed to let the control of the constabulary remain, under Mr.
+Gladstone's scheme, for some years in the hands of the British
+Government; but they would not agree to this while Dublin Castle ruled
+the country. Moreover, the formidable difficulty suggested by Lord
+Salisbury and Mr. John Stuart Mill (see pp. 115, 116) would appear the
+moment men began seriously to consider the question of local government
+for Ireland. The government of Dublin Castle would have to go, but
+something would have to be put in its place; and when that point has
+been reached it will probably be seen that nothing much better or safer
+can be found than some plan on the main lines of Mr. Gladstone's Bill.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 15: Speech at Manchester, May 7, 1886, by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre,
+who was a member of the Cabinet to which Mr. Chamberlain's scheme was
+submitted.]
+
+[Footnote 16: _Hansard_, vol. 220, pp. 708, 715.]
+
+[Footnote 17: _Considerations on Representative Government_, p. 281.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Dicey's _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 25-31, and
+Letter in _Spectator_ of September 17th, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 19: From the beginning of 1880 till now there have been six
+Viceroys and ten Chief Secretaries in Dublin--namely, Duke of
+Marlborough, Earls Cowper and Spencer, Earls of Carnarvon and Aberdeen,
+and the Marquis of Londonderry; Mr. Lowther, Mr. Forster, Lord F.
+Cavendish, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Campbell Bannerman, Sir W. Hart Dyke, Mr.
+W.H. Smith, Mr. J. Morley, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, and Mr. A. Balfour. A
+fine example, truly, of stable government and continuous policy!]
+
+[Footnote 20: Creasy's _Imperial and Colonial Constitutions of the
+Britannic Empire,_ p. 155.]
+
+[Footnote 21: May's _Const. Hist._, i. 313.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Blackstone's _Commentaries_, by Stephen, ii. 491, 492,
+497, 507.]
+
+[Footnote 23: We need not go far afield for illustrations. A few samples
+will suffice. "It was natural," says Mill (_Rep. Gov._, p. 311), "to
+feel strong doubts before trial had been made how such a provision [as
+the Supreme Court of the United States] would work; whether the tribunal
+would have the courage to exercise its constitutional power; if it did,
+whether it would exercise it wisely, and whether the Government would
+consent peaceably to its decision. The discussions on the American
+Constitution, before its final adoption, give evidence that these
+natural apprehensions were strongly felt; but they are now entirely
+quieted, since, during the two generations and more which have
+subsequently elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify them, though there
+have at times been disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became
+the badges of parties respecting the limits of the authority of the
+Federal and State Governments." The Austrian opponents of Home Rule in
+Hungary predicted that it would lead straight to separation. The
+opponents of the Canadian Constitution prophesied that Canada would in a
+few years be annexed to the United States; and Home Rule in Australia
+was believed by able statesmen to involve independence at an early date.
+Mr. Dicey himself tells us "that the wisest thinkers of the eighteenth
+century (including Burke) held that the independence of the American
+Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain. There were
+apparently solid reasons for this belief: experience has proved it to be
+without foundation." The various changes in our own Constitution, and
+even in our Criminal Code, were believed by "men of light and leading"
+at the time to portend national ruin. All the judges in the land, all
+the bankers, and the professions generally, petitioned against
+alteration in the law which sent children of ten to the gallows for the
+theft of a pocket-handkerchief. The great Lord Ellenborough declared in
+the House of Lords that "the learned judges were unanimously agreed"
+that any mitigation in that law would imperil "the public security." "My
+Lords," he exclaimed, "if we suffer this Bill to pass we shall not know
+where we stand; we shall not know whether we are on our heads or on our
+feet." Mr. Perceval, when leader of the House of Commons in 1807,
+declared that "he could not conceive a time or change of circumstances
+which would render further concessions to the Catholics consistent with
+the safety of the State." (_Croker Papers_, i. 12.) Croker was a very
+astute man; but here is his forecast of the Reform Act of 1832: "No
+kings, no lords, no inequalities in the social system; all will be
+levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers and small farmers: this,
+perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly by confiscations and
+persecutions." "There can be no longer any doubt that the Reform Bill is
+a stepping-stone in England to a Republic, and in Ireland to
+separation." Croker met the Queen in 1832, considered her very
+good-looking, but thought it not unlikely that "she may live to be plain
+Miss Guelph." Even Sir Robert Peel wrote: "If I am to be believed, I
+foresee revolution as the consequence of this Bill;" and he "felt that
+it had ceased to be an object of ambition to any man of equable and
+consistent mind to enter into the service of the Crown." And as late as
+1839, so robust a character as Sir James Graham thought the world was
+coming to an end because the young Queen gave her confidence to a Whig
+Minister. "I begin to share all your apprehensions and forebodings," he
+writes to Croker, "with regard to the probable issue of the present
+struggle. The Crown in alliance with Democracy baffles every calculation
+on the balance of power in our mixed form of Government. Aristocracy and
+Church cannot contend against Queen and people mixed; they must yield in
+the first instance, when the Crown, unprotected, will meet its fate, and
+the accustomed round of anarchy and despotism will run its course." And
+he prays that he may "lie cold before that dreadful day." (_Ibid._, ii.
+113, 140, 176, 181, 356.) Free Trade created a similar panic. "Good
+God!" Croker exclaimed, "what a chaos of anarchy and misery do I foresee
+in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing
+an _average_ duty of 8_s._ into a _fixed_ duty of 8_s._, the fact being
+that the fixed duty means _no duty at all_; and _no duty at all_ will be
+the overthrow of the existing social and political system of our
+country!" (_Ibid._, iii. 13.) And what have become of Mr. Lowe's gloomy
+vaticinations as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate
+Reform Bill of 1866, followed as it was by a much more democratic
+measure?]
+
+
+
+
+A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE.
+
+BY E.L. GODKIN.
+
+
+Mr. Dicey in his _Case against Home Rule_ does me the honour to refer to
+an article which I wrote a year ago on "American Home Rule,"[24]
+expressing in one place "disagreement in the general conclusion to which
+the article is intended to lead," and in another "inability to follow
+the inference" which he supposes me to draw "against all attempts to
+enforce an unpopular law." Now the object of that article, I may be
+permitted to explain, was twofold. I desired, in the first place, to
+combat the notion which, it seemed to me, if I might judge from a great
+many of the speeches and articles on the Irish question, was widely
+diffused even among thoughtful Englishmen that the manner in which the
+Irish have expressed their discontent--that is, through outrage and
+disorder--was indicative of incapacity for self-government, and even
+imposed upon the Englishmen the duty, in the interest of morality (I
+think it was the _Spectator_ who took this view), and as a disciplinary
+measure, of refusing to such a people the privilege of managing their
+own affairs. I tried to show by several noted examples occurring in this
+country that prolonged displays of lawlessness, and violence, and even
+cruelty, such as the anti-rent movement in the State of New York, the
+Ku-Klux outrages in the South, and the persecution of Miss Prudence
+Crandall in Connecticut, were not inconsistent with the possession of
+marked political capacity. I suggested that it was hardly adult politics
+to take such things into consideration in passing on the expediency of
+conceding local self-government to a subject community. There was to me
+something almost childish in the arguments drawn from Irish lawlessness
+in the discussion of Home Rule, and in the moral importance attached by
+some Englishmen to the refusal to such wicked men as the Irish of the
+things they most desire. It is only in kindergartens, I said, that
+rulers are able to do equal and exact justice, and see that the naughty
+are brought to grief and the good made comfortable. Statesmen occupy
+themselves with the more serious business of curing discontent. They
+concern themselves but little, if at all, with the question whether it
+might not be manifested by less objectionable methods.
+
+The Irish methods of manifesting it, I endeavoured to show, were not
+exceptional, and did not prove either inability to make laws or
+unwillingness to obey them. I illustrated this by examples drawn from
+the United States. I might, had I had more time and space, have made
+these examples still more numerous and striking. I might have given very
+good reasons for believing that, were Ireland a state in the American
+Union, there probably would not have been any rent paid in the island
+within the last fifty years, and that the armed resistance of the
+tenants would have had the open or secret sympathy of the great bulk of
+the American people. In truth, the importance of Irish crime as a
+political symptom is grossly exaggerated by English writers. I venture
+to assert that more murders unconnected with robbery are committed in
+the State of Kentucky in one year than in Ireland in ten, and the
+condition of some other Southern and Western States is nearly as bad.
+All good Americans lament this and are ashamed of it, but it never
+enters into the heads of even the most lugubrious American moralists
+that Kentucky or any other State should be disfranchised and remanded to
+the condition of a Territory, because the offences against the person
+committed in it are so numerous, and the punishment of them, owing to
+popular sympathy or apathy, so difficult.
+
+There are a great many Englishmen who think that when they show that
+Grattan's Parliament was a venal and somewhat disorderly body, which
+occasionally indulged in mixed metaphor, they have proved the
+impossibility of giving Ireland a Parliament now. But then, as they are
+obliged to admit, Walpole's Parliament was very corrupt, and no one
+would say that for that reason it would have been wise to suspend
+constitutional government in England in the eighteenth century. It is
+only through the pernicious habit of thinking of Irishmen as exceptions
+to all political rules that Grattan's Parliament is considered likely,
+had it lasted, to have come down to our time unreformed and unimproved.
+
+Those have misunderstood me who suppose that I draw from the success of
+the anti-rent movement in this State between 1839 and 1846 an inference
+against "all attempts to enforce an unpopular law." Such was not by any
+means my object. What I sought to show by the history of this movement
+was that there was nothing peculiar or inexplicable in the hostility to
+rent-paying in Ireland. The rights of the New York landlords were as
+good in law and morals as the rights of the Irish landlords, and their
+mode of asserting them far superior. Moreover, those who resisted them
+were not men of a different race, religion, or nationality, and had, as
+Mr. Dicey says, "none of the excuses that can be urged in extenuation of
+half-starved tenants." Their mode of setting the law at defiance was
+exactly similar to that adopted by the Irish, and it was persisted in
+for a period of ten years, or until they had secured a substantial
+victory. The history of the anti-rent agitation in New York also
+illustrates strikingly, as it seems to me, the perspicacity of a remark
+made, in substance, long ago by Mr. Disraeli, which, in my eyes at
+least, threw a great deal of light on the Irish problem, namely, that
+Ireland was suffering from suppressed revolution. As Mr. Dicey says,
+"The crises called revolutions are the ultimate and desperate cures for
+the fundamental disorganization of society. The issue of a revolutionary
+struggle shows what is the true sovereign power in the revolutionized
+state. So strong is the interest of mankind, at least in any European
+country, in favour of some sort of settled rule, that civil disturbance
+will, if left to itself, in general end in the supremacy of some power
+which by securing the safety at last gains the attachment of the people.
+The Reign of Terror begets the Empire; even wars of religion at last
+produce peace, albeit peace may be nothing better than the iron
+uniformity of despotism. Could Ireland have been left for any lengthened
+period to herself, some form of rule adapted to the needs of the country
+would in all probability have been established. Whether Protestants or
+Catholics would have been the predominant element in the State; whether
+the landlords would have held their own, or whether the English system
+of tenure would long ago have made way for one more in conformity with
+native traditions; whether hostile classes and races would at last have
+established some _modus vivendi_ favourable to individual freedom, or
+whether despotism under some of its various forms would have been
+sanctioned by the acquiescence of its subjects, are matters of uncertain
+speculation. A conclusion which, though speculative, is far less
+uncertain, is that Ireland, if left absolutely to herself, would have
+arrived, like every other country, at some lasting settlement of her
+difficulties" (p. 87). That is to say, that in Ireland as in New York
+the attempt to enforce unpopular land laws would have been abandoned,
+had local self-government existed. For "revolution" is, after all, only
+a fine name for the failure or refusal of the rulers of a country to
+persist in executing laws which the bulk of the population find
+obnoxious. When the popular hostility to the law is strong enough to
+make its execution impossible, as it was in New York in the rent affair,
+it is accepted as the respectable solution of a very troublesome
+problem. When, as in Ireland, it is strong enough to produce turbulence
+and disorder, but not strong enough to tire out and overcome the
+authorities, it simply ruins the political manners of the people. If the
+Irish landlords had had from the beginning to face the tenants
+single-handed and either hold them down by superior physical force, or
+come to terms with them as the New York landlords had to do, conditions
+of peace and good will would have assuredly been discovered long ago.
+The land question, in other words, would have been adjusted in
+accordance with "Irish ideas," that is, in some way satisfactory to the
+tenants. The very memory of the conflict would probably by this time
+have died out, and the two classes would be living in harmony on the
+common soil. If in New York, on the other hand, the Van Rensselaers and
+Livingstons had been able to secure the aid of martial law and of the
+Federal troops in asserting their claims, and in preventing local
+opinion having any influence whatever on the settlement of the dispute,
+there can be no doubt that a large portion of this State would to-day be
+as poor and as savage, and apparently as little fitted for the serious
+business of government, as the greater part of Ireland is.
+
+There is, in truth, no reason to doubt that the idea of property in
+land, thoroughly accepted though it be in the United States, is
+nevertheless held under the same limitations as in the rest of the
+world. No matter what the law may say in any country, in no country is
+the right of the landed proprietor in his acres as absolute as his right
+in his movables. A man may own as much land as he can purchase, and may
+assert his ownership in its most absolute form against one, two, or
+three occupants, but the minute he began to assert it against a large
+number of occupants, that is, to act as if his rights were such that he
+had only to buy a whole state or a whole island in order to be able to
+evict the entire population, he would find in America, as he finds in
+Ireland, that he cannot have the same title to land as to personal
+property. He would, for instance, if he tried to oust the people of a
+whole district or of a village from their homes on any plea of
+possession, or of a contract, find that he was going too far, and that
+no matter what the judges might say, or the sheriff might try to do for
+him, his legal position was worth very little to him. Consequently a
+large landlord in America, if he were lucky enough to get tenants at
+all, would be very chary indeed about quarrelling with more than one of
+them at a time. The tenants would no more submit to wholesale ejectment
+than the farmers in Missouri would submit some years ago to a tax levy
+on their property to pay county bonds given in aid of a railroad. The
+goods of some of them were seized, but a large body of them attended the
+sale armed with rifles, having previously issued a notice that the place
+would be very "unhealthy" for outside bidders.
+
+The bearing of this condition of American opinion on the Irish question
+will be plainer if I remind English readers that the Irish in the United
+States numbered in 1880 nearly 2,000,000, and that the number of persons
+of Irish parentage is probably between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000. In short
+there are, as well as one can judge, more Irish nationalists in the
+United States than in Ireland. The Irish-Americans are to-day the only
+large and prosperous Irish community in the world. The children of the
+Irish born in the United States or brought there in their infancy are
+just as Irish in their politics as those who have grown up at home.
+Patrick Ford, for instance, the editor of the _Irish World_, who is such
+a shape of dread to some Englishmen, came to America in childhood, and
+has no personal knowledge nor recollection of Irish wrongs. Of the part
+this large Irish community plays in stimulating agitation--both agrarian
+and political--at home I need not speak; Englishmen are very familiar
+with it, and are very indignant over it. The Irish-Americans not only
+send over a great deal of American money to their friends at home, but
+they send over American ideas, and foremost among them American
+hostility to large landowners, and American belief in Home Rule. Now, to
+me, one of the most curious things in the English state of mind about
+the Irish problem is the apparent expectation that this Irish-American
+interference is transient, and will probably soon die out. It is quite
+true, as Englishmen are constantly told, that "the best Americans," that
+is, the literary people and the commercial magnates, whom travelling
+Englishmen see on the Atlantic coast, dislike the Irish anti-English
+agitation. But it is also true that the disapproval of the "best
+Americans" is not of the smallest practical consequence, particularly as
+it is largely due to complete indifference to, and ignorance of, the
+whole subject. There are probably not a dozen of them who would venture
+to express their disapproval publicly. The mass of the population,
+particularly in the West, sympathize, though half laughingly, with the
+efforts of the transplanted Irish to "twist the British lion's tail,"
+and all the politicians either sympathize with them, or pretend to do
+so. I am not now expressing any opinion as to whether this state of
+things is good or bad. What I wish to point out is that this
+Irish-American influence on Irish affairs is very powerful, and may, for
+all practical purposes, be considered permanent, and must be taken into
+account as a constant element in the Irish problem. I will indeed
+venture on the assertion that it is the appearance of the
+Irish-Americans on the scene which has given the Irish question its
+present seriousness. The attempts of the Irish at physical resistance to
+English authority have been steadily diminishing in gravity during the
+present century--witness the descent from the rebellion of 1798 to Smith
+O'Brien's rebellion and the Fenian rising of 1867. On the other hand the
+power of the Irish to act as a disturbing agency in English politics has
+greatly increased, and the reason is that the stream of Irish discontent
+is fed by thousands of rills from the United States. Every emigrant's
+letter, every Irish-American newspaper, every returned emigrant with
+money in his pocket and a good coat on his back, helps to swell it, and
+there is not the slightest sign, that I can see, of its drying up.
+
+Where Mr. Dicey is most formidable to the Home Rulers, as it seems to
+me, is in his chapter on "Home Rule as Federalism," which is the form in
+which the Irish ask for it. He attacks this in two ways. One is by
+maintaining that the necessary conditions for a federal union between
+Great Britain and Ireland do not exist. This disposes at one blow of all
+the experience derived from the working of the foreign federations, on
+which the advocates of Home Rule have relied a good deal. The other is
+what I may call predictions that the federation even if set up would not
+work. Either the state of facts on which all other federations have been
+built does not exist in Ireland, or if it now exists, will not, owing to
+the peculiarities of Irish character, continue to exist. In other words,
+the federation will either fail at the outset, or fail in the long run.
+No one can admire more than I do the force and ingenuity and wealth of
+illustration with which Mr. Dicey supports this thesis. But
+unfortunately the arguments by which he assails Irish federalism might
+be, or might have been, used against all federations whatever. They
+might have been used, as I shall try to show, against the most
+successful of them all, the Government of the United States. I was
+reminded, while reading Mr. Dicey's account of the impossibility of an
+Anglo-Irish federation, of Mr. Madison's rehearsal in the _Federalist_
+(No. 38) of the objections made to the Federal Constitution after the
+Convention had submitted it to the States. These objections covered
+every feature in it but one; and that, the mode of electing the
+President, curiously enough, is the only one which can be said to have
+utterly failed. A more impressive example of the danger of _à priori_
+attacks on any political arrangement, history does not contain. Mr.
+Madison says: "This one tells me that the proposed Constitution ought to
+be rejected, because it is not a confederation of the states, but a
+government over individuals. Another admits that it ought to be a
+government over individuals to a certain extent, but by no means to the
+extent proposed. A third does not object to the government over
+individuals, or to the extent proposed, but to the want of a bill of
+rights. A fourth concurs in the absolute necessity of a bill of rights,
+but contends that it ought to be declaratory not of the personal rights
+of individuals, but of the rights reserved to the states in their
+political capacity. A fifth is of opinion that a bill of rights of any
+sort would be superfluous and misplaced, and that the plan would be
+unexceptionable but for the fatal power of regulating the times and
+places of election. An objector in a large state exclaims loudly against
+the unreasonable equality of representation in the Senate. An objector
+in a small state is equally loud against the dangerous inequality in the
+House of Representatives. From one quarter we are alarmed with the
+amazing expense, from the number of persons who are to administer the
+new government. From another quarter, and sometimes from the same
+quarter, on another occasion the cry is that the Congress will be but
+the shadow of a representation, and that the government would be far
+less objectionable if the number and the expense were doubled. A patriot
+in a state that does not import or export discerns insuperable
+objections against the power of direct taxation. The patriotic adversary
+in a state of great exports and imports is not less dissatisfied that
+the whole burden of taxes may be thrown on consumption. This politician
+discovers in the constitution a direct and irresistible tendency to
+monarchy. That is equally sure it will end in aristocracy. Another is
+puzzled to say which of these shapes it will ultimately assume, but sees
+clearly it must be one or other of them. Whilst a fourth is not wanting,
+who with no less confidence affirms that the Constitution is so far from
+having a bias towards either of these dangers, that the weight on that
+side will not be sufficient to keep it upright and firm against the
+opposite propensities. With another class of adversaries to the
+Constitution, the language is, that the legislative, executive, and
+judiciary departments are intermixed in such a manner as to contradict
+all the ideas of regular government and all the requisite precautions in
+favour of liberty. Whilst this objection circulates in vague and general
+expressions, there are not a few who lend their sanction to it. Let each
+one come forward with his particular explanation, and scarcely any two
+are exactly agreed on the subject. In the eyes of one the junction of
+the Senate with the President in the responsible function of appointing
+to offices, instead of vesting this power in the executive alone, is the
+vicious part of the organization. To another the exclusion of the House
+of Representatives, whose numbers alone could be a due security against
+corruption and partiality in the exercise of such a power, is equally
+obnoxious. With a third the admission of the President into any share of
+a power which must ever be a dangerous engine in the hands of the
+executive magistrate is an unpardonable violation of the maxims of
+republican jealousy. No part of the arrangement, according to some, is
+more inadmissible than the trial of impeachments by the Senate, which is
+alternately a member both of the legislative and executive departments,
+when this power so evidently belonged to the judiciary department. We
+concur fully, reply others, in the objection to this part of the plan,
+but we can never agree that a reference of impeachments to the judiciary
+authority would be an amendment of the error; our principal dislike to
+the organization arises from the extensive powers already lodged in that
+department. Even among the zealous patrons of a council of state, the
+most irreconcilable variance is discovered concerning the mode in which
+it ought to be constituted."
+
+Mr. Madison's challenge to the opponents of the American Constitution to
+agree on some plan of their own, and his humorous suggestion that if the
+American people had to wait for some such agreement to be reached they
+would go for a long time without a government, are curiously applicable
+to the opponents of Irish Home Rule. They are very fertile in reasons
+for thinking that neither the Gladstone plan nor any other plan can
+succeed, but no two of them, so far as I know, have yet hit upon any
+other mode of pacifying Ireland, except the use of force for a certain
+period to maintain order, and oddly enough, even when they agree on this
+remedy, they are apt to disagree about the length of time during which
+it should be tried.
+
+Mr. Dicey, in conceding the success of the American Constitution, seems
+to me unmindful, if I may use the expression, of the judgments he would
+probably have passed on it had it been submitted to him at the outset
+were he in the frame of mind to which a prolonged study of the Irish
+problem has now brought him. The Supreme Court, for instance, which he
+now recognizes as an essential feature of the Federal Constitution, and
+the absence of which in the Gladstonian arrangement he treats as a fatal
+defect, would have undoubtedly appeared to him a preposterous
+contrivance. It would have seemed to him impossible that a legislature
+like Congress, with the traditions of parliamentary omnipotence still
+strong in the minds of the members, would ever submit to have its acts
+nullified by a board composed of half a dozen elderly lawyers. Nor would
+he have treated as any more reasonable the expectation that the State
+tribunals, which had existed in each colony from its foundation, and had
+earned the respect and confidence of the people, would quietly submit to
+have their jurisdiction curtailed, their decisions overruled, causes
+torn from their calendar, and prisoners taken out of their custody by
+new courts of semi-foreign origin, which the State neither paid nor
+controlled. He would, too, very probably have been most incredulous
+about the prospect of the growth of loyalty on the part of New-Yorkers
+and Massachusetts men to a new-fangled government, which was to make
+itself only slightly felt in their daily lives, and was to sit a
+fortnight away in an improvised village in the midst of a Virginian
+forest.
+
+He would, too, have ridiculed the notion that State legislatures would
+refrain, in obedience to the Constitution, from passing any law which
+local sentiment strongly favoured or local convenience plainly demanded,
+such as a law impairing the obligation of obnoxious contracts, or
+levying duties on imports or exports. The possibility that the State
+militia could ever be got to obey federal officers, or form an efficient
+part of a federal army, he would have scouted. On the feebleness of the
+front which federation would present to a foreign enemy he would have
+dwelt with emphasis, and would have pointed with confidence to the
+probability that in the event of a war some of the states would make
+terms with him or secretly favour his designs. National allegiance and
+local allegiance would divide and perplex the feelings of loyal
+citizens. Unless the national sentiment predominated--and it could not
+predominate without having had time to grow--the federation would go to
+pieces at any of those crises when the interests or wishes of any of the
+states conflicted with the interests or wishes of the Union. That the
+national sentiment could grow at all rapidly, considering the maturity
+of the communities which composed the Union and the differences of
+origin, creed, and manners which separated them, no calm observer of
+human nature would believe for one moment.
+
+The American Constitution is flecked throughout with those flaws which a
+lawyer delights to discover and point out, and which the framers of a
+federal contract can only excuse by maintaining that they are
+inevitable. It is true that Mr. Dicey does not even now acknowledge the
+success of the American Constitution to be complete. He points out that
+if the "example either of America or of Switzerland is to teach us
+anything worth knowing, the history of these countries must be read as a
+whole. It will then be seen that the two most successful confederacies
+in the world have been kept together only by the decisive triumph
+through force of arms of the central power over real or alleged State
+rights" (p. 192).
+
+It is odd that such objectors do not see that the decisive triumph of
+the central power in the late civil war in America was, in reality, a
+striking proof of the success of the federation. The armies which
+General Grant commanded, and the enormous resources in money and
+devotion from which he was able to draw, were the product of the Federal
+Union and of nothing else. One of the greatest arguments its founders
+used in its favour was that if once established it would supply
+overwhelming force for the suppression of any attempt to break it up.
+They did not aim at setting up a government which neither foreign malice
+nor domestic treason, would ever assail, for they knew that this was
+something beyond the reach of human endeavour. They tried to set up one
+which, if attacked either from within or from without, would make a
+successful resistance, and we now know that they accomplished their
+object. Somewhat the same answer may be made to the objection, which is
+supposed to have fatal applicability to the case of Ireland, that among
+the "special faults of federalism" is that it does not provide
+"sufficient protection of the legal rights of unpopular minorities," and
+that "the moral of it all is that the [American] Federal Government is
+not able to protect the rights of individuals against strong local
+sentiment" (p. 194 of Mr. Dicey's book). He says, moreover, if I
+understand the argument rightly, that it was bound to protect free
+speech in the States because "there is not and never was a word in the
+Articles of the Constitution forbidding American citizens to criticize
+the institutions of the State." It would seem from this as if Mr. Dicey
+were under the impression that in America the citizen of a State has a
+right to do in his State whatever he is not forbidden to do by the
+Federal Constitution, and in doing it has a right to federal protection.
+But the Federal Government can only do what the Constitution expressly
+authorizes it to do, and the Constitution does not authorize it to
+protect a citizen in criticizing the institutions of his own State. This
+arrangement, too, is just as good federalism as the committal of free
+speech to federal guardianship would have been. The goodness or badness
+of the federal system is in no way involved in the matter.
+
+The question to what extent a minority shall rely on the federation for
+protection, and to what extent on its own State, is a matter settled by
+the contract which has created the federation. The settlement of this
+is, in fact, the great object of a Constitution. Until it is settled
+somehow, either by writing or by understanding, there is, and can be, no
+federation. If I, as a citizen of the State of New York, could call on
+the United States Government to protect me under all circumstances and
+against all wrongs, it would show that I was not living under a
+federation at all, but under a centralized republic. The reason why I
+have to rely on the United States for protection against some things and
+not against others is that it was so stipulated when the State of New
+York entered the Union. There is nothing in the nature of the federal
+system to prevent the United States Government from protecting my
+freedom of speech. Nor is there anything in the federal system which
+forbids its protecting me against the establishment of a State Church,
+which, as a matter of fact, it does not do. Nor is there anything in the
+federal system compelling the Government to protect me against the
+establishment of an order of nobility, which, as a matter of fact, it
+does do. The reason why it does not do one of these things and does the
+other is simply and solely that it was so stipulated, after much
+discussion, in the contract. Most thinking men are to-day of opinion
+that the United States ought to have exclusive jurisdiction of marriage,
+so that the law of marriage might be uniform in all parts of the Union.
+The reason why they do not possess such jurisdiction is not that
+Congress is not fully competent to pass such a law or the federal courts
+to execute it, but that no such jurisdiction is conferred by the
+Constitution. In fact it seems to me just as reasonable to cite the ease
+of divorce in various States of the Union as a defect in the federal
+system, as to cite the oppression of local minorities in matters not
+placed under federal authority by the organic law.
+
+If one may judge from a great deal of writing on American matters which
+one sees in English journals and the demands for federal interference in
+America in State affairs which they constantly make, the greatest
+difficulty Irish Home Rule has to contend with is the difficulty which
+men bred in a united monarchy and under an omnipotent Parliament
+experience in grasping what I may call the federal idea. The influence
+of association on their minds is so strong that they can hardly conceive
+of a central power, worthy of the name of a government, standing by and
+witnessing disorders or failures of justice in any place within its
+borders, without stepping in to set matters right, no matter what the
+Constitution may say. They remind me often of an old verger in
+Westminster Abbey during the American civil war who told me that "he
+always knew a government without a head couldn't last." Permanence and
+peace were in his mind inseparably linked with kingship. That even Mr.
+Dicey has not been able to escape this influence appears frequently in
+his discussions of federalism. He, of course, thoroughly understands the
+federal system as a jurist, but when he comes to discuss it as a
+politician he has evidently some difficulty in seeing how a government
+with a power to enforce _any_ commands can be restrained by contract
+from enforcing _all_ commands which may seem to be expedient or
+salutary. Consequently the cool way in which the Federal Government here
+looks on at local disorders seems to him a sign, not of the fidelity of
+the President and Congress to the federal pact, but of some inherent
+weakness in the federal system.
+
+The true way to judge the federal system, however, either in the United
+States or elsewhere, is by observing the manner in which it has
+performed the duties assigned to it by the Constitution. If the
+Government at Washington performs these faithfully, its failure to
+prevent lawlessness in New York or the oppression of minorities in
+Connecticut is of no more consequence than its failure to put down
+brigandage in Macedonia. Possibly it would have been better to saddle it
+with greater responsibility for local peace; but the fact is that the
+framers of the Constitution decided not to do so. They did not mean to
+set up a government which would see that every man living under it got
+his due. They could not have got the States to accept such a
+government. They meant to set up a government which should represent
+the nation worthily in all its relations with foreigners, which should
+carry on war effectively, protect life and property on the high seas,
+furnish a proper currency, put down all resistance to its lawful
+authority, and secure each State against domestic violence on the demand
+of its Legislature.
+
+There is no common form for federal contracts, and no rules describing
+what such a contract must contain in order that the Government may be
+federal and not unitarian. There is no hard and fast line which must,
+under the federal system, divide the jurisdiction of the central
+Government from the jurisdiction of each State Government. The way in
+which the power is divided between the two must necessarily depend on
+the traditions, manners, aims, and needs of the people of the various
+localities. The federal system is not a system manufactured on a
+regulation model, which can be sent over the world like iron huts or
+steam launches, in detached pieces, to be put together when the scene of
+operation is reached. Therefore I am unable to see the force of the
+argument that, as the conditions under which all existing federations
+were established differ in some respects from those under which the
+proposed federal union between England and Ireland would have to be
+established, therefore the success of these confederations, such as it
+is, gives them no value as precedents. A system which might have worked
+very well for the New England States would not have worked well for a
+combination which included also the middle and southern States. And the
+framers of the American Constitution were not so simple-minded as to
+inquire, either before beginning their labours or before ending them--as
+Mr. Dicey would apparently have the English and Irish do--whether this
+or that style of constitution was "the correct thing" in federalism.
+Assuming that the people desired to form a nation as regarded the world
+outside, they addressed themselves to the task of discovering how much
+power the various States were willing to surrender for this purpose.
+That was ascertained, as far as it could be ascertained, by assembling
+their delegates in convention, and discussing the wishes and fears and
+suggestions of the different localities in a friendly and conciliatory
+spirit. They had no precedents to guide them. There had not existed a
+federal government, either in ancient or modern times, whose working
+afforded an example by which the imagination or the understanding of the
+American people was likely to be affected in the smallest degree. They,
+therefore, had to strike out an entirely new path for themselves, and
+they ended by producing an absolutely new kind of federation, which was
+half Unitarian, that is, in some respects a union of states, and in
+others a centralized government; and it was provided for a Territory one
+end of which was more than a month's distance from the other.
+
+It is not in its details, therefore, but in the manner of its
+construction, that the American Constitution furnishes anything in the
+way of guidance or suggestion to those who are now engaged in trying to
+find a _modus vivendi_ between England and Ireland. The same thing may
+be said of the Swiss Constitution and of the Austro-Hungarian
+Constitution. Both of them contain many anomalies--that is, things that
+are not set down in the books as among the essentials of federalism. But
+both are adapted to the special wants of the people who live under them,
+and were framed in reference to those wants.
+
+The Austro-Hungarian Delegations are another exception to the rule.
+These Delegations undoubtedly control the ministry of the Empire, or at
+all events do in practice displace it by their votes. It is made
+formally responsible to them by the Constitution. All that Mr. Dicey can
+say to this is that "the real responsibility of the Ministry to the
+Delegations admits of a good deal of doubt," and that, at all events,
+it is not like the responsibility of Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury to
+the British Parliament. This may be true, but the more mysterious or
+peculiar it is the better it illustrates the danger of speaking of any
+particular piece of machinery or of any particular division of power as
+an essential feature of a federal constitution.
+
+We are told by the critics of the Gladstonian scheme that federalism is
+not "a plan for disuniting the parts of a united state." But whether it
+is or not once more depends on circumstances. Federalism, like the
+British or French Constitution, is an arrangement intended to satisfy
+the people who set it up by gratifying some desire or removing some
+cause of discontent. If that discontent be due to unity, federalism
+disunites; if it be due to disunion, federalism unites. In the case of
+the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for instance, it clearly is a "plan for
+disuniting the parts of a united state." Austria and Hungary were united
+in the sense in which the opponents of Home Rule use the word for many
+years before 1867, but the union did not work, that is, did not produce
+moral as well as legal unity. A constitution was therefore invented
+which disunites the two countries for the purposes of domestic
+legislation, but leaves them united for the purposes of foreign
+relations. This may be a queer arrangement. Although it has worked well
+enough thus far, it may not continue to work well, but it does work well
+now. It has succeeded in converting Hungary from a discontented and
+rebellious province and a source of great weakness to Austria into a
+loyal and satisfied portion of the Empire. In other words, it has
+accomplished its purpose. It was not intended to furnish a symmetrical
+piece of federalism. It was intended to conciliate the Hungarian people.
+When therefore the professional federal architects make their tour of
+inspection and point out to the Home Ruler what flagrant departures from
+the correct federal model the Austro-Hungarian Constitution contains,
+how improbable it is that so enormous a structure can endure, and how,
+after all, the Hungarians have not got rid of the Emperor, who commands
+the army and represents the brute force of the old _régime_, I do not
+think he need feel greatly concerned. This may be all true, and yet the
+Austro-Hungarian federalism is a valuable thing. It has proved that the
+federal remedy is good for more than one disease, that it can cure both
+too much unity and too little. The truth is that there are only two
+essentials of a federal government. One is an agreement between the
+various communities who are to live under it as to the manner in which
+the power is to be divided between the general and local governments;
+the other is an honest desire on the part of all concerned to make it
+succeed. As a general rule, whatever the parties agree on and desire to
+make work is likely to work, just as a Unitarian government is sure to
+succeed if the people who live under it determine that it shall succeed.
+If a federal plan be settled in the only right way, by amicable and
+mutually respectful discussion between representative men, all the more
+serious obstacles are certain to be revealed and removed. Those which
+are not brought to light by such discussions are pretty sure to be
+comparatively trifling, and to disappear before the general success of
+arrangement. But by a "mutually respectful discussion" I mean discussion
+in which good faith and intelligence of all concerned are acknowledged
+on both sides.
+
+In what I have said by way of criticism of a book which may be taken as
+a particularly full exposition of the legal criticism that may be
+levelled at Mr. Gladstone's scheme, I have not touched on the arguments
+against Home Rule which Mr. Dicey draws from the amount of disturbance
+it would cause in English political habits and arrangements. I freely
+admit the weight of these arguments. The task of any English statesman
+who gives Home Rule to Ireland in the only way in which it can be
+given--with the assent of the British people--will be a very arduous
+one. But this portion of Mr. Dicey's book, producing, as it does, the
+distinctively English objections to Home rule, is to me much the most
+instructive, because it shows the difficulty there would be in creating
+the state of mind in England about any federal relation to Ireland which
+would be necessary to make it succeed. I do not think it an exaggeration
+to say that two-thirds of the English objections to Home Rule as
+federalism are unconscious expressions of distrust of Irish sincerity or
+intelligence thrown into the form of prophecy, and prophets, as we all
+know, cannot be refuted. For instance, "the changes necessitated by
+federalism would all tend to weaken the power of Great Britain" (Dicey,
+p. 173). The question of the command of the army could not be arranged;
+the Irish army could not be depended on by the Crown (p. 174); the
+central Government would be feeble against foreign aggression, and the
+Irish Parliament would give aid to a foreign enemy (pp. 176-7).
+Federalism would aggravate or increase instead of diminishing the actual
+Irish disloyalty to the Crown (pp. 179-80); the Irish expectations of
+material prosperity from Home Rule are baseless or grossly exaggerated
+(p. 182); the probability is, it would produce increased poverty and
+hardship; there would be frequent quarrels between the two countries
+over questions of nullification, secession, and federal taxation (p.
+184); neither side would acquiesce in the decision either of the Privy
+Council or of any other tribunal on these questions; Home Rulers would
+be the first to resist these decisions (p. 185). Irish federation "would
+soon generate a demand that the whole British Empire should be turned
+into a Confederacy" (p. 188). Finally, as "the one prediction which may
+be made with absolute confidence," "federalism would not generate the
+goodwill between England and Ireland which, could it be produced, would
+be an adequate compensation even for the evils and inconveniences of a
+federal system" (p. 191).
+
+Now I do not myself believe these things, but what else can any advocate
+of Home Rule say in answer to them? They are in their very nature the
+utterances of a prophet--an able, acute, and fair-minded prophet, I
+grant, but still a prophet--and before a prophet the wisest man has to
+be silent, or content himself by answering in prophecy also. What makes
+the sceptical frame of mind in which Mr. Dicey approaches the Home Rule
+question so important is not simply that it probably represents that of
+a very large body of educated Englishmen, but that it is one in which a
+federal system cannot be produced. Faith, hope, and charity are
+political as well as social virtues. The minute you leave the region of
+pure despotism and try any form of government in which the citizen has
+in the smallest degree to co-operate in the execution of the laws, you
+have need of these virtues at every step. As soon as you give up the
+attempt to rule men by drumhead justice, you have to begin to trust in
+some degree to their intelligence, to their love of order, to their
+self-respect, and to their desire for material prosperity, and the
+nearer you get to what is called free government the larger this trust
+has to be. It has to be very large indeed in order to carry on such a
+government as that of Great Britain or of the United States; it has to
+be larger still in order to set up and administer a federal government.
+In such a government the worst that can happen is very patent. The
+opportunities which the best-drawn federal constitution offers for
+outbreaks of what Americans call "pure cussedness"--that is, for the
+indulgence of anarchical tendencies and impulses--is greater than in any
+other. Therefore, to set it up, or even to discuss it with any profit,
+your faith in the particular variety of human nature, which is to live
+under it, has to be great. No communities can live under it together
+and make it work which do not respect each other. I say respect, I do
+not say love, each other. The machine can be made to go a good while
+without love, and if it goes well it will bring love before long; but
+mutual respect is necessary from the first day. This is why Mr. Dicey's
+book is discouraging. The arguments which he addressed to Englishmen
+would not, I think, be formidable but for the mood in which he finds
+Englishmen, and that this mood makes against Home Rule there can be
+little doubt.
+
+I am often asked by Americans why the English do not call an Anglo-Irish
+convention in the American fashion, and discuss the Irish question with
+the Irish, find out exactly what they will take to be quiet, and settle
+with them in a rational way. I generally answer that, in the first
+place, a convention is a constitution-making agency with which the
+English public is totally unfamiliar, and that, in the second place,
+Englishmen's temper is too imperial, or rather imperious, to make the
+idea of discussion on equal terms with the Irish at all acceptable. They
+are, in fact, so far from any such arrangement that--preposterous and
+even funny as it seems to the American mind--to say that an English
+statesman is carrying on any sort of communication with the
+representatives of the Irish people is to bring against him, in English
+eyes, a very damaging accusation. When a man like Mr. Matthew Arnold
+writes to the _Times_ to contend that Englishmen should find out what
+the Irish want solely for the purpose of not letting them have it, and a
+journal like the _Spectator_ maintains that the sole excuse for
+extending the suffrage in Ireland, as it has lately been extended in
+England, was that the Irish as a minority would not be able to make any
+effective use of it; and when another political philosopher writes a
+long and very solemn letter in which, while conceding that in governing
+Ireland a sympathetic regard for Irish feelings and interests should be
+displayed, he mentions, as one of the leading facts of the situation,
+that in "the Irish character there is a grievous lack of independence,
+of self-respect, of courage, and above all of truthfulness"--when men of
+this kind talk in this way, it is easy to see that the mental and moral
+conditions necessary to the successful formation of a federal union are
+still far off. No federal government, and no government requiring
+loyalty and fidelity for its successful working, was ever set up by, or
+even discussed between, two parties, one of which thought the other so
+unreasonable that it should be carefully denied everything it asked for
+and as unfit for any sort of political co-operation as mendacity,
+cowardice, and slavishness could make it.
+
+Finally let me say that there is nothing in Mr. Dicey's book which has
+surprised me more, considering with what singular intellectual integrity
+he attacks every point, than his failure to make any mention or to take
+any account of the large part which time and experience must necessarily
+play in bringing to perfection any political arrangement which is made
+to order, if I may use the expression, no matter how carefully it may be
+drafted. Hume says on this point with great wisdom, "To balance the
+large state or society, whether monarchical or republican, on general
+laws, is a work of so great difficulty, that no human genius, however
+comprehensive, is able by the mere dint of reason or reflection to
+effect it. The judgments of many must unite in the work, experience must
+guide their labour, time must bring it to perfection, and the feeling of
+inconveniences must correct the mistakes which they inevitably fall into
+in their first trial and experiments."[25]
+
+This has proved true of the American and Swiss federations; it will
+probably prove true of the Austro-Hungarian federation and of any that
+may be set up by Great Britian [Transcriber: sic.] and her colonies. It
+will prove still more true of any attempt that may be made at
+federation between Great Britain and Ireland. No corrections which could
+be made in the Gladstonian or any other constitution would make it work
+exactly on the lines laid down by its framers. Even if it were revised
+in accordance with Mr. Dicey's criticism, it would probably be found, as
+in the case of the American Constitution, that few of the dangers which
+were most feared for it had beset it, and that some of the
+inconveniences which were most distinctly foreseen as likely to arise
+from it were among the things which had materially contributed to its
+success. History is full of the gentle ridicule which the course of
+events throws on statesmen and philosophers.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 24: Printed in the earlier part of this volume.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Essay on the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences.]
+
+
+
+
+THE "UNIONIST" CASE FOR HOME RULE.
+
+BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN.
+
+
+I am often asked, What are the best books to read on the Irish question?
+and I never fail to mention Mr. Lecky's _Leaders of Public Opinion in
+Ireland_ and the _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_; Mr.
+Goldwin Smith's _Irish History and Irish Character, Three English
+Statesmen, The Irish Question_, and Professor Dicey's admirable work,
+_England's Case against Home Rule_.
+
+Indeed, the case for Home Rule, as stated in these books, is
+unanswerable; and it redounds to the credit of Mr. Lecky, Mr. Goldwin
+Smith, and Mr. Dicey that their narrative of facts should in no wise be
+prejudiced by their political opinions.
+
+That their facts are upon one side and their opinions on the other is a
+minor matter. Their facts, I venture to assert, have made more Home
+Rulers than their opinions can unmake.
+
+To put this assertion to the test I propose to quote some extracts from
+the works above mentioned. These extracts shall be full and fair.
+Nothing shall be left out that can in the slightest degree qualify any
+statement of fact in the context. Arguments will be omitted, for I wish
+to place facts mainly before my readers. From these facts they can draw
+their own conclusions. Neither shall I take up space with comments of my
+own. I shall call my witnesses and let them speak for themselves.
+
+I.--MR. LECKY.
+
+In the introduction to the new edition of the _Leaders of Public Opinion
+in Ireland_, published in 1871--seventy-one years after Mr. Pitt's
+Union, which was to make England and Ireland one nation--we find the
+following "contrast" between "national life" in the two countries:--
+
+"There is, perhaps, no Government in the world which succeeds more
+admirably in the functions of eliciting, sustaining, and directing
+public opinion than that of England. It does not, it is true, escape its
+full share of hostile criticism, and, indeed, rather signally
+illustrates the saying of Bacon, that 'the best Governments are always
+subject to be like the finest crystals, in which every icicle and grain
+is seen which in a fouler stone is never perceived;' but whatever
+charges may be brought against the balance of its powers, or against its
+legislative efficiency, few men will question its eminent success as an
+organ of public opinion. In England an even disproportionate amount of
+the national talent takes the direction of politics. The pulse of an
+energetic national life is felt in every quarter of the land. The
+debates of Parliament are followed with a warm, constant, and
+intelligent interest by all sections of the community. It draws all
+classes within the circle of political interests, and is the centre of a
+strong and steady patriotism, equally removed from the apathy of many
+Continental nations in time of calm, and from their feverish and
+spasmodic energy in time of excitement. Its decisions, if not instantly
+accepted, never fail to have a profound and calming influence on the
+public mind. It is the safety-valve of the nation. The discontents, the
+suspicions, the peccant humours that agitate the people, find there
+their vent, their resolution, and their end.
+
+"It is impossible, I think, not to be struck by the contrast which, in
+this respect, Ireland presents to England. If the one country furnishes
+us with an admirable example of the action of a healthy public opinion,
+the other supplies us with the most unequivocal signs of its disease.
+The Imperial Parliament exercises for Ireland legislative functions, but
+it is almost powerless upon opinion--it allays no discontent, and
+attracts no affection. Political talent, which for many years was at
+least as abundant among Irishmen as in any equally numerous section of
+the people, has been steadily declining, and marked decadence in this
+respect among the representatives of the nation reflects but too truly
+the absence of public spirit in their constituents.
+
+"The upper classes have lost their sympathy with and their moral
+ascendency over their tenants, and are thrown for the most part into a
+policy of mere obstruction. The genuine national enthusiasm never flows
+in the channel of imperial politics. With great multitudes sectarian
+considerations have entirely superseded national ones, and their
+representatives are accustomed systematically to subordinate all party
+and all political questions to ecclesiastical interests; and while
+calling themselves Liberals, they make it the main object of their home
+politics to separate the different classes of their fellow-countrymen
+during the period of their education, and the main object of their
+foreign policy to support the temporal power of the Pope. With another
+and a still larger class the prevailing feeling seems to be an
+indifference to all Parliamentary proceedings; an utter scepticism about
+constitutional means of realizing their ends; a blind, persistent hatred
+of England. Every cause is taken up with an enthusiasm exactly
+proportioned to the degree in which it is supposed to be injurious to
+English interests. An amount of energy and enthusiasm which if rightly
+directed would suffice for the political regeneration of Ireland is
+wasted in the most insane projects of disloyalty; while the diversion of
+so much public feeling from Parliamentary politics leaves the
+Parliamentary arena more and more open to corruption, to place-hunting,
+and to imposture.
+
+"This picture is in itself a very melancholy one, but there are other
+circumstances which greatly heighten the effect. In a very ignorant or a
+very wretched population it is natural that there should be much vague,
+unreasoning discontent; but the Irish people are at present neither
+wretched nor ignorant. Their economical condition before the famine was,
+indeed, such that it might well have made reasonable men despair. With
+the land divided into almost microscopic farms, with a population
+multiplying rapidly to the extreme limits of subsistence, accustomed to
+the very lowest standard of comfort, and marrying earlier than in any
+other northern country in Europe, it was idle to look for habits of
+independence or self-reliance, or for the culture which follows in the
+train of leisure and comfort. But all this has been changed. A fearful
+famine and the long-continued strain of emigration have reduced the
+nation from eight millions to less than five, and have effected, at the
+price of almost intolerable suffering, a complete economical revolution.
+The population is now in no degree in excess of the means of
+subsistence. The rise of wages and prices has diffused comfort through
+all classes. ... Probably no country in Europe has advanced so rapidly
+as Ireland within the last ten years, and the tone of cheerfulness, the
+improvement of the houses, the dress, and the general condition of the
+people must have struck every observer.[26] ... If industrial
+improvement, if the rapid increase of material comforts among the poor,
+could allay political discontent, Ireland should never have been so
+loyal as at present.
+
+"Nor can it be said that ignorance is at the root of the discontent. The
+Irish people have always, even in the darkest period of the penal laws,
+been greedy for knowledge, and few races show more quickness in
+acquiring it. The admirable system of national education established in
+the present century is beginning to bear abundant fruit, and, among the
+younger generation at least, the level of knowledge is quite as high as
+in England. Indeed, one of the most alarming features of Irish
+disloyalty is its close and evident connection with education. It is
+sustained by a cheap literature, written often with no mean literary
+skill, which penetrates into every village, gives the people their first
+political impressions, forms and directs their enthusiasm, and seems
+likely in the long leisure of the pastoral life to exercise an
+increasing power. Close observers of the Irish character will hardly
+have failed to notice the great change which since the famine has passed
+over the amusements of the people. The old love of boisterous
+out-of-door sports has almost disappeared, and those who would have once
+sought their pleasures in the market or the fair now gather in groups in
+the public-house, where one of their number reads out a Fenian
+newspaper. Whatever else this change may portend, it is certainly of no
+good omen for the future loyalty of the people.
+
+"It was long customary in England to underrate this disaffection by
+ascribing it to very transitory causes. The quarter of a century that
+followed the Union was marked by almost perpetual disturbance; but this
+it was said was merely the natural ground swell of agitation which
+followed a great reform. It was then the popular theory that it was the
+work of O'Connell, who was described during many years as the one
+obstacle to the peace of Ireland, and whose death was made the subject
+of no little congratulation, as though Irish discontent had perished
+with its organ. It was as if, the Æolian harp being shattered, men wrote
+an epitaph upon the wind. Experience has abundantly proved the folly of
+such theories. Measured by mere chronology, a little more than seventy
+years have passed since the Union, but famine and emigration have
+compressed into these years the work of centuries. The character,
+feelings, and conditions of the people have been profoundly altered. A
+long course of remedial legislation has been carried, and during many
+years the national party has been without a leader and without a
+stimulus. Yet, so far from subsiding, disloyalty in Ireland is probably
+as extensive, and is certainly as malignant, as at the death of
+O'Connell, only in many respects the public opinion of the country has
+palpably deteriorated. O'Connell taught an attachment to the connection,
+a loyalty to the crown, a respect for the rights of property, a
+consistency of Liberalism, which we look for in vain among his
+successors; and that faith in moral force and constitutional agitation
+which he made it one of his greatest objects to instil into the people
+has almost vanished with the failure of his agitation."[27]
+
+Few Irish Nationalists have drawn a weightier indictment against the
+Union than this. After a trial of seventy years, Mr. Lecky sums up the
+case against the Union in these pregnant sentences:--
+
+"The Imperial Parliament allays no discontent, and attracts no
+affection;" "The genuine national enthusiasm never flows in the channel
+of imperial politics;" the people have "an utter scepticism about
+constitutional means of realizing their ends," and are imbued with "a
+blind, persistent hatred of England." Worse still, neither the material
+progress of the country, nor the education of the people, has
+reconciled them to the Imperial Parliament. Indeed, their disloyalty has
+increased with their prosperity and enlightenment. This is the story
+which Mr. Lecky has to tell. But why are the Irish disloyal? Mr. Lecky
+shall answer the question.
+
+"The causes of this deep-seated disaffection I have endeavoured in some
+degree to investigate in the following essays. To the merely dramatic
+historian the history of Ireland will probably appear less attractive
+than that of most other countries, for it is somewhat deficient in great
+characters and in splendid episodes; but to a philosophic student of
+history it presents an interest of the very highest order. In no other
+history can we trace more clearly the chain of causes and effects, the
+influence of past legislation, not only upon the material condition, but
+also upon the character of a nation. In no other history especially can
+we investigate more fully the evil consequences which must ensue from
+disregarding that sentiment of nationality which, whether it be wise or
+foolish, whether it be desirable or the reverse, is at least one of the
+strongest and most enduring of human passions. This, as I conceive, lies
+at the root of Irish discontent. It is a question of nationality as
+truly as in Hungary or in Poland. Special grievances or anomalies may
+aggravate, but do not cause it, and they become formidable only in as
+far as they are connected with it. What discontent was felt against the
+Protestant Established Church was felt chiefly because it was regarded
+as an English garrison sustaining an anti-national system; and the
+agrarian difficulty never assumed its full intensity till by the repeal
+agitation the landlords had been politically alienated from the
+people."[28]
+
+Let those who imagine that the Irish question can be completely settled
+by the redress of material grievances take those words to heart.
+
+
+But, it is said, Scotch national sentiment is as strong as Irish, why
+should not a legislative union be as acceptable to Ireland as to
+Scotland? Mr. Lecky shall answer this question too.
+
+"It is hardly possible to advert to the Scotch Union, without pausing
+for a moment to examine why its influence on the loyalty of the people
+should have ultimately been so much happier than that of the legislative
+union which, nearly a century later, was enacted between England and
+Ireland. A very slight attention to the circumstances of the case will
+explain the mystery, and will at the same time show the extreme
+shallowness of those theorists who can only account for it by reference
+to original peculiarities of national character. The sacrifice of a
+nationality is a measure which naturally produces such intense and such
+enduring discontent that it never should be exacted unless it can be
+accompanied by some political or material advantages to the lesser
+country that are so great and at the same time so evident as to prove a
+corrective. Such a corrective in the case of Scotland, was furnished by
+the commercial clauses. The Scotch Parliament was very arbitrary and
+corrupt, and by no means a faithful representation of the people. The
+majority of the nation were certainly opposed to the Union, and,
+directly or indirectly, it is probable that much corruption was employed
+to effect it; but still the fact remains that by it one of the most
+ardent wishes of all Scottish patriots was attained, that there had been
+for many years a powerful and intelligent minority who were prepared to
+purchase commercial freedom even at the expense of the fusion of
+legislatures, and that in consequence of the establishment of free trade
+the next generation of Scotchmen witnessed an increase of material
+well-being that was utterly unprecedented in the history of their
+country. Nothing equivalent took place in Ireland. The gradual abolition
+of duties between England and Ireland was, no doubt, an advantage to the
+lesser country, but the whole trade to America and the other English
+colonies had been thrown open to Irishmen between 1775 and 1779. Irish
+commerce had taken this direction; the years between 1779 and the
+rebellion of 1798 were probably the most prosperous in Irish history,
+and the generation that followed the Union was one of the most
+miserable. The sacrifice of nationality was extorted by the most
+enormous corruption in the history of representative institutions. It
+was demanded by no considerable section of the Irish people. It was
+accompanied by no signal political or material benefit that could
+mitigate or counteract its unpopularity, and it was effected without a
+dissolution, in opposition to the votes of the immense majority of the
+representatives of the counties and considerable towns, and to
+innumerable addresses from every part of the country. Can any impartial
+man be surprised that such a measure, carried in such a manner, should
+have proved unsuccessful?"[29]
+
+
+In the _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_ Mr. Lecky traces the
+current of events which have led to the present situation. He shows how
+the Treaty of Limerick was shamelessly violated, and how the native
+population was oppressed and degraded.
+
+"The position of Ireland was at this time [1727] one of the most
+deplorable that can be conceived.... The Roman Catholics had been
+completely prostrated by the battle of the Boyne and by the surrender of
+Limerick. They had stipulated indeed for religious liberty, but the
+Treaty of Limerick was soon shamelessly violated, and it found no
+avengers. Sarsfield and his brave companions had abandoned a country
+where defeat left no opening for their talents, and had joined the Irish
+Brigade which had been formed in the service of France.... But while the
+Irish Roman Catholics abroad found free scope for their ambition in the
+service of France, those who remained at home had sunk into a condition
+of utter degradation. All Catholic energy and talent had emigrated to
+foreign lands, and penal laws of atrocious severity crushed the
+Catholics who remained."[30]
+
+Mr. Lecky's account of these "penal laws" is upon the whole, I think,
+the best that has been written.
+
+"The last great Protestant ruler of England was William III., who is
+identified in Ireland with the humiliation of the Boyne, with the
+destruction of Irish trade, and with the broken Treaty of Limerick. The
+ceaseless exertions of the extreme Protestant party have made him more
+odious in the eyes of the people than he deserves to be; for he was
+personally far more tolerant than the great majority of his
+contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted under his
+successors. It required, indeed, four or five reigns to elaborate a
+system so ingeniously contrived to demoralize, to degrade, and to
+impoverish the people of Ireland. By this code the Roman Catholics were
+absolutely excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from the
+corporations, from the bench, and from the bar. They could not vote at
+Parliamentary elections or at vestries; they could not act as
+constables, or sheriffs, or jurymen, or serve in the army or navy, or
+become solicitors, or even hold the positions of gamekeeper or watchman.
+Schools were established to bring up their children as Protestants; and
+if they refused to avail themselves of these, they were deliberately
+assigned to hopeless ignorance, being excluded from the university, and
+debarred, under crushing penalties, from acting as schoolmasters, as
+ushers, or as private tutors, or from sending their children abroad to
+obtain the instruction they were refused at home. They could not marry
+Protestants, and if such a marriage were celebrated it was annulled by
+law, and the priest who officiated might be hung. They could not buy
+land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from Protestants, or hold
+life-annuities, or leases for more than thirty-one years, or any lease
+on such terms that the profits of the land exceeded one-third of the
+rent. If any Catholic leaseholder by his industry so increased his
+profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did not immediately make
+a corresponding increase in his payments, any Protestant who gave the
+information could enter into possession of his farm. If any Catholic had
+secretly purchased either his old forfeited estate, or any other land,
+any Protestant who informed against him might become the proprietor. The
+few Catholic landowners who remained were deprived of the right which
+all other classes possessed of bequeathing their lands as they pleased.
+If their sons continued Catholics, it was divided equally between them.
+If, however, the eldest son consented to apostatize, the estate was
+settled upon him, the father from that hour became only a life-tenant,
+and lost all power of selling, mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of it.
+If the wife of a Catholic abandoned the religion of her husband, she was
+immediately free from his control, and the Chancellor was empowered to
+assign to her a certain proportion of her husband's property. If any
+child, however young, professed itself a Protestant, it was at once
+taken from the father's care, and the Chancellor could oblige the father
+to declare upon oath the value of his property, both real and personal,
+and could assign for the present maintenance and future portion of the
+converted child such proportion of that property as the court might
+decree. No Catholic could be guardian either to his own children or to
+those of another person; and therefore a Catholic who died while his
+children were minors had the bitterness of reflecting upon his death-bed
+that they must pass into the care of Protestants. An annuity of from
+twenty to forty pounds was provided as a bribe for every priest who
+would become a Protestant. To convert a Protestant to Catholicism was a
+capital offence. In every walk of life the Catholic was pursued by
+persecution or restriction. Except in the linen trade, he could not have
+more than two apprentices. He could not possess a horse of the value of
+more than five pounds, and any Protestant, on giving him five pounds,
+could take his horse. He was compelled to pay double to the militia. He
+was forbidden, except under particular conditions, to live in Galway or
+Limerick. In case of war with a Catholic power, the Catholics were
+obliged to reimburse the damage done by the enemy's privateers. The
+Legislature, it is true, did not venture absolutely to suppress their
+worship, but it existed only by a doubtful connivance--stigmatized as if
+it were a species of licensed prostitution, and subject to conditions
+which, if they had been enforced, would have rendered its continuance
+impossible. An old law which prohibited it, and another which enjoined
+attendance at the Anglican worship, remained unrepealed, and might at
+any time be revived; and the former was, in fact, enforced during the
+Scotch rebellion of 1715. The parish priests, who alone were allowed to
+officiate, were compelled to be registered, and were forbidden to keep
+curates or to officiate anywhere except in their own parishes. The
+chapels might not have bells or steeples. No crosses might be publicly
+erected. Pilgrimages to the holy wells were forbidden. Not only all
+monks and friars, but also all Catholic archbishops, bishops, deacons,
+and other dignitaries, were ordered by a certain day to leave the
+country; and if after that date they were found in Ireland they were
+liable to be first imprisoned and then banished; and if after that
+banishment they returned to discharge their duty in their dioceses, they
+were liable to the punishment of death. To facilitate the discovery of
+offences against the code, two justices of the peace might at any time
+compel any Catholic of eighteen years of age to declare when and where
+he last heard Mass, what persons were present, and who officiated; and
+if he refused to give evidence they might imprison him for twelve
+months, or until he paid a fine of twenty pounds. Any one who harboured
+ecclesiastics from beyond the seas was subject to fines which for the
+third offence amounted to confiscation of all his goods. A graduated
+scale of rewards was offered for the discovery of Catholic bishops,
+priests, and schoolmasters; and a resolution of the House of Commons
+pronounced 'the prosecuting and informing against Papists' 'an
+honourable service to the Government.'
+
+"Such were the principal articles of this famous code--a code which
+Burke truly described as 'well digested and well disposed in all its
+parts; a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted
+for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the
+debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the
+perverted ingenuity of man.'"[31]
+
+The effects of these laws Mr. Lecky has described thus:
+
+"The economical and moral effects of the penal laws were, however,
+profoundly disastrous. The productive energies of the nation were
+fatally diminished. Almost all Catholics of energy and talent who
+refused to abandon their faith emigrated to foreign lands. The relation
+of classes was permanently vitiated; for almost all the proprietary of
+the country belonged to one religion, while the great majority of their
+tenants were of another. The Catholics, excluded from almost every
+possibility of eminence, deprived of their natural leaders, and
+consigned by the Legislature to utter ignorance, soon sank into the
+condition of broken and dispirited helots. A total absence of industrial
+virtues, a cowering and abject deference to authority, a recklessness
+about the future, a love of secret illegal combinations, became general
+among them. Above all, they learned to regard law as merely the
+expression of force, and its moral weight was utterly destroyed. For the
+greater part of a century, the main object of the Legislature was to
+extirpate a religion by the encouragement of the worst, and the
+punishment of some of the best qualities of our nature. Its rewards were
+reserved for the informer, for the hypocrite, for the undutiful son, or
+for the faithless wife. Its penalties were directed against religious
+constancy and the honest discharge of ecclesiastical duty.
+
+"It would, indeed, be scarcely possible to conceive a more infamous
+system of legal tyranny than that which in the middle of the eighteenth
+century crushed every class and almost every interest in Ireland."[32]
+
+But laws were not only passed against the native race and the national
+religion. Measures were taken to destroy the industries of the country,
+and to involve natives and colonists, Protestants and Catholics, in
+common ruin. Mr. Lecky shall tell the story.
+
+"The commercial and industrial condition of the country was, if
+possible, more deplorable than its political condition, and was the
+result of a series of English measures which for deliberate and selfish
+tyranny could hardly be surpassed. Until the reign of Charles II. the
+Irish shared the commercial privileges of the English; but as the island
+had not been really conquered till the reign of Elizabeth, and as its
+people were till then scarcely removed from barbarism, the progress was
+necessarily slow. In the early Stuart reigns, however, comparative
+repose and good government were followed by a sudden rush of prosperity.
+The land was chiefly pasture, for which it was admirably adapted; the
+export of live cattle to England was carried on upon a large scale, and
+it became a chief source of Irish wealth. The English landowners,
+however, took the alarm. They complained that Irish rivalry in the
+cattle market was reducing English rents; and accordingly, by an Act
+which was first passed in 1663, and was made perpetual in 1666, the
+importation of cattle into England was forbidden.
+
+"The effect of a measure of this kind, levelled at the principal article
+of the commerce of the nation, was necessarily most disastrous. The
+profound modification which it introduced into the course of Irish
+industry was sufficiently shown by the estimate of Sir W. Petty, who
+declares that before the statute three-fourths of the trade of Ireland
+was with England, but not one-fourth of it since that time. In the very
+year when this Bill was passed another measure was taken not less fatal
+to the interest of the country. In the first Navigation Act, Ireland was
+placed on the same terms as England; but in the Act as amended in 1663
+she was omitted, and was thus deprived of the whole Colonial trade. With
+the exception of a very few specified articles no European merchandise
+could be imported into the British Colonies except directly from
+England, in ships built in England, and manned chiefly by English
+sailors. No articles, with a few exceptions, could be brought from the
+Colonies to Europe without being first unladen in England. In 1670 this
+exclusion of Ireland was confirmed, and in 1696 it was rendered more
+stringent, for it was enacted that no goods of any sort could be
+imported directly from the Colonies to Ireland. It will be remembered
+that at this time the chief British Colonies were those of America, and
+that Ireland, by her geographical position, was naturally of all
+countries most fitted for the American trade.
+
+"As far, then, as the Colonial trade was concerned, Ireland at this time
+gained nothing whatever by her connection with England. To other
+countries, however, her ports were still open, and in time of peace a
+foreign commerce was unrestricted. When forbidden to export their cattle
+to England, the Irish turned their land chiefly into sheep-walks, and
+proceeded energetically to manufacture the wool. Some faint traces of
+this manufacture may be detected from an early period, and Lord
+Strafford, when governing Ireland, had mentioned it with a
+characteristic comment. Speaking of the Irish he says, 'There was little
+or no manufactures amongst them, but some small beginnings towards a
+cloth trade, which I had and so should still discourage all I could,
+unless otherwise directed by His Majesty and their Lordships. It might
+be feared that they would beat us out of the trade itself by
+underselling us, which they were able to do.' With the exception,
+however, of an abortive effort by this governor, the Irish wool
+manufacture was in no degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned with
+special favour in many Acts of Parliament; and it was in a great degree
+on the faith of this long-continued legislative sanction that it was so
+greatly expanded. The poverty of Ireland, the low state of civilization
+of a large proportion of its inhabitants, the effects of the civil wars
+which had so recently convulsed it, and the exclusion of its products
+from the English Colonies, were doubtless great obstacles to
+manufacturing enterprise; but, on the other hand, Irish wool was very
+good, living was cheaper, taxes were lighter than in England, a spirit
+of real industrial energy began to pervade the country, and a
+considerable number of English manufacturers came over to colonize it.
+There appeared for a time every probability that the Irish would become
+an industrial nation, and, had manufactures arisen, their whole social,
+political, and economical condition would have been changed. But English
+jealousy again interposed. By an Act of crushing and unprecedented
+severity, which was introduced in 1698 and carried in 1699, the export
+of the Irish woollen manufactures, not only to England, but also to all
+other countries, was absolutely forbidden.
+
+"The effects of this measure were terrible almost beyond conception. The
+main industry of the country was at a blow completely and irretrievably
+annihilated. A vast population was thrown into a condition of utter
+destitution. Several thousands of manufacturers left the country, and
+carried their skill and enterprise to Germany, France, and Spain. The
+western and southern districts of Ireland are said to have been nearly
+depopulated. Emigration to America began on a large scale, and the blow
+was so severe that long after, a kind of chronic famine prevailed."[33]
+
+Mr. Lecky relates with pride how the penal code was relaxed, and the
+commercial restrictions were removed, while the Irish Parliament,
+essentially a Protestant and landlord body, still existed, and shows how
+the cause of Catholic Emancipation was retarded by the Union.
+
+"The Relief Bill of '93 naturally suggests a consideration of the
+question so often agitated in Ireland, whether the Union was really a
+benefit to the Roman Catholic cause. It has been argued that Catholic
+Emancipation was an impossibility as long as the Irish Parliament
+lasted; for in a country where the great majority were Roman Catholics,
+it would be folly to expect the members of the dominant creed to
+surrender a monopoly on which their ascendency depended. The arguments
+against this view are, I believe, overwhelming. The injustice of the
+disqualification was far more striking before the Union than after it.
+In the one case, the Roman Catholics were excluded from the Parliament
+of a nation of which they were the great majority; in the other, they
+were excluded from the Parliament of an empire in which they were a
+small minority. Grattan, Plunket, Curran, Burrowes, and Ponsonby were
+the great supporters of Catholic Emancipation, and the great opponents
+of the Union. Clare and Duigenan were the two great opponents of
+emancipation, and the great supporters of the Union. At a time when
+scarcely any public opinion existed in Ireland, when the Roman Catholics
+were nearly quiescent, and when the leaning of Government was generally
+liberal, the Irish Protestants admitted their fellow-subjects to the
+magistracy, to the jury-box, and to the franchise. By this last measure
+they gave them an amount of political power which necessarily implied
+complete emancipation. Even if no leader of genius had arisen in the
+Roman Catholic ranks, and if no spirit of enthusiasm had animated their
+councils, the influence possessed by a body who formed three fourths of
+the population, who were rapidly rising in wealth, and who could send
+their representatives to Parliament, would have been sufficient to
+ensure their triumph. If the Irish Legislature had continued, it would
+have been found impossible to resist the demand for reform; and every
+reform, by diminishing the overgrown power of a few Protestant
+landholders, would have increased that of the Roman Catholics. The
+concession accorded in 1793 was, in fact, far greater and more important
+than that accorded in 1829, and it placed the Roman Catholics, in a
+great measure, above the mercy of Protestants. But this was not all. The
+sympathies of the Protestants were being rapidly enlisted in their
+behalf. The generation to which Charlemont and Flood belonged had passed
+away, and all the leading intellects of the country, almost all the
+Opposition, and several conspicuous members of the Government, were
+warmly in favour of emancipation. The rancour which at present exists
+between the members of the two creeds appears then to have been almost
+unknown, and the real obstacle to emancipation was not the feelings of
+the people, but the policy of the Government. The Bar may be considered
+on most subjects a very fair exponent of the educated opinion of the
+nation; and Wolf Tone observed, in 1792, that it was almost unanimous in
+favour of the Catholics; and it is not without importance, as showing
+the tendencies of the rising generation, that a large body of the
+students of Dublin University in 1795 presented an address to Grattan,
+thanking him for his labours in the cause. The Roman Catholics were
+rapidly gaining the public opinion of Ireland, when the Union arrayed
+against them another public opinion which was deeply prejudiced against
+their faith, and almost entirely removed from their influence. Compare
+the twenty years before the Union with the twenty years that followed
+it, and the change is sufficiently manifest. There can scarcely be a
+question that if Lord Fitzwilliam had remained in office the Irish
+Parliament would readily have given emancipation. In the United
+Parliament for many years it was obstinately rejected, and if O'Connell
+had never arisen it would probably never have been granted unqualified
+by the veto. In 1828 when the question was brought forward in
+Parliament, sixty-one out of ninety-three Irish members, forty-five out
+of sixty-one Irish county members, voted in its favour. Year after year
+Grattan and Plunket brought forward the case of their fellow-countrymen
+with an eloquence and a perseverance worthy of their great cause; but
+year after year they were defeated. It was not till the great tribune
+had arisen, till he had moulded his co-religionists into one compact and
+threatening mass, and had brought the country to the verge of
+revolution, that the tardy boon was conceded. Eloquence and argument
+proved alike unavailing when unaccompanied by menace, and Catholic
+Emancipation was confessedly granted because to withhold it would be to
+produce a rebellion."[34]
+
+Many people will think that this is a sufficiently weighty condemnation
+of the Union, but what follows is a still graver reflection on that
+untoward measure.
+
+"In truth the harmonious co-operation of Ireland with England depends
+much less upon the framework of the institutions of the former country
+than upon the dispositions of its people and upon the classes who guide
+its political life. With a warm and loyal attachment to the connection
+pervading the nation, the largest amount of self-government might be
+safely conceded, and the most defective political arrangement might
+prove innocuous. This is the true cement of nations, and no change,
+however plausible in theory, can be really advantageous which
+contributes to diminish it. Theorists may argue that it would be better
+for Ireland to become in every respect a province of England; they may
+contend that a union of Legislatures, accompanied by a corresponding
+fusion of characters and identification of hopes, interests, and
+desires, would strengthen the empire; but as a matter of fact this was
+not what was effected in 1800. The measure of Pitt centralized, but it
+did not unite, or rather, by uniting the Legislatures it divided the
+nations. In a country where the sentiment of nationality was as intense
+as in any part of Europe, it destroyed the national Legislature contrary
+to the manifest wish of the people, and by means so corrupt,
+treacherous, and shameful that they are never likely to be forgotten. In
+a country where, owing to the religious difference, it was peculiarly
+necessary that a vigorous lay public opinion should be fostered to
+dilute or restrain the sectarian spirit, it suppressed the centre and
+organ of political life, directed the energies of the community into the
+channels of sectarianism, drove its humours inwards, and thus began a
+perversion of public opinion which has almost destroyed the elements of
+political progress. In a country where the people have always been
+singularly destitute of self-reliance, and at the same time eminently
+faithful to their leaders, it withdrew the guidance of affairs from the
+hands of the resident gentry, and, by breaking their power, prepared the
+ascendency of the demagogue or the rebel. In two plain ways it was
+dangerous to the connection: it incalculably increased the aggregate
+disloyalty of the people, and it destroyed the political supremacy of
+the class that is most attached to the connection. The Irish Parliament,
+with all its faults, was an eminently loyal body. The Irish people
+through the eighteenth century, in spite of great provocations, were on
+the whole a loyal people till the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and even
+then a few very moderate measures of reform might have reclaimed them.
+Burke, in his _Letters on a Regicide Peace_, when reviewing the elements
+of strength on which England could confide in her struggle with
+revolutionary France, placed in the very first rank the co-operation of
+Ireland. At the present day, it is to be feared that most impartial men
+would regard Ireland, in the event of a great European war, rather as a
+source of weakness than of strength. More than seventy years have passed
+since the boasted measure of Pitt, and it is unfortunately incontestable
+that the lower orders in Ireland are as hostile to the system of
+government under which they live as the Hungarian people have ever been
+to Austrian, or the Roman to Papal rule; that Irish disloyalty is
+multiplying enemies of England wherever the English tongue is spoken;
+and that the national sentiment runs so strongly that multitudes of
+Irish Catholics look back with deep affection to the Irish Parliament,
+although no Catholic could sit within its walls, and although it was
+only during the last seven years of its independent existence that
+Catholics could vote for its members. Among the opponents of the Union
+were many of the most loyal, as well as nearly all the ablest men in
+Ireland; and Lord Charlemont, who died shortly before the measure was
+consummated, summed up the feelings of many in the emphatic sentence
+with which he protested against it. 'It would more than any other
+measure,' he said, 'contribute to the separation of two countries the
+perpetual connection of which is one of the warmest wishes of my heart.'
+
+"In fact, the Union of 1800 was not only a great crime, but was also,
+like most crimes, a great blunder. The manner in which it was carried
+was not only morally scandalous; it also entirely vitiated it as a work
+of statesmanship. No great political measure can be rationally judged
+upon its abstract merits, and without considering the character and the
+wishes of the people for whom it is intended. It is now idle to discuss
+what might have been the effect of a Union if it had been carried before
+1782, when the Parliament was still unemancipated; if it had been the
+result of a spontaneous movement of public opinion; if it had been
+accompanied by the emancipation of the Catholics. Carried as it was
+prematurely, in defiance of the national sentiment of the people and of
+the protests of the unbribed talent of the country, it has deranged the
+whole course of political development, driven a large proportion of the
+people into sullen disloyalty, and almost destroyed healthy public
+opinion. In comparing the abundance of political talent in Ireland
+during the last century with the striking absence of it at present,
+something no doubt may be attributed to the absence of protection for
+literary property in Ireland in the former period, which may have
+directed an unusual portion of the national talent to politics, and
+something to the Colonial and Indian careers which have of late years
+been thrown open to competition; but when all due allowances have been
+made for these, the contrast is sufficiently impressive. Few impartial
+men can doubt that the tone of political life and the standard of
+political talent have been lowered, while sectarian animosity has been
+greatly increased, and the extent to which Fenian principles have
+permeated the people is a melancholy comment upon the prophesies that
+the Union would put an end to disloyalty in Ireland."[35]
+
+Mr. Lecky's views as to what ought to have been done in 1800 deserve to
+be set forth.
+
+"While, however, the Irish policy of Pitt appears to be both morally and
+politically deserving of almost unmitigated condemnation, I cannot agree
+with those who believe that the arrangement of 1782 could have been
+permanent. The Irish Parliament would doubtless have been in time
+reformed, but it would have soon found its situation intolerable.
+Imperial policy must necessarily have been settled by the Imperial
+Parliament, in which Ireland had no voice; and, unlike Canada or
+Australia, Ireland is profoundly affected by every change of Imperial
+policy. Connection with England was of overwhelming importance to the
+lesser country, while the tie uniting them would have been found
+degrading by one nation and inconvenient to the other. Under such
+circumstances a Union of some kind was inevitable. It was simply a
+question of time, and must have been demanded by Irish opinion. At the
+same time, it would not, I think, have been such a Union as that of
+1800. The conditions of Irish and English politics are so extremely
+different, and the reasons for preserving in Ireland a local centre of
+political life are so powerful, that it is probable a Federal Union
+would have been preferred. Under such a system the Irish Parliament
+would have continued to exist, but would have been restricted to purely
+local subjects, while an Imperial Parliament, in which Irish
+representatives sat, would have directed the policy of the empire."[36]
+
+
+MR. GOLDWIN SMITH.
+
+None of the recent opponents of Home Rule have written against that
+policy with more brilliance and epigrammatic keenness than Mr. Goldwin
+Smith. But no one has stated with more force the facts and
+considerations which, operating on men's mind for years past, have made
+the Liberal party Home Rulers now. His _coup d'oeil_ remains the most
+pointed indictment ever drawn from the historical annals of Ireland
+against the English methods of governing that country. Twenty years ago
+he anticipated the advice recently given by Mr. Gladstone. In 1867 he
+wrote:--
+
+"I have myself sought and found in the study of Irish history the
+explanation of the paradox, that a people with so many gifts, so
+amiable, naturally so submissive to rulers, and everywhere but in their
+own country industrious, are in their own country bywords of idleness,
+lawlessness, disaffection, and agrarian crime."[37] He explains the
+paradox thus: "But it is difficult to distinguish the faults of the
+Irish from their misfortunes. It has been well said of their past
+industrial character and history,--'We were reckless, ignorant,
+improvident, drunken, and idle. We were idle, for we had nothing to do;
+we were reckless, for we had no hope; we were ignorant, for learning was
+denied us; we were improvident, for we had no future; we were drunken,
+for we sought to forget our misery. That time has passed away for ever.'
+No part of this defence is probably more true than that which connects
+the drunkenness of the Irish people with their misery. Drunkenness is,
+generally speaking, the vice of despair; and it springs from the despair
+of the Irish peasant as rankly as from that of his English fellow. The
+sums of money which have lately been transmitted by Irish emigrants to
+their friends in Ireland seem a conclusive answer to much loose
+denunciation of the national character, both in a moral and an
+industrial point of view.... There seems no good reason for believing
+that the Irish Kelts are averse to labour, provided they be placed, as
+people of all races require to be placed, for two or three generations
+in circumstances favourable to industry."[38] He shows that the Irish
+have not been so placed. "Still more does justice require that allowance
+should be made on historical grounds for the failings of the Irish
+people. If they are wanting in industry, in regard for the rights of
+property, in reverence for the law, history furnishes a full explanation
+of their defects, without supposing in them any inherent depravity, or
+even any inherent weakness. They have never had the advantage of the
+training through which other nations have passed in their gradual rise
+from barbarism to civilization. The progress of the Irish people was
+arrested at almost a primitive stage, and a series of calamities,
+following close upon each other, have prevented it from ever fairly
+resuming its course. The pressure of overwhelming misery has now been
+reduced; government has become mild and just; the civilizing agency of
+education has been introduced; the upper classes are rapidly returning
+to their duty, and the natural effect is at once seen in the improved
+character of the people. Statesmen are bound to be well acquainted with
+the historical sources of the evil with which they have to deal,
+especially when those evils are of such a nature as, at first aspect, to
+imply depravity in a nation. There are still speakers and writers who
+seem to think that the Irish are incurably vicious, because the
+accumulated effects of so many centuries cannot be removed at once by a
+wave of the legislator's wand. Some still believe, or affect to believe,
+that the very air of the island is destructive of the characters and
+understandings of all who breathe it."[39]
+
+Elsewhere he adds, referring to the land system:
+
+"How many centuries of a widely different training have the English
+people gone through in order to acquire their boasted love of law."[40]
+
+Of the "training" through which the Irish went, he says--
+
+"The existing settlement of land in Ireland, whether dating from the
+confiscations of the Stuarts, or from those of Cromwell, rests on a
+proscription three or four times as long as that on which the settlement
+of land rests over a considerable part of France. It may, therefore, be
+considered as placed upon discussion in the estimation of all sane men;
+and, this being the case, it is safe to observe that no inherent want of
+respect for property is shown by the Irish people if a proprietorship
+which had its origin within historical memory in flagrant wrong is less
+sacred in their eyes than it would be if it had its origin in immemorial
+right."[41]
+
+The character which he gives of Irish landlordism deserves to be quoted:
+
+"The Cromwellian landowners soon lost their religious character, while
+they retained all the hardness of the fanatic and the feelings of
+Puritan conquerors towards a conquered Catholic people. 'I have eaten
+with them,' said one, 'drunk with them, fought with them; but I never
+prayed with them.' Their descendants became, probably, the very worst
+upper class with which a country was ever afflicted. The habits of the
+Irish gentry grew beyond measure brutal and reckless, and the coarseness
+of their debaucheries would have disgusted the crew of Comus. Their
+drunkenness, their blasphemy, their ferocious duelling, left the squires
+of England far behind. If there was a grotesque side to their vices
+which mingles laughter with our reprobation, this did not render their
+influence less pestilent to the community of which the motive of destiny
+had made them social chiefs. Fortunately, their recklessness was sure,
+in the end, to work, to a certain extent, its own cure; and in the
+background of their swinish and uproarious drinking-bouts, the
+Encumbered Estates Act rises to our view."[42]
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith deals with agrarian crime thus:
+
+"The atrocities perpetrated by the Whiteboys, especially in the earlier
+period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew somewhat less inhuman),
+are such as to make the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in
+speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be
+unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or
+to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the
+part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive
+at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian
+conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was
+very small. In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 crimes, 627 were Whiteboy,
+or agrarian, and even of the remainder, many, being crimes of violence,
+were probably committed from the same motive.
+
+"In plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered the Whiteboy
+code were to the people the organs of a wild law of social morality by
+which, on the whole, the interest of the peasant was protected. They
+were not regular tribunals; neither were the secret tribunals of Germany
+in the Middle Ages, the existence of which, and the submission of the
+people to their jurisdiction, implied the presence of much violence, but
+not of much depravity, considering the wildness of the times. The
+Whiteboys 'found in their favour already existing a general and settled
+hatred of the law among the great body of the peasantry.'[43] We have
+seen how much the law, and the ministers of the law, had done to deserve
+the peasant's love. We have seen, too, in what successive guises
+property had presented itself to his mind: first as open rapine; then as
+robbery carried on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code;
+finally as legalized and systematic oppression. Was it possible that he
+should have formed so affectionate a reverence either for law or
+property as would be proof against the pressure of starvation?"[44] "A
+people cannot be expected to love and reverence oppression because it is
+consigned to the statute-book, and called law."[45]
+
+These extracts are taken from _Irish History and Irish Character_, which
+was published in 1861. But in 1867 Mr. Goldwin Smith wrote a series of
+letters to the _Daily News_, which were republished in 1868 under the
+title of _The Irish Question_; and these letters form, perhaps, the most
+statesmanlike and far-seeing pronouncement that has ever been made on
+the Irish difficulty.
+
+In the preface Mr. Goldwin Smith begins:
+
+"The Irish legislation of the last forty years, notwithstanding the
+adoption of some remedial measures, has failed through the indifference
+of Parliament to the sentiments of Irishmen; and the harshness of
+English public opinion has embittered the effects on Irish feeling of
+the indifference of Parliament. Occasionally a serious effort has been
+made by an English statesman to induce Parliament to approach Irish
+questions in that spirit of sympathy, and with that anxious desire to be
+just, without which a Parliament in London cannot legislate wisely for
+Ireland. Such efforts have hitherto met with no response; is it too much
+to hope that it will be otherwise in the year now opening?"[46]
+
+The only comment I shall make on these words is: they were penned more
+than half a century after Mr. Pitt's Union, which was to shower down
+blessings on the Irish people.
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith's first letter was written on the 23rd of November,
+1867, the day of the execution of the Fenians Allen, Larkin, and
+O'Brien. He says--
+
+"There can be no doubt, I apprehend, that the Irish difficulty has
+entered on a new phase, and that Irish disaffection has, to repeat an
+expression which I heard used in Ireland, come fairly into a line with
+the other discontented nationalities of Europe. Active Fenianism
+probably pervades only the lowest class; passive sympathy, which the
+success of the movement would at once convert into active co-operation,
+extends, it is to be feared, a good deal higher.
+
+"England has ruin before her, unless she can hit on a remedy, and
+overcome any obstacles of class interest or of national pride which
+would prevent its application, the part of Russia in Poland, or of
+Austria in Italy--a part cruel, hateful, demoralizing, contrary to all
+our high principles and professions, and fraught with dangers to our own
+freedom. Our position will be worse than that of Russia in this respect,
+that, while her Poland is only a province, our Fenianism is an element
+pervading every city of the United Kingdom in which Irish abound, and
+allying itself with kindred misery, discontent, and disorder.
+Wretchedness, the result of misgovernment, has caused the Irish people
+to multiply with the recklessness of despair, and now here are their
+avenging hosts in the midst of us, here is the poison of their
+disaffection running through every member of our social frame. Not only
+so, but the same wretchedness has sent millions of emigrants to form an
+Irish nation in the United States, where the Irish are a great political
+power, swaying by their votes the councils of the American Republic, and
+in immediate contact with those Transatlantic possessions of England,
+the retention of which it is now patriotic to applaud, and will one day
+be patriotic to have dissuaded.
+
+" ... That Ireland is not at this moment, materially speaking, in a
+particularly suffering state, but, on the contrary, the farmers are
+rather prosperous, and wages, even when allowance is made for the rise
+in the price of provisions, considerably higher than they were, only
+adds to the significance of this widespread disaffection.
+
+"The Fenian movement is not religious, nor radically economical (though
+no doubt it has in it a socialistic element), but national, and the
+remedy for it must be one which cures national discontent. This is the
+great truth which the English people have to lay to heart."[47]
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith then dispels the notion that the Irish question is a
+religious one.
+
+"When Fenianism first appeared, the Orangemen, in accordance with their
+fixed idea, ascribed it to the priests. They were undeceived, I was
+told, by seeing a priest run away from the Fenians in fear of his
+life."[48]
+
+Neither was it a question of the land.
+
+"The land question, no doubt, lies nearer to the heart of the matter,
+and it is the great key to Irish history in the past; but I do not
+believe that even this is fundamental."
+
+He then states what is "fundamental."[49]
+
+"The real root of the disaffection which exhibits itself at present in
+the guise of Fenianism, and which has been suddenly kindled into flame
+by the arming of the Irish in the American civil war, but which existed
+before in a nameless and smouldering state, is, as I believe, the want
+of national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects of
+national reverence and attachment, and consequently of anything
+deserving to be called national life. The English Crown and Parliament
+the Irish have never learnt, nor have they had any chance of learning,
+to love, or to regard as national, notwithstanding the share which was
+given them, too late, in the representation. The greatness of England is
+nothing to them. Her history is nothing, or worse. The success of
+Irishmen in London consoles the Irish in Ireland no more than the
+success of Italian adventurers in foreign countries (which was very
+remarkable) consoled the Italian people. The drawing off of Irish
+talent, in fact, turns to an additional grievance in their minds. Dublin
+is a modern Tara, a metropolis from which the glory has departed; and
+the viceroyalty, though it pleases some of the tradesmen, fails
+altogether to satisfy the people. 'In Ireland we can make no appeal to
+patriotism, we can have no patriotic sentiments in our schoolbooks, no
+patriotic emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything
+patriotic is rebellious.' These were the words uttered in my hearing,
+not by a complaining demagogue, but by a desponding statesman. They
+seemed to me pregnant with fatal truths.
+
+"If the craving for national institutions, and the disaffection bred in
+this void of the Irish people's heart, seem to us irrational and even
+insane, in the absence of any more substantial grievance, we ought to
+ask ourselves what would become of our own patriotism if we had no
+national institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence,
+even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in intention, by
+a neighbouring people whom we regarded as aliens, and who, in fact,
+regarded us pretty much in the same light. Let us first judge ourselves
+fairly, and then judge the Irish, remembering always that they are more
+imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of national feeling
+and affection more than ourselves."[50]
+
+And all this was written sixty-seven years after the Union of 1800.
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith then deals with the subject of the Irish and Scotch
+unions much in the same way as Mr. Lecky.
+
+"The incorporation of the Scotch nation with the English, being
+conducted on the right principles by the great Whig statesman of Anne,
+has been perfectly successful. The attempt to incorporate the Irish
+nation with the English and Scotch, the success of which would have
+been, if possible, a still greater blessing, being conducted by very
+different people and on very different principles, has unhappily failed.
+What might have been the result if even the Hanoverian sovereigns had
+done the personal duty to their Irish kingdom which they have
+unfortunately neglected, it is now too late to inquire. The Irish Union
+has missed its port, and, in order to reach it, will have to tack again.
+We may hold down a dependency, of course, by force, in Russian and
+Austrian fashion; but force will never make the hearts of two nations
+one, especially when they are divided by the sea. Once get rid of this
+deadly international hatred, and there will be hope of real union in the
+future."[51]
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith finally proposes a "plan" by which the "deadly
+international hatred" might be got rid of, and a "real union" brought
+about. Here it is.
+
+"1. The residence of the Court at Dublin, not merely to gratify the
+popular love of royalty and its pageantries, which no man of sense
+desires to stimulate, but to assure the Irish people, in the only way
+possible as regards the mass of them, that the sovereign of the United
+Kingdom is really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for
+and honoured with the other subjects of the realm. This would also tend
+to make Dublin a real capital, and to gather and retain there a portion
+of the Irish talent which now seeks its fortune elsewhere.
+
+"2. An occasional session (say once in every three years) of the
+Imperial Parliament in Dublin, partly for the same purposes as the last
+proposal, but also because the circumstances of Ireland are likely to
+be, for some time at least, really peculiar, and the personal
+acquaintance of our legislators with them is the only sufficient
+security for good Irish legislation. There could be no serious
+difficulty in holding a short session in the Irish capital, where there
+is plenty of accommodation for both Houses.
+
+"3. A liberal measure of local self-government for Ireland. I would not
+vest the power in any single assembly for all Ireland, because Ulster is
+really a different country from the other provinces. I would give each
+province a council of its own, and empower that council to legislate
+(subject, of course, to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament) on all
+matters not essential to the political and legal unity of the empire, in
+which I would include local education. The provincial councils should of
+course be elective, and the register of electors might be the same as
+that of electors to the Imperial Parliament. In England itself the
+extension of local institutions, as political training schools for the
+masses, as checks upon the sweeping action of the great central
+assembly, and as the best organs of legislation in all matters requiring
+(as popular education, among others, does) adaptation to the
+circumstances of particular districts, would, I think, have formed a
+part of any statesmanlike revision of our political system. Here, also,
+much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing the
+present business of quarter sessions, other than the judicial business,
+together with such other matters as the central legislative might think
+fit to vest in local hands, to an assembly elected by the county."[52]
+
+Thus it will be seen that twenty years ago Mr. Goldwin Smith anticipated
+Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of provincial councils, and got a good way on
+the road to an Irish Parliament.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MR. DICEY.
+
+A fairer controversalist, or an abler supporter of the "paper Union,"
+than Mr. Dicey there is not; nevertheless no man has fired more
+effective shots into Mr. Pitt's unfortunate arrangement of 1800.
+
+How well has the "failure" of that arrangement been described in these
+pithy sentences--"Eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of
+the Treaty of Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do
+not yet form an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more
+wretched (for the whole European world has made progress, and Ireland
+with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness, and Irish disaffection to
+England is, if not deeper, more widespread than in 1800. An Act meant by
+its authors to be a source of the prosperity and concord which, though
+slowly, followed upon the Union with Scotland, has not made Ireland
+rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the
+feud between Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of
+Irish tenants, has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and
+has, therefore, not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment
+which can fairly be brought against the Act of Union."[53]
+
+What follows reflects honour on Mr. Dicey as an honest opponent who does
+not shrink from facts; but what a wholesale condemnation of the policy
+of the Imperial Parliament!
+
+"On one point alone (it may be urged) all men, of whatever party or of
+whatever nation, who have seriously studied the annals of Ireland are
+agreed--the history is a record of incessant failure on the part of the
+Government, and of incessant misery on the part of the people. On this
+matter, if on no other, De Beaumont, Froude, and Lecky are at one. As to
+the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may and do
+differ; that England, whether from her own fault or the fault of the
+Irish people, or from perversity of circumstances, has failed in Ireland
+of achieving the elementary results of good government is as certain as
+any fact of history or of experience. Every scheme has been tried in
+turn, and no scheme has succeeded or has even, it may be suggested,
+produced its natural effects. Oppression of the Catholics has increased
+the adherents and strengthened the hold of Catholicism. Protestant
+supremacy, while it lasted, did not lead even to Protestant contentment,
+and the one successful act of resistance to the English dominion was
+effected by a Protestant Parliament supported by an army of volunteers,
+led by a body of Protestant officers. The independence gained by a
+Protestant Parliament led, after eighteen years, to a rebellion so
+reckless and savage that it caused, if it did not justify, the
+destruction of the Parliament and the carrying of the Union. The Act of
+Union did not lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on
+the face of it (though the appearance, it must be admitted, was
+delusive) to be a copy of the law which bound England and Scotland into
+a common country inspired by common patriotism, produced conspiracy and
+agitation, and at last placed England and Ireland further apart,
+morally, than they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of
+Union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not combined with
+Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were emancipated, but emancipation,
+instead of producing loyalty, brought forth the cry for repeal. The
+Repeal movement ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the
+attempted rebellion in 1848. Suppressed rebellion begot Fenianism, to be
+followed in its turn by the agitation for Home Rule. The movement
+relies, it is said, and there is truth in the assertion, on
+constitutional methods for obtaining redress. But constitutional
+measures are supplemented by boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of
+dynamite. A century of reform has given us Mr. Parnell instead of
+Grattan, and it is more than possible that Mr. Parnell may be succeeded
+by leaders in whose eyes Mr. Davitt's policy may appear to be tainted
+with moderation. No doubt, in each case the failure of good measures
+admits, like every calamity in public or private life, of explanation,
+and after the event it is easy to see why, for example, the Poor Law,
+when extended to Ireland, did not produce even the good effects such as
+they are which in England are to be set against its numerous evils; or
+why an emigration of unparalleled proportions has diminished population
+without much diminishing poverty; why the disestablishment of the
+Anglican Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to
+England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts have not
+contented Irish farmers. It is easy enough, in short, and this without
+having any recourse to theory of race, and without attributing to
+Ireland either more or less of original sin than falls to the lot of
+humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship--and all
+statesmanship, it should be remembered, is imperfect--has failed in
+obtaining good results at all commensurate with its generally good
+intentions. Failure, however, is none the less failure because its
+causes admit of analysis. It is no defence to bankruptcy that an
+insolvent can, when brought before the Court, lucidly explain the errors
+which resulted in disastrous speculations. The failure of English
+statesmanship, explain it as you will, has produced the one last and
+greatest evil which misgovernment can cause. It has created hostility to
+the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work in Ireland
+because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the
+actions of the courts, are in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in
+full sympathy with law-breakers."[54]
+
+No Home Ruler has described the evils of English misrule in Ireland with
+such vigour as this.
+
+"Bad administration, religious persecution, above all, a thoroughly
+vicious land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping confiscations as to
+make it, at any rate, a plausible assertion that all land in Ireland has
+during the course of Irish history been confiscated at least thrice
+over, are admittedly some of the causes, if they do not constitute the
+whole cause, of the one immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy
+of England. This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the
+law of the land prevailing among large numbers of Irish people. The
+existence of this disaffection, whatever be the inference to be drawn
+from it, is undeniable. A series of so-called Coercion Acts, passed both
+before and since the Act of Union, give undeniable evidence, if evidence
+were wanted, of the ceaseless and, as it would appear, almost
+irrepressible resistance in Ireland offered by the people to the
+enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest inclination to underrate
+the lasting and formidable character of this opposition between opinion
+and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious
+and infinitely painful topic, question for a moment that the ultimate
+strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at the lowest the acquiescence,
+of the mass of the population. Judges, constables, and troops become
+almost powerless when the conscience of the people permanently opposes
+the execution of the law. Severity produces either no effect or bad
+effects; executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs; and
+jurymen and witnesses meet with the execration and often with the fate
+of criminals. On such a point it is best to take the opinion of a
+foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions from which no Englishman
+or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free.
+
+"'Quand vous en êtes arroês à ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie
+de regueurs tous vos efforts pour rétabler l'ordre et la paix seront
+inutiles. En vain, pour réprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez à
+votre aide toutes les sévérités du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez
+des lois cruelles pour arrêter le cours de révoltantes cruautés;
+vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre délit se rattachant à ces
+grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre impuissance, vous
+suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaries proclamerez des comtés entiers
+en état de suspicion légale, voilerez le principe de la liberté
+individuelle, créerez des cours martiales, des commissions
+extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur,
+multiplierez à l'excès les exécutions capitales.'"[55]
+
+The next passage is a trenchant condemnation of the "Union."
+
+"There exists in Europe no country so completely at unity with itself as
+Great Britain. Fifty years of reform have done their work, and have
+removed the discontents, the divisions, the disaffection, and the
+conspiracies which marked the first quarter, or the first half of this
+century. Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the
+force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community
+of interests. The distraction and the uncertainty of our political aims,
+the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise, in
+part at least, from the connection with Ireland. Neither Englishmen nor
+Irishmen are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for communities
+differing in historical associations and in political conceptions to
+keep step together in the path of progress. For other evils arising from
+the connection the blame must rest on English Statesmen. All the
+inherent vices of party government, all the weaknesses of the
+parliamentary system, all the evils arising from the perverse notion
+that reform ought always to be preceded by a period of lengthy and more
+than half factitious agitation met by equally factitious resistance,
+have been fostered and increased by the interaction of Irish and English
+politics. No one can believe that the inveterate habit of ruling one
+part of the United Kingdom on principles which no one would venture to
+apply to the government of any other part of it, can have produced
+anything but the most injurious effect on the stability of our
+Government and the character of our public men. The advocates of Home
+Rule find by far their strongest arguments for influencing English
+opinion, in the proofs which they produce that England, no less than
+Ireland, has suffered from a political arrangement under which legal
+union has failed to secure moral union. _These arguments, whatever their
+strength, are, however, it must be noted, more available to a
+Nationalist than to an advocate of federalism_."[56]
+
+The words which I have italicised are an expression of opinion; but
+nothing can alter the damning statement of fact--"legal union has failed
+to secure moral union." Nevertheless, Mr. Dicey advocates the
+maintenance of this legal union as it stands.
+
+"On the whole, then, it appears that, whatever changes or calamities the
+future may have in store, the maintenance of the Union is at this day
+the one sound policy for England to pursue. It is sound because it is
+expedient; it is sound because it is just."[57]
+
+
+I shall not discuss the question of Home Rule with the eminent writers
+whose works I have cited. It is enough that they demonstrate the failure
+of the Union. So convinced was Mr. Lecky, in 1871, of its failure, that
+he suggested a readjustment of the relations of the two countries on a
+federal basis;[58] and Mr. Goldwin Smith, in 1868, contended that the
+Irish difficulty could only be settled by the establishment of
+Provincial Councils, and an occasional session of the Imperial
+Parliament in Dublin. Mr. Dicey clings to the existing Union while
+demonstrating its failure, because he has persuaded himself that the
+only alternative is separation.
+
+Irishmen may be pardoned for acting on Mr. Dicey's facts, and
+disregarding his prophecies. The mass of Irishmen believe, with Grattan,
+that the ocean protests against separation as the sea protests against
+such a union as was attempted in 1800.[59]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 26: Omissions here and elsewhere are merely for purposes of
+space. In some places the omitted parts would strengthen the Irish case;
+in no place would they weaken it.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Lecky, _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, new edit.
+(1871), Introduction, pp. viii., xiv.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Lecky, _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, new edit.
+(1871), Introduction, pp. xiv., xv.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Lecky, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+vol. ii. pp. 59, 60.]
+
+[Footnote 30: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 33, 34.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 120-123.]
+
+[Footnote 32: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 125, 126.]
+
+[Footnote 33: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 34-37.]
+
+[Footnote 34: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 134-137.]
+
+[Footnote 35: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 192-195.]
+
+[Footnote 36: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 195, 196.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Goldwin Smith, _Three English Statesmen_, p. 274.]
+
+[Footnote 38: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 13, 14.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Ibid., p. 194.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Ibid., p. 142.]
+
+[Footnote 41: _Irish History and Irish Character_, p. 101.]
+
+[Footnote 42: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 139, 140.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Sir George Cornewall Lewis, _Irish Disturbances_, p. 97.]
+
+[Footnote 44: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 153-157.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Ibid., pp. 70, 71]
+
+[Footnote 46: _The Irish Question_, Preface, pp. iii., iv.]
+
+[Footnote 47: _The Irish Question_, pp. 3-5.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Ibid., p. 6.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Ibid., p. 7.]
+
+[Footnote 50: _The Irish Question_, pp. 7-9.]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Irish Question_, p. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 52: _The Irish Question_, pp. 16-18.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, p. 128.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 72-74.]
+
+[Footnote 55: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 92-94.--The
+foreigner is De Beaumont.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 151, 152.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Ibid., p. 288.]
+
+[Footnote 58: I hope I am not doing Mr. Lecky an injustice in this
+statement. I rely on the extract quoted from the _Leaders of Public
+Opinion in Ireland,_ at p. 176 of this volume; but see Introduction, p.
+xix.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Irish House of Commons, January 15th, 1800.]
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES.
+
+BY LORD THRING.[60]
+
+
+Ireland is a component member of the most complex political body the
+world has yet known; any inquiry, then, into the fitness of any
+particular form of government for that country involves an investigation
+of the structures of various composite nations, or nations made up of
+numerous political communities more or less differing from each other.
+From the examination of the nature of the common tie, and the
+circumstances which caused it to be adopted or imposed on the component
+peoples, we cannot but derive instruction, and be furnished with
+materials which will enable us to take a wide view of the question of
+Home Rule, and assist us in judging between the various remedies
+proposed for the cure of Irish disorders.
+
+The nature of the ties which bind, or have bound, the principal
+composite nations of the world together may be classified as--
+
+    1. Confederate unions.
+    2. Federal unions.
+    3. Imperial unions.
+
+A confederate union may be defined to mean an alliance between the
+governments of independent States, which agree to appoint a common
+superior authority having power to make peace and war and to demand
+contributions of men and money from the confederate States. Such
+superior authority has no power of enforcing its decrees except through
+the medium of the governments of the constituent States; or, in other
+words, in case of disobedience, by armed force.
+
+A federal union differs from a confederate union in the material fact
+that the common superior authority, instead of acting on the individual
+subjects of the constituent States through the medium of their
+respective governments, has a power, in respect of all matters within
+its jurisdiction, of enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding
+directly on the individual citizens.
+
+The distinguishing characteristics of an imperial union are, that it
+consists of an aggregate of communities, one of which is dominant, and
+that the component communities have been brought into association, not
+by arrangement between themselves, but by colonization, cession, and by
+other means emanating from the resources or power of the dominant
+community.
+
+The above-mentioned distinction between a Government having communities
+only for its subjects, and incapable of enforcing its orders by any
+other means than war, and a Government acting directly on individuals,
+must be constantly borne in mind, for in this lies the whole difference
+between a confederate and federal union; that is to say, between a
+confederacy which, in the case of the United States, lasted a few short
+years, and a federal union which, with the same people as subjects, has
+lasted nearly a century, and has stood the strain of the most terrible
+war of modern times.
+
+The material features of the Constitution of the United States have been
+explained in a previous article.[61] All that is necessary to call to
+mind here is, that the Government of the United States exercises a power
+of taxation throughout the whole Union by means of its own officers, and
+enforces its decrees through the medium of its own Courts. A Supreme
+Court has also been established, which has power to adjudicate on the
+constitutionality of all laws passed by the Legislature of the United
+States, or of any State, and to decide on all international questions.
+
+Switzerland was till 1848 an example of a confederate union or league of
+semi-independent States, which, unlike other confederacies, had existed
+with partial interruptions for centuries. This unusual vitality is
+attributed by Mill[62] to the circumstance that the confederate
+government felt its weakness so strongly that it hardly ever attempted
+to exercise any real authority. Its present government, finally settled
+in 1874, but based on fundamental laws passed in 1848, is a federal
+union formed on the pattern of the American Constitution. It consists of
+a federal assembly comprising two Chambers--the Upper Chamber composed
+of forty-four members chosen by the twenty-two cantons, two for each
+canton; the Lower consisting of 145 members chosen by direct election at
+the rate of one deputy for every 20,000 persons. The chief executive
+authority is deputed to a federal council consisting of seven members
+elected for three years by the federal assembly, and having at their
+head a president and vice-president, who are the first magistrates of
+the republic. There is also a federal tribunal, having similar functions
+to those of the supreme court of the United States of America,
+consisting of nine members elected for six years by the federal
+assembly.
+
+The Empire of Germany is a federal union, differing from the United
+States and Switzerland in having an hereditary emperor as its head. It
+comprises twenty-six States, who have "formed an eternal union for the
+protection of the realm, and the care of the welfare of the German
+people."[63] The King of Prussia, under the title of German Emperor,
+represents the empire in all its relations to foreign nations, and has
+the power of making peace and war, but if the war be more than a
+defensive war he must have the assent of the Upper House. The
+legislative body of the empire consists of two Houses--the Upper, called
+the Bundesrath, representing the several component States in different
+proportions according to their relative importance; the lower, the
+Reichstag, elected by the voters in 397 electoral districts, which are
+distributed amongst the constituent States in unequal numbers, regard
+being had to the population and circumstances of each State.
+
+The Austro-Hungarian Empire is a federal union, differing alike in its
+origin and construction from the federal unions above mentioned. In the
+beginning Austria and Hungary were independent countries--Austria a
+despotism, Hungary a constitutional monarchy, with ancient laws and
+customs dating back to the foundation of the kingdom in 895. In the
+sixteenth century the supreme power in both countries--that is to say,
+the despotic monarchy in Austria and the constitutional monarchy in
+Hungary--became vested in the same person; as might have been
+anticipated, the union was not a happy one. If we dip into Heeren's
+_Political System of Europe_ at intervals selected almost at random, the
+following notices will be found in relation to Austria and
+Hungary:--Between 1671 and 1700 "political unity in the Austrian
+monarchy was to have been enforced especially in the principal country
+(Hungary), for this was regarded as the sole method of establishing
+power; the consequence was an almost perpetual revolutionary state of
+affairs."[64] Again, in the next chapter, commenting on the period
+between 1740 and 1786: "Hungary, in fact the chief, was treated like a
+conquered province; subjected to the most oppressive commercial
+restraints, it was regarded as a colony from which Austria exacted what
+she could for her own advantage. The injurious consequences of this
+internal discord are evident." Coming to modern times we find that
+oppression followed oppression with sickening monotony, and that at last
+the determination of Austria to stamp out the Constitution in Hungary
+gave rise to the insurrection of 1849, which Austria suppressed with the
+assistance of Russia, and as a penalty declared the Hungarian
+Constitution to be forfeited, and thereupon Hungary was incorporated
+with Austria, as Ireland was incorporated with Great Britain in 1800.
+Both events were the consequences of unsuccessful rebellions; but the
+junction which, in the case of Hungary, was enforced by the sword, was
+in Ireland more smoothly carried into effect by corruption. Hungary,
+sullen and discontented, waited for Austria's calamity as her
+opportunity, and it came after the battle of Sadowa. Austria had just
+emerged from a fearful conflict, and Count Beust[65] felt that unless
+some resolute effort was made to meet the views of the constitutional
+party in Hungary, the dismemberment of the empire must be the result.
+Now, what was the course he took? Was it a tightening of the bonds
+between Austria and Hungary? On the contrary, to maintain the unity of
+the empire he dissolved its union and restored to Hungary its ancient
+constitutional privileges. Austria and Hungary each had its own
+Parliament for local purposes. To manage the imperial concerns of peace
+and war, and the foreign relations, a controlling body, called the
+Delegations, was established, consisting of 120 members, of whom half
+represent and are chosen by the Legislature of Austria, and the other
+half by that of Hungary; the Upper House of each country returning
+twenty members, and the Lower House forty.[66] Ordinarily the delegates
+sit and vote in two Chambers, but if they disagree the two branches
+must meet together and give their final vote without debate, which is
+binding on the whole empire.[67]
+
+The question arises, What is the magnetic influence which induces
+communities of men to combine together in federal unions? Undoubtedly it
+is the feeling of nationality; and what is nationality? Mr. Mill
+says,[68] "a portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality
+if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not
+exist between them and any others; which make them co-operate with each
+other more willingly than other people; desire to be under the same
+government, and desire that it should be a government by themselves or a
+portion of themselves exclusively." He then proceeds to state that the
+feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes.
+Sometimes it is the identity of race and descent; community of language
+and community of religion greatly contribute to it; geographical limits
+are one of its causes; but the strongest of all is identity of political
+antecedents: the possession of a national history and consequent
+community of recollections--collective pride and humiliation, pleasure
+and regret--connected with the same incidents in the past.
+
+The only point to be noted further in reference to the foregoing federal
+unions, is that the same feeling of nationality which, in the United
+States, Switzerland, and the German Empire, produced a closer legal bond
+of union, in the case of Austria-Hungary operated to dissolve the
+amalgamation formed in 1849 of the two States, and to produce a federal
+union of States in place of a single State.
+
+One conclusion seems to follow irresistibly from any review of the
+construction of the various States above described: that the stability
+of a nation bears no relation whatever to the legal compactness or
+homogeneity of its component parts. Russia and France, the most compact
+political societies in Europe, do not, to say the least, rest on a
+firmer basis than Germany and Switzerland, the inhabitants of which are
+subjected to the obligations of a double nationality. Above all, no
+European nation, except Great Britain, can for a moment bear comparison
+with the United States in respect of the devotion of its people to their
+Constitution.
+
+An imperial union, though resembling somewhat in outward form a federal
+union, differs altogether from it both in principle and origin. Its
+essential characteristic is that one community is absolutely dominant
+while all the others are subordinate. In the case of a federal union
+independent States have agreed to resign a portion of their powers to a
+central Government for the sake of securing the common safety. In an
+imperial union the dominant or imperial State delegates to each
+constituent member of the union such a portion of local government as
+the dominant State considers the subordinate member entitled to,
+consistently with the integrity of the empire. The British Empire
+furnishes the best example of an imperial union now existing in the
+world. Her Majesty, as common head, is the one link which binds the
+empire together and connects with each other every constituent member.
+The Indian Empire and certain military dependencies require no further
+notice in these pages; but a summary of our various forms of colonial
+government is required to complete our knowledge of the forms of Home
+Rule possibly applicable to Ireland.
+
+The colonies, in relation to their forms of government, may be
+classified as follows:--
+
+I. Crown colonies, in which laws may be made by the Governor alone, or
+with the concurrence of a Council nominated by the Crown.
+
+2. Colonies possessing representative institutions, but not responsible
+government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, but the
+Home Government retains the control of the executive.
+
+3. Colonies possessing representative institutions and responsible
+government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, and the
+Home Government has no control over any public officer except the
+Governor.
+
+The British Colonial Governments thus present an absolute gradation of
+rule; beginning with absolute despotism and ending with almost absolute
+legal independence, except in so far as a veto on legislation and the
+presence of a Governor named by the Crown mark the dependence of the
+colony on the mother country.
+
+It is to be remembered, moreover, that the colonies which have received
+this complete local freedom are the great colonies of the earth--nations
+themselves possessing territories as large or larger than any European
+State--namely, Canada, the Cape, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland,
+South Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania. And this change from dependence
+to freedom has been effected with the good-will both of the mother
+country and the colony, and without it being imputed to the colonists,
+when desiring a larger measure of self-government, that they were
+separatists, anarchists, or revolutionists.
+
+Such are the general principles of colonial government, but one colony
+requires special mention, from the circumstance of its Constitution
+having been put forward as a model for Ireland; this is the Dominion of
+Canada. The Government of Canada is, in effect, a subordinate federal
+union; that is to say, it possesses a central Legislature, having the
+largest possible powers of local self-government consistent with the
+supremacy of the empire, with seven inferior provincial Governments,
+exercising powers greater than those of an English county, but not so
+great as those of an American State. The advantage of such a form of
+government is that, without weakening the supremacy of the empire or of
+the central local power, it admits of considerable diversities being
+made in the details of provincial government, where local peculiarities
+and antecedents render it undesirable to make a more complete
+assimilation of the Governments of the various provinces.
+
+Materials have now been collected which will enable the reader to judge
+of the expediency or inexpediency of the course taken by Mr. Gladstone's
+Government in dealing with Ireland. Three alternatives were open to
+them--
+
+    1. To let matters alone.
+    2. To pass a Coercion Bill.
+    3. To change the government of Ireland, and at
+    the same time to pass a Land Bill.
+
+The two last measures are combined under the head of one alternative, as
+it will be shown in the sequel that no effective Land Bill can be passed
+without granting Home Rule in Ireland.
+
+Now, the short answer to the first alternative is, that no party in the
+State--Conservative, Whig, Radical, Unionist, Home Ruler,
+Parnellite--thought it possible to leave things alone. That something
+must be done was universally admitted.
+
+The second alternative has found favour with the present Government, and
+certainly is a better example of the triumph of hope over experience,
+than even the proverbial second marriage.
+
+Eighty-six years have elapsed since the Union. During the first
+thirty-two years only eleven years, and during the last fifty-four years
+only two years have been free from special repressive legislation; yet
+the agitation for repeal of the Union, and general discontent, are more
+violent in 1887 than in any one of the eighty-six previous years. In
+the name of common-sense, is there any reason for supposing that the
+Coercion Bill of 1887 will have a better or more enduring effect than
+its numerous predecessors? The _primâ facie_ case is at all events in
+favour of the contention that, when so many trials of a certain remedy
+have failed, it would be better not to try the same remedy again, but to
+have recourse to some other medicine. What, then, was the position of
+Mr. Gladstone's Government at the close of the election of 1885? What
+were the considerations presented to them as supreme supervisors and
+guardians of the British Empire? They found that vast colonial empire
+tranquil and loyal beyond previous expectation--the greater colonies
+satisfied with their existing position; the lesser expecting that as
+they grew up to manhood they would be treated as men, and emancipated
+from childish restraints. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were
+contented with their sturdy dependent independence, loyal to the
+backbone. One member only stood aloof, sulky and dissatisfied, and
+though in law integrally united with the dominant community, practically
+was dissociated from it by forming within Parliament (the controlling
+body of the whole) a separate section, of which the whole aim was to
+fetter the action of the entire supreme body in order to bring to an
+external severance the practical disunion which existed between that
+member and Great Britain. This member--Ireland--as compared with other
+parts of the empire, was small and insignificant; measured against Great
+Britain, its population was five millions to thirty-one millions, and
+its estimated capital was only one twenty-fourth part of the capital of
+the United Kingdom. Measured against Australia, its trade with Great
+Britain was almost insignificant. Its importance arose from the force of
+public opinion in Great Britain, which deemed England pledged to protect
+the party in Ireland which desired the Union to be maintained, and from
+the power of obstructing English legislation through the medium of the
+Irish contingent, willing and ready on every occasion to intervene in
+English debates. The first step to be taken obviously was to find out
+what the great majority of Irish members wanted. The answer was, that
+they would be contented to quit the British Parliament on having a
+Parliament established on College Green, with full powers of local
+government, and that they would accept on behalf of their country a
+certain fixed annual sum to be paid to the Imperial Exchequer, on
+condition that such sum should not be increased without the consent of
+the Irish representatives. Here there were two great points gained
+without any sacrifice of principle. Ireland could not be said to be
+taxed without representation when her representatives agreed to a
+certain fixed sum to be paid till altered with their consent; while at
+the same time all risk of obstruction to English legislation by Irish
+means was removed by the proposal that the Irish representatives should
+exercise local powers in Dublin instead of imperial powers at
+Westminster.
+
+On the basis of the above arrangement the Bill of Mr. Gladstone was
+founded. Absolute local autonomy was conferred on Ireland; the assent of
+the Irish members to quit the Imperial Parliament was accepted; and the
+Bill provided that after a certain day the representative Irish peers
+should cease to sit in the House of Lords, and the Irish members vacate
+their places in the House of Commons. Provisions were then made for the
+absorption in the Irish Legislative Body of both the Irish
+representative peers and Irish members.
+
+The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament was maintained by an
+express provision excepting from any interference on the part of Irish
+Legislature all imperial powers, and declaring any enactment void which
+infringed that provision; further, an enactment was inserted for the
+purpose of securing to the English Legislature in the last resource the
+absolute power to make any law for the government of Ireland, and
+therefore to repeal, or suspend, the Irish Constitution.
+
+Technically these reservations of supremacy to the English Legislature
+were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of constitutional law that a
+sovereign Legislature, such as the Queen and two Houses of Parliament in
+England, cannot bind their successors, and consequently can repeal or
+alter any law, however fundamental, and annul any restrictions on
+alteration, however strongly expressed. Practically they were never
+likely to be called into operation, as it is the custom of Parliament to
+adhere, under all but the most extraordinary and unforeseen
+circumstances, to any compact made by Act of Parliament between itself
+and any subordinate legislative body. The Irish Legislature was
+subjected to the same controlling power which has for centuries been
+applied to prevent any excess of jurisdiction in our Colonial
+Legislatures, by a direction that an appeal as to the constitutionality
+of any laws which they might pass should lie to the Judicial Committee
+of the Privy Council. This supremacy of the imperial judicial power over
+the action of the Colonial Legislatures was a system which the founders
+of the American Constitution copied in the establishment of their
+supreme Court, and thereby secured for that legislative system a
+stability which has defied the assaults of faction and the strain of
+civil war.
+
+The Executive Government of Ireland was continued in her Majesty, and
+was to be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on her behalf, by the aid of
+such officers and such Council as her Majesty might from time to time
+see fit. The initiative power of recommending taxation was also vested
+in the Queen, and delegated to the Lord Lieutenant. These clauses are
+co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local
+powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers
+to the Imperial Legislature. The Governor is an imperial officer, and
+will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny,
+and to veto any Bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the
+other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided
+by the advice of the Irish Executive Council. The system is self-acting.
+The Governor, for local purposes, must have a Council which is in
+harmony with the Legislative Body. If the Governor and a Council,
+supported by the Legislative Body, do not agree, the Governor must give
+way, unless he can, by dismissing his Council, and dissolving the
+Legislative Body, obtain both a Council and a Legislative Body which
+will support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case is
+different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and in the
+last resort a determination of the Executive Council, backed by the
+Legislative Body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act of
+rebellion on the part of the Irish people, and be dealt with
+accordingly.
+
+In acceding to the claims of the National Party for Home Rule in Ireland
+another question had to be considered: the demands of the English
+garrison, as it is called--or, in plain words, of the class of Irish
+landlords--for protection. They urged that to grant Home Rule in Ireland
+would be to hand them over to their enemies, their tenants, and to lead
+to an immediate, or to all events a proximate, confiscation of their
+properties. Without admitting the truth of these apprehensions to the
+full extent, or indeed to any great extent, it was undoubtedly felt by
+the framers of the Home Rule Bill that a moral obligation rested on the
+Imperial Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations
+attending the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a
+question so fraught with danger, so involved in difficulty, to be
+determined by the Irish Government on its first entry on official
+existence. Hence the Land Bill, the scheme of which was to frame a
+system under which the tenants, by being made owners of the soil, should
+become interested as a class in the maintenance of social order, while
+the landlords should be enabled to rid themselves on fair terms of their
+estates, in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for
+pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the
+responsibilities of ownership. Of the land scheme brought into
+Parliament in 1886, it need only here be said that it proposed to lend
+the Irish Government 3 per cent. stock at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, the
+Irish Government undertaking to purchase, from any Irish landlord
+desirous of selling, his estate at (as a general rule) twenty years'
+purchase on the net rental. The money thus disbursed by the Irish
+Government was repaid to them by an annuity, payable by the tenant for
+forty-nine years, of 4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times
+the gross rental; the result being that, were the Bill passed into law,
+the tenant would become immediate owner of the land, subject to the
+payment of an annuity considerably less than the previous rent--that the
+Irish Government would make a considerable profit on the transaction,
+inasmuch as it would receive from the tenant interest calculated on the
+basis of the _gross_ rental, whilst it would pay to the English
+Government interest calculated on the basis of the _net_ rental--and
+that the English Government would sustain no loss if the interest were
+duly received by them.
+
+The effect of such a plan appears almost magical: Ireland is transformed
+at one stroke from a nation of landlords into a nation of peasant
+proprietors--apparently without loss to any one, and with gain to
+everybody concerned, except the British Government, who neither gain nor
+lose in the matter. The practicability, however, of such a scheme
+depends altogether on the security against loss afforded to the British
+tax-payer, for he is industrious and heavily burdened, and cannot be
+expected to assent to any plan which will land him in any appreciable
+loss. Here it is that the plan of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill differs from
+all other previous plans. Act after Act has been passed enabling the
+tenant to borrow money from the British Government on the security of
+the holding, for the purpose of enabling him to purchase the fee-simple.
+In such transactions the British Government becomes the mortgagee, and
+can only recover its money, if default is made in payment, by ejecting
+the tenant and becoming the landlord. In proportion, then, as any
+existing purchase Act succeeds, in the same proportion the risk of the
+British taxpayer increases. He is ever placed in the most invidious of
+all lights; instead of posing as the generous benefactor who holds forth
+his hand to rescue the landlord and tenant from an intolerable position,
+he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the still more
+hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant of his holding, is
+seeking to introduce another man into property which really belongs to
+the ejected tenant. Such a position may be endurable when the number of
+purchasing tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform
+in Ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable
+difference in the relations of landlord and tenant; still more, if it
+become general. Now, what is the remedy of such a state of things?
+Surely to interpose the Irish Government between the Irish debtor and
+his English creditor, and to provide that the Irish revenues in bulk,
+not the individual holdings of each tenant, shall be the security for
+the English creditor. This was the scheme embodied in the Land Act of
+1886. The punctual payment of all money due from the Government of
+Ireland to the Government of Great Britain was to have been secured by
+the continuance in the hands of the British Government of the Excise and
+Customs duties, and by the appointment of an Imperial Receiver-General,
+assisted by subordinate officers, and protected by an Imperial Court.
+This officer would have received not only all the imperial taxes, but
+also the local taxes; and it would have been his duty to satisfy the
+claims of the British Government before he allowed any sum to pass into
+the Irish Exchequer. In effect, the British Government, in relation to
+the levying of imperial taxes, would have stood in the same relation to
+Ireland as Congress does to the United States in respect to the levying
+of federal taxes. The fiscal unity of Great Britain and Ireland would
+have been in this way secured, and the British Government protected
+against any loss of interest for the large sums to be expended in
+carrying into effect in Ireland any agrarian reform worthy of the name.
+
+The Irish Bills of 1886, as above represented, had at least three
+recommendations:
+
+1. They created a state of things in Ireland under which it was possible
+to make a complete agrarian reform without exposing the English
+Exchequer to any appreciable risk.
+
+2. They enabled the Irish to govern themselves as respects local
+matters, while preserving intact the supremacy of the British Parliament
+and the integrity of the Empire.
+
+3. They enabled the British Parliament to govern the British Empire
+without any obstructive Irish interference.
+
+To the first of these propositions no attempt at an answer has been
+made. The Land Bill was never considered on its merits; indeed, was
+never practically discussed, but was at once swept into oblivion by the
+wave which overwhelmed the Home Rule Bill.
+
+The contention against the second proposition was concerned in proving
+that the supremacy of the British Parliament was not maintained: the
+practical answer to this objection has been given above. Pushed to its
+utmost, it could only amount to proof that an amendment ought to have
+been introduced in Committee, declaring, in words better selected than
+those introduced for that purpose in the Bill, that nothing in the Act
+should affect the supremacy of the British Parliament. In short, the
+whole discussion here necessarily resolved itself into a mere verbal
+squabble as to the construction of a clause in a Bill not yet in
+Committee, and had no bottom or substance.
+
+It was also urged that the concession of self-government to Ireland was
+but another mode of handing over the Loyalist party--or, as it is
+sometimes called, the English garrison--to the tender mercies of the
+Parnellites. The reply to this would seem to be, that as respects
+property the Land Bill effectually prevented any interference of the
+Irish Parliament with the land; nay, more, enabled any Irishman desirous
+of turning his land into money to do so on the most advantageous terms
+that ever had been--and with a falling market it may be confidently
+prophesied ever can be--offered to the Irish landlord; while as respect
+life and liberty, were it possible that they should be endangered, it
+was the duty of the imperial officer, the Lord Lieutenant, to take means
+for the preservation of peace and good order; and behind him, to enforce
+his behests, stand the strong battalions who, to our sorrow be it
+spoken, have so often been called upon to put down disturbance and
+anarchy in Ireland.
+
+Competing plans have been put forward, with more or less detail, for
+governing Ireland. The suggestion that Ireland should be governed as a
+_Crown_ colony need only be mentioned to be rejected. It means in
+effect, that Ireland should sink from the rank of an equal or
+independent member of the British Empire to the grade of the most
+dependent of her colonies, and should be governed despotically by
+English officials, without representation in the English Parliament or
+any machinery of local self-government. Another proposal has been to
+give four provincial Governments to Ireland, limiting their powers to
+local rating, education, and legislation in respect of matters which
+form the subjects of private Bill legislation at present; in fact, to
+place them somewhat on the footing of the provinces of Canada, while
+reserving to the English Parliament the powers vested in the Dominion of
+Canada. Such a scheme would seem adapted to whet the appetite of the
+Irish for nationality, without supplying them with any portion of the
+real article. It would supply no basis on which a system of agrarian
+reform could be founded, as it would be impossible to leave the
+determination of a local question, which is a unit in its dangers and
+its difficulties, to four different Legislatures; above all, the hinge
+on which the question turns--the sufficiency of the security for the
+British taxpayer--could not be afforded by provincial resources. Indeed,
+no alternative for the Land Bill of 1886 has been suggested which does
+not err in one of the following points: either it pledges English credit
+on insufficient security, or it requires the landowners to accept Irish
+debentures or some form of Irish paper money at par; in other words, it
+makes English taxes a fund for relieving Irish landlords, or else it
+compels the Irish landowner, if he sells at all, to sell at an
+inadequate price. Before parting with Canada, it may be worth while
+noticing that another, and more feasible, alternative is to imitate more
+closely the Canadian Constitution, and to vest the central or Dominion
+powers in a central Legislature in Dublin, parcelling out the provincial
+powers, as they have been called, amongst several provincial
+Legislatures. This scheme might be made available as a means of
+protecting Ulster from the supposed danger of undue interference from
+the Central Government, and for making, possibly, other diversities in
+the local administration of various parts of Ireland in order to meet
+special local exigencies.
+
+A leading writer among the dissentient Liberals has intimated that one
+of two forms of representative colonial government might be imposed on
+Ireland--either the form in which the executive is conducted by
+colonial officials, or the form of the great irresponsible colonies. The
+first of these forms is open to the objection, that it perpetuates those
+struggles between English executive measures and Irish opinion which has
+made Ireland for centuries ungovernable, and led to the establishment of
+the union and destruction of Irish independence in 1800; the second
+proposal would destroy the fiscal unity of the empire--leave the
+agrarian feud unextinguished, and aggravate the objections which have
+been urged against the Home Rule Bill of 1886. A question still remains,
+in relation to the _form_ of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, which would not
+have deserved attention but for the prominence given to it in some of
+the discussions upon the subject. The Bill of 1886 provides "that the
+Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good government of
+Ireland," but subjects their power to numerous exceptions and
+restrictions. The Act establishing the Dominion of Canada enumerates
+various matters in respect of which the Legislature of Canada is to have
+exclusive power, but prefaces the enumeration with a clause "that the
+Dominion Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good
+government of Canada in relation to all matters not within the
+jurisdiction of the provincial Legislatures, although such matters may
+not be specially mentioned." In effect, therefore, the difference
+between the Irish Bill and the Canadian Act is one of expression and not
+of substance, and, although the Bill is more accurate in its form, it
+would scarcely be worth while to insist on legislating by exception
+instead of by enumeration if, by the substitution of the latter form for
+the former, any material opposition would be conciliated.
+
+What, then, are the conclusions intended to be drawn from the foregoing
+premises?
+
+1. That coercion is played out, and can no longer be regarded as a
+remedy for the evils of Irish misrule.
+
+2. That some alternative must be found, and that the only alternative
+within the range of practical politics is some form of Home Rule.
+
+3. That there is no reason for thinking that the grant of Home Rule to
+Ireland--a member only, and not one of the most important members, of
+the British Empire--will in any way dismember, or even in the slightest
+degree risk the dismemberment of the Empire.
+
+4. That Home Rule presupposes and admits the supremacy of the British
+Parliament.
+
+5. That theory is in favour of Home Rule, as the nationality of Ireland
+is distinct, and justifies a desire for local independence; while the
+establishment of Home Rule is a necessary condition to the effectual
+removal of agrarian disturbances in Ireland.
+
+6. That precedent is in favour of granting Home Rule to Ireland--_e.g._
+the success of the new Constitution in Austria-Hungary, and the happy
+effects resulting from the establishment of the Dominion of Canada.
+
+7. That the particular form of Home Rule granted is comparatively
+immaterial.
+
+8. That the Home Rule Bill of 1886 may readily be amended in such a
+manner as to satisfy all real and unpartisan objectors.
+
+9. That the Land Bill of 1886 is the best that has ever been devised,
+having regard to the advantages offered to the new Irish Government, the
+landlord, and the tenant.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 60: Reprinted by permission, with certain omissions, from the
+_Contemporary Review_, August, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 61: "Home Rule and Imperial Unity:" _Contemporary Review_,
+March, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Mill on _Representative Government_, p. 310.]
+
+[Footnote 63: See _Statesman's Year-Book_: Switzerland and Germany.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Heeren's _Political System of Europe_, p. 152.]
+
+[Footnote 65: _Memoirs of Count Beust_, vol. i., Introduction, p.
+xliii.]
+
+[Footnote 66: _Statesman's Year-Book._]
+
+[Footnote 67: The Emperor of Austria is the head of the empire, with the
+title of King in Hungary. Austria-Hungary is treated as a federal, not
+as an imperial union, on the ground that Austria was never rightfully a
+dominant community over Hungary.]
+
+[Footnote 68: _Representative Government_, p. 295.]
+
+
+
+
+THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION[69]
+
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+
+For half a century or more no question of English domestic politics has
+excited so much interest outside England as that question of resettling
+her relations with Ireland, which was fought over in the last
+Parliament, and still confronts the Parliament that has lately been
+elected. Apart from its dramatic interest, apart from its influence on
+the fortune of parties, and its effect on the imperial position of Great
+Britain, it involves so many large principles of statesmanship, and
+raises so many delicate points of constitutional law, as to deserve the
+study of philosophical thinkers no less than of practical politicians in
+every free country.
+
+The circumstances which led to the introduction of the Government of
+Ireland Bill, in April, 1886, are familiar to Americans as well as
+Englishmen. Ever since the crowns and parliaments of Great Britain and
+Ireland were united, in A.D. 1800, there has been in Ireland a party
+which protested against that union as fraudulently obtained and
+inexpedient in itself. For many years this party, led by Daniel
+O'Connell, maintained an agitation for Repeal. After his death a more
+extreme section, which sought the complete independence of Ireland,
+raised the insurrection of 1848, and subsequently, under the guidance of
+other hands, formed the Fenian conspiracy, whose projected insurrection
+was nipped in the bud in 1867, though the conspiracy continued to menace
+the Government and the tranquillity of the island. In 1872 the Home Rule
+party was formed, demanding, not the Repeal of the Union, but the
+creation of an Irish Legislature, and the agitation, conducted in
+Parliament in a more systematic and persistent way than heretofore, took
+also a legitimate constitutional form. To this demand English and Scotch
+opinion was at first almost unanimously opposed. At the General Election
+of 1880, which, however, turned mainly on the foreign policy of Lord
+Beaconsfield's Government, not more than three or four members were
+returned by constituencies in Great Britain who professed to consider
+Home Rule as even an open question. All through the Parliament, which
+sat from 1880 till 1885, the Nationalist party, led by Mr. Parnell, and
+including at first less than half, ultimately about half, of the Irish
+members, was in constant and generally bitter opposition to the
+Government of Mr. Gladstone. But during these five years a steady,
+although silent and often unconscious, process of change was passing in
+the minds of English and Scotch members, especially Liberal members, due
+to their growing sense of the mistakes which Parliament committed in
+handling Irish questions, and of the hopelessness of the efforts which
+the Executive was making to pacify the country on the old methods. The
+adoption of a Home Rule policy by one of the great English parties was,
+therefore, not so sudden a change as it seemed. The process had been
+going on for years, though in its earlier stages it was so gradual and
+so unwelcome as to be faintly felt and reluctantly admitted by the minds
+that were undergoing it. In the spring of 1886 the question could be no
+longer evaded or postponed. It was necessary to choose between one of
+two courses; the refusal of the demand for self-government, coupled with
+the introduction of a severe Coercion Bill, or the concession of it by
+the introduction of a Home Rule Bill. There were some few who suggested,
+as a third course, the granting of a limited measure of local
+institutions, such as county boards; but most people felt, as did Mr.
+Gladstone's Ministry, that this plan would have had most of the dangers
+and few of the advantages of either of the two others.
+
+How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into the House of Commons
+on April 8th, amid circumstances of curiosity and excitement
+unparalleled since 1832; how, after debates of almost unprecedented
+length, it was defeated in June, by a majority of thirty; how the policy
+it embodied was brought before the country at the General Election, and
+failed to win approval--all this is too well known to need
+recapitulation here. But the causes of the disaster have not been well
+understood, for it is only now--now, when the smoke of the battle has
+cleared away from the field--that these causes have begun to stand
+revealed in their true proportions.
+
+Besides some circumstances attending the production of the Bill, to
+which I shall refer presently, and which told heavily against it, there
+were three feelings which worked upon men's minds, disposing them to
+reject it.
+
+The first of these was dislike and fear of the Irish Nationalist
+members. In the previous House of Commons this party had been uniformly
+and bitterly hostile to the Liberal Government. Measures intended for
+the good of Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been ungraciously
+received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no thanks were
+due--inadequate concessions, which must be made the starting-point for
+fresh demands. Obstruction had been freely practised to defeat not only
+bills restraining the liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other
+measures. Some few members of the Irish party had systematically sought
+to delay all English and Scotch legislation, and, in fact, to bring the
+work of Parliament to a dead stop. Much violent language had been used,
+even where the provocation was slight. The outbreaks of crime which had
+repeatedly occurred in Ireland had been, not, indeed, defended, but so
+often passed over in silence by Nationalist speakers, that English
+opinion was inclined to hold them practically responsible for disorders
+which, so it was thought, they had neither wished nor tried to prevent.
+(I am, of course, expressing no opinion as to the justice of this view,
+nor as to the excuses to be made for the Parliamentary tactics of the
+Irish party, but merely stating how their conduct struck many
+Englishmen.) There could be no doubt as to the hostility which they,
+still less as to that which their fellow-countrymen in the United
+States, had expressed toward England, for they had openly wished success
+to Russia while war seemed impending with her, and the so-called Mahdi
+of the Soudan was vociferously cheered at many a Nationalist meeting. At
+the Election of 1885 they had done their utmost to defeat Liberal
+candidates in every English and Scotch constituency where there existed
+a body of Irish voters, and had thrown some twenty seats or more into
+the hands of the Tories. Now, to many Englishmen, the proposal to create
+an Irish Parliament seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand
+over to these Irish members the government of Ireland, with all the
+opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland
+and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the
+tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to
+extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule
+had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would contain
+different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr.
+Parnell's nominees. Neither of these arguments could overcome the
+suspicious antipathy which many Englishmen felt, nor dissolve the
+association in their minds between the Nationalist leaders and the
+forces of disorder. The Parnellites (thus they reasoned) are bad men;
+what they seek is therefore likely to be bad, and whether bad in itself
+or not, they will make a bad use of it. In such reasonings there was
+more of sentiment and prejudice than of reason, but sentiment and
+prejudice are proverbially harder than arguments to expel from minds
+where they have made a lodgment.
+
+The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial grounds for
+alarm. As everybody knows, she is not, either in religion or in blood,
+or in feelings and ideas, a homogeneous country. Three-fourths of the
+people are Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant
+fourth subdivided into bodies not fond of one another, who have little
+community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish colony in Ulster, many
+English families have settled here and there through the country. They
+have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and
+many of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since they
+came, still look on themselves as rather English than Irish. The last
+fifty years, whose wonderful changes have in most parts of the world
+tended to unite and weld into one compact body the inhabitants of each
+part of the earth's surface, connecting them by the ties of commerce,
+and of a far easier and swifter intercourse than was formerly possible,
+have in Ireland worked in the opposite direction. It has become more and
+more the habit of the richer class in Ireland to go to England for its
+enjoyment, and to feel itself socially rather English than Irish. Thus
+the chasm between the immigrants and the aborigines has grown deeper.
+The upper class has not that Irish patriotism which it showed in the
+days of the National Irish Parliament (1782-1800), and while there is
+thus less of a common national feeling to draw rich and poor together,
+the strife of landlords and tenants has continued, irritating the minds
+of both parties, and gathering them into two hostile camps. As everybody
+knows, the Nationalist agitation has been intimately associated with the
+Land agitation--has, in fact, found a strong motive-force in the desire
+of the tenants to have their rents reduced, and themselves secured
+against eviction. Now, many people in England assumed that an Irish
+Parliament would be under the control of the tenants and the humbler
+class generally, and would therefore be hostile to the landlords. They
+went farther, and made the much bolder assumption that as such a
+Parliament would be chosen by electors, most of whom were Roman
+Catholics, it would be under the control of the Catholic priesthood, and
+hostile to Protestants. Thus they supposed that the grant of
+self-government to Ireland would mean the abandonment of the upper and
+wealthier class, the landlords and the Protestants, to the tender
+mercies of their enemies. Such abandonment, it was proclaimed on a
+thousand platforms, would be disgraceful in itself, dishonouring to
+England, a betrayal of the very men who had stood by her in the past,
+and were prepared to stand by her in the future, if only she would stand
+by them. It was, of course, replied by the defenders of the Home Rule
+Bill, that what the so-called English party in Ireland really stood by
+was their own ascendency over the Irish masses--an oppressive
+ascendency, which had caused most of the disorders of the country. As to
+religion, there were many Protestants besides Mr. Parnell himself among
+the Nationalist leaders. There was no ill-feeling (except in Ulster)
+between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ireland. There was no reason
+to expect that either the Catholic hierarchy or the priesthood generally
+would be supreme in an Irish Parliament, and much reason to expect the
+contrary. As regards Ulster, where, no doubt, there were special
+difficulties, due to the bitter antagonism of the Orangemen (not of the
+Protestants generally) and Catholics, Mr. Gladstone had undertaken to
+consider any special provisions which could be suggested as proper to
+meet those difficulties. These replies, however, made little impression.
+They were pronounced, and pronounced all the more confidently the more
+ignorant of Ireland the speaker was, to be too hypothetical. To many
+Englishmen the case seemed to be one of two hostile factions contending
+in Ireland for the last sixty years, and that the gift of
+self-government might enable one of them to tyrannize over the other.
+True, that party was the majority, and, according to the principles of
+democratic government, therefore entitled to prevail. But it is one
+thing to admit a principle and another to consent to its application.
+The minority had the sympathy of the upper classes in England, because
+the minority contained the landlords. It had the sympathy of a part of
+the middle class, because it contained the Protestants. And of those
+Englishmen who were impartial as between the Irish factions, there were
+some who held that England must in any case remain responsible for the
+internal peace and the just government of Ireland, and could not grant
+powers whose possession might tempt the one party to injustice, and the
+other to resist injustice by violence.
+
+There was another anticipation, another forecast of evils to follow,
+which told most of all upon English opinion. This was the notion that
+Home Rule was only a stage in the road to the complete separation of the
+two islands. The argument was conceived as follows: "The motive passions
+of the Irish agitation have all along been hatred toward England and a
+desire to make Ireland a nation, holding her independent place among the
+nations of the world. This design was proclaimed by the Young Irelanders
+of 1848 and by the Fenian rebels of 1866; it has been avowed, in
+intervals of candour, by the present Nationalists themselves. The grant
+of an Irish Parliament will stimulate rather than appease this thirst
+for separate national existence. The nearer complete independence seems,
+the more will it be desired. Hatred to England will still be an active
+force, because the amount of control which England retains will irritate
+Irish pride, as well as limit Irish action; while all the misfortunes
+which may befall the new Irish Government will be blamed, not on its own
+imprudence, but on the English connection. And as the motives for
+seeking separation will remain, so the prospect of obtaining it will
+seem better. Agitation will have a better vantage-ground in an Irish
+Parliament than it formerly had among the Irish members of a British
+Legislature; and if actual resistance to the Queen's authority should be
+attempted, it will be attempted under conditions more favourable than
+the present, because the rebels will have in their hands the machinery
+of Irish Government, large financial resources, and a _prima facie_
+title to represent the will of the Irish people. As against a rebellious
+party in Ireland, England has now two advantages--an advantage of
+theory, an advantage of fact. The advantage of theory is that she does
+not admit Ireland to be a distinct nation, but maintains that in the
+United Kingdom there is but one nation, whereof some inhabit Great
+Britain and some Ireland. The advantage of fact is that, through her
+control of the constabulary, the magistrates, the courts of justice,
+and, in fine, the whole administrative system of Ireland, she can easily
+quell insurrectionary movements. By creating an Irish Parliament and
+Government she would strip herself of both these advantages."
+
+I need hardly say that I do not admit the fairness of this statement of
+the case, because some of the premises are untrue, and because it
+misrepresents the nature of the Irish Government which Mr. Gladstone's
+Bill would have created. But I am trying to state the case as it was
+sedulously and skilfully presented to Englishmen. And it told all the
+more upon English waverers, because the considerations above mentioned
+seemed, if well founded, to destroy and cut away the chief ground on
+which Home Rule had been advocated, viz. that it would relieve England
+from the constant pressure of Irish discontent and agitation, and bring
+about a time of tranquillity, permitting good feeling to grow up between
+the peoples. If Home Rule was, after all, to be nothing more than a
+half-way house to independence, an Irish Parliament only a means of
+extorting a more complete emancipation from imperial control, was it not
+much better to keep things as they were, and go on enduring evils, the
+worst of which were known already? Hence the advocates of the Bill
+denied not the weight of the argument, but its applicability.
+Separation, they urged, is impossible, for it is contrary to the nature
+of things, which indicates that the two islands must go together. It is
+not desired by the Irish people, for it would injure them far more than
+it could possibly injure England, since Ireland finds in England the
+only market for her produce, the only source whence capital flows to
+her. A small revolutionary party has, no doubt, conspired to obtain it.
+But the only sympathy they received was due to the fact that the
+legitimate demand of Ireland for a recognition of her national feeling
+and for the management of her own local affairs was contemptuously
+ignored by England. The concession of that demand will banish the notion
+even from those minds which now entertain it, whereas its continued
+refusal may perpetuate that alienation of feeling which is at the bottom
+of all the mischief, the one force that makes for separation.
+
+It is no part of my present purpose to examine these arguments and
+counter arguments, but only to show what were the grounds on which a
+majority of the English voters refused to pronounce in favour of the
+Home Rule Bill. The reader will have observed that the issues raised
+were not only numerous, but full of difficulty. They were issues of
+fact, involving a knowledge both of the past history of Ireland and of
+her present state. They were also issues of inference, for even
+supposing the broad facts to be ascertained, these facts were
+susceptible of different interpretations, and men might, and did,
+honestly draw opposite conclusions from them. A more obscure and
+complicated problem, or rather group of problems, has seldom been
+presented to a nation for its decision. But the nation did not possess
+the requisite knowledge. Closely connected as Ireland seems to be with
+England, long as the Irish question has been a main trouble in English
+politics, the English and Scottish people know amazingly little about
+Ireland. Even in the upper class, you meet with comparatively few
+persons who have set foot on Irish soil, and, of course, far fewer who
+have ever examined the condition of the island and the sources of her
+discontent. Irish history, which is, no doubt, dismal reading, is a
+blank page to the English. In January, 1886, one found scarce any
+politicians who had ever heard of the Irish Parliament of 1782. And in
+that year, 1886, an Englishman anxious to discover the real state of the
+country did not know where to go for information. What appeared in the
+English newspapers, or, rather, in the one English newspaper which keeps
+a standing "own correspondent" in Dublin, was (as it still is) a grossly
+and almost avowedly partisan report, in which opinions are skilfully
+mixed with so-called facts, selected, consciously or unconsciously, to
+support the writer's view. The Nationalist press is, of course, not less
+strongly partisan on its own side, so that not merely an average
+Englishman, but even the editor of an English newspaper, who desires to
+ascertain the true state of matters and place it before his English
+readers, has had, until within the last few months, when events in
+Ireland began to be fully reported in Great Britain, no better means at
+his disposal for understanding Ireland than for understanding Bulgaria.
+I do not dwell upon this ignorance as an argument for Home Rule, though,
+of course, it is often so used. I merely wish to explain the
+bewilderment in which Englishmen found themselves when required to
+settle by their votes a question of immense difficulty. Many, on both
+sides, simply followed their party banners. Tories voted for Lord
+Salisbury; thorough-going admirers of Mr. Gladstone voted for Mr.
+Gladstone. But there was on the Liberal side a great mass who were
+utterly perplexed by the position. Contradictory statements of fact, as
+well as contradictory arguments, were flung at their heads in
+distracting profusion. They felt themselves unable to determine what was
+true and who was right. But one thing seemed clear to them. The policy
+of Home Rule was a new policy. They had been accustomed to censure and
+oppose it. Only nine months before, the Irish Nationalists had
+emphasized their hostility to the Liberal party by doing their utmost to
+defeat Liberal candidates in English constituencies. Hence, when it was
+proclaimed that Home Rule was the true remedy which the Liberal party
+must accept, they were startled and discomposed.
+
+Now, the English are not a nimble-minded people. They cannot, to use a
+familiar metaphor, turn round in their own length. Their momentum is
+such as to carry them on for some distance in the direction wherein they
+have been moving, even after the order to stop has been given. They need
+time to appreciate, digest, and comprehend a new proposition. Timid they
+are not, nor, perhaps, exceptionally cautious, but they do not like to
+be hurried, and insist on looking at a proposition for a good while
+before they come to a decision regarding it. It is one of the qualities
+which make them a great people. As has been observed, this proposition
+was novel, was most serious, and raised questions which they felt that
+their knowledge was insufficient to determine. Accordingly, a certain
+section of the Liberal party refused to accept it. A great number,
+probably the majority, of these doubtful men abstained from voting.
+Others voted against the Home Rule Liberal candidates, not necessarily
+because they condemned the policy, but because, as they were not
+satisfied that it was right, they deemed delay a less evil than the
+committal of the nation to a new departure, which might prove
+irrevocable.
+
+It must not, however, be supposed that it was only hesitation which
+drove many Liberals into the host arrayed against the Irish Government
+Bill. I have already said that among the leaders there were some, and
+those men of great influence, who condemned its principles. This was
+true also of a considerable, though a relatively smaller, section of the
+rank and file. And it was only what might have been expected. The
+proposal to undo much of the work done in 1800, to alter fundamentally
+the system which had for eighty-six years regulated the relations of the
+two islands, by setting up a Parliament in Ireland, was a proposal which
+not only had not formed a part of the accepted creed of the Liberal
+party, but fell outside party lines altogether. It might, no doubt, be
+argued, as was actually done, and as those who understand the history of
+the Liberal party have more and more come to see, that Liberal
+principles recommended it, since they involve faith in the people, and
+faith in the curative tendency of local self-government. But this was by
+no means axiomatic. Taking the whole complicated facts of the case, and
+taking Liberalism as it had been practically understood in England, a
+man might in July, 1886, deem himself a good Liberal and yet think that
+the true interests of both peoples would be best served by maintaining
+the existing Parliamentary system. Similarly, there was nothing in
+Toryism or Tory principles to prevent a fair-minded and patriotic Tory
+from approving the Home Rule scheme. It was a return to the older
+institutions of the monarchy, and not inconsistent with any of the
+doctrines which the Tory party had been accustomed to uphold. The
+question, in short, was one of those which cut across ordinary party
+lines, creating new divisions among politicians; and there might have
+been and ought to have been Liberal Home Rulers and Tory Home Rulers,
+Liberal opponents of Home Rule and Tory opponents of Home Rule.
+
+But here comes in a feature, a natural but none the less a regrettable
+feature, of the English party system. As the object of the party in
+opposition is to turn out the party in power and seat itself in their
+place, every Opposition regards with the strongest prejudice the
+measures proposed by a ruling Ministry. Cases sometimes occur where
+these measures are so obviously necessary, or so evidently approved by
+the nation, that the Opposition accepts them. But in general it scans
+them with a hostile eye. Human nature is human nature; and when the
+defeat of Government can be secured by defeating a Government Bill, the
+temptation to the Opposition to secure it is irresistible. Now, the Tory
+party is far more cohesive than the Liberal party, far more obedient to
+its leaders, far less disposed to break into sections, each of which
+thinks and acts for itself. Accordingly, that division of opinion in the
+Tory party which might have been expected, and which would have occurred
+if those who composed the Tory party had been merely so many reflecting
+men, and not members of a closely compacted political organization, did
+not occur. Liberals were divided, as such a question would naturally
+divide them. Tories were not divided; they threw their whole strength
+against the Bill. I am far from suggesting that they did so against
+their consciences. Whatever may be said as to two or three of the
+leaders, whose previous language and conduct seemed to indicate that
+they would themselves, had the election of 1885 gone differently, have
+been inclined to a Home Rule policy, many of the Tory chiefs, as well
+as the great mass of the party, honestly disapproved Mr. Gladstone's
+measure. But their party motives and party affiliations gave it no
+chance of an impartial verdict at their hands. They went into the
+jury-box with an invincible prepossession against the scheme of their
+opponents. When all these difficulties are duly considered, and
+especially when regard is had to those which I have last enumerated, the
+suddenness with which the new policy was launched, and the fact that as
+coming from one party it was sure beforehand of the hostility of the
+other, no surprise can be felt at its fate. Those who, in England, now
+look back over the spring and summer of 1886 are rather surprised that
+it should come so near succeeding. To have been rejected by a majority
+of only thirty in Parliament, and of little over ten per cent. of the
+total number of electors who voted at the general election, is a defeat
+far less severe than any one who knew England would have predicted.
+
+That the decision of the country is regarded by nobody as a final
+decision goes without saying. It was not regarded as final, even in the
+first weeks after it was given. This was not because the majority was
+comparatively small, for a smaller majority the other way would have
+been conclusive. It is because the country had not time enough for full
+consideration and deliberate judgment. The Bill was brought in on April
+14th, the elections began on July 1st; no one can say what might have
+been the result of a long discussion, during which the first feelings of
+alarm (for alarm there was) might have worn off. And the decision is
+without finality, also, because the decision of the country was merely
+against the particular plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and not in favour
+of any alternative plan for dealing with Ireland, most certainly not for
+the coercive method which has since been adopted. One particular
+solution of the Irish problem was refused. The problem still stands
+confronting us, and when other modes of solving it have been in turn
+rejected, the country may come back to this mode.
+
+We may now turn from the past to the future. Yet the account which has
+been given of the feelings and ideas arrayed against the Bill does not
+wholly belong to the past. They are the feelings to which the opponents
+of any plan of self-government for Ireland still appeal, and which will
+have to be removed or softened down before it can be accepted by the
+English. In particular, the probability of separation, and the supposed
+dangers to the Protestants and the landlords from an Irish Parliament,
+will continue to form the themes of controversy so long as the question
+remains unsettled.
+
+What are the prospects of its settlement? What is the position which it
+now occupies? How has it affected the current politics of England?
+
+It broke up the Liberal party in Parliament. The vast numerical majority
+of that party in the country supported, and still supports, Mr.
+Gladstone and the policy of Irish self-government. But the dissentient
+minority includes many men of influence, and constitutes in the House of
+Commons a body of about seventy members, who hold the balance between
+parties. For the present they are leagued with the Tory Ministry to
+resist Home Rule, and their support insures a parliamentary majority to
+that Ministry. But it is, of course, necessary for them to rally to Lord
+Salisbury, not only on Irish questions, but on all questions; for, under
+our English system, a Ministry defeated on any serious issue is bound to
+resign, or dissolve Parliament. Now, to maintain an alliance for a
+special purpose, between members of opposite parties, is a hard matter.
+Agreement about Ireland does not, of itself, help men to agree about
+foreign policy, or bimetallism, or free trade, or changes in land laws,
+or ecclesiastical affairs. When these and other grave questions come up
+in Parliament, the Tory Ministry and their Liberal allies must, on
+every occasion, negotiate a species of concordat, whereby the liberty
+of both is fettered. One party may wish to resist innovation, the other
+to yield to it, or even to anticipate it. Each is obliged to forego
+something in order to humour the other; neither has the pleasure or the
+credit of taking a bold line on its own responsibility. There is, no
+doubt, less difference between the respective tenets of the great
+English parties than there was twenty years ago, when Mr. Disraeli had
+not yet completed the education of one party, and economic laws were
+still revered by the other. But, besides its tenets, each party has its
+tendencies, its sympathies, its moral atmosphere; and these differ so
+widely as to make the co-operation of Tories and Liberals constrained
+and cumbrous. Moreover, there are the men to be considered, the leaders
+on each side, whose jealousies, rivalries, suspicions, personal
+incompatibilities, neither old habits of joint action nor corporate
+party feeling exist to soften. On the whole, therefore, it is unlikely
+that the league of these two parties, united for one question only, and
+that a question which will pass into new phases, can be durable. Either
+the league will dissolve, or the smaller party will be absorbed into the
+larger. In England, as in America, third parties rarely last. The
+attraction of the larger mass is irresistible, and when the crisis which
+created a split or generated a new group has passed, or the opinion the
+new group advocates has been either generally discredited or generally
+adopted, the small party melts away, its older members disappearing from
+public life, its younger ones finding their career in the ranks of one
+of the two great standing armies of politics. If the dissentient, or
+anti-Home Rule, Liberal party lives till the next general election, it
+cannot live longer, for at that election it will be ground to powder
+between the upper and nether millstones of the regular Liberals and the
+regular Tories.
+
+The Irish struggle of 1886 has had another momentous consequence. It
+has brought the Nationalist or Parnellite party into friendly relations
+with the mass of English Liberals. When the Home Rule party was founded
+by Mr. Butt, some fifteen years ago, it had more in common with the
+Liberal than with the Tory party. But as it demanded what both English
+parties were then resolved to refuse, it was forced into antagonism to
+both; and from 1877 onward (Mr. Butt being then dead) the antagonism
+became bitter, and, of course, specially bitter as toward the statesmen
+in power, because it was they who continued to refuse what the
+Nationalists sought. Mr. Parnell has always stated, with perfect
+candour, that he and his friends must fight for their own hand
+unhampered by English alliances, and getting the most they could for
+Ireland from the weakness of either English party. This position they
+still retain. If the Tory party will give them Home Rule, they will help
+the Tory party. However, as the Tory party has gained office by opposing
+Home Rule, this contingency may seem not to lie within the immediate
+future. On the other hand, the Gladstonian Liberals have lost office for
+their advocacy of Home Rule, and now stand pledged to maintain the
+policy they have proclaimed. The Nationalists have, therefore, for the
+first time since the days immediately following the Union of A.D. 1800
+(a measure which the Whigs of those days resisted), a great English
+party admitting the justice of their claim, and inviting them to agitate
+for it by purely constitutional methods. For such an alliance the
+English Liberals are hotly reproached, both by the Tories and by the
+dissentients who follow Lord Harrington and Mr. Chamberlain. They are
+accused of disloyalty to England. The past acts and words of the
+Nationalists are thrown in their teeth, and they are told that in
+supporting the Irish claim they condone such acts, they adopt such
+words. They reply by denying the adoption, and by pointing out that the
+Tories themselves were from 1881 till 1886 in a practical, and often
+very close, though unavowed, Parliamentary alliance with the
+Nationalists in the House of Commons. The student of history will,
+however, conceive that the Liberals have a stronger and higher defence
+than any _tu quoque_. Issues that involve the welfare of peoples are far
+too serious for us to apply to them the same sentiments of personal
+taste and predilection which we follow in inviting a dinner party, or
+selecting companions for a vacation tour. If a man has abused your
+brother, or got drunk in the street, you do not ask him to go with you
+to the Yellowstone Park. But his social offences do not prevent you from
+siding with him in a political convention. So, in politics itself, one
+must distinguish between characters and opinions. If a man has shown
+himself unscrupulous or headstrong, you may properly refuse to vote him
+into office, or to sit in the same Cabinet with him, because you think
+these faults of his dangerous to the country. But if the cause he pleads
+be a just one, you have no more right to be prejudiced against it by his
+conduct than a judge has to be swayed by dislike to the counsel who
+argues a case. There were moderate men in America, who, in the days of
+the anti-slavery movement, cited against it the intemperate language of
+many abolitionists. There were aristocrats in England, who, during the
+struggle for the freedom and unity of Italy, sought to discredit the
+patriotic party by accusing them of tyrannicide. But the sound sense of
+both nations refused to be led away by such arguments, because it held
+those two causes to be in their essence righteous. In all revolutionary
+movements there are elements of excess and violence, which sober men may
+regret, but which must not disturb our judgment as to the substantial
+merits of an issue. The revolutionist of one generation is, like
+Garibaldi or Mazzini, the hero of the next; and the verdict of posterity
+applauds those who, even in his own day, were able to discern the
+justice of the cause under the errors or faults of its champion. Doubly
+is it the duty of a great and far-sighted statesman not to be repelled
+by such errors, when he can, by espousing a revolutionary movement,
+purify it of its revolutionary character, and turn it into a legitimate
+constitutional struggle. This is what Mr. Gladstone has done. If his
+policy be in itself dangerous and disloyal to the true interests of the
+people of our islands, let it be condemned. But if it be the policy
+which has the best promise for the peace, the prosperity, and the mutual
+good will of those peoples, he and those who follow him would be
+culpable indeed were they to be deterred by the condemnation which they
+have so often expressed, and which they still express, for some of the
+past acts of a particular party, from declaring that the aims of that
+party were substantially right aims, and from now pressing upon the
+country what their conscience approves.
+
+However, as the Home Rule Liberals and Nationalists, taken together, are
+in a minority (although a minority which obtains recruits at many
+bye-elections) in the present Parliament, it is not from them that fresh
+proposals are expected. They will, of course, continue to speak, write,
+and agitate on behalf of the views they hold. But practical attempt to
+deal with Irish troubles must for the present come from the Tory
+Ministry; for in the English system of government those who command a
+Parliamentary majority are responsible for legislation as well as
+administration, and are censured not merely if their legislation is bad,
+but if it is not forthcoming when events call for it.
+
+Why, it may be asked, should Lord Salisbury's Government burn its
+fingers over Ireland, as so many governments have burnt their fingers
+before? Why not let Ireland alone, giving to foreign affairs and to
+English and Scottish reforms all the attention which these too much
+neglected matters need?
+
+Well would it be for England, as well as for English Ministries, if
+Ireland could be simply let alone, her maladies left to be healed by the
+soft, slow hand of nature. But Irish troubles call aloud to be dealt
+with, and that promptly. They stand in the way of all other reforms,
+indeed of all other business. Letting alone has been tried, and it has
+succeeded no better, even in times less urgent than the present, than
+the usual policy of coercion followed by concession, or concession
+followed by coercion.
+
+There are three aspects of the Irish question, three channels by which
+the troubles of the "distressful island" stream down upon us, forcing
+whoever now rules or may come to rule in England to attempt some plan
+for dealing with them. I will take them in succession.
+
+The first is the Parliamentary difficulty. In the British House of
+Commons, with its six hundred and seventy members, there are nearly
+ninety Irish Nationalists. They are a well-disciplined body, voting as
+one man, though capable of speaking enough for a thousand. They have no
+interest in English or Scotch or colonial or Indian affairs, but only in
+Irish, and look upon the vote which they have the right of giving upon
+the former solely as a means of furthering their own Irish aims. They
+are, therefore, in the British Parliament not merely a foreign body,
+indifferent to the great British and imperial issues confided to it, but
+a hostile body, opposed to its present constitution, seeking to
+discredit it in its authority over Ireland, and to make more and more
+palpable and incurable the incompetence for Irish business whereof they
+accuse it. Several modes of doing this are open to them. They may, as
+some of the more actively bitter among them did in the Parliaments of
+1874 and 1880, obstruct business by long and frequent speeches, dilatory
+motions, and all those devices which in America are called
+filibustering. The House of Commons may, no doubt, try to check these
+tactics by more stringent rules of procedure, but the attempts already
+made in this direction have had but slight success, and every
+restriction of debate, since it trenches on the freedom of English and
+Scotch no less than of Irish members, injures Parliament as a whole.
+They may disgust the British people with the House of Commons by keeping
+it (as they have done in former years) so constantly occupied with Irish
+business as to leave it little time for English and Scotch measures.
+They may throw the weight of their collective vote into the scale of one
+or other British party, according to the amount of concession it will
+make to them, or, by always voting against the Ministry of the day, they
+may cause frequent and sudden changes of Government. This plan also they
+have followed in time past; for the moment it is not so applicable,
+because the Tories and dissentient Liberals, taken together, possess a
+majority in the House of Commons. But at any moment the alliance of
+those two sections may vanish, or another General Election may leave
+Tories and Liberals so nearly balanced that the Irish vote could turn
+the scale. Whoever reflects on the nature of Parliamentary Government
+will perceive that it is based on the assumption that the members of the
+ruling assembly, however much they may differ on other subjects, agree
+in desiring the strength, dignity, and welfare of the assembly itself,
+and in caring for the main national interests which it controls. He will
+therefore be prepared to expect countless and multiform difficulties in
+working such a Government, where a large section of the assembly seeks
+not to use, but to make useless, its forms and rules--not to preserve,
+but to lower and destroy, its honour, its credit, its efficiency. In
+vain are Irish members blamed for these tactics, for they answer that
+the interests of their own country require them to seek first her
+welfare, which can in their view be secured only by removing her from
+the direct control of what they deem a foreign assembly. Now that the
+demand for Irish self-government has obtained the sympathy of the bulk
+of English Liberals, they are unlikely forthwith to resume the
+systematic obstruction of past years. But they will be able, without
+alienating their English friends, to render the conduct of Parliamentary
+business so difficult that every English Ministry will be forced either
+to crush them, if it can, or to appease them by a series of concessions.
+
+The second difficulty is that of maintaining social order in Ireland.
+What that difficulty is, and whence it arises, every one knows. It is
+chronic, but every second or third winter, when there has been a wet
+season, or the price of live stock declines, it becomes specially acute.
+The tenants refuse to pay rents which they declare to be impossible. The
+landlords, or the harsher among them, try to enforce rents by evictions;
+evictions are resisted by outrages and boycotting. Popular sentiment
+supports those who commit outrages, because it considers the tenantry to
+be engaged in a species of war, a righteous war, against the landlord.
+Evidence can seldom be obtained, and juries acquit in the teeth of
+evidence. Thus the enforcement of the law strains all the resources of
+authority, while a habit of lawlessness and discontent is transmitted
+from generation to generation. Of the remedies proposed for this chronic
+evil the most obvious is the strengthening of the criminal law. We have
+been trying this for more than one hundred years, since Whiteboyism
+appeared, and trying it in vain. Since the Union, Coercion Acts, of more
+or less severity, have been almost always in force in Ireland, passed
+for two or three years, then dropped for a year or two, then renewed in
+a form slightly varying, but always with the same result of driving the
+disease in for a time, but not curing it. Mr. Gladstone proposed to buy
+out the landlords and then leave an Irish Parliament to restore social
+order, with that authority which it would derive from having the will of
+the people behind it; because he held that when the people felt the law
+to be of their own making, and not imposed from without, their sentiment
+would be enlisted on its side, and the necessity for a firm Government
+recognized. This plan, has, however, been rejected, so the choice was
+left of a fresh Coercion Act, or of some scheme, necessarily a costly
+scheme, for getting rid of the source of trouble by transferring the
+land of Ireland to the peasantry. The present Government, while guided
+by Sir M. Hicks-Beach, who had some knowledge of Ireland, did its best
+to persuade the landlords to accept reduced rents, while the Nationalist
+leaders, on their side, sought to restrain the people from outrages. But
+the armistice did not last. The Ministry yielded to the foolish counsels
+of its more violent supporters, and entrusted Irish affairs to the hands
+of a Chief Secretary without previous knowledge of the island. An
+unusually severe Coercion Act has been brought in and passed by the aid
+of the dissentient Liberals. And we now see this Act administered with a
+mixture of virulence and incompetence to which even the dreary annals of
+Irish misgovernment present few parallels. The feeling of the English
+people is rising against the policy carried out in their name. So far
+from being solved, the problem of social order becomes every day more
+acute.
+
+There remains the question of a reform of local government. For many
+years past, every English Ministry has undertaken to frame a measure
+creating a new system of popular rural self-government in England. It is
+the first large task of domestic legislation which we ask from
+Parliament. When such a scheme is proposed, can Ireland be left out of
+it? Should she be left out, the argument that she is being treated
+unequally and unfairly, as compared with England, would gain immense
+force; because the present local government of Ireland is admittedly
+less popular, less efficient, altogether less defensible, than even that
+of England which we are going to reform. If, therefore, the theory that
+the Imperial Parliament is both anxious and able to do its duty by
+Ireland is to be maintained, Ireland, too, must have her scheme of local
+government. And a scheme of local government is a large project, the
+discussion of which must pass into a discussion of the government of the
+island as a whole.
+
+Since, then, we may conclude that whatever Ministry is in power will be
+bound to take up the state of Ireland--since Parliament and the nation
+will be occupied with the subject during the coming sessions fully as
+much as they have been during those that have recently passed--the next
+inquiry is, What will the tendency of opinion and legislation be? Will
+the reasons and forces described above bring us to Home Rule? and if so,
+when, how, and why?
+
+There are grounds for answering these questions in the negative. A
+majority of the House of Commons, including the present Ministry and
+such influential Liberals as Mr. Bright, Lord Hartington, Mr.
+Chamberlain, stand pledged to resist it, and seem--such is the passion
+which controversy engenders--more disposed to resist it than they were
+in 1885. But this ground is less strong than it may appear. We have had
+too many changes of opinion--ay, and of action too--upon Irish affairs
+not to be prepared for further changes. A Ministry in power learns much
+which an Opposition fails to learn. Home Rule is an elastic expression,
+and some of those who were loudest in denouncing Mr. Gladstone's Bill
+will find it easy to explain, should they bring in a Bill of their own
+for giving self-government to Ireland, that their measure is a different
+thing, and free from the objections brought against his. Nor, if such a
+conversion should come, need it be deemed a dishonest one, for events
+are potent teachers, and governments now seek rather to follow than to
+form opinion. Although a decent interval must be allowed, no one will be
+astonished if the Tory leaders should move ere long in the direction
+indicated. Toryism itself, as has been remarked already, contains
+nothing opposed to the idea.
+
+Far greater obstacles exist in the aversion which (as already observed)
+so many Englishmen of both parties have entertained for any scheme which
+should seem to leave the Protestant minority at the mercy of the peasant
+and Roman Catholic majority, and to carry us some way toward the
+ultimate separation of the islands. These alarms are genuine and
+deep-seated. One who (like the present writer) thinks them, if not
+baseless, yet immensely overstrained, is, of course, convinced that they
+may be allayed. But time must first pass, and the plan that is to allay
+them may have to be framed on somewhat different lines from those of Mr.
+Gladstone's measure. It is even possible that a conflict more sharp and
+painful than any of recent years may intervene before a settlement is
+reached.
+
+Nevertheless, great as are the obstacles in the way, bitter as are the
+reproaches with which Mr. Gladstone is pursued by the richer classes in
+England, there is good reason to believe that the current is setting
+toward his policy. In proceeding to state the grounds for this view, I
+must frankly own that I am no longer (as in most of the preceding pages)
+merely setting forth facts on which impartial men in England would
+agree. The forecast which I seek to give may be tinged by my own belief
+that the grant of self-government is the best, if not the only method,
+now open to us of establishing peace between the islands, relieving the
+English Parliament of work it is ill fitted to discharge, allowing
+Ireland opportunities to learn those lessons in politics which her
+people so much need. The future, even the near future, is more than
+usually dim. Yet, if we examine those three branches of the Irish
+question which have been enumerated above, we shall see how naturally,
+in each of them, the concession of self-government seems to open, I will
+not say the most direct, but the least dangerous way, out of our
+troubles.
+
+The Parliamentary difficulty arises from the fact that the
+representatives of Ireland have the feelings of foreigners sitting in a
+foreign assembly, whose honour and usefulness they do not desire. While
+these are their feelings they cannot work properly in it, and it cannot
+work properly with them. The inconvenience may be endured, but the
+English will grow tired of it, and be disposed to rid themselves of it,
+if they see their way to do so without greater mischief. There are but
+two ways out of the difficulty. One is to get rid of the Irish members
+altogether; the other is to make them, by the concession of their just
+demands, contented and loyal members of a truly united Parliament. The
+experience of the Parliament of 1880, which was mainly occupied with
+Irish business, and began, being a strongly Liberal Parliament, with a
+bias toward the Irish popular party, showed how difficult it is for a
+House of Commons which is ignorant of Ireland to legislate wisely for
+it. In the House of Lords there is not a single Nationalist; indeed, up
+till 1886, that exalted chamber contained only one peer, Lord Dalhousie
+(formerly member for Liverpool), who had ever said a word in favour of
+Home Rule. The more that England becomes sensible, as she must become
+sensible, of the deficiencies of the present machinery for appreciating
+the needs and giving effect to the wishes of Irishmen, the more disposed
+will she be to grant them some machinery of their own.
+
+As regards social order, I have shown that the choice which lies before
+the opponents of Home Rule is either to continue the policy of coercing
+the peasantry by severe special legislation, or to remove the source of
+friction by buying out the landlords for the benefit of the tenants. The
+present Ministry have chosen the former alternative, but they dangle
+before the eyes of their supporters some prospect that they may
+ultimately revert to the latter. Now, the only way that has yet been
+pointed out of buying out the landlords, without imposing tremendous
+liabilities of loss upon the British Treasury, is the creation of a
+strong Home Rule Government in Dublin. Supposing, however, that some
+other plan could be discovered, which would avoid the fatal objections
+to which an extension of the plan of the (Salisbury) Land Purchase Act
+of 1885 is open, such a plan would remove one of the chief objections to
+an Irish Parliament, by leaving no estates for such a Parliament to
+confiscate. As for coercion every day, I might say, every bye-election
+shows us how it becomes more and more odious to the British democracy.
+They dislike severity; they dislike the inequality involved in passing
+harsher laws for Ireland than those that apply to England and Scotland.
+They find themselves forced to sympathize with acts of violence in
+Ireland which they would condemn in Great Britain, because these acts
+seem the only way of resisting harsh and unjust laws. When the recoil
+comes, it will be more violent than in former days. The wish to discover
+some other course will be very strong, and the obvious other course will
+be to leave it to an Irish authority to enforce social order in its own
+way--probably a more rough-and-ready way than that of British officials.
+The notion which has possessed most Englishmen, that Irish
+self-government would be another name for anarchy, is curiously
+erroneous. Conflicts there may be, but a vigorous rule will emerge.
+
+Lastly, as to local government. If a popular system is established in
+Ireland--one similar to that which it is proposed to establish in
+England--the control of its assemblies and officials will, over
+four-fifths of the island, fall into Nationalist hands. Their power will
+be enormously increased, for they will then command the machinery of
+administration, and the power of taxing. What with taxing landlords,
+aiding recalcitrant tenants, stopping the wheels of any central
+authority which may displease or oppose them, they will be in so strong
+a position that the creation of an Irish Parliament may appear to be a
+comparatively small further step, may even appear (as the wisest
+Nationalists now think it would prove) in the light of a check upon the
+abuse of local powers. These eventualities will unquestionably, when
+English opinion has realized them, make such a Parliament as the present
+pause before it commits rural local government to the Irish democracy.
+But it could not refuse to do something; and if it tried to restrain
+popular representative bodies by the veto of a bureaucracy in Dublin,
+there would arise occasions for quarrel and irritation more serious than
+now exist.[70] Those who once begin to repair an old and tottering
+building are led on, little by little, into changes they did not at
+starting contemplate. So it will be if once the task is undertaken of
+reforming the confessedly bad and indefensible system of Irish
+administration. We may stop at some half-way house on the way, but Home
+Rule stands at the end of the road.
+
+Supposing, then, that the Nationalist party, retaining its present
+strength and unity, perseveres in its present demands, there is every
+prospect that these demands will be granted. But will it persevere?
+There are among the English Dissentients those who prophesy that it will
+break up, as such parties have broken up before--will lose hope and
+wither away. Or the support of the Irish peasantry may be withdrawn--a
+result which some English politicians expect from a final settlement of
+the land question in the interest of the tenants. Any of these
+contingencies is possible, but at present most improbable. The moment
+when long-cherished aims begin to seem attainable is not that at which
+men are disposed to abandon them.
+
+There are, however, other reasons which suggest the likelihood of a
+change in English sentiment on the whole matter. The surprise with
+which the Bill of last April was received has worn off. The alarm is
+wearing off too. Those who set their teeth at what seemed to them a
+surrender to the Parnellites and their Irish-American allies, having
+relieved their temper by an emphatic No, have begun to ponder things
+more calmly. The English people are listening to the arguments from
+Irish history that are now addressed to them. They will be moved by the
+solid grounds of policy which that history suggests; will understand
+that what they have deemed insensate hatred is the natural result of
+long misgovernment, and will disappear with time and the removal of its
+causes. Many of the best minds of both nations will be at work to
+discover some method of reconciling Irish self-government with imperial
+supremacy and union free from the objections brought against the Bills
+of 1886. It is reasonable to expect that they may greatly improve upon
+these measures, which were prepared under pressure from a clamorous
+Opposition. What Mr. Disraeli once called the historical conscience of
+the country will appreciate those great underlying principles to which
+Mr. Gladstone's policy appeals. It has been accused of being a policy of
+despair; and may have commended itself to some who supported it as being
+simply a means of ridding England of responsibility. But to others it
+seemed, and more truly, a policy of faith; not, indeed, of thoughtless
+optimism, but of faith according to the definition which calls it "the
+substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith,
+by which nations as well as men must live, means nothing less than a
+conviction that great principles, permanent truths of human nature, lie
+at the bottom of all sound politics, and ought to be boldly and
+consistently applied, even when temporary difficulties surround their
+application. Such a principle is the belief in the power of freedom and
+self-government to cure the faults of a nation, in the tendency of
+responsibility to teach wisdom, and to make men see that justice and
+order are the surest sources of prosperity. Such a principle is the
+perception that national hatreds do not live on of themselves, but will
+expire when oppression has ceased, as a fire burns out without fuel.
+Such a principle is the recognition of the force of national sentiment,
+and of the duty of allowing it all the satisfaction that is compatible
+with the maintenance of imperial unity. Such, again, is the appreciation
+of those natural economic laws which show that nations, when disturbing
+passions have ceased, follow their own permanent interests, and that an
+island which finds its chief market in England and draws its capital
+from England will prefer a connection with England to the poverty and
+insignificance of isolation. It is the honour of Mr. Gladstone to have
+built his policy of conciliation upon principles like these, as upon a
+rock; and already the good effects are seen in the new friendliness
+which has arisen between the English masses and the people of Ireland,
+and in the better temper with which, despite the acrimony of some
+prominent politicians, the relations of the two peoples are discussed.
+When one looks round the horizon it is still far from clear; nor can we
+say from which quarter fair weather will arrive. But the air is fresher,
+and the clouds are breaking overhead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+What has happened since the above paragraphs were written, ten months
+ago, has confirmed more quickly and completely than the writer expected
+the forecasts they contain. Home Rule is no longer a word of terror,
+even to those English and Scotch voters who were opposed to it in July,
+1886. Most sensible men in the Tory and Dissentient Liberal camps have
+come to see that it is inevitable; and, while they continue to resist
+it for the sake of what is called consistency, or because they do not
+yet see in what form it is to be granted, they are disposed to regard
+its speedy arrival as the best method of retreat from an indefensible
+position.
+
+The repressive policy which the present Ministry are attempting in
+Ireland--for in the face of their failures one cannot say that they are
+carrying out any policy--is rendering Coercion Acts more and more
+detested by the English people. The actualities of Ireland, the social
+condition of her peasantry, the unwisdom of the dominant caste, the
+incompetence of the bureaucracy which affects to rule her, are being, by
+the full accounts we now receive, brought home to the mind of England
+and Scotland as they never were before, and produce their appropriate
+effect upon the heart and conscience of the people. The recognition by
+the Liberal party of the rights of Ireland, the visits of English
+Liberals to Ireland, the work done by Irishmen in English
+constituencies, are creating a feeling of unity and reciprocal interest
+between the masses of the people on both sides of the Channel without
+example in the seven hundred years that have passed since Strongbow's
+landing.
+
+This was the thing most needed to make Home Rule safe and full of
+promise, because it affords a guarantee that in such political contests
+as may arise in future, the division will not be, as heretofore, between
+the Irish people on the one side and the power of Britain on the other,
+but between two parties, each of which will have adherents in both
+islands. We may now at last hope that national hatreds will vanish; that
+England will unlearn her arrogance and Ireland her suspicion; that the
+basis is being laid for a harmonious co-operation of both nations in
+promoting the welfare and greatness of a common Empire.
+
+Many of the Irish patriots of 1798 and 1848 desired Separation, because
+they thought that Ireland, attached to England, could never be more
+than the obscure satellite of a greater State. When Ireland has been
+heartily welcomed by the democracy of Great Britain as an equal partner,
+the ground for any such desire will have disappeared, and Union will
+rest on a foundation firmer than has ever before existed. Ireland will
+feel, when those rights of self-government have been secured for which
+she has pleaded so long, that she owes them, not only to her own
+tenacity and courage, but to the magnanimity, the justice, and the
+freely given sympathy of the English and Scottish people.
+
+_October_, 1887.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 69: This article, which originally appeared in the American
+_New Princeton Review_, has been added to in a few places, in order to
+bring its narrative of facts up to date.]
+
+[Footnote 70: The experience of the last few months, which has shown us
+rural Boards of Guardians and municipal bodies over four-fifths of
+Ireland displaying their zeal in the Nationalist cause, has amply
+confirmed this anticipation, expressed nearly a year ago.]
+
+
+
+
+SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.[71]
+
+BY JOHN MORLEY.
+
+
+It is a favourite line of argument to show that we have no choice
+between the maintenance of the Union and the concession to Ireland of
+national independence. The evils of Irish independence are universally
+reckoned by Englishmen to be so intolerable that we shall never agree to
+it. The evils of Home Rule are even more intolerable still. Therefore,
+it is said, if we shall never willingly bring the latter upon our heads,
+_à fortiori_ we ought on no account to invite the former. The business
+in hand, however, is not a theorem, but a problem; it is not a thesis to
+be proved, but a malady to be cured; and the world will thank only the
+reasoner who winds up, not with Q.E.D., but with Q.E.F. To reason that a
+patient ought not to take a given medicine because it may possibly cause
+him more pain than some other medicine which he has no intention of
+taking, is curiously oblique logic. The question is not oblique; it is
+direct. Will the operation do more harm to his constitution than the
+slow corrosions of a disorder grown inveterate? Are the conditions of
+the connection between England and Ireland, as laid down in the Act of
+Union, incapable of improvement? Is the present working of these
+conditions more prosperous and hopeful, or happier for Irish order and
+for English institutions, than any practicable proposal that it is
+within the compass of statesmanship to devise, and of civic sense to
+accept and to work? That is the question.
+
+Some people contend that the burden of making out a case rests on the
+advocate of change, and not on those who support things as they are. But
+who supports things as they are? Things as they are have become
+insupportable. If you make any of the constitutional changes that have
+been proposed, we are told, parliamentary government, as Englishmen now
+know it, is at an end; and our critic stands amazed at those "who deem
+it a slighter danger to innovate on the Act of Union than to remodel the
+procedure of the House of Commons." As if that were the alternative.
+Great changes in the rules may do other good things, but no single
+competent authority believes that in this particular they will do the
+thing that we want. We cannot avoid constitutional changes. It is made
+matter of crushing rebuke that the Irish proposals of the late
+Government were an innovation on the old constitution of the realm. But
+everybody knows that, while ancient forms have survived, the last
+hundred years have witnessed a long succession of silent but most
+profound innovations. It was shortsighted to assume that the
+redistribution of political power that took place in 1884-5 was the last
+chapter of the history of constitutional change. It ought to have been
+foreseen that new possessors of power, both Irish and British, would
+press for objects the pursuit of which would certainly involve further
+novelties in the methods and machinery of government. Every given
+innovation must be rigorously scrutinized, but in the mere change or in
+the fact of innovation there is no valid reproach. When one of the
+plans for the better government of Ireland is described as depriving
+parliamentary institutions of their elasticity and strength, as
+weakening the Executive at home, and lessening the power of the country
+to resist foreign attack, no careful observer of the events of the last
+seven years can fail to see that all this evil has already got its grip
+upon us. Mr. Dicey himself admits it. "Great Britain," he says, "if left
+to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given
+by unity of sentiment and community of interests. The obstruction and
+the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency
+with which they are pursued, arise in part at least from the connection
+with Ireland." So then, after all, it is feebleness and inconsistency,
+not elasticity and strength, that mark our institutions as they stand;
+feebleness and inconsistency, distraction and uncertainty. The supporter
+of things as they are is decidedly as much concerned in making out a
+case as the advocate of change.
+
+The strength of the argument from Nationality is great, and full of
+significance; but Nationality is not the whole essence of either the
+argument from History or the argument from Self-government. Their force
+lies in considerations of political expediency as tested by practical
+experience.
+
+The point of the argument from the lessons of History is that for some
+reason or another the international concern, whose unlucky affairs we
+are now trying to unravel, has always been carried on at a loss: the
+point of the argument from Self-government is that the loss would have
+been avoided if the Irish shareholders had for a certain number of the
+transactions been more influentially represented on the Board. That is
+quite apart from the sentiment of pure nationality. The failure has come
+about, not simply because the laws were not made by Irishmen as such,
+but because they were not made by the men who knew most about Ireland.
+The vice of the connection between the two countries has been the
+stupidity of governing a country without regard to the interests or
+customs, the peculiar objects and peculiar experiences, of the great
+majority of the people who live in it. It is not enough to say that the
+failures of England in Ireland have to a great extent flowed from causes
+too general to be identified with the intentional wrong-doing either of
+rulers or of subjects. We readily admit that, but it is not the point.
+It is not enough to insist that James I., in his plantations and
+transplantations, probably meant well to his Irish subjects. Probably he
+did. That is not the question. If it is "absolutely certain that his
+policy worked gross wrong," what is the explanation and the defence? We
+are quite content with Mr. Dicey's own answer. "Ignorance and want of
+sympathy produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity. An intended
+reform produced injustice, litigation, misery, and discontent. The case
+is noticeable, for it is a type of a thousand subsequent English
+attempts to reform and improve Ireland." This description would apply,
+with hardly a word altered, to the wrong done by the Encumbered Estates
+Act in the reign of Queen Victoria. That memorable measure, as Mr.
+Gladstone said, was due not to the action of a party, but to the action
+of a Parliament. Sir Robert Peel was hardly less responsible for it than
+Lord John Russell. "We produced it," said Mr. Gladstone, "with a
+general, lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good intention of taking
+capital to Ireland. What did we do? We sold the improvements of the
+tenants" (House of Commons, April 16). It is the same story, from the
+first chapter to the last, in education, poor law, public works, relief
+Acts, even in coercion Acts--lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good
+intention. That is the argument from history. When we are asked what
+good law an Irish Parliament would make that could not equally well be
+made by the Parliament at Westminster, this is the answer. It is not
+the will, it is the intelligence, that is wanting. We all know what the
+past has been. Why should the future be different?
+
+"It is an inherent condition of human affairs," said Mill in a book
+which, in spite of some chimeras, is a wholesome corrective of the
+teaching of our new jurists, "that no intention, however sincere, of
+protecting the interests of others can make it safe or salutary to tie
+up their own hands. Still more obviously true is it, that by their own
+hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their
+circumstances in life be worked out" (_Repres. Government_, p. 57). It
+is these wise lessons from human experience to which the advocate of
+Home Rule appeals, and not the wild doctrine that any body of persons
+claiming to be united by a sense of nationality possesses _an inherent
+and divine right_ to be treated as an independent community. It is quite
+true that circumstances sometimes justify a temporary dictatorship. In
+that there is nothing at variance with Liberalism. But the Parliamentary
+dictatorship in Ireland has lasted a great deal too long to be called
+temporary, and its stupid shambling operations are finally and
+decisively condemned by their consequences. That is a straightforward
+utilitarian argument, and has nothing whatever to do with inherent and
+divine rights, or any other form of political moonshine.
+
+There are some who believe that an honest centralized administration of
+impartial officials, and not Local Self-Government, would best meet the
+real wants of the people. In other words, everything is to be for the
+people, nothing by the people--which has not hitherto been a Liberal
+principle. Something, however, may be said for this view, provided that
+the source of the authority of such an administration be acceptable.
+Austrian administration in Lombardy was good rather than bad, yet it was
+hated and resisted because it was Austrian and not Italian. No rational
+person can hold for an instant that the source of a scheme of
+government is immaterial to its prosperity. More than that, when people
+look for success in the government of Ireland to "honest centralized
+administration," we cannot but wonder what fault they find with the
+administration of Ireland to-day in respect of its honesty or its
+centralization. What administration ever carried either honesty or
+centralization to a higher pitch than the Irish administration of Mr.
+Forster? What could be less successful? Those who have been most
+directly concerned in the government of Ireland, whether English or
+Irish, even while alive to the perils of any other principle, habitually
+talk of centralization as the curse of the system. Here, again, why
+should we expect success in the future from a principle that has so
+failed in the past?
+
+Again, how are we to get a strong centralized administration in the face
+of a powerful and hostile parliamentary representation? It is very easy
+to talk of the benefits that might have been conferred on Ireland by
+such humanity and justice as was practised by Turgot in his
+administration of the Generality of Limoges. But Turgot was not
+confronted by eighty-six Limousin members of an active sovereign body,
+all interested in making his work difficult, and trusted by a large
+proportion of the people of the province with that as their express
+commission. It is possible to have an honest centralized administration
+of great strength and activity in India, but there is no Parliament in
+India. If India, or any province of it, ever gets representative
+government and our parliamentary system, from that hour, if there be any
+considerable section of Indian feeling averse from European rule, the
+present administrative system will be paralyzed, as the preliminary to
+being revolutionized. It is conceivable, if any one chooses to think so,
+that a body of impartial officials could manage the national business in
+Ireland much better without the guidance of public opinion and common
+sentiment than with it. But if you intend to govern the country as you
+think best--and that is the plain and practical English of centralized
+administration--why ask the country to send a hundred men to the great
+tribunal of supervision to inform you how it would like to be governed?
+The Executive cannot set them aside as if they were a hundred dummies;
+in refusing to be guided, it cannot escape being harassed, by them. You
+may amend procedure, but that is no answer, unless you amend the Irish
+members out of voice and vote. They will still count. You cannot gag and
+muzzle them effectually, and if you could, they would still be there,
+and their presence would still make itself incessantly felt. Partly from
+a natural desire to lessen the common difficulties of government, and
+partly from a consciousness, due to the prevailing state of the modern
+political atmosphere, that there is something wrong in this total
+alienation of an Executive from the possessors of parliamentary power,
+the officials will incessantly be tempted to make tacks out of their own
+course; and thus they lose the coherency and continuity of absolutism
+without gaining the pliant strength of popular government. This is not a
+presumption of what would be likely to happen, but an account of what
+does happen, and what justified Mr. Disraeli in adding a weak Executive
+to the alien Church and the absentee aristocracy, as the three great
+curses of Ireland. Nothing has occurred since 1844 to render the
+Executive stronger, but much to the contrary. There is, and there can
+be, no weaker or less effective Government in the world than a highly
+centralized system working alongside of a bitterly inimical popular
+representation. I say nothing of the effect of the fluctuations of
+English parties on Irish administration. I say nothing of the tendency
+in an Irish government, awkwardly alternating with that to which I have
+just adverted, to look over the heads of the people of Ireland, and to
+consider mainly what will be thought by the ignorant public in England.
+But these sources of incessant perturbation must not be left out. The
+fault of Irish centralization is not that it is strong, but that it is
+weak. Weak it must remain until Parliament either approves of the
+permanent suspension of the Irish writs, or else devises constitutional
+means for making Irish administration responsible to Irish
+representatives.
+
+If experience is decisive against the policy of the past, experience
+too, all over the modern world, indicates the better direction for the
+future. I will not use my too scanty space in repeating any of the great
+wise commonplaces in praise of self-government. Here they are
+superfluous. In the case of Ireland they have all been abundantly
+admitted in a long series of measures, from Catholic Emancipation down
+to Lord O'Hagan's Jury Law and the Franchise and Redistribution Acts of
+a couple of years ago. The principle of self-government has been
+accepted, ratified, and extended in a hundred ways. It is only a
+question of the form that self-government shall take. Against the form
+proposed by the late Ministry a case is built up that rests on a series
+of prophetic assumptions. These assumptions, from the nature of the
+case, can only be met by a counter-statement of fair and reasonable
+probabilities. Let us enumerate some of them.
+
+1. It is inferred that, because the Irish leaders have used violent
+language and resorted to objectionable expedients against England during
+the last six years, they would continue in the same frame of mind after
+the reasons for it had disappeared. In other words, because they have
+been the enemies of a Government which refused to listen to a
+constitutional demand, therefore they would continue to be its enemies
+after the demand had been listened to. On this reasoning, the effect is
+to last indefinitely and perpetually, notwithstanding the cessation of
+the cause. Our position is that all the reasonable probabilities of
+human conduct point the other way. The surest way of justifying violent
+language and fostering treasonable designs, is to refuse to listen to
+the constitutional demand.
+
+2. The Irish, we are told, hate the English with an irreconcilable
+hatred, and would unquestionably use any Constitution as an instrument
+for satisfying their master passion. Irrational hatred, they say, can be
+treated by rational men with composure. The Czechs of Bohemia are said
+to be irreconcilable, yet the South Germans bear with their hatred; and
+if we cannot cure we might endure the antipathy of Ireland. Now, as for
+the illustration, I may remark that the hatred of the Czechs would be
+much too formidable for German composure, if the Czechs did not happen
+to possess a provincial charter and a special constitution of their own.
+If the Irish had the same, their national dislike--so far as it
+exists--might be expected to become as bearable as the Germans have
+found the feeling of the Czechs. But how deep does Irish dislike go? Is
+it directed against Englishmen, or against an English official system?
+The answers of every impartial observer to the whole group of such
+questions as these favour the conclusion that the imputed hatred of
+England in Ireland has been enormously exaggerated and overcoloured by
+Ascendency politicians for good reasons of their own; that with the
+great majority of Irishmen it has no deep roots; that it is not one of
+those passionate international animosities that blind men to their own
+interests, or lead them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of injuring
+their foe; and, finally, that it would not survive the amendment of the
+system that has given it birth.[72]
+
+3. It is assumed that there is a universal desire for Separation. That
+there is a strong sentiment of nationality we of course admit; it is
+part of the case, and not the worst part. But the sentiment of
+nationality is a totally different thing from a desire for Separation.
+Scotland might teach our pseudo-Unionists so much as that. Nowhere in
+the world is the sentiment of nationality stronger, yet there is not a
+whisper of Separation. That there is a section of Irishmen who desire
+Separation is notorious, but everything that has happened since the
+Government of Ireland Bill was introduced, including the remarkable
+declarations of Mr. Parnell in accepting the Bill (June 7), and
+including the proceedings at Chicago, shows that the separatist section
+is a very small one either in Ireland or in America, and that it has
+become sensibly smaller since, and in consequence of, the proposed
+concession of a limited statutory constitution. The Irish are quite
+shrewd enough to know that Separation, if it were attainable--and they
+are well aware that it is not--would do no good to their markets; and to
+that knowledge, as well as to many other internal considerations, we may
+confidently look for the victory of strong centripetal over very weak
+centrifugal tendencies. Even if we suppose these centrifugal tendencies
+to be stronger than I would allow them to be, how shall we best resist
+them--by strengthening the hands and using the services of the party
+which, though nationalist, is also constitutional; or by driving that
+party also, in despair of a constitutional solution, to swell the ranks
+of Extremists and Irreconcilables?
+
+4. Whatever may be the ill-feeling towards England, it is at least
+undeniable that there are bitter internal animosities in Ireland, and a
+political constitution, our opponents argue, can neither assuage
+religious bigotry nor remove agrarian discontent.
+
+It is true, no doubt, that the old feud between Protestant and Catholic
+might, perhaps, not instantly die down to the last smouldering embers of
+it all over Ireland. But we may remark that there is no perceptible bad
+blood between Protestant and Catholic, outside of one notorious corner.
+Second, the real bitterness of the feud arose from the fact that
+Protestantism was associated with an exclusive and hostile ascendency,
+which would now be brought to an end. Whatever feeling about what is
+called Ulster exists in the rest of Ireland, arises not from the fact
+that there are Protestants in Ulster, but that the Protestants are
+anti-National. Third, the Catholics would no longer be one compact body
+for persecuting, obscurantist, or any other evil purposes; the abatement
+of the national struggle would allow the Catholics to fall into the two
+natural divisions of Clerical and Liberal. What we may be quite sure of
+is that the feud will never die so long as sectarian pretensions are
+taken as good reasons for continuing bad government.
+
+It is true, again, that a constitution would not necessarily remove
+agrarian discontent. But it is just as true that you will never remove
+agrarian discontent without a constitution. Mr. Dicey, on consideration,
+will easily see why. Here we come to an illustration, and a very
+impressive illustration it is, of the impotence of England to do for
+Ireland the good which Ireland might do for herself. Nobody just now is
+likely to forget the barbarous condition of the broad fringe of
+wretchedness on the west coast of Ireland. Of this Lord Dufferin truly
+said in 1880 that no legislation could touch it, that no alteration in
+the land laws could effectually ameliorate it, and that it must continue
+until the world's end unless something be contrived totally to change
+the conditions of existence in that desolate region. Parliament lavishly
+pours water into the sieve in the shape of Relief Acts. Even in my own
+short tenure of office I was responsible for one of these terribly
+wasteful and profoundly unsatisfactory measures. Instead of relief, what
+a statesman must seek is prevention of this great evil and strong root
+of evil; and prevention means a large, though it cannot be a very swift,
+displacement of the population. But among the many experts with whom I
+have discussed this dolorous and perplexing subject, I never found one
+of either political party who did not agree that a removal of the
+surplus population was only practicable if carried out by an Irish
+authority, backed by the solid weight of Irish opinion. Any exertion of
+compulsory power by a British Minister would raise the whole
+country-side in squalid insurrection, government would become
+impossible, and the work of transplantation would end in ghastly
+failure. It is misleading and untrue, then, to say that there is no
+possible relation between self-government and agrarian discontent,
+misery, and backwardness; and when Mr. Dicey and others tell us that the
+British Parliament is able to do all good things for Ireland, I would
+respectfully ask them how a British Parliament is to deal with the
+Congested Districts.
+
+Nearly as much may be said of the prevention of the mischievous practice
+of Subdivision. Some contend that the old disposition to subdivide is
+dying out; others, however, assure us that it is making its appearance
+even among the excellent class who purchased their holdings under the
+Church Act. That Act did not prohibit subdivision, but it is prohibited
+in the Act of 1881. Still the prohibition can only be made effective, if
+operations take place on anything like a great scale, on condition that
+representative, authorities resident on the spot have the power of
+enforcing it, and have an interest in enforcing it. Some of the
+pseudo-Unionists are even against any extension of local
+self-government, and if it be unaccompanied by the creation of a central
+native authority they are right. What such people fail to see is that,
+in resisting political reconstruction, they are at the same time
+resisting the only available remedies for some of the worst of agrarian
+maladies.
+
+The ruinous interplay between agrarian and political forces, each using
+the other for ends of its own, will never cease so long as the political
+demand is in every form resisted. That, we are told, is all the fault of
+the politicians. Be it so; then the Government must either suppress the
+politicians outright, or else it must interest them in getting the terms
+of its land settlement accepted and respected. Home Rule on our scheme
+was, among other things, part of an arrangement for "settling the
+agrarian feud." It was a means of interposing between the Irish tenant
+and the British State an authority interested enough and strong enough
+to cause the bargain to be kept. It is said that the Irish authority
+would have had neither interest nor strength enough to resist the forces
+making for repudiation. Would those forces be any less irresistible if
+the whole body of the Irish peasantry stood, as Land Purchase _minus_
+Self-Government makes them to stand, directly face to face with the
+British State? This is a question that our opponents cannot evade, any
+more than they can evade that other question, which lies unnoticed at
+the back of all solutions of the problem by way of peasant
+ownership--Whether it is possible to imagine the land of Ireland handed
+over to Irishmen, and yet the government of Ireland kept exclusively and
+directly by Englishmen? Such a divorce is conceivable under a rule like
+that of the British in India: with popular institutions it is
+inconceivable and impossible.
+
+5. It is argued that Home Rule on Mr. Gladstone's plan would not work,
+because it follows in some respects the colonial system, whereas the
+conditions at the root of the success of the system in the Colonies do
+not exist in Ireland. They are distant, Ireland is near; they are
+prosperous, Ireland is poor; they are proud of the connection with
+England, Ireland resents it. But the question is not whether the
+conditions are identical with those of any colony; it is enough if in
+themselves they seem to promise a certain basis for government. It might
+justly be contended that proximity is a more favourable condition than
+distance; without it there could not be that close and constant
+intercommunication which binds the material interests of Ireland to
+those of Great Britain, and so provides the surest guarantee for union.
+If Ireland were suddenly to find herself as far off as Canada, then
+indeed one might be very sorry to answer for the Union. Again, though
+Ireland has to bear her share of the prevailing depression in the chief
+branch of her production, it is a great mistake to suppose that outside
+of the margin of chronic wretchedness in the west and south-west, the
+condition not only of the manufacturing industries of the north, but of
+the agricultural industry in the richer parts of the middle and south,
+is so desperately unprosperous as to endanger a political constitution.
+Under our stupidily [Transcriber: sic] centralized system, Irishmen have
+no doubt acquired the enervating trick of attributing every misfortune,
+great or small, public or private, to the Government. When they learn
+the lessons of responsibility, they will unlearn this fatal habit, and
+not before.
+
+I do not see, therefore, that the differences in condition between
+Ireland and the Colonies make against Home Rule. What I do see is ample
+material out of which would arise a strong and predominant party of
+order. The bulk of the nation are sons and daughters of a Church which
+has been hostile to revolution in every country but Ireland, and which
+would be hostile to it there from the day that the cause of revolution
+ceased to be the cause of self-government. If the peasantry were made to
+realize that at last the land settlement, wisely and equitably made, was
+what it must inexorably remain, and what no politicians could help them
+to alter, they would be as conservative as the peasantry under a similar
+condition in every other spot on the surface of the globe. There is no
+reason to expect that the manufacturers, merchants, and shopkeepers of
+Ireland would be less willing or less able to play an active and useful
+part in the affairs of their country than the same classes in England or
+Scotland. It will be said that this is mere optimist prophesying. But
+why is that to be flung aside under the odd name of sentimentalism,
+while pessimist prophesying is to be taken for gospel?
+
+The only danger is lest we should allot new responsibilities to Irishmen
+with a too grudging and restrictive hand. For true responsibility there
+must be real power. It is easy to say that this power would be misused,
+and that the conditions both of Irish society and of the proposed
+Constitution must prevent it from being used for good. It is easy to say
+that separation would be a better end. Life is too short to discuss
+that. Separation is not the alternative either to Home Rule or to the
+_status quo_. If the people of Ireland are not to be trusted with real
+power over their own affairs, it would be a hundred times more just to
+England, and more merciful to Ireland, to take away from her that
+semblance of free government which torments and paralyzes one country,
+while it robs the other of national self-respect and of all the
+strongest motives and best opportunities of self-help. The _status quo_
+is drawing very near to its inevitable end. The two courses then open
+will be Home Rule on the one hand, and some shy bungling underhand
+imitation of a Crown Colony on the other. We shall have either to listen
+to the Irish representatives or to suppress them. Unless we have lost
+all nerve and all political faculty we shall, before many months are
+over, face these alternatives. Liberals are for the first; Tories at
+present incline to the second. It requires very moderate instinct for
+the forces at work in modern politics to foresee the path along which we
+shall move, in the interests alike of relief to Great Britain and of a
+sounder national life for Ireland. The only real question is not Whether
+we are to grant Home Rule, but How.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 71: The following pages, with one or two slight alterations,
+are extracted, by the kind permission of Mr. James Knowles, from two
+articles which were published in the _Nineteenth Century_ at the
+beginning of the present year, in reply to Professor Dicey's statement
+of the English case against Home Rule.]
+
+[Footnote 72: The late J.E. Cairnes, after describing the clearances
+after the famine, goes on to say, "I own I cannot wonder that a thirst
+for revenge should spring from such calamities; that hatred, even
+undying hatred, for what they could not but regard as the cause and
+symbol of their misfortunes--English rule in Ireland--should possess the
+sufferers.... The disaffection now so widely diffused throughout Ireland
+may possibly in some degree be fed from historical traditions, and have
+its remote origin in the confiscations of the seventeenth century; but
+all that gives it energy, all that renders it dangerous, may, I believe,
+be traced to exasperation produced by recent transactions, and more
+especially to the bitter memories left by that most flagrant abuse of
+the rights of property and most scandalous disregard of the claims of
+humanity--the wholesale clearances of the period following the
+famine."--_Political Essays_, p. 198.]
+
+
+
+
+LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+BY W.E. GLADSTONE.
+
+
+Ireland for more than seven hundred years has been part of the British
+territory, and has been with slight exceptions held by English arms, or
+governed in the last resort from this side the water. Scotland was a
+foreign country until 1603, and possessed absolute independence until
+1707. Yet, whether it was due to the standing barrier of the sea, or
+whatever may have been the cause, much less was known by Englishmen of
+Ireland than of Scotland. Witness the works of Shakespeare, whose mind,
+unless as to book-knowledge, was encyclopædic, and yet who, while he
+seems at home in Scotland, may be said to tell us nothing of Ireland,
+unless it is that--
+
+    "The uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms."[73]
+
+During more recent times, the knowledge of Scotland on this side the
+border, which before was greatly in advance, has again increased in afar
+greater degree than the knowledge of Ireland.
+
+It is to Mr. Lecky that we owe the first serious effort, both in his
+_Leaders of Public Opinion_ and in his _History of England in the
+Eighteenth Century_, to produce a better state of things. He carefully
+and completely dovetailed the affairs of Ireland into English History,
+and the debt is one to be gratefully acknowledged. But such remedies,
+addressing themselves in the first instance to the lettered mind of the
+country, require much time to operate upon the mass, and upon the organs
+of superficial and transitory opinion, before the final stage, when they
+enter into our settled and familiar traditions. Meantime, since Ireland
+threatens to absorb into herself our Parliamentary life, there is a
+greatly enhanced necessity for becoming acquainted with the true state
+of the account between the islands that make up the United Kingdom, and
+with the likelihoods of the future in Ireland, so far as they are to be
+gathered from her past history.
+
+That history, until the eighteenth century begins, has a dismal
+simplicity about it. Murder, persecution, confiscation too truly
+describe its general strain; and policy is on the whole subordinated to
+violence as the standing instrument of government. But after, say, the
+reign of William III., the element of representation begins to assert
+itself. Simplicity is by degrees exchanged for complexity; the play of
+human motives, singularly diversified, now becomes visible in the
+currents of a real public life. It has for a very long time been my
+habit, when consulted by young political students, to recommend them
+carefully to study the characters and events of the American
+Independence. Quite apart from the special and temporary reasons bearing
+upon the case, I would now add a twin recommendation to examine and
+ponder the lessons of Irish history during the eighteenth century. The
+task may not be easy, but the reward will be ample.
+
+The mainspring of public life had, from a venerable antiquity, lain _de
+jure_ within Ireland herself. The heaviest fetter upon this life was the
+Law of Poynings; the most ingenious device upon record for hamstringing
+legislative independence, because it cut off the means of resumption
+inherent in the nature of Parliaments such as were those of the three
+countries. But the Law of Poynings was an Irish Law. Its operation
+effectually aided on the civil side those ruder causes, under the action
+of which Ireland had lain for four centuries usually passive, and
+bleeding at every pore. The main factors of her destiny worked, in
+practice, from this side the water. But from the reign of Anne, or
+perhaps from the Revolution onwards,
+
+    "Novus sæcorum nascitur ordo."
+
+Of the three great nostrums so liberally applied by England, extirpation
+and persecution had entirely failed, but confiscation had done its work.
+The great Protestant landlordism of Ireland[74] had been strongly and
+effectually built up. But, like other human contrivances, while it held
+Ireland fast, it had also undesigned results. The repressed principle of
+national life, the struggles of which had theretofore been extinguished
+in blood, slowly sprang up anew in a form which, though extremely
+narrow, and extravagantly imperfect, was armed with constitutional
+guarantees; and, the regimen of violence once displaced, these
+guarantees were sure to operate. What had been transacted in England
+under Plantagenets and Stuarts was, to a large extent, transacted anew
+by the Parliament of Ireland in the eighteenth century. That Parliament,
+indeed, deserves almost every imaginable epithet of censure. It was
+corrupt, servile, selfish, cruel. But when we have said all this, and
+said it truly, there is more to tell. It was alive, and it was national.
+Even absenteeism, that obstinately clinging curse, though it enfeebled
+and distracted, could not, and did not, annihilate nationality. The
+Irish Legislation was, moreover, compressed and thwarted by a foreign
+executive; but even to this tremendous agent the vital principle was
+too strong eventually to succumb.
+
+Mr. Lecky well observes that the Irish case supplied "one of the most
+striking examples upon record"[75] of an unconquerable efficacy in even
+the most defective Parliament. I am, however, doubtful whether in this
+proposition we have before us the whole case. This efficacy is not
+invariably found even in tolerably constructed Parliaments. Why do we
+find it in a Parliament of which the constitution and the environment
+were alike intolerable? My answer is, because that Parliament found
+itself faced by a British influence which was entirely anti-national,
+and was thus constrained to seek for strength in the principle of
+nationality.
+
+Selfishness is a rooted principle of action in nations not less than in
+single persons. It seems to draw a certain perfume from the virtue of
+patriotism, which lies upon its borders. It stalks abroad with a
+semblance of decency, nay, even of excellence. And under this cover a
+paramount community readily embraces the notion, that a dependent
+community may be made to exist not for its own sake, but for the sake of
+an extraneous society of men. With this idea, the European nations,
+utterly benighted in comparison with the ancient Greeks, founded their
+transmarine dependencies. But a vast maritime distance, perhaps aided by
+some filtration of sound ideas, prevented the application of this theory
+in its nakedness and rigour to the American Colonies of England. In
+Ireland we had not even the title of founders to allege. Nay, we were,
+in point of indigenous civilization, the junior people. But the maritime
+severance, sufficient to prevent accurate and familiar knowledge, was
+not enough to bar the effective exercise of overmastering power. And
+power was exercised, at first from without, to support the Pale, to
+enlarge it, to make it include Ireland. When this had been done, power
+began, in the seventeenth century, to be exercised from within Ireland,
+within the precinct of its government and its institutions. These were
+carefully corrupted, from the multiplication of the Boroughs by James I.
+onwards, for the purpose. The struggle became civil, instead of martial;
+and it was mainly waged by agencies on the spot, not from beyond the
+Channel. When the rule of England passed over from the old violence into
+legal forms and doctrines, the Irish reaction against it followed the
+example. And the legal idea of Irish nationality took its rise in very
+humble surroundings; if the expression may be allowed, it was born in
+the slums of politics. Ireland reached the nadir of political depression
+when, at and after the Boyne, she had been conquered not merely by an
+English force, but by continental mercenaries. The ascendant
+Protestantism of the island had never stood so low in the aspect it
+presented to this country; inasmuch as the Irish Parliament, for the
+first time, I believe, declared itself dependent upon England,[76] and
+either did not desire, or did not dare, to support its champion
+Molyneux, when his work asserting Irish independence was burned in
+London. It petitioned for representation in the English Parliament, not
+in order to uplift the Irish people, but in order to keep them down. In
+its sympathies and in its aims the overwhelming mass of the population
+had no share. It was Swift who, by the _Drapier's Letters_, for the
+first time called into existence a public opinion flowing from and
+representing Ireland as a whole. He reasserted the doctrine of Molyneux,
+and denounced Wood's halfpence not only as a foul robbery, but as a
+constitutional and as a national insult. The patience of the Irish
+Protestants was tried very hard, and they were forced, as Sir Charles
+Duffy states in his vivid book, to purchase the power of oppressing
+their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen at a great price.[77] Their
+pension list was made to provide the grants too degrading to be
+tolerated in England. The Presbyterians had to sit down under the
+Episcopal monopoly; but the enjoyment of that monopoly was not left to
+the Irish Episcopalians. In the time of Henry VIII. it had been
+necessary to import an English Archbishop Browne[78] and an English
+Bishop Bale, or there might not have been a single Protestant in
+Ireland. It was well to enrich the rolls of the Church of Ireland with
+the piety and learning of Ussher, and to give her in Bedell one name, at
+least, which carries the double crown of the hero and the saint. But,
+after the Restoration, by degrees the practice degenerated, and
+Englishmen were appointed in numbers to the Irish Episcopate in order to
+fortify and develop by numerical force what came to be familiarly known
+as the English interest. So that the Primate Boulter, during his
+government of Ireland, complains[79] that Englishmen are still less than
+one-half the whole body of Bishops, although the most important sees
+were to a large extent in their hands. The same practice was followed in
+the higher judicial offices. Fitzgibbon was the first Irishman who
+became Lord Chancellor.[80] The Viceroy, commonly absent, was
+represented by Lords Justices, who again were commonly English; and
+Primate Boulter, a most acute and able man, jealous of an Irish Speaker
+in that character, recommends that the commander of the forces should
+take his place.[81] When, later on, the Viceroy resided, it was a rule
+that the Chief Secretary should be an Englishman. On the occasion when
+Lord Castlereagh was by way of exception admitted to that office, an
+apology was found for it in his entire devotion to English policy and
+purposes. "His appointment," says Lord Cornwallis, "gives me great
+satisfaction, as he is so very unlike an Irishman!"[82] Resources were
+also found in the military profession, and among the voters for the
+Union we find the names of eight[83] English generals.
+
+The arrangements under Poynings's Law, and the commercial proscription,
+drove the iron ever deeper and deeper into the souls of Irishmen. It is
+but small merit in the Irish Parliament of George I. and George II., if
+under these circumstances a temper was gradually formed in, and
+transmitted by, them, which might one day achieve the honours of
+patriotism. It was in dread of this most healthful process, that the
+English Government set sedulously to work for its repression. The odious
+policy was maintained by a variety of agencies; by the misuse of Irish
+revenue, a large portion of which was unhappily under their control; by
+maintaining the duration of the Irish House of Commons for the life of
+the Sovereign; and, worst of all, by extending the range of corruption
+within the walls, through the constant multiplication of paid offices
+tenable by members of Parliament without even the check of re-election
+on acceptance.
+
+Thus by degrees those who sat in the Irish Houses came to feel both that
+they had a country, and that their country had claims upon them. The
+growth of a commercial interest in the Roman Catholic body must have
+accelerated the growth of this idea, as that interest naturally fell
+into line with the resistance to the English prescriptive laws. But the
+rate of progress was fearfully slow. It was hemmed in on every side by
+the obstinate unyielding pressure of selfish interests: the interest of
+the Established Church against the Presbyterians; the interest of the
+Protestant laity, or tithe-payers, against the clergy; the bold
+unscrupulous interest of a landlords' Parliament against the occupier of
+the soil; which, together with the grievance of the system of
+tithe-proctors, established in Ireland through the Whiteboys the fatal
+alliance between resistance to wrong and resistance to law, and supplied
+there the yet more disastrous facility of sustaining and enforcing wrong
+under the name of giving support to public tranquillity. Yet, forcing on
+its way amidst all these difficulties by a natural law, in a strange
+haphazard and disjointed method, and by a zigzag movement, there came
+into existence, and by degrees into steady operation, a sentiment native
+to Ireland and having Ireland for its vital basis, and yet not deserving
+the name of Irish patriotism, because its care was not for a nation, but
+for a sect. For a sect, in a stricter sense than may at first sight be
+supposed. The battle was not between Popery and a generalized
+Protestantism, though, even if it had been so, it would have been
+between a small minority and the vast majority of the Irish people. It
+was not a party of ascendency, but a party of monopoly, that ruled. It
+must always be borne in mind that the Roman Catholic aristocracy had
+been emasculated, and reduced to the lowest point of numerical and moral
+force by the odious action of the penal laws, and that the mass of the
+Roman Catholic population, clerical and lay, remained under the grinding
+force of many-sided oppression, and until long after the accession of
+George III. had scarcely a consciousness of political existence. As long
+as the great bulk of the nation could be equated to zero, the Episcopal
+monopolists had no motive for cultivating the good-will of the
+Presbyterians, who like the Roman Catholics maintained their religion,
+with the trivial exception of the _Regium Donum_, by their own
+resources, and who differed from them in being not persecuted, but only
+disabled. And this monopoly, which drew from the sacred name of religion
+its title to exist, offered through centuries an example of religious
+sterility to which a parallel can hardly be found among the communions
+of the Christian world. The sentiment, then, which animated the earlier
+efforts of the Parliament might be _Iricism_, but did not become
+patriotism until it had outgrown, and had learned to forswear or to
+forget, the conditions of its infancy. Neither did it for a long time
+acquire the courage of its opinions; for, when Lucas, in the middle of
+the century, reasserted the doctrine of Molyneux and of Swift, the Grand
+Jury of Dublin took part against him, and burned his book.[84] And the
+Parliament,[85] prompted by the Government, drove him into exile. And
+yet the smoke showed that there was fire. The infant, that confronted
+the British Government in the Parliament House, had something of the
+young Hercules about him. In the first exercises of strength he acquired
+more strength, and in acquiring more strength he burst the bonds that
+had confined him.
+
+    "Es machte mir zu eng, ich mussie fort."[86]
+
+The reign of George IV. began with resolute efforts of the Parliament
+not to lengthen, as in England under his grandfather, but to shorten its
+own commission, and to become septennial. Surely this was a noble
+effort. It meant the greatness of their country, and it meant also
+personal self-sacrifice. The Parliament which then existed, elected
+under a youth of twenty-two, had every likelihood of giving to the bulk
+of its members a seat for life. This they asked to change for a
+_maximum_ term of seven years. This from session to session, in spite of
+rejection after rejection in England, they resolutely fought to obtain.
+It was an English amendment which, on a doubtful pretext; changed seven
+years to eight. Without question some acted under the pressure of
+constituents; but only a minority of the members had constituents, and
+popular exigencies from such a quarter might have been bought off by an
+occasional vote, and could not have induced a war with the Executive and
+with England so steadily continued, unless a higher principle had been
+at work.
+
+The triumph came at last; and from 1768 onwards the Commons never wholly
+relapsed into their former quiescence. True, this was for a Protestant
+House, constituency, and nation; but ere long they began to enlarge
+their definition of nationality. Flood and Lucas, the commanders in the
+real battle, did not dream of giving the Roman Catholics a political
+existence, but to their own constituents they performed an honourable
+service and gave a great boon. Those, who had insincerely supported the
+measure, became the dupes of their own insincerity. In the very year of
+this victory, a Bill for a slight relaxation of the penal laws was
+passed, but met its death in England.[87] Other Bills followed, and one
+of them became an Act in 1771. A beginning had thus been made on behalf
+of religious liberty, as a corollary to political emancipation. It was
+like a little ray of light piercing its way through the rocks into a
+cavern and supplying the prisoner at once with guidance and with hope.
+Resolute action, in withholding or shortening supply, convinced the
+Executive in Dublin, and the Ministry in London, that serious business
+was intended. And it appeared, even in this early stage, how necessary
+it was for a fruitful campaign on their own behalf to enlarge their
+basis, and enlist the sympathies of hitherto excluded fellow-subjects.
+
+It may seem strange that the first beginnings of successful endeavour
+should have been made on behalf not of the "common Protestantism," but
+of Roman Catholics. But, as Mr. Lecky has shown, the Presbyterians had
+been greatly depressed and distracted, while the Roman Catholics had now
+a strong position in the commerce of the country, and in Dublin
+knocked, as it were, at the very doors of the Parliament. There may also
+have been an apprehension of republican sentiments among the Protestants
+of the north, from which the Roman Catholics were known to be free. Not
+many years, however, passed before the softening and harmonizing
+effects, which naturally flow from a struggle for liberty, warmed the
+sentiment of the House in favour of the Presbyterians.
+
+A Bill was passed by the Irish Parliament in 1778, which greatly
+mitigated the stringency of the penal laws. Moreover, in its preamble
+was recited, as a ground for this legislation, that for "a long series
+of years" the Roman Catholics had exhibited an "uniform peaceable
+behaviour." In doing and saying so much, the Irish Parliament virtually
+bound itself to do more.[88] In this Bill was contained a clause which
+repealed the Sacramental Test, and thereby liberated the Presbyterians
+from disqualification. But the Bill had to pass the ordeal of a review
+in England, and there the clause was struck out. The Bill itself, though
+mutilated, was wisely passed by a majority of 127 to 89. Even in this
+form it excited the enthusiastic admiration of Burke.[89] Nor were the
+Presbyterians forgotten at the epoch when, in 1779-80, England, under
+the pressure of her growing difficulties, made large commercial
+concessions to Ireland. The Dublin Parliament renewed the Bill for the
+removal of the Sacramental Test. And it was carried by the Irish
+Parliament in the very year which witnessed in London the disgraceful
+riots of Lord George Gordon, and forty-eight years before the Imperial
+Parliament conceded, on this side the Channel, any similar relief. Other
+contemporary signs bore witness to the growth of toleration; for the
+Volunteers, founded in 1778, and originally a Protestant body, after a
+time received Roman Catholics into their ranks. These impartial
+proceedings are all the more honourable to Irish sentiment in general,
+because Lord Charlemont, its champion out of doors, and Flood, long the
+leader of the Independent party in the Parliament, were neither of them
+prepared to surrender the system of Protestant ascendency.
+
+In order to measure the space which had at this period been covered by
+the forward movement of liberality and patriotism, it is necessary to
+look back to the early years of the Georgian period, when Whiggism had
+acquired a decisive ascendency, and the spirits of the great deep were
+let loose against Popery. But the temper of proscription in the two
+countries exhibited specific differences. Extravagant in both, it became
+in Ireland vulgar and indecent. In England, it was Tilburina,[90] gone
+mad in white satin; in Ireland it was Tilburina's maid, gone mad in
+white linen. The Lords Justices of Ireland, in 1715, recommended the
+Parliament to put an end to all other distinctions in Ireland "but that
+of Protestant and Papist."[91] And the years that followed seem to mark
+the lowest point of constitutional depression for the Roman Catholic
+population in particular, as well as for Ireland at large. The Commons,
+in 1715, prayed for measures to discover any Papist enlisting in the
+King's service, in order that he might be expelled "and punished with
+the utmost severity of the law."[92] When an oath of abjuration had been
+imposed which prevented nearly all priests from registering, a Bill was
+passed by the Commons in 1719 for branding the letter P on the cheek of
+all priests, who were unregistered, with a red-hot iron. The Privy
+Council "disliked" this punishment, and substituted for it the loathsome
+measure by which safe guardians are secured for Eastern harems. The
+English Government could not stomach this beastly proposal; and, says
+Mr. Lecky,[93] unanimously restored the punishment of branding. The
+Bill was finally lost in Ireland, but only owing to a clause concerning
+leases. It had gone to England winged with a prayer from the Commons
+that it might be recommended "in the most effectual manner to his
+Majesty," and by the assurance of the Viceroy in reply that they might
+depend on his due regard to what was desired.[94] In the same year
+passed the Act which declared the title of the British Parliament to
+make laws for the government of Ireland. On the accession of George II.,
+a considerable body of Roman Catholics offered an address of
+congratulation. It was received by the Lords Justices with silent
+contempt, and no one knows whether it ever reached its destination.
+Finally, the acute state-craft of Primate Boulter resisted habitually
+the creation of an "Irish interest," and above all any capacity of the
+Roman Catholics to contribute to its formation; and in the first year of
+George II. a clause was introduced in committee into a harmless Bill[95]
+for the regulation of elections, which disfranchised at a single stroke
+all the Roman Catholic voters in Ireland who up to that period had
+always enjoyed the franchise.
+
+It is painful to record the fact that the remarkable progress gradually
+achieved was in no way due to British influence. For nearly forty years
+from the arrival of Archbishop Boulter in Ireland, the government of
+Ireland was in the hands of the Primates. The harshness of
+administration was gradually tempered, especially in the brief
+viceroyalty of Lord Chesterfield; but the British policy was steadily
+opposed to the enlargement of Parliamentary privilege, or the creation
+of any Irish interest, however narrow its basis, while the political
+extinction of the mass of the people was complete. The pecuniary wants,
+however, of the Government, extending beyond the hereditary revenue,
+required a resort to the national purse. The demands which were
+accordingly made, and these alone, supplied the Parliament with a
+vantage-ground, and a principle of life. The action of this principle
+brought with it civilizing and humanizing influences, which had become
+clearly visible in the early years of George III., and which were
+cherished by the war of American Independence, as by a strong current of
+fresh air in a close and murky dungeon.
+
+The force of principles, and the significance of political achievements,
+is to be estimated in no small degree by the slenderness of the means
+available to those who promote them. And the progress brought about in
+the Irish Parliament is among the most remarkable on record, because it
+was effected against the joint resistance of a hostile Executive and of
+an intolerable constitution. Of the three hundred members, about
+two-thirds were nominated by individual patrons and by close
+corporations. What was still worse, the action of the Executive was
+increasingly directed, as the pulse of the national life came to beat
+more vigorously, to the systematic corruption of the Parliament borough
+pensions and paid offices. In the latter part of the century, more than
+one-third of the members of Parliament were dismissible at pleasure from
+public emoluments. If the base influence of the Executive allied itself
+with the patriotic party, everything might be hoped. For we must bear in
+mind not only the direct influence of this expenditure on those who were
+in possession, but the enormous power of expectancy on those who were
+not. Conversely, when the Government were determined to do wrong, there
+were no means commonly available of forcing it to do right, in any
+matter that touched either religious bigotry or selfish interest. With
+so miserable an apparatus, and in the face of the ever-wakeful Executive
+sustained by British power, it is rather wonderful how much than how
+little was effected. I am not aware of a single case in which a measure
+on behalf of freedom was proposed by British agency, and rejected by
+the Irish Parliament. On the other hand, we have a long list of the
+achievements of that Parliament due to a courage and perseverance which
+faced and overcame a persistent English opposition. Among other
+exploits, it established periodical elections, obtained the writ of
+Habeas Corpus, carried the independence of the judges, repealed the Test
+Act, limited the abominable expenditure on pensions, subjected the
+acceptance of office from the crown to the condition of re-election, and
+achieved, doubtless with the powerful aid of the volunteers, freedom of
+trade with England, and the repeal of Poynings's Act, and of the British
+Act of 1719.[96]
+
+All this it did without the manifestation, either within the walls or
+among the Roman Catholic population, of any disposition to weaken the
+ties which bound Ireland to the empire. All this it did; and what had
+the British Parliament been about during the same period, with its
+vastly greater means both of self-defence and of action? It had been
+building up the atrocious criminal code, tampering in the case of Wilkes
+with liberty of election, and tampering with many other liberties;
+driving, too, the American Colonies into rebellion, while, as to good
+legislation, the century is almost absolutely blank, until between 1782
+and 1793 we have the establishment of Irish freedom, the economical
+reform of Mr. Burke, the financial reforms of Mr. Pitt, the new libel
+law of Mr. Fox, and the legislative constitution of Canada, in which
+both these great statesmen concurred.
+
+But we have not yet reached the climax of Irish advancement. When, in
+1782 and 1783, the legislative relations of the two countries were
+fundamentally rectified by the formal acknowledgment of Irish
+nationality, the beginning of a great work was accomplished; but its
+final consummation, though rendered practicable and even easy, depended
+wholly on the continuing good intention of the British Cabinet. The
+Acts of 1782 and 1783 required a supplemental arrangement, to obviate
+those secondary difficulties in the working of the two Legislatures,
+which supplied Mr. Pitt with his main parliamentary plea for the Union.
+What was yet more important was the completion of the scheme in Ireland
+itself. And this under three great heads: (1) The purification of
+Parliament by a large measure of reform; (2) the abolition of all Roman
+Catholic disabilities; (3) the establishment of a proper relation
+between the Legislative and the Executive powers. It is often urged,
+with cynical disregard to justice and reason, that with the Grattan
+Parliament we had corruption, coercion, discontent, and finally
+rebellion. But the political mischiefs, which disfigure the brief life
+of the Grattan Parliament, and the failure to obtain the two first of
+the three great purposes I have named, were all in the main due to the
+third grand flaw in the Irish case after 1782. I mean the false
+position, and usually mischievous character, of the Irish Executive,
+which, with its army of placemen and expectants in Parliament, was
+commonly absolute master of the situation. Well does Mr. Swift
+MacNeill,[97] in his very useful work, quote the words of Mr. Fox in
+1797: "The advantages, which the form of a free Government seemed to
+promise, have been counteracted by the influence of the Executive
+Government, and of the British Cabinet."
+
+There were five Viceroys between 1782 and 1790. Then came a sixth, Lord
+Westmoreland, the worst of them all, whose political judgment was on a
+par with his knowledge of the English language.[98] The great settlement
+of 1782-3 was in the main worked by men who were radically adverse to
+its spirit and intention. But they were omnipotent in their control of
+the unreformed. Parliament of Ireland, more and more drenched, under
+their unceasing and pestilent activity, with fresh doses of corruption.
+Westmoreland and his myrmidons actually persuaded Pitt, in 1792, that
+Irish Protestantism and its Parliament were unconquerably adverse to the
+admission of Roman Catholics to the franchise; but when the proposal was
+made from the Throne in 1793, notwithstanding the latent hostility of
+the Castle, the Parliament passed the Bill with little delay, and
+"without any serious opposition."[99] The votes against it were one and
+three on two divisions[100] respectively. A minority of sixty-nine
+supported, against the Government, a clause for extending the measure to
+seats in Parliament. That clause, lost by a majority of ninety-four,
+might apparently have been carried, but for "Dublin Castle," by an even
+larger majority.
+
+I shall not here examine the interesting question, whether the mission
+of Lord Fitzwilliam was wholly due to the action of those Whig statesmen
+who were friendly to the war, but disinclined to a junction with Mr.
+Pitt except on condition of a fundamental change in the administration
+of Ireland. Nor shall I dwell upon his sudden, swift, and disastrous
+recall. But I purpose here to invite attention to the most remarkable
+fact in the whole history of the Irish Parliament. When the Viceroy's
+doom was known, when the return to the policy and party of ascendency
+lay darkly lowering in the immediate future, this diminutive and tainted
+Irish Parliament, with a chivalry rare even in the noblest histories,
+made what can hardly be called less than a bold attempt to arrest the
+policy of retrogression adopted by the Government in London. Lord
+Fitzwilliam was the declared friend of Roman Catholic Emancipation,
+which was certain to be followed by reform; and he had struck a
+death-blow at bigotry and monopoly in the person of their heads, Mr.
+Beresford and Mr. Cooke. The Bill of Emancipation was introduced on the
+12th of February,[101] with only three dissentient voices. On the 14th,
+when the London Cabinet had declared dissent from the proceedings of
+their Viceroy without recalling him, Sir L. Parsons at once moved an
+address, imploring him to continue among them, and only postponed it at
+the friendly request of Mr. Ponsonby.[102] On the 2nd of March, when the
+recall was a fact, the House voted that Lord Fitzwilliam merited "the
+thanks of that House, and the confidence of the people."[103] On the 5th
+the Duke of Leinster moved, and the House of Peers carried, a similar
+resolution.[104]
+
+At this epoch I pause. Here there opens a new and disastrous drama of
+disgrace to England and misery to Ireland. This is the point at which we
+may best learn the second and the greatest lesson taught by the history
+of Ireland in the eighteenth century. It is this, that, awful as is the
+force of bigotry, hidden under the mask of religion, but fighting for
+plunder and for power with all the advantages of possession, of
+prescription, and of extraneous support, there is a David that can kill
+this Goliath. That conquering force lies in the principle of
+nationality.
+
+It was the growing sense of nationality that prompted the Irish
+Parliament to develop its earlier struggles for privilege on the narrow
+ground into a genuine contest for freedom, civil and religious, on a
+ground as broad as Ireland, nay, as humanity at large. If there be such
+things as contradictions in the world of politics, they are to be found
+in nationality on the one side, and bigotry of all kinds on the other,
+but especially religious bigotry, which is of all the most baneful.
+Whatever is given to the first of these two is lost to the second. I
+speak of a reasonable and reasoning, not of a blind and headstrong
+nationality; of a nationality which has regard to circumstances and to
+traditions, and which only requires that all relations, of incorporation
+or of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to the laws of
+Nature's own enactment. Such a nationality was the growth of the last
+century in Ireland. As each Irishman began to feel that he had a
+country, to which he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a
+true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood, and into
+the sense of brotherhood, with those who shared the allegiance and the
+property, the obligation and the heritage. And this idea of country,
+once well conceived, presents itself as a very large idea, and as a
+framework for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a common
+life. Hence it was that, on the coming of Lord Fitzwilliam, the whole
+generous emotion of the country leapt up with one consent, and went
+forth to meet him. Hence it was that religious bigotry was no longer an
+appreciable factor in the public life of Ireland. Hence it was that on
+his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his recall, it became
+necessary to divide again the host that had, welcomed him--to put one
+part of it in array as Orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed;
+and to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger mass by
+repulsion and proscription, by stripping Roman Catholics of arms in the
+face of licence and of cruelty, and, finally, by clothing the extreme of
+lawlessness with the forms of law.
+
+Within the last twelve months we have seen, in the streets of Belfast,
+the painful proof that the work of Beresford and of Castlereagh has been
+found capable for the moment of revival. To aggravate or sustain Irish
+disunion, religious bigotry has been again evoked in Ireland. If the
+curse be an old one, there is also an old cure, recorded in the grand
+pharmacopoeia of history; and if the abstract force of policy and
+prudence are insufficient for the work, we may yet find that the evil
+spirit will be effectually laid by the gentle influence of a living and
+working Irish nationality. _Quod faxit Deus._
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 73: _2 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+chap, vii. vol. ii, p. 205.]
+
+[Footnote 75: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+vol. ii. p. 227.]
+
+[Footnote 76: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 164.]
+
+[Footnote 77: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 166.]
+
+[Footnote 78: See Ball's _History of the Church of Ireland_, a valuable
+work, deserving of more attention than it seems to have received.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Boulter's _Letters_, i. 138, _et alibi_.]
+
+[Footnote 80: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+ii.]
+
+[Footnote 81: Boulter's _Letters_, vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 82: Cornwallis's _Correspondence_, ii. 441.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Grattan's _Life and Times_, v. 173.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Lecky, ii. 430.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Duffy, p. 177.]
+
+[Footnote 86: Schiller's _Wallenstein_.]
+
+[Footnote 87: Lecky, iv. 489.]
+
+[Footnote 88: Lecky, iv. 477-479; Brown, _Laws against Catholics_, pp.
+329-332.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Lecky, pp. 499-501.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Sheridan's _Critic_, act iii. sc. I.]
+
+[Footnote 91: Plowden's _History_ (1809), ii. 70.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Brown, _Laws against Catholics_, p. 289.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Lecky, i. 297.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Plowden, i. 297.]
+
+[Footnote 95: 1 Geo. II. c. ix. sect 7.]
+
+[Footnote 96: See Lecky, vi. 521.]
+
+[Footnote 97: _The Irish Parliament_, p. 64. Cassell: 1885.]
+
+[Footnote 98: See Lecky, vi. 492, 493.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Lecky, vi. 567.]
+
+[Footnote 100: Plowden's _Historical Review_, ii. 335.]
+
+[Footnote 101: Ibid., ii. 353.]
+
+[Footnote 102: Plowden's _Historical Review_, ii. 498.]
+
+[Footnote 103: Ibid., ii. 357.]
+
+[Footnote 104: Ibid., ii. 505.]
+
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Handbook of Home Rule (1887)
+by W. E. Gladstone et al.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14518 ***
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14518 ***</div>
+
+<h1>HANDBOOK OF HOME RULE<!-- Page i --><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i" /><!-- Page ii --><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii" /></h1>
+
+<p class="titlepagesmall">BEING</p>
+<p class="titlepagebig"><i>ARTICLES ON THE IRISH QUESTION</i></p>
+<p class="titlepagesmall">BY</p>
+
+<p class="titlepagebig">THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P.<br />
+THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P., LORD THRING<br />
+JAMES BRYCE, M.P., CANON MACCOLL<br />
+E.L. GODKIN, AND R. BARRY O'BRIEN
+<br /></p>
+
+<p class="titlepagesmall"><i>WITH PREFACE BY</i></p>
+<p class="titlepagebig">THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G.
+<br /></p>
+
+<p class="titlepagesmall">EDITED BY</p>
+<p class="titlepagebig">JAMES BRYCE, M.P.<br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="titlepagebig">SECOND EDITION<br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="titlepagebig">LONDON</p>
+<p class="titlepagesmall">KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH &amp; CO., I, PATERNOSTER SQUARE<br />
+1887</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><!-- Page iii --><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii" /><a name="EDITORS_NOTE" id="EDITORS_NOTE" />EDITOR'S NOTE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Of the articles contained in this volume, those by Mr.
+Gladstone, Mr. E.L. Godkin on &quot;A Lawyer's Objections
+to Home Rule,&quot; and Mr. Barry O'Brien appear
+for the first time. The others are reprinted from the
+<i>Contemporary Review</i>, the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, and the
+<i>New Princeton Review</i>, to the proprietors and editors of
+which periodicals respectively the thanks of the several
+writers and of the editor are tendered. In most of these
+reprints some passages of transitory interest have been
+omitted, and some few additions have been made.</p>
+
+<p>The object of the writers has been to treat the difficult
+questions connected with the Government of Ireland in a
+dispassionate spirit; and the volume is offered to the public
+in the hope that it may, at a time of warm controversy over
+passing events, help to lead thoughtful men back to the
+consideration of the principles which underlie those questions,
+and which it seeks to elucidate by calm discussion
+and by references to history.</p>
+
+<p><i>October</i>, 1887.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><!-- Page iv --><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv" /><!-- Page v --><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v" />
+CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<p><a href="#PREFACE">PREFACE.</a><br />
+BY THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#AMERICAN_HOME_RULE">AMERICAN HOME RULE.</a><br />
+BY E.L. GODKIN</p>
+
+<p><a href="#HOW_WE_BECAME_HOME_RULERS">HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS.</a><br />
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#HOME_RULE_AND_IMPERIAL_UNITY">HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY.</a><br />
+BY LORD THRING</p>
+
+<p><a href="#THE_IRISH_GOVERNMENT_BILL">THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL AND THE IRISH LAND BILL.</a><br />
+BY LORD THRING</p>
+
+
+<p><a href="#THE_UNIONISTquot_POSITION">THE &quot;UNIONIST&quot; POSITION.</a><br />
+BY CANON MACCOLL</p>
+
+<p><a href="#A_LAWYERS_OBJECTIONS_TO">A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE.</a><br />
+BY E.L. GODKIN</p>
+
+<p><a href="#THE_UNIONISTquot_CASE_FOR_HOME">THE &quot;UNIONIST&quot; CASE FOR HOME RULE.</a><br />
+BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN</p>
+
+<p><a href="#IRELANDS_ALTERNATIVES">IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES.</a><br />
+BY LORD THRING</p>
+
+<p><a href="#THE_PAST_AND_FUTURE_OF_THE">THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION.</a><br />
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#SOME_ARGUMENTS_CONSIDERED71">SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.</a><br />
+BY THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#LESSONS_OF_IRISH_HISTORY_IN">LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.</a><br />
+BY THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE" /><!-- Page vi --><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi" /><!-- Page vii --><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii" />PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The present seems an excellent moment for bringing forward
+the arguments in favour of a new policy for Ireland,
+which are to be found in the articles contained in this
+volume.</p>
+
+<p>We are realizing the first results of the verdict given
+at the election of 1886. And this I interpret as saying
+that the constituencies were not then ready to depart from
+the lines of policy which, up to last year, nearly all politicians
+of both parties in Parliament had laid down for their
+guidance in Irish affairs.</p>
+
+<p>We have had the Session occupied almost wholly with
+Lord Salisbury's proposals for strengthening the power of
+the central Government to maintain law and order in Ireland,
+and for dealing with the most pressing necessities of the
+Land question in that country.</p>
+
+<p>It is well, before the policy of the Government is
+practically tested, that the views of thoughtful men holding
+different opinions should be clearly set forth, not in the
+shape of polemical speeches, but in measured articles which
+specially appeal to those who have not hitherto joined the
+fighting ranks of either side, and who are sure to intervene
+with great force at the next election, when the Irish question
+is again submitted to the constituencies.<!-- Page viii --><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii" /></p>
+
+<p>I feel that I can add little or nothing to the weight of
+the arguments contained in these papers, but I should like
+to give some reasons why I earnestly hope that they will
+receive careful consideration.</p>
+
+<p>The writers have endeavoured to approach their work
+with impartiality, and to free themselves from those prejudices
+which make it difficult for Englishmen to discuss
+Irish questions in a fresh and independent train of thought,
+and realize how widely Irish customs, laws, traditions, and
+sentiments differ from our own.</p>
+
+<p>We are apt to think that what has worked well here
+will work well in Ireland; that Irishmen who differ from
+us are unreasonable; and that their proposals for change
+must be mistaken. We do not make allowance for the
+soreness of feeling prevailing among men who have long
+objected to the system by which Ireland has been governed,
+and who find that their earnest appeals for reform have
+been, until recent times, contemptuously disregarded by
+English politicians. Time after time moderate counsels
+have been rejected until too late. Acts of an exceptional
+character intended to secure law and order have been very
+numerous, and every one of them has caused fresh irritation;
+while remedial measures have been given in a manner
+which has not won the sympathy of the people, because
+they have not been the work of the Irish themselves, and
+have not been prepared in their own way.</p>
+
+<p>Parliament seems during the past Session to have fallen
+into the same error. By the power of an English majority,
+measures have been passed which are vehemently opposed
+by the political leaders and the majority of the Irish nation,
+and which are only agreeable to a small minority in Ireland.
+This action can only succeed if the Irish can be persuaded
+to relinquish the national sentiments of Home Rule; and yet
+<!-- Page ix --><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix" />this was never stronger or more vigorous than at the present
+time. It is supported by millions of Irish settled in America
+and in Australia; and here I would say that it has often struck
+me that the strong feeling of dissatisfaction, or, I might say,
+of disaffection, among the Irish is fed and nurtured by the
+marked contrast existing between the social condition of
+large numbers of the Irish in the South and West of Ireland
+and the views and habits of their numerous relatives in the
+United States.</p>
+
+<p>The social condition of many parts of Ireland is as
+backward, or perhaps more backward, than the condition of
+the rural population of England at the end of last or the
+beginning of this century. The Irish peasantry still live
+in poor hovels, often in the same room with animals;
+they have few modern comforts; and yet they are in close
+communication with those who live at ease in the cities and
+farms of the United States. They are also imbued with all
+the advanced political notions of the American Republic,
+and are sufficiently educated to read the latest political
+doctrines in the Press which circulates among them. Their
+social condition at home is a hundred years behind their
+state of political and mental culture. They naturally contrast
+the misery of many Irish peasants with the position of
+their relatives in the New World. This cannot but embitter
+their views against English rulers, and strengthen
+their leaning to national sentiments. Their national aspirations
+have never died out since 1782. They have taken
+various forms; but if the movements arising from them
+have been put down, fresh movements have constantly
+sprung up. The Press has grown into an immense power,
+and its influences have all been used to strengthen the zeal for
+Irish nationality, while, at the same time, the success of the
+national movements in Italy, Hungary, Greece, and Germany
+<!-- Page x --><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x" />have had the same effect. Lastly, the sentiment of Home
+Rule has gained the sympathy of large bodies of electors in
+the constituencies of Great Britain, and, under the circumstances,
+it is difficult to suppose that, even if the country
+remains quiet, constitutional agitation will vanish or the
+Irish relinquish their most cherished ambition.</p>
+
+<p>We hear, from men who ought to know something of
+Ireland, that if the Land question is once settled, and dual
+ownership practically abolished, the tenants will be satisfied,
+and the movement for Home Rule will no longer find active
+support in Ireland. Without going into the whole of this
+argument, I should like to say two things: first, that I do
+not know how a large scheme of Land Purchase can be
+carried through Parliament with safety to Imperial interests
+without establishing, at the same time, some strong Irish
+Government in Dublin to act between the Imperial Government
+and the tenants of Ireland; and, second, that the
+feeling for Home Rule has a vitality of its own which will
+survive the Land question, even if independently settled.</p>
+
+<p>Home Rule is an expression of national feeling which
+cannot be extinguished in Ireland, and the only safe method
+of dealing with it is to turn its force and power to the
+support of an Irish Government established for the management
+of local Irish affairs. There are those who think that
+this must lead to separation. I cannot believe in this
+fear, for I know of no English statesman who looks upon
+complete separation of Ireland from Great Britain as
+possible. The geographical position of Ireland, the social
+and commercial connection between the two peoples, renders
+such a thing impossible. The Irish know this, and they
+are not so foolish as to think that they could gain their
+independence by force of arms; but I do not believe that
+they desire it. They are satisfied to obtain the manage<!-- Page xi --><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi" />ment
+of their own local affairs under the <i>&aelig;gis</i> of the flag
+of England. The papers in this volume show how this
+can be done with due regard to Imperial interests and the
+rights of minorities.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not enlarge on this part of the subject, but I wish
+to draw attention to the working of the Irish Government,
+and the position which it holds in the country, for it is through
+its administration that the policy of the Cabinet will be carried
+out. At the outset I feel bound to deprecate the exaggerated
+condemnation which the &quot;Castle&quot; receives from its opponents.
+It has its defects. Notwithstanding efforts of various
+ministers to enlarge the circle from which its officials are
+drawn, it is still too narrow for the modern development
+of Irish society, and it has from time to time been recruited
+from partisans without sufficient regard to the efficiency and
+requirements of the public service. But, on the whole, its
+members, taken as individuals, can well bear comparison
+with those of other branches of the Civil Service. They
+are diligent; they desire to do their duty with impartiality,
+and to hold an even balance between many opposing interests
+in Ireland. Whatever party is in office, they loyally
+carry out the policy of their chiefs. They are, probably,
+more plastic to the leadership of the heads of departments
+than members of some English offices, and they are more
+quickly moved by the influences around them. Sometimes
+they may relapse into an attitude of indifference and
+inertness if their chiefs are not active; but, on the other
+hand, they will act with vigour and decision if they are led
+by men who know their own minds and desire to be firm
+in the government of the country.</p>
+
+<p>When speaking of the chiefs of the Irish Civil Service, who
+change according to the political party in office, we must not
+overlook the legal officers, who exercise a most powerful
+<!-- Page xii --><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii" />influence on Irish administration. They consist of the
+Lord Chancellor, the Attorney and Solicitor General, and,
+until 1883, there was also an officer called the Law Adviser,
+who was the maid-of-all-work of Castle administration. In
+England, those who hold similar legal offices take no part
+in the daily administration of public affairs. The Lord
+Chancellor, as a member of the Cabinet, takes his share in
+responsibility for the policy of the Government. The law
+officers are consulted in special cases, and take their part
+from time to time in debates in the House of Commons.
+In Ireland, however, the Chancellor is constantly consulted
+by the Lord-Lieutenant on any difficult matter of administration,
+and the Attorney and Solicitor General are in
+constant communication with the Lord-Lieutenant, if he
+carries out the daily work of administration, and with the
+Chief and the Under Secretary.</p>
+
+<p>Governments differ as to the use they make of these
+officials. Some Governments have endeavoured to confine
+their work to cases where a mere legal opinion has to be
+obtained; but, when the country is in a disturbed state, even
+these limited references become very frequent, and questions
+of policy as well as of law are often discussed with the law
+officers. It is needless to say that, with their knowledge of
+Ireland and the traditions of Castle government (it is rare
+that all the law officers are new to office, and, consequently,
+they carry on the traditions from one Government to another),
+they often exercise a paramount influence over the policy
+of the Irish Government, and practically control it.</p>
+
+<p>They are connected with the closest and most influential
+order in Irish society&mdash;the legal order, consisting of the
+judges and Bar of Ireland. This adds to the general
+weight of their advice, but it has a special bearing when
+cases of legal reform or administration are under considera<!-- Page xiii --><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii" />tion;
+it then requires unwonted courage and independence
+for the law officers of the Crown to support changes which
+the lay members of the Government deem necessary.</p>
+
+<p>I have known conspicuous instances of the exercise of
+these high qualities by law officers enabling reforms to be
+carried, but as a rule, particularly when the initiative of
+legal reform is left to them, the Irish law officers do not
+care to move against the feeling of the legal world in
+Dublin. The lawyers, like other bodies, oppose the diminution
+of offices and honours belonging to them, or of the funds
+which, in the way of fees and salaries, are distributed among
+members of the bar; and they become bitterly hostile to any
+permanent official who is known to be a firm legal reformer.
+It would be impossible for me not to acknowledge the great
+service often done to the Government by the able men
+who have filled the law offices, yet I feel that under certain
+circumstances, when their influence has been allowed too
+strongly to prevail, it has tended to narrow the views of the
+Irish Government, and to keep it within a circle too narrow
+for the altered circumstances of modern life.</p>
+
+<p>The chief peculiarity of the Irish Administration is its
+extreme centralization. In this two departments may be
+mentioned as typical of the whole&mdash;the police and administration
+of local justice.</p>
+
+<p>The police in Dublin and throughout Ireland are under
+the control of the Lord-Lieutenant, and both these forces
+are admirable of their kind. They are almost wholly maintained
+by Imperial funds. The Dublin force costs about
+&pound;150,000 a year. The Royal Irish Constabulary costs
+over a million in quiet, and a million and a half in disturbed
+times. Local authorities have nothing to do with their
+action or management. Local justice is administered by
+unpaid magistrates as in England, but they have been
+<!-- Page xiv --><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv" />assisted, and gradually are being supplanted, by magistrates
+appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant and paid by the State.</p>
+
+<p>This state of things arose many years ago from the want
+of confidence between resident landlords and the bulk of
+the people. When agrarian or religious differences disturbed
+a locality the people distrusted the local magistrates, and by
+degrees the system of stipendiary, or, as they are called,
+resident magistrates, spread over the country. To maintain
+the judicial independence and impartiality of these magistrates
+is of the highest importance. At one time this was
+in some danger, for the resident magistrates not only heard
+cases at petty sessions, but, as executive peace officers, to
+a very great extent took the control of the police in their
+district, not only at riots, but in following up and discovering
+offenders. Their position as judicial and executive officers
+was thus very unfortunately mixed up. Between 1882 and
+1883 the Irish Government did their utmost to separate
+and distinguish between these two functions, and it is to be
+hoped that the same policy has been and will be now continued,
+otherwise grave mischief in the administration of
+justice will arise. The existence of this staff of stipendiary
+magistrates could not fail to weaken the influence of the
+gentry in local affairs, and, at the same time, other causes
+were at work to undermine still further their power. The
+spread of education, the ballot, the extension of the franchise,
+communication with America, all tended to strengthen
+the political leaning of the tenants towards the National
+party in Ireland, and to widen the political differences between
+the richer and poorer classes in the country. The
+result of this has been, that not only have even the best
+landlords gradually lost their power in Parliamentary elections
+and on elective boards, but the Government, which
+greatly relied on them for support, has become isolated.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page xv --><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv" />The system of centralization is felt all over the country.
+It was the cause of weakness in the disturbed years of 1880
+and 1881, and, although the Irish Executive strengthened
+themselves by placing officers over several counties, on
+whom they devolved a great deal of responsibility, they did
+not by these steps meet the real difficulty, which was that
+everything that went wrong, whether as to police or magisterial
+decisions, was attributed to the management of the
+Castle.</p>
+
+<p>In this country, local authorities and benches of
+magistrates, quite independent of the Home Office, are
+held responsible for mistakes in police action or irregularities
+in local justice. The consequence is that there is
+a strong buffer to protect the character and power of the
+Home Office.</p>
+
+<p>The absence of such protection in Ireland obviously
+has a very prejudicial effect on the permanent influence and
+popularity of the Irish Government. But as long as our
+system of government from England exists, this centralization
+cannot be avoided, for it would not be possible to
+transfer the responsibility of the police to local representative
+bodies, as they are too much opposed to the landlords
+and the Government to be trusted when strong party differences
+arise; nor, for the same reason, would it be possible
+to fall back on local men to administer justice. The
+fact is, that, out of the Protestant part of Ulster, the Irish
+Government receives the cordial support of only the landed
+proprietors, and a part of the upper middle classes in the
+towns. The feeling of the mass of the people has been so
+long against them that no change in the direction of trust in
+any centralized government of anti-national character can be
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find any<!-- Page xvi --><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi" />
+Municipal Council, Boards of Guardians, or Local Boards,
+in Leinster, Munster, or Connaught, whose members do
+not consist of a majority of Nationalists. At nearly all
+such assemblies, whenever any important political movement
+takes place in the country, or when the Irish
+Government take any action which is displeasing to the
+Nationalists, resolutions are discussed and carried in a
+spirit of sharp hostility to the Government.</p>
+
+<p>In Parliamentary elections we also find clear evidence
+of the strength of the Nationalists, and the extreme weakness
+of their opponents. This is a test which those who accept
+popular representative government cannot disregard, particularly
+at an election when for the first time the new
+constituencies were called upon to exercise the privileges
+entrusted to them by Parliament. Such was the election of
+1885, followed in 1886 by another General Election. In 1885
+contests took place in most of the Irish constituencies.
+They were between Liberals allied with Conservatives, and
+Parnellites. In 1886 the contests were between those who
+called themselves Unionists and Parnellites, and the Irish
+policy of Mr. Gladstone was specially referred to the electors.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the number of members returned on the
+two sides, the result of each election was almost identical,
+but in 1886 there were fewer contests. We may, then,
+assume that the relative forces of Parnellites and Unionists
+were accurately represented at the election of 1885.
+If we take the votes at the election of 1885 for candidates
+standing as Nationalists, we shall find, roughly speaking,
+that they obtained in round numbers about 300,000 votes,
+and candidates who stood either as Liberals or Conservatives
+about 143,000. But the case is really stronger than these
+figures represent it, because in some constituencies the contests
+were between Liberals and Conservatives, and there
+<!-- Page xvii --><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii" />can be no doubt that in those constituencies a number of
+Nationalist votes were given for one or both of such candidates&mdash;votes
+which, therefore, would have to be deducted
+from the 143,000, leaving a still heavier majority on the
+Nationalist side.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1" /><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>If we look at individual constituencies, we find that in
+South Kerry only 133 persons voted for the &quot;Unionist&quot;
+candidate, while 2742 voted for the Nationalist. In six out
+of seven constituencies in Cork where contests took place
+27,692 votes were given for the Nationalists, and only 1703
+for their opponents. In Dublin, in the division which may be
+considered the West End constituency of the Irish metropolis,
+the most successful man of commerce in Ireland, a leader
+of society, whose liberality towards those in his employment
+is only equalled by his munificence in all public works, was
+defeated by over 1900 votes. He did not stand in 1886,
+but his successor was defeated by a still larger majority.
+These elections show the numbers in Ireland on which the
+Government and those who oppose Mr. Parnell's policy
+can count for support.</p>
+
+<p>It is absurd to say that these results are caused by
+terrorism exercised over the minds of the electors by
+the agitators in Ireland; the same results occurred in every
+part of three provinces, and in part of Ulster, and the
+universality of the feeling proves the dominant feeling of
+the Irish electors. They show the extreme difficulty, the
+impossibility, of gaining that support and confidence which
+a Government needs in a free country. As it is, the Irish
+Government stands isolated in Ireland, and relies for support
+solely on England. Is a policy opposed to national
+feeling, which has been often, and by different Ministers,
+<!-- Page xviii --><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii" />tried in Ireland, likely to succeed in the hands of a Government
+such as I have described, and isolated, as I think
+few will deny it to be? It is impossible in the long run
+to maintain it. The roots of strength are wanting.</p>
+
+<p>If we turn from Dublin to London, we do not find
+greater prospects of success. Twice within fourteen months
+Lord Salisbury has formed a Government. In 1885 his
+Cabinet, on taking office, deliberately decided to rule
+Ireland without exceptional laws; after a few months, they
+announced that they must ask Parliament for fresh powers.
+They resigned before they had defined their measures. But
+within six months Lord Salisbury was once more Prime
+Minister, and again commenced his administration by
+governing Ireland under the ordinary law. This attempt
+did not continue longer than the first, for when Parliament
+met in 1887, preparations were at once made to carry the
+Criminal Law Amendment Act, which occupied so large
+a portion of the late Session.</p>
+
+<p>This is not the action of men who have strong faith in
+their principles. Nor can it be shown that the continuous
+support so necessary for success will be given to this policy.
+No doubt it may be urged that the operation of the Act
+is not limited in duration; but, notwithstanding that, few
+politicians believe that the constituencies of Great Britain
+will long support the application of exceptional criminal
+laws to any part of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>This would be wholly inconsistent with past experience
+In relation to these measures, which points entirely the
+other way; and the publication in English newspapers and
+constant discussion on English platforms of the painful
+incidents which seem, unfortunately, inseparable from a rigid
+administration of the law in Ireland, together with the prolonged
+debates, such incidents give rise to, in Parliament,
+<!-- Page xix --><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix" />aggravate the difficulties of administration, and lead the
+Irish people to believe that exceptional legislation will be
+as short-lived in the future as it has been in the past.</p>
+
+<p>It was this evidence of want of continuity of policy in
+1885, and the startling disclosure of the weakness of the
+anti-national party in Ireland at the election in the autumn
+of that year, which finally convinced me that the time had come
+when we could no longer turn to a mixed policy of remedial
+and exceptional criminal legislation as the means of winning
+the constituencies of that country in support of our old
+system of governing Ireland. That system has failed for
+eighty-six years, and obviously cannot succeed when worked
+with representative institutions. As the people of Great
+Britain will not for a moment tolerate the withdrawal of
+representative government from Ireland, we must adopt
+some new plan. What I have here written deals with
+but a fragment of the arguments for Home Rule, some
+of which are admirably set forth by the able men who
+have written the articles to which this is the preface. I
+earnestly wish that they may arrest the attention of many
+excellent Irishmen who still cling to the old traditions
+of English rule, and cause them to realize that the only
+way of relieving their country from the intolerable uncertainty
+which hangs over her commercial, social, and
+political interests and paralyzes all efforts for the improvement
+of her people, will be to form a Constitution supported
+by all classes of the community. I trust that they will join
+in this work before it is too late, for they may yet exercise
+a powerful and salutary influence in the settlement of this
+great question.<!-- Page xx --><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx" /><!-- Page 1 --><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> There was one case&mdash;North Louth&mdash;in which two Nationalists
+opposed one another, and I have left that case out of the calculation.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AMERICAN_HOME_RULE" id="AMERICAN_HOME_RULE" />AMERICAN HOME RULE</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY E.L. GODKIN</p>
+
+
+<p>American experience has been frequently cited, in the
+course of the controversy now raging in England over the
+Irish question, both by way of warning and of example.
+For instance, I have found in the <i>Times</i> as well as in other
+journals&mdash;the <i>Spectator</i>, I think, among the number&mdash;very
+contemptuous dismissals of the plan of offering Ireland a
+government like that of an American State, on the ground
+that the Americans are loyal to the central authority, while
+in Ireland there is a strong feeling of hostility to it, which
+would probably increase under Home Rule. The Queen's
+writ, it has been remarked, cannot be said to run in large
+parts of Ireland, while in every part of the United States
+the Federal writ is implicitly obeyed, and the ministers of
+Federal authority find ready aid and sympathy from the
+people. If I remember rightly, the Duke of Argyll has
+been very emphatic in pointing out the difference between
+giving local self-government to a community in which the
+tendencies of popular feeling are &quot;centrifugal,&quot; and giving
+it to one in which these tendencies are &quot;centripetal.&quot; The
+inference to be drawn was, of course, that as long as Ireland
+disliked the Imperial government the concession of Home
+Rule would be unsafe, and would only become safe when
+the Irish people showed somewhat the same sort of affection
+<!-- Page 2 --><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" />for the English connection which the people of the State
+of New York now feel for the Constitution of the United
+States.</p>
+
+<p>Among the multitude of those who have taken part in
+the controversy on one side or the other, no one has, so
+far as I have observed, pointed out that the state of feeling
+in America toward the central government with which the
+state of feeling in Ireland towards the British Government
+is now compared, did not exist when the American Constitution
+was set up; that the political tendencies in America
+at that time were centrifugal, not centripetal, and that the
+extraordinary love and admiration with which Americans
+now regard the Federal government are the result of eighty
+years' experience of its working. The first Confederation
+was as much as the people could bear in the way of surrendering
+local powers when the War of Independence
+came to an end. It was its hopeless failure to provide
+peace and security which led to the framing of the present
+Constitution. But even with this experience still fresh, the
+adoption of the Constitution was no easy matter. I shall
+not burden this article with historical citations showing
+the very great difficulty which the framers of the Constitution
+had in inducing the various States to adopt it,
+or the magnitude and variety of the fears and suspicions
+with which, many of the most influential men in all parts
+of the country regarded it. Any one who wishes to
+know how numerous and diversified these fears and suspicions
+were, cannot do better than read the series of
+papers known as &quot;The Federalist,&quot; written mainly by
+Hamilton and Madison, to commend the new plan to the
+various States. It was adopted almost as a matter of
+necessity, that is, as the only way out of the Slough of
+Despond in which the Confederation had plunged the
+union of the States; but the objections to it which were
+felt at the beginning were only removed by actual trial.<!-- Page 3 --><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" />
+Hamilton's two colleagues, as delegates from New York,
+Yates and Lansing, withdrew in disgust from the Convention,
+as soon as the Constitution was outlined, and did not
+return. The notion that the Constitution was produced by
+the craving of the American people for something of that
+sort to love and revere, and that it was not bestowed on
+them until they had given ample assurance that they would
+lavish affection on it, has no foundation whatever in fact.
+The devotion of Americans to the Union is, indeed, as
+clear a case of cause and effect as is to be found in political
+history. They have learned to like the Constitution because
+the country has prospered under it, and because it has
+given them all the benefits of national life without interference
+with local liberties. If they had not set up a
+central government until the centrifugal sentiment had disappeared
+from the States, and the feeling of loyalty for a
+central authority had fully shown itself, they would assuredly
+never have set it up at all.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, it has to be borne in mind that the adoption
+of the Constitution did not involve the surrender of any
+local franchises, by which the people of the various States
+set great store. The States preserved fully four-fifths of
+their autonomy, or in fact nearly all of it which closely concerned
+the daily lives of individuals. Set aside the post-office,
+and a citizen of the State of New York, not engaged in foreign
+trade, might, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, have
+passed a long and busy life without once coming in contact
+with a United States official, and without being made aware
+in any of his doings, by any restriction or regulation, that
+he was living under any government but that of his own
+State. If he went abroad he had to apply for a United
+States passport. If he quarrelled with a foreigner, or with
+the citizen of another State, he might be sued in the Federal
+Court. If he imported foreign goods he had to pay duties
+to the collector of a Federal Custom-house. If he invented
+<!-- Page 4 --><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" />something, or wrote a book, he had to apply to the Department
+of the Interior for a patent or a copyright. But how
+few there were in the first seventy years of American history
+who had any of these experiences! No one supposes, or
+has ever supposed, that had the Federalists demanded any
+very large sacrifice of local franchises, or attempted to set
+up even a close approach to a centralized Government, the
+adoption of the Constitution would have been possible.
+If, for instance, such a transfer of both administration and
+legislation to the central authority as took place in Ireland
+after the Union had been proposed, it would have been
+rejected with derision. You will get no American to argue
+with you on this point. If you ask him whether he thinks
+it likely that a highly centralized government could have
+been created in 1879&mdash;such a one, for example, as Ireland
+has been under since 1800&mdash;or whether if created it would
+by this time have won the affection of the people, or filled
+them with centripetal tendencies, he will answer you with
+a smile.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is that nowhere, any more than in Ireland,
+do people love their Government from a sense of duty or
+because they crave an object of political affection, or even
+because it exalts them in the eyes of foreigners. They love
+it because they are happy or prosperous under it; because
+it supplies security in the form best suited to their tastes
+and habits, or in some manner ministers to their self-love.
+Loyalty to the king as the Lord's anointed, without any
+sense either of favours received or expected, has played
+a great part in European politics, I admit; but, for reasons
+which I will not here take up space in stating, a political
+arrangement, whether it be an elected monarch or a constitution,
+cannot be made, in our day, to reign in men's
+hearts except as the result of benefits so palpable that
+common people, as well as political philosophers, can see
+them and count them.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 5 --><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" />Many of the opponents of Home Rule, too, point to
+the vigour with which the United States Government put
+down the attempt made by the South to break up the
+Union as an example of the American love of &quot;imperial
+unity,&quot; and of the spirit in which England should now
+meet the Irish demands for local autonomy. This again
+is rather surprising, because you will find no one in
+America who will maintain for one moment that troops
+could have been raised in 1860 to undertake the conquest
+of the South for the purpose of setting up a centralized
+administration, or, in other words, for the purpose of wiping
+out State lines, or diminishing State authority. No man or
+party proposed anything of this kind at the outbreak of the
+war, or would have dared to propose it. The object for
+which the North rose in arms, and which Lincoln had in
+view when he called for troops, was the restoration of the
+Union just as it was when South Carolina seceded, barring
+the extension of slavery into the territories. During the
+first year of the war, certainly, the revolted States might at
+any time have had peace on the <i>status quo</i> basis, that is, without
+the smallest diminution of their rights and immunities
+under the Constitution. It was only when it became
+evident that the war would have to be fought out to a
+finish, as the pugilists say&mdash;that is, that it would have to
+end in a complete conquest of the Southern territory&mdash;that
+the question, what would become of the States as a political
+organization after the struggle was over, began to be
+debated at all. What did become of them? How did
+Americans deal with Home Rule, after it had been used
+to set on foot against the central authority what the newspapers
+used to delight in calling &quot;the greatest rebellion the
+world ever saw&quot;? The answer to these questions is, it
+seems to me, a contribution of some value to the discussion
+of the Irish problem in its present stage, if American precedents
+can throw any light whatever on it.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 6 --><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" />There was a Joint Committee of both Houses of Congress
+appointed in 1866 to consider the condition of the
+South with reference to the safety or expediency of admitting
+the States lately in rebellion to their old relations to the
+Union, including representation in Congress. It contained,
+besides such fanatical enemies of the South as Thaddeus
+Stevens, such very conservative men as Mr. Fessenden,
+Mr. Grimes, Mr. Morrill, and Mr. Conkling. Here is the
+account they gave of the condition of Southern feeling one
+year after Lee's surrender:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Examining the evidence taken by your committee still
+further, in connection with facts too notorious to be disputed,
+it appears that the Southern press, with few exceptions,
+and those mostly of newspapers recently established
+by Northern men, abounds with weekly and daily abuse of
+the institutions and people of the loyal States; defends the
+men who led, and the principles which incited, the rebellion;
+denounces and reviles Southern men who adhered to the
+Union; and strives constantly and unscrupulously, by every
+means in its power, to keep alive the fire of hate and discord
+between the sections; calling upon the President to
+violate his oath of office, overturn the Government by force
+of arms, and drive the representatives of the people from
+their seats in Congress. The national banner is openly
+insulted, and the national airs scoffed at, not only by an
+ignorant populace, but at public meetings, and once, among
+other notable instances, at a dinner given in honour of
+a notorious rebel who had violated his oath and abandoned
+his flag. The same individual is elected to an important
+office in the leading city of his State, although an unpardoned
+rebel, and so offensive that the President refuses to allow
+him to enter upon his official duties. In another State the
+leading general of the rebel armies is openly nominated for
+Governor by the Speaker of the House of Delegates, and
+the nomination is hailed by the people with shouts of
+satisfaction, and openly endorsed by the press....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<!-- Page 7 --><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" />The evidence of an intense hostility to the Federal
+Union, and an equally intense love of the late Confederacy,
+nurtured by the war is decisive. While it appears that
+nearly all are willing to submit, at least for the time being,
+to the Federal authority, it is equally clear that the ruling
+motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will be
+derived from a representation in Congress. Officers of the
+Union army on duty, and Northern men who go south to
+engage in business, are generally detested and proscribed.
+Southern men who adhered to the Union are bitterly hated
+and relentlessly persecuted. In some localities prosecutions
+have been instituted in State courts against Union officers
+for acts done in the line of official duty, and similar prosecutions
+are threatened elsewhere as soon as the United
+States troops are removed. All such demonstrations show
+a state of feeling against which it is unmistakably necessary
+to guard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The testimony is conclusive that after the collapse of
+the Confederacy the feeling of the people of the rebellious
+States was that of abject submission. Having appealed to
+the tribunal of arms, they had no hope except that by the
+magnanimity of their conquerors, their lives, and possibly
+their property, might be preserved. Unfortunately the
+general issue of pardons to persons who had been prominent
+in the rebellion, and the feeling of kindliness and
+conciliation manifested by the Executive, and very
+generally indicated through the Northern press, had the
+effect to render whole communities forgetful of the crime
+they had committed, defiant towards the Federal Government,
+and regardless of their duties as citizens. The
+conciliatory measures of the Government do not seem
+to have been met even half-way. The bitterness and
+defiance exhibited towards the United States under such
+circumstances is without a parallel in the history of the
+world. In return for our leniency we receive only an
+<!-- Page 8 --><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" />insulting denial of our authority. In return for our kind
+desire for the resumption of fraternal relations we receive
+only an insolent assumption of rights and privileges long
+since forfeited. The crime we have punished is paraded
+as a virtue, and the principles of republican government
+which we have vindicated at so terrible a cost are denounced
+as unjust and oppressive.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If we add to this evidence the fact that, although
+peace has been declared by the President, he has not, to
+this day, deemed it safe to restore the writ of <i>habeas corpus</i>,
+to relieve the insurrectionary States of martial law, nor to
+withdraw the troops from many localities, and that the
+commanding general deems an increase of the army indispensable
+to the preservation of order and the protection of
+loyal and well-disposed people in the South, the proof of
+a condition of feeling hostile to the Union and dangerous
+to the Government throughout the insurrectionary States
+would seem to be overwhelming.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This Committee recommended a series of coercive
+measures, the first of which was the adoption of the fourteenth
+amendment to the Constitution, which disqualified
+for all office, either under the United States or under any
+State, any person who having in any capacity taken an oath
+of allegiance to the United States afterwards engaged in
+rebellion or gave aid and comfort to the rebels. This
+denied the <i>jus honorum</i> to all the leading men at the South
+who had survived the war. In addition to it, an Act was
+passed in March, 1867, which put all the rebel States under
+military rule until a constitution should have been framed
+by a Convention elected by all males over twenty-one,
+except such as would be excluded from office by the above-named
+constitutional amendment if it were adopted, which
+at that time it had not been. Another Act was passed
+three weeks later, prescribing, for voters in the States lately
+in rebellion, what was known as the &quot;ironclad oath,&quot; which
+<!-- Page 9 --><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" />excluded from the franchise not only all who had borne
+arms against the United States, but all who, having ever
+held any office for which the taking an oath of allegiance
+to the United States was a qualification, had afterwards
+ever given &quot;aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.&quot; This
+practically disfranchised all the white men of the South
+over twenty-five years old.</p>
+
+<p>On this legislation there grew up, as all the world now
+knows, what was called the &quot;carpet-bag&quot; <i>regime</i>. Swarms
+of Northern adventurers went down to the Southern States,
+organized the ignorant negro voters, constructed State constitutions
+to suit themselves, got themselves elected to all
+the chief offices, plundered the State treasuries, contracted
+huge State debts, and stole the proceeds in connivance with
+legislatures composed mainly of negroes, of whom the most
+intelligent and instructed had been barbers and hotel-waiters.
+In some of the States, such as South Carolina and Mississippi,
+in which the negro population were in the majority,
+the government became a mere caricature. I was in
+Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, in 1872, during
+the session of the legislature, when you could obtain the
+passage of almost any measure you pleased by a small payment&mdash;at
+that time seven hundred dollars&mdash;to an old negro
+preacher who controlled the coloured majority. Under the
+pretence of fitting up committee-rooms, the private lodging-rooms
+at the boarding-houses of the negro members, in
+many instances, were extravagantly furnished with Wilton
+and Brussels carpets, mirrors, and sofas. A thousand dollars
+were expended for two hundred elegant imported china
+spittoons. There were only one hundred and twenty-three
+members in the House of Representatives, but the residue
+were, perhaps, transferred to the private chambers of the
+legislators.</p>
+
+<p>Now, how did the Southern whites deal with this state of
+things? Well, I am sorry to say they manifested their
+<!-- Page 10 --><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" />discontent very much in the way in which the Irish have for
+the last hundred years been manifesting theirs. If, as the
+English opponents of Home Rule seem to think, readiness to
+commit outrages, and refusal to sympathize with the victims
+of outrages, indicate political incapacity, the whites of the
+South showed, in the period between 1866 and 1876, that they
+were utterly unfit to be entrusted with the work of self-government.
+They could not rise openly in revolt because the
+United States troops were everywhere at the service of the
+carpet-baggers, for the suppression of armed resistance.
+They did not send petitions to Congress, or write letters to
+the Northern newspapers, or hold indignation meetings.
+They simply formed a huge secret society on the model of
+the &quot;Molly Maguires&quot; or &quot;Moonlighters,&quot; whose special
+function was to intimidate, flog, mutilate, or murder political
+opponents in the night time. This society was called the
+&quot;Ku-Klux Klan.&quot; Let me give some account of its operation,
+and I shall make it as brief as possible. It had
+become so powerful in 1871 that President Grant in that
+year, in his message to Congress, declared that &quot;a condition
+of things existed in some of the States of the Union rendering
+life and property insecure, and the carrying of the mails
+and the collecting of the revenue dangerous.&quot; A Joint Select
+Committee of Congress was accordingly appointed, early in
+1872, to &quot;inquire into the condition of affairs in the late
+insurrectionary States, so far as regards the execution of the
+laws and the safety of the lives and property of the citizens
+of the United States.&quot; Its report now lies before me, and
+it reads uncommonly like the speech of an Irish Secretary
+in the House of Commons bringing in a &quot;Suppression of
+Crime Bill.&quot; The Committee say&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is a remarkable concurrence of testimony to the
+effect that, in those of the late rebellious States into whose
+condition we have examined, the courts and juries administer
+justice between man and man in all ordinary cases, civil
+<!-- Page 11 --><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />and criminal; and while there is this concurrence on this
+point, the evidence is equally decisive that redress cannot
+be obtained against those who commit crimes in disguise
+and at night. The reasons assigned are that identification
+is difficult, almost impossible; that, when this is attempted,
+the combinations and oaths of the order come in and release
+the culprit by perjury, either upon the witness-stand or in
+the jury-box; and that the terror inspired by their acts, as
+well as the public sentiment in their favour in many localities,
+paralyzes the arm of civil power.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&quot;The murders and outrages which have been perpetrated
+in many counties of Middle and West Tennessee, during
+the past few months, have been so numerous, and of such
+an aggravated character, as almost baffles investigation. In
+these counties a reign of terror exists which is so absolute
+in its nature that the best of citizens are unable or unwilling
+to give free expression to their opinions. The terror inspired
+by the secret organization known as the Ku-Klux
+Klan is so great, that the officers of the law are powerless
+to execute its provisions, to discharge their duties, or
+to bring the guilty perpetrators of these outrages to the
+punishment they deserve. Their stealthy movements are
+generally made under cover of night, and under masks and
+disguises, which render their identification difficult, if not
+impossible. To add to the secrecy which envelops their
+operations, is the fact that no information of their murderous
+acts can be obtained without the greatest difficulty and
+danger in the localities where they are committed. No one
+dares to inform upon them, or take any measures to bring
+them to punishment, because no one can tell but that he
+may be the next victim of their hostility or animosity. The
+members of this organization, with their friends, aiders, and
+abettors, take especial pains to conceal all their operations.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><!-- Page 12 --><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" />&quot;Your committee believe that during the past six
+months, the murders&mdash;to say nothing of other outrages&mdash;would
+average one a day, or one for every twenty-four
+hours; that in the great majority of these cases they have
+been perpetrated by the Ku-Klux above referred to, and
+few, if any, have been brought to punishment. A number
+of the counties of this State (Tennessee) are entirely at the
+mercy of this organization, and roving bands of nightly
+marauders bid defiance to the civil authorities, and threaten
+to drive out every man, white or black, who does not submit
+to their arbitrary dictation. To add to the general lawlessness
+of these communities, bad men of every description
+take advantage of the circumstances surrounding them, and
+perpetrate acts of violence, from personal or pecuniary
+motives, under the plea of political necessity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here is some of the evidence on which the report was
+based.</p>
+
+<p>A complaint of outrages committed in Georgia was referred
+by the general of the army, in June, 1869, to the
+general of the Department of the South for thorough investigation
+and report. General Terry, in his report, made
+August 14, 1869, says<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2" /><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In many parts of the State there is practically no
+government. The worst of crimes are committed, and no
+attempt is made to punish those who commit them. Murders
+have been and are frequent; the abuse, in various ways, of
+the blacks is too common to excite notice. There can
+be no doubt of the existence of numerous insurrectionary
+organizations known as 'Ku-Klux Klans,' who, shielded by
+their disguise, by the secrecy of their movements, and by
+the terror which they inspire, perpetrate crime with impunity.
+There is great reason to believe that in some cases local
+magistrates are in sympathy with the members of these
+organizations. In many places they are overawed by them
+<!-- Page 13 --><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" />and dare not attempt to punish them. To punish such
+offenders by civil proceedings would be a difficult task, even
+were magistrates in all cases disposed and had they the
+courage to do their duty, for the same influences which
+govern them equally affect juries and witnesses.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Merrill, who assumed command
+(in Louisiana) on the 26th of March, and commenced
+investigation into the state of affairs, says (p. 1465)&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From the best information I can get, I estimate the
+number of cases of whipping, beating, and personal violence
+of various grades, in this county, since the first of last
+November, at between three and four hundred, excluding
+numerous minor cases of threats, intimidation, abuse, and
+small personal violence, as knocking down with a pistol
+or gun, etc. The more serious outrages, exclusive of
+murders and whippings, noted hereafter, have been the
+following:&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He then proceeds with the details of sixty-eight cases,
+giving the names of the parties injured, white and black,
+and including the tearing up of the railway, on the night
+before a raid was made by the Ku-Klux on the county
+treasury building. The rails were taken up, to prevent the
+arrival of the United States troops, who, it was known, were
+to come on Sunday morning. The raid was made on that
+Sunday night while the troops were lying at Chester,
+twenty-two miles distant, unable to reach Yorkville, because
+of the rails being torn up.</p>
+
+<p>Another witness said: &quot;To give the details of the
+whipping of men to compel them to change their mode of
+voting, the tearing of them away from their families at night,
+accompanied with insults and outrage, and followed by their
+murder, would be but repeating what has been described in
+other States, showing that it is the same organization in all,
+working by the same means for the same end. Five
+murders are shown to have been committed in Monroe<!-- Page 14 --><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" />
+County, fifteen in Noxubee, one in Lowndes, by the
+testimony taken in the city of Washington; but the extent
+to which school-houses were burnt, teachers whipped, and
+outrages committed in this State, cannot be fully given
+until the testimony taken by the sub-committee shall have
+been printed and made ready to report.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There are about eighty, closely printed, large octavo
+pages of this kind of testimony given by sufferers from the
+outrages.</p>
+
+<p>Something was done to suppress the Ku-Klux by a
+Federal Act passed in 1871, which made offences of this
+kind punishable in the Federal Courts. Considerable
+numbers of them were arrested, tried, and convicted, and
+sent to undergo their punishment in the Northern jails.
+But there was no complete pacification of the South until
+the carpet-bag governments were refused the support of the
+Federal troops by President Hayes, on his accession to
+power in 1876. Then the carpet-bag <i>r&eacute;gime</i> disappeared
+like a house of cards. The chief carpet-baggers fled, and
+the government passed at once into the hands of the native
+whites. I do not propose to defend or explain the way in
+which they have since then kept it in their hands, by
+suppressing or controlling the negro vote. This is not
+necessary to my purpose.</p>
+
+<p>What I seek to show is that the Irish are not peculiar
+in their manner of expressing their discontent with a
+government directed or controlled by the public opinion
+of another indifferent or semi-hostile community which it
+is impossible to resist in open warfare; that Anglo-Saxons
+resort to somewhat the same methods under similar circumstances,
+and that lawlessness and cruelty, considered
+as expressions of political animosity, do not necessarily
+argue any incapacity for the conduct of an orderly and
+efficient government, although I admit freely that they do
+argue a low state of civilization.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 15 --><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" />I will add one more illustration which, although more
+remote than those which I have taken from the Southern
+States during the reconstruction period, is not too remote
+for my purpose, and is in some respects stronger than any
+of them. I do not know a more orderly community in the
+world, or one which, down to the outbreak of the Civil
+War, when manufactures began to multiply, and the Irish
+immigration began to pour in, had a higher average of
+intelligence than the State of Connecticut. Down to 1818
+all voters in that State had to be members of the Congregational
+Church. It had no large cities, and this, with the
+aid of its seat of learning, Yale College, preserved in it, I
+think, in greater purity than even Massachusetts, the old
+Puritan simplicity of manners, the Puritan spirit of order and
+thrift, and the business-like view of government which grew
+out of the practice of town government. A less sentimental
+community, I do not think, exists anywhere, or one in which
+the expression of strong feeling on any subject but religion
+is less cultivated or viewed with less favour. In the matter
+of managing their own political affairs in peace or war, I do
+not expect the Irish to equal the Connecticut people for a
+hundred years to come, no matter how much practice they
+may have in the interval, and I think that fifty years ago it
+was only picked bodies of Englishmen who could do so.
+Yet, in 1833, in the town of Canterbury, one of the most
+orderly and intelligent in the State, an estimable and much-esteemed
+lady, Miss Prudence Crandall, was carrying on a
+girls' school, when something happened to touch her
+conscience about the condition of the free negroes of the
+North. She resolved, in a moment of enthusiasm, to
+undertake the education of negro girls only. What follows
+forms one of the most famous episodes in the anti-slavery
+struggle in America, and is possibly familiar to many
+of the older readers of this article. I shall extract the
+account of it as given briefly in the lately published life of<!-- Page 16 --><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" />
+William Lloyd Garrison, by his sons. Some of the details
+are much worse than is here described.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The story of this remarkable case cannot be pursued
+here except in brief.... It will be enough to say that the
+struggle between the modest and heroic young Quaker
+woman and the town lasted for nearly two years; that the
+school was opened in April; that attempts were immediately
+made under the law to frighten the pupils away and to fine
+Miss Crandall for harbouring them; that in May an Act
+prohibiting private schools for non-resident coloured persons,
+and providing for the expulsion of the latter, was procured
+from the legislature, amid the greatest rejoicing in Canterbury
+(even to the ringing of church bells); that, under this
+Act, Miss Crandall was in June arrested and temporarily
+imprisoned in the county jail, twice tried (August and
+October) and convicted; that her case was carried up to
+the Supreme Court of Errors, and her persecutors defeated
+on a technicality (July, 1834), and that pending this
+litigation the most vindictive and inhuman measures were
+taken to isolate the school from the countenance and even
+the physical support of the townspeople. The shops and
+the meeting-house were closed against teacher and pupils,
+carriage in the public conveyances was denied them, physicians
+would not wait upon them, Miss Crandall's own
+family and friends were forbidden, under penalty of heavy
+fines, to visit her, the well was filled with manure and water
+from other sources refused, the house itself was smeared
+with filth, assailed with rotten eggs and stones, and finally
+set on fire&quot; (vol. i. p. 321).</p>
+
+<p>Miss Crandall is still living in the West, in extreme old
+age, and the Connecticut legislature voted her a small
+pension two years ago, as a slight expiation of the ignominy
+and injustice from which she had suffered at the hands of
+a past generation.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Spectator</i> frequently refers to the ferocious hatred
+<!-- Page 17 --><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" />displayed toward the widow of Curtin, the man who was
+cruelly murdered by moonlighters somewhere in Kerry, as
+an evidence of barbarism which almost, if not quite, justifies
+the denial of self-government to a people capable of producing
+such monsters in one spot and on one occasion.
+Let me match this from Mississippi with a case which I
+produce, not because it was singular, but because it was
+notorious at the North, where it occurred, in 1877. One
+Chisholm, a native of the State, and a man of good standing
+and character, became a Republican after the war, and was
+somewhat active in organizing the negro voters in his
+district. He was repeatedly warned by some of his neighbours
+to desist and abandon politics, but continued resolutely
+on his course. A mob, composed of many of the
+leading men in the town, then attacked him in his house.
+He made his escape, with his wife and young daughter and
+son, a lad of fourteen, to the jail. His assailants broke the
+jail open, and killed him and his son, and desperately
+wounded the daughter. The poor lad received such a
+volley of bullets, that his blood went in one rush to the
+floor, and traced the outlines of his trunk on the ceiling of
+the room below, where it remained months afterwards, an
+eye-witness told me, as an illustration of the callousness of
+the jailer. The leading murderers were tried. They had
+no defence. The facts were not disputed. The judge and
+the bar did their duty, but the jury acquitted the prisoners
+without leaving their seats. Mrs. Chisholm, the widow,
+found neither sympathy nor friends at the scene of the
+tragedy. She had to leave the State, and found refuge in
+Washington, where she now holds a clerkship in the
+Treasury department.</p>
+
+<p>Let me cite as another illustration the violent ways in
+which popular discontent may find expression in communities
+whose political capacity and general respect for the law and
+its officers, as well as for the sanctity of contracts, have never
+<!-- Page 18 --><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" />been questioned. Large tracts of land were formerly held
+along the Hudson river in the State of New York, by a few
+families, of which the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons
+were the chief, either under grants from the Dutch at the first
+settlement of the colony, or from the English Crown after the
+conquest. That known as the &quot;Manor of Rensselaerwick,&quot;
+held by the Van Rensselaers, comprised a tract of country
+extending twenty-four miles north and south, and forty-eight
+miles east and west, lying on each side of the Hudson river.
+It was held by the tenants for perpetual leases. The rents
+were, on the Van Rensselaer estate, fourteen bushels of
+wheat for each hundred acres, and four fat hens, and one
+day's service with a carriage and horses, to each farm of
+one hundred and sixty acres. Besides this, there was a fine
+on alienation amounting to about half a year's rent. The
+Livingston estates were let in much the same way.</p>
+
+<p>In 1839, Stephen Van Rensselaer, the proprietor, or
+&quot;Patroon&quot; as he was called, died, with $400,000 due to
+him as arrears from the tenants, for which, being a man
+of easy temper, he had forborne to press them. But he left
+the amount in trust by his will for the payment of his debts,
+and his heirs proceeded to collect it, and persisted in the
+attempt during the ensuing seven years. What then happened
+I shall describe in the words of Mr. John Bigelow.
+Mr. Tilden was a member of the State Legislature in 1846,
+and was appointed Chairman of a Committee to investigate
+the rent troubles, and make the report which furnished the
+basis for the legislation by which they were subsequently
+settled. Mr. Bigelow, who has edited Mr. Tilden's <i>Public
+Writings and Speeches</i>, prefaces the report with the following
+explanatory note:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Attempts were made to enforce the collection of these
+rents. The tenants resisted. They established armed
+patrols, and, by the adoption of various disguises, were
+enabled successfully to defy the civil authorities. Eventually
+<!-- Page 19 --><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />it became necessary to call out the military, but the
+result was only partially satisfactory. These demonstrations
+of authority provoked the formation of 'anti-rent clubs'
+throughout the manorial district, with a view of acquiring a
+controlling influence in the legislature. Small bands, armed
+and disguised as Indians, were also formed to hold themselves
+in readiness at all times to resist the officers of the
+law whenever and wherever they attempted to serve legal
+process upon the tenants. The principal roads throughout
+the infected district were guarded by the bands so carefully,
+and the animosity between the tenants and the civil authorities
+was so intense, that at last it became dangerous for
+any one not an anti-renter to be found in these neighbourhoods.
+It was equally dangerous for the landlords to make
+any appeal to the law or for the collection of rents or for
+protection of their persons. When Governor Wright entered
+upon his duties in Albany in 1845, he found that the anti-rent
+party had a formidable representation in the legislature,
+and that the questions involved were assuming an almost
+national importance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff made gallant attempts to enforce the law,
+but his deputies were killed, and a legal investigation in
+which two hundred persons were examined, failed to reveal
+the perpetrators of the crime. The militia were called out,
+but they were no more successful than the sheriff. In the
+case of one murder committed in Delaware County in 1845,
+however, two persons were convicted, but their sentence
+was commuted to imprisonment for life. Various others
+concerned in the disturbances were convicted of minor
+offences, but when Governor Young succeeded Governor
+Seward after an election in which the anti-renters showed
+considerable voting strength, he pardoned them all on the
+ground that their crimes were political. The dispute was
+finally settled by a compromise&mdash;that is, the Van Rensselaers
+and the Livingstons both sold their estates, giving quit-claim
+<!-- Page 20 --><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" />deeds to the tenants for what they chose to pay, and the
+granting of agricultural leases for a longer term than twelve
+years was forbidden by the State Constitution of 1846.</p>
+
+<p>This anti-rent agitation is described by Professor Johnston
+of Princeton, in the <i>Cyclop&aelig;dia of Political Science</i>, as &quot;a reign
+of terror which for ten years practically suspended the
+operations of law and the payment of rent throughout the
+district.&quot; Suppose all the land of the State had been held
+under similar tenures; that the controversy had lasted one
+hundred years; that the rents had been high; and that the
+Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons had had the aid of
+the Federal army in enforcing distraints and evictions, and
+in enabling them to set local opinion at defiance, what do
+you suppose the state of morals and manners would have
+been in New York by this time? What would have been
+the feelings of the people towards the Federal authority had
+the matter been finally adjusted with the strong hand, in
+accordance, not with the views of the people of the State,
+but of the landholders of South Carolina or of the district
+of Columbia? I am afraid they would have been terribly
+Irish.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>I know very well the risk I run, in citing all these precedents
+and parallels, of seeming to justify, or at all events
+to palliate, Irish lawlessness. But I am not doing anything
+of the kind. I am trying to illustrate a somewhat trite
+remark which I recently made: &quot;that government is a
+very practical business, and that those succeed best in
+it who bring least sentiment or enthusiasm to the conduct
+of their affairs.&quot; The government of Ireland, like
+the government of all other countries, is a piece of
+business&mdash;a very difficult piece of business, I admit&mdash;and
+therefore horror over Irish doings, and the natural and
+human desire to &quot;get even with&quot; murderers and moonlighters,
+by denying the community which produces them
+<!-- Page 21 --><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" />something it would like much to possess, should have no
+influence with those who are charged with Irish government.
+It is only in nurseries and kindergartens that we can give
+offenders their exact due and withhold their toffee until they
+have furnished satisfactory proofs of repentance. Rulers of
+men have to occupy themselves mainly with the question
+of drying up the sources of crime, and often, in order to
+accomplish this, to let much crime and disorder go unwhipped
+of justice.</p>
+
+<p>With the state of mind which cannot bear to see any
+concessions made to the Irish Nationalists because they are
+such wicked men, in which so many excellent Englishmen,
+whom we used to think genuine political philosophers, are
+now living, we are very familiar in the United States. It
+is a state of mind which prevailed in the Republican party
+with regard to the South, down to the election of 1884, and
+found constant expression on the stump and in the newspapers
+in what is described, in political slang, as &quot;waving
+the bloody shirt.&quot; It showed itself after the war in unwillingness
+to release the South from military rule; then in
+unwillingness to remove the disfranchisement of the whites
+or to withdraw from the carpet-bag State governments the
+military support without which they could not have existed
+for a day; and, last of all, in dread of the advent of a
+Democratic Federal Administration in which Southerners
+or &quot;ex-rebels&quot; would be likely to hold office. At first the
+whole Republican party was more or less permeated by these
+ideas; but the number of those who held them gradually
+diminished, until in 1884 it was at last possible to elect a
+Democratic President. Nevertheless a great multitude witnessed
+the entrance into the White House of a President
+who is indebted for his election mainly to the States formerly
+in rebellion, with genuine alarm. They feared from it something
+dreadful, in the shape either of a violation of the rights
+of the freedmen, or of an assault on the credit and stability
+<!-- Page 22 --><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />of the Federal Government. Nothing but actual experiment
+would have disabused them.</p>
+
+<p>I am very familiar with the controversy with them, for I
+have taken some part in it ever since the passage of the
+reconstruction Acts, and I know very well how they felt, and
+am sometimes greatly impressed by the similarity between
+their arguments and those of the opponents of Irish Home
+Rule. One of their fixed beliefs for many years, though it
+is now extinct, was that Southerners were so bent on rebelling
+again, and were generally so prone to rebellion, that the
+awful consequences of their last attempt in the loss of life
+and property, had made absolutely no impression on them.
+The Southerner was, in fact, in their eyes, what Mr. Gladstone
+says the Irishman is in the eyes of some Englishmen:
+&quot;A <i>lusus natur&aelig;</i>; that justice, common sense, moderation,
+national prosperity had no meaning for him; that all he
+could appreciate was strife and perpetual dissension. It
+was for many years useless to point out to them the severity
+of the lesson taught by the Civil War as to the physical
+superiority of the North, or the necessity of peace and quiet
+to enable the new generation of Southerners to restore their
+fortunes, or even gain a livelihood. Nor was it easy to
+impress them with the inconsistency of arguing that it was
+slavery which made Southerners what they were before they
+went to war, and maintaining at the same time that the disappearance
+of slavery would produce no change in their
+manners, ideas, or opinions. All this they answered by
+pointing to speeches delivered by some fiery adorer of &quot;the
+lost cause,&quot; to the Ku-Klux outrages, to political murders,
+like that of Chisholm, to the building of monuments to the
+Confederate dead, or to some newspaper expression of
+reverence for Confederate nationality. In fact, for fully ten
+years after the close of the war the collection of Southern
+&quot;outrages&quot; and their display before Northern audiences, was
+the chief work of Republican politicians. In 1876, during
+<!-- Page 23 --><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" />the Hayes-Tilden canvass, the opening speech which furnished
+what is called &quot;the key-note of the campaign&quot; was
+made by Mr. Wheeler, the Republican candidate for the
+Vice-Presidency, and his advice to the Vermonters, to whom
+it was delivered, was &quot;to vote as they shot,&quot; that is, to go to
+the polls with the same feelings and aims as those with which
+they enlisted in the war.</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly tell English readers how all this has
+ended. The withdrawal of the Federal troops from the
+South by President Hayes, and the consequent complete
+restoration of the State governments to the discontented
+whites, have fully justified the expectations of those who
+maintained that it is no less true in politics than in physics,
+that if you remove what you see to be the cause, the effect
+will surely disappear. It is true, at least in the Western
+world, that if you give communities in a reasonable degree
+the management of their own affairs, the love of material
+comfort and prosperity which is now so strong among all
+civilized, and even partially civilized men, is sure in the long
+run to do the work of creating and maintaining order; or,
+as Mr. Gladstone has expressed it, in setting up a government,
+&quot;the best and surest foundation we can find to build
+on is the foundation afforded by the affections, the convictions,
+and the will of men.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Report of Secretary of War, 1869-70, vol. i. p. 89.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="HOW_WE_BECAME_HOME_RULERS" id="HOW_WE_BECAME_HOME_RULERS" /><!-- Page 24 --><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" />HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS.</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.</p>
+
+
+<p>In the Home Rule contest of the last eighteen months no
+argument has been more frequently used against the Liberal
+party than the charge of sudden, and therefore, it would
+seem, dishonest change of view. &quot;You were opposed to
+an Irish Parliament at the election of 1880 and for some
+time afterward; you are not entitled to advocate it in 1886.&quot;
+&quot;You passed a Coercion Bill in 1881, your Ministry (though
+against the protests of an active section of its supporters)
+passed another Coercion Bill in 1882; you have no right
+to resist a third such Bill in 1887, and, if you do, your
+conduct can be due to nothing but party spite and revenge
+at your own exclusion from office.&quot; Reproaches of this
+kind are now the stock-in-trade, not merely of the ordinary
+politician, who, for want of a case, abuses the plaintiff's
+attorney, but of leading men, and, still more, of leading
+newspapers, who might be thought bound to produce from
+recent events and an examination of the condition of
+Ireland some better grounds for the passion they display.
+It is noticeable that such reproaches come more often from
+the so-called Liberal Unionists than from the present
+Ministry. Perhaps, with their belief that all Liberals are
+unprincipled revolutionaries, the Tories deem a sin more
+or less to be of small account. Perhaps a recollection of
+<!-- Page 25 --><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />their own remarkable gyrations, before and after the General
+Election of 1885, may suggest that the less said about the
+past the better for everybody. Be the cause what it may,
+it is surprising to find that a section commanding so much
+ability as the group of Dissentient Liberals does, should rely
+rather on the charge of inconsistency than on the advocacy of
+any counter-policy of their own. It is not large and elevated,
+but petty, minds that rejoice to say to an opponent (and
+all the more so if he was once a friend), &quot;You must either
+be wrong now, or have been wrong then, because you have
+changed your opinion. I have not changed; I was right
+then, and I am right now.&quot; Such an argument not only
+dispenses with the necessity of sifting the facts, but it fosters
+the satisfaction of the person who employs it. Consistency
+is the pet virtue of the self-righteous, and the man who
+values himself on his consistency can seldom be induced
+to see that to shut one's eyes to the facts which time develops,
+to refuse to reconsider one's position by the light they
+shed, to cling to an old solution when the problem is substantially
+new, is a proof, not of fortitude and wisdom, but
+rather of folly and conceit.</p>
+
+<p>Such persons may be left to the contemplation of their
+own virtues. But there are many fair-minded men of both
+political parties, or of neither, who, while acquitting those
+Liberal members who supported Home Rule in 1886 and
+opposed Coercion in 1887 of the sordid or spiteful motives
+with which the virulence of journalism credits them, have
+nevertheless been surprised at the apparent swiftness and
+completeness of the change in their opinions. It would be
+idle to deny that, in startling the minds of steady-going people,
+this change did, for the moment, weaken the influence and
+weight of those who had changed. This must be so. A
+man who says now what he denied six years ago cannot
+expect to be believed on his <i>ipse dixit</i>. He must set forth
+the grounds of his conviction. He must explain how his
+<!-- Page 26 --><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />views altered, and why reasons which formerly satisfied him
+satisfy him no longer. It may be that the Liberal party
+have omitted to do this as they ought. Occupied by warm
+and incessant discussions, and conscious, I venture to
+believe, of their own honesty, few of its members have been
+at the trouble of showing what were the causes which
+modified their views, and what the stages of the process
+which carried them from the position of 1880 to that of
+1886.</p>
+
+<p>Of that process I shall attempt in the following pages
+to give a sketch. Such a sketch, though mainly retrospective,
+is pertinent to the issues which now divide the country.
+It will indicate the origin and the strength of the chief
+reasons by which Liberals are now governed. And, if
+executed with proper fairness and truth, it may, as a study
+in contemporary history, be of some little interest to those
+who in future will attempt to understand our present conflict.
+The causes which underlie changes of opinion are
+among the most obscure phenomena in history, because
+those who undergo, these changes are often only half conscious
+of them, and do not think of recording that which
+is imperceptible in its growth, and whose importance is not
+realized till it already belongs to the past.</p>
+
+<p>The account which follows is based primarily on my
+own recollection of the phases of opinion and feeling through
+which I myself, and the friends whom I knew most intimately
+in the House of Commons, passed during the Parliament
+which sat from 1880 till 1885. But I should not
+think of giving it to the public if I did not believe that
+what happened to our minds happened to many others also,
+and that the record of our own slow movement from the
+position of 1880 to that of 1886 is substantially a record
+of the movement of the Liberal party at large. We were
+fairly typical members of that party, loyal to our leaders, but
+placing the principles for which the Liberal party exists
+<!-- Page 27 --><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />above the success of the party itself; with our share of
+prepossessions and prejudices, yet with reasonably open
+minds, and (as we believed) inferior to no other section
+of the House of Commons in patriotism and in attachment
+to the Constitution. I admit frankly that when we entered
+Parliament we knew less about the Irish question than we
+ought to have known, and that even after knowledge had
+been forced upon us, we were more deferential to our
+leaders than was good either for us or for them. But these
+are faults always chargeable on the great majority of members.
+It is because those of whom I speak were in these respects
+fairly typical, that it seems worth while to trace the history
+of their opinions. If any one should accuse me of attributing
+to an earlier year sentiments which began to appear
+in a later one, I can only reply that I am aware of this
+danger, as one which always besets those who recall their
+past states of mind, and that I have done my utmost to
+avoid it.</p>
+
+<p>The change I have to describe was slow and gradual.
+It was reluctant&mdash;that is to say, it seemed rather forced
+upon us by the teaching of events than the work of our
+own minds. Each session marked a further stage in it;
+and I therefore propose to examine its progress session by
+session.</p>
+
+<p>Session of 1880.&mdash;The General Election of 1880
+turned mainly on the foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's
+Government. Few Liberal candidates said much about
+Ireland. Absorbed in the Eastern and Afghan questions,
+they had not watched the progress of events in Ireland
+with the requisite care, nor realized the gravity of the crisis
+which was approaching. They were anxious to do justice
+to Ireland, in the way of amending both the land laws and
+local government, but saw no reason for going further.
+Nearly all of them refused, even when pressed by Irish
+electors in their constituencies, to promise to vote for that<!-- Page 28 --><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" />
+&quot;parliamentary inquiry into the demand for Home Rule,&quot;
+which was then propounded by those electors as a sort
+of test question. We (<i>i.e.</i> the Liberal candidates of 1880)
+then declared that we thought an Irish Parliament would
+involve serious constitutional difficulties, and that we saw
+no reason why the Imperial Parliament should not do full
+justice to Ireland. Little was said about Coercion. Hopes
+were expressed that it would not be resorted to, but very
+few (if any) pledged themselves against it.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Forster was appointed Irish Secretary in
+Mr. Gladstone's Government which the General Election
+brought into power, we (by which I mean throughout the
+new Liberal members) were delighted. We knew him to be
+conscientious, industrious, kind-hearted. We believed him to
+be penetrating and judicious. We applauded his conduct in
+not renewing the Coercion Act which Lord Beaconsfield's
+Government had failed to renew before dissolving Parliament,
+and which indeed there was scarcely time left after
+the election to renew, a fact which did not save Mr. Forster
+from severe censure on the part of the Tories.</p>
+
+<p>The chief business of the session was the Compensation
+for Disturbance Bill, which Mr. Forster brought in for the
+sake of saving from immediate eviction tenants whom a
+succession of bad seasons had rendered utterly unable to
+pay their rents. This Bill was pressed through the House
+of Commons with the utmost difficulty, and at an expenditure
+of time which damaged the other work of the session,
+though the House continued to sit into September. The
+Executive Government declared it to be necessary, in order
+not only to relieve the misery of the people, but to secure
+the tranquillity of the country. Nevertheless, the whole
+Tory party, and a considerable section of the Liberal party,
+opposed it in the interests of the Irish landlords, and of
+economic principles in general, principles which (as commonly
+understood in England) it certainly trenched on.<!-- Page 29 --><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" />
+When it reached the House of Lords it was contemptuously
+rejected, and the unhappy Irish Secretary left to face as he
+best might the cries of a wretched peasantry and the rising
+tide of outrage. What was even more remarkable, was the
+coolness with which the Liberal party took the defeat of a
+Bill their leaders had pronounced absolutely needed. Had
+it been an English Bill of the same consequence to England
+as it was to Ireland, the country would have been up in
+arms against the House of Lords, demanding the reform
+or the abolition of a Chamber which dared to disregard the
+will of the people. But nothing of the kind happened. It
+was only an Irish measure. We relieved ourselves by a few
+strong words, and the matter dropped.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this session that the Liberal party first learnt
+what sort of a spirit was burning in the hearts of Irish
+members. There had been obstruction in the last years
+of the previous Parliament, but, as the Tories were in
+power, they had to bear the brunt of it. Now that a
+Liberal Ministry reigned, it fell on the Liberals. At first
+it incensed us. Full of our own good intentions towards
+Ireland, we thought it contrary to nature that Irish members
+should worry us, their friends, as they had worried Tories,
+their hereditary enemies. Presently we came to understand
+how matters stood. The Irish members made little
+difference between the two great English parties. Both
+represented to them a hostile domination. Both were
+ignorant of the condition of their country. Both cared so
+little about Irish questions that nothing less than deeds of
+violence out of doors or obstruction within doors could
+secure their attention. Concessions had to be extorted
+from both by the same devices; Coercion might be feared
+at the hands of both. Hence the Irish party was resolved
+to treat both parties alike, and play off the one against the
+other in the interests of Ireland alone, using the questions
+which divide Englishmen and Scotchmen merely as levers
+<!-- Page 30 --><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" />whereby to effect their own purposes, because themselves
+quite indifferent to the substantial merits of those questions.
+To us new members this was an alarming revelation. We
+found that the House of Commons consisted of two distinct
+and dissimilar bodies: a large British body (including some
+few Tories and Liberals from Ireland), which, though it was
+distracted by party quarrels, really cared for the welfare
+of the country and the dignity of the House, and would
+set aside its quarrels in the presence of a great emergency;
+and a small Irish body, which, though it spoke the English
+language, was practically foreign, felt no interest in, no
+responsibility for, the business of Britain or the Empire,
+and valued its place in the House only as a means of
+making itself so disagreeable as to obtain its release. When
+we had grasped this fact, we began to reflect on its causes
+and conjecture its effects. We had read of the same things
+in the newspapers, but what a difference there is between
+reading a drama in your study and seeing it acted on the
+stage! We realized what Irish feeling was when we heard
+these angry cries, and noted how appeals that would have
+affected English partisans fell on deaf ears. I remember
+how one night in the summer of 1880, when the Irish
+members kept us up very late over some trivial Bill of
+theirs, refusing to adjourn till they had extorted terms, a
+friend, sitting beside me, said, &quot;See how things come
+round. They keep us out of bed till five o'clock in the
+morning because our ancestors bullied theirs for six
+centuries.&quot; And we saw that the natural relations of an
+Executive, even a Liberal Executive, to the Irish members
+were those of strife. Whose fault it was we were unable to
+decide. Perhaps the Government was too stiff; perhaps
+the members were vexatious. Anyhow, this strife was
+evidently the normal state of things, wholly unlike that
+which existed between Scotch members, to whichever party
+they belonged, and the executive authorities of Scotland.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 31 --><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" />Thus the session of 1880, though it did not bring us
+consciously nearer to Home Rule, impressed three facts
+upon us: first, that the House of Lords regarded Ireland
+solely from the point of view of English landlords,
+sympathizing with Irish landlords; secondly, that the
+House of Commons knew so little or cared so little
+about Ireland that when the Executive declared a measure
+essential to the peace of Ireland, it scarcely resented the
+rejection of that measure by the House of Lords; thirdly,
+that the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons were
+a foreign body, foreign in the sense in which a needle which
+a man swallows is foreign, not helping the organism to
+discharge its functions, but impeding them, and setting up
+irritation. We did not yet draw from these facts all the
+conclusions we should now draw. But the facts were there,
+and they began to tell upon our minds.</p>
+
+<p>SESSION OF 1881.&mdash;The winter of 1880-81 was a terrible
+one in Ireland. The rejection of the Compensation for
+Disturbance Bill had borne the fruit which Mr. Forster
+had predicted, and which the House of Lords had ignored.
+Outrages were numerous and serious. The cry in England
+for repressive measures had gone on rising from November,
+when it occasioned a demonstration at the Guildhall banquet.
+Several Liberal members (of whom I was one) went
+to Ireland at Christmas, to see with our own eyes how
+things stood. We were struck by the difficulty of obtaining
+trustworthy information in Dublin, where the richer classes,
+with whom we chiefly came in contact, merely abused the
+Land League, while the Land Leaguers declared that the
+accounts of outrages were grossly exaggerated. The most
+prominent, Mr. Michael Davitt, assured me, and I believe
+with perfect truth, that he had exerted himself to discountenance
+outrage, and that if, as he expected, he was
+locked up by the Government, outrages would increase.
+When one reached the disturbed districts, where, of course,
+<!-- Page 32 --><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" />one talked to members as well of the landlord class as of
+the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged from
+the medley of contradictions was that, though there was
+much agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity,
+the disorders were not so bad as people in England believed,
+and might have been dealt with by a vigorous administration
+of the existing law. Unfortunately, the so-called
+&quot;better classes,&quot; full of bitterness against the Liberal
+Ministry and Mr. Forster (whom they did not praise till
+it was too late), had not assisted the Executive, and had
+allowed things to reach a pass at which it found the work
+of governing very difficult.</p>
+
+<p>When the Coercion Bill of 1881 was introduced, many
+English Liberals were inclined to resist it. The great
+majority voted for it, but within two years they bitterly
+repented their votes. Our motives, which I mention by
+way of extenuation, not of defence, were these. The Executive
+Government declared that it could not deal with crime
+by the ordinary law. If its followers refused exceptional
+powers, they must displace the Ministry, and let in the
+Tories, who would doubtless obtain such powers, and probably
+use them worse. We had still confidence in Mr.
+Forster's judgment, and a deference to Irish Executive
+Governments generally which Parliamentary experience is well
+fitted to dissipate. The violence with which the Nationalist
+members resisted the introduction of the Bill had roused
+our blood, and the foolish attempts which the Radical and
+Irish electors in some constituencies had made to deter
+their members from supporting it had told the other way,
+and disposed these members to vote for it, in order to show
+that they were not to be cowed by threats. Finally, we were
+assured that votes given for the Coercion Bill would purchase
+a thorough-going Land Bill, and our anxiety for the latter
+induced us, naturally, but erringly, to acquiesce in the former.</p>
+
+<p>When that Land Bill went into Committee we perceived
+<!-- Page 33 --><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" />how much harm the Coercion Bill had done in intensifying
+the bitterness of Irish members. Although the Ministry
+was fighting for their interests against the Tory party and
+the so-called Whiggish section of its own supporters, who
+were seeking to cut down the benefits which the measure
+offered to Irish tenants, the Nationalist members regarded
+it, and in particular Mr. Forster, as their foe. They resented
+what they deemed the insult put upon their country. They
+saw those who had been fighting, often, no doubt, by
+unlawful methods, for the national cause, thrown into
+prison and kept there without trial. They anticipated
+(not without reason) the same fortune for themselves.
+Hence the friendliness which the Liberal party sought to
+show them met with no response, and Mr. Forster was
+worried with undiminished vehemence. In the discussions
+on the Bill we found the Ministry generally resisting all
+amendments which came from Irish members. When these
+amendments seemed to us right, we voted for them, but
+they were almost always defeated by the union of the Tories
+with the steady Ministerialists. Subsequent events have
+proved that many were right, but, whether they were right
+or wrong, the fact which impressed us was that in matters
+which concerned Ireland only, and lay within the exclusive
+knowledge of Irishmen, Irish members were constantly
+outvoted by English and Scotch members, who knew
+nothing at all of the merits of the case, but simply obeyed
+the party whip. This happened even when the Irish
+members who sat on the Liberal side (such as Mr. Dickson
+and his Liberal colleagues from Ulster) joined the Nationalist
+section in demanding some extension of the Bill which
+the Ministry refused. And we perceived that nothing
+incensed the Irish members more than the feeling that their
+arguments were addressed to deaf ears; that they were
+overborne, not by reason, but by sheer weight of numbers.
+Even if they convinced the Ministry, they could seldom
+<!-- Page 34 --><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" />hope to obtain its assent, because the Ministry had to
+consider the House of Lords, sure to reject amendments
+which favoured the tenant, while to detach a number of
+Ministerialists sufficient to carry an amendment against the
+Treasury Bench, the Moderate Liberals, and the Tories,
+was evidently hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the session the House of Lords came
+again upon the scene. It seriously damaged the Bill by its
+amendments, and would have destroyed it but for the skill
+with which the head of the Government handled these
+amendments, accepting the least pernicious, so as to enable
+the Upper House without loss of dignity to recede from
+those which were wholly inadmissible. Several times it
+seemed as if the conflict would have to pass from Westminster
+to the country, and, in contemplating the chances
+of a popular agitation or a dissolution, we were regretfully
+obliged to own that the English people cared too little and
+knew too little about Irish questions to give us much hope
+of defeating the House of Lords and the Tories upon these
+issues.</p>
+
+<p>An incident which occurred towards the end of the
+session seems, though trifling in itself, so illustrative of the
+illogical position in which we stood towards Ireland, as to
+deserve mention. Mr. Forster, still Chief Secretary, had
+brought in a Bill for extinguishing the Queen's University
+in Ireland, and creating in place of it a body to be called
+the Royal University, which, however, was not to be a real
+university at all, but only a set of examiners plus some
+salaried fellowships, to be held at various places of instruction.
+Regarding this as a gross educational blunder,
+which would destroy a useful existing body, and create a
+sham university in its place, and finding several Parliamentary
+friends on whose judgment I could rely to be of the
+same opinion, I gave notice of opposition to the Bill. Mr.
+Forster came to me, and pressed with great warmth that
+<!-- Page 35 --><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" />the opposition should be withdrawn. The Bill, he said,
+would satisfy the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and complete
+the work of the Land Bill in pacifying Ireland. The Irish
+members wanted it: what business had an English member
+to interfere to defeat their wishes, and thwart the Executive?
+The reply was obvious. Not to speak of the simplicity of
+expecting the hierarchy to be satisfied by this small concession,
+what were such arguments but the admission of Home
+Rule in its worst form? &quot;You resist the demand of the
+Irish members to legislate for Ireland; you have just been
+demanding, and obtaining, the support of English members
+against those amendments of the Land Bill which Irish
+members declare to be necessary. Now you bid us surrender
+our own judgment, ignore our own responsibility,
+and blindly pass a Bill which we, who have studied these
+university questions as they affect both Ireland and England,
+believe to be thoroughly mischievous to the prospects of
+higher education in Ireland, only because the Irish
+members, as you say, desire it. Do one thing or the
+other. Either give them the power and the responsibility,
+or leave both with the Imperial Parliament. You are now
+asking us to surrender the power, but to remain still subject
+to the responsibility. We will not bear the latter without
+the former. We shall prefer Home Rule.&quot; Needless to
+add that this device&mdash;a sample of the petty sops by which
+successive generations of English statesmen, Whigs and
+Tories alike, have sought to win over a priesthood which
+uses and laughs at them&mdash;failed as completely as its
+predecessors to settle the University question or to range
+the bishops on the side of the Government.</p>
+
+<p>The autumn and winter of 1881 revealed the magnitude
+of the mischief done by making a Coercion Bill precede a
+Relief Bill. The Land Bill was the largest concession made
+to the demands of the people since Catholic Emancipation.
+It was a departure, justified by necessity, but still a de<!-- Page 36 --><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />parture
+from our established principles of legislation. It
+ought to have brought satisfaction and confidence, if not
+gratitude, with it; ought to have led Ireland to believe in
+the sincere friendliness of England, and produced a new
+cordiality between the islands. It did nothing of the kind.
+It was held to have been extorted from our fears; its grace
+and sweetness were destroyed by the concomitant severities
+which the Coercion Act had brought into force, as wholesome
+food becomes distasteful when some bitter compound
+has been sprinkled over it. We were deeply mortified at
+this result of our efforts. What was the malign power which
+made the boons we had conferred shrivel up, &quot;like fairy
+gifts fading away&quot;? We still believed the Coercion Act to
+have been justified, but lamented the fate which baffled the
+main object of our efforts, the winning over Ireland to trust
+the justice and the capacity of the Imperial Parliament. And
+thus the two facts which stood out from the history of this
+eventful session were, first, that even in legislating for the
+good of Ireland we were legislating against the wishes of
+Ireland, imposing on her enactments which her representatives
+opposed, and which we supported only at the bidding
+of the Ministry; and, secondly, that at the end of a long
+session, entirely devoted to her needs, we found her more
+hostile and not less disturbed than she had been at its
+beginning. We began to wonder whether we should ever
+succeed better on our present lines. But we still mostly
+regarded Home Rule as a disagreeable solution.</p>
+
+<p>SESSION OF 1882.&mdash;Still graver were the lessons of
+the first four months of this year. Mr. Forster went on
+filling the prisons of Ireland with persons whom he arrested
+under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, and never
+brought to trial. But the country grew no more quiet. At
+last he had nine hundred and forty men under lock and
+key, many of them not &quot;village ruffians,&quot; whose power a few
+weeks' detention was to break, but political offenders, and
+<!-- Page 37 --><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" />even popular leaders. How long could this go on? Where
+was it to stop? It became plain that the Act was a failure,
+and that the people, trained to combination by a century
+and a half's practice, were too strong for the Executive.
+Either the scheme and plan of the Act had been wrong, or
+its administration had been incompetent. Whichever was
+the source of the failure (most people will now blame both),
+the fault must be laid at the door of the Irish Executive;
+not of Mr. Forster himself, but of those on whom he relied.
+It had been a Dublin Castle Bill, conceived and carried out
+by the incompetent bureaucracy which has so long pretended
+to govern Ireland. Such a proof of incompetence destroyed
+whatever confidence in that bureaucracy then remained to
+us, and the disclosures which the Phoenix Park murders
+and the subsequent proceedings against the Invincibles
+brought out, proved beyond question that the Irish Executive
+had only succeeded in giving a more dark and dangerous
+form, the form of ruthless conspiracy, to the agitation it was
+combating.</p>
+
+<p>When therefore the Prevention of Crime Bill of 1882
+was brought in, some of us felt unable to support it, and
+specially bound to resist those of its provisions which related
+to trials without a jury, and to boycotting. It was impossible,
+on the morrow of the Phoenix Park murders, to deny
+that some coercive measure might be needed; but we had
+so far lost faith in repression, and in the officials who were
+to administer it, as to desire to limit it to what was absolutely
+necessary, and we protested against enacting for Ireland
+a criminal code which was not to be applied to Great
+Britain. Our resistance might have been more successful
+but for the manner in which the Nationalist members conducted
+their opposition. When they began to obstruct&mdash;not
+that under the circumstances we felt entitled to censure
+them for obstructing a Bill dealing so harshly with their
+countrymen&mdash;we were obliged to desist, and our experience
+<!-- Page 38 --><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />of the stormy scenes of the summer of 1882 deepened our
+sense of the passionate bitterness with which they regarded
+English members, scarcely making an exception in favour of
+those who were most disposed to sympathize with them.
+Many and many a time when we listened to their fierce
+cries, we seemed to hear in them the battle-cries of the
+centuries of strife between Celt and Englishman from
+Athenry to Vinegar Hill; many a time we felt that this rage
+and mistrust were chiefly of England's making; and yet not
+of England's, but rather of the overmastering fate which had
+prolonged to our own days the hatreds and the methods of
+barbarous times:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="poem" lang="el" title="hêmeis d ouk aitioi esmen">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&#7969;&#956;&#949;&#8150;&#962; &#948;' &#959;&#8016;&#954; &#945;&#7988;&#964;&#953;&#959;&#953; &#7956;&#963;&#956;&#949;&#957;</span>
+<br />
+<span class="poem" lang="el" title="Alla Zeus kai Moira kai êerophoitis Herinus.">&#7944;&#955;&#955;&#8048; &#918;&#949;&#8058;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#924;&#959;&#8150;&#961;&#945; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#7968;&#949;&#961;&#959;&#966;&#959;&#8150;&#964;&#953;&#962; &#7961;&#961;&#953;&#957;&#8059;&#962;.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>So much of the session as the Crime Bill had spared
+was consumed by the Arrears Bill, over which we had again
+a &quot;crisis&quot; with the House of Lords. This was the third
+session that had been practically given up to Irishmen.
+The freshness and force of the Parliament of 1880&mdash;a Parliament
+full of zeal and ability&mdash;had now been almost spent,
+yet few of the plans of domestic legislation spread before the
+constituencies of 1880 had been realized. The Government
+had been anxious to legislate, their majority had been ready
+to support them, but Ireland had blocked the way; and
+now the only expedient for improving the procedure of the
+House was to summon Parliament in an extra autumn
+session. Here was another cause for reflection. England
+and Scotland were calling for measures promised years ago,
+but no time could be found to discuss them. Nothing was
+done to reorganize local government, to reform the liquor
+laws, to improve secondary education, to deal with the
+housing of the poor, or a dozen other urgent questions,
+because we were busy with Ireland; and yet how little more
+loyal or contented did Ireland seem to be for all we had
+<!-- Page 39 --><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" />done. We began to ask whether Home Rule might not be
+as much an English and Scotch question as an Irish question.
+It was, at any rate, clear that to allow Ireland to
+manage her own affairs would open a prospect for England
+and Scotland to obtain time to attend to theirs.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3" /><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>This feeling was strengthened by the result of the
+attempts made in the autumn session of 1882, to improve
+the procedure of the House of Commons. We had cherished
+the hope that more drastic remedies against obstruction and
+better arrangements for the conduct of business, might
+relieve much of the pressure Irish members had made us
+suffer. The passing of the New Rules shattered this hope,
+for it was plain they would not accomplish what was needed.
+Some blamed the Government for not framing a more
+stringent code. Some blamed the Tory and the Irish Oppositions
+(now beginning to work in concert) for cutting
+down the proposals of the Government. But most of us
+saw, and came to see still more clearly in the three succeeding
+sessions, that the evil was too deep-rooted to be cured
+by any changes of procedure, unless they went so far as to
+destroy freedom of debate for English members also. The
+presence in a deliberative assembly of a section numbering
+(or likely soon to number) one-seventh of the whole&mdash;a
+section seeking to lower the character of the assembly, and
+to derange its mechanism, with no further interest in the
+greater part of its business except that of preventing it from
+<!-- Page 40 --><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" />conducting that business&mdash;this was the phenomenon which
+confronted us, and we felt that no rules of debate would
+overcome the dangers it threatened.</p>
+
+<p>It is from this year 1882 that I date the impression
+which we formed, that Home Rule was sure to come. &quot;It
+may be a bold experiment,&quot; we said to one another in the
+lobbies; &quot;there are serious difficulties in the way, though
+the case for it is stronger than we thought two years ago.
+But if the Irishmen persist as they are doing now, they will
+get it. It is only a question of their tenacity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible not to be struck during the conflicts
+of 1881 and 1882 with the small amount of real bitterness
+which the conduct of the Irish members, irritating as it often
+was, provoked among the Liberals, who of course bore the
+brunt of the conflict. The Nationalists did their best to
+injure a Government which was at the same time being
+denounced by the Tories as too favourable to Irish claims;
+they lowered the character of Parliament by scenes far more
+painful than those of the session of 1887, on which so much
+indignation has been lately expended; they said the hardest
+things they could think of against us in the House; they
+attacked us in our constituencies. Their partisans (for I do
+not charge this on the leaders) interrupted and broke up
+our meetings. Nevertheless, all this did not provoke
+responsive hatred from the Liberals. There could not be
+a greater contrast than that between the way in which the
+great bulk of the Liberal members all through the Parliament
+of 1880 behaved towards their Irish antagonists, and
+the violence with which the Tory members, under much
+slighter provocation, conduct themselves towards those
+antagonists now. I say this not to the credit of our temper,
+which was no better than that of other men heated by the
+struggles of a crowded assembly. It was due entirely to
+our feeling that there was a great balance of wrong standing
+to the debit of England; that if the Irish were turbulent, it
+<!-- Page 41 --><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" />was the ill-treatment of former days that had made them so;
+and that, whatever might be their methods, they were fighting
+for their country. Although, therefore, there was little
+social intercourse between us and them, there was always
+a hope and a wish that the day might come when the
+Liberal party should resume its natural position of joining
+the representatives of the Irish people in obtaining radical
+reforms in Irish government. And the remarkable speech of
+February 9, 1882, in which Mr. Gladstone declared his mind
+to be open on the subject, and invited the Nationalists
+to propound a practicable scheme of self-government, had
+encouraged us to hope that this day might soon arrive.</p>
+
+<p>SESSION OF 1883.&mdash;Three facts stood out in the history
+of this comparatively quiet session, each of which brought us
+further along the road we had entered.</p>
+
+<p>One was the omission of Parliament to complete the
+work begun by the Land Bill of 1881, of improving the
+condition of the Irish peasantry and reorganizing Irish administration.
+The Nationalist members brought in Bills
+for these purposes, including one for amending the Land
+Act by admitting leaseholders to its benefits and securing
+tenants against having their improvements reckoned against
+them in the fixing of rents. Though we could not approve
+all the contents of these Bills, we desired to see the Government
+either take them up and amend them, or introduce
+Bills of its own to do what was needed. Some of us
+spoke strongly in this sense, nor will any one now deny
+that we were right. Sound policy called aloud for the
+completion of the undertaking of 1881. The Government
+however refused, alleging, no doubt with some truth, that
+Ireland could not have all the time of Parliament, but must
+let England and Scotland have their turn. Nor was anything
+done towards the creation of new local institutions in
+Ireland, or the reform of the Castle bureaucracy. We were
+profoundly disheartened. We saw golden opportunities
+<!-- Page 42 --><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" />slipping away, and doubted more than ever whether
+Westminster was the place in which to legislate for Irish
+grievances.</p>
+
+<p>Another momentous fact was the steady increase in the
+number of Nationalist members. Every seat that fell vacant
+in Ireland was filled by them. The moderate Irish party,
+most of whom had by this time crossed the floor of
+the House, and were sitting among us, had evidently no
+future. They were estimable, and, in some cases, able men,
+from whom we had hoped much, as a link between the
+Liberal party and the Irish people. But they seemed to
+have lost their hold on the people, nor were they able to
+give us much practical counsel as to Irish problems. It was
+clear that they would vanish at the next General Election,
+and Parliament be left to settle accounts with the extreme
+men, whose spirits rose as those of our friends steadily sank.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly: it was in this session that the alliance of the
+Nationalists and the Tory Opposition became a potent
+factor in politics. Its first conspicuous manifestation was
+in the defeat of the Government by the allied forces on
+the Affirmation Bill, when the least respectable privates in
+both armies vied with one another in boisterous rejoicings
+over the announcement of numbers in the division. I do
+not refer to this as ground for complaint. It was in the
+course of our usual political warfare that two groups, each
+hating and fearing the Ministry, should unite to displace it.
+But we now saw what power the Irish section must exert
+when it came to hold the balance of numbers in the House.
+Till this division, the Government had commanded a
+majority of the whole House. This would probably not
+outlast a dissolution. What then? Could the two English
+parties, differing so profoundly from one another, combine
+against the third party? Evidently not. We must, therefore,
+look forward to unstable Governments, if not to a total
+dislocation of our Parliamentary system.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 43 --><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />Session of 1884.&mdash;I pass over the minor incidents of
+this year, including the continued neglect of remedial legislation
+for Ireland to dwell on its dominant and most impressive
+lesson. It was the year of the Franchise Bill, which,
+as regards Ireland, worked an extension, not merely of the
+county but also of the borough franchise, and produced,
+owing to the economic condition of the humbler classes in
+that country, a far more extensive change than in England
+or Scotland. When the Bill was introduced the question
+at once arose&mdash;Should Ireland be included?</p>
+
+<p>There were two ways of treating Ireland between which
+Parliament had to choose.</p>
+
+<p>One was to leave her out of the Bill, on the ground that
+the masses of her population could not be trusted with the
+franchise, as being ignorant, sympathetic to crime, hostile
+to the English Government. This course was the logical
+concomitant of exceptional coercive legislation, such as had
+been passed in 1881 and 1882. It was quite compatible
+with generous remedial legislation. But it placed Ireland in
+an unequal and lower position, treating her, as the Coercion
+Acts did, as a dependent country, inhabited by a population
+unfit for the same measure of power which the inhabitants
+of Britain might receive.</p>
+
+<p>The other course was to bestow on Ireland the same
+extended franchise which the English county occupiers were
+to receive, applying the principle of equality, and disregarding
+the obvious consequences. These consequences were
+both practical and logical. The practical consequence was
+the increase in numbers and weight of the Irish party in
+Parliament hostile to Parliament itself. The logical consequence
+was the duty of complying with the wishes of the
+enfranchised nation. Whatever reasons were good for
+giving this enlarged suffrage to the Irish masses, were good
+for respecting the will which they might use to express it.
+If the Irish were deemed fit to exercise the same full
+<!-- Page 44 --><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" />constitutional rights in legislation as the English, must they
+not be fit for the same rights of trial by jury, a free press,
+and all the privileges of personal freedom?</p>
+
+<p>Of these two courses the Cabinet chose the latter,
+those of its members whom we must suppose, from the
+language they now hold, to have then hesitated, either
+stifling their fears or not apprehending the consequences
+of their boldness. It might have been expected, and
+indeed was generally expected, that the Tory party would
+refuse to follow. They talked largely about the danger
+of an extended Irish suffrage, and pointed out that it
+would be a weapon in the hands of disloyalty. But when
+the moment for resistance came, they swerved, and never
+divided in either House against the application of the Bill
+to Ireland. They might have failed to defeat the measure;
+but they would have immensely strengthened their position,
+logically and morally, had they given effect by their votes to
+the sentiments they were known to entertain, and which not
+a few Liberals shared.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this uncontested grant to Ireland of a
+suffrage practically universal was immense upon our minds,
+and the longer we reflected on it the more significant did
+it become. It meant to us that the old methods were
+abandoned, and, as we supposed, for ever. We had
+deliberately given the Home Rule party arms against English
+control far more powerful than they previously possessed.
+We had deliberately asserted our faith in the Irish people.
+Impossible after this to fall back on Coercion Bills. Impossible
+to refuse any request compatible with the general
+safety of the United Kingdom, which Ireland as a nation
+might prefer. Impossible to establish that system of Crown
+Colony Government which we had come to perceive was
+the only real and solid alternative to self-government. To
+those of us who had been feeling that the Irish difficulty
+was much the greatest of all England's difficulties, this stood
+<!-- Page 45 --><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" />out beyond the agitation of the autumn and the compromise
+of the winter as the great political event of 1884.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4" /><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>Although this sketch is in the main a record of Parliamentary
+opinion, I ought not to pass over the influence
+which the study of their constituents' ideas exerted upon
+members for the larger towns. We found the vast bulk of
+our supporters&mdash;English supporters, for after 1882 it was
+understood that the Irish voters were our enemies&mdash;sympathetic
+with the Irish people. They knew and thought little
+about Home Rule, believing that their member understood
+that question better than they did, and willing, so long as
+he was sound on English issues, to trust him. But they
+pitied Irish tenants, and condemned Irish landlords.
+Though they acquiesced in a Coercion Bill when proposed
+by a Liberal Cabinet, because they concluded that nothing
+less than necessity would lead such a Cabinet to propose
+one, they so much disliked any exceptional or repressive
+legislation that it was plain they would not long tolerate it.
+Any popular leader denouncing coercion was certain to have
+the sentiment of the English masses with him, while as to
+suspending Irish representation or carrying out consistently
+the policy of treating Ireland as a subject country, there
+was no chance in the world of their approval. Those of us,
+therefore, who represented large working-class constituencies
+became convinced that the solution of the Irish problem
+must be sought in conciliation and self-government, if only
+because the other solution, Crown Colony Government, was
+utterly repugnant to the English masses, in whom the
+<!-- Page 46 --><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" />Franchise Bill of 1884, completing that of 1867, had vested
+political supremacy.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5" /><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>Session of 1885.&mdash;The allied powers of Toryism and
+Nationalism gained in this year the victory they had so long
+striven for. In February they reduced the Ministerial
+majority to fourteen; in June they overthrew the Ministry.
+No one supposed that on either occasion the merits of the
+issue had anything to do with the Nationalist vote: that
+vote was given simply and solely against the Government,
+as the Government which had passed the Coercion Acts of
+1881 and 1882&mdash;Acts demanded by the Tory party, and
+which had not conceded an Irish Parliament. At last the
+Irish party had attained its position as the arbiter of power
+and office. Some of us said, as we walked away from the
+House, under the dawning light of that memorable 9th of
+June, &quot;This means Home Rule.&quot; Our forecast was soon
+to be confirmed. Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, formed upon
+the resignation of Mr. Gladstone's, announced that it would
+not propose to renew any part of the Coercion Act of 1882,
+which was to expire in August. Here was a surrender
+indeed! But the Tory leaders went further. They did not
+excuse themselves on the ground of want of time. They
+took credit for their benevolence towards Ireland; they discovered
+excellent reasons why the Act should be dropped.
+They even turned upon Lord Spencer, whose administration
+they had hitherto blamed for its leniency, and attacked him
+in Parliament, among the cheers of his Irish enemies. From
+that time till the close of the General Election in December
+everything was done, short of giving public pledges, to keep
+the Irish leaders and the Irish voters in good humour. The
+Tory party in fact posed as the true friends of Ireland, averse
+<!-- Page 47 --><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" />from coercion, and with minds perfectly open on the subject
+of self-government.</p>
+
+<p>This change of front, so sudden, so unblushing, completed
+the process which had been going on in our minds.
+By 1882 we had come to feel that Home Rule was inevitable,
+though probably undesirable. Before long we had asked
+ourselves whether it was really undesirable, whether it might
+not be a good thing both for England, whose Parliament
+and Cabinet system it would relieve from impending dangers,
+while leaving free scope for domestic legislation, and for
+Ireland, which could hardly manage her affairs worse than
+we were managing them for her, and might manage them
+better. And thus, by the spring of 1885, many of us were
+prepared for a large scheme of local self-government in
+Ireland, including a central legislative body in Dublin.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6" /><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>Now when it was plain that the English party which had
+hitherto called for repression, and had professed itself anxious
+for a patriotic union of all parties to maintain order and a
+continuity of policy in Ireland, was ready to bid for Irish
+help at the polls by throwing over repression and reversing
+the policy it had advocated, we felt that the sooner Ireland
+was taken out of English party politics the better. What
+prospect was there of improving Ireland by the superior
+wisdom and fairness of the British Parliament, if British
+leaders were to make their Irish policy turn on interested
+bargains with Nationalist leaders? Repression, which we
+<!-- Page 48 --><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />clearly saw to be the only alternative to self-government,
+seemed to be by common consent abandoned. I remember
+how, at a party of members in the beginning of July, some
+one said, &quot;Well, there's an end for ever of coercion at any
+rate,&quot; and every one assented as to an obvious truth. Accordingly
+the result of the new departure of the Salisbury
+Cabinet in 1885 was to convince even doubters that Home
+Rule must come, and to make those already convinced
+anxious to see it come quickly, and to find the best form
+that could be given it. Many of us expected the Tory
+Government to propose it. Rumour declared the new Lord
+Lieutenant to be in favour of it. His government was extremely
+conciliatory in Ireland, even to the recalcitrant corporation
+of Limerick. Not to mention less serious and less
+respected Tory Ministers, Lord Salisbury talked at Newport
+about the dualism of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy with
+the air of a man who desired to have a workable scheme,
+analogous, if not similar, suggested for Ireland and Great
+Britain. The Irish Nationalists appeared to place their
+hopes in this quarter, for they attacked the Liberal party
+with unexampled bitterness, and threw all their voting
+strength into the Tory scale.</p>
+
+<p>As it has lately been attempted to blacken the character
+of the Irish leaders, it deserves to be remarked that whatever
+has been charged against them was said or done by them
+before the spring of 1885, and was, practically, perfectly well
+known to the Tory leaders when they accepted the alliance
+of the Irish party in the House of Commons, and courted
+their support in the election of 1885. To those who
+remember what went on in the House in the sessions of
+1884 and 1885, the horror now professed by the Tory
+leaders for the conduct and words of the Irish party would
+be matter for laughter if it were not also matter for just
+indignation.</p>
+
+<p>Why, it may be asked, if the persuasion that Home Rule
+<!-- Page 49 --><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" />was certain, and even desirable, had become general among
+the Liberals who had sat through the Parliament of 1880,
+was it not more fully expressed at the election of 1885?
+This is a fair question, which I shall try to answer.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, the electors made few inquiries about
+Ireland. They disliked the subject; they had not realized
+its supreme importance. Those of us who felt anxious to
+explain our views (as was my own case) had to volunteer to
+do so, for we were not asked about them. The Irish party
+in the constituencies was in violent opposition to Liberal
+candidates; it did not interrogate, but denounced. Further,
+it was felt that the issue was mainly one to be decided in
+Ireland itself. The question of Home Rule was being submitted,
+not, as heretofore, to a limited constituency, but to
+the whole Irish people. Till their will had been constitutionally
+declared at the polls it was not proper that Englishmen
+or Scotchmen should anticipate its tenour. We should
+even have been accused, had we volunteered our opinions,
+of seeking to affect the result in Ireland, and, not only of
+playing for the Irish vote in Great Britain, as we saw the
+Tories doing, but of prejudicing the chances of those Liberal
+candidates who, in Irish constituencies, were competing with
+extreme Nationalists. A third reason was that most English
+and Scotch Liberals did not know how far their own dispositions
+towards Home Rule were shared by their leaders.
+Mr. Gladstone's declaration in his Midlothian address was
+no doubt a decided intimation of his views, and was certainly
+understood by some (as by myself) to imply the grant to
+Ireland of a Parliament; but, strong as its words were, its
+importance does not seem to have been fully appreciated at
+the moment. And the opinions of a statesman whose unequalled
+Irish experience and elevated character gave him a
+weight only second to that of Mr. Gladstone&mdash;I mean Lord
+Spencer&mdash;had not been made known. We had consequently
+no certainty that there were leaders prepared to give
+<!-- Page 50 --><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />prompt effect to the views we entertained. Lastly, we were
+not prepared with a practical scheme of self-government for
+Ireland. The Nationalist members had propounded none
+which we could either adopt or criticize. Convinced as we
+were that Home Rule would come and must come, we felt
+the difficulties surrounding every suggestion that had yet
+been made, and had not hammered out any plan which we
+could lay before the electors as approved by Liberal opinion.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7" /><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>
+We were forced to confine ourselves to generalities.</p>
+
+<p>Whether it would have been better for us to have done
+our thinking and scheme-making in public, and thereby have
+sooner forced the details of the problem upon the attention
+of the country, need not now be inquired. Any one can
+now see that something was lost by the omission. But
+those who censure a course that has actually been taken
+usually fail to estimate the evils that would have followed
+from the taking of the opposite course. Such evils might
+in this instance have been as great as those we have
+encountered.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the importance we attached to the
+decision of Ireland itself, and of the attitude of expectancy
+which, while that decision was uncertain, Englishmen were
+forced to maintain. We had not long to wait. Early in
+December it was known that five-sixths of the members
+returned from Ireland were Nationalists, and that the
+<!-- Page 51 --><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" />majorities which had returned them were crushing. If ever
+a people spoke its will, the Irish people spoke theirs at the
+election of 1885. The last link in the chain of conviction,
+which events had been forging since 1880, was now supplied.
+In passing the Franchise Bill of 1884, we had asked Ireland
+to declare her mind. She had now answered. If the
+question was not a mockery, and representative government
+a sham, we were bound to accept the answer, subject only,
+but subject always, to the interests of the whole United
+Kingdom. In other words, we were bound to devise such
+a scheme of self-government for Ireland as would give full
+satisfaction to her wishes, while maintaining the ultimate
+supremacy of the Imperial Parliament and the unity of the
+British Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Very few words are needed to summarize the outline
+which, omitting many details which would have illustrated
+and confirmed its truth, I have attempted to present of the
+progress of opinion among Liberal members of the Parliament
+of 1880.</p>
+
+<p>1. Our experience of the Coercion Bills of 1881 and
+1882 disclosed the enormous mischief which such measures
+do in alienating the minds of Irishmen, and the difficulty of
+enlisting Irish sentiment on behalf of the law. The results
+of the Act of 1881 taught us that the repression of open
+agitation means the growth of far more dangerous conspiracy;
+those of the Act of 1882 proved that even under
+an administration like Lord Spencer's repression works no
+change for the better in the habits and ideas of the people.</p>
+
+<p>2. The conduct of the House of Lords in 1880 and
+1881, and the malign influence which its existence exerted
+whenever remedial legislation for Ireland came in question,
+convinced us that full and complete justice will never be done
+to Ireland by the British Parliament while the Upper House
+(as at present constituted) remains a part of that Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>3. The break-down of the procedure of the House of<!-- Page 52 --><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" />
+Commons, and the failure of the efforts to amend it, proved
+that Parliament cannot work so long as a considerable
+section of its members seek to impede its working. To
+enable it to do its duty by England and Scotland, it was
+evidently necessary, either to make the Irish members as
+loyal to Parliament as English and Scotch members usually
+are, or else to exclude them.</p>
+
+<p>4. The discussions of Irish Bills in the House of
+Commons made us realize how little English members knew
+about Ireland; how utterly different were their competence
+for, and their attitude towards, Irish questions and English
+questions. We perceived that we were legislating in the
+dark for a country whose economic and social condition
+we did not understand&mdash;a country to which we could not
+apply our English ideas of policy; a country whose very
+temper and feeling were strange to us. We were really
+fitter to pass laws for Canada or Australia than for this isle
+within sight of our shores.</p>
+
+<p>5. I have said that we were legislating in the dark. But
+there were two quarters from which light was proffered, the
+Irish members and the Irish Executive. We rejected the first,
+and could hardly help doing so, for to accept it would have
+been to displace our own leaders. We followed the light
+which the Executive gave. But in some cases (as notably
+in the case of the Coercion Bill of 1881) it proved to be a
+&quot;wandering fire,&quot; leading us into dangerous morasses. And
+we perceived that at all times legislation at the bidding of
+the Executive, against the wishes of Irish members, was not
+self-government or free government. It was despotism.
+The rule of Ireland by the British Parliament was really
+&quot;the rule of a dependency through an official, responsible
+no doubt, but responsible not to the ruled, but to an
+assembly of which they form less than a sixth part.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8" /><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> As
+<!-- Page 53 --><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" />this assembly closed its ears to the one-sixth, and gave effect
+to the will of the official, this was essentially arbitrary
+government, and wanted those elements of success which
+free government contains.</p>
+
+<p>This experience had, by 1884, convinced us that the
+present relations of the British Parliament to Ireland were
+bad, and could not last; that the discontent of Ireland was
+justified; that the existing system, in alienating the mind of
+Ireland, tended, not merely to Repeal, but to Separation;
+that the simplest, and probably the only effective, remedy
+for the increasing dangers was the grant of an Irish Legislature.
+Two events clinched these conclusions. One was
+the Tory surrender of June, 1885. Self-government, we had
+come to see, was the only alternative to Coercion, and now
+Coercion was gone. The other was the General Election
+of December, 1885, when newly-enfranchised Ireland,
+through five-sixths of her representatives, demanded a
+Parliament of her own.</p>
+
+<p>These were not, as is sometimes alleged, conclusions of
+despair. We were mostly persons of a cautious and conservative
+turn of mind, as men imbued with the spirit of the
+British Constitution ought to be. The first thing was to
+convince us that the existing relations of the islands were
+faulty, and could not be maintained. This was a negative
+result, and while we remained in that stage we were despondent.
+Many Liberal members will remember the gloom
+that fell on us in 1882 and 1883 whenever we thought or
+spoke of Ireland. But presently the clouds lifted. We still
+felt the old objections to any Home Rule scheme, though
+we now saw that they were less formidable than the evils of
+the present system. But we came to feel that the grant of
+self-government was a right thing in itself. It was not
+merely a means of ridding ourselves of our difficulties, not
+merely a boon yielded because long demanded. It was a
+return to broad and deep principles, a conformity to those
+<!-- Page 54 --><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" />natural laws which govern human society as well as the
+inanimate world&mdash;an effort to enlist the better and higher
+feelings of mankind in the creation of a truer union between
+the two nations than had ever yet existed. When we
+perceived this, hope returned. It is strong with us now,
+for, though we see troubles, perhaps even dangers, in the
+immediate future, we are confident that the principles on
+which Liberal policy towards Ireland is based will in the
+long run work out a happy issue for her, as they have in and
+for every other country that has trusted to them.</p>
+
+<p>One last word as to Consistency. We learnt in the
+Parliament of 1880 many facts about Ireland we had not
+known before; we felt the force and bearing of other facts
+previously accepted on hearsay, but not realized. We saw
+the Irish problem change from what it had been in 1880
+into the new phase which stood apparent at the end of
+1885, Coercion abandoned by its former advocates, Self-government
+demanded by the nation. Were we to disregard
+all these new facts, ignore all these new conditions,
+and cling to old ideas, some of which we perceived to be
+mistaken, while others, still true in themselves, were out-weighed
+by arguments of far wider import? We did not so
+estimate our duty. We foresaw the taunts of foes and the
+reproaches of friends. But we resolved to give effect to the
+opinions we slowly, painfully, even reluctantly formed,
+opinions all the stronger because not suddenly adopted,
+and founded upon evidence whose strength no one can
+appreciate till he has studied the causes of Irish discontent
+in Irish history, and been forced (as we were) to face in
+Parliament the practical difficulties of the government of
+Ireland by the British House of Commons.<!-- Page 55 --><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> I may mention here another fact whose significance impressed
+some among us. Parliament, which usually sinned in not doing for
+Ireland what Ireland asked, occasionally passed bills for Ireland which
+were regarded as setting very bad precedents for England. By some
+bargain between the Irish Office and the Nationalist members, measures
+were put through which may have been right as respects Ireland, but
+which embodied principles mischievous as respects Great Britain. We
+felt that if it was necessary to enact such statutes, it would be better
+that they should proceed from an Irish Legislature rather than from the
+Imperial Parliament, which might be embarrassed by its own acts when
+asked to extend the same principles to England. The Labourers' Act
+of July, 1885, is the most conspicuous example.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> At Easter, 1885, I met a number of leading Ulster Liberals in
+Belfast, told them that Home Rule was certainly coming, and urged
+them to prepare some plan under which any special interests they
+conceived the Protestant part of Ulster to have, would be effectually
+safe-guarded. They were startled, and at first discomposed, but
+presently told me I was mistaken; to which I could only reply that
+time would show, and perhaps sooner then even English Liberals expected.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> My recollection of a conversation with a distinguished public man
+in July, 1882, enables me to say that this fact had impressed itself upon
+us as early as that year. He doubted the fact, but admitted that, if
+true, it was momentous. The passing of the Franchise Bill made it, in
+our view, more momentous than ever.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Some thought that its functions should be very limited, while large
+powers were granted to county boards or provincial councils. But most
+had, I think, already perceived that the grant of a merely local self-government,
+while retaining an irresponsible central bureaucracy, would
+do more harm than good. It seemed at first sight a safer experiment
+than the creation of a central legislative body. But, like many middle
+courses, it combined the demerits and wanted the merits of each of the
+extreme courses. It would not make the country tranquil, as firm and
+long-continued repression might possibly do. Neither would it satisfy
+the people's demands, and divert them from struggles against England
+to disputes and discussions among themselves, as the gift of genuine
+self-government might do.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7" /><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Some of us had tried to do so. I prepared such a scheme in the
+autumn of 1885, and submitted it to some specially competent friends.
+Their objections, made from what would now be called the Unionist
+point of view, were weighty. But their effect was to convince me that
+the scheme erred on the side of caution; and I believe the experience
+of other Liberals who worked at the problem to have been the same as
+my own&mdash;viz. that a small and timid scheme is more dangerous than a
+large and bold one. Thus the result of our thinking from July, 1885, till
+April, 1886, was to make us more and more disposed to reject half-and-half
+solutions. Some of us (of whom I was one) expressed this feeling
+by saying in our election addresses in 1885, &quot;the further we go in giving
+the Irish people the management of their own affairs (subject to the
+maintenance of the unity of the empire) the better.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8" /><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Quoted from an article contributed by myself to the American
+<i>Century Magazine</i>, which I refer to because, written in the spring of
+1883, it expresses the ideas here stated.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="HOME_RULE_AND_IMPERIAL_UNITY" id="HOME_RULE_AND_IMPERIAL_UNITY" />HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY LORD THRING</p>
+
+
+<p>The principal charge made against the scheme of Home
+Rule contained in the Irish Government Bill, 1886, is that it
+is incompatible with the maintenance of the unity of the
+Empire and the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament.
+A further allegation states that the Bill is useless, as agrarian
+exasperation lies at the root of Irish discontent and Irish
+disloyalty, and that no place would be found for a Home
+Rule Bill even in Irish aspirations if an effective Land Bill
+were first passed. An endeavour will be made in the following
+pages to secure a verdict of acquittal on both counts&mdash;as
+to the charge relating to Imperial unity and the supremacy
+of the Imperial Parliament, by proving that the accusation
+is absolutely unfounded, and based partly on a
+misconception of the nature of Imperial ties, and partly on
+a misapprehension of the effect of the provisions of the
+Home Rule Bill as bearing on Imperial questions; and
+as to the inutility of the Home Rule Bill in view of the
+necessity of Land Reform, by showing that without a Home
+Rule Bill no Land Bill worth consideration as a means of
+pacifying Ireland can be passed.</p>
+
+<p>The complete partisan spirit in which Home Rule has
+been treated is the more to be deplored as the subject is
+<!-- Page 56 --><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />one which does not lend itself readily to the trivialities
+of party debates. It raises questions of principle, not of
+detail. It ascends at once into the highest region of
+politics. It is conversant with the great questions of constitutional
+and international law, and leads to an inquiry
+into the very nature of governments and the various modes
+in which communities of men are associated together either
+as simple or composite nations. To describe those modes in
+detail would be to give a history of the various despotic,
+monarchical, oligarchical, and democratic systems of government
+which have oppressed or made happy the children of
+men. Such a description is calculated to perplex and
+mislead from its very extent; not so an inquiry into the
+powers of government, and a classification of those powers.
+They are limited in extent, and, if we confine ourselves to
+English names and English necessities, we shall readily
+attain to an apprehension of the mode in which empires,
+nations, and political societies are bound together, at least
+in so far as such knowledge is required for the understanding
+of the nature of Imperial supremacy, and the mode in
+which Home Rule in Ireland is calculated to affect that
+supremacy.</p>
+
+<p>The powers of government are divisible into two great
+classes&mdash;1. Imperial powers; 2. State powers, using &quot;State&quot;
+in the American sense of a political community subordinated
+to some other power, and not in the sense of an
+independent nation. The Imperial powers are in English
+law described as the prerogatives of the Crown, and consist
+in the main of the powers of making peace and war, of
+maintaining armies and fleets and regulating commerce, and
+making treaties with foreign nations. State powers are
+complete powers of local self-government, described in our
+colonial Constitutions as powers to make laws &quot;for the
+peace, order, and good government of the Colony or State&quot;
+in which such powers are to be exercised.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 57 --><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" />Intermediate between the Imperial and State powers are
+a class of powers required to prevent disputes and facilitate
+intercourse between the various parts of an empire or other
+composite system of States&mdash;for example, the coinage of
+money, and other regulations relating to the currency; the
+laws relating to copyright, or other exclusive rights to the
+use and profits of any works or inventions; and so forth.
+These powers may be described as quasi-Imperial powers.</p>
+
+<p>Having arrived at a competent knowledge of the materials
+out of which governments are formed, it may be well
+to proceed to a consideration of the manner in which those
+materials have been worked up in building the two great
+Anglo-Saxon composite nations&mdash;namely, the American
+Union and the British Empire&mdash;for, if we find that the
+arrangements proposed by the Irish Home Rule Bill are
+strictly in accordance with the principles on which the unity
+of the American Union was based and on which the Imperial
+power of Great Britain has rested for centuries, the conclusion
+must be that the Irish Home Rule Bill is not antagonistic
+to the unity of the Empire or to the supremacy of the
+British Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>In discussing these matters it will be convenient to begin
+with the American Union, as it is less extensive in area and
+more homogeneous in its construction than the British
+Empire. The thirteen revolted American colonies, on the
+conclusion of their war with England, found themselves in
+the position of thirteen independent States having no connection
+with each other. The common tie of supremacy
+exercised by the mother country was broken, and each
+State was an independent nation, possessed both of Imperial
+and Local rights.</p>
+
+<p>The impossibility of a cluster of thirteen small independent
+nations maintaining their independence against foreign
+aggression became immediately apparent, and, to remedy
+this evil, the thirteen States appointed delegates to form
+<!-- Page 58 --><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" />a convention authorized to weld them into one body as
+respected Imperial powers. This was attempted to be
+done by the establishment of a central body called a
+Congress, consisting of delegates from the component States,
+and invested with all the powers designated above as Imperial
+and quasi-Imperial powers. The expenses incurred by
+the confederacy were to be defrayed out of a common fund,
+to be supplied by requisitions made on the several States.
+In effect, the confederacy of the thirteen States amounted to
+little more than an offensive and defensive alliance between
+thirteen independent nations, as the central power had States
+for its subjects and not individuals, and could only enforce the
+law against any disobedient State by calling on the twelve other
+States to make war on the refractory member of the union.
+A system dependent for its efficacy on the concurrence of
+so many separate communities contained in itself the seeds
+of dissolution, and it soon became apparent that one of two
+things must occur&mdash;either the American States must cease
+as such to be a nation, or the component members of that
+union must each be prepared to relinquish a further portion
+of the sovereign or quasi-sovereign powers which it possessed.
+Under those circumstances, what was the course taken by
+the thirteen States? They perceived that it was quite
+possible to maintain complete unity and compactness as
+a nation if, in addition to investing the Supreme Government
+with Imperial and quasi-Imperial powers, they added
+full power to impose federal taxes on the component States
+and established an Executive furnished with ample means
+to carry all federal powers into effect through the medium
+of federal officers. The government so formed consisted of
+a President and two elected Houses called Congress, and,
+as a balance-wheel of the Constitution, a Supreme Court
+was established, to which was confided the task of deciding
+in case of dispute all questions arising under the Constitution
+of the United States or relating to international law.<!-- Page 59 --><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />
+The Executive of the United States, with the President as
+its source and head, was furnished with full authority and
+power to enforce the federal laws. The army and navy
+were under its command, and it was provided with courts of
+justice, and subordinate officers to enforce the decrees of
+those courts throughout the length and breadth of the
+Union. Above all, a complete system of federal taxation
+supplied the Central Government with the necessary funds
+to perform effectually all the functions of a supreme national
+government.</p>
+
+<p>The nature of the Constitution of the United States will
+be best understood by considering the position in which its
+subjects stand to the Central Government and their own
+State Governments. In effect, every inhabitant of the
+United States has a double nationality. He belongs to one
+great nation called the United States, or, as it would be
+more aptly called to show its absolute unity, the American
+Republic, having jurisdiction over the whole surface of
+ground comprised in the area of the United States. He is
+also a citizen of a smaller local and partially self-governing
+body&mdash;more important than a county, but not approaching
+the position of a nation&mdash;called a State.</p>
+
+<p>It is no part of the object of this article to enter into
+the details of the American government, its advantages or
+defects. This much, however, is clear&mdash;the American Constitution
+has lasted nearly one hundred years, and shows no
+signs of decay or disruption. It has stood the strain of the
+greatest war of modern times, and has emerged from the
+conflict stronger than before. Even during the war the antagonism
+of the rebels was directed, not against the Union,
+but against the efforts of the Northern States to suppress
+slavery, or, in other words, to destroy, as the Southern States
+believed (not unjustly as the event showed), their property
+in slaves, and consequently the only means they had of
+making their estates profitable. One conclusion, then, we
+<!-- Page 60 --><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" />may draw, that a nation in which the Imperial powers and
+the State powers are vested in different authorities is no less
+compact and powerful, as respects all national capacities,
+than a nation in which both classes of powers are wielded
+by the same functionaries; and one lesson more may be
+learnt from the American War of Secession&mdash;namely, that
+in a nation having such a division of powers, any conflict
+between the two classes results in the Supreme or Imperial
+powers prevailing over the Local governmental powers, and
+not in the latter invading or driving a wedge into the
+Supreme powers. In fact, the tendency in case of a struggle
+is towards an undue centralization of the nation by reason
+of the encroachment by the Supreme authority, rather than
+towards a weakening of the national unity by separatist
+action on the part of the constituent members of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>In comparing the Constitution of the United States with
+the Constitution of the British Empire, we find an apparent
+resemblance in form as respects the Anglo-Saxon colonies,
+but underlying the surface a total difference of principle.
+The United States is an aggregate of homogeneous and
+contiguous States which, in order to weld themselves into a
+nation, gave up a portion of their rights to a central authority,
+reserving to themselves all powers of government which they
+did not expressly relinquish.</p>
+
+<p>The British Empire is an aggregate of many communities
+under one common head, and is thus described by Mr.
+Burke in 1774, in language which may seem to have been
+somewhat too enthusiastic at the time when it was spoken,
+but at the present day does not more than do justice to an
+Empire which comprises one-sixth of the habitable globe in
+extent and population:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I look, I say, on the Imperial rights of Great Britain,
+and the privileges which the colonies ought to enjoy under
+those rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the
+world. The Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of
+<!-- Page 61 --><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" />her extensive Empire in two capacities: one as the local
+legislature of this island, providing for all things at home
+immediately and by no other instrument than the executive
+power; the other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what
+I call her Imperial character, in which, as from the throne
+of heaven, she superintends all the several Legislatures, and
+guides and controls them all without annihilating any. As
+all these provincial Legislatures are only co-ordinate with
+each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her, else they
+can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual
+justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9" /><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>The means by which the possessions of Great Britain
+were acquired have been as various as the possessions themselves.
+The European, Asiatic, and African possessions
+became ours by conquest and cession; the American by
+conquest, treaty, and settlement; the Australasian by settlement,
+and by that dubious system of settlement known by
+the name of annexation. Now, what is the link which
+fastens each of these possessions to the mother country?
+Surely it is the inherent and indestructible right of the
+British Crown to exercise Imperial powers&mdash;in other words,
+the supremacy of the Queen and the British Parliament?
+What, again, is the common bond of union between these
+vast colonial possessions, differing in laws, in religion, and
+in the character of the population? The same answer must
+be given: the joint and several tie, so to speak, is the same
+&mdash;namely, the sovereignty of Great Britain. It is true that
+the mode in which the materials composing the British
+Empire have been cemented together is exactly the reverse
+of the manner of the construction of the American Union.
+In the case of the Union, independent States voluntarily
+relinquished a portion of their sovereignty to secure national
+unity, and entrusted the guardianship of that unity to a
+representative body chosen by themselves. Such a union
+<!-- Page 62 --><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" />was based on contract, and could only be constructed by
+communities which claimed to be independent. Far different
+have been the circumstances under which England
+has developed itself into the British Empire. England
+began as a sovereign power, having its sovereignty vested at
+first solely in the Sovereign, but gradually in the Sovereign
+and Parliament. This sovereignty neither the Crown nor
+the Parliament can, jointly or severally, get rid of, for it is
+of the very essence of a sovereign power that it cannot, by
+Act of Parliament or otherwise, bind its successors.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10" /><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> This
+principle of supremacy has never been lost sight of by the
+British Parliament. Their right to alter or suspend a colonial
+Constitution has never been disputed. Contract never enters
+into the question. The dominant authority delegates to its
+subordinate communities as much or as little power as it
+deems advantageous for each body, and, if it sees fit, resumes
+a portion or the whole of the delegated authority. The last
+point of difference to be noted between the American Constitution
+and the Constitution of the British Empire is the
+fact that as Minerva sprang from the brain of Jupiter fully
+equipped, so the American Constitution came forth from the
+hands of its framers complete and, what is of more importance,
+practically in material matters unchangeable except by the
+agony of an internecine war or some overwhelming passions.
+The British Empire, on the other hand, is, as respects its
+component members, ever in progress and flux. An Anglo-Saxon
+colony, no less than a human being, has its infancy
+under the maternal care of a governor, its boyhood subject
+to the government of a representative council and an Executive
+appointed by the Crown, its manhood under Home
+Rule and responsible government, in which the Executive
+are bound to vacate their offices whenever they are out-voted
+<!-- Page 63 --><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" />in the Legislature. Changes are ever taking place in the
+growth, so to speak, of the several British possessions, but
+what is the result? Nobody ever dreams of these changes
+injuring the Imperial tie or the supremacy of the British
+Parliament, that alone towers above all, unchangeable and
+unimpaired; and, what is most notable, loyalty and devotion
+to the Crown&mdash;that is to say, the Imperial tie&mdash;so far from
+being weakened by the transition of a colony from a state of
+dependence in local affairs to the higher degree of a self-governing
+colony, are, on the contrary, strengthened almost
+in direct proportion as the central interference with local
+affairs is diminished. On this point an unimpeachable witness&mdash;Mr.
+Merivale&mdash;says: &quot;What, then, are the lessons to
+be learnt from a consideration of the American Constitution
+and of our colonial system? Surely these: that Imperial
+unity and Imperial supremacy are in no degree dependent
+on the control exercised by the central power on its dependent
+members.&quot; Facts, however, are more conclusive
+than any arguments; and we have only to look back to the
+state some forty years ago of Canada, New Zealand, and the
+various colonies of Australia, and compare that state with
+their condition to-day, to come to the conclusion that the
+fullest power of local government is perfectly consistent with
+the unity of the Empire and the supremacy of the British
+Parliament. Under the old colonial Constitutions the
+Executive of those colonies was under the control of the
+Crown; and Mr. Merivale says &quot;that the political existence
+consisted of a series of quarrels and reconciliations between
+the two opposing authorities&mdash;the colonial legislative body
+and the Executive nominated by the Crown.&quot; England
+resolved to give up the control of the Executive, and to
+grant complete responsible government&mdash;that is to say, the
+Governor of each colony was instructed that his Executive
+Council (or Ministry, as we should call it) must resign whenever
+they were out-voted by the legislative body. The
+<!-- Page 64 --><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" />effect of this change, this relaxing, as would be supposed, of
+the Imperial tie, was magical, and is thus described by Mr.
+Merivale:<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11" /><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;The magnitude of that change&mdash;the extraordinary
+rapidity of its beneficial effects&mdash;it is scarcely possible to
+exaggerate. None but those who have traced it can realize
+the sudden spring made by a young community under its
+first release from the old tie of subjection, moderate as that
+tie really was. The cessation, as if by magic, of the old
+irritant sores between colony and mother country is the first
+result. Not only are they at concord, but they seem to leave
+hardly any traces in the public mind behind them. Confidence
+and affection towards the home, still fondly so termed
+by the colonist as well as the emigrant, seem to supersede
+at once distrust and hostility. Loyalty, which was before
+the badge of a class suspected by the rest of the community,
+became the common watchword of all, and, with some extravagance
+in the sentiment, there arises no small share of
+its nobleness and devotion. Communities, which but a few
+years ago would have wrangled over the smallest item of
+public expenditure to which they were invited by the Executive
+to contribute, have vied with each other in their subscriptions
+to purposes of British interests in response to calls
+of humanity, or munificence for objects but indistinctly heard
+of at the distance of half the world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Dominion of Canada has been so much talked
+about that it may be well to give a summary of its Constitution,
+though, in so far as regards its relations to the mother
+country, it differs in no material respect from any other self-governing
+colony. The Dominion consists of seven provinces,
+each of which has a Legislature of its own, but is at
+the same time subject to the Legislature of the Dominion,
+in the same manner as each State in the American Union
+has a Legislature of its own, and is at the same time subject
+<!-- Page 65 --><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" />to the control of Congress. The distinguishing feature between
+the system of the American States and the associated
+colonies of the Dominion of Canada is this&mdash;that all Imperial
+powers, everything that constitutes a people a nation as
+respects foreigners, are reserved to the mother country.
+The division, then, of the Dominion and its provinces consists
+only in a division of Local powers. It is impossible to
+mark accurately the line between Dominion and Provincial
+powers, but, speaking generally, Dominion powers relate to
+such matters&mdash;for example, the regulation of trade and
+commerce, postal service, currency, and so forth&mdash;as require
+to be dealt with on a uniform principle throughout the
+whole area of a country; while the Provincial powers relate
+to provincial and municipal institutions, provincial licensing,
+and other subjects restricted to the limits of the province.
+As a general rule, the Legislature of the Dominion and the
+Legislature of each province have respectively exclusive
+jurisdiction within the limits of the subjects entrusted to
+them; but, as respects agriculture and immigration, the
+Dominion Parliament have power to overrule any Act of
+the provincial Legislatures, and, as respects property and
+civil rights in Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick,
+the Dominion Parliament may legislate with a view to
+uniformity, but their legislation is not valid unless it is
+accepted by the Legislature of each province to which
+it applies.</p>
+
+<p>The executive authority in the Dominion Government,
+as in all the self-governing colonies, is carried on by the
+Governor in the name of the Queen, but with the advice of
+a Council: that is to say, as to all Imperial matters, he is
+under the control of the mother country; as to all local
+matters, he acts on the advice of his local Council. The
+result of the whole is that the citizenship of an inhabitant
+of the Dominion of Canada is a triple tie. Suppose him to
+reside in the province of Quebec. First, he is a citizen of
+<!-- Page 66 --><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" />that province, and bound to obey all the laws which it is
+within the competence of the provincial Legislature to pass.
+Next, he is a citizen of the Dominion of Canada, and
+acknowledges its jurisdiction in all matters outside the
+legitimate sphere of the province. Lastly, and above all,
+he is a subject of her Majesty. He is to all intents and
+purposes, as respects the vast company of nations, an
+Englishman, entitled to all the privileges as he is to all the
+glory of the mother country so far as such privileges can
+be enjoyed and glory participated in without actual residence
+in England. One startling point of likeness in events
+and unlikeness in consequences is to be found in the history
+of Ireland and Canada. In 1798 Ireland rebelled. Protestant
+and Catholic were arrayed in arms against each
+other. The rebellion was quenched in blood, and measures
+of repression have been in force, with slight intervals of
+suspension, ever since, with this result&mdash;that the Ireland
+of 1886 is scarcely less disloyal and discontented than the
+Ireland of 1798. In 1837 and 1838 Canada rebelled.
+Protestants and Catholics, differing in nationality as well as
+in religion, were arrayed in arms against each other. The
+rebellion was quelled with the least possible violence, a free
+Constitution was given, and the Canada of 1886 is the
+largest, most loyal, and most contented colony in her
+Majesty's dominions.</p>
+
+<p>Assuming, then, thus much to be proved by the Constitution
+of the United States that national unity of the
+closest description is consistent with complete Home Rule
+in the component members of the nation, and by the history
+of Canada and the British colonial empire that an Imperial
+tie is sufficient to bind together for centuries dependencies
+differing in situation, in nationality, in religion, in laws, in
+everything that distinguishes peoples one from another, and
+further and more particularly that emancipation of the
+Anglo-Saxon colonies from control in their internal affairs
+<!-- Page 67 --><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" />strengthens instead of weakening Imperial unity, let us turn
+to Ireland and inquire whether there is anything in the
+circumstances under which Home Rule was proposed to be
+granted to Ireland, or in the measures intended to establish
+that Home Rule, fairly leading to the inference that disruption
+of the Empire or an impairment of Imperial powers
+would probably be a consequence of passing the Irish
+Government Bill and the Irish Land Bill. And, first, as to
+the circumstances which would seem to recommend the
+Irish Home Rule Bill.</p>
+
+<p>Ireland, from the very commencement of her connection
+with England, has chafed under the restraints which that
+connection imposed. The closer the apparent union
+between the two countries the greater the real disunion.
+The Act of 1800, <i>in words and in law</i>, effected not a union
+merely, but a consolidation of the two countries. The effect
+of those words and that law was to give rise to a restless
+discontent, which has constantly found expression in efforts
+to procure the repeal of the Act of Union and the reestablishment
+of a National Parliament in Dublin. How
+futile have been the efforts of the British Parliament to
+diminish by concession or repress by coercion Irish aspirations
+or Irish discontent it is unnecessary to discuss here.
+All men admit the facts, however different the conclusions
+which they draw from those facts. What Burke said of
+America on moving in 1775 his resolution on conciliation
+with the colonies was true in 1885 with respect to
+Ireland:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fact is undoubted, that under former Parliaments
+the state of America [read for America, Ireland] has been
+kept in continual agitation. Everything administered as
+remedy to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was
+at least followed by an heightening of the distemper, until,
+by a variety of experiments, that important country has been
+brought into her present situation&mdash;a situation which I will
+<!-- Page 68 --><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" />not miscall, which I dare not name, which I scarcely know
+how to comprehend in the terms of any description.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12" /><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>At length, after the election of 1885, Mr. Gladstone and
+the majority of his followers came to the conclusion that an
+opportunity had presented itself for providing Ireland with
+a Constitution conferring on the people of that country the
+largest measure of self-government consistent with the
+absolute supremacy of the Crown and the Imperial Parliament
+and the entire unity of the Empire. A scheme was
+proposed which was accepted in principle by the representatives
+of the National party in Ireland as a fair and sufficient
+adjustment of the Imperial claims of Great Britain and the
+Local claims of Ireland. The scheme was shortly this. A
+Legislative Assembly was proposed to be established in
+Ireland with power to make all laws necessary for the good
+government of Ireland&mdash;in other words, invested with the
+same powers of local self-government as a colonial Assembly.
+The Irish Assembly was in one respect unlike a colonial
+Legislature. It consisted of one House only, but this House
+was divided into two orders, each of which, in case of
+differences on any important legislative matter, voted
+separately. This form was adopted in order to minimize
+the chances of collision between the two orders, by making
+it imperative on each order to hear the arguments of the
+other before proceeding to a division, thus throwing on the
+dissentient order the full responsibility of its dissent, with a
+complete knowledge of the consequences likely to ensue
+therefrom. The clause conferring on the Irish Legislature
+full powers of local self-government was immediately followed
+by a provision excepting, by enumeration, from any interference
+on the part of the Irish Legislature, all Imperial
+powers, and declaring any enactment void which infringed
+on that provision. This exception (as is well known) is not
+found in colonial Constitutional Acts. In them the restriction
+<!-- Page 69 --><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" />of the words of the grant to Local powers only has been
+held sufficient to safeguard the supremacy of the British
+Parliament and the unity of the Empire. The reason for
+making a difference in the case of the Home Rule Bill was
+political, not legal. Separation was declared by the enemies
+of the Bill to be the real intention of its supporters, and
+destruction of the unity of the Empire to be its certain
+consequence. It seemed well that Ireland, by her representatives,
+should accept as a satisfactory charter of Irish
+liberty a document which contained an express submission
+to Imperial power and a direct acknowledgment of Imperial
+unity. Similarly with respect to the supremacy of the
+British Parliament. In the colonial Constitutions all reference
+to this supremacy is omitted as being too clear to
+require notice. In the case of the Irish Home Rule Bill
+instructions were given to preserve in express words the
+supremacy of the British Parliament in order to pledge
+Ireland to an express admission of that supremacy by the
+same vote which accepted Local powers. It is true that
+the wording by the draftsman of the sentence reserving the
+supremacy of Parliament was justly found fault with as
+inaccurate and doubtful, but that defect would have been
+cured by an amendment in Committee; and, even if there
+had not been any such clause in the Bill, it is clear, from
+what has been said above, that the Imperial Legislature
+could not, if it would, renounce its supremacy or abdicate
+its sovereign powers. The executive government in Ireland
+was continued in the Queen, to be carried on by the Lord
+Lieutenant on behalf of her Majesty, with the aid of such
+officers and Council as to her Majesty might from time to
+time seem fit. Her Majesty was also a constituent part of
+the Legislature, with power to delegate to the Lord
+Lieutenant the prerogative of assenting to or dissenting
+from Bills, and of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving
+Parliament. Under these provisions the Lord Lieutenant
+<!-- Page 70 --><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" />resembled the Governor of a colony with responsible
+government. He was invested with a double authority&mdash;first,
+Imperial; secondly, Local. As an Imperial officer,
+he was bound to veto any Bill injuriously affecting Imperial
+interests or inconsistent with general Imperial policy; as a
+Local officer, it was his duty to act in all local matters
+according to the advice of his Council, whose tenure of
+office depended on their being in harmony with, and
+supported by, a majority of the Legislative Assembly.
+Questions relating to the constitutionality of any particular
+law were not left altogether to the decision of the Governor.
+If a Bill containing a provision infringing Imperial rights
+passed the Legislature, its validity might be decided in the
+first instance by the ordinary courts of law, but the ultimate
+appeal lay to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,
+and, with a view to secure absolute impartiality in the
+Committee, it was provided that Ireland should be represented
+on that body by persons who either were or had been
+Irish judges. Not the least important provision of the Bill,
+as respects the maintenance of Imperial interests, was the
+continuance of Imperial taxation. The Customs and Excise
+duties were directed to be levied, as heretofore, in pursuance
+of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament, and were
+excepted from the control of the Irish Legislature, which
+had full power, with that exception, to impose such taxes in
+Ireland as they might think expedient. The Bill further
+provided that neither the Imperial taxes of Excise nor any
+Local taxes that might be imposed by the Irish Legislature
+should be paid into the Irish Exchequer. An Imperial
+officer, called the Receiver-General, was appointed, into
+whose hands the produce of every tax, both Imperial and
+Local, was required to be paid, and it was the duty of the
+Receiver-General to take care that all claims of the English
+Exchequer, including especially the contribution payable by
+Ireland for Imperial purposes, were satisfied before a farthing
+<!-- Page 71 --><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />found its way into the Irish Exchequer for Irish purposes.
+The Receiver-General was provided with an Imperial Court
+to enforce his rights of Imperial taxation, and adequate
+means for enforcing all Imperial powers by Imperial civil
+officers. The Bill did not provide for the representation of
+Ireland in the Imperial Parliament on all Imperial questions,
+including questions relating to Imperial taxation, but it is
+fully understood that in any Bill which might hereafter be
+brought forward relating to Home Rule those defects would
+be remedied.</p>
+
+<p>An examination, then, of the Home Rule Bill, that
+&quot;child of revolution and parent of separation,&quot; appears to
+lead irresistibly to two conclusions. First, that Imperial
+rights and Imperial powers, representation for Imperial purposes,
+Imperial taxation&mdash;in short, every link that binds a
+subordinate member of an Empire to its supreme head&mdash;have
+been maintained unimpaired and unchanged. Secondly,
+that, in granting Home Rule to discontented Ireland, that
+form of responsible government has been adopted which, as
+Mr. Merivale declares&mdash;and his declaration subsequent events
+have more than verified&mdash;when conferred on the discontented
+colonies, changed restless aspirations for separation into quiet
+loyalty.</p>
+
+<p>That such a Bill as the Home Rule Bill should be treated
+as an invasion of Imperial rights is a proof of one, or perhaps
+of both, the following axioms&mdash;that Bills are never
+read by their accusers, and that party spirit will distort the
+plainest facts. The union of Great Britain and Ireland was
+not, so far as Imperial powers were concerned, disturbed by
+the Bill, and an Irishman remains a citizen of the British
+Empire under the Home Rule Bill, with the same obligations
+and the same privileges, on the same terms as before.
+All the Bill did was to make his Irish citizenship distinct
+from his Imperial citizenship, in the same manner as the
+citizenship of a native of the State of New York is distinct
+<!-- Page 72 --><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" />from his citizenship as a member of the United States. Now
+it has been found that the Central power in the United
+States has been more than a match for the State powers,
+and can it be conceived for a moment that the Imperial
+power of Great Britain should not be a match for the Local
+power of Ireland&mdash;a State which has not one-seventh of
+the population or one-twentieth part of the income of the
+dominant community?</p>
+
+<p>One argument remains to be noticed which the opponents
+of Home Rule urge as absolutely condemnatory of the
+measure, whereas, if properly weighed, it is conclusive in its
+favour. Home Rule, they say, is a mere question of sentiment.
+&quot;National aspirations&quot; are the twaddle of English
+enthusiasts who know nothing of Ireland. What is really
+wanted is the reform of the Land Law. Settle the agrarian
+problem, and Home Rule may be relegated to the place
+supposed to be paved with good intentions. The Irish will
+straightway change their character, and become a law-abiding,
+contented, loyal people. Be it so. But suppose it to be
+proved that the establishment of an Irish Government, or,
+in other words, Home Rule, is an essential condition of
+agrarian reform&mdash;that the latter cannot be had without the
+former&mdash;surely Home Rule should stand none the worse in
+the estimation of its opponents if it not only secures a safe
+basis for putting an end to agrarian exasperation, but also
+gratifies the feeling of the Irish people as expressed by the
+majority of its representatives in Parliament? Now, what
+is the nature of the Irish Land Question? This we must
+understand before considering the remedy. In Ireland
+(meaning by Ireland that part of the country which is in the
+hands of tenants, and falls within the compass of a Land
+Bill) the tenure of land is wholly unlike that which is found
+in the greater part of England. Instead of large farms in
+which the landlord makes all the improvements and the
+tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the land and
+<!-- Page 73 --><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" />receives the produce, small holdings are found in which the
+tenant does the improvements (if any) and pays a fixed rent-charge
+to the owner. In England the tenant does not perform
+the obligations or in any way aspire to the character of
+owner. If he thinks he can get a cheaper farm, he quits his
+former one, regarding his interest in the land as a mere
+matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Not so the Irish
+tenant. He has made what he calls improvements, he
+claims a quasi-ownership in the land, and has the characteristic
+Celtic attachment for the patch of ground forming his
+holding, however squalid it may be, however inadequate for
+his support. In short, in Ireland there is a dual ownership&mdash;that
+of the proprietor, who has no interest in the soil so
+long as the tenant pays his rent and fulfils the conditions of
+his tenancy; and that of the tenant, who, subject to the
+payment of his rent and performance of the fixed conditions,
+acts, thinks, and carries himself as the owner of his holding.
+A system, then, of agrarian reform in Ireland resolves itself
+into an inquiry as to the best mode of putting an end to this
+dual ownership&mdash;that is to say, of making the tenant the sole
+proprietor of his holding, and compensating the landlord for
+his interest in the ownership. The problem is further
+narrowed by the circumstance that the tenant cannot be
+expected to advance any capital or pay an increased rent,
+so that the means of compensating the landlord must be
+found out of the existing rent.</p>
+
+<p>The plan adopted in Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill was to
+commute the rent-charges, offering the landlord, as a general
+rule, twenty years' purchase on the net rental of the estate
+(that is to say, the rent received by him after deducting all
+outgoings), and paying him the purchase-money in &pound;3 per
+cent. stock taken at par. The stock was to be advanced by
+the English Government to an Irish State department at
+3-1/8 per cent. interest, and the Bill provided that the tenant,
+instead of rent, was to pay an annuity of &pound;4 per cent. on a
+<!-- Page 74 --><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" />capital sum equal in amount to twenty times the gross
+rental.</p>
+
+<p>The notable feature which distinguished this plan from
+all other schemes was the security given for the repayment
+of the purchase-money: hitherto the English Government
+has lent the money directly to the landlord or tenant, and
+has become the mortgagee of the land&mdash;in other words, has
+become in effect the landlord of the land sold to the tenant
+until the repayment of the loan has been completed. To
+carry into effect under such a system any extensive scheme
+of agrarian reform (and if not extensive such a reform would
+be of no value in pacifying Ireland) presupposes a readiness
+on the part of the English Government to become virtually
+the landlord of a large portion of Ireland, with the attendant
+odium of absenteeism and alien domination. Under a land
+scheme such as that of 1886, all these difficulties would
+be overcome. The Irish, not the English, Government
+would be the virtual landlord. It would be the interest of
+Ireland that the annuities due from the tenants should be
+regularly paid, as, subject to the prior charge of the English
+Exchequer, they would form part of the Irish revenues. The
+cardinal difference, then, between Mr. Gladstone's scheme
+and any other land scheme that has seen the light is this&mdash;that
+in Mr. Gladstone's scheme the English loans would
+have been lent to the Irish Government on the security of
+the whole Irish revenues, whereas in every other scheme
+they have been lent by the English Government to the Irish
+creditors on the security of individual patches of land.</p>
+
+<p>The whole question, then, of the relation between Home
+Rule and agrarian reform may be summed up as follows:&mdash;Agrarian
+reform is necessary for the pacification of Ireland;
+agrarian reform cannot be efficiently carried into effect without
+an Irish Government; an Irish Government can only be
+established by a Home Rule Bill: therefore a Home Rule
+Bill is necessary for the pacification of Ireland. It is idle to
+<!-- Page 75 --><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" />say, as has been said on numerous platforms, that plans no
+doubt can be devised for agrarian reform without Home
+Rule. The Irish revenues are the only collateral security
+that can be obtained for loans of English money, and Irish
+revenues are only available for the purpose on the establishment
+of an Irish Government. Baronial guarantees, union
+guarantees, county guarantees, debenture schemes, have all
+been tried and found wanting, and vague assertions as to
+possibilities are idle unless they are based on intelligible
+working plans.</p>
+
+<p>The foregoing arguments will be equally valid if, instead
+of making the tenants peasant-proprietors, it were thought
+desirable that the Irish State should be the proprietor and
+the tenants be the holders of the land at perpetual rents and
+subject to fixed conditions. Again, it might be possible to
+pay the landlords by annual sums instead of capital sums.
+Such matters are really questions of detail. The substance
+is to interpose the Irish Government between the tenant
+and the English mortgagee, and to make the loans general
+charges on the whole of the Irish Government revenues as
+paid into the hands of an Imperial Receiver instead of
+placing them as special charges, each fixed on its own small
+estate or holding. The fact that Mr. Gladstone's land
+scheme was denounced as confiscation of &pound;100,000,000 of
+the English taxpayers' property, while Lord Ashbourne's
+Act is pronounced by the same party wise and prudent,
+shows the political blindness of party spirit in its most absurd
+form. Lord Ashbourne's Act requires precisely the same
+expenditure to do the same work as Mr. Gladstone's Bill
+requires, but in Mr. Gladstone's scheme the whole Irish
+revenue was pledged as collateral security, and the Irish
+Government was interposed between the ultimate creditor
+and the Irish tenant, while under Lord Ashbourne's Act
+the English Government figures without disguise as the landlord
+of each tenant, exacting a debt which the tenant is
+<!-- Page 76 --><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" />unwilling to pay as being due to what he calls an alien
+Government.</p>
+
+<p>An endeavour has been made in the preceding pages to
+prove that Home Rule in no respect infringes on Imperial
+rights or Imperial unity, for the simple reason that the
+Imperial power remains exactly in the same position as it
+was before, the Home Rule Bill dealing only with Local
+matters. At all events, Burke thought that the Imperial
+supremacy alone constituted a real union between England
+and Ireland. He says&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My poor opinion is, that the closest connection between
+Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the well-being&mdash;I
+had almost said to the very being&mdash;of the three kingdoms;
+for that purpose I humbly conceive that the whole of the
+superior, and what I should call Imperial politics, ought to
+have its residence here, and that Ireland, locally, civilly, and
+commercially independent, ought politically to look up to
+Great Britain in all matters of peace and war. In all these
+points to be joined with her, and, in a word, with her to live
+and to die.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13" /><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>How strange to Burke would have seemed the doctrine
+that the restoration of a limited power of self-government to
+Ireland, excluding commerce, and excluding all matters not
+only Imperial, but those in which uniformity is required,
+should be denounced as a disruption of the Empire!</p>
+
+<p>It remains to notice one other charge made against the
+Gladstonian Home Rule Bill, namely, that of impairing the
+supremacy of the British Parliament. That allegation has
+been shown also to be founded on a mistake. Next, it is
+said that the Gladstonian scheme does not provide securities
+against executive and legislative oppression. The answer is
+complete. The executive authority being vested in the
+Queen, it will be the duty of the Governor not to allow
+executive oppression; still more will it be his duty to veto
+<!-- Page 77 --><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" />any act of legislative oppression. Further, it is stated that
+difficulties will arise with respect to the power of the Privy
+Council to nullify unconstitutional Acts. But it is hard to
+see why a power which is exercised with success in the
+United States, where all the States are equal, and without
+dispute in our colonies, which are all dependent, should not
+be carried into effect with equal ease in Ireland, which
+is more closely bound to us and more completely under our
+power than the colonies are, or than the several States are
+under the power of the Central Government.</p>
+
+<p>To conclude: the cause of Irish discontent is the conjoint
+operation of the passion for nationality and the vicious
+system of land tenure, and the scheme of the Irish Home
+Rule Bill and the Land Bill removes the whole fabric on
+which Irish discontent is raised. The Irish, by the great
+majority of their representatives, have accepted the Home
+Rule Bill as a satisfactory settlement of the nationality
+question. The British Parliament can, through the medium
+of the Home Rule Bill and the establishment of an Irish
+Legislature, carry through a final settlement of agrarian disputes
+with less injustice to individuals than could a Parliament
+sitting in Dublin, and, be it added, with scarcely any
+appreciable risk to the British taxpayer. Of course it may
+be said that an Irish Parliament will go farther&mdash;that Home
+Rule is a step to separation, and a reform of the Land
+Laws a spoliation of the landlords. To those who urge
+such arguments I would recommend the perusal of the
+speech of Burke on Conciliation with America, and especially
+the following sentences, substituting &quot;Ireland&quot; for
+&quot;the colonies:&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But [the Colonies] Ireland will go further. Alas! alas!
+when will this speculating against fact and reason end?
+What will quiet these panic fears which we entertain of the
+hostile effect of a conciliatory conduct? Is it true that no
+case can exist in which it is proper for the Sovereign to
+<!-- Page 78 --><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" />accede to the desires of his discontented subjects? Is there
+anything peculiar in this case to make it a rule for itself?
+Is all authority of course lost when it is not pushed to the
+extreme? Is it a certain maxim that the fewer causes of
+discontentment are left by Government the more the subject
+will be inclined to resist and rebel?&quot;<!-- Page 79 --><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9" /><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Burke's Speech on American Taxation, vol. i. p. 174</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10" /><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> This is the opinion of both English and American lawyers. See
+Blackstone's Comm., i. 90; Austin on Jurisprudence, i. 226. As to
+American cases, see Corley on Constitutional Limitations, pp. 2-149.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11" /><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> &quot;Lectures on the Colonies,&quot; p, 641.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12" /><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Burke, vol. i. p. 181.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13" /><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> &quot;Letter on Affairs of Ireland,&quot; i. 462.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_IRISH_GOVERNMENT_BILL" id="THE_IRISH_GOVERNMENT_BILL" />THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL
+AND THE IRISH LAND BILL</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY LORD THRING</p>
+
+
+<p>A mere enumeration or analysis of the contents of the
+Irish Government Bill, 1886, and the Land (Ireland) Bill,
+1886, would convey scarcely any intelligible idea to the
+mind of an ordinary reader. It is, therefore, proposed in
+the following pages, before entering on the details of each
+Bill, to give a summary of the reasons which led to its
+introduction, and of the principles on which it is founded.
+To begin with the Irish Government Bill&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The object of the Irish Government Bill is to confer on
+the Irish people the largest measure of self-government
+consistent with the absolute supremacy of the Crown and
+Imperial Parliament and the entire unity of the Empire.
+To carry into effect this object it was essential to create a
+separate though subordinate legislature; thus occasion was
+given to opponents to apply the name of Separatists to the
+supporters of the Bill&mdash;a term true in so far only as it
+denoted the intention to create a separate legislature, but
+false and calumnious when used in the sense in which it
+was intended to be understood&mdash;of imputing to the
+promoters of the Bill the intention to disunite or in any
+way to disintegrate the Empire. Indeed, the very object
+of the measure was, by relaxing a little the legal bonds
+of union, to draw closer the actual ties between England
+<!-- Page 80 --><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" />and Ireland, in fact, to do as we have done in our Colonies,
+by decentralizing the subordinate functions of government
+to strengthen the central supremacy of natural affection and
+Imperial unity. The example of the effects of giving
+complete self-government to our Colonies would seem not
+unfavourable to trying the same experiment in Ireland.
+Some forty years ago, Canada, New Zealand, and the
+various colonies of Australia were discontented and uneasy
+at the control exercised by the Government of England
+over their local affairs. What did England do? She gave
+to each of those communities the fullest power of local
+government consistent with the unity of the Empire. The
+result was that the real union was established in the same
+degree as the apparent tie of control over local affairs was
+loosened. Are there any reasons to suppose that the
+condition of Ireland is such as to render the example of
+the Colonies applicable? Let us look a little at the past
+history of that country. Up to 1760 Ireland was governed
+practically as a conquered country. The result was that in
+1782, in order to save Imperial unity, we altogether relaxed
+the local tie and made Ireland legislatively independent.
+The Empire was thus saved, but difficulties naturally arose
+between two independent legislatures. The true remedy
+would have been to have imposed on Grattan's Parliament
+the conditions imposed by the Irish Government Bill on
+the statutory Parliament created by that Bill; the course
+actually taken was that, instead of leaving the Irish with
+their local government, and arranging for the due supremacy
+of England, the Irish Legislature was destroyed under the
+guise of Union, and Irish representatives were transferred
+to an assembly in which they had little weight, and in which
+they found no sympathy. The result was that from the
+date of the Union to the present day Ireland has been
+constantly working for the reinstatement of its National
+Legislature, and has been governed by a continuous system
+<!-- Page 81 --><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" />of extraordinary legislature called coercion; the fact being
+that between 1800, the date of the Act of Union, and 1832,
+the date of the great Reform Act, there were only eleven
+years free from coercion, while in the fifty-three years since
+that period there have been only two years entirely free
+from special repressive legislation. So much, therefore, is
+clear, that Irish discontent at not being allowed to manage
+their own affairs has gradually increased instead of diminishing.
+The conclusion then would seem irresistible, that if
+coercion has failed, the only practical mode of governing
+Ireland satisfactorily is to give the people power to manage
+their local affairs. Coming, then, to the principle of the
+Bill, the first step is to reconcile local government with
+Imperial supremacy, in other words, to divide Imperial
+from local powers; for if this division be accurately made,
+and the former class of powers be reserved to the British
+Crown and British Parliament, while the latter only are
+intrusted to the Irish Parliament, it becomes a contradiction
+in terms to say that Imperial unity is dissolved by reserving
+to the Imperial authority all its powers, or that Home Rule
+is a sundering of the Imperial tie when that tie is preserved
+inviolable. Imperial powers, then, are the prerogatives of
+the Crown with respect to peace and war, and making
+treaties with foreign nations; in short, the power of regulating
+the relations of the Empire towards foreign nations.
+These are the <i>jura summi imperii</i>, the very insignia of
+supremacy; the attributes of sovereign authority in every
+form of government, be it despotism, limited monarchy, or
+republic; the only difference is that in a system of government
+under one supreme head, they are vested in that head
+alone, in a federal government, as in America or Switzerland,
+they reside in the composite body forming the federal
+supreme authority. Various subsidiary powers necessarily
+attend the above supreme powers; for example, the power
+of maintaining armies and navies, of commanding the
+<!-- Page 82 --><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" />militia, and other incidental powers. Closely connected
+with the power of making peace and war is the power of
+regulating commerce with foreign nations. Next in importance
+to the reservations necessary to constitute the
+Empire a Unity with regard to foreign nations, are the powers
+required to prevent disputes and to facilitate intercourse
+between the various parts of the Empire. These are the
+coinage of money and other regulations relating to currency,
+to copyright or other exclusive rights to the use or profit of
+any works or inventions. The above subjects must be
+altogether excluded from the powers of the subordinate
+legislature; it ceases to be subordinate as soon as it is
+invested with these Imperial, or quasi-Imperial, powers.</p>
+
+<p>Assuming, however, the division between Imperial and
+local powers to be accurately determined, how is the
+subordinate legislative body to be kept within its due limits?
+The answer is very plain,&mdash;an Imperial court must be
+established to decide in the last resort whether the subordinate
+legislature has or has not infringed Imperial rights.
+Such a court has been in action in the United States of
+America ever since their union, and no serious conflict has
+arisen in carrying its decisions into effect, and the Privy
+Council, acting as the Supreme Court in respect to Colonial
+appeals, has been accepted by all the self-governing colonies
+as a just and impartial expositor of the meaning of their
+several constitutions.</p>
+
+<p>Next in importance to the right division of Imperial and
+local powers is a correct understanding of the relation borne
+by the executive of an autonomous country to the mother
+country. In every part of the British Empire which enjoys
+home rule the legislature consists of the Queen and the two
+local legislative bodies. The administrative power resides
+in the Queen alone. The Queen has the appointment of
+all the officers of the government; money bills can be introduced
+into the legislature only with the consent of the<!-- Page 83 --><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />
+Queen. The initiative power of taxation then is vested
+in the Queen, the executive head, in practice represented
+by the Governor. But such a power of initiation is of course
+useless unless the legislative body is willing to support the
+executive, and grants it the necessary funds for carrying on
+the government. What, then, is the contrivance by which the
+governmental machine is prevented from being stopped by
+a difference between the executive and legislative authorities?
+It is the same in the mother country, and in every British
+home-rule country, with this difference only&mdash;that beyond
+the limits of the mother country the Queen is represented
+by a governor to whom are delegated such a measure of
+powers as is necessary for the supreme head of a local self-governing
+community. The contrivance is this in the
+mother country:&mdash;the Queen acts upon the advice of a
+cabinet council; in home-rule dependencies the Governor
+acts on the advice of a local council. If this cabinet council
+in the mother country, or local council in a dependency,
+ceases to command a majority in the popular legislative
+body, it resigns, and the Governor is obliged to select a
+council which, by commanding such a majority, can obtain
+the supplies necessary to carry on the government. The
+consequence then is, that in a home-rule community, if a
+serious difficulty arises between the legislative and executive
+authority, the head of the executive, the governor, refers the
+ultimate decision of the question to the general body of
+electors by dissolving the popular legislative body. It has
+been urged in the discussion on the Irish Government Bill
+that the powers of the executive in relation to the legislative
+body ought to be expressed in the Bill itself; but it is clear
+to anybody acquainted with the rudiments of legislation that
+the details of such a system (in other words, the mode in
+which a governor ought to act under the endless variety of
+circumstances which may occur in governing a dependency)
+never have been and never can be expressed in an Act of<!-- Page 84 --><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" />
+Parliament. But how little difficulty this absence of definition
+has caused may be judged from the fact that neither in
+England nor in any of her home-rule dependencies has any
+vital collision arisen between the executive and legislative
+authorities, and that all the home-rule colonies have
+managed to surmount the obstacles which the opponents
+of Home Rule argued would be fatal to their existence.
+The main principles have now been stated on which the
+Irish Government Bill is framed, and it remains to give
+a summary of the provisions of the Bill, the objects and
+bearing of which will be readily understood from the foregoing
+observations. The first clause provides that&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On and after the appointed day there shall be established
+in Ireland a Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the
+Queen and an Irish legislative body.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This is the first step in all English constitutional systems,
+to vest the power of legislation in the Queen and the legislative
+body. Such a legislature might have had conferred
+on it the independent powers vested in Grattan's Parliament:
+but the second clause at once puts an end to any doubt as
+to the subordination of the Irish legislative body; for while
+on the one hand it confers full powers of local self-government,
+by declaring that the Legislature may make any laws
+for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland, it
+subjects that power to numerous exceptions and restrictions.
+The exceptions are contained in the third clause, and the
+restrictions in the fourth. The exceptions are as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws relating
+to the following matters or any of them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(1.) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession
+to the Crown, or a Regency;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(2.) The making of peace or war;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(3.) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other
+military or naval forces, or the defence of the realm;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(4.) Treaties and other relations with foreign States,
+<!-- Page 85 --><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" />or the relations between the various parts of Her Majesty's
+dominions;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(5.) Dignities or titles of honour;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(6.) Prize or booty of war;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(7.) Offences against the law of nations; or offences
+committed in violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to
+be made, between Her Majesty and any foreign State; or
+offences committed on the high seas;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(8.) Treason, alienage, or naturalization;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(9.) Trade, navigation, or quarantine;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(10.) The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter
+in this Act mentioned with respect to the transmission
+of letters and telegrams in Ireland;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(11.) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(12.) The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal
+tender; or weights and measures; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(13.) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights
+to the use or profits of any works or inventions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Of these exceptions the first four preserve the imperial
+rights which have been insisted on above, and maintain the
+position of Ireland as an integral portion of that Empire of
+which Great Britain is the head. The remaining exceptions
+are either subsidiary to the first four, or relate, as is the case
+with exceptions 10 to 13, to matters on which it is desirable
+that uniformity should exist throughout the whole Empire.
+The restrictions in clause 4 are:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Irish Legislature shall not make any law&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(1.) Respecting the establishment or endowment of
+religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(2.) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege,
+on account of religious belief; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(3.) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish
+or maintain any place of denominational education or
+any denominational institution or charity; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(4.) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to
+<!-- Page 86 --><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" />attend a school receiving public money without attending
+the religious instruction at that school; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(5.) Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty
+in Council first obtained on an address presented by the
+legislative body of Ireland, or the consent of the corporation
+interested, the rights, property, or privileges of any existing
+corporation incorporated by royal charter or local and
+general Act of Parliament; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(6.) Imposing or relating to duties of customs and
+duties of excise, as defined by this Act, or either of such
+duties, or affecting any Act relating to such duties or either
+of them; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(7.) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared
+to be alterable by the Irish Legislature.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These restrictions differ from the exceptions, inasmuch
+as they do not prevent the Legislature of Ireland from dealing
+with the subjects to which they refer, but merely impose
+on it an obligation not to handle the specified matters in a
+manner detrimental to the interests of certain classes of Her
+Majesty's subjects. For example, restrictions 1 to 4 are
+practically concerned in securing religious freedom; restriction
+5 protects existing charters; restriction 6 is necessary,
+as will be seen hereinafter, to carrying into effect the financial
+scheme of the bill; restriction 7 is a consequence of the
+very framework of the Bill: it provides for the stability of
+the Irish constitution, by declaring that the Irish Legislature
+is not competent to alter the constitutional act to which it
+owes its existence, except on those points on which it is
+expressly permitted to make alterations.</p>
+
+<p>Clause 5 is an exposition, so to speak, of the consequence
+which would seem to flow from the fact of the Queen being
+a constitutional part of the Legislature. It states that the
+royal prerogatives with respect to the summoning, prorogation,
+and dissolution of the Irish legislative body are to be
+the same as the royal prerogatives in relation to the Imperial<!-- Page 87 --><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" />
+Parliament. The next clause (6) is comparatively immaterial;
+it merely provides that the duration of the Irish legislative
+body is to be quinquennial. As it deals with a matter of
+detail, it perhaps would have more aptly found a place in a
+subsequent part of the Bill. Clause 7 passes from the
+legislative to the executive authority; it declares:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>(1.) The executive government of Ireland shall continue
+vested in Her Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord
+Lieutenant on behalf of Her Majesty with the aid of such
+officers and such council as to Her Majesty may from time
+to time seem fit.</p>
+
+<p>(2.) Subject to any instructions which may from time to
+time be given by Her Majesty, the Lord Lieutenant shall
+give or withhold the assent of Her Majesty to bills passed
+by the Irish legislative body, and shall exercise the prerogatives
+of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning, proroguing,
+and dissolving of the Irish legislative body, and any
+prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to him
+by Her Majesty.</p>
+
+<p>Bearing in mind what has been said in the preliminary
+observations in respect of the relation between the executive
+and the legislative authority, it will be at once understood
+how much this clause implies, according to constitutional
+maxims, of the dependence on the one hand of the Irish
+executive in respect of imperial matters, and of its independence
+in respect of local matters. The clause is practically
+co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete
+local powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves
+all imperial powers to the Imperial Legislature. The
+governor is an imperial officer, and will be bound to watch
+over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny, and to veto
+any bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the
+other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and
+be guided by the advice of the Irish executive council.
+The system is, as has been shown above, self-acting. The
+<!-- Page 88 --><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" />governor, for local purposes, must have a council which is
+in harmony with the legislative body. If a council, supported
+by the legislative body and the governor do not
+agree, the governor must give way unless he can, by dismissing
+his council and dissolving the legislative body,
+obtain both a council and a legislative body which will
+support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case
+is different; here the last word rests with the mother country,
+and in the last resort a determination of the executive council,
+backed by the legislative body, to resist imperial rights, must
+be deemed an act of rebellion on the part of the Irish people,
+and be dealt with accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>The above clauses contain the pith and marrow of the
+whole scheme. The exact constitution of the legislative
+body, and the orders into which it should be divided, the
+exclusion or non-exclusion of the Irish members from the
+Imperial Parliament, indeed, the whole of the provisions
+found in the remainder of this Bill, are matters which might
+be altered without destroying, or even violently disarranging,
+the Home-rule scheme as above described.</p>
+
+<p>Clauses 9, 10, and 11 provide for the constitution of the
+legislative body; it differs materially from the colonial legislative
+bodies, and from the Legislature of the United States.
+For the purpose of deliberation it consists of one House
+only; for the purpose of voting on all questions (except
+interlocutory applications and questions of order), it is
+divided into two classes, called in the Bill &quot;Orders,&quot; each
+of which votes separately, with the result that a question on
+which the two orders disagree is deemed to be decided in
+the negative. The object of this arrangement is to diminish
+the chances of collision between the two branches of the
+Legislature, which have given rise to so much difficulty both
+in England and the colonies. Each order will have ample
+opportunity of learning the strength and hearing the arguments
+of the other order. They will therefore, each of
+<!-- Page 89 --><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" />them, proceed to a division with a full sense of the responsibility
+attaching to their action. A further safeguard is provided
+against a final conflict between the first and second
+orders. If the first order negative a proposition, that negative
+is in force only for a period of three years, unless a dissolution
+takes place sooner, in which case it is terminated at
+once; the lost bill or clause may then be submitted to the
+whole House, and if decided in the affirmative, and assented
+to by the Queen, becomes law. The first order of the Irish
+legislative body comprises 103 members. It is intended to
+consist ultimately wholly of elective members; but for the
+next immediate period of thirty years the rights of the Irish
+representative peers are, as will be seen, scrupulously reserved.
+The plan is this: of the 103 members composing the first
+order, seventy-five are elective, and twenty-eight peerage
+members. The qualification of the elective members is an
+annual income of &pound;200, or the possession of a capital sum
+of &pound;4000 free from all charges. The elections are to be
+conducted in the electoral districts set out in the schedule
+to the Bill. The electors must possess land or tenements
+within the district of the annual value of &pound;25. The
+twenty-eight peerage members consist of the existing
+twenty-eight representative peers, and any vacancies in
+their body during the next thirty years are to be filled up
+in the manner at present in use respecting the election of
+Irish representative peers. The Irish representative peers
+cease to sit in the English Parliament; but a member of
+that body is not required to sit in the Irish Parliament without
+his assent, and the place of any existing peer refusing to
+sit in the Irish Parliament will be filled up as in the case of
+an ordinary vacancy. The elective members of the first
+order sit for ten years; every five years one half their number
+will retire. The members of the first order do not vacate
+their seats on a dissolution of the legislative body. At the
+expiration of thirty years, that is to say, upon the exhaustion
+<!-- Page 90 --><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" />of all the existing Irish representative peers, the whole of
+the upper order will consist of elective members. The
+second order consists of 204 members, that is to say, of the
+103 existing Irish members (who are transferred to the Irish
+Parliament), and of 101 additional members to be elected
+by the county districts and the represented towns, in the
+same manner as that in which the present 101 members for
+counties and towns are elected&mdash;each constituency returning
+two instead of one member. If an existing member does
+not assent to his transfer, his seat is vacated.</p>
+
+<p>A power is given to the Legislature of Ireland to enable
+the Royal University of Ireland to return two members.</p>
+
+<p>The provisions with respect to this second order fall
+within the class of enactments which are alterable by the
+Irish Legislature. After the first dissolution of parliament
+the Irish Legislature may deal with the second order in any
+manner they think fit, with the important restrictions:&mdash;(1)
+That in the distribution of members they must have due
+regard to population; (2) that they must not increase or
+diminish the number of members.</p>
+
+<p>The transfer to the Irish legislative body of the Irish
+representative peers, and of the Irish members, involves
+their exclusion under ordinary circumstances from the Imperial
+Parliament, with this great exception, that whenever
+an alteration is proposed to be made in the fundamental
+provisions of the Irish Government Bill, a mode of procedure
+is devised for recalling both orders of the Irish
+legislative body to the Imperial Parliament for the purpose
+of obtaining their consent to such alteration (clause 39).</p>
+
+<p>Further, it is right to state here that Mr. Gladstone in
+his speech on the second reading of the Bill proposed to
+provide, &quot;that when any proposal for taxation was made
+affecting the condition of Ireland, Irish members should
+have an opportunity of appearing in the House to take a
+share in the transaction of that business.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 91 --><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" />Questions arising as to whether the Irish Parliament has
+or not exceeded its constitutional powers may be determined
+by the ordinary courts of law in the first instance; the
+ultimate appeal lies to the Judicial Committee of the Privy
+Council. An additional safeguard is provided by declaring
+that before a provision in a Bill becomes law, the Lord
+Lieutenant may take the opinion of the Judicial Committee
+of the Privy Council as to its legality, and further, that
+without subjecting private litigants to the expense of trying
+the constitutionality of an Act, the Lord Lieutenant may, of
+his own motion, move the judicial committee to determine
+the question. With a view to secure absolute impartiality
+in the committee, Ireland will be represented on that body
+by persons who are or have been Irish judges (clause 25).</p>
+
+<p>The question of finance forms a separate portion of the
+Bill, the provisions of which are contained in clauses twelve
+to twenty, while the machinery for carrying those enactments
+into effect will be found in Part III. of the Land Bill.
+The first point to be determined was the amount to be
+contributed by Ireland to imperial expenses. Under the
+Act of Union it was intended that Ireland should pay 2/17ths,
+or in the proportion of 1 to 7-1/2 of the total expenditure of
+the United Kingdom. This amount being found exorbitant,
+it was gradually reduced, until at the present moment it
+amounts to something under the proportion of 1 to 11-1/2.
+The bill fixes the proportion at 1/15th, or 1 to 14, this sum
+being arrived at by a comparison between the amount of
+the income-tax, death-duties, and valuation of property in
+Great Britain, and the amount of the same particulars in
+Ireland. The amount to be contributed by Ireland to the
+imperial expenditure being thus ascertained, the more difficult
+part of the problem remained to provide the fund out
+of which the contribution should be payable, and the mode
+in which its payment should be secured. The plan which
+commended itself to the framers of the Bill, as combining
+<!-- Page 92 --><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" />the advantage of insuring the fiscal unity of Great Britain
+and Ireland, with absolute security to the British exchequer,
+was to continue the customs and excise duties under imperial
+control, and to pay them into the hands of an imperial
+officer. This plan is carried into effect by the conjoint
+operation of the clauses of the Irish Government Bill and
+the Irish Land Bill above referred to. The customs and
+excise duties are directed to be levied as heretofore in
+pursuance of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament,
+and are excepted from the control of the Irish Legislature,
+which may, with that exception, impose any taxes in Ireland
+it may think expedient. The imperial officer who is appointed
+under the Land Bill bears the title of Receiver-General,
+and into his hands not only the imperial taxes (the
+customs and excise duties), but also all local taxes imposed
+by the Irish Parliament are in the first instance paid. (See
+Clauses 25-27 of the Land Bill.) The Receiver-General
+having thus in his hands all imperial and local funds levied
+in Ireland, his duty is to satisfy all imperial claims before
+paying over any moneys to the Irish Exchequer. Further,
+an Imperial Court of Exchequer is established in Ireland
+to watch over the interests of the Receiver-General, and all
+revenue cases are to be tried, and all defaults punished in
+that court. Any neglect of the local authorities to carry
+into effect the decrees of the Imperial Court will amount to
+treason, and it will be the duty of the Imperial Government
+to deal with it accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>Supposing the Bill to have passed, the account of the
+Exchequer in Ireland would have stood thus:&mdash;<!-- Page 93 --><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" /></p>
+
+
+
+<pre>
+                         RECEIPTS.
+
+1. <i>Imperial Taxes</i>:
+   (1) Customs . . . . . . . . . . £1,880,000
+   (2) Excise  . . . . . . . . . .  4,300,000
+                                    ---------  £6,180,000
+
+2. <i>Local Taxes</i>:
+   (1) Stamps . . . . . . . . . . .  £600,000
+   (2) Income-Tax at 6<i>d</i>. in £ . . .   550,000
+                                     --------- £1,150,000
+
+3. <i>Non-Tax Revenue</i>:
+   (Post Office, Telegraph, etc.) . . . . .    £1,020,000
+                                               ----------
+                                               £8,350,000
+
+                       EXPENDITURE.
+
+1. <i>Contribution to Imperial Exchequer</i> on basis of
+     1/15th of Imperial Expenditure, viz.:
+   (1) Debt Charge . . . . . . . .  £1,466,000
+   (2) Army and Navy . . . . . . .   1,666,000
+   (3) Civil Charges . . . . . . .     110,000
+                                     --------- £3,242,000
+2. <i>Sinking Fund</i> on 1/15th of
+      Capital of Debt . . . . . . . . . . . . .   360,000
+3. <i>Charge for Constabulary</i><a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14" /><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>  . . . . . . . .  1,000,000
+4. <i>Local Civil Charges</i>
+      other than Constabulary . . . . . . . . . 2,510,000
+5. <i>Collection of Revenue</i>:
+      (1) Imperial Taxes . . . . . .   £170,000
+      (2) Local Taxes  . . . . . . . .   60,000
+      (3) Non-Tax Revenue  . . . . . .  604,000
+                                        -------   834,000
+6. <i>Balance</i> or Surplus . . . . . . . . . . . . .   404,000
+                                                 --------
+                                               £8,350,000
+</pre>
+
+<!--
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 12.5em;">RECEIPTS.</span><br />
+<br />
+1. <i>Imperial Taxes</i>:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(1) Customs . . . . . . . . . . &pound;1,880,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(2) Excise&nbsp; . . . . . . . . . .&nbsp; 4,300,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 17em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;- &pound;6,180,000</span><br />
+<br />
+2. <i>Local Taxes</i>:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(1) Stamps . . . . . . . . . . .&nbsp; &pound;600,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(2) Income-Tax at 6<i>d</i>. in &pound; . .&nbsp;  550,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 17em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;- &pound;1,150,000</span><br />
+<br />
+3. <i>Non-Tax Revenue</i>:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(Post Office, Telegraph, etc.) . . . . . &pound;1,020,000&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &pound;8,350,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 22em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 22em;">&pound;8,350,000</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;">EXPENDITURE.</span><br />
+<br />
+1. <i>Contribution to Imperial Exchequer</i> on basis of<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">1/15th of Imperial Expenditure, viz.:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(1) Debt Charge . . . . . . . . . &pound;1,466,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(2) Army and Navy . . . . . . . .&nbsp; 1,666,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(3) Civil Charges . . . . . . . .&nbsp; &nbsp; 110,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 19em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;- &pound;3,242,000</span><br />
+2. <i>Sinking Fund</i> on 1/15th of<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Capital of Debt . . . . . . . . . . . . .&nbsp; &nbsp; 360,000</span><br />
+3. <i>Charge for Constabulary</i><a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14" /><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> . . . . .  1,000,000<br />
+4. <i>Local Civil Charges</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">other than Constabulary . . . . . . . . .&nbsp; 2,510,000</span><br />
+5. <i>Collection of Revenue</i>:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">(1) Imperial Taxes . . . . . .&nbsp;  &pound;170,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">(2) Local Taxes&nbsp; . . . . . . . .&nbsp;  60,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">(3) Non-Tax Revenue&nbsp; . . . . . .&nbsp; 604,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-&nbsp; &nbsp; 834,000</span><br />
+6. <i>Balance</i> or Surplus . . . . . . . . . . . 404,000<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 25em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 24em;">&pound;8,350,000</span><br />
+-->
+
+
+
+<p><!-- Page 94 --><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" />The Imperial contribution payable by Ireland to Great
+Britain cannot be increased for thirty years, though it may
+be diminished if the charges for the army and navy and
+Imperial civil expenditure for any year be less than fifteen
+times the contribution paid by Ireland, in which case 1/15th
+of the diminution will be deducted from the annual Imperial
+contribution. Apart from the Imperial charges there are
+other charges strictly Irish, for the security of the payment
+of which the Bill provides. This it does by imposing an
+obligation on the Irish legislative body to enact sufficient
+taxes to meet such charges, and by directing them to be
+paid by the Imperial Receiver-General, who is required to
+keep an imperial and an Irish account, carrying the customs
+and excise duties, in the first instance, to the imperial
+account, and the local taxes to the Irish account, transferring
+to the Irish account the surplus remaining after paying
+the imperial charges on the imperial account. On this Irish
+account are charged debts due from the Government of
+Ireland, pensions, and other sums due to the civil servants,
+and the salaries of the judges of the supreme courts in
+Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Some provisions of importance remain to be noticed.
+Judges of the superior and county courts in Ireland are to
+be removable from office only on address to the Crown,
+presented by both orders of the Legislative body voting
+separately. Existing Civil servants are retained in their
+offices at their existing salaries; if the Irish Government
+desire their retirement, they will be entitled to pensions; on
+the other hand, if at the end of two years the officers themselves
+wish to retire, they can do so, and will be entitled to
+the same pensions as if their office had been abolished.
+The pensions are payable by the Receiver-General out of
+the Irish account above mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament over all parts
+of the Empire is an inherent quality of which Parliament
+<!-- Page 95 --><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />cannot divest itself, inasmuch as it cannot bind its successors
+or prevent them from repealing any prior Act. In order,
+however, to prevent any misapprehension on this point clause
+37 was inserted, the efficacy of which, owing in great measure
+to a misprint, has been doubted. It is enough to state here
+that it was intended by express legislation to reserve all
+powers to the Imperial Parliament, and had the Bill gone
+into Committee the question would have been placed beyond
+the reach of cavil by a slight alteration in the wording of
+the clause. This summary may be concluded by the statement
+that the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords
+over actions and suits arising in Ireland (except in respect
+of constitutional questions reserved for the determination of
+the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as explained
+above), and with respect to claims for Irish Peerages, is
+preserved intact.</p>
+
+<p>The object of the Land Bill was a political one: to
+promote the contentment of the people, and the cause
+of good government in Ireland, by settling once and for
+ever the vexed question relating to land. To do this
+effectually it was necessary to devise a system under which
+the tenants, as a class, should become interested in the
+maintenance of social order, and be furnished with substantial
+inducements to rally round the institutions of their
+country. On the other hand, it was just and right that
+the landlords should participate in the benefits of any
+measure proposed for remedying the evils attendant upon
+the tenure of land in Ireland; and should be enabled to rid
+themselves, on fair terms, of their estates in cases where,
+from apprehension of impending changes, or for pecuniary
+reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the
+responsibilities of ownership. Further, it was felt by the
+framers of the Bill that a moral obligation rested on the
+Imperial Government to remove, if possible, &quot;the fearful
+exasperations attending the agrarian relations in Ireland,&quot;<!-- Page 96 --><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" />
+rather than leave a question so fraught with danger, and so
+involved in difficulty, to be determined by the Irish Government
+on its first entry on official existence. Such were the
+governing motives for bringing in the Land Bill.</p>
+
+<p>To understand an Irish Land Bill it is necessary to
+dismiss at once all ideas of the ordinary relations between
+landlord and tenant in England, and to grasp a true conception
+of the condition of an Irish tenanted estate. In
+England the relation between the landlord and tenant of
+a farm resembles, with a difference in the subject-matter, the
+relation between the landlord and tenant of a furnished
+house. In the case of the house, the landlord keeps it in
+a state fit for habitation, and the tenant pays rent for the
+privilege of living in another man's house. In the case of
+the farm, the landlord provides the farm with house, farm-buildings,
+gates, and other permanent improvements required
+to fit it for cultivation by the tenant, and the tenant pays
+rent for the privilege of cultivating the farm, receiving the
+proceeds of that cultivation. The characters of owner
+and tenant, however long the connection between them may
+subsist, are quite distinct. The tenant does no acts of
+ownership, and never regards the land as belonging to
+himself, quitting it without hesitation if he can make more
+money by taking another farm. In Ireland the whole
+situation is different: instead of a farm of some one hundred
+or two hundred acres, the tenant has a holding varying, say,
+from five to fifty acres, for which he pays an annual rent-charge
+to the landlord. He, or his ancestors have, in the
+opinion of the tenant, acquired a quasi-ownership in the
+land by making all the improvements, and he is only
+removable on non-payment of the fixed rent, or non-fulfilment
+of certain specified conditions. In short, in
+Ireland the ownership is dual: the landlord is merely the
+lord of a quasi-copyhold manor, consisting of numerous
+small tenements held by quasi-copyholders who, so long as
+<!-- Page 97 --><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" />they pay what may be called the manorial rents, and fulfil
+the manorial conditions, regard themselves as independent
+owners of their holdings. An Irish Land Bill, then, dealing
+with tenanted estates, is, in fact, merely a Bill for converting
+the small holders of tenements held at a fixed rent
+into fee-simple owners by redemption of the rent due to the
+landlord and a transfer of the land to the holders. Every
+scheme, therefore, for settling the Land question in Ireland
+resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of paying
+off the rent-charges due to the landlord. The tenant
+cannot, of course, raise the capital sufficient for paying off
+the redemption money; some State authority must, therefore,
+intervene and advance the whole or the greater part of
+that money, and recoup itself for the advance by the creation
+in its own favour of an annual charge on the holding
+sufficient to repay in a certain number of years both the
+principal and interest due in respect of the advance.</p>
+
+<p>The first problem, then, in an Irish Land Bill, is to settle
+the conditions of this annuity in such a manner as to satisfy
+the landlord and tenant; the first, as to the price of his
+estate; the second, as to the amount of the annuity to be
+paid by him, at the same time to provide the State authority
+with adequate security for the repayment of the advance, or,
+in other words, for the punctual payments of the annuity
+which is to discharge the advance. Next in importance to
+the financial question of the adjustment of the annuity
+comes the administrative difficulty of investigating the title,
+and thus securing to the tenant the possession of the fee
+simple, and to the State authority the position of a mortgagee.
+Under ordinary circumstances the investigation of
+the title to an estate involves the examination of every
+document relating thereto for a period of forty years, and
+the distribution of the purchase-money amongst the head
+renters, mortgagees, and other encumbrancers, who, in
+addition to the landlord, are found to be interested in the
+<!-- Page 98 --><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" />ownership of almost every Irish estate. Such a process is
+costly, even in the case of large estates, and involves an
+expense almost, and, indeed, speaking generally, absolutely
+prohibitory in the case of small properties. Some mode,
+then, must be devised for reducing this expense within
+manageable limits, or any scheme for dealing with Irish
+land, however well devised from a financial point of view,
+will sink under the burden imposed by the expense attending
+the transfer of the land to the new proprietors. Having
+thus stated the two principal difficulties attending the Land
+question in Ireland, it may be well before entering on the
+details of the Sale and Purchase of Land (Ireland) Bill, to
+mention the efforts which have been made during the last
+fifteen years to surmount those difficulties. The Acts having
+this object in view are the Land Acts of 1870, 1872, and
+1881, brought in by Mr. Gladstone, and the Land Purchase
+Act of 1885, brought in by the Conservative Lord Chancellor
+of Ireland (Lord Ashbourne). The Act of 1870, as amended
+by the Act of 1872, provided that the State authority might
+advance two-thirds of the purchase-money. An attempt was
+made to get over the difficulties of title by providing that
+the Landed Estates Court or Board of Works shall undertake
+the investigation of the title and the transfer and distribution
+of the purchase-money at a fixed price. The Act of 1881
+increased the advance to three-quarters, leaving the same
+machinery to deal with the title. Both under the Acts of
+1870 and 1881 the advance was secured by an annuity of
+5 per cent., payable for the period of thirty-five years, and
+based on the loan of the money by the English Exchequer
+at 3-1/2 per cent. interest. These Acts produced very little
+effect. The expense of dealing with the titles in the Landed
+Estates Court proved overwhelming, and neither the Board
+of Works, under the Act of 1872, nor the Land Commission,
+under the Act of 1881, found themselves equal to the task
+of completing inexpensively the transfer of the land;
+<!-- Page 99 --><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />further, the tenants had no means of providing even the
+quarter of the purchase-money required by the Act of 1881.
+In 1885 Lord Ashbourne determined to remove all obstacles
+at the expense of the English Exchequer. By the Land
+Act of that year he authorized the whole of the purchase-money
+to be advanced by the State, with a guarantee by
+the landlord, to be carried into effect by his allowing
+one-fifth of the purchase-money to remain in the hands of
+the agents of the State Authority until one-fifth of the
+purchase-money had been repaid by the annual payments
+of the tenants. The principal was to be recouped by an
+annuity of 4 per cent., extending over a period of forty-nine
+years, instead of an annuity of 5 per cent. extending over a
+period of thirty-five years. The English Exchequer was to
+advance the money on the basis of interest at 3-1/8 per cent.,
+instead of at 3-1/2 per cent. Though sufficient time has not
+yet elapsed to show whether the great bribe offered by the
+Act of 1885, at the expense of the British taxpayer, will
+succeed in overcoming the apathy of the tenants, it cannot
+escape notice that if the Act of 1885 succeeds better than
+the previous Acts, it will owe that success solely to the
+greater amount of risk which it imposes on the English
+Exchequer, and not to any improvement in the scheme in
+respect of securing greater certainty of sale to the Irish
+landlord, or of diminishing the danger of loss to the English
+taxpayer.</p>
+
+<p>Such being the state of legislation, and such the circumstances
+of the land question in Ireland in the year 1886,
+the Irish Government Bill afforded Mr. Gladstone the
+means and the opportunity of bringing in a Land Bill
+which would secure to the Irish landlord the certainty of
+selling his land at a fair price, without imposing any
+practical liability on the English Exchequer, and would, at
+the same time, diminish the annual sums payable by the
+tenant; while it also conferred a benefit on the Irish<!-- Page 100 --><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" />
+Exchequer. These advantages were, as will be seen, gained,
+firstly, by the pledge of English credit on good security,
+instead of advancing money on a mere mortgage on Irish
+holdings, made directly to the English Government; and,
+secondly, by the interposition of the Irish Government, as
+the immediate creditor of the Irish tenant. The scheme of
+the Land Purchase Bill is as follows:&mdash;The landlord of an
+agricultural estate occupied by tenants may apply to a
+department of the new Irish Government to purchase his
+estate. The tenants need not be consulted, as the purchase,
+if completed, will necessarily better their condition, and
+thus at the very outset the difficulty of procuring the assent
+of the tenants, which has hitherto proved so formidable an
+obstacle to all Irish land schemes, disappears. The landlord
+may require the department to which he applies (called in
+the Bill the State Authority) to pay him the statutory price
+of his estate, not in cash, but in consols valued at par.
+This price, except in certain unusual cases of great goodness
+or of great badness of the land, is twenty years' purchase
+of the <i>net</i> rental. The <i>net</i> rental is the <i>gross</i> rental after
+deducting from that rent tithe rent-charge, the average
+percentage for expenses in respect of bad debts, any rates
+paid by the landlord, and any like outgoings. The <i>gross</i>
+rental of an estate is the gross rent of all the holdings on
+the estate, payable in the year ending in November, 1885.
+Where a judicial rent has been fixed, it is the judicial rent;
+where no judicial rent has been fixed, it is the rent to be
+determined in the manner provided by the Bill.</p>
+
+<p>To state this shortly, the Bill provides that an Irish
+landlord may require the State Authority to pay him for
+his estate, in consols valued at par, a capital sum equal to
+twenty times the amount of the annual sum which he has
+actually put into his pocket out of the proceeds of the
+estate. The determination of the statutory price is, so far
+as the landlord is concerned, the cardinal point of the Bill,
+<!-- Page 101 --><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" />and in order that no injustice may be done the landlord,
+an Imperial Commission&mdash;called the Land Commission&mdash;is
+appointed by the Bill, whose duty it is to fix the statutory
+price, and, where there is no judicial rent, to determine the
+amount of rent which, in the character of gross rental, is to
+form the basis of the statutory price. The Commission also
+pay the purchase-money to the landlord, or distribute it
+amongst the parties entitled, and generally the Commission
+act as intermediaries between the landlord and the Irish
+State Authority, which has no power of varying the terms
+to which the landlord is entitled under the Bill, or of
+judging of the conditions which affect the statutory price.
+If the landlord thinks the price fixed by the Land Commission,
+as the statutory price inequitable, he may reject
+their offer and keep his estate.</p>
+
+<p>Supposing, however, the landlord to be satisfied with
+the statutory price offered by the Land Commission, the
+sale is concluded, and the Land Commission make an
+order carrying the required sum of consols (which is for
+convenience hereinafter called the purchase-money,
+although it consists of stock and not of cash) to the
+account of the estate in their books after deducting 1 per
+cent. for the cost of investigation of title and distribution
+of the purchase-money, and upon the purchase-money being
+thus credited to the estate, the landlord ceases to have any
+interest in the estate, and the tenants, by virtue of the order
+of the Land Commission, become owners in fee simple of
+their holdings, subject to the payment to the Irish State
+Authority of an annuity. The amount of the annuity is
+stated in the Bill. It is a sum equal to &pound;4 per cent.
+on a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount of the
+gross rental of the holding. The illustration given by
+Mr. Gladstone in his speech will at once explain these apparently
+intricate matters of finance. A landlord is entitled
+to the Hendon estate, producing &pound;1200 a year gross
+<!-- Page 102 --><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />rental; to find the net rental, the Land Commission deduct
+from this gross rental outgoings estimated at about 20 per
+cent., or &pound;240 a year. This makes the net rental &pound;960
+a year, and the price payable to the landlord is &pound;19,200
+(twenty years' purchase of &pound;960, or &pound;960 multiplied by
+20), which, as above stated, will be paid in consols. The
+tenants will pay, as the maximum amount for their holdings,
+&pound;4 per cent. for forty-nine years on the capitalized value of
+twenty years' purchase of the gross rent. This will amount
+to &pound;960 instead of &pound;1,200, which they have hitherto paid;
+a saving of &pound;240 a year will thus be effected, from which,
+however, must be deducted the half rates to which they will
+become liable, formerly paid by the landlord. This &pound;4 per
+cent. charge payable by the tenants will continue for forty-nine
+years, but at the end of that time each tenant will
+become a free owner of his estate without any annual payment.
+Next, as to the position of the State Authority.
+The State Authority receives &pound;960 from the tenants; it
+pays out of that sum &pound;4 per cent., not upon the gross
+rental, but upon the net rental capitalized, that is to say,
+&pound;768 to the Imperial Exchequer. The State Authority,
+therefore, receives,&pound;960, and assuming that the charge of
+collecting the rental is 2 per cent., that is to say, &pound;19 4<i>s.</i>,
+the State Authority will, out of &pound;960, have to disburse
+only &pound;787 4<i>s.</i>, leaving it a gainer of &pound;172 16<i>s.</i>, or nearly
+18 per cent. The result then between the several parties
+is, the landlord receives &pound;19,200; the tenantry pay &pound;240
+a year less than they have hitherto paid, and at the end of
+forty-nine years are exempt altogether from payment; the
+gain of Irish State Authority is &pound;172 16<i>s.</i> a year. Another
+mode of putting the case shortly is as follows: The English
+Exchequer lends the money to the Irish State Authority at
+3-1/8 per cent. and an annuity of 4 per cent. paid during
+forty-nine years will, as has been stated above, repay both
+principal and interest for every &pound;100 lent at 3-1/8 per cent.<!-- Page 103 --><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" />
+On the sale of an estate under the Bill, the landlord receives
+twenty years' purchase; the tenant pays &pound;4 per cent. on
+twenty years' purchase of the gross rental; the Irish State
+Authority receives &pound;4 per cent. on the gross rental; the
+English Exchequer receives 4 per cent. on the net rental
+only. The repayment of the interest due by the Irish
+Authority to the English Exchequer is in no wise dependent
+on the punctual payment of their annuities by the Irish
+tenants, nor does the English Government in any way
+figure as the landlord or creditor of the Irish tenants. The
+annuities payable by the tenants are due to the Irish
+Government, and collected by them, while the interest due
+to the English Government is a charge on the whole of the
+Irish Government funds; and further, these funds themselves
+are paid into the hands of the Imperial officer,
+whose duty it is to liquidate the debt due to his master, the
+Imperial Exchequer, before a sixpence can be touched by
+the Irish Government. It is not, then, any exaggeration to
+say that the Land Purchase Bill of 1886 provides for the
+settlement of the Irish Land question without any appreciable
+risk to the English Exchequer, and with the advantage
+of securing a fair price for the landlord, a diminution of
+annual payments to the tenant with the ultimate acquisition
+of the fee simple, also a gain of no inconsiderable sum to
+the Irish Exchequer. In order to obviate the difficulties
+attending the investigation of title and transfer of the property,
+the Bill provides, as stated above, that on the completion
+of the agreement for the sale between the landlord
+and the Commission, the holding shall vest at once in the
+tenants: it then proceeds to declare that the claims of all
+persons interested in the land shall attach to the purchase-money
+in the same manner as though it were land. The
+duty of ascertaining these claims and distributing the
+purchase-money is vested in the Land Commission, who
+undertake the task in exchange for the 1 per cent. which
+<!-- Page 104 --><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" />they have, as above stated, deducted from the purchase-money
+as the cost of conducting the complete transfer of
+the estate from the landlord to the tenants. The difficulty
+of the process of dealing with the purchase-money depends,
+of course, on the intricacy of the title. If the vendor is the
+sole unencumbered owner, he is put in immediate possession
+of the stock constituting the price of the estate. If
+there are encumbrances, as is usually the case, they are
+paid off by the Land Commission. Capital sums are paid
+in full; jointures and other life charges are valued according
+to the usual tables. Drainage and other temporary charges
+are estimated at their present value, permanent rent-charges
+are valued by agreement, or in case of disagreement, by the
+Land Commission; a certain minimum number of years'
+purchase being assigned by the Bill to any permanent rent-charge
+which amounts only to one-fifth part of the rental of
+the estate on which it is charged, this provision being made
+to prevent injustice being done to the holders of rent-charges
+which are amply secured.</p>
+
+<p>It remains to notice certain other points of some importance.
+The landlord entitled to require the State to
+purchase his property is the immediate landlord, that is to
+say, the person entitled to the receipt of the rent of the
+estate; no encumbrancer can avail himself of the privilege,
+the reason being that the Bill is intended to assist solvent
+landlords, and not to create a new Encumbered Estates
+Court. The landlord may sell this privilege, and possibly
+by means of this power of sale may be able to put pressure
+on his encumbrancers to reduce their claims in order to
+obtain immediate payment. The Land Commission, in
+their character of quasi-arbitrators between the landlord and
+the Irish State Authority, have ample powers given to enable
+them to do justice. If the statutory price, as settled according
+to the Act, is too low, they may raise it to twenty-two
+years' purchase instead of twenty years' purchase. If it is
+<!-- Page 105 --><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" />too high, they may refuse to buy unless the landlord will
+reduce it to a proper price. In the congested districts
+scheduled in the Bill the land, on a sale, passes to the Irish
+State Authority, as landlords, and not to the tenants; the
+reason being that it is considered that the tenants would be
+worsened, rather than bettered, by having their small plots
+vested in them in fee simple. For the same cause it is provided
+that in any part of Ireland tenants of holdings under
+&pound;4 a year may object to become the owners of their
+holdings, which will thereupon vest, on a sale, in the Irish
+State Authority. Lastly, the opportunity is taken of
+establishing a registry of title in respect of all property
+dealt with under the Bill. The result of such a registry
+would be that any property entered therein would ever
+thereafter be capable of being transferred with the same
+facility, and at as little expense, as stock in the public
+funds.<!-- Page 106 --><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14" /><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Any charge in excess of one million was to be borne by Imperial
+Exchequer.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_UNIONISTquot_POSITION" id="THE_UNIONISTquot_POSITION" />THE &quot;UNIONIST&quot; POSITION.</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY CANON MACCOLL</p>
+
+
+<p>Is it not time that the opponents of Home Rule for Ireland
+should define their position? They defeated Mr. Gladstone's
+scheme last year in Parliament and in the constituencies;
+and they defeated it by the promise of a
+counter policy which was to consist, in brief, of placing
+Ireland on the same footing as Great Britain in respect to
+Local Government; or, if there was to be any difference, it
+was to be in the direction of a larger and more generous
+measure for Ireland than for the rest of the United Kingdom.
+This certainly was the policy propounded by the
+distinguished leader of the Liberal Unionists in his speech
+at Belfast, in November, 1885, and repeated in his electoral
+speeches last year. In the Belfast speech Lord Hartington
+said: &quot;My opinion is that it is desirable for Irishmen that
+institutions of local self-government such as are possessed
+by England and Scotland, and such as we hope to give in
+the next session in greater extent to England and Scotland,
+should also be extended to Ireland.&quot; But this extension of
+local self-government to Ireland would require, in Lord
+Hartington's opinion, a fundamental change in the fabric of
+Irish Government. &quot;I would not shrink,&quot; he says, &quot;from
+a great and bold reconstruction of the Irish Government,&quot;
+a reconstruction leading up gradually to some real and
+<!-- Page 107 --><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" />substantial form of Home Rule. His Lordship's words
+are: &quot;I submit with some confidence to you these principles,
+which I have endeavoured to lay down, and upon
+which, I think, the extension of Local Government in
+Ireland must proceed. First, you must have some adequate
+guarantees both for the maintenance of the essential unity
+of the Empire and for the protection of the minority in
+Ireland. And, secondly, you must also admit this principle:
+the work of complete self-government of Ireland, the
+grant of full control over the management of its own affairs,
+is not a grant that can be made by any Parliament of this
+country in a day. It must be the work of continuous and
+careful effort.&quot; Elsewhere in the same speech Lord Hartington
+says: &quot;Certainly I am of opinion that nothing can
+be done in the direction of giving Ireland anything like
+complete control over her own affairs either in a day, or a
+session, or probably in a Parliament.&quot; &quot;Complete control
+over her own affairs,&quot; &quot;the work of complete self-government
+of Ireland, the grant of full control over the management
+of its own affairs:&quot; this is the policy which Lord
+Hartington proclaimed in Ulster, the promise which he, the
+proximate Liberal leader, held out to Ireland on the eve of
+the General Election of 1885. It was a policy to be begun
+&quot;in the next session,&quot; though not likely to be completed
+&quot;in a day, or a session, or probably in a Parliament.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Next to Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington the most
+important member of the Liberal party at that time was
+undoubtedly Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Chamberlain's
+Irish policy was proclaimed in the <i>Radical Programme,
+</i> which was published before the General Election as the
+Radical leader's manifesto to the constituencies. This
+scheme, which Mr. Chamberlain had submitted as a
+responsible minister to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone in
+June, 1885, culminated in a National Council which was to
+control a series of local bodies and govern the whole of<!-- Page 108 --><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" />
+Ireland. &quot;His National Council was to consist of two
+orders; one-third of its members were to be elected by the
+owners of property, and two-thirds by ratepayers. The
+National Council also was to be a single one, and Ulster
+was not to have a separate Council. As the Council was
+to be charged with the supervision and legislation about
+education, which is the burning question between Catholics
+and Protestants, it is clear that Mr. Chamberlain at that
+time contemplated no special protection for Ulster.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15" /><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> Moreover,
+in a letter dated April 23rd, 1886, and published in
+the <i>Daily News</i> of May 17th, 1886, Mr. Chamberlain
+declared that he &quot;had not changed his opinion in the least&quot;
+since his first public declaration on Irish policy in 1874.
+&quot;I then said that I was in favour of the principles of Home
+Rule, as defined by Mr. Butt, but that I would do nothing
+which would weaken in any way Imperial unity, and that I
+did not agree with all the details of his plan.... Mr. Butt's
+proposals were in the nature of a federal scheme, and differ
+entirely from Mr. Gladstone's, which are on the lines of
+Colonial independence. Mr. Butt did not propose to give
+up Irish representation at Westminster.&quot; It is true that Mr.
+Butt did not propose to give up Irish representation at
+Westminster; but it is also true that he proposed to give
+it up in the sense in which Mr. Chamberlain wishes to
+retain it. Mr. Butt's words, in the debate to which Mr.
+Chamberlain refers, are, &quot;that the House should meet <i>without
+Irish members</i> for the discussion of English and Scotch
+business; and when there was any question affecting the
+Empire at large, Irish members might be summoned to
+attend. He saw no difficulty in the matter.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16" /><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>There is no need to quote Mr. Gladstone's declarations
+<!-- Page 109 --><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" />on the Irish question at the General Election of 1885, and
+previously. He has been accused of springing a surprise
+on the country when he proposed Home Rule in the
+beginning of 1886. That is not, at all events, the opinion
+of Lord Hartington. In a speech delivered at the Eighty
+Club in March, 1886, his Lordship, with his usual manly
+candour, declared as follows: &quot;I am not going to say one
+word of complaint or charge against Mr. Gladstone for the
+attitude which he has taken on this question. I think no
+one who has read or heard, during a long series of years, the
+declarations of Mr. Gladstone on the question of self-government
+for Ireland, can be surprised at the tone of his
+present declarations.... When I look back to those
+declarations that Mr. Gladstone made in Parliament,
+which have not been unfrequent; when I look back to the
+increased definiteness given to those declarations in his
+address to the electors of Midlothian, and in his Midlothian
+speeches; I say, when I consider all these things,
+I feel that I have not, and that no one has, any right to complain
+of the tone of the declarations which Mr. Gladstone
+has recently made upon this subject.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So much as to the state of Liberal opinion on the Irish
+question at the General Election of 1885. The leaders of
+all sections of the party put the Irish question in the foreground
+of their programme for the session of 1886. We all
+remember Sir Charles Dilke's public announcement that
+he and Mr. Chamberlain were going to visit Ireland in the
+autumn of 1885, to study the Irish question on the spot,
+with a view to maturing a plan for the first session of the
+new Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>What about the Conservative party? Lord Salisbury's
+Newport speech was avowedly the programme of his Cabinet.
+It was the Conservative answer to Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian
+manifesto. He dealt with the Irish question in
+guarded language; but it was language which plainly showed
+<!-- Page 110 --><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" />that he recognized, not less clearly than the Liberal leaders,
+the crucial change which the assimilation of the Irish
+franchise to that of Great Britain had wrought in Irish
+policy. His keen eye saw at once the important bearing
+which that enfranchisement had on the traditional policy of
+coercion: &quot;You had passed an Act of Parliament, giving
+in unexampled abundance, and with unexampled freedom,
+supreme power to the great mass of the Irish people&mdash;supreme
+power as regards their own locality.... To my
+mind the renewal of exceptional legislation against a population
+whom you had treated legislatively to this marked
+confidence was so gross in its inconsistency that you could
+not possibly hope, during the few remaining months that
+were at your disposal before the present Parliament expired,
+to renew any legislation which expressed on one side a
+distrust of what on the other side your former legislation
+had so strongly emphasized. The only result of your doing
+it would have been, not that you would have passed the
+Act, but that you would have promoted by the very
+inconsistency of the position that you were occupying&mdash;by
+the untenable character of the arguments that you were
+advancing&mdash;you would have produced so intense an exasperation
+amongst the Irish people, that you would
+have caused ten times more evil, ten times more resistance
+to law than your Crimes Act, even if it had
+been renewed, would possibly have been able to check.&quot;
+Lord Salisbury went on to say that &quot;the effect of the
+Crimes Act had been very much exaggerated,&quot; and that
+&quot;boycotting is of that character which legislation has very
+great difficulty in reaching.&quot; &quot;Boycotting does not operate
+through outrage. Boycotting is the act of a large majority
+of a community resolving to do a number of things which
+are themselves legal, and which are only illegal by the intention
+with which they are done.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Next to Lord Salisbury the most prominent member of
+<!-- Page 111 --><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" />the Conservative party at that date was Lord Randolph
+Churchill. On the 3rd of January, 1885, when it was
+rumoured that Mr. Gladstone's Government, then in office,
+intended to renew a few of the clauses of the Crimes Act,
+Lord Randolph Churchill made a speech at Bow against
+any such policy. The following quotation will suffice as a
+specimen of his opinion: &quot;It comes to this, that the policy
+of the Government in Ireland is to declare on the one hand,
+by the passing of the Reform Bill, that the Irish people are
+perfectly capable of exercising for the advantage of the
+Empire the highest rights and privileges of citizenship; and
+by the proposal to renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously
+declare, on the other hand, that the Irish people
+are perfectly incapable of performing for the advantage of
+society the lowest and most ordinary duties of citizenship.... All
+I can say is that, if such an incoherent, such a
+ridiculous, such a dangerously ridiculous combination of
+acts can be called a policy, then, thank God, the Conservative
+party have no policy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Within a few months of the delivery of that speech a
+Conservative Government was in office, with Lord Randolph
+Churchill as its leader in the House of Commons; and one
+of the first acts of the new leader was to separate himself
+ostentatiously from the Irish policy of Lord Spencer and
+from the policy of coercion in general. Lord Randolph
+Churchill, as the organ of the Government in the House of
+Commons, repudiated in scornful language any atom of
+sympathy with the policy pursued by Lord Spencer in
+Ireland; and Lord Carnarvon, the new Viceroy, declared
+that &quot;the era of coercion&quot; was past, and that the Conservative
+Government intended to govern Ireland by the ordinary
+law. Lord Carnarvon, in addition, and very much to his
+credit, sought and obtained an interview with Mr. Parnell,
+and discussed with him, in sympathetic language, the
+question of Home Rule. In his own explanation of this
+<!-- Page 112 --><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" />interview Lord Carnarvon admitted that he desired to see
+established in Ireland some form of self-government which
+would satisfy &quot;the national sentiment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is idle, therefore, to assert that the question of Home
+Rule for Ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the
+country as a surprise by Mr. Gladstone in the beginning of
+1886. The question was brought prominently before the
+public in the General Election of 1885 as one that must be
+faced in the new Parliament. All parties were committed
+to that policy, and the only difference was as to the character
+and limits of the measure of self-government to be granted
+to Ireland; whether it was to be large enough to satisfy
+&quot;the national sentiment,&quot; as Lord Carnarvon, Mr. Chamberlain,
+Mr. Gladstone, and others desired; or whether it was to
+consist only of a system of county boards under the control of
+a reformed Dublin Castle. There was a general agreement
+that the grant to Ireland of electoral equality with England
+necessitated equality of political treatment, and that, above
+all things, there was to be no renewal of the stale policy of
+Coercion until the Irish people had got an opportunity of
+proving or disproving their fitness for self-government,
+unless, indeed, there should happen to be a recrudescence
+of crime which would render exceptional legislation necessary.
+The election of 1886 turned almost entirely on the
+question of Irish government, and it is not too much to say
+that Conservatives and Liberal Unionists vied with Home
+Rulers in repudiating a return to the policy of coercion until
+the effect of some kind of self-government had been tried.
+Of course, there were the usual platitudes about the necessity
+of maintaining law and order; but there was a <i>consensus</i> of
+profession that coercion should not be resorted to unless
+there was a fresh outbreak of crime and disorder in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the professions of the opponents of Home
+Rule in 1885 and in 1886. They have now been in office
+for eighteen months, and what do we behold? They have
+<!-- Page 113 --><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" />passed a perpetual Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the question
+of any kind of self-government has been relegated to an
+uncertain future. In his recent speech at Birmingham
+(Sept. 29), Mr. Chamberlain has declared that the question
+is not ripe for solution, and that the question of disestablishment,
+in Wales, Scotland, and England successively, as
+well as the questions of Local Option, local government for
+Great Britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take
+precedence of it. That means the postponement of the
+reform of Irish Government to the Greek Kalends. What
+justification can be made for this change of front? No
+valid justification has been offered. So far from there
+having been any increase of crime in the interval, there
+has been a very marked decrease. When the Coercion
+Bill received the royal assent last August, Ireland was more
+free from crime than it had been for many years past.
+Nothing had happened to account for the return to the
+policy of coercion in violation of the promise to try the
+experiment of conciliation. The National League was
+in full vigour in 1885-1886, when the policy of coercion
+was abandoned; boycotting was just as prevalent, and
+outrages were much more numerous.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances it is the opponents of Home
+Rule, not its advocates, who owe an explanation to the
+public. They defeated Mr. Gladstone's Bill, but promised
+a Bill of their own. Where is their Bill? We hear nothing
+of it. They have made a complete change of front. They
+now tell us that the grievance of Ireland is entirely economic,
+and that the true solution of the Irish question is the abolition
+of dual ownership in land combined with a firm administration
+of the existing law. England and Scotland are to have
+a large measure of local government next year; but Ireland
+is to wait till a more convenient season. A more complete
+reversal of the policy proclaimed last summer by the so-called
+Unionists cannot be imagined.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 114 --><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" />Still, however, the &quot;Unionists&quot; hope to be able some
+day to offer some form of self-government to Ireland. For
+party purposes they are wise in postponing that day to the
+latest possible period, for its advent will probably dissolve
+the union of the &quot;Unionists.&quot; Lord Salisbury, Lord
+Hartington, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Chamberlain cannot
+agree upon any scheme which all can accept without a
+public recantation of previous professions. Mr. Bright is
+opposed to Home Rule &quot;in any shape or form.&quot; Mr.
+Chamberlain, on the other hand, is in favour of a great
+National Council, on Mr. Butt's lines or on the lines
+of the Canadian plan; either of which would give the
+National Council control over education and the maintenance
+of law and order. Latterly, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain
+has advocated a separate treatment for Ulster. But
+the first act of an Ulster Provincial Assembly would probably
+be to declare the union of that Province with the rest
+of Ireland. Ulster, be it remembered, returns a majority
+of Nationalists to the Imperial Parliament. To exclude
+Ulster from any share in the settlement offered to the other
+three Provinces would therefore be impracticable; and
+Mr. Bright has lately expressed his opinion emphatically in
+that sense. In any case, Lord Hartington could be no party
+to any scheme so advanced as Mr. Chamberlain's. For
+although he declared, in his Belfast speech, that &quot;complete
+self-government&quot; was the goal of his policy for Ireland, he
+was careful to explain that &quot;the extension of Irish management
+over Irish affairs must be a growth from small beginnings.&quot;
+But this &quot;growth from small beginnings&quot; would
+be, in Lord Salisbury's opinion, a very dangerous and mischievous
+policy. The establishment of self-government
+in Ireland, as distinct from what is commonly known
+as Home Rule, he pronounced in his Newport speech to
+be &quot;a very difficult question;&quot; and in the following passage
+he placed his finger upon the kernel of the difficulty:&mdash;<!-- Page 115 --><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" />
+&quot;A local authority is more exposed to the temptation,
+and has more of the facility for enabling a majority to be
+unjust to the minority, than is the case when the authority
+derives its sanction and extends its jurisdiction over a wide
+area. That is one of the weaknesses of local authorities.
+In a large central authority the wisdom of several parts of
+the country will correct the folly or the mistakes of one. In
+a local authority that correction to a much greater extent
+is wanting; and it would be impossible to leave that out
+of sight in the extension of any such local authority to
+Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This seems to me a much wiser and more statesmanlike
+view than a system of elective boards scattered broadcast
+over Ireland. A multitude of local boards all over Ireland,
+without a recognized central authority to control them,
+would inevitably become facile instruments in the hands
+of the emissaries of disorder and sedition. And, even apart
+from any such sinister influences, they would be almost
+certain to yield to the temptation of being oppressive,
+extravagant, and corrupt, if there were no executive power
+to command their confidence and enforce obedience.
+Without the previous creation of some authority of that
+kind it would be sheer madness to offer Ireland the fatal
+boon of local self-government. It would enormously
+increase without conciliating the power of the Nationalists,
+and would make the administration of Ireland by constitutional
+means simply impossible. The policy of the Liberal
+Unionists is thus much too large or much too small. It is
+too small to conciliate, and therefore too large to be given
+with safety. All these proposed concessions are liable to
+one insuperable objection; they would each and all enable
+the Irish to extort Home Rule, but under circumstances
+which would rob it of its grace and repel gratitude. Mill
+has some admirable observations bearing on this subject,
+and I venture to quote the following passage: &quot;The
+<!-- Page 116 --><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />greatest imperfection of popular local institutions, and
+the chief cause of the failure which so often attends them,
+is the low calibre of the men by whom they are almost
+always carried on. That these should be of a very miscellaneous
+character is, indeed, part of the usefulness of the
+institution; it is that circumstance chiefly which renders
+it a school of political capacity and general intelligence.
+But a school supposes teachers as well as scholars; the
+utility of the instruction greatly depends on its bringing
+inferior minds into contact with superior, a contact which
+in the ordinary course of life is altogether exceptional, and
+the want of which contributes more than anything else to
+keep the generality of mankind on one level of contented
+ignorance.... It is quite hopeless to induce persons of a
+high class, either socially or intellectually, to take a share of
+local administration in a corner by piecemeal as members
+of a Paving Board or a Drainage Commission.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17" /><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mill goes on to argue that it is essential to the safe
+working of any scheme of local self-government that it
+should be under the control of a central authority in
+harmony with public opinion.</p>
+
+<p>When the &quot;Unionists&quot; begin, if they ever do begin,
+seriously to deliberate on the question of self-government
+for Ireland, they will find that they have only two practicable
+alternatives&mdash;the maintenance of the present system, or
+some scheme of Home Rule on the lines of Mr. Gladstone's
+much misunderstood Bill. And the ablest men among the
+&quot;Unionists&quot; are beginning to perceive this. The <i>Spectator</i>
+has in a recent article implored Mr. Chamberlain to desist
+from any further proposal in favour of self-government for
+Ireland, because the inevitable result would be to split up
+the Unionist party; and Mr. Chamberlain, as we have seen,
+has accepted the advice. Another very able and very
+logical opponent of Home Rule has candidly avowed that
+<!-- Page 117 --><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" />the only alternative to Home Rule is the perpetuation of
+&quot;things as they are.&quot; Ireland, he thinks, &quot;possesses none
+of the conditions necessary for local self-government.&quot;
+His own view, therefore, is &quot;that in Ireland, as in France,
+an honest, centralized administration of impartial officials,
+and not local self-government, would best meet the real
+wants of the people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The name of 'Self-government' has a natural fascination
+for Englishmen; but a policy which cannot satisfy the
+wishes of Home Rulers, which may&mdash;it is likely enough&mdash;be
+of no benefit to the Irish people, which will certainly
+weaken the Government in its contest with lawlessness and
+oppression, is not a policy which obviously commends itself
+to English good sense.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18" /><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>Well may this distinguished &quot;Supporter of things as they
+are&quot; declare: &quot;The maintenance of the Union [on such
+terms] must necessarily turn out as severe a task as ever
+taxed a nation's energies; for to maintain the Union with
+any good effect, means that, while refusing to accede to
+the wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do
+justice to every fair demand from Ireland; must strenuously,
+and without fear or favour, assert the equal rights of landlords
+and tenants, of Protestants and Catholics; and must,
+at the same time, put down every outrage and reform every
+abuse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What hope is there of this? Our only guide to the
+probabilities of the future is our experience of the past
+And what has that been in Ireland? In every year since
+the Legislative Union there have been multitudes of men
+in England as upright, as enlightened, as well-intentioned
+towards Ireland, as Professor Dicey, and with better
+opportunities of translating their thoughts into acts. Yet
+what has been the result? <i>Si monumenlum requiris circum<!-- Page 118 --><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" />spice</i>.
+Behold Ireland at this moment, and examine every
+year of its history since the Union. Do the annals of any
+constitutional Government in the world present so portentous
+a monument of Parliamentary failure, so vivid an
+example of a moral and material ruin &quot;paved with good
+intentions&quot;? Therein lies the pathos of it. Not from
+malice, not from cruelty, not from wanton injustice, not
+even from callous indifference to suffering and wrong, does
+our misgovernment of Ireland come. If the evil had its
+root in deliberate wrong-doing on the part of England it
+would probably have been cured long ago. But each
+generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers,
+has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own
+achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude,
+has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the
+Irish character as the key to the Irish problem. The
+generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of
+British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered
+what had become of the prosperity and contentment which
+the promoters of the Union had promised to Ireland. The
+next generation made vicarious penance, and preferred the
+enactment of Catholic emancipation to the alternative of
+civil war; and then wondered in its turn that Ireland still
+remained unpacified. Then came a terrible famine, followed
+by evictions on a scale so vast and cruel that the late Sir
+Robert Peel declared that no parallel could be found for
+such a tale of inhumanity in &quot;the records of any country,
+civilized or barbarous.&quot; Another generation, pluming itself
+on its enlightened views and kind intentions, passed the
+Encumbered Estates Act, which delivered the Irish tenants
+over to the tender mercies of speculators and money-lenders;
+and then Parliament for a time closed its eyes and ears, and
+relied upon force alone to keep Ireland quiet. It rejected
+every suggestion of reform in the Land laws; and a great
+Minister, himself an Irish landlord, dismissed the whole
+<!-- Page 119 --><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" />subject in the flippant epigram that &quot;tenant-right was landlord-wrong.&quot;
+Since then the Irish Church has been disestablished,
+and two Land Acts have been passed; yet we
+seem to be as far as ever from the pacification of Ireland.
+Surely it is time to inquire whether the evil is not inherent
+in our system of governing Ireland, and whether there is
+any other cure than that which De Beaumont suggested,
+namely, the destruction of the system. It is probable that
+there is not in all London a more humane or a more kind-hearted
+man than Lord Salisbury. Yet Lord Salisbury's
+Government will do some harsh and inequitable things in
+Ireland this winter, just as Liberal Governments have done
+during their term of office. The fault is not in the men, but
+in the system which they have to administer. I see no
+reason to doubt that Sir M. Hicks-Beach did the best he
+could under the circumstances; but, unfortunately, bad is
+the best. In a conversation which I had with Dr. D&ouml;llinger
+while he was in full communion with his Church, I ventured
+to ask him whether he thought that a new Pope, of Liberal
+ideas, force of character, and commanding ability, would
+make any great difference in the Papal system. &quot;No,&quot; he
+replied, &quot;the Curial system is the growth of centuries, and
+there can be no change of any consequence while it lasts.
+Many a Pope has begun with brave projects of reform; but
+the struggle has been brief, and the end has been invariably
+the same: the Pope has been forced to succumb. His
+<i>entourage</i> has been too much for him. He has found himself
+enclosed in a system which was too strong for him,
+wheel within wheel; and while the system lasts the most
+enlightened ideas and the best intentions are in the long
+run unavailing.&quot; This criticism applies, <i>mutatis mutandis</i>,
+to what may be called the Curial system of Dublin Castle.
+It is a species of political Ultramontanism, exercising
+supreme power behind the screen of an official infallibility
+on which there is practically no check, since Parliament has
+<!-- Page 120 --><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" />never hitherto refused to grant it any power which it demanded
+for enforcing its decrees.</p>
+
+<p>There is, moreover, another consideration which must
+convince any dispassionate mind which ponders it, that the
+British Parliament is incompetent to manage Irish affairs,
+and must become increasingly incompetent year by year.
+In ordinary circumstances Parliament sits about twenty-seven
+weeks out of the fifty-two. Five out of the twenty-seven
+may safely be subtracted for holidays, debates on the
+Address, and other debates apart from ordinary business.
+That leaves twenty-two weeks, and out of these two nights
+a week are at the disposal of the Government and three at
+the disposal of private members; leaving in all forty-four
+days for the Government and sixty-six for private members.
+Into those forty-four nights Government must compress all
+its yearly programme of legislation for the whole of the
+British Empire, from the settlement of some petty dispute
+about land in the Hebrides, to some question of high
+policy in Egypt, India, or other portions of the Queen's
+world-wide empire; and all this amidst endless distractions,
+enforced attendance through dreary debates and vapid talk,
+and a running fire of cross-examination from any volunteer
+questioner out of the six hundred odd members who sit
+outside the Government circle. The consequence is, that
+Parliament is getting less able every year to overtake the
+mass of business which comes before it. Each year contributes
+its quota of inevitable arrears to the accumulated
+mass of previous Sessions, and the process will go on multiplying
+in increasing ratio as the complex and multiform
+needs of modern life increase. The large addition recently
+made to the electorate of the United Kingdom is already
+forcing a crop of fresh subjects on the attention of Parliament,
+as well as presenting old ones from new points of
+view. Plans of devolution and Grand Committees will fail
+to cope with this evil. To overcome it we need some
+<!-- Page 121 --><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" />organic change in our present Parliamentary system, some
+form of decentralization, which shall leave the Imperial
+Parliament supreme over all subordinate bodies, yet relegate
+to the historic and geographical divisions of the United
+Kingdom the management severally of their own local
+affairs.</p>
+
+<p>I should have better hope from governing Ireland (if it
+were possible) as we govern India, than from the present
+Unionist method of leaving &quot;things as they are.&quot; A Viceroy
+surrounded by a Council of trained officials, and in semi-independence
+of Parliament, would have settled the Irish
+question, land and all, long ago. But imagine India
+governed on the model of Ireland: the Viceroy and the
+most important member of his Government changing with
+every change of Administration at Westminster;<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19" /><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> his
+Council and the official class in general consisting almost
+exclusively of native Mussulmans, deeply prejudiced by
+religious and traditional enmity against the great mass of
+the population; himself generally subordinate to his Chief
+Secretary, and exposed to the daily criticism of an ignorant
+Parliament and to the determined hostility of eighty-six
+Hindoos, holding seats in Parliament as the representatives
+of the vast majority of the people of India, and resenting
+bitterly the domination of the hereditary oppressors of their
+race. How long could the Government of India be carried
+on under such conditions?</p>
+
+<p>Viewing it all round, then, it must be admitted that the
+problem of governing Ireland while leaving things as they are
+<!-- Page 122 --><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />is a sufficiently formidable one. Read the remarkable admissions
+which the facts have forced from intelligent opponents
+of Home Rule like Mr. Dicey, and add to them all the other
+evils which are rooted in our existing system of Irish government,
+and then consider what hope there is, under &quot;things
+as they are,&quot; of &quot;sedulously doing justice to every demand
+from Ireland,&quot; &quot;strenuously, and without fear or favour,
+asserting the equal rights of landlords and tenants, Protestants
+and Catholics,&quot; &quot;putting down every outrage, and
+reforming every abuse;&quot; and all the &quot;while refusing to
+accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen&quot; for a fundamental
+change in a political arrangement that has for
+centuries produced all the mischief which the so-called
+Unionist party are forced to admit, and much more besides,
+while it has at the same time frustrated every serious endeavour
+to bring about the better state of things which they
+expect from&mdash;what? From &quot;things as they are!&quot; As well
+expect grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles. While the
+tree remains the same, no amount of weeding, or pruning,
+or manuring, or change of culture, will make it bring forth
+different fruit. Mr. Dicey, among others, has demolished
+what Lord Beaconsfield used to call the &quot;bit-by-bit&quot; reformers
+of Irish Government&mdash;those who would administer
+homoeopathic doses of local self-government, but always
+under protest that the supply was to stop short of what
+would satisfy the hunger of the patient. But a continuance
+of &quot;things as they are,&quot; gilded with a thin tissue of benevolent
+hopes and aspirations, is scarcely a more promising
+remedy for the ills of Ireland. Is it not time to try some
+new treatment&mdash;one which has been tried in similar cases,
+and always with success? One only policy has never been
+tried in Ireland&mdash;honest Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, if Home Rule is to be refused till all the
+prophets of evil are refuted, Ireland must go without Home
+Rule for ever. &quot;If the sky fall, we shall catch larks.&quot; But
+<!-- Page 123 --><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" />he would be a foolish bird-catcher who waited for that
+contingency. And not less foolish is the statesman who
+sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has
+been mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild
+prediction falsified by the event; for that would ensure
+his never moving at all. <i>Sedet &aelig;ternumque sedebit</i>. A
+proper enough attitude, perhaps, on the part of an eristic
+philosopher speculating on politics in the silent shade of
+academic groves, but hardly suitable for a practical politician
+who has to take action on one of the most burning questions
+of our time. Human affairs are not governed by mathematical
+reasoning. You cannot demonstrate the precise
+results of any legislative measure beforehand as you can
+demonstrate the course of a planet in the solar system.
+&quot;Probability,&quot; as Bishop Butler says, &quot;is the guide of life;&quot;
+and an older philosopher than Butler has warned us that
+to demand demonstrative proof in the sphere of contingent
+matter is the same kind of absurdity as to demand probable
+reasoning in mathematics. You cannot confute a prophet
+before the event; you can only disbelieve him. The
+advocates of Home Rule believe that their policy would
+in general have an exactly contrary effect to that predicted
+by their opponents. In truth, every act of legislation is,
+before experience, amenable to such destructive criticism
+as these critics urge against Home Rule. I have not a
+doubt that they could have made out an unanswerable
+&quot;case&quot; against the Great Charter at Runnymede; and they
+would find it easy to prove on <i>&agrave; priori</i> grounds that the
+British Constitution is one of the most absurd, mischievous,
+and unworkable instruments that ever issued from human
+brains or from the evolution of events. By their method
+of reasoning the Great Charter and other fundamental
+portions of the Constitution ought to have brought the
+Government of the British Empire to a deadlock long ago.
+Every suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, every Act of<!-- Page 124 --><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" />
+Attainder, every statute for summary trial and conviction
+before justices of the peace, is a violation of the fundamental
+article of the Constitution, which requires that no
+man shall be imprisoned or otherwise punished except after
+lawful trial by his peers.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20" /><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> Consider also the magazines of
+explosive materials which lie hidden in the constitutional
+prerogatives of the Crown, if they could only be ignited by
+the match of an ingenious theorist. The Crown, as Lord
+Sherbrooke once somewhat irreverently expressed it, &quot;can
+turn every cobbler in the land into a peer,&quot; and could thus
+put an end, as the Duke of Wellington declared, to &quot;the
+Constitution of this country.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21" /><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> &quot;The Crown is not bound
+by Act of Parliament unless named therein by special and
+particular words.&quot;[22] The Crown can make peace or war
+without consulting Parliament, can by secret treaty saddle
+the nation with the most perilous obligations, and give
+away all such portions of the empire as do not rest on
+Statute. The prerogative of mercy, too, would enable an
+eccentric Sovereign, aided by an obsequious Minister, to
+open the jails and let all the convicted criminals in the land
+loose upon society.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22" /><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> But criticism which proves too much
+in effect proves nothing.</p>
+
+<p>In short, every stage in the progress of constitutional
+reform has, in matter of fact, been marked by similar predictions
+falsified by results, and the prophets who condemn
+Home Rule have no better credentials; indeed, much
+worse, for they proclaim the miserable failure of &quot;things
+as they are,&quot; whereas their predecessors were in their day
+satisfied with things as they were.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23" /><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a><!-- Page 125 --><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" /></p>
+
+<p>It is, high time, therefore, to call upon the opponents
+of Home Rule to tell us plainly where they stand. They
+<!-- Page 126 --><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" />claim a mandate from the country for their policy. They
+neither asked nor received a mandate to support the
+system of Government which prevailed in Ireland at the
+last election, and still less the policy of coercion which they
+have substituted for that system. Do they mean to go back
+or forward? They cannot stand still. They have already
+discovered that one act of repression leads to another, and
+they will find ere long that they have no alternative except
+Home Rule or the suppression of Parliamentary Government
+in Ireland. Men may talk lightly of the ease with
+which eighty-six Irish members may be kept in order in
+Parliament. They forget that the Irish people are behind
+the Irish members. How is Ireland to be governed on
+Parliamentary principles if the voice of her representatives
+is to be forcibly silenced or disregarded? Could even
+Yorkshire or Lancashire be governed permanently in that
+way? Let it be observed that we have now reached this
+pass, namely, that the opponents of Home Rule are opposed
+to the Irish members, not on any particular form of self-government
+for Ireland, but on any form; in other words,
+<!-- Page 127 --><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" />they resist the all but unanimous demand of Ireland for
+what &quot;Unionists&quot; of all parties declared a year ago to be
+a reasonable demand. No candidate at the last election
+ventured to ask the suffrages of any constituency as &quot;a supporter
+of things as they are.&quot; Yet that is practically the
+attitude now assumed by the Ministerial party, both Conservatives
+and Liberal Unionists. It is an attitude of which
+the country is getting weary, as the bye-elections have
+shown. But the &quot;Unionists,&quot; it must be admitted, are in
+a sore dilemma. Their strength, such as it is, lies in doing
+nothing for the reform of Irish Government. Their bond
+of union consists of nothing else but opposition to Mr.
+Gladstone's policy. They dare not attempt to formulate
+any policy of their own, knowing well that they would go
+to pieces in the process. Their hope and speculation is
+that something may happen to remove Mr. Gladstone from
+the political arena before the next dissolution. But, after
+all, Mr. Gladstone did not create the Irish difficulty. It
+preceded him and will survive him, unless it is settled to
+the satisfaction of the Irish people before his departure.
+And the difficulty of the final settlement will increase with
+every year of delay. Nor will the difficulty be confined
+to Ireland. The Irish question is already reacting upon
+kindred, though not identical, problems in England and
+Scotland, and the longer it is kept open, so much the worse
+will it be for what are generally regarded as Conservative
+interests. It is not the Moderate Liberals or Conservatives
+who are gaining ground by the prolongation of the controversy,
+and the disappearance of Mr. Gladstone from the
+scene would have the effect of removing from the forces of
+extreme Radicalism a conservative influence, which his
+political opponents will discover when it is too late to
+restore it. Their regret will then be as unavailing as the
+lament of William of Deloraine over his fallen foe&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;I'd give the lands of Deloraine<br /></span>
+<span>Dark Musgrave were alive again.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 128 --><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" />The Irish landlords have already begun to realize the
+mistake they made when they rejected Mr. Gladstone's
+policy of Home Rule and Land Purchase. It is the old
+story of the Sibyl's books. No British Government will
+ever again offer such terms to the Irish landlords as they
+refused to accept from Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand,
+Home Rule is inevitable. Can any reflective person really
+suppose that the democracy of Great Britain will consent
+to refuse to share with the Irish people the boon of self-government
+which will be offered to themselves next year?
+Any attempt to exclude the Irish from the benefits of such a
+scheme, after all the promises of the last general election,
+would almost certainly wreck the government; for constituencies
+have ways and means of impressing their wills on
+their representatives in Parliament even without a dissolution.
+If, on the other hand, Ireland should be included in a general
+scheme of local Government, the question of who shall
+control the police will arise. In Great Britain the police,
+of course, will be under local control. To refuse this to
+Ireland would be to offer a boon with a stigma attached
+to it. The Irish members agreed to let the control of the
+constabulary remain, under Mr. Gladstone's scheme, for some
+years in the hands of the British Government; but they would
+not agree to this while Dublin Castle ruled the country.
+Moreover, the formidable difficulty suggested by Lord Salisbury
+and Mr. John Stuart Mill (see pp. 115, 116) would appear
+the moment men began seriously to consider the question of
+local government for Ireland. The government of Dublin
+Castle would have to go, but something would have to be put
+in its place; and when that point has been reached it will
+probably be seen that nothing much better or safer can be
+found than some plan on the main lines of Mr. Gladstone's
+Bill.<!-- Page 129 --><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15" /><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Speech at Manchester, May 7, 1886, by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, who
+was a member of the Cabinet to which Mr. Chamberlain's scheme was
+submitted.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16" /><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Hansard</i>, vol. 220, pp. 708, 715.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17" /><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Considerations on Representative Government</i>, p. 281.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18" /><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Dicey's <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>, pp. 25-31, and
+Letter in <i>Spectator</i> of September 17th, 1887.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19" /><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> From the beginning of 1880 till now there have been six Viceroys
+and ten Chief Secretaries in Dublin&mdash;namely, Duke of Marlborough,
+Earls Cowper and Spencer, Earls of Carnarvon and Aberdeen, and the
+Marquis of Londonderry; Mr. Lowther, Mr. Forster, Lord F. Cavendish,
+Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Campbell Bannerman, Sir W. Hart Dyke,
+Mr. W.H. Smith, Mr. J. Morley, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, and Mr. A.
+Balfour. A fine example, truly, of stable government and continuous
+policy!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20" /><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Creasy's <i>Imperial and Colonial Constitutions of the Britannic
+Empire,</i> p. 155.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21" /><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> May's <i>Const. Hist.</i>, i. 313.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22" /><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Blackstone's <i>Commentaries</i>, by Stephen, ii. 491, 492, 497, 507.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23" /><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> We need not go far afield for illustrations. A few samples will
+suffice. &quot;It was natural,&quot; says Mill (<i>Rep. Gov.</i>, p. 311), &quot;to feel
+strong doubts before trial had been made how such a provision [as the
+Supreme Court of the United States] would work; whether the tribunal
+would have the courage to exercise its constitutional power; if it did,
+whether it would exercise it wisely, and whether the Government would
+consent peaceably to its decision. The discussions on the American
+Constitution, before its final adoption, give evidence that these natural
+apprehensions were strongly felt; but they are now entirely quieted,
+since, during the two generations and more which have subsequently
+elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify them, though there have at
+times been disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became the
+badges of parties respecting the limits of the authority of the Federal
+and State Governments.&quot; The Austrian opponents of Home Rule in
+Hungary predicted that it would lead straight to separation. The
+opponents of the Canadian Constitution prophesied that Canada would
+in a few years be annexed to the United States; and Home Rule in
+Australia was believed by able statesmen to involve independence at an
+early date. Mr. Dicey himself tells us &quot;that the wisest thinkers of the
+eighteenth century (including Burke) held that the independence of the
+American Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain. There
+were apparently solid reasons for this belief: experience has proved
+it to be without foundation.&quot; The various changes in our own Constitution,
+and even in our Criminal Code, were believed by &quot;men of light
+and leading&quot; at the time to portend national ruin. All the judges in
+the land, all the bankers, and the professions generally, petitioned
+against alteration in the law which sent children of ten to the gallows
+for the theft of a pocket-handkerchief. The great Lord Ellenborough
+declared in the House of Lords that &quot;the learned judges were unanimously
+agreed&quot; that any mitigation in that law would imperil &quot;the
+public security.&quot; &quot;My Lords,&quot; he exclaimed, &quot;if we suffer this Bill
+to pass we shall not know where we stand; we shall not know whether
+we are on our heads or on our feet.&quot; Mr. Perceval, when leader of the
+House of Commons in 1807, declared that &quot;he could not conceive a
+time or change of circumstances which would render further concessions
+to the Catholics consistent with the safety of the State.&quot; (<i>Croker
+Papers</i>, i. 12.) Croker was a very astute man; but here is his forecast
+of the Reform Act of 1832: &quot;No kings, no lords, no inequalities in the
+social system; all will be levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers
+and small farmers: this, perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly
+by confiscations and persecutions.&quot; &quot;There can be no longer any
+doubt that the Reform Bill is a stepping-stone in England to a Republic,
+and in Ireland to separation.&quot; Croker met the Queen in 1832, considered
+her very good-looking, but thought it not unlikely that &quot;she
+may live to be plain Miss Guelph.&quot; Even Sir Robert Peel wrote: &quot;If
+I am to be believed, I foresee revolution as the consequence of this
+Bill;&quot; and he &quot;felt that it had ceased to be an object of ambition to
+any man of equable and consistent mind to enter into the service of the
+Crown.&quot; And as late as 1839, so robust a character as Sir James
+Graham thought the world was coming to an end because the young
+Queen gave her confidence to a Whig Minister. &quot;I begin to share all
+your apprehensions and forebodings,&quot; he writes to Croker, &quot;with regard
+to the probable issue of the present struggle. The Crown in alliance
+with Democracy baffles every calculation on the balance of power in our
+mixed form of Government. Aristocracy and Church cannot contend
+against Queen and people mixed; they must yield in the first instance,
+when the Crown, unprotected, will meet its fate, and the accustomed
+round of anarchy and despotism will run its course.&quot; And he prays
+that he may &quot;lie cold before that dreadful day.&quot; (<i>Ibid.</i>, ii. 113, 140,
+176, 181, 356.) Free Trade created a similar panic. &quot;Good God!&quot;
+Croker exclaimed, &quot;what a chaos of anarchy and misery do I foresee
+in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing
+an <i>average</i> duty of 8<i>s.</i> into a <i>fixed</i> duty of 8<i>s.</i>, the fact being that the
+fixed duty means <i>no duty at all</i>; and <i>no duty at all</i> will be the overthrow
+of the existing social and political system of our country!&quot; (<i>Ibid.</i>,
+iii. 13.) And what have become of Mr. Lowe's gloomy vaticinations
+as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate Reform Bill of
+1866, followed as it was by a much more democratic measure?</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_LAWYERS_OBJECTIONS_TO" id="A_LAWYERS_OBJECTIONS_TO" />A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO
+HOME RULE.</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY E.L. GODKIN.</p>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Dicey in his <i>Case against Home Rule</i> does me the
+honour to refer to an article which I wrote a year ago
+on &quot;American Home Rule,&quot;<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24" /><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> expressing in one place
+&quot;disagreement in the general conclusion to which the
+article is intended to lead,&quot; and in another &quot;inability to
+follow the inference&quot; which he supposes me to draw
+&quot;against all attempts to enforce an unpopular law.&quot; Now
+the object of that article, I may be permitted to explain,
+was twofold. I desired, in the first place, to combat the
+notion which, it seemed to me, if I might judge from a great
+many of the speeches and articles on the Irish question,
+was widely diffused even among thoughtful Englishmen that
+the manner in which the Irish have expressed their discontent&mdash;that
+is, through outrage and disorder&mdash;was indicative
+of incapacity for self-government, and even imposed
+upon the Englishmen the duty, in the interest of morality
+(I think it was the <i>Spectator</i> who took this view), and as
+a disciplinary measure, of refusing to such a people the
+privilege of managing their own affairs. I tried to show by
+several noted examples occurring in this country that
+prolonged displays of lawlessness, and violence, and even
+<!-- Page 130 --><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />cruelty, such as the anti-rent movement in the State of New
+York, the Ku-Klux outrages in the South, and the persecution
+of Miss Prudence Crandall in Connecticut, were not inconsistent
+with the possession of marked political capacity.
+I suggested that it was hardly adult politics to take such
+things into consideration in passing on the expediency of
+conceding local self-government to a subject community.
+There was to me something almost childish in the arguments
+drawn from Irish lawlessness in the discussion of Home
+Rule, and in the moral importance attached by some
+Englishmen to the refusal to such wicked men as the Irish
+of the things they most desire. It is only in kindergartens,
+I said, that rulers are able to do equal and exact justice,
+and see that the naughty are brought to grief and the good
+made comfortable. Statesmen occupy themselves with the
+more serious business of curing discontent. They concern
+themselves but little, if at all, with the question whether it
+might not be manifested by less objectionable methods.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish methods of manifesting it, I endeavoured to
+show, were not exceptional, and did not prove either
+inability to make laws or unwillingness to obey them.
+I illustrated this by examples drawn from the United States.
+I might, had I had more time and space, have made these
+examples still more numerous and striking. I might have
+given very good reasons for believing that, were Ireland
+a state in the American Union, there probably would not
+have been any rent paid in the island within the last fifty
+years, and that the armed resistance of the tenants would
+have had the open or secret sympathy of the great bulk of
+the American people. In truth, the importance of Irish
+crime as a political symptom is grossly exaggerated by
+English writers. I venture to assert that more murders
+unconnected with robbery are committed in the State of
+Kentucky in one year than in Ireland in ten, and the
+condition of some other Southern and Western States is
+<!-- Page 131 --><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />nearly as bad. All good Americans lament this and are
+ashamed of it, but it never enters into the heads of even the
+most lugubrious American moralists that Kentucky or any
+other State should be disfranchised and remanded to the
+condition of a Territory, because the offences against the
+person committed in it are so numerous, and the punishment
+of them, owing to popular sympathy or apathy, so difficult.</p>
+
+<p>There are a great many Englishmen who think that
+when they show that Grattan's Parliament was a venal and
+somewhat disorderly body, which occasionally indulged in
+mixed metaphor, they have proved the impossibility of giving
+Ireland a Parliament now. But then, as they are obliged
+to admit, Walpole's Parliament was very corrupt, and no
+one would say that for that reason it would have been wise
+to suspend constitutional government in England in the
+eighteenth century. It is only through the pernicious habit
+of thinking of Irishmen as exceptions to all political rules
+that Grattan's Parliament is considered likely, had it lasted,
+to have come down to our time unreformed and unimproved.</p>
+
+<p>Those have misunderstood me who suppose that I
+draw from the success of the anti-rent movement in this
+State between 1839 and 1846 an inference against &quot;all
+attempts to enforce an unpopular law.&quot; Such was not by
+any means my object. What I sought to show by the
+history of this movement was that there was nothing peculiar
+or inexplicable in the hostility to rent-paying in Ireland.
+The rights of the New York landlords were as good in law
+and morals as the rights of the Irish landlords, and their
+mode of asserting them far superior. Moreover, those who
+resisted them were not men of a different race, religion, or
+nationality, and had, as Mr. Dicey says, &quot;none of the
+excuses that can be urged in extenuation of half-starved
+tenants.&quot; Their mode of setting the law at defiance was
+exactly similar to that adopted by the Irish, and it was
+<!-- Page 132 --><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" />persisted in for a period of ten years, or until they had
+secured a substantial victory. The history of the anti-rent
+agitation in New York also illustrates strikingly, as it seems
+to me, the perspicacity of a remark made, in substance, long
+ago by Mr. Disraeli, which, in my eyes at least, threw a great
+deal of light on the Irish problem, namely, that Ireland was
+suffering from suppressed revolution. As Mr. Dicey says,
+&quot;The crises called revolutions are the ultimate and desperate
+cures for the fundamental disorganization of society.
+The issue of a revolutionary struggle shows what is the
+true sovereign power in the revolutionized state. So
+strong is the interest of mankind, at least in any European
+country, in favour of some sort of settled rule, that civil
+disturbance will, if left to itself, in general end in the
+supremacy of some power which by securing the safety at
+last gains the attachment of the people. The Reign of
+Terror begets the Empire; even wars of religion at last
+produce peace, albeit peace may be nothing better than the
+iron uniformity of despotism. Could Ireland have been
+left for any lengthened period to herself, some form of rule
+adapted to the needs of the country would in all probability
+have been established. Whether Protestants or Catholics
+would have been the predominant element in the State;
+whether the landlords would have held their own, or whether
+the English system of tenure would long ago have made
+way for one more in conformity with native traditions;
+whether hostile classes and races would at last have
+established some <i>modus vivendi</i> favourable to individual
+freedom, or whether despotism under some of its various
+forms would have been sanctioned by the acquiescence of
+its subjects, are matters of uncertain speculation. A conclusion
+which, though speculative, is far less uncertain, is
+that Ireland, if left absolutely to herself, would have arrived,
+like every other country, at some lasting settlement of her
+difficulties&quot; (p. 87). That is to say, that in Ireland as in<!-- Page 133 --><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" />
+New York the attempt to enforce unpopular land laws
+would have been abandoned, had local self-government
+existed. For &quot;revolution&quot; is, after all, only a fine name
+for the failure or refusal of the rulers of a country to persist
+in executing laws which the bulk of the population find
+obnoxious. When the popular hostility to the law is strong
+enough to make its execution impossible, as it was in New
+York in the rent affair, it is accepted as the respectable
+solution of a very troublesome problem. When, as in
+Ireland, it is strong enough to produce turbulence and
+disorder, but not strong enough to tire out and overcome
+the authorities, it simply ruins the political manners of the
+people. If the Irish landlords had had from the beginning
+to face the tenants single-handed and either hold them
+down by superior physical force, or come to terms with
+them as the New York landlords had to do, conditions of
+peace and good will would have assuredly been discovered
+long ago. The land question, in other words, would have
+been adjusted in accordance with &quot;Irish ideas,&quot; that is,
+in some way satisfactory to the tenants. The very memory
+of the conflict would probably by this time have died out,
+and the two classes would be living in harmony on the
+common soil. If in New York, on the other hand, the
+Van Rensselaers and Livingstons had been able to secure
+the aid of martial law and of the Federal troops in asserting
+their claims, and in preventing local opinion having any
+influence whatever on the settlement of the dispute, there
+can be no doubt that a large portion of this State would
+to-day be as poor and as savage, and apparently as little
+fitted for the serious business of government, as the greater
+part of Ireland is.</p>
+
+<p>There is, in truth, no reason to doubt that the idea of
+property in land, thoroughly accepted though it be in the
+United States, is nevertheless held under the same limitations
+as in the rest of the world. No matter what the law
+<!-- Page 134 --><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />may say in any country, in no country is the right of the
+landed proprietor in his acres as absolute as his right in his
+movables. A man may own as much land as he can purchase,
+and may assert his ownership in its most absolute form
+against one, two, or three occupants, but the minute he began
+to assert it against a large number of occupants, that is, to
+act as if his rights were such that he had only to buy a whole
+state or a whole island in order to be able to evict the entire
+population, he would find in America, as he finds in Ireland,
+that he cannot have the same title to land as to personal property.
+He would, for instance, if he tried to oust the people of
+a whole district or of a village from their homes on any plea
+of possession, or of a contract, find that he was going too
+far, and that no matter what the judges might say, or the
+sheriff might try to do for him, his legal position was worth
+very little to him. Consequently a large landlord in America,
+if he were lucky enough to get tenants at all, would be very
+chary indeed about quarrelling with more than one of them
+at a time. The tenants would no more submit to wholesale
+ejectment than the farmers in Missouri would submit some
+years ago to a tax levy on their property to pay county bonds
+given in aid of a railroad. The goods of some of them were
+seized, but a large body of them attended the sale armed
+with rifles, having previously issued a notice that the place
+would be very &quot;unhealthy&quot; for outside bidders.</p>
+
+<p>The bearing of this condition of American opinion on
+the Irish question will be plainer if I remind English readers
+that the Irish in the United States numbered in 1880 nearly
+2,000,000, and that the number of persons of Irish parentage
+is probably between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000. In short
+there are, as well as one can judge, more Irish nationalists
+in the United States than in Ireland. The Irish-Americans
+are to-day the only large and prosperous Irish community in
+the world. The children of the Irish born in the United
+States or brought there in their infancy are just as Irish in
+<!-- Page 135 --><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />their politics as those who have grown up at home. Patrick
+Ford, for instance, the editor of the <i>Irish World</i>, who
+is such a shape of dread to some Englishmen, came to
+America in childhood, and has no personal knowledge nor
+recollection of Irish wrongs. Of the part this large Irish
+community plays in stimulating agitation&mdash;both agrarian and
+political&mdash;at home I need not speak; Englishmen are very
+familiar with it, and are very indignant over it. The Irish-Americans
+not only send over a great deal of American
+money to their friends at home, but they send over American
+ideas, and foremost among them American hostility to large
+landowners, and American belief in Home Rule. Now, to
+me, one of the most curious things in the English state of
+mind about the Irish problem is the apparent expectation
+that this Irish-American interference is transient, and will
+probably soon die out. It is quite true, as Englishmen are
+constantly told, that &quot;the best Americans,&quot; that is, the
+literary people and the commercial magnates, whom travelling
+Englishmen see on the Atlantic coast, dislike the Irish
+anti-English agitation. But it is also true that the disapproval
+of the &quot;best Americans&quot; is not of the smallest
+practical consequence, particularly as it is largely due to
+complete indifference to, and ignorance of, the whole subject.
+There are probably not a dozen of them who would venture
+to express their disapproval publicly. The mass of the
+population, particularly in the West, sympathize, though
+half laughingly, with the efforts of the transplanted Irish to
+&quot;twist the British lion's tail,&quot; and all the politicians either
+sympathize with them, or pretend to do so. I am not now
+expressing any opinion as to whether this state of things is
+good or bad. What I wish to point out is that this Irish-American
+influence on Irish affairs is very powerful, and
+may, for all practical purposes, be considered permanent,
+and must be taken into account as a constant element in
+the Irish problem. I will indeed venture on the assertion
+<!-- Page 136 --><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" />that it is the appearance of the Irish-Americans on the
+scene which has given the Irish question its present
+seriousness. The attempts of the Irish at physical resistance
+to English authority have been steadily diminishing in
+gravity during the present century&mdash;witness the descent
+from the rebellion of 1798 to Smith O'Brien's rebellion and
+the Fenian rising of 1867. On the other hand the power
+of the Irish to act as a disturbing agency in English politics
+has greatly increased, and the reason is that the stream of
+Irish discontent is fed by thousands of rills from the United
+States. Every emigrant's letter, every Irish-American
+newspaper, every returned emigrant with money in his
+pocket and a good coat on his back, helps to swell it,
+and there is not the slightest sign, that I can see, of its
+drying up.</p>
+
+<p>Where Mr. Dicey is most formidable to the Home
+Rulers, as it seems to me, is in his chapter on &quot;Home Rule
+as Federalism,&quot; which is the form in which the Irish ask
+for it. He attacks this in two ways. One is by maintaining
+that the necessary conditions for a federal union between
+Great Britain and Ireland do not exist. This disposes at
+one blow of all the experience derived from the working of
+the foreign federations, on which the advocates of Home
+Rule have relied a good deal. The other is what I may
+call predictions that the federation even if set up would not
+work. Either the state of facts on which all other federations
+have been built does not exist in Ireland, or if it now
+exists, will not, owing to the peculiarities of Irish character,
+continue to exist. In other words, the federation will
+either fail at the outset, or fail in the long run. No one
+can admire more than I do the force and ingenuity and
+wealth of illustration with which Mr. Dicey supports this
+thesis. But unfortunately the arguments by which he
+assails Irish federalism might be, or might have been, used
+against all federations whatever. They might have been
+<!-- Page 137 --><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" />used, as I shall try to show, against the most successful of
+them all, the Government of the United States. I was reminded,
+while reading Mr. Dicey's account of the impossibility
+of an Anglo-Irish federation, of Mr. Madison's
+rehearsal in the <i>Federalist</i> (No. 38) of the objections made
+to the Federal Constitution after the Convention had submitted
+it to the States. These objections covered every
+feature in it but one; and that, the mode of electing the
+President, curiously enough, is the only one which can be
+said to have utterly failed. A more impressive example
+of the danger of <i>&agrave; priori</i> attacks on any political arrangement,
+history does not contain. Mr. Madison says:
+&quot;This one tells me that the proposed Constitution ought
+to be rejected, because it is not a confederation of the
+states, but a government over individuals. Another admits
+that it ought to be a government over individuals to a
+certain extent, but by no means to the extent proposed.
+A third does not object to the government over individuals,
+or to the extent proposed, but to the want of a bill of rights.
+A fourth concurs in the absolute necessity of a bill of rights,
+but contends that it ought to be declaratory not of the
+personal rights of individuals, but of the rights reserved
+to the states in their political capacity. A fifth is of opinion
+that a bill of rights of any sort would be superfluous and
+misplaced, and that the plan would be unexceptionable but
+for the fatal power of regulating the times and places of
+election. An objector in a large state exclaims loudly
+against the unreasonable equality of representation in the
+Senate. An objector in a small state is equally loud against
+the dangerous inequality in the House of Representatives.
+From one quarter we are alarmed with the amazing expense,
+from the number of persons who are to administer the new
+government. From another quarter, and sometimes from
+the same quarter, on another occasion the cry is that the
+Congress will be but the shadow of a representation, and
+<!-- Page 138 --><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" />that the government would be far less objectionable if the
+number and the expense were doubled. A patriot in a
+state that does not import or export discerns insuperable
+objections against the power of direct taxation. The
+patriotic adversary in a state of great exports and imports
+is not less dissatisfied that the whole burden of taxes may
+be thrown on consumption. This politician discovers in
+the constitution a direct and irresistible tendency to monarchy.
+That is equally sure it will end in aristocracy.
+Another is puzzled to say which of these shapes it will
+ultimately assume, but sees clearly it must be one or other
+of them. Whilst a fourth is not wanting, who with no less
+confidence affirms that the Constitution is so far from
+having a bias towards either of these dangers, that the
+weight on that side will not be sufficient to keep it upright
+and firm against the opposite propensities. With another
+class of adversaries to the Constitution, the language is,
+that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments
+are intermixed in such a manner as to contradict all the
+ideas of regular government and all the requisite precautions
+in favour of liberty. Whilst this objection circulates
+in vague and general expressions, there are not a few who
+lend their sanction to it. Let each one come forward with
+his particular explanation, and scarcely any two are exactly
+agreed on the subject. In the eyes of one the junction
+of the Senate with the President in the responsible function
+of appointing to offices, instead of vesting this power in the
+executive alone, is the vicious part of the organization. To
+another the exclusion of the House of Representatives,
+whose numbers alone could be a due security against corruption
+and partiality in the exercise of such a power, is
+equally obnoxious. With a third the admission of the
+President into any share of a power which must ever be
+a dangerous engine in the hands of the executive magistrate
+is an unpardonable violation of the maxims of republican
+<!-- Page 139 --><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" />jealousy. No part of the arrangement, according to some,
+is more inadmissible than the trial of impeachments by the
+Senate, which is alternately a member both of the legislative
+and executive departments, when this power so evidently
+belonged to the judiciary department. We concur fully,
+reply others, in the objection to this part of the plan, but
+we can never agree that a reference of impeachments to the
+judiciary authority would be an amendment of the error;
+our principal dislike to the organization arises from the
+extensive powers already lodged in that department. Even
+among the zealous patrons of a council of state, the most
+irreconcilable variance is discovered concerning the mode
+in which it ought to be constituted.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Madison's challenge to the opponents of the American
+Constitution to agree on some plan of their own, and his
+humorous suggestion that if the American people had to
+wait for some such agreement to be reached they would
+go for a long time without a government, are curiously
+applicable to the opponents of Irish Home Rule. They
+are very fertile in reasons for thinking that neither the
+Gladstone plan nor any other plan can succeed, but no
+two of them, so far as I know, have yet hit upon any other
+mode of pacifying Ireland, except the use of force for a
+certain period to maintain order, and oddly enough, even
+when they agree on this remedy, they are apt to disagree
+about the length of time during which it should be tried.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dicey, in conceding the success of the American
+Constitution, seems to me unmindful, if I may use the
+expression, of the judgments he would probably have passed
+on it had it been submitted to him at the outset were he
+in the frame of mind to which a prolonged study of the
+Irish problem has now brought him. The Supreme Court,
+for instance, which he now recognizes as an essential
+feature of the Federal Constitution, and the absence of
+which in the Gladstonian arrangement he treats as a fatal
+<!-- Page 140 --><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" />defect, would have undoubtedly appeared to him a preposterous
+contrivance. It would have seemed to him impossible
+that a legislature like Congress, with the traditions
+of parliamentary omnipotence still strong in the minds of
+the members, would ever submit to have its acts nullified
+by a board composed of half a dozen elderly lawyers. Nor
+would he have treated as any more reasonable the expectation
+that the State tribunals, which had existed in each
+colony from its foundation, and had earned the respect and
+confidence of the people, would quietly submit to have their
+jurisdiction curtailed, their decisions overruled, causes torn
+from their calendar, and prisoners taken out of their custody
+by new courts of semi-foreign origin, which the State neither
+paid nor controlled. He would, too, very probably have
+been most incredulous about the prospect of the growth of
+loyalty on the part of New-Yorkers and Massachusetts men
+to a new-fangled government, which was to make itself only
+slightly felt in their daily lives, and was to sit a fortnight
+away in an improvised village in the midst of a Virginian
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>He would, too, have ridiculed the notion that State
+legislatures would refrain, in obedience to the Constitution,
+from passing any law which local sentiment strongly favoured
+or local convenience plainly demanded, such as a law impairing
+the obligation of obnoxious contracts, or levying
+duties on imports or exports. The possibility that the State
+militia could ever be got to obey federal officers, or form an
+efficient part of a federal army, he would have scouted. On
+the feebleness of the front which federation would present
+to a foreign enemy he would have dwelt with emphasis,
+and would have pointed with confidence to the probability
+that in the event of a war some of the states would make
+terms with him or secretly favour his designs. National
+allegiance and local allegiance would divide and perplex
+the feelings of loyal citizens. Unless the national sentiment
+<!-- Page 141 --><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" />predominated&mdash;and it could not predominate without having
+had time to grow&mdash;the federation would go to pieces at any
+of those crises when the interests or wishes of any of the
+states conflicted with the interests or wishes of the Union.
+That the national sentiment could grow at all rapidly, considering
+the maturity of the communities which composed
+the Union and the differences of origin, creed, and manners
+which separated them, no calm observer of human nature
+would believe for one moment.</p>
+
+<p>The American Constitution is flecked throughout with
+those flaws which a lawyer delights to discover and point
+out, and which the framers of a federal contract can only
+excuse by maintaining that they are inevitable. It is true
+that Mr. Dicey does not even now acknowledge the success
+of the American Constitution to be complete. He points
+out that if the &quot;example either of America or of Switzerland
+is to teach us anything worth knowing, the history of
+these countries must be read as a whole. It will then be
+seen that the two most successful confederacies in the
+world have been kept together only by the decisive triumph
+through force of arms of the central power over real or
+alleged State rights&quot; (p. 192).</p>
+
+<p>It is odd that such objectors do not see that the decisive
+triumph of the central power in the late civil war in
+America was, in reality, a striking proof of the success of the
+federation. The armies which General Grant commanded,
+and the enormous resources in money and devotion from
+which he was able to draw, were the product of the Federal
+Union and of nothing else. One of the greatest arguments
+its founders used in its favour was that if once established
+it would supply overwhelming force for the suppression of
+any attempt to break it up. They did not aim at setting
+up a government which neither foreign malice nor domestic
+treason, would ever assail, for they knew that this was
+something beyond the reach of human endeavour. They
+<!-- Page 142 --><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" />tried to set up one which, if attacked either from within or
+from without, would make a successful resistance, and we now
+know that they accomplished their object. Somewhat the
+same answer may be made to the objection, which is supposed
+to have fatal applicability to the case of Ireland, that
+among the &quot;special faults of federalism&quot; is that it does not
+provide &quot;sufficient protection of the legal rights of unpopular
+minorities,&quot; and that &quot;the moral of it all is that the
+[American] Federal Government is not able to protect the
+rights of individuals against strong local sentiment&quot; (p. 194
+of Mr. Dicey's book). He says, moreover, if I understand
+the argument rightly, that it was bound to protect free speech
+in the States because &quot;there is not and never was a word in
+the Articles of the Constitution forbidding American citizens
+to criticize the institutions of the State.&quot; It would seem from
+this as if Mr. Dicey were under the impression that in
+America the citizen of a State has a right to do in his State
+whatever he is not forbidden to do by the Federal Constitution,
+and in doing it has a right to federal protection.
+But the Federal Government can only do what the Constitution
+expressly authorizes it to do, and the Constitution
+does not authorize it to protect a citizen in criticizing the
+institutions of his own State. This arrangement, too, is
+just as good federalism as the committal of free speech to
+federal guardianship would have been. The goodness or
+badness of the federal system is in no way involved in the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>The question to what extent a minority shall rely on the
+federation for protection, and to what extent on its own
+State, is a matter settled by the contract which has
+created the federation. The settlement of this is, in fact,
+the great object of a Constitution. Until it is settled
+somehow, either by writing or by understanding, there is,
+and can be, no federation. If I, as a citizen of the State
+of New York, could call on the United States Government
+<!-- Page 143 --><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" />to protect me under all circumstances and against all
+wrongs, it would show that I was not living under a
+federation at all, but under a centralized republic. The
+reason why I have to rely on the United States for protection
+against some things and not against others is that it was so
+stipulated when the State of New York entered the Union.
+There is nothing in the nature of the federal system to
+prevent the United States Government from protecting my
+freedom of speech. Nor is there anything in the federal
+system which forbids its protecting me against the establishment
+of a State Church, which, as a matter of fact, it does
+not do. Nor is there anything in the federal system compelling
+the Government to protect me against the establishment
+of an order of nobility, which, as a matter of fact, it does
+do. The reason why it does not do one of these things
+and does the other is simply and solely that it was so
+stipulated, after much discussion, in the contract. Most
+thinking men are to-day of opinion that the United States
+ought to have exclusive jurisdiction of marriage, so that the
+law of marriage might be uniform in all parts of the Union.
+The reason why they do not possess such jurisdiction is not
+that Congress is not fully competent to pass such a law or
+the federal courts to execute it, but that no such jurisdiction
+is conferred by the Constitution. In fact it seems to me
+just as reasonable to cite the ease of divorce in various
+States of the Union as a defect in the federal system, as to
+cite the oppression of local minorities in matters not placed
+under federal authority by the organic law.</p>
+
+<p>If one may judge from a great deal of writing on American
+matters which one sees in English journals and the demands
+for federal interference in America in State affairs which
+they constantly make, the greatest difficulty Irish Home
+Rule has to contend with is the difficulty which men bred
+in a united monarchy and under an omnipotent Parliament
+experience in grasping what I may call the federal idea.<!-- Page 144 --><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" />
+The influence of association on their minds is so strong
+that they can hardly conceive of a central power, worthy of
+the name of a government, standing by and witnessing
+disorders or failures of justice in any place within its
+borders, without stepping in to set matters right, no matter
+what the Constitution may say. They remind me often of
+an old verger in Westminster Abbey during the American
+civil war who told me that &quot;he always knew a government
+without a head couldn't last.&quot; Permanence and
+peace were in his mind inseparably linked with kingship.
+That even Mr. Dicey has not been able to escape this
+influence appears frequently in his discussions of federalism.
+He, of course, thoroughly understands the federal system
+as a jurist, but when he comes to discuss it as a politician he
+has evidently some difficulty in seeing how a government
+with a power to enforce <i>any</i> commands can be restrained
+by contract from enforcing <i>all</i> commands which may seem
+to be expedient or salutary. Consequently the cool way
+in which the Federal Government here looks on at local
+disorders seems to him a sign, not of the fidelity of the
+President and Congress to the federal pact, but of some
+inherent weakness in the federal system.</p>
+
+<p>The true way to judge the federal system, however, either
+in the United States or elsewhere, is by observing the
+manner in which it has performed the duties assigned to
+it by the Constitution. If the Government at Washington
+performs these faithfully, its failure to prevent lawlessness in
+New York or the oppression of minorities in Connecticut
+is of no more consequence than its failure to put down
+brigandage in Macedonia. Possibly it would have been
+better to saddle it with greater responsibility for local peace;
+but the fact is that the framers of the Constitution decided
+not to do so. They did not mean to set up a government
+which would see that every man living under it got his due.
+They could not have got the States to accept such a
+<!-- Page 145 --><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" />government. They meant to set up a government which
+should represent the nation worthily in all its relations with
+foreigners, which should carry on war effectively, protect life
+and property on the high seas, furnish a proper currency,
+put down all resistance to its lawful authority, and secure
+each State against domestic violence on the demand of its
+Legislature.</p>
+
+<p>There is no common form for federal contracts, and no
+rules describing what such a contract must contain in order
+that the Government may be federal and not unitarian.
+There is no hard and fast line which must, under the federal
+system, divide the jurisdiction of the central Government
+from the jurisdiction of each State Government. The way
+in which the power is divided between the two must necessarily
+depend on the traditions, manners, aims, and needs
+of the people of the various localities. The federal system
+is not a system manufactured on a regulation model, which
+can be sent over the world like iron huts or steam launches,
+in detached pieces, to be put together when the scene of
+operation is reached. Therefore I am unable to see the
+force of the argument that, as the conditions under which
+all existing federations were established differ in some
+respects from those under which the proposed federal union
+between England and Ireland would have to be established,
+therefore the success of these confederations, such as it is,
+gives them no value as precedents. A system which might
+have worked very well for the New England States would
+not have worked well for a combination which included
+also the middle and southern States. And the framers
+of the American Constitution were not so simple-minded as
+to inquire, either before beginning their labours or before
+ending them&mdash;as Mr. Dicey would apparently have the
+English and Irish do&mdash;whether this or that style of constitution
+was &quot;the correct thing&quot; in federalism. Assuming
+that the people desired to form a nation as regarded the
+<!-- Page 146 --><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" />world outside, they addressed themselves to the task of
+discovering how much power the various States were willing
+to surrender for this purpose. That was ascertained, as far
+as it could be ascertained, by assembling their delegates
+in convention, and discussing the wishes and fears and
+suggestions of the different localities in a friendly and conciliatory
+spirit. They had no precedents to guide them.
+There had not existed a federal government, either in ancient
+or modern times, whose working afforded an example by
+which the imagination or the understanding of the American
+people was likely to be affected in the smallest degree.
+They, therefore, had to strike out an entirely new path for
+themselves, and they ended by producing an absolutely new
+kind of federation, which was half Unitarian, that is, in some
+respects a union of states, and in others a centralized
+government; and it was provided for a Territory one end of
+which was more than a month's distance from the other.</p>
+
+<p>It is not in its details, therefore, but in the manner of its
+construction, that the American Constitution furnishes anything
+in the way of guidance or suggestion to those who
+are now engaged in trying to find a <i>modus vivendi</i> between
+England and Ireland. The same thing may be said of the
+Swiss Constitution and of the Austro-Hungarian Constitution.
+Both of them contain many anomalies&mdash;that is,
+things that are not set down in the books as among the
+essentials of federalism. But both are adapted to the
+special wants of the people who live under them, and were
+framed in reference to those wants.</p>
+
+<p>The Austro-Hungarian Delegations are another exception
+to the rule. These Delegations undoubtedly control
+the ministry of the Empire, or at all events do in practice
+displace it by their votes. It is made formally responsible
+to them by the Constitution. All that Mr. Dicey can say
+to this is that &quot;the real responsibility of the Ministry to the
+Delegations admits of a good deal of doubt,&quot; and that,
+<!-- Page 147 --><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" />at all events, it is not like the responsibility of Mr.
+Gladstone or Lord Salisbury to the British Parliament.
+This may be true, but the more mysterious or peculiar it
+is the better it illustrates the danger of speaking of any
+particular piece of machinery or of any particular division
+of power as an essential feature of a federal constitution.</p>
+
+<p>We are told by the critics of the Gladstonian scheme
+that federalism is not &quot;a plan for disuniting the parts of a
+united state.&quot; But whether it is or not once more depends
+on circumstances. Federalism, like the British or French
+Constitution, is an arrangement intended to satisfy the people
+who set it up by gratifying some desire or removing some
+cause of discontent. If that discontent be due to unity,
+federalism disunites; if it be due to disunion, federalism
+unites. In the case of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for
+instance, it clearly is a &quot;plan for disuniting the parts of
+a united state.&quot; Austria and Hungary were united in
+the sense in which the opponents of Home Rule use the
+word for many years before 1867, but the union did not
+work, that is, did not produce moral as well as legal
+unity. A constitution was therefore invented which disunites
+the two countries for the purposes of domestic
+legislation, but leaves them united for the purposes of
+foreign relations. This may be a queer arrangement.
+Although it has worked well enough thus far, it may not
+continue to work well, but it does work well now. It
+has succeeded in converting Hungary from a discontented
+and rebellious province and a source of great weakness to
+Austria into a loyal and satisfied portion of the Empire. In
+other words, it has accomplished its purpose. It was not
+intended to furnish a symmetrical piece of federalism. It
+was intended to conciliate the Hungarian people. When
+therefore the professional federal architects make their tour
+of inspection and point out to the Home Ruler what
+flagrant departures from the correct federal model the<!-- Page 148 --><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" />
+Austro-Hungarian Constitution contains, how improbable
+it is that so enormous a structure can endure, and how,
+after all, the Hungarians have not got rid of the Emperor,
+who commands the army and represents the brute force
+of the old <i>r&eacute;gime</i>, I do not think he need feel greatly
+concerned. This may be all true, and yet the Austro-Hungarian
+federalism is a valuable thing. It has proved
+that the federal remedy is good for more than one disease,
+that it can cure both too much unity and too little. The
+truth is that there are only two essentials of a federal
+government. One is an agreement between the various
+communities who are to live under it as to the manner in
+which the power is to be divided between the general and
+local governments; the other is an honest desire on the
+part of all concerned to make it succeed. As a general
+rule, whatever the parties agree on and desire to make work
+is likely to work, just as a Unitarian government is sure
+to succeed if the people who live under it determine that
+it shall succeed. If a federal plan be settled in the only
+right way, by amicable and mutually respectful discussion
+between representative men, all the more serious obstacles
+are certain to be revealed and removed. Those which are
+not brought to light by such discussions are pretty sure
+to be comparatively trifling, and to disappear before the
+general success of arrangement. But by a &quot;mutually
+respectful discussion&quot; I mean discussion in which good
+faith and intelligence of all concerned are acknowledged on
+both sides.</p>
+
+<p>In what I have said by way of criticism of a book which
+may be taken as a particularly full exposition of the legal
+criticism that may be levelled at Mr. Gladstone's scheme,
+I have not touched on the arguments against Home Rule
+which Mr. Dicey draws from the amount of disturbance it
+would cause in English political habits and arrangements.
+I freely admit the weight of these arguments. The task of
+<!-- Page 149 --><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" />any English statesman who gives Home Rule to Ireland
+in the only way in which it can be given&mdash;with the assent
+of the British people&mdash;will be a very arduous one. But
+this portion of Mr. Dicey's book, producing, as it does, the
+distinctively English objections to Home rule, is to me
+much the most instructive, because it shows the difficulty
+there would be in creating the state of mind in England
+about any federal relation to Ireland which would be
+necessary to make it succeed. I do not think it an exaggeration
+to say that two-thirds of the English objections to
+Home Rule as federalism are unconscious expressions of distrust
+of Irish sincerity or intelligence thrown into the form of
+prophecy, and prophets, as we all know, cannot be refuted.
+For instance, &quot;the changes necessitated by federalism would
+all tend to weaken the power of Great Britain&quot; (Dicey, p.
+173). The question of the command of the army could not
+be arranged; the Irish army could not be depended on by
+the Crown (p. 174); the central Government would be feeble
+against foreign aggression, and the Irish Parliament would
+give aid to a foreign enemy (pp. 176-7). Federalism would
+aggravate or increase instead of diminishing the actual Irish
+disloyalty to the Crown (pp. 179-80); the Irish expectations
+of material prosperity from Home Rule are baseless or
+grossly exaggerated (p. 182); the probability is, it would
+produce increased poverty and hardship; there would be
+frequent quarrels between the two countries over questions
+of nullification, secession, and federal taxation (p. 184);
+neither side would acquiesce in the decision either of the
+Privy Council or of any other tribunal on these questions;
+Home Rulers would be the first to resist these decisions
+(p. 185). Irish federation &quot;would soon generate a demand
+that the whole British Empire should be turned into a Confederacy&quot;
+(p. 188). Finally, as &quot;the one prediction which
+may be made with absolute confidence,&quot; &quot;federalism would
+not generate the goodwill between England and Ireland
+<!-- Page 150 --><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" />which, could it be produced, would be an adequate compensation
+even for the evils and inconveniences of a federal
+system&quot; (p. 191).</p>
+
+<p>Now I do not myself believe these things, but what else
+can any advocate of Home Rule say in answer to them?
+They are in their very nature the utterances of a prophet&mdash;an
+able, acute, and fair-minded prophet, I grant, but still a
+prophet&mdash;and before a prophet the wisest man has to be
+silent, or content himself by answering in prophecy also.
+What makes the sceptical frame of mind in which Mr.
+Dicey approaches the Home Rule question so important is
+not simply that it probably represents that of a very large
+body of educated Englishmen, but that it is one in which
+a federal system cannot be produced. Faith, hope, and
+charity are political as well as social virtues. The minute
+you leave the region of pure despotism and try any form of
+government in which the citizen has in the smallest degree
+to co-operate in the execution of the laws, you have need
+of these virtues at every step. As soon as you give up the
+attempt to rule men by drumhead justice, you have to begin
+to trust in some degree to their intelligence, to their love of
+order, to their self-respect, and to their desire for material
+prosperity, and the nearer you get to what is called free
+government the larger this trust has to be. It has to be
+very large indeed in order to carry on such a government
+as that of Great Britain or of the United States; it has to
+be larger still in order to set up and administer a federal
+government. In such a government the worst that can
+happen is very patent. The opportunities which the best-drawn
+federal constitution offers for outbreaks of what
+Americans call &quot;pure cussedness&quot;&mdash;that is, for the indulgence
+of anarchical tendencies and impulses&mdash;is greater
+than in any other. Therefore, to set it up, or even to
+discuss it with any profit, your faith in the particular variety
+of human nature, which is to live under it, has to be great.<!-- Page 151 --><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />
+No communities can live under it together and make it work
+which do not respect each other. I say respect, I do not
+say love, each other. The machine can be made to go a
+good while without love, and if it goes well it will bring love
+before long; but mutual respect is necessary from the first
+day. This is why Mr. Dicey's book is discouraging. The
+arguments which he addressed to Englishmen would not, I
+think, be formidable but for the mood in which he finds
+Englishmen, and that this mood makes against Home Rule
+there can be little doubt.</p>
+
+<p>I am often asked by Americans why the English do not
+call an Anglo-Irish convention in the American fashion, and
+discuss the Irish question with the Irish, find out exactly
+what they will take to be quiet, and settle with them in a
+rational way. I generally answer that, in the first place, a
+convention is a constitution-making agency with which the
+English public is totally unfamiliar, and that, in the second
+place, Englishmen's temper is too imperial, or rather imperious,
+to make the idea of discussion on equal terms with the
+Irish at all acceptable. They are, in fact, so far from any
+such arrangement that&mdash;preposterous and even funny as it
+seems to the American mind&mdash;to say that an English statesman
+is carrying on any sort of communication with the
+representatives of the Irish people is to bring against him,
+in English eyes, a very damaging accusation. When a man
+like Mr. Matthew Arnold writes to the <i>Times</i> to contend
+that Englishmen should find out what the Irish want solely
+for the purpose of not letting them have it, and a journal
+like the <i>Spectator</i> maintains that the sole excuse for extending
+the suffrage in Ireland, as it has lately been extended in
+England, was that the Irish as a minority would not be
+able to make any effective use of it; and when another
+political philosopher writes a long and very solemn letter
+in which, while conceding that in governing Ireland a
+sympathetic regard for Irish feelings and interests should
+<!-- Page 152 --><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />be displayed, he mentions, as one of the leading facts
+of the situation, that in &quot;the Irish character there is a
+grievous lack of independence, of self-respect, of courage,
+and above all of truthfulness&quot;&mdash;when men of this kind talk
+in this way, it is easy to see that the mental and moral conditions
+necessary to the successful formation of a federal
+union are still far off. No federal government, and no
+government requiring loyalty and fidelity for its successful
+working, was ever set up by, or even discussed between, two
+parties, one of which thought the other so unreasonable that
+it should be carefully denied everything it asked for and as
+unfit for any sort of political co-operation as mendacity,
+cowardice, and slavishness could make it.</p>
+
+<p>Finally let me say that there is nothing in Mr. Dicey's
+book which has surprised me more, considering with what
+singular intellectual integrity he attacks every point, than
+his failure to make any mention or to take any account of
+the large part which time and experience must necessarily
+play in bringing to perfection any political arrangement
+which is made to order, if I may use the expression, no
+matter how carefully it may be drafted. Hume says on this
+point with great wisdom, &quot;To balance the large state or
+society, whether monarchical or republican, on general
+laws, is a work of so great difficulty, that no human genius,
+however comprehensive, is able by the mere dint of reason
+or reflection to effect it. The judgments of many must
+unite in the work, experience must guide their labour, time
+must bring it to perfection, and the feeling of inconveniences
+must correct the mistakes which they inevitably fall into in
+their first trial and experiments.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25" /><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>This has proved true of the American and Swiss federations;
+it will probably prove true of the Austro-Hungarian
+federation and of any that may be set up by Great Britian [Transcriber: sic.]
+and her colonies. It will prove still more true of any
+<!-- Page 153 --><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" />attempt that may be made at federation between Great
+Britain and Ireland. No corrections which could be made
+in the Gladstonian or any other constitution would make
+it work exactly on the lines laid down by its framers. Even
+if it were revised in accordance with Mr. Dicey's criticism,
+it would probably be found, as in the case of the American
+Constitution, that few of the dangers which were most feared
+for it had beset it, and that some of the inconveniences
+which were most distinctly foreseen as likely to arise from it
+were among the things which had materially contributed to
+its success. History is full of the gentle ridicule which the
+course of events throws on statesmen and philosophers.<!-- Page 154 --><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24" /><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Printed in the earlier part of this volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25" /><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Essay on the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_UNIONISTquot_CASE_FOR_HOME" id="THE_UNIONISTquot_CASE_FOR_HOME" />THE &quot;UNIONIST&quot; CASE FOR HOME
+RULE.</h2>
+
+
+<p class="author">BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN.</p>
+
+
+<p>I am often asked, What are the best books to read on the
+Irish question? and I never fail to mention Mr. Lecky's
+<i>Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland</i> and the <i>History
+of England in the Eighteenth Century</i>; Mr. Goldwin
+Smith's <i>Irish History and Irish Character, Three English
+Statesmen, The Irish Question</i>, and Professor Dicey's admirable
+work, <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, the case for Home Rule, as stated in these
+books, is unanswerable; and it redounds to the credit of
+Mr. Lecky, Mr. Goldwin Smith, and Mr. Dicey that their
+narrative of facts should in no wise be prejudiced by their
+political opinions.</p>
+
+<p>That their facts are upon one side and their opinions
+on the other is a minor matter. Their facts, I venture
+to assert, have made more Home Rulers than their opinions
+can unmake.</p>
+
+<p>To put this assertion to the test I propose to quote
+some extracts from the works above mentioned. These
+extracts shall be full and fair. Nothing shall be left out
+that can in the slightest degree qualify any statement of
+fact in the context. Arguments will be omitted, for I wish
+to place facts mainly before my readers. From these facts
+<!-- Page 155 --><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />they can draw their own conclusions. Neither shall I take
+up space with comments of my own. I shall call my
+witnesses and let them speak for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>I.&mdash;MR. LECKY.</p>
+
+<p>In the introduction to the new edition of the <i>Leaders
+of Public Opinion in Ireland</i>, published in 1871&mdash;seventy-one
+years after Mr. Pitt's Union, which was to make
+England and Ireland one nation&mdash;we find the following
+&quot;contrast&quot; between &quot;national life&quot; in the two countries:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is, perhaps, no Government in the world which
+succeeds more admirably in the functions of eliciting,
+sustaining, and directing public opinion than that of
+England. It does not, it is true, escape its full share of
+hostile criticism, and, indeed, rather signally illustrates the
+saying of Bacon, that 'the best Governments are always
+subject to be like the finest crystals, in which every icicle
+and grain is seen which in a fouler stone is never perceived;'
+but whatever charges may be brought against the
+balance of its powers, or against its legislative efficiency,
+few men will question its eminent success as an organ of
+public opinion. In England an even disproportionate
+amount of the national talent takes the direction of politics.
+The pulse of an energetic national life is felt in every
+quarter of the land. The debates of Parliament are
+followed with a warm, constant, and intelligent interest by
+all sections of the community. It draws all classes within
+the circle of political interests, and is the centre of a strong
+and steady patriotism, equally removed from the apathy of
+many Continental nations in time of calm, and from their
+feverish and spasmodic energy in time of excitement. Its
+decisions, if not instantly accepted, never fail to have a
+profound and calming influence on the public mind. It
+is the safety-valve of the nation. The discontents, the
+<!-- Page 156 --><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" />suspicions, the peccant humours that agitate the people,
+find there their vent, their resolution, and their end.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is impossible, I think, not to be struck by the contrast
+which, in this respect, Ireland presents to England.
+If the one country furnishes us with an admirable example
+of the action of a healthy public opinion, the other supplies
+us with the most unequivocal signs of its disease. The
+Imperial Parliament exercises for Ireland legislative functions,
+but it is almost powerless upon opinion&mdash;it allays no discontent,
+and attracts no affection. Political talent, which
+for many years was at least as abundant among Irishmen
+as in any equally numerous section of the people, has been
+steadily declining, and marked decadence in this respect
+among the representatives of the nation reflects but too
+truly the absence of public spirit in their constituents.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The upper classes have lost their sympathy with and
+their moral ascendency over their tenants, and are thrown
+for the most part into a policy of mere obstruction. The
+genuine national enthusiasm never flows in the channel of
+imperial politics. With great multitudes sectarian considerations
+have entirely superseded national ones, and their
+representatives are accustomed systematically to subordinate
+all party and all political questions to ecclesiastical interests;
+and while calling themselves Liberals, they make it the
+main object of their home politics to separate the different
+classes of their fellow-countrymen during the period of their
+education, and the main object of their foreign policy to
+support the temporal power of the Pope. With another
+and a still larger class the prevailing feeling seems to be
+an indifference to all Parliamentary proceedings; an utter
+scepticism about constitutional means of realizing their
+ends; a blind, persistent hatred of England. Every cause
+is taken up with an enthusiasm exactly proportioned to
+the degree in which it is supposed to be injurious to English
+interests. An amount of energy and enthusiasm which if
+<!-- Page 157 --><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" />rightly directed would suffice for the political regeneration
+of Ireland is wasted in the most insane projects of disloyalty;
+while the diversion of so much public feeling
+from Parliamentary politics leaves the Parliamentary arena
+more and more open to corruption, to place-hunting, and
+to imposture.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This picture is in itself a very melancholy one, but there
+are other circumstances which greatly heighten the effect.
+In a very ignorant or a very wretched population it is
+natural that there should be much vague, unreasoning discontent;
+but the Irish people are at present neither
+wretched nor ignorant. Their economical condition before
+the famine was, indeed, such that it might well have made
+reasonable men despair. With the land divided into almost
+microscopic farms, with a population multiplying rapidly
+to the extreme limits of subsistence, accustomed to the
+very lowest standard of comfort, and marrying earlier than
+in any other northern country in Europe, it was idle to look
+for habits of independence or self-reliance, or for the culture
+which follows in the train of leisure and comfort. But all
+this has been changed. A fearful famine and the long-continued
+strain of emigration have reduced the nation
+from eight millions to less than five, and have effected, at
+the price of almost intolerable suffering, a complete
+economical revolution. The population is now in no
+degree in excess of the means of subsistence. The rise of
+wages and prices has diffused comfort through all classes.
+... Probably no country in Europe has advanced so
+rapidly as Ireland within the last ten years, and the tone of
+cheerfulness, the improvement of the houses, the dress, and
+the general condition of the people must have struck every
+observer.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26" /><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> ... If industrial improvement, if the rapid
+<!-- Page 158 --><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />increase of material comforts among the poor, could allay
+political discontent, Ireland should never have been so
+loyal as at present.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nor can it be said that ignorance is at the root of the
+discontent. The Irish people have always, even in the darkest
+period of the penal laws, been greedy for knowledge, and
+few races show more quickness in acquiring it. The
+admirable system of national education established in the
+present century is beginning to bear abundant fruit, and,
+among the younger generation at least, the level of knowledge
+is quite as high as in England. Indeed, one of the
+most alarming features of Irish disloyalty is its close and
+evident connection with education. It is sustained by a
+cheap literature, written often with no mean literary skill,
+which penetrates into every village, gives the people their first
+political impressions, forms and directs their enthusiasm, and
+seems likely in the long leisure of the pastoral life to exercise
+an increasing power. Close observers of the Irish character
+will hardly have failed to notice the great change which since
+the famine has passed over the amusements of the people.
+The old love of boisterous out-of-door sports has almost
+disappeared, and those who would have once sought their
+pleasures in the market or the fair now gather in groups in
+the public-house, where one of their number reads out a
+Fenian newspaper. Whatever else this change may portend,
+it is certainly of no good omen for the future loyalty of the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was long customary in England to underrate this
+disaffection by ascribing it to very transitory causes. The
+quarter of a century that followed the Union was marked
+by almost perpetual disturbance; but this it was said was
+merely the natural ground swell of agitation which followed
+a great reform. It was then the popular theory that it was
+the work of O'Connell, who was described during many years
+as the one obstacle to the peace of Ireland, and whose death
+<!-- Page 159 --><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" />was made the subject of no little congratulation, as though
+Irish discontent had perished with its organ. It was as if,
+the &AElig;olian harp being shattered, men wrote an epitaph
+upon the wind. Experience has abundantly proved the
+folly of such theories. Measured by mere chronology, a
+little more than seventy years have passed since the Union,
+but famine and emigration have compressed into these years
+the work of centuries. The character, feelings, and conditions
+of the people have been profoundly altered. A long
+course of remedial legislation has been carried, and during
+many years the national party has been without a leader
+and without a stimulus. Yet, so far from subsiding, disloyalty
+in Ireland is probably as extensive, and is certainly
+as malignant, as at the death of O'Connell, only in many
+respects the public opinion of the country has palpably
+deteriorated. O'Connell taught an attachment to the connection,
+a loyalty to the crown, a respect for the rights of
+property, a consistency of Liberalism, which we look for in
+vain among his successors; and that faith in moral force
+and constitutional agitation which he made it one of his
+greatest objects to instil into the people has almost vanished
+with the failure of his agitation.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27" /><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+<p>Few Irish Nationalists have drawn a weightier indictment
+against the Union than this. After a trial of seventy years,
+Mr. Lecky sums up the case against the Union in these
+pregnant sentences:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Imperial Parliament allays no discontent, and
+attracts no affection;&quot; &quot;The genuine national enthusiasm
+never flows in the channel of imperial politics;&quot;
+the people have &quot;an utter scepticism about constitutional
+means of realizing their ends,&quot; and are imbued with &quot;a
+blind, persistent hatred of England.&quot; Worse still, neither
+the material progress of the country, nor the education of
+<!-- Page 160 --><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" />the people, has reconciled them to the Imperial Parliament.
+Indeed, their disloyalty has increased with their prosperity
+and enlightenment. This is the story which Mr. Lecky has
+to tell. But why are the Irish disloyal? Mr. Lecky shall
+answer the question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The causes of this deep-seated disaffection I have
+endeavoured in some degree to investigate in the following
+essays. To the merely dramatic historian the history of
+Ireland will probably appear less attractive than that of most
+other countries, for it is somewhat deficient in great characters
+and in splendid episodes; but to a philosophic student
+of history it presents an interest of the very highest order.
+In no other history can we trace more clearly the chain of
+causes and effects, the influence of past legislation, not only
+upon the material condition, but also upon the character of
+a nation. In no other history especially can we investigate
+more fully the evil consequences which must ensue from
+disregarding that sentiment of nationality which, whether it
+be wise or foolish, whether it be desirable or the reverse,
+is at least one of the strongest and most enduring of
+human passions. This, as I conceive, lies at the root of
+Irish discontent. It is a question of nationality as truly
+as in Hungary or in Poland. Special grievances or
+anomalies may aggravate, but do not cause it, and they
+become formidable only in as far as they are connected
+with it. What discontent was felt against the Protestant
+Established Church was felt chiefly because it was regarded
+as an English garrison sustaining an anti-national system;
+and the agrarian difficulty never assumed its full intensity
+till by the repeal agitation the landlords had been politically
+alienated from the people.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28" /><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>Let those who imagine that the Irish question can be
+<!-- Page 161 --><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" />completely settled by the redress of material grievances
+take those words to heart.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>But, it is said, Scotch national sentiment is as strong as
+Irish, why should not a legislative union be as acceptable
+to Ireland as to Scotland? Mr. Lecky shall answer this
+question too.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is hardly possible to advert to the Scotch Union,
+without pausing for a moment to examine why its influence
+on the loyalty of the people should have ultimately been so
+much happier than that of the legislative union which,
+nearly a century later, was enacted between England and
+Ireland. A very slight attention to the circumstances of
+the case will explain the mystery, and will at the same time
+show the extreme shallowness of those theorists who can
+only account for it by reference to original peculiarities of
+national character. The sacrifice of a nationality is a
+measure which naturally produces such intense and such
+enduring discontent that it never should be exacted unless
+it can be accompanied by some political or material
+advantages to the lesser country that are so great and
+at the same time so evident as to prove a corrective. Such
+a corrective in the case of Scotland, was furnished by the
+commercial clauses. The Scotch Parliament was very
+arbitrary and corrupt, and by no means a faithful representation
+of the people. The majority of the nation were
+certainly opposed to the Union, and, directly or indirectly,
+it is probable that much corruption was employed to effect
+it; but still the fact remains that by it one of the most
+ardent wishes of all Scottish patriots was attained, that there
+had been for many years a powerful and intelligent minority
+who were prepared to purchase commercial freedom even
+at the expense of the fusion of legislatures, and that in
+consequence of the establishment of free trade the next
+generation of Scotchmen witnessed an increase of material
+<!-- Page 162 --><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" />well-being that was utterly unprecedented in the history of
+their country. Nothing equivalent took place in Ireland.
+The gradual abolition of duties between England and
+Ireland was, no doubt, an advantage to the lesser country,
+but the whole trade to America and the other English
+colonies had been thrown open to Irishmen between 1775
+and 1779. Irish commerce had taken this direction; the
+years between 1779 and the rebellion of 1798 were
+probably the most prosperous in Irish history, and the
+generation that followed the Union was one of the most
+miserable. The sacrifice of nationality was extorted by
+the most enormous corruption in the history of representative
+institutions. It was demanded by no considerable
+section of the Irish people. It was accompanied by no signal
+political or material benefit that could mitigate or counteract
+its unpopularity, and it was effected without a dissolution,
+in opposition to the votes of the immense majority
+of the representatives of the counties and considerable
+towns, and to innumerable addresses from every part of the
+country. Can any impartial man be surprised that such
+a measure, carried in such a manner, should have proved
+unsuccessful?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29" /><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland</i> Mr. Lecky
+traces the current of events which have led to the present
+situation. He shows how the Treaty of Limerick was shamelessly
+violated, and how the native population was oppressed
+and degraded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The position of Ireland was at this time [1727] one
+of the most deplorable that can be conceived.... The
+Roman Catholics had been completely prostrated by the
+battle of the Boyne and by the surrender of Limerick.
+They had stipulated indeed for religious liberty, but the
+<!-- Page 163 --><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" />Treaty of Limerick was soon shamelessly violated, and it
+found no avengers. Sarsfield and his brave companions
+had abandoned a country where defeat left no opening for
+their talents, and had joined the Irish Brigade which had
+been formed in the service of France.... But while the
+Irish Roman Catholics abroad found free scope for their
+ambition in the service of France, those who remained at
+home had sunk into a condition of utter degradation. All
+Catholic energy and talent had emigrated to foreign lands,
+and penal laws of atrocious severity crushed the Catholics
+who remained.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30" /><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lecky's account of these &quot;penal laws&quot; is upon
+the whole, I think, the best that has been written.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The last great Protestant ruler of England was
+William III., who is identified in Ireland with the humiliation
+of the Boyne, with the destruction of Irish trade, and
+with the broken Treaty of Limerick. The ceaseless exertions
+of the extreme Protestant party have made him more odious
+in the eyes of the people than he deserves to be; for he was
+personally far more tolerant than the great majority of his
+contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted
+under his successors. It required, indeed, four or five
+reigns to elaborate a system so ingeniously contrived to
+demoralize, to degrade, and to impoverish the people of
+Ireland. By this code the Roman Catholics were absolutely
+excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from
+the corporations, from the bench, and from the bar. They
+could not vote at Parliamentary elections or at vestries;
+they could not act as constables, or sheriffs, or jurymen, or
+serve in the army or navy, or become solicitors, or even
+hold the positions of gamekeeper or watchman. Schools
+were established to bring up their children as Protestants;
+and if they refused to avail themselves of these, they were
+deliberately assigned to hopeless ignorance, being excluded
+<!-- Page 164 --><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" />from the university, and debarred, under crushing penalties,
+from acting as schoolmasters, as ushers, or as private
+tutors, or from sending their children abroad to obtain the
+instruction they were refused at home. They could not
+marry Protestants, and if such a marriage were celebrated
+it was annulled by law, and the priest who officiated might
+be hung. They could not buy land, or inherit or receive
+it as a gift from Protestants, or hold life-annuities, or leases
+for more than thirty-one years, or any lease on such terms
+that the profits of the land exceeded one-third of the rent.
+If any Catholic leaseholder by his industry so increased
+his profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did not
+immediately make a corresponding increase in his payments,
+any Protestant who gave the information could enter into
+possession of his farm. If any Catholic had secretly purchased
+either his old forfeited estate, or any other land, any
+Protestant who informed against him might become the
+proprietor. The few Catholic landowners who remained
+were deprived of the right which all other classes possessed
+of bequeathing their lands as they pleased. If their sons
+continued Catholics, it was divided equally between them.
+If, however, the eldest son consented to apostatize, the
+estate was settled upon him, the father from that hour
+became only a life-tenant, and lost all power of selling,
+mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of it. If the wife of
+a Catholic abandoned the religion of her husband, she was
+immediately free from his control, and the Chancellor
+was empowered to assign to her a certain proportion of her
+husband's property. If any child, however young, professed
+itself a Protestant, it was at once taken from the father's
+care, and the Chancellor could oblige the father to declare
+upon oath the value of his property, both real and personal,
+and could assign for the present maintenance and future
+portion of the converted child such proportion of that
+property as the court might decree. No Catholic could be
+<!-- Page 165 --><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" />guardian either to his own children or to those of another
+person; and therefore a Catholic who died while his
+children were minors had the bitterness of reflecting upon
+his death-bed that they must pass into the care of Protestants.
+An annuity of from twenty to forty pounds was
+provided as a bribe for every priest who would become
+a Protestant. To convert a Protestant to Catholicism was
+a capital offence. In every walk of life the Catholic was
+pursued by persecution or restriction. Except in the linen
+trade, he could not have more than two apprentices. He
+could not possess a horse of the value of more than five
+pounds, and any Protestant, on giving him five pounds, could
+take his horse. He was compelled to pay double to the
+militia. He was forbidden, except under particular conditions,
+to live in Galway or Limerick. In case of war with
+a Catholic power, the Catholics were obliged to reimburse
+the damage done by the enemy's privateers. The Legislature,
+it is true, did not venture absolutely to suppress their
+worship, but it existed only by a doubtful connivance&mdash;stigmatized
+as if it were a species of licensed prostitution,
+and subject to conditions which, if they had been enforced,
+would have rendered its continuance impossible. An old
+law which prohibited it, and another which enjoined
+attendance at the Anglican worship, remained unrepealed,
+and might at any time be revived; and the former was, in
+fact, enforced during the Scotch rebellion of 1715. The
+parish priests, who alone were allowed to officiate, were
+compelled to be registered, and were forbidden to keep
+curates or to officiate anywhere except in their own parishes.
+The chapels might not have bells or steeples. No crosses
+might be publicly erected. Pilgrimages to the holy wells
+were forbidden. Not only all monks and friars, but also
+all Catholic archbishops, bishops, deacons, and other dignitaries,
+were ordered by a certain day to leave the country;
+and if after that date they were found in Ireland they were
+<!-- Page 166 --><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" />liable to be first imprisoned and then banished; and if after
+that banishment they returned to discharge their duty in
+their dioceses, they were liable to the punishment of death.
+To facilitate the discovery of offences against the code, two
+justices of the peace might at any time compel any Catholic
+of eighteen years of age to declare when and where he last
+heard Mass, what persons were present, and who officiated;
+and if he refused to give evidence they might imprison him
+for twelve months, or until he paid a fine of twenty pounds.
+Any one who harboured ecclesiastics from beyond the seas
+was subject to fines which for the third offence amounted
+to confiscation of all his goods. A graduated scale of
+rewards was offered for the discovery of Catholic bishops,
+priests, and schoolmasters; and a resolution of the House
+of Commons pronounced 'the prosecuting and informing
+against Papists' 'an honourable service to the Government.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such were the principal articles of this famous code&mdash;a
+code which Burke truly described as 'well digested and
+well disposed in all its parts; a machine of wise and elaborate
+contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment,
+and degradation of a people, and the debasement
+in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded
+from the perverted ingenuity of man.'&quot;<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31" /><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+<p>The effects of these laws Mr. Lecky has described thus:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The economical and moral effects of the penal laws
+were, however, profoundly disastrous. The productive
+energies of the nation were fatally diminished. Almost all
+Catholics of energy and talent who refused to abandon their
+faith emigrated to foreign lands. The relation of classes
+was permanently vitiated; for almost all the proprietary of
+the country belonged to one religion, while the great majority
+of their tenants were of another. The Catholics, excluded
+from almost every possibility of eminence, deprived of their
+natural leaders, and consigned by the Legislature to utter
+<!-- Page 167 --><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" />ignorance, soon sank into the condition of broken and
+dispirited helots. A total absence of industrial virtues, a
+cowering and abject deference to authority, a recklessness
+about the future, a love of secret illegal combinations,
+became general among them. Above all, they learned
+to regard law as merely the expression of force, and its
+moral weight was utterly destroyed. For the greater part
+of a century, the main object of the Legislature was to
+extirpate a religion by the encouragement of the worst, and
+the punishment of some of the best qualities of our
+nature. Its rewards were reserved for the informer, for the
+hypocrite, for the undutiful son, or for the faithless wife.
+Its penalties were directed against religious constancy and
+the honest discharge of ecclesiastical duty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It would, indeed, be scarcely possible to conceive a more
+infamous system of legal tyranny than that which in the
+middle of the eighteenth century crushed every class and
+almost every interest in Ireland.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32" /><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<p>But laws were not only passed against the native race
+and the national religion. Measures were taken to destroy
+the industries of the country, and to involve natives and
+colonists, Protestants and Catholics, in common ruin.
+Mr. Lecky shall tell the story.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The commercial and industrial condition of the
+country was, if possible, more deplorable than its political
+condition, and was the result of a series of English measures
+which for deliberate and selfish tyranny could hardly be
+surpassed. Until the reign of Charles II. the Irish shared
+the commercial privileges of the English; but as the island
+had not been really conquered till the reign of Elizabeth,
+and as its people were till then scarcely removed from
+barbarism, the progress was necessarily slow. In the early
+Stuart reigns, however, comparative repose and good
+government were followed by a sudden rush of prosperity.
+<!-- Page 168 --><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" />The land was chiefly pasture, for which it was admirably
+adapted; the export of live cattle to England was carried on
+upon a large scale, and it became a chief source of Irish
+wealth. The English landowners, however, took the alarm.
+They complained that Irish rivalry in the cattle market was
+reducing English rents; and accordingly, by an Act which
+was first passed in 1663, and was made perpetual in 1666,
+the importation of cattle into England was forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The effect of a measure of this kind, levelled at the
+principal article of the commerce of the nation, was necessarily
+most disastrous. The profound modification which it
+introduced into the course of Irish industry was sufficiently
+shown by the estimate of Sir W. Petty, who declares that
+before the statute three-fourths of the trade of Ireland was
+with England, but not one-fourth of it since that time. In
+the very year when this Bill was passed another measure
+was taken not less fatal to the interest of the country. In
+the first Navigation Act, Ireland was placed on the same
+terms as England; but in the Act as amended in 1663 she
+was omitted, and was thus deprived of the whole Colonial
+trade. With the exception of a very few specified articles
+no European merchandise could be imported into the
+British Colonies except directly from England, in ships built
+in England, and manned chiefly by English sailors. No
+articles, with a few exceptions, could be brought from the
+Colonies to Europe without being first unladen in England.
+In 1670 this exclusion of Ireland was confirmed, and in
+1696 it was rendered more stringent, for it was enacted that
+no goods of any sort could be imported directly from the
+Colonies to Ireland. It will be remembered that at this
+time the chief British Colonies were those of America, and
+that Ireland, by her geographical position, was naturally of
+all countries most fitted for the American trade.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As far, then, as the Colonial trade was concerned,
+Ireland at this time gained nothing whatever by her con<!-- Page 169 --><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />nection
+with England. To other countries, however, her
+ports were still open, and in time of peace a foreign
+commerce was unrestricted. When forbidden to export
+their cattle to England, the Irish turned their land chiefly
+into sheep-walks, and proceeded energetically to manufacture
+the wool. Some faint traces of this manufacture may be
+detected from an early period, and Lord Strafford, when
+governing Ireland, had mentioned it with a characteristic
+comment. Speaking of the Irish he says, 'There was little
+or no manufactures amongst them, but some small beginnings
+towards a cloth trade, which I had and so should still discourage
+all I could, unless otherwise directed by His
+Majesty and their Lordships. It might be feared that they
+would beat us out of the trade itself by underselling us,
+which they were able to do.' With the exception, however, of
+an abortive effort by this governor, the Irish wool manufacture
+was in no degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned
+with special favour in many Acts of Parliament; and it was
+in a great degree on the faith of this long-continued legislative
+sanction that it was so greatly expanded. The
+poverty of Ireland, the low state of civilization of a large
+proportion of its inhabitants, the effects of the civil wars
+which had so recently convulsed it, and the exclusion of its
+products from the English Colonies, were doubtless great
+obstacles to manufacturing enterprise; but, on the other
+hand, Irish wool was very good, living was cheaper, taxes
+were lighter than in England, a spirit of real industrial
+energy began to pervade the country, and a considerable
+number of English manufacturers came over to colonize it.
+There appeared for a time every probability that the Irish
+would become an industrial nation, and, had manufactures
+arisen, their whole social, political, and economical condition
+would have been changed. But English jealousy again
+interposed. By an Act of crushing and unprecedented
+severity, which was introduced in 1698 and carried in 1699,
+<!-- Page 170 --><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" />the export of the Irish woollen manufactures, not only to
+England, but also to all other countries, was absolutely
+forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The effects of this measure were terrible almost beyond
+conception. The main industry of the country was at a
+blow completely and irretrievably annihilated. A vast
+population was thrown into a condition of utter destitution.
+Several thousands of manufacturers left the country, and
+carried their skill and enterprise to Germany, France, and
+Spain. The western and southern districts of Ireland are
+said to have been nearly depopulated. Emigration to
+America began on a large scale, and the blow was so severe
+that long after, a kind of chronic famine prevailed.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33" /><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lecky relates with pride how the penal code was
+relaxed, and the commercial restrictions were removed,
+while the Irish Parliament, essentially a Protestant and
+landlord body, still existed, and shows how the cause of
+Catholic Emancipation was retarded by the Union.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Relief Bill of '93 naturally suggests a consideration
+of the question so often agitated in Ireland, whether the
+Union was really a benefit to the Roman Catholic cause.
+It has been argued that Catholic Emancipation was an impossibility
+as long as the Irish Parliament lasted; for in a
+country where the great majority were Roman Catholics, it
+would be folly to expect the members of the dominant
+creed to surrender a monopoly on which their ascendency
+depended. The arguments against this view are, I believe,
+overwhelming. The injustice of the disqualification was
+far more striking before the Union than after it. In the
+one case, the Roman Catholics were excluded from the
+Parliament of a nation of which they were the great majority;
+in the other, they were excluded from the Parliament of an
+empire in which they were a small minority. Grattan, Plunket,
+Curran, Burrowes, and Ponsonby were the great supporters of
+<!-- Page 171 --><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" />Catholic Emancipation, and the great opponents of the Union.
+Clare and Duigenan were the two great opponents of
+emancipation, and the great supporters of the Union. At
+a time when scarcely any public opinion existed in Ireland,
+when the Roman Catholics were nearly quiescent, and
+when the leaning of Government was generally liberal, the
+Irish Protestants admitted their fellow-subjects to the
+magistracy, to the jury-box, and to the franchise. By
+this last measure they gave them an amount of political
+power which necessarily implied complete emancipation.
+Even if no leader of genius had arisen in the Roman
+Catholic ranks, and if no spirit of enthusiasm had animated
+their councils, the influence possessed by a body who
+formed three fourths of the population, who were rapidly
+rising in wealth, and who could send their representatives
+to Parliament, would have been sufficient to ensure their
+triumph. If the Irish Legislature had continued, it would
+have been found impossible to resist the demand for reform;
+and every reform, by diminishing the overgrown power of a
+few Protestant landholders, would have increased that of the
+Roman Catholics. The concession accorded in 1793 was,
+in fact, far greater and more important than that accorded
+in 1829, and it placed the Roman Catholics, in a great
+measure, above the mercy of Protestants. But this was not
+all. The sympathies of the Protestants were being rapidly
+enlisted in their behalf. The generation to which Charlemont
+and Flood belonged had passed away, and all the
+leading intellects of the country, almost all the Opposition,
+and several conspicuous members of the Government, were
+warmly in favour of emancipation. The rancour which at
+present exists between the members of the two creeds
+appears then to have been almost unknown, and the real
+obstacle to emancipation was not the feelings of the people,
+but the policy of the Government. The Bar may be considered
+on most subjects a very fair exponent of the educated
+<!-- Page 172 --><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" />opinion of the nation; and Wolf Tone observed, in 1792,
+that it was almost unanimous in favour of the Catholics;
+and it is not without importance, as showing the tendencies
+of the rising generation, that a large body of the
+students of Dublin University in 1795 presented an address
+to Grattan, thanking him for his labours in the cause. The
+Roman Catholics were rapidly gaining the public opinion
+of Ireland, when the Union arrayed against them another
+public opinion which was deeply prejudiced against their
+faith, and almost entirely removed from their influence.
+Compare the twenty years before the Union with the
+twenty years that followed it, and the change is sufficiently
+manifest. There can scarcely be a question that if Lord
+Fitzwilliam had remained in office the Irish Parliament would
+readily have given emancipation. In the United Parliament
+for many years it was obstinately rejected, and if O'Connell
+had never arisen it would probably never have been granted
+unqualified by the veto. In 1828 when the question was
+brought forward in Parliament, sixty-one out of ninety-three
+Irish members, forty-five out of sixty-one Irish county
+members, voted in its favour. Year after year Grattan and
+Plunket brought forward the case of their fellow-countrymen
+with an eloquence and a perseverance worthy of their
+great cause; but year after year they were defeated. It was
+not till the great tribune had arisen, till he had moulded
+his co-religionists into one compact and threatening mass,
+and had brought the country to the verge of revolution,
+that the tardy boon was conceded. Eloquence and argument
+proved alike unavailing when unaccompanied by
+menace, and Catholic Emancipation was confessedly granted
+because to withhold it would be to produce a rebellion.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34" /><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+<p>Many people will think that this is a sufficiently weighty
+condemnation of the Union, but what follows is a still
+graver reflection on that untoward measure.<!-- Page 173 --><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;In truth the harmonious co-operation of Ireland with
+England depends much less upon the framework of the
+institutions of the former country than upon the dispositions
+of its people and upon the classes who guide its
+political life. With a warm and loyal attachment to the
+connection pervading the nation, the largest amount of self-government
+might be safely conceded, and the most defective
+political arrangement might prove innocuous. This is the
+true cement of nations, and no change, however plausible
+in theory, can be really advantageous which contributes to
+diminish it. Theorists may argue that it would be better for
+Ireland to become in every respect a province of England;
+they may contend that a union of Legislatures, accompanied
+by a corresponding fusion of characters and identification
+of hopes, interests, and desires, would strengthen
+the empire; but as a matter of fact this was not what was
+effected in 1800. The measure of Pitt centralized, but it
+did not unite, or rather, by uniting the Legislatures it
+divided the nations. In a country where the sentiment
+of nationality was as intense as in any part of Europe, it
+destroyed the national Legislature contrary to the manifest
+wish of the people, and by means so corrupt, treacherous,
+and shameful that they are never likely to be forgotten.
+In a country where, owing to the religious difference, it was
+peculiarly necessary that a vigorous lay public opinion
+should be fostered to dilute or restrain the sectarian spirit,
+it suppressed the centre and organ of political life, directed
+the energies of the community into the channels of sectarianism,
+drove its humours inwards, and thus began a
+perversion of public opinion which has almost destroyed
+the elements of political progress. In a country where the
+people have always been singularly destitute of self-reliance,
+and at the same time eminently faithful to their leaders, it
+withdrew the guidance of affairs from the hands of the
+resident gentry, and, by breaking their power, prepared the
+<!-- Page 174 --><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" />ascendency of the demagogue or the rebel. In two plain
+ways it was dangerous to the connection: it incalculably
+increased the aggregate disloyalty of the people, and it
+destroyed the political supremacy of the class that is
+most attached to the connection. The Irish Parliament,
+with all its faults, was an eminently loyal body. The Irish
+people through the eighteenth century, in spite of great
+provocations, were on the whole a loyal people till the recall
+of Lord Fitzwilliam, and even then a few very moderate
+measures of reform might have reclaimed them. Burke,
+in his <i>Letters on a Regicide Peace</i>, when reviewing the
+elements of strength on which England could confide in her
+struggle with revolutionary France, placed in the very first
+rank the co-operation of Ireland. At the present day, it
+is to be feared that most impartial men would regard
+Ireland, in the event of a great European war, rather as
+a source of weakness than of strength. More than seventy
+years have passed since the boasted measure of Pitt, and
+it is unfortunately incontestable that the lower orders in
+Ireland are as hostile to the system of government under
+which they live as the Hungarian people have ever been to
+Austrian, or the Roman to Papal rule; that Irish disloyalty is
+multiplying enemies of England wherever the English tongue
+is spoken; and that the national sentiment runs so strongly
+that multitudes of Irish Catholics look back with deep
+affection to the Irish Parliament, although no Catholic could
+sit within its walls, and although it was only during the last
+seven years of its independent existence that Catholics
+could vote for its members. Among the opponents of the
+Union were many of the most loyal, as well as nearly all
+the ablest men in Ireland; and Lord Charlemont, who died
+shortly before the measure was consummated, summed up
+the feelings of many in the emphatic sentence with which
+he protested against it. 'It would more than any other
+measure,' he said, 'contribute to the separation of two
+<!-- Page 175 --><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" />countries the perpetual connection of which is one of the
+warmest wishes of my heart.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In fact, the Union of 1800 was not only a great crime,
+but was also, like most crimes, a great blunder. The manner
+in which it was carried was not only morally scandalous;
+it also entirely vitiated it as a work of statesmanship. No
+great political measure can be rationally judged upon its
+abstract merits, and without considering the character and
+the wishes of the people for whom it is intended. It is now
+idle to discuss what might have been the effect of a Union
+if it had been carried before 1782, when the Parliament
+was still unemancipated; if it had been the result of a
+spontaneous movement of public opinion; if it had been
+accompanied by the emancipation of the Catholics. Carried
+as it was prematurely, in defiance of the national sentiment
+of the people and of the protests of the unbribed talent
+of the country, it has deranged the whole course of political
+development, driven a large proportion of the people into
+sullen disloyalty, and almost destroyed healthy public
+opinion. In comparing the abundance of political talent
+in Ireland during the last century with the striking absence
+of it at present, something no doubt may be attributed to
+the absence of protection for literary property in Ireland
+in the former period, which may have directed an unusual
+portion of the national talent to politics, and something
+to the Colonial and Indian careers which have of late years
+been thrown open to competition; but when all due allowances
+have been made for these, the contrast is sufficiently
+impressive. Few impartial men can doubt that the tone
+of political life and the standard of political talent have been
+lowered, while sectarian animosity has been greatly increased,
+and the extent to which Fenian principles have permeated
+the people is a melancholy comment upon the prophesies
+that the Union would put an end to disloyalty in Ireland.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35" /><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a><!-- Page 176 --><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" /></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lecky's views as to what ought to have been
+done in 1800 deserve to be set forth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;While, however, the Irish policy of Pitt appears to
+be both morally and politically deserving of almost unmitigated
+condemnation, I cannot agree with those who believe
+that the arrangement of 1782 could have been permanent.
+The Irish Parliament would doubtless have been in time reformed,
+but it would have soon found its situation intolerable.
+Imperial policy must necessarily have been settled by
+the Imperial Parliament, in which Ireland had no voice; and,
+unlike Canada or Australia, Ireland is profoundly affected by
+every change of Imperial policy. Connection with England
+was of overwhelming importance to the lesser country, while
+the tie uniting them would have been found degrading by
+one nation and inconvenient to the other. Under such
+circumstances a Union of some kind was inevitable. It
+was simply a question of time, and must have been demanded
+by Irish opinion. At the same time, it would not,
+I think, have been such a Union as that of 1800. The
+conditions of Irish and English politics are so extremely
+different, and the reasons for preserving in Ireland a local
+centre of political life are so powerful, that it is probable
+a Federal Union would have been preferred. Under such
+a system the Irish Parliament would have continued to
+exist, but would have been restricted to purely local subjects,
+while an Imperial Parliament, in which Irish representatives
+sat, would have directed the policy of the
+empire.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36" /><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>MR. GOLDWIN SMITH.</p>
+
+<p>None of the recent opponents of Home Rule have
+written against that policy with more brilliance and epigrammatic
+keenness than Mr. Goldwin Smith. But no one
+<!-- Page 177 --><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" />has stated with more force the facts and considerations
+which, operating on men's mind for years past, have made
+the Liberal party Home Rulers now. His <i>coup d'oeil</i>
+remains the most pointed indictment ever drawn from the
+historical annals of Ireland against the English methods
+of governing that country. Twenty years ago he anticipated
+the advice recently given by Mr. Gladstone. In 1867 he
+wrote:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have myself sought and found in the study of Irish
+history the explanation of the paradox, that a people with so
+many gifts, so amiable, naturally so submissive to rulers, and
+everywhere but in their own country industrious, are in
+their own country bywords of idleness, lawlessness, disaffection,
+and agrarian crime.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37" /><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> He explains the paradox thus:
+&quot;But it is difficult to distinguish the faults of the Irish from
+their misfortunes. It has been well said of their past industrial
+character and history,&mdash;'We were reckless, ignorant,
+improvident, drunken, and idle. We were idle, for we had
+nothing to do; we were reckless, for we had no hope; we
+were ignorant, for learning was denied us; we were improvident,
+for we had no future; we were drunken, for we
+sought to forget our misery. That time has passed away
+for ever.' No part of this defence is probably more true
+than that which connects the drunkenness of the Irish
+people with their misery. Drunkenness is, generally speaking,
+the vice of despair; and it springs from the despair of
+the Irish peasant as rankly as from that of his English fellow.
+The sums of money which have lately been transmitted by
+Irish emigrants to their friends in Ireland seem a conclusive
+answer to much loose denunciation of the national character,
+both in a moral and an industrial point of view.... There
+seems no good reason for believing that the Irish Kelts are
+averse to labour, provided they be placed, as people of all
+races require to be placed, for two or three generations in
+<!-- Page 178 --><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" />circumstances favourable to industry.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38" /><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> He shows that
+the Irish have not been so placed. &quot;Still more does
+justice require that allowance should be made on historical
+grounds for the failings of the Irish people. If they are
+wanting in industry, in regard for the rights of property, in
+reverence for the law, history furnishes a full explanation
+of their defects, without supposing in them any inherent
+depravity, or even any inherent weakness. They have
+never had the advantage of the training through which
+other nations have passed in their gradual rise from barbarism
+to civilization. The progress of the Irish people
+was arrested at almost a primitive stage, and a series of
+calamities, following close upon each other, have prevented
+it from ever fairly resuming its course. The pressure of
+overwhelming misery has now been reduced; government
+has become mild and just; the civilizing agency of education
+has been introduced; the upper classes are rapidly returning
+to their duty, and the natural effect is at once seen
+in the improved character of the people. Statesmen are
+bound to be well acquainted with the historical sources
+of the evil with which they have to deal, especially when
+those evils are of such a nature as, at first aspect, to imply
+depravity in a nation. There are still speakers and writers
+who seem to think that the Irish are incurably vicious,
+because the accumulated effects of so many centuries
+cannot be removed at once by a wave of the legislator's
+wand. Some still believe, or affect to believe, that the
+very air of the island is destructive of the characters and
+understandings of all who breathe it.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39" /><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere he adds, referring to the land system:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How many centuries of a widely different training
+have the English people gone through in order to acquire
+their boasted love of law.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40" /><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 179 --><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" />Of the &quot;training&quot; through which the Irish went, he
+says&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The existing settlement of land in Ireland, whether
+dating from the confiscations of the Stuarts, or from
+those of Cromwell, rests on a proscription three or four
+times as long as that on which the settlement of land
+rests over a considerable part of France. It may, therefore,
+be considered as placed upon discussion in the estimation
+of all sane men; and, this being the case, it is safe to
+observe that no inherent want of respect for property is
+shown by the Irish people if a proprietorship which had its
+origin within historical memory in flagrant wrong is less
+sacred in their eyes than it would be if it had its origin in
+immemorial right.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41" /><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>The character which he gives of Irish landlordism
+deserves to be quoted:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Cromwellian landowners soon lost their religious
+character, while they retained all the hardness of the fanatic
+and the feelings of Puritan conquerors towards a conquered
+Catholic people. 'I have eaten with them,' said one, 'drunk
+with them, fought with them; but I never prayed with them.'
+Their descendants became, probably, the very worst upper
+class with which a country was ever afflicted. The habits of
+the Irish gentry grew beyond measure brutal and reckless, and
+the coarseness of their debaucheries would have disgusted
+the crew of Comus. Their drunkenness, their blasphemy,
+their ferocious duelling, left the squires of England far
+behind. If there was a grotesque side to their vices which
+mingles laughter with our reprobation, this did not render
+their influence less pestilent to the community of which the
+motive of destiny had made them social chiefs. Fortunately,
+their recklessness was sure, in the end, to work, to
+a certain extent, its own cure; and in the background of
+<!-- Page 180 --><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />their swinish and uproarious drinking-bouts, the Encumbered
+Estates Act rises to our view.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42" /><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goldwin Smith deals with agrarian crime thus:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The atrocities perpetrated by the Whiteboys, especially
+in the earlier period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew
+somewhat less inhuman), are such as to make the flesh creep.
+No language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of
+such a state of society. But it would be unjust to confound
+these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose
+that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either
+on the part of those who commit them, or on the part of the
+people who connive at and favour their commission. In
+the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were
+most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small.
+In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 crimes, 627 were Whiteboy,
+or agrarian, and even of the remainder, many, being crimes
+of violence, were probably committed from the same motive.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered
+the Whiteboy code were to the people the organs of a wild
+law of social morality by which, on the whole, the interest
+of the peasant was protected. They were not regular
+tribunals; neither were the secret tribunals of Germany in
+the Middle Ages, the existence of which, and the submission
+of the people to their jurisdiction, implied the
+presence of much violence, but not of much depravity, considering
+the wildness of the times. The Whiteboys 'found
+in their favour already existing a general and settled hatred
+of the law among the great body of the peasantry.'<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43" /><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> We
+have seen how much the law, and the ministers of the law,
+had done to deserve the peasant's love. We have seen,
+too, in what successive guises property had presented itself
+to his mind: first as open rapine; then as robbery carried
+on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code; finally
+<!-- Page 181 --><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" />as legalized and systematic oppression. Was it possible
+that he should have formed so affectionate a reverence
+either for law or property as would be proof against the
+pressure of starvation?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44" /><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> &quot;A people cannot be expected
+to love and reverence oppression because it is consigned to
+the statute-book, and called law.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45" /><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p>
+
+<p>These extracts are taken from <i>Irish History and Irish
+Character</i>, which was published in 1861. But in 1867 Mr.
+Goldwin Smith wrote a series of letters to the <i>Daily News</i>,
+which were republished in 1868 under the title of <i>The Irish
+Question</i>; and these letters form, perhaps, the most statesmanlike
+and far-seeing pronouncement that has ever been
+made on the Irish difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>In the preface Mr. Goldwin Smith begins:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Irish legislation of the last forty years, notwithstanding
+the adoption of some remedial measures, has failed
+through the indifference of Parliament to the sentiments
+of Irishmen; and the harshness of English public opinion
+has embittered the effects on Irish feeling of the indifference
+of Parliament. Occasionally a serious effort has been made
+by an English statesman to induce Parliament to approach
+Irish questions in that spirit of sympathy, and with that
+anxious desire to be just, without which a Parliament in
+London cannot legislate wisely for Ireland. Such efforts
+have hitherto met with no response; is it too much to hope
+that it will be otherwise in the year now opening?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46" /><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>The only comment I shall make on these words is: they
+were penned more than half a century after Mr. Pitt's
+Union, which was to shower down blessings on the Irish
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goldwin Smith's first letter was written on the 23rd of
+November, 1867, the day of the execution of the Fenians
+Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien. He says&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<!-- Page 182 --><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" />There can be no doubt, I apprehend, that the Irish
+difficulty has entered on a new phase, and that Irish disaffection
+has, to repeat an expression which I heard used in Ireland,
+come fairly into a line with the other discontented nationalities
+of Europe. Active Fenianism probably pervades only
+the lowest class; passive sympathy, which the success of the
+movement would at once convert into active co-operation,
+extends, it is to be feared, a good deal higher.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;England has ruin before her, unless she can hit on a
+remedy, and overcome any obstacles of class interest or of
+national pride which would prevent its application, the part
+of Russia in Poland, or of Austria in Italy&mdash;a part cruel,
+hateful, demoralizing, contrary to all our high principles and
+professions, and fraught with dangers to our own freedom.
+Our position will be worse than that of Russia in this
+respect, that, while her Poland is only a province, our
+Fenianism is an element pervading every city of the United
+Kingdom in which Irish abound, and allying itself with
+kindred misery, discontent, and disorder. Wretchedness,
+the result of misgovernment, has caused the Irish people to
+multiply with the recklessness of despair, and now here are
+their avenging hosts in the midst of us, here is the poison of
+their disaffection running through every member of our
+social frame. Not only so, but the same wretchedness has
+sent millions of emigrants to form an Irish nation in the
+United States, where the Irish are a great political power,
+swaying by their votes the councils of the American
+Republic, and in immediate contact with those Transatlantic
+possessions of England, the retention of which
+it is now patriotic to applaud, and will one day be patriotic
+to have dissuaded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot; ... That Ireland is not at this moment, materially
+speaking, in a particularly suffering state, but, on the contrary,
+the farmers are rather prosperous, and wages, even
+when allowance is made for the rise in the price of provi<!-- Page 183 --><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" />sions,
+considerably higher than they were, only adds to the
+significance of this widespread disaffection.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Fenian movement is not religious, nor radically
+economical (though no doubt it has in it a socialistic
+element), but national, and the remedy for it must be one
+which cures national discontent. This is the great truth
+which the English people have to lay to heart.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47" /><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goldwin Smith then dispels the notion that the Irish
+question is a religious one.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When Fenianism first appeared, the Orangemen, in
+accordance with their fixed idea, ascribed it to the priests.
+They were undeceived, I was told, by seeing a priest run
+away from the Fenians in fear of his life.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48" /><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p>
+
+<p>Neither was it a question of the land.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The land question, no doubt, lies nearer to the heart
+of the matter, and it is the great key to Irish history in
+the past; but I do not believe that even this is fundamental.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He then states what is &quot;fundamental.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49" /><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;The real root of the disaffection which exhibits itself at
+present in the guise of Fenianism, and which has been
+suddenly kindled into flame by the arming of the Irish in
+the American civil war, but which existed before in a
+nameless and smouldering state, is, as I believe, the want of
+national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects
+of national reverence and attachment, and consequently of
+anything deserving to be called national life. The English
+Crown and Parliament the Irish have never learnt, nor have
+they had any chance of learning, to love, or to regard as
+national, notwithstanding the share which was given them,
+too late, in the representation. The greatness of England
+is nothing to them. Her history is nothing, or worse. The
+success of Irishmen in London consoles the Irish in
+Ireland no more than the success of Italian adventurers in
+<!-- Page 184 --><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" />foreign countries (which was very remarkable) consoled the
+Italian people. The drawing off of Irish talent, in fact,
+turns to an additional grievance in their minds. Dublin is
+a modern Tara, a metropolis from which the glory has
+departed; and the viceroyalty, though it pleases some of
+the tradesmen, fails altogether to satisfy the people. 'In
+Ireland we can make no appeal to patriotism, we can have
+no patriotic sentiments in our schoolbooks, no patriotic
+emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything
+patriotic is rebellious.' These were the words uttered in
+my hearing, not by a complaining demagogue, but by a
+desponding statesman. They seemed to me pregnant with
+fatal truths.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If the craving for national institutions, and the disaffection
+bred in this void of the Irish people's heart, seem to us
+irrational and even insane, in the absence of any more
+substantial grievance, we ought to ask ourselves what
+would become of our own patriotism if we had no national
+institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence,
+even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in
+intention, by a neighbouring people whom we regarded as
+aliens, and who, in fact, regarded us pretty much in the
+same light. Let us first judge ourselves fairly, and then
+judge the Irish, remembering always that they are more
+imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of
+national feeling and affection more than ourselves.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50" /><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<p>And all this was written sixty-seven years after the
+Union of 1800.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goldwin Smith then deals with the subject of the
+Irish and Scotch unions much in the same way as Mr.
+Lecky.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The incorporation of the Scotch nation with the
+English, being conducted on the right principles by the
+great Whig statesman of Anne, has been perfectly success<!-- Page 185 --><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />ful.
+The attempt to incorporate the Irish nation with the
+English and Scotch, the success of which would have been,
+if possible, a still greater blessing, being conducted by very
+different people and on very different principles, has unhappily
+failed. What might have been the result if even the
+Hanoverian sovereigns had done the personal duty to their
+Irish kingdom which they have unfortunately neglected, it
+is now too late to inquire. The Irish Union has missed its
+port, and, in order to reach it, will have to tack again. We
+may hold down a dependency, of course, by force, in
+Russian and Austrian fashion; but force will never make
+the hearts of two nations one, especially when they are
+divided by the sea. Once get rid of this deadly international
+hatred, and there will be hope of real union in
+the future.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51" /><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goldwin Smith finally proposes a &quot;plan&quot; by which
+the &quot;deadly international hatred&quot; might be got rid of, and
+a &quot;real union&quot; brought about. Here it is.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;1. The residence of the Court at Dublin, not merely
+to gratify the popular love of royalty and its pageantries,
+which no man of sense desires to stimulate, but to assure
+the Irish people, in the only way possible as regards the
+mass of them, that the sovereign of the United Kingdom is
+really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for
+and honoured with the other subjects of the realm. This
+would also tend to make Dublin a real capital, and to
+gather and retain there a portion of the Irish talent which
+now seeks its fortune elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;2. An occasional session (say once in every three years)
+of the Imperial Parliament in Dublin, partly for the same
+purposes as the last proposal, but also because the circumstances
+of Ireland are likely to be, for some time at least,
+really peculiar, and the personal acquaintance of our legislators
+with them is the only sufficient security for good Irish
+<!-- Page 186 --><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" />legislation. There could be no serious difficulty in holding
+a short session in the Irish capital, where there is plenty of
+accommodation for both Houses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;3. A liberal measure of local self-government for
+Ireland. I would not vest the power in any single assembly
+for all Ireland, because Ulster is really a different country
+from the other provinces. I would give each province a
+council of its own, and empower that council to legislate
+(subject, of course, to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament)
+on all matters not essential to the political and
+legal unity of the empire, in which I would include local
+education. The provincial councils should of course be
+elective, and the register of electors might be the same as
+that of electors to the Imperial Parliament. In England
+itself the extension of local institutions, as political training
+schools for the masses, as checks upon the sweeping action
+of the great central assembly, and as the best organs of
+legislation in all matters requiring (as popular education,
+among others, does) adaptation to the circumstances of particular
+districts, would, I think, have formed a part of any
+statesmanlike revision of our political system. Here, also,
+much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing
+the present business of quarter sessions, other than
+the judicial business, together with such other matters as
+the central legislative might think fit to vest in local hands,
+to an assembly elected by the county.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52" /><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+<p>Thus it will be seen that twenty years ago Mr. Goldwin
+Smith anticipated Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of provincial
+councils, and got a good way on the road to an Irish
+Parliament.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>MR. DICEY.</p>
+
+<p>A fairer controversalist, or an abler supporter of the
+&quot;paper Union,&quot; than Mr. Dicey there is not; nevertheless
+<!-- Page 187 --><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" />no man has fired more effective shots into Mr. Pitt's
+unfortunate arrangement of 1800.</p>
+
+<p>How well has the &quot;failure&quot; of that arrangement been
+described in these pithy sentences&mdash;&quot;Eighty-six years have
+elapsed since the conclusion of the Treaty of Union between
+England and Ireland. The two countries do not yet form
+an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more
+wretched (for the whole European world has made progress,
+and Ireland with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness,
+and Irish disaffection to England is, if not deeper, more
+widespread than in 1800. An Act meant by its authors to
+be a source of the prosperity and concord which, though
+slowly, followed upon the Union with Scotland, has not
+made Ireland rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness,
+has not terminated the feud between Protestants and
+Catholics, has not raised the position of Irish tenants, has
+not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and has,
+therefore, not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment
+which can fairly be brought against the Act of
+Union.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53" /><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
+
+<p>What follows reflects honour on Mr. Dicey as an honest
+opponent who does not shrink from facts; but what
+a wholesale condemnation of the policy of the Imperial
+Parliament!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On one point alone (it may be urged) all men, of whatever
+party or of whatever nation, who have seriously studied the
+annals of Ireland are agreed&mdash;the history is a record of incessant
+failure on the part of the Government, and of incessant
+misery on the part of the people. On this matter, if on no
+other, De Beaumont, Froude, and Lecky are at one. As to
+the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may
+and do differ; that England, whether from her own fault
+or the fault of the Irish people, or from perversity of circumstances,
+has failed in Ireland of achieving the elemen<!-- Page 188 --><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" />tary
+results of good government is as certain as any fact of
+history or of experience. Every scheme has been tried in
+turn, and no scheme has succeeded or has even, it may be
+suggested, produced its natural effects. Oppression of the
+Catholics has increased the adherents and strengthened the
+hold of Catholicism. Protestant supremacy, while it lasted,
+did not lead even to Protestant contentment, and the one
+successful act of resistance to the English dominion was
+effected by a Protestant Parliament supported by an army
+of volunteers, led by a body of Protestant officers. The
+independence gained by a Protestant Parliament led, after
+eighteen years, to a rebellion so reckless and savage that it
+caused, if it did not justify, the destruction of the Parliament
+and the carrying of the Union. The Act of Union did not
+lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on
+the face of it (though the appearance, it must be admitted,
+was delusive) to be a copy of the law which bound England
+and Scotland into a common country inspired by common
+patriotism, produced conspiracy and agitation, and at last
+placed England and Ireland further apart, morally, than
+they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of
+Union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not
+combined with Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were
+emancipated, but emancipation, instead of producing
+loyalty, brought forth the cry for repeal. The Repeal movement
+ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the
+attempted rebellion in 1848. Suppressed rebellion begot
+Fenianism, to be followed in its turn by the agitation for
+Home Rule. The movement relies, it is said, and there is
+truth in the assertion, on constitutional methods for obtaining
+redress. But constitutional measures are supplemented by
+boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of dynamite. A
+century of reform has given us Mr. Parnell instead of
+Grattan, and it is more than possible that Mr. Parnell may
+be succeeded by leaders in whose eyes Mr. Davitt's policy
+<!-- Page 189 --><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" />may appear to be tainted with moderation. No doubt, in
+each case the failure of good measures admits, like every
+calamity in public or private life, of explanation, and after
+the event it is easy to see why, for example, the Poor Law,
+when extended to Ireland, did not produce even the good
+effects such as they are which in England are to be set against
+its numerous evils; or why an emigration of unparalleled
+proportions has diminished population without much diminishing
+poverty; why the disestablishment of the Anglican
+Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to
+England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts
+have not contented Irish farmers. It is easy enough, in
+short, and this without having any recourse to theory of
+race, and without attributing to Ireland either more or less
+of original sin than falls to the lot of humanity, to see how
+it is that imperfect statesmanship&mdash;and all statesmanship, it
+should be remembered, is imperfect&mdash;has failed in obtaining
+good results at all commensurate with its generally good
+intentions. Failure, however, is none the less failure because
+its causes admit of analysis. It is no defence to
+bankruptcy that an insolvent can, when brought before the
+Court, lucidly explain the errors which resulted in disastrous
+speculations. The failure of English statesmanship, explain
+it as you will, has produced the one last and greatest evil
+which misgovernment can cause. It has created hostility to
+the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work
+in Ireland because the classes whose opinion in other
+countries supports the actions of the courts, are in Ireland,
+even when not law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54" /><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+<p>No Home Ruler has described the evils of English misrule
+in Ireland with such vigour as this.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bad administration, religious persecution, above all, a
+thoroughly vicious land tenure, accompanied by such sweep<!-- Page 190 --><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" />ing
+confiscations as to make it, at any rate, a plausible assertion
+that all land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history
+been confiscated at least thrice over, are admittedly some of
+the causes, if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one
+immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy of England.
+This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the
+law of the land prevailing among large numbers of Irish
+people. The existence of this disaffection, whatever be the
+inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. A series of
+so-called Coercion Acts, passed both before and since the
+Act of Union, give undeniable evidence, if evidence were
+wanted, of the ceaseless and, as it would appear, almost
+irrepressible resistance in Ireland offered by the people
+to the enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest
+inclination to underrate the lasting and formidable character
+of this opposition between opinion and law, nor can any
+jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious and
+infinitely painful topic, question for a moment that the
+ultimate strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at the
+lowest the acquiescence, of the mass of the population.
+Judges, constables, and troops become almost powerless
+when the conscience of the people permanently opposes
+the execution of the law. Severity produces either no effect
+or bad effects; executed criminals are regarded as heroes
+or martyrs; and jurymen and witnesses meet with the
+execration and often with the fate of criminals. On such
+a point it is best to take the opinion of a foreigner unaffected
+by prejudices or passions from which no Englishman
+or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Quand vous en &ecirc;tes arro&ecirc;s &agrave; ce point, croyez bien que
+dans cette voie de regueurs tous vos efforts pour r&eacute;tabler
+l'ordre et la paix seront inutiles. En vain, pour r&eacute;primer
+des crimes atroces, vous appellerez &agrave; votre aide toutes les
+s&eacute;v&eacute;rit&eacute;s du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez des lois
+cruelles pour arr&ecirc;ter le cours de r&eacute;voltantes cruaut&eacute;s; vaine<!-- Page 191 --><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" />ment
+vous frapperez de mort le moindre d&eacute;lit se rattachant
+&agrave; ces grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre
+impuissance, vous suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaries
+proclamerez des comt&eacute;s entiers en &eacute;tat de suspicion l&eacute;gale,
+voilerez le principe de la libert&eacute; individuelle, cr&eacute;erez des
+cours martiales, des commissions extraordinaires, et pour
+produire de salutaires impressions de terreur, multiplierez &agrave;
+l'exc&egrave;s les ex&eacute;cutions capitales.'&quot;<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55" /><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
+
+<p>The next passage is a trenchant condemnation of the
+&quot;Union.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There exists in Europe no country so completely at
+unity with itself as Great Britain. Fifty years of reform
+have done their work, and have removed the discontents,
+the divisions, the disaffection, and the conspiracies which
+marked the first quarter, or the first half of this century.
+Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the force,
+consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and
+community of interests. The distraction and the uncertainty
+of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency
+with which they are pursued, arise, in part at least, from
+the connection with Ireland. Neither Englishmen nor Irishmen
+are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for communities
+differing in historical associations and in political
+conceptions to keep step together in the path of progress.
+For other evils arising from the connection the blame must
+rest on English Statesmen. All the inherent vices of party
+government, all the weaknesses of the parliamentary system,
+all the evils arising from the perverse notion that reform
+ought always to be preceded by a period of lengthy and
+more than half factitious agitation met by equally factitious
+resistance, have been fostered and increased by the interaction
+of Irish and English politics. No one can believe
+that the inveterate habit of ruling one part of the United
+<!-- Page 192 --><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" />Kingdom on principles which no one would venture to
+apply to the government of any other part of it, can have
+produced anything but the most injurious effect on the
+stability of our Government and the character of our public
+men. The advocates of Home Rule find by far their
+strongest arguments for influencing English opinion, in the
+proofs which they produce that England, no less than
+Ireland, has suffered from a political arrangement under
+which legal union has failed to secure moral union.
+<i>These arguments, whatever their strength, are, however, it
+must be noted, more available to a Nationalist than to an
+advocate of federalism</i>.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56" /><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p>The words which I have italicised are an expression of
+opinion; but nothing can alter the damning statement of
+fact&mdash;&quot;legal union has failed to secure moral union.&quot; Nevertheless,
+Mr. Dicey advocates the maintenance of this legal
+union as it stands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On the whole, then, it appears that, whatever changes
+or calamities the future may have in store, the maintenance
+of the Union is at this day the one sound policy for England
+to pursue. It is sound because it is expedient; it is sound
+because it is just.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57" /><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>I shall not discuss the question of Home Rule with the
+eminent writers whose works I have cited. It is enough
+that they demonstrate the failure of the Union. So convinced
+was Mr. Lecky, in 1871, of its failure, that he
+suggested a readjustment of the relations of the two countries
+on a federal basis;<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58" /><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> and Mr. Goldwin Smith, in 1868, contended
+that the Irish difficulty could only be settled by the
+establishment of Provincial Councils, and an occasional
+<!-- Page 193 --><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />session of the Imperial Parliament in Dublin. Mr. Dicey
+clings to the existing Union while demonstrating its failure,
+because he has persuaded himself that the only alternative
+is separation.</p>
+
+<p>Irishmen may be pardoned for acting on Mr. Dicey's
+facts, and disregarding his prophecies. The mass of Irishmen
+believe, with Grattan, that the ocean protests against
+separation as the sea protests against such a union as was
+attempted in 1800.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59" /><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26" /><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Omissions here and elsewhere are merely for purposes of space.
+In some places the omitted parts would strengthen the Irish case; in
+no place would they weaken it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27" /><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Lecky, <i>Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland</i>, new edit. (1871),
+Introduction, pp. viii., xiv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28" /><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Lecky, <i>Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland</i>, new edit. (1871),
+Introduction, pp. xiv., xv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29" /><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Lecky, <i>History of England in the Eighteenth Century</i>, vol. ii.
+pp. 59, 60.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30" /><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 33, 34.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31" /><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 120-123.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32" /><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 125, 126.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33" /><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 34-37.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34" /><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 134-137.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35" /><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 192-195.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36" /><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 195, 196.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37" /><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Goldwin Smith, <i>Three English Statesmen</i>, p. 274.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38" /><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>Irish History and Irish Character</i>, pp. 13, 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39" /><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Ibid., p. 194.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40" /><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Ibid., p. 142.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41" /><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Irish History and Irish Character</i>, p. 101.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42" /><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> <i>Irish History and Irish Character</i>, pp. 139, 140.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43" /><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Sir George Cornewall Lewis, <i>Irish Disturbances</i>, p. 97.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44" /><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>Irish History and Irish Character</i>, pp. 153-157.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45" /><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Ibid., pp. 70, 71</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46" /><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>The Irish Question</i>, Preface, pp. iii., iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47" /><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <i>The Irish Question</i>, pp. 3-5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48" /><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Ibid., p. 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49" /><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Ibid., p. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50" /><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>The Irish Question</i>, pp. 7-9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51" /><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>Irish Question</i>, p. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52" /><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> <i>The Irish Question</i>, pp. 16-18.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53" /><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Dicey, <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>, p. 128.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54" /><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Dicey, <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>, pp. 72-74.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55" /><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Dicey, <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>, pp. 92-94.&mdash;The
+foreigner is De Beaumont.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56" /><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> Dicey, <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>, pp. 151, 152.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57" /><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Ibid., p. 288.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58" /><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> I hope I am not doing Mr. Lecky an injustice in this statement.
+I rely on the extract quoted from the <i>Leaders of Public Opinion in
+Ireland,</i> at p. 176 of this volume; but see Introduction, p. xix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59" /><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Irish House of Commons, January 15th, 1800.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IRELANDS_ALTERNATIVES" id="IRELANDS_ALTERNATIVES" /><!-- Page 194 --><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES.</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY LORD THRING.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60" /><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>Ireland is a component member of the most complex
+political body the world has yet known; any inquiry, then,
+into the fitness of any particular form of government for
+that country involves an investigation of the structures of
+various composite nations, or nations made up of numerous
+political communities more or less differing from each other.
+From the examination of the nature of the common tie, and
+the circumstances which caused it to be adopted or imposed
+on the component peoples, we cannot but derive instruction,
+and be furnished with materials which will enable us to take
+a wide view of the question of Home Rule, and assist us in
+judging between the various remedies proposed for the cure
+of Irish disorders.</p>
+
+<p>The nature of the ties which bind, or have bound, the
+principal composite nations of the world together may be
+classified as&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+1. Confederate unions.<br />
+2. Federal unions.<br />
+3. Imperial unions.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>A confederate union may be defined to mean an alliance
+between the governments of independent States, which
+agree to appoint a common superior authority having power
+<!-- Page 195 --><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" />to make peace and war and to demand contributions of men
+and money from the confederate States. Such superior
+authority has no power of enforcing its decrees except
+through the medium of the governments of the constituent
+States; or, in other words, in case of disobedience, by
+armed force.</p>
+
+<p>A federal union differs from a confederate union in the
+material fact that the common superior authority, instead
+of acting on the individual subjects of the constituent States
+through the medium of their respective governments, has a
+power, in respect of all matters within its jurisdiction, of
+enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding directly
+on the individual citizens.</p>
+
+<p>The distinguishing characteristics of an imperial union
+are, that it consists of an aggregate of communities, one of
+which is dominant, and that the component communities
+have been brought into association, not by arrangement
+between themselves, but by colonization, cession, and by
+other means emanating from the resources or power of the
+dominant community.</p>
+
+<p>The above-mentioned distinction between a Government
+having communities only for its subjects, and incapable
+of enforcing its orders by any other means than
+war, and a Government acting directly on individuals, must
+be constantly borne in mind, for in this lies the whole
+difference between a confederate and federal union; that is
+to say, between a confederacy which, in the case of the
+United States, lasted a few short years, and a federal union
+which, with the same people as subjects, has lasted nearly
+a century, and has stood the strain of the most terrible war
+of modern times.</p>
+
+<p>The material features of the Constitution of the United
+States have been explained in a previous article.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61" /><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> All that
+<!-- Page 196 --><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" />is necessary to call to mind here is, that the Government of
+the United States exercises a power of taxation throughout
+the whole Union by means of its own officers, and enforces
+its decrees through the medium of its own Courts. A
+Supreme Court has also been established, which has power
+to adjudicate on the constitutionality of all laws passed by
+the Legislature of the United States, or of any State, and to
+decide on all international questions.</p>
+
+<p>Switzerland was till 1848 an example of a confederate
+union or league of semi-independent States, which, unlike
+other confederacies, had existed with partial interruptions
+for centuries. This unusual vitality is attributed by Mill<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62" /><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a>
+to the circumstance that the confederate government felt
+its weakness so strongly that it hardly ever attempted to
+exercise any real authority. Its present government, finally
+settled in 1874, but based on fundamental laws passed in
+1848, is a federal union formed on the pattern of the
+American Constitution. It consists of a federal assembly
+comprising two Chambers&mdash;the Upper Chamber composed
+of forty-four members chosen by the twenty-two cantons,
+two for each canton; the Lower consisting of 145 members
+chosen by direct election at the rate of one deputy for every
+20,000 persons. The chief executive authority is deputed
+to a federal council consisting of seven members elected for
+three years by the federal assembly, and having at their
+head a president and vice-president, who are the first
+magistrates of the republic. There is also a federal tribunal,
+having similar functions to those of the supreme court
+of the United States of America, consisting of nine members
+elected for six years by the federal assembly.</p>
+
+<p>The Empire of Germany is a federal union, differing
+from the United States and Switzerland in having an hereditary
+emperor as its head. It comprises twenty-six States,
+who have &quot;formed an eternal union for the protection of
+<!-- Page 197 --><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" />the realm, and the care of the welfare of the German
+people.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63" /><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> The King of Prussia, under the title of German
+Emperor, represents the empire in all its relations to foreign
+nations, and has the power of making peace and war, but
+if the war be more than a defensive war he must have
+the assent of the Upper House. The legislative body of
+the empire consists of two Houses&mdash;the Upper, called the
+Bundesrath, representing the several component States in
+different proportions according to their relative importance;
+the lower, the Reichstag, elected by the voters in 397
+electoral districts, which are distributed amongst the constituent
+States in unequal numbers, regard being had to the
+population and circumstances of each State.</p>
+
+<p>The Austro-Hungarian Empire is a federal union, differing
+alike in its origin and construction from the federal
+unions above mentioned. In the beginning Austria and
+Hungary were independent countries&mdash;Austria a despotism,
+Hungary a constitutional monarchy, with ancient laws and
+customs dating back to the foundation of the kingdom in
+895. In the sixteenth century the supreme power in both
+countries&mdash;that is to say, the despotic monarchy in Austria
+and the constitutional monarchy in Hungary&mdash;became
+vested in the same person; as might have been anticipated,
+the union was not a happy one. If we dip into Heeren's
+<i>Political System of Europe</i> at intervals selected almost
+at random, the following notices will be found in relation to
+Austria and Hungary:&mdash;Between 1671 and 1700 &quot;political
+unity in the Austrian monarchy was to have been enforced
+especially in the principal country (Hungary), for this was
+regarded as the sole method of establishing power; the
+consequence was an almost perpetual revolutionary state of
+affairs.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64" /><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> Again, in the next chapter, commenting on the
+period between 1740 and 1786: &quot;Hungary, in fact the
+<!-- Page 198 --><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" />chief, was treated like a conquered province; subjected to
+the most oppressive commercial restraints, it was regarded
+as a colony from which Austria exacted what she could for
+her own advantage. The injurious consequences of this
+internal discord are evident.&quot; Coming to modern times we
+find that oppression followed oppression with sickening
+monotony, and that at last the determination of Austria to
+stamp out the Constitution in Hungary gave rise to the
+insurrection of 1849, which Austria suppressed with the
+assistance of Russia, and as a penalty declared the Hungarian
+Constitution to be forfeited, and thereupon Hungary
+was incorporated with Austria, as Ireland was incorporated
+with Great Britain in 1800. Both events were the consequences
+of unsuccessful rebellions; but the junction which,
+in the case of Hungary, was enforced by the sword, was in
+Ireland more smoothly carried into effect by corruption.
+Hungary, sullen and discontented, waited for Austria's
+calamity as her opportunity, and it came after the battle of
+Sadowa. Austria had just emerged from a fearful conflict,
+and Count Beust<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65" /><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> felt that unless some resolute effort was
+made to meet the views of the constitutional party in Hungary,
+the dismemberment of the empire must be the result.
+Now, what was the course he took? Was it a tightening of
+the bonds between Austria and Hungary? On the contrary,
+to maintain the unity of the empire he dissolved its union
+and restored to Hungary its ancient constitutional privileges.
+Austria and Hungary each had its own Parliament for local
+purposes. To manage the imperial concerns of peace and
+war, and the foreign relations, a controlling body, called the
+Delegations, was established, consisting of 120 members, of
+whom half represent and are chosen by the Legislature of
+Austria, and the other half by that of Hungary; the Upper
+House of each country returning twenty members, and the
+Lower House forty.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66" /><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> Ordinarily the delegates sit and vote
+<!-- Page 199 --><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" />in two Chambers, but if they disagree the two branches
+must meet together and give their final vote without debate,
+which is binding on the whole empire.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67" /><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<p>The question arises, What is the magnetic influence
+which induces communities of men to combine together in
+federal unions? Undoubtedly it is the feeling of nationality;
+and what is nationality? Mr. Mill says,<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68" /><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> &quot;a portion of
+mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they are
+united among themselves by common sympathies which do
+not exist between them and any others; which make them
+co-operate with each other more willingly than other people;
+desire to be under the same government, and desire that it
+should be a government by themselves or a portion of themselves
+exclusively.&quot; He then proceeds to state that the
+feeling of nationality may have been generated by various
+causes. Sometimes it is the identity of race and descent;
+community of language and community of religion greatly
+contribute to it; geographical limits are one of its causes;
+but the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents:
+the possession of a national history and consequent community
+of recollections&mdash;collective pride and humiliation,
+pleasure and regret&mdash;connected with the same incidents in
+the past.</p>
+
+<p>The only point to be noted further in reference to the
+foregoing federal unions, is that the same feeling of nationality
+which, in the United States, Switzerland, and the
+German Empire, produced a closer legal bond of union,
+in the case of Austria-Hungary operated to dissolve the
+amalgamation formed in 1849 of the two States, and to
+produce a federal union of States in place of a single State.</p>
+
+<p>One conclusion seems to follow irresistibly from any
+<!-- Page 200 --><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" />review of the construction of the various States above
+described: that the stability of a nation bears no relation
+whatever to the legal compactness or homogeneity of its
+component parts. Russia and France, the most compact
+political societies in Europe, do not, to say the least, rest on
+a firmer basis than Germany and Switzerland, the inhabitants
+of which are subjected to the obligations of a double
+nationality. Above all, no European nation, except Great
+Britain, can for a moment bear comparison with the United
+States in respect of the devotion of its people to their
+Constitution.</p>
+
+<p>An imperial union, though resembling somewhat in
+outward form a federal union, differs altogether from it both
+in principle and origin. Its essential characteristic is that
+one community is absolutely dominant while all the others
+are subordinate. In the case of a federal union independent
+States have agreed to resign a portion of their powers to a
+central Government for the sake of securing the common
+safety. In an imperial union the dominant or imperial
+State delegates to each constituent member of the union
+such a portion of local government as the dominant State
+considers the subordinate member entitled to, consistently
+with the integrity of the empire. The British Empire
+furnishes the best example of an imperial union now
+existing in the world. Her Majesty, as common head, is
+the one link which binds the empire together and connects
+with each other every constituent member. The Indian
+Empire and certain military dependencies require no
+further notice in these pages; but a summary of our various
+forms of colonial government is required to complete our
+knowledge of the forms of Home Rule possibly applicable
+to Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The colonies, in relation to their forms of government,
+may be classified as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. Crown colonies, in which laws may be made by the<!-- Page 201 --><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" />
+Governor alone, or with the concurrence of a Council
+nominated by the Crown.</p>
+
+<p>2. Colonies possessing representative institutions, but
+not responsible government, in which the Crown has only a
+veto on legislation, but the Home Government retains the
+control of the executive.</p>
+
+<p>3. Colonies possessing representative institutions and
+responsible government, in which the Crown has only a
+veto on legislation, and the Home Government has no
+control over any public officer except the Governor.</p>
+
+<p>The British Colonial Governments thus present an
+absolute gradation of rule; beginning with absolute
+despotism and ending with almost absolute legal independence,
+except in so far as a veto on legislation and the
+presence of a Governor named by the Crown mark the
+dependence of the colony on the mother country.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be remembered, moreover, that the colonies
+which have received this complete local freedom are the
+great colonies of the earth&mdash;nations themselves possessing
+territories as large or larger than any European State&mdash;namely,
+Canada, the Cape, New South Wales, Victoria,
+Queensland, South Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania.
+And this change from dependence to freedom has been
+effected with the good-will both of the mother country and
+the colony, and without it being imputed to the colonists,
+when desiring a larger measure of self-government, that
+they were separatists, anarchists, or revolutionists.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the general principles of colonial government,
+but one colony requires special mention, from the circumstance
+of its Constitution having been put forward as a
+model for Ireland; this is the Dominion of Canada. The
+Government of Canada is, in effect, a subordinate federal
+union; that is to say, it possesses a central Legislature,
+having the largest possible powers of local self-government
+consistent with the supremacy of the empire, with seven
+<!-- Page 202 --><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />inferior provincial Governments, exercising powers greater
+than those of an English county, but not so great as those
+of an American State. The advantage of such a form of
+government is that, without weakening the supremacy of
+the empire or of the central local power, it admits of considerable
+diversities being made in the details of provincial
+government, where local peculiarities and antecedents
+render it undesirable to make a more complete assimilation
+of the Governments of the various provinces.</p>
+
+<p>Materials have now been collected which will enable
+the reader to judge of the expediency or inexpediency of
+the course taken by Mr. Gladstone's Government in dealing
+with Ireland. Three alternatives were open to them&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+1. To let matters alone.<br />
+2. To pass a Coercion Bill.<br />
+3. To change the government of Ireland, and at<br />
+the same time to pass a Land Bill.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The two last measures are combined under the head of
+one alternative, as it will be shown in the sequel that no
+effective Land Bill can be passed without granting Home
+Rule in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the short answer to the first alternative is, that no
+party in the State&mdash;Conservative, Whig, Radical, Unionist,
+Home Ruler, Parnellite&mdash;thought it possible to leave things
+alone. That something must be done was universally
+admitted.</p>
+
+<p>The second alternative has found favour with the
+present Government, and certainly is a better example of
+the triumph of hope over experience, than even the proverbial
+second marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Eighty-six years have elapsed since the Union. During
+the first thirty-two years only eleven years, and during the
+last fifty-four years only two years have been free from
+special repressive legislation; yet the agitation for repeal of
+the Union, and general discontent, are more violent in<!-- Page 203 --><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" />
+1887 than in any one of the eighty-six previous years. In
+the name of common-sense, is there any reason for supposing
+that the Coercion Bill of 1887 will have a better or
+more enduring effect than its numerous predecessors? The
+<i>prim&acirc; facie</i> case is at all events in favour of the contention
+that, when so many trials of a certain remedy have failed, it
+would be better not to try the same remedy again, but to
+have recourse to some other medicine. What, then, was
+the position of Mr. Gladstone's Government at the close of
+the election of 1885? What were the considerations presented
+to them as supreme supervisors and guardians of
+the British Empire? They found that vast colonial empire
+tranquil and loyal beyond previous expectation&mdash;the greater
+colonies satisfied with their existing position; the lesser
+expecting that as they grew up to manhood they would be
+treated as men, and emancipated from childish restraints.
+The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were contented
+with their sturdy dependent independence, loyal to the
+backbone. One member only stood aloof, sulky and dissatisfied,
+and though in law integrally united with the
+dominant community, practically was dissociated from it by
+forming within Parliament (the controlling body of the
+whole) a separate section, of which the whole aim was to
+fetter the action of the entire supreme body in order to
+bring to an external severance the practical disunion which
+existed between that member and Great Britain. This
+member&mdash;Ireland&mdash;as compared with other parts of the
+empire, was small and insignificant; measured against
+Great Britain, its population was five millions to thirty-one
+millions, and its estimated capital was only one twenty-fourth
+part of the capital of the United Kingdom. Measured
+against Australia, its trade with Great Britain was almost
+insignificant. Its importance arose from the force of public
+opinion in Great Britain, which deemed England pledged to
+protect the party in Ireland which desired the Union to be
+<!-- Page 204 --><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" />maintained, and from the power of obstructing English
+legislation through the medium of the Irish contingent,
+willing and ready on every occasion to intervene in English
+debates. The first step to be taken obviously was to find
+out what the great majority of Irish members wanted. The
+answer was, that they would be contented to quit the British
+Parliament on having a Parliament established on College
+Green, with full powers of local government, and that they
+would accept on behalf of their country a certain fixed
+annual sum to be paid to the Imperial Exchequer, on condition
+that such sum should not be increased without the
+consent of the Irish representatives. Here there were two
+great points gained without any sacrifice of principle.
+Ireland could not be said to be taxed without representation
+when her representatives agreed to a certain fixed
+sum to be paid till altered with their consent; while at the
+same time all risk of obstruction to English legislation by
+Irish means was removed by the proposal that the Irish
+representatives should exercise local powers in Dublin
+instead of imperial powers at Westminster.</p>
+
+<p>On the basis of the above arrangement the Bill of Mr.
+Gladstone was founded. Absolute local autonomy was
+conferred on Ireland; the assent of the Irish members to
+quit the Imperial Parliament was accepted; and the Bill
+provided that after a certain day the representative Irish
+peers should cease to sit in the House of Lords, and the
+Irish members vacate their places in the House of Commons.
+Provisions were then made for the absorption in
+the Irish Legislative Body of both the Irish representative
+peers and Irish members.</p>
+
+<p>The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament was
+maintained by an express provision excepting from any
+interference on the part of Irish Legislature all imperial
+powers, and declaring any enactment void which infringed
+that provision; further, an enactment was inserted for the
+<!-- Page 205 --><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" />purpose of securing to the English Legislature in the last
+resource the absolute power to make any law for the government
+of Ireland, and therefore to repeal, or suspend, the
+Irish Constitution.</p>
+
+<p>Technically these reservations of supremacy to the
+English Legislature were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of
+constitutional law that a sovereign Legislature, such as the
+Queen and two Houses of Parliament in England, cannot
+bind their successors, and consequently can repeal or alter
+any law, however fundamental, and annul any restrictions on
+alteration, however strongly expressed. Practically they
+were never likely to be called into operation, as it is the
+custom of Parliament to adhere, under all but the most
+extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances, to any compact
+made by Act of Parliament between itself and any subordinate
+legislative body. The Irish Legislature was subjected
+to the same controlling power which has for centuries been
+applied to prevent any excess of jurisdiction in our Colonial
+Legislatures, by a direction that an appeal as to the constitutionality
+of any laws which they might pass should lie
+to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This
+supremacy of the imperial judicial power over the action of
+the Colonial Legislatures was a system which the founders
+of the American Constitution copied in the establishment of
+their supreme Court, and thereby secured for that legislative
+system a stability which has defied the assaults of faction
+and the strain of civil war.</p>
+
+<p>The Executive Government of Ireland was continued in
+her Majesty, and was to be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant
+on her behalf, by the aid of such officers and such
+Council as her Majesty might from time to time see fit. The
+initiative power of recommending taxation was also vested
+in the Queen, and delegated to the Lord Lieutenant. These
+clauses are co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring
+complete local powers on the Irish Legislature,
+<!-- Page 206 --><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" />while it preserves all imperial powers to the Imperial Legislature.
+The Governor is an imperial officer, and will be
+bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous
+scrutiny, and to veto any Bill which may be injurious to
+those interests. On the other hand, as respects all local
+matters, he will act on and be guided by the advice of the
+Irish Executive Council. The system is self-acting. The
+Governor, for local purposes, must have a Council which is
+in harmony with the Legislative Body. If the Governor
+and a Council, supported by the Legislative Body, do not
+agree, the Governor must give way, unless he can, by dismissing
+his Council, and dissolving the Legislative Body,
+obtain both a Council and a Legislative Body which will
+support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case
+is different; here the last word rests with the mother country,
+and in the last resort a determination of the Executive
+Council, backed by the Legislative Body, to resist imperial
+rights, must be deemed an act of rebellion on the part of the
+Irish people, and be dealt with accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>In acceding to the claims of the National Party for
+Home Rule in Ireland another question had to be considered:
+the demands of the English garrison, as it is called&mdash;or,
+in plain words, of the class of Irish landlords&mdash;for
+protection. They urged that to grant Home Rule in
+Ireland would be to hand them over to their enemies, their
+tenants, and to lead to an immediate, or to all events a
+proximate, confiscation of their properties. Without admitting
+the truth of these apprehensions to the full extent, or
+indeed to any great extent, it was undoubtedly felt by the
+framers of the Home Rule Bill that a moral obligation
+rested on the Imperial Government to remove, if possible,
+&quot;the fearful exasperations attending the agrarian relations
+in Ireland,&quot; rather than leave a question so fraught with
+danger, so involved in difficulty, to be determined by the
+Irish Government on its first entry on official existence.<!-- Page 207 --><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" />
+Hence the Land Bill, the scheme of which was to frame a
+system under which the tenants, by being made owners of
+the soil, should become interested as a class in the maintenance
+of social order, while the landlords should be
+enabled to rid themselves on fair terms of their estates, in
+cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for
+pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves
+from the responsibilities of ownership. Of the land scheme
+brought into Parliament in 1886, it need only here be said that
+it proposed to lend the Irish Government 3 per cent. stock
+at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, the Irish Government undertaking
+to purchase, from any Irish landlord desirous of selling, his
+estate at (as a general rule) twenty years' purchase on the
+net rental. The money thus disbursed by the Irish Government
+was repaid to them by an annuity, payable by the
+tenant for forty-nine years, of 4 per cent. on a capital sum
+equal to twenty times the gross rental; the result being
+that, were the Bill passed into law, the tenant would become
+immediate owner of the land, subject to the payment of an
+annuity considerably less than the previous rent&mdash;that the
+Irish Government would make a considerable profit on the
+transaction, inasmuch as it would receive from the tenant
+interest calculated on the basis of the <i>gross</i> rental, whilst it
+would pay to the English Government interest calculated on
+the basis of the <i>net</i> rental&mdash;and that the English Government
+would sustain no loss if the interest were duly received
+by them.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of such a plan appears almost magical: Ireland
+is transformed at one stroke from a nation of landlords into
+a nation of peasant proprietors&mdash;apparently without loss to
+any one, and with gain to everybody concerned, except the
+British Government, who neither gain nor lose in the matter.
+The practicability, however, of such a scheme depends
+altogether on the security against loss afforded to the British
+tax-payer, for he is industrious and heavily burdened, and
+<!-- Page 208 --><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" />cannot be expected to assent to any plan which will land
+him in any appreciable loss. Here it is that the plan
+of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill differs from all other previous
+plans. Act after Act has been passed enabling the tenant
+to borrow money from the British Government on the
+security of the holding, for the purpose of enabling him to
+purchase the fee-simple. In such transactions the British
+Government becomes the mortgagee, and can only recover
+its money, if default is made in payment, by ejecting the
+tenant and becoming the landlord. In proportion, then,
+as any existing purchase Act succeeds, in the same proportion
+the risk of the British taxpayer increases. He is ever
+placed in the most invidious of all lights; instead of posing
+as the generous benefactor who holds forth his hand to
+rescue the landlord and tenant from an intolerable position,
+he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the
+still more hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant
+of his holding, is seeking to introduce another man into
+property which really belongs to the ejected tenant. Such
+a position may be endurable when the number of purchasing
+tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform
+in Ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable
+difference in the relations of landlord and tenant;
+still more, if it become general. Now, what is the remedy
+of such a state of things? Surely to interpose the Irish
+Government between the Irish debtor and his English
+creditor, and to provide that the Irish revenues in bulk, not
+the individual holdings of each tenant, shall be the security
+for the English creditor. This was the scheme embodied
+in the Land Act of 1886. The punctual payment of all
+money due from the Government of Ireland to the Government
+of Great Britain was to have been secured by the
+continuance in the hands of the British Government of the
+Excise and Customs duties, and by the appointment of an
+Imperial Receiver-General, assisted by subordinate officers,
+<!-- Page 209 --><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />and protected by an Imperial Court. This officer would
+have received not only all the imperial taxes, but also the
+local taxes; and it would have been his duty to satisfy
+the claims of the British Government before he allowed any
+sum to pass into the Irish Exchequer. In effect, the British
+Government, in relation to the levying of imperial taxes,
+would have stood in the same relation to Ireland as
+Congress does to the United States in respect to the levying
+of federal taxes. The fiscal unity of Great Britain and
+Ireland would have been in this way secured, and the
+British Government protected against any loss of interest
+for the large sums to be expended in carrying into effect in
+Ireland any agrarian reform worthy of the name.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish Bills of 1886, as above represented, had at
+least three recommendations:</p>
+
+<p>1. They created a state of things in Ireland under which
+it was possible to make a complete agrarian reform without
+exposing the English Exchequer to any appreciable risk.</p>
+
+<p>2. They enabled the Irish to govern themselves as
+respects local matters, while preserving intact the supremacy
+of the British Parliament and the integrity of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>3. They enabled the British Parliament to govern the
+British Empire without any obstructive Irish interference.</p>
+
+<p>To the first of these propositions no attempt at an answer
+has been made. The Land Bill was never considered on
+its merits; indeed, was never practically discussed, but was
+at once swept into oblivion by the wave which overwhelmed
+the Home Rule Bill.</p>
+
+<p>The contention against the second proposition was
+concerned in proving that the supremacy of the British
+Parliament was not maintained: the practical answer to this
+objection has been given above. Pushed to its utmost, it
+could only amount to proof that an amendment ought to
+have been introduced in Committee, declaring, in words
+better selected than those introduced for that purpose in the<!-- Page 210 --><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" />
+Bill, that nothing in the Act should affect the supremacy of
+the British Parliament. In short, the whole discussion here
+necessarily resolved itself into a mere verbal squabble as to
+the construction of a clause in a Bill not yet in Committee,
+and had no bottom or substance.</p>
+
+<p>It was also urged that the concession of self-government
+to Ireland was but another mode of handing over the
+Loyalist party&mdash;or, as it is sometimes called, the English
+garrison&mdash;to the tender mercies of the Parnellites. The
+reply to this would seem to be, that as respects property
+the Land Bill effectually prevented any interference of the
+Irish Parliament with the land; nay, more, enabled any
+Irishman desirous of turning his land into money to do
+so on the most advantageous terms that ever had been&mdash;and
+with a falling market it may be confidently prophesied
+ever can be&mdash;offered to the Irish landlord; while as respect
+life and liberty, were it possible that they should be endangered,
+it was the duty of the imperial officer, the Lord Lieutenant,
+to take means for the preservation of peace and
+good order; and behind him, to enforce his behests, stand
+the strong battalions who, to our sorrow be it spoken, have
+so often been called upon to put down disturbance and
+anarchy in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Competing plans have been put forward, with more or
+less detail, for governing Ireland. The suggestion that
+Ireland should be governed as a <i>Crown</i> colony need only
+be mentioned to be rejected. It means in effect, that
+Ireland should sink from the rank of an equal or independent
+member of the British Empire to the grade of the
+most dependent of her colonies, and should be governed
+despotically by English officials, without representation in
+the English Parliament or any machinery of local self-government.
+Another proposal has been to give four provincial
+Governments to Ireland, limiting their powers to
+local rating, education, and legislation in respect of matters
+<!-- Page 211 --><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" />which form the subjects of private Bill legislation at present;
+in fact, to place them somewhat on the footing of the
+provinces of Canada, while reserving to the English Parliament
+the powers vested in the Dominion of Canada. Such a
+scheme would seem adapted to whet the appetite of the Irish
+for nationality, without supplying them with any portion of
+the real article. It would supply no basis on which a system
+of agrarian reform could be founded, as it would be impossible
+to leave the determination of a local question, which is
+a unit in its dangers and its difficulties, to four different
+Legislatures; above all, the hinge on which the question
+turns&mdash;the sufficiency of the security for the British taxpayer&mdash;could
+not be afforded by provincial resources.
+Indeed, no alternative for the Land Bill of 1886 has been
+suggested which does not err in one of the following points:
+either it pledges English credit on insufficient security, or
+it requires the landowners to accept Irish debentures or
+some form of Irish paper money at par; in other words, it
+makes English taxes a fund for relieving Irish landlords, or
+else it compels the Irish landowner, if he sells at all, to
+sell at an inadequate price. Before parting with Canada, it
+may be worth while noticing that another, and more feasible,
+alternative is to imitate more closely the Canadian Constitution,
+and to vest the central or Dominion powers in a
+central Legislature in Dublin, parcelling out the provincial
+powers, as they have been called, amongst several provincial
+Legislatures. This scheme might be made available as
+a means of protecting Ulster from the supposed danger
+of undue interference from the Central Government, and
+for making, possibly, other diversities in the local administration
+of various parts of Ireland in order to meet special
+local exigencies.</p>
+
+<p>A leading writer among the dissentient Liberals has intimated
+that one of two forms of representative colonial
+government might be imposed on Ireland&mdash;either the form
+<!-- Page 212 --><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" />in which the executive is conducted by colonial officials, or
+the form of the great irresponsible colonies. The first of
+these forms is open to the objection, that it perpetuates
+those struggles between English executive measures and
+Irish opinion which has made Ireland for centuries ungovernable,
+and led to the establishment of the union and
+destruction of Irish independence in 1800; the second
+proposal would destroy the fiscal unity of the empire&mdash;leave
+the agrarian feud unextinguished, and aggravate
+the objections which have been urged against the Home
+Rule Bill of 1886. A question still remains, in relation
+to the <i>form</i> of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, which would
+not have deserved attention but for the prominence given
+to it in some of the discussions upon the subject. The
+Bill of 1886 provides &quot;that the Legislature may make laws
+for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland,&quot; but
+subjects their power to numerous exceptions and restrictions.
+The Act establishing the Dominion of Canada
+enumerates various matters in respect of which the Legislature
+of Canada is to have exclusive power, but prefaces
+the enumeration with a clause &quot;that the Dominion Legislature
+may make laws for the peace, order, and good government
+of Canada in relation to all matters not within the
+jurisdiction of the provincial Legislatures, although such
+matters may not be specially mentioned.&quot; In effect, therefore,
+the difference between the Irish Bill and the Canadian
+Act is one of expression and not of substance, and, although
+the Bill is more accurate in its form, it would scarcely
+be worth while to insist on legislating by exception instead
+of by enumeration if, by the substitution of the latter form
+for the former, any material opposition would be conciliated.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, are the conclusions intended to be drawn
+from the foregoing premises?</p>
+
+<p>1. That coercion is played out, and can no longer be
+regarded as a remedy for the evils of Irish misrule.<!-- Page 213 --><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" /></p>
+
+<p>2. That some alternative must be found, and that the
+only alternative within the range of practical politics is some
+form of Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p>3. That there is no reason for thinking that the grant of
+Home Rule to Ireland&mdash;a member only, and not one of the
+most important members, of the British Empire&mdash;will in
+any way dismember, or even in the slightest degree risk the
+dismemberment of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>4. That Home Rule presupposes and admits the supremacy
+of the British Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>5. That theory is in favour of Home Rule, as the
+nationality of Ireland is distinct, and justifies a desire for
+local independence; while the establishment of Home Rule
+is a necessary condition to the effectual removal of agrarian
+disturbances in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>6. That precedent is in favour of granting Home Rule
+to Ireland&mdash;<i>e.g.</i> the success of the new Constitution in
+Austria-Hungary, and the happy effects resulting from the
+establishment of the Dominion of Canada.</p>
+
+<p>7. That the particular form of Home Rule granted is
+comparatively immaterial.</p>
+
+<p>8. That the Home Rule Bill of 1886 may readily be
+amended in such a manner as to satisfy all real and unpartisan
+objectors.</p>
+
+<p>9. That the Land Bill of 1886 is the best that has ever
+been devised, having regard to the advantages offered to
+the new Irish Government, the landlord, and the tenant.<!-- Page 214 --><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60" /><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Reprinted by permission, with certain omissions, from the <i>Contemporary
+Review</i>, August, 1887.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61" /><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> &quot;Home Rule and Imperial Unity:&quot; <i>Contemporary Review</i>, March, 1887.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62" /><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Mill on <i>Representative Government</i>, p. 310.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63" /><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> See <i>Statesman's Year-Book</i>: Switzerland and Germany.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64" /><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Heeren's <i>Political System of Europe</i>, p. 152.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65" /><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> <i>Memoirs of Count Beust</i>, vol. i., Introduction, p. xliii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66" /><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> <i>Statesman's Year-Book.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67" /><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> The Emperor of Austria is the head of the empire, with the title
+of King in Hungary. Austria-Hungary is treated as a federal, not as
+an imperial union, on the ground that Austria was never rightfully a
+dominant community over Hungary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68" /><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> <i>Representative Government</i>, p. 295.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_PAST_AND_FUTURE_OF_THE" id="THE_PAST_AND_FUTURE_OF_THE" />THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE
+IRISH QUESTION<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69" /><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.</p>
+
+
+<p>For half a century or more no question of English domestic
+politics has excited so much interest outside England as
+that question of resettling her relations with Ireland, which
+was fought over in the last Parliament, and still confronts
+the Parliament that has lately been elected. Apart from its
+dramatic interest, apart from its influence on the fortune of
+parties, and its effect on the imperial position of Great
+Britain, it involves so many large principles of statesmanship,
+and raises so many delicate points of constitutional
+law, as to deserve the study of philosophical thinkers no
+less than of practical politicians in every free country.</p>
+
+<p>The circumstances which led to the introduction of the
+Government of Ireland Bill, in April, 1886, are familiar to
+Americans as well as Englishmen. Ever since the crowns
+and parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland were united,
+in A.D. 1800, there has been in Ireland a party which protested
+against that union as fraudulently obtained and inexpedient
+in itself. For many years this party, led by Daniel
+O'Connell, maintained an agitation for Repeal. After his
+<!-- Page 215 --><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />death a more extreme section, which sought the complete
+independence of Ireland, raised the insurrection of 1848,
+and subsequently, under the guidance of other hands,
+formed the Fenian conspiracy, whose projected insurrection
+was nipped in the bud in 1867, though the conspiracy continued
+to menace the Government and the tranquillity of
+the island. In 1872 the Home Rule party was formed,
+demanding, not the Repeal of the Union, but the creation
+of an Irish Legislature, and the agitation, conducted in
+Parliament in a more systematic and persistent way than
+heretofore, took also a legitimate constitutional form. To
+this demand English and Scotch opinion was at first almost
+unanimously opposed. At the General Election of 1880,
+which, however, turned mainly on the foreign policy of
+Lord Beaconsfield's Government, not more than three or
+four members were returned by constituencies in Great
+Britain who professed to consider Home Rule as even an
+open question. All through the Parliament, which sat from
+1880 till 1885, the Nationalist party, led by Mr. Parnell,
+and including at first less than half, ultimately about half,
+of the Irish members, was in constant and generally bitter
+opposition to the Government of Mr. Gladstone. But
+during these five years a steady, although silent and often
+unconscious, process of change was passing in the minds of
+English and Scotch members, especially Liberal members,
+due to their growing sense of the mistakes which Parliament
+committed in handling Irish questions, and of the hopelessness
+of the efforts which the Executive was making to
+pacify the country on the old methods. The adoption of a
+Home Rule policy by one of the great English parties was,
+therefore, not so sudden a change as it seemed. The process
+had been going on for years, though in its earlier stages
+it was so gradual and so unwelcome as to be faintly felt and
+reluctantly admitted by the minds that were undergoing it.
+In the spring of 1886 the question could be no longer
+<!-- Page 216 --><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" />evaded or postponed. It was necessary to choose between
+one of two courses; the refusal of the demand for self-government,
+coupled with the introduction of a severe
+Coercion Bill, or the concession of it by the introduction of
+a Home Rule Bill. There were some few who suggested,
+as a third course, the granting of a limited measure of local
+institutions, such as county boards; but most people felt, as
+did Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, that this plan would have had
+most of the dangers and few of the advantages of either of
+the two others.</p>
+
+<p>How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into
+the House of Commons on April 8th, amid circumstances
+of curiosity and excitement unparalleled since 1832; how,
+after debates of almost unprecedented length, it was defeated
+in June, by a majority of thirty; how the policy it embodied
+was brought before the country at the General
+Election, and failed to win approval&mdash;all this is too well
+known to need recapitulation here. But the causes of the
+disaster have not been well understood, for it is only
+now&mdash;now, when the smoke of the battle has cleared
+away from the field&mdash;that these causes have begun to stand
+revealed in their true proportions.</p>
+
+<p>Besides some circumstances attending the production
+of the Bill, to which I shall refer presently, and which told
+heavily against it, there were three feelings which worked
+upon men's minds, disposing them to reject it.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these was dislike and fear of the Irish
+Nationalist members. In the previous House of Commons
+this party had been uniformly and bitterly hostile to the
+Liberal Government. Measures intended for the good of
+Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been ungraciously
+received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no
+thanks were due&mdash;inadequate concessions, which must be
+made the starting-point for fresh demands. Obstruction
+had been freely practised to defeat not only bills restraining
+<!-- Page 217 --><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" />the liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other
+measures. Some few members of the Irish party had
+systematically sought to delay all English and Scotch
+legislation, and, in fact, to bring the work of Parliament to
+a dead stop. Much violent language had been used, even
+where the provocation was slight. The outbreaks of crime
+which had repeatedly occurred in Ireland had been, not,
+indeed, defended, but so often passed over in silence by
+Nationalist speakers, that English opinion was inclined to
+hold them practically responsible for disorders which, so it
+was thought, they had neither wished nor tried to prevent.
+(I am, of course, expressing no opinion as to the justice of
+this view, nor as to the excuses to be made for the Parliamentary
+tactics of the Irish party, but merely stating how
+their conduct struck many Englishmen.) There could be
+no doubt as to the hostility which they, still less as to that
+which their fellow-countrymen in the United States, had
+expressed toward England, for they had openly wished
+success to Russia while war seemed impending with her,
+and the so-called Mahdi of the Soudan was vociferously
+cheered at many a Nationalist meeting. At the Election of
+1885 they had done their utmost to defeat Liberal candidates
+in every English and Scotch constituency where there
+existed a body of Irish voters, and had thrown some twenty
+seats or more into the hands of the Tories. Now, to many
+Englishmen, the proposal to create an Irish Parliament
+seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand over
+to these Irish members the government of Ireland, with all
+the opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite
+party in Ireland and to worry England herself. It was all
+very well to urge that the tactics which the Nationalists had
+pursued when their object was to extort Home Rule would
+be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule had
+been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament
+would contain different men from those who had been sent
+<!-- Page 218 --><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" />to Westminster as Mr. Parnell's nominees. Neither of these
+arguments could overcome the suspicious antipathy which
+many Englishmen felt, nor dissolve the association in their
+minds between the Nationalist leaders and the forces of disorder.
+The Parnellites (thus they reasoned) are bad men;
+what they seek is therefore likely to be bad, and whether
+bad in itself or not, they will make a bad use of it. In
+such reasonings there was more of sentiment and prejudice
+than of reason, but sentiment and prejudice are proverbially
+harder than arguments to expel from minds where they have
+made a lodgment.</p>
+
+<p>The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial
+grounds for alarm. As everybody knows, she is
+not, either in religion or in blood, or in feelings and ideas,
+a homogeneous country. Three-fourths of the people are
+Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant
+fourth subdivided into bodies not fond of one another, who
+have little community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish
+colony in Ulster, many English families have settled here
+and there through the country. They have been regarded
+as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and many
+of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since
+they came, still look on themselves as rather English than
+Irish. The last fifty years, whose wonderful changes have
+in most parts of the world tended to unite and weld into
+one compact body the inhabitants of each part of the earth's
+surface, connecting them by the ties of commerce, and of a
+far easier and swifter intercourse than was formerly possible,
+have in Ireland worked in the opposite direction. It has
+become more and more the habit of the richer class in
+Ireland to go to England for its enjoyment, and to feel
+itself socially rather English than Irish. Thus the chasm
+between the immigrants and the aborigines has grown
+deeper. The upper class has not that Irish patriotism
+which it showed in the days of the National Irish<!-- Page 219 --><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" />
+Parliament (1782-1800), and while there is thus less of a
+common national feeling to draw rich and poor together,
+the strife of landlords and tenants has continued, irritating
+the minds of both parties, and gathering them into two
+hostile camps. As everybody knows, the Nationalist agitation
+has been intimately associated with the Land agitation&mdash;has,
+in fact, found a strong motive-force in the desire of the
+tenants to have their rents reduced, and themselves secured
+against eviction. Now, many people in England assumed
+that an Irish Parliament would be under the control of the
+tenants and the humbler class generally, and would therefore
+be hostile to the landlords. They went farther, and made
+the much bolder assumption that as such a Parliament
+would be chosen by electors, most of whom were Roman
+Catholics, it would be under the control of the Catholic
+priesthood, and hostile to Protestants. Thus they supposed
+that the grant of self-government to Ireland would mean the
+abandonment of the upper and wealthier class, the landlords
+and the Protestants, to the tender mercies of their enemies.
+Such abandonment, it was proclaimed on a thousand platforms,
+would be disgraceful in itself, dishonouring to England,
+a betrayal of the very men who had stood by her in
+the past, and were prepared to stand by her in the future,
+if only she would stand by them. It was, of course, replied
+by the defenders of the Home Rule Bill, that what the so-called
+English party in Ireland really stood by was their
+own ascendency over the Irish masses&mdash;an oppressive
+ascendency, which had caused most of the disorders of
+the country. As to religion, there were many Protestants
+besides Mr. Parnell himself among the Nationalist leaders.
+There was no ill-feeling (except in Ulster) between Protestants
+and Roman Catholics in Ireland. There was no
+reason to expect that either the Catholic hierarchy or the
+priesthood generally would be supreme in an Irish Parliament,
+and much reason to expect the contrary. As regards<!-- Page 220 --><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" />
+Ulster, where, no doubt, there were special difficulties, due
+to the bitter antagonism of the Orangemen (not of the Protestants
+generally) and Catholics, Mr. Gladstone had undertaken
+to consider any special provisions which could be
+suggested as proper to meet those difficulties. These
+replies, however, made little impression. They were pronounced,
+and pronounced all the more confidently the
+more ignorant of Ireland the speaker was, to be too
+hypothetical. To many Englishmen the case seemed to
+be one of two hostile factions contending in Ireland for
+the last sixty years, and that the gift of self-government
+might enable one of them to tyrannize over the other.
+True, that party was the majority, and, according to the
+principles of democratic government, therefore entitled to
+prevail. But it is one thing to admit a principle and another
+to consent to its application. The minority had the sympathy
+of the upper classes in England, because the minority
+contained the landlords. It had the sympathy of a part of
+the middle class, because it contained the Protestants. And
+of those Englishmen who were impartial as between the Irish
+factions, there were some who held that England must in
+any case remain responsible for the internal peace and the
+just government of Ireland, and could not grant powers
+whose possession might tempt the one party to injustice,
+and the other to resist injustice by violence.</p>
+
+<p>There was another anticipation, another forecast of evils
+to follow, which told most of all upon English opinion.
+This was the notion that Home Rule was only a stage in
+the road to the complete separation of the two islands. The
+argument was conceived as follows: &quot;The motive passions
+of the Irish agitation have all along been hatred toward
+England and a desire to make Ireland a nation, holding her
+independent place among the nations of the world. This
+design was proclaimed by the Young Irelanders of 1848 and
+by the Fenian rebels of 1866; it has been avowed, in inter<!-- Page 221 --><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" />vals
+of candour, by the present Nationalists themselves.
+The grant of an Irish Parliament will stimulate rather than
+appease this thirst for separate national existence. The
+nearer complete independence seems, the more will it be
+desired. Hatred to England will still be an active force,
+because the amount of control which England retains will
+irritate Irish pride, as well as limit Irish action; while all
+the misfortunes which may befall the new Irish Government
+will be blamed, not on its own imprudence, but on the
+English connection. And as the motives for seeking
+separation will remain, so the prospect of obtaining it
+will seem better. Agitation will have a better vantage-ground
+in an Irish Parliament than it formerly had among
+the Irish members of a British Legislature; and if actual
+resistance to the Queen's authority should be attempted, it
+will be attempted under conditions more favourable than
+the present, because the rebels will have in their hands the
+machinery of Irish Government, large financial resources,
+and a <i>prima facie</i> title to represent the will of the Irish
+people. As against a rebellious party in Ireland, England
+has now two advantages&mdash;an advantage of theory, an advantage
+of fact. The advantage of theory is that she does not
+admit Ireland to be a distinct nation, but maintains that in
+the United Kingdom there is but one nation, whereof some
+inhabit Great Britain and some Ireland. The advantage of
+fact is that, through her control of the constabulary, the
+magistrates, the courts of justice, and, in fine, the whole
+administrative system of Ireland, she can easily quell insurrectionary
+movements. By creating an Irish Parliament
+and Government she would strip herself of both these
+advantages.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly say that I do not admit the fairness of this
+statement of the case, because some of the premises are
+untrue, and because it misrepresents the nature of the Irish
+Government which Mr. Gladstone's Bill would have created.<!-- Page 222 --><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" />
+But I am trying to state the case as it was sedulously and
+skilfully presented to Englishmen. And it told all the
+more upon English waverers, because the considerations
+above mentioned seemed, if well founded, to destroy
+and cut away the chief ground on which Home Rule had
+been advocated, viz. that it would relieve England from
+the constant pressure of Irish discontent and agitation, and
+bring about a time of tranquillity, permitting good feeling to
+grow up between the peoples. If Home Rule was, after all,
+to be nothing more than a half-way house to independence,
+an Irish Parliament only a means of extorting a more complete
+emancipation from imperial control, was it not much
+better to keep things as they were, and go on enduring evils,
+the worst of which were known already? Hence the advocates
+of the Bill denied not the weight of the argument, but
+its applicability. Separation, they urged, is impossible, for
+it is contrary to the nature of things, which indicates that
+the two islands must go together. It is not desired by the
+Irish people, for it would injure them far more than it could
+possibly injure England, since Ireland finds in England the
+only market for her produce, the only source whence capital
+flows to her. A small revolutionary party has, no doubt,
+conspired to obtain it. But the only sympathy they received
+was due to the fact that the legitimate demand of Ireland
+for a recognition of her national feeling and for the management
+of her own local affairs was contemptuously ignored by
+England. The concession of that demand will banish the
+notion even from those minds which now entertain it,
+whereas its continued refusal may perpetuate that alienation
+of feeling which is at the bottom of all the mischief, the one
+force that makes for separation.</p>
+
+<p>It is no part of my present purpose to examine these
+arguments and counter arguments, but only to show what
+were the grounds on which a majority of the English voters
+refused to pronounce in favour of the Home Rule Bill. The
+<!-- Page 223 --><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" />reader will have observed that the issues raised were not only
+numerous, but full of difficulty. They were issues of fact,
+involving a knowledge both of the past history of Ireland and
+of her present state. They were also issues of inference, for
+even supposing the broad facts to be ascertained, these facts
+were susceptible of different interpretations, and men might,
+and did, honestly draw opposite conclusions from them. A
+more obscure and complicated problem, or rather group of
+problems, has seldom been presented to a nation for its
+decision. But the nation did not possess the requisite
+knowledge. Closely connected as Ireland seems to be with
+England, long as the Irish question has been a main trouble
+in English politics, the English and Scottish people know
+amazingly little about Ireland. Even in the upper class,
+you meet with comparatively few persons who have set foot
+on Irish soil, and, of course, far fewer who have ever
+examined the condition of the island and the sources of her
+discontent. Irish history, which is, no doubt, dismal reading,
+is a blank page to the English. In January, 1886, one
+found scarce any politicians who had ever heard of the Irish
+Parliament of 1782. And in that year, 1886, an Englishman
+anxious to discover the real state of the country did
+not know where to go for information. What appeared
+in the English newspapers, or, rather, in the one English
+newspaper which keeps a standing &quot;own correspondent&quot;
+in Dublin, was (as it still is) a grossly and almost
+avowedly partisan report, in which opinions are skilfully
+mixed with so-called facts, selected, consciously or unconsciously,
+to support the writer's view. The Nationalist
+press is, of course, not less strongly partisan on its own side,
+so that not merely an average Englishman, but even the
+editor of an English newspaper, who desires to ascertain the
+true state of matters and place it before his English readers,
+has had, until within the last few months, when events
+in Ireland began to be fully reported in Great Britain,
+<!-- Page 224 --><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" />no better means at his disposal for understanding Ireland
+than for understanding Bulgaria. I do not dwell upon this
+ignorance as an argument for Home Rule, though, of course,
+it is often so used. I merely wish to explain the bewilderment
+in which Englishmen found themselves when required
+to settle by their votes a question of immense difficulty.
+Many, on both sides, simply followed their party banners.
+Tories voted for Lord Salisbury; thorough-going admirers
+of Mr. Gladstone voted for Mr. Gladstone. But there was
+on the Liberal side a great mass who were utterly perplexed
+by the position. Contradictory statements of fact, as well
+as contradictory arguments, were flung at their heads in distracting
+profusion. They felt themselves unable to determine
+what was true and who was right. But one thing seemed
+clear to them. The policy of Home Rule was a new policy.
+They had been accustomed to censure and oppose it. Only
+nine months before, the Irish Nationalists had emphasized
+their hostility to the Liberal party by doing their utmost to
+defeat Liberal candidates in English constituencies. Hence,
+when it was proclaimed that Home Rule was the true
+remedy which the Liberal party must accept, they were
+startled and discomposed.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the English are not a nimble-minded people.
+They cannot, to use a familiar metaphor, turn round in
+their own length. Their momentum is such as to carry
+them on for some distance in the direction wherein they
+have been moving, even after the order to stop has been
+given. They need time to appreciate, digest, and comprehend
+a new proposition. Timid they are not, nor, perhaps,
+exceptionally cautious, but they do not like to be hurried, and
+insist on looking at a proposition for a good while before they
+come to a decision regarding it. It is one of the qualities
+which make them a great people. As has been observed,
+this proposition was novel, was most serious, and raised
+questions which they felt that their knowledge was insuf<!-- Page 225 --><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" />ficient
+to determine. Accordingly, a certain section of
+the Liberal party refused to accept it. A great number,
+probably the majority, of these doubtful men abstained
+from voting. Others voted against the Home Rule Liberal
+candidates, not necessarily because they condemned the
+policy, but because, as they were not satisfied that it
+was right, they deemed delay a less evil than the committal
+of the nation to a new departure, which might prove
+irrevocable.</p>
+
+<p>It must not, however, be supposed that it was only hesitation
+which drove many Liberals into the host arrayed against
+the Irish Government Bill. I have already said that among
+the leaders there were some, and those men of great influence,
+who condemned its principles. This was true also of
+a considerable, though a relatively smaller, section of the
+rank and file. And it was only what might have been
+expected. The proposal to undo much of the work done
+in 1800, to alter fundamentally the system which had for
+eighty-six years regulated the relations of the two islands, by
+setting up a Parliament in Ireland, was a proposal which not
+only had not formed a part of the accepted creed of the
+Liberal party, but fell outside party lines altogether. It
+might, no doubt, be argued, as was actually done, and as
+those who understand the history of the Liberal party have
+more and more come to see, that Liberal principles recommended
+it, since they involve faith in the people, and faith
+in the curative tendency of local self-government. But this
+was by no means axiomatic. Taking the whole complicated
+facts of the case, and taking Liberalism as it had been practically
+understood in England, a man might in July, 1886,
+deem himself a good Liberal and yet think that the true
+interests of both peoples would be best served by maintaining
+the existing Parliamentary system. Similarly, there was
+nothing in Toryism or Tory principles to prevent a fair-minded
+and patriotic Tory from approving the Home Rule scheme.<!-- Page 226 --><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" />
+It was a return to the older institutions of the monarchy, and
+not inconsistent with any of the doctrines which the Tory
+party had been accustomed to uphold. The question, in
+short, was one of those which cut across ordinary party lines,
+creating new divisions among politicians; and there might
+have been and ought to have been Liberal Home Rulers
+and Tory Home Rulers, Liberal opponents of Home Rule
+and Tory opponents of Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p>But here comes in a feature, a natural but none the less
+a regrettable feature, of the English party system. As the
+object of the party in opposition is to turn out the party in
+power and seat itself in their place, every Opposition regards
+with the strongest prejudice the measures proposed by a
+ruling Ministry. Cases sometimes occur where these
+measures are so obviously necessary, or so evidently approved
+by the nation, that the Opposition accepts them.
+But in general it scans them with a hostile eye. Human
+nature is human nature; and when the defeat of Government
+can be secured by defeating a Government Bill, the
+temptation to the Opposition to secure it is irresistible.
+Now, the Tory party is far more cohesive than the Liberal
+party, far more obedient to its leaders, far less disposed to
+break into sections, each of which thinks and acts for itself.
+Accordingly, that division of opinion in the Tory party which
+might have been expected, and which would have occurred
+if those who composed the Tory party had been merely so
+many reflecting men, and not members of a closely compacted
+political organization, did not occur. Liberals were
+divided, as such a question would naturally divide them.
+Tories were not divided; they threw their whole strength
+against the Bill. I am far from suggesting that they did so
+against their consciences. Whatever may be said as to two
+or three of the leaders, whose previous language and conduct
+seemed to indicate that they would themselves, had the
+election of 1885 gone differently, have been inclined to a<!-- Page 227 --><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" />
+Home Rule policy, many of the Tory chiefs, as well as the
+great mass of the party, honestly disapproved Mr. Gladstone's
+measure. But their party motives and party affiliations gave
+it no chance of an impartial verdict at their hands. They
+went into the jury-box with an invincible prepossession
+against the scheme of their opponents. When all these
+difficulties are duly considered, and especially when regard
+is had to those which I have last enumerated, the suddenness
+with which the new policy was launched, and the fact
+that as coming from one party it was sure beforehand of the
+hostility of the other, no surprise can be felt at its fate.
+Those who, in England, now look back over the spring and
+summer of 1886 are rather surprised that it should come so
+near succeeding. To have been rejected by a majority of
+only thirty in Parliament, and of little over ten per cent.
+of the total number of electors who voted at the general
+election, is a defeat far less severe than any one who knew
+England would have predicted.</p>
+
+<p>That the decision of the country is regarded by nobody
+as a final decision goes without saying. It was not regarded
+as final, even in the first weeks after it was given. This was
+not because the majority was comparatively small, for a
+smaller majority the other way would have been conclusive.
+It is because the country had not time enough for full consideration
+and deliberate judgment. The Bill was brought
+in on April 14th, the elections began on July 1st; no one
+can say what might have been the result of a long discussion,
+during which the first feelings of alarm (for alarm there was)
+might have worn off. And the decision is without finality,
+also, because the decision of the country was merely against
+the particular plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and not in
+favour of any alternative plan for dealing with Ireland,
+most certainly not for the coercive method which has since
+been adopted. One particular solution of the Irish problem
+was refused. The problem still stands confronting us, and
+<!-- Page 228 --><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" />when other modes of solving it have been in turn rejected,
+the country may come back to this mode.</p>
+
+<p>We may now turn from the past to the future. Yet the
+account which has been given of the feelings and ideas
+arrayed against the Bill does not wholly belong to the past.
+They are the feelings to which the opponents of any plan of
+self-government for Ireland still appeal, and which will have
+to be removed or softened down before it can be accepted
+by the English. In particular, the probability of separation,
+and the supposed dangers to the Protestants and the landlords
+from an Irish Parliament, will continue to form the
+themes of controversy so long as the question remains
+unsettled.</p>
+
+<p>What are the prospects of its settlement? What is the
+position which it now occupies? How has it affected the
+current politics of England?</p>
+
+<p>It broke up the Liberal party in Parliament. The vast
+numerical majority of that party in the country supported,
+and still supports, Mr. Gladstone and the policy of Irish self-government.
+But the dissentient minority includes many
+men of influence, and constitutes in the House of Commons
+a body of about seventy members, who hold the balance
+between parties. For the present they are leagued with the
+Tory Ministry to resist Home Rule, and their support insures
+a parliamentary majority to that Ministry. But it is, of
+course, necessary for them to rally to Lord Salisbury, not
+only on Irish questions, but on all questions; for, under our
+English system, a Ministry defeated on any serious issue is
+bound to resign, or dissolve Parliament. Now, to maintain an
+alliance for a special purpose, between members of opposite
+parties, is a hard matter. Agreement about Ireland does not,
+of itself, help men to agree about foreign policy, or bimetallism,
+or free trade, or changes in land laws, or ecclesiastical affairs.
+When these and other grave questions come up in Parliament,
+the Tory Ministry and their Liberal allies must, on
+<!-- Page 229 --><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" />every occasion, negotiate a species of concordat, whereby
+the liberty of both is fettered. One party may wish to
+resist innovation, the other to yield to it, or even to anticipate
+it. Each is obliged to forego something in order
+to humour the other; neither has the pleasure or the
+credit of taking a bold line on its own responsibility. There
+is, no doubt, less difference between the respective tenets of
+the great English parties than there was twenty years ago,
+when Mr. Disraeli had not yet completed the education of
+one party, and economic laws were still revered by the
+other. But, besides its tenets, each party has its tendencies,
+its sympathies, its moral atmosphere; and these differ so
+widely as to make the co-operation of Tories and Liberals
+constrained and cumbrous. Moreover, there are the men
+to be considered, the leaders on each side, whose jealousies,
+rivalries, suspicions, personal incompatibilities, neither old
+habits of joint action nor corporate party feeling exist to
+soften. On the whole, therefore, it is unlikely that the
+league of these two parties, united for one question only,
+and that a question which will pass into new phases, can be
+durable. Either the league will dissolve, or the smaller
+party will be absorbed into the larger. In England, as in
+America, third parties rarely last. The attraction of the
+larger mass is irresistible, and when the crisis which created
+a split or generated a new group has passed, or the opinion
+the new group advocates has been either generally discredited
+or generally adopted, the small party melts away,
+its older members disappearing from public life, its younger
+ones finding their career in the ranks of one of the two great
+standing armies of politics. If the dissentient, or anti-Home
+Rule, Liberal party lives till the next general election,
+it cannot live longer, for at that election it will be ground
+to powder between the upper and nether millstones of the
+regular Liberals and the regular Tories.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish struggle of 1886 has had another momentous
+<!-- Page 230 --><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" />consequence. It has brought the Nationalist or Parnellite
+party into friendly relations with the mass of English
+Liberals. When the Home Rule party was founded by
+Mr. Butt, some fifteen years ago, it had more in common
+with the Liberal than with the Tory party. But as it
+demanded what both English parties were then resolved to
+refuse, it was forced into antagonism to both; and from
+1877 onward (Mr. Butt being then dead) the antagonism
+became bitter, and, of course, specially bitter as toward the
+statesmen in power, because it was they who continued
+to refuse what the Nationalists sought. Mr. Parnell has
+always stated, with perfect candour, that he and his friends
+must fight for their own hand unhampered by English
+alliances, and getting the most they could for Ireland from
+the weakness of either English party. This position they
+still retain. If the Tory party will give them Home Rule,
+they will help the Tory party. However, as the Tory party
+has gained office by opposing Home Rule, this contingency
+may seem not to lie within the immediate future. On the
+other hand, the Gladstonian Liberals have lost office for
+their advocacy of Home Rule, and now stand pledged to
+maintain the policy they have proclaimed. The Nationalists
+have, therefore, for the first time since the days immediately
+following the Union of A.D. 1800 (a measure which the Whigs
+of those days resisted), a great English party admitting the
+justice of their claim, and inviting them to agitate for it by
+purely constitutional methods. For such an alliance the
+English Liberals are hotly reproached, both by the Tories
+and by the dissentients who follow Lord Harrington and Mr.
+Chamberlain. They are accused of disloyalty to England.
+The past acts and words of the Nationalists are thrown in
+their teeth, and they are told that in supporting the Irish
+claim they condone such acts, they adopt such words.
+They reply by denying the adoption, and by pointing out
+that the Tories themselves were from 1881 till 1886 in
+<!-- Page 231 --><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" />a practical, and often very close, though unavowed, Parliamentary
+alliance with the Nationalists in the House of
+Commons. The student of history will, however, conceive
+that the Liberals have a stronger and higher defence than
+any <i>tu quoque</i>. Issues that involve the welfare of peoples
+are far too serious for us to apply to them the same sentiments
+of personal taste and predilection which we follow
+in inviting a dinner party, or selecting companions for a
+vacation tour. If a man has abused your brother, or got
+drunk in the street, you do not ask him to go with you to the
+Yellowstone Park. But his social offences do not prevent
+you from siding with him in a political convention. So, in
+politics itself, one must distinguish between characters and
+opinions. If a man has shown himself unscrupulous or
+headstrong, you may properly refuse to vote him into
+office, or to sit in the same Cabinet with him, because you
+think these faults of his dangerous to the country. But
+if the cause he pleads be a just one, you have no more
+right to be prejudiced against it by his conduct than a
+judge has to be swayed by dislike to the counsel who
+argues a case. There were moderate men in America,
+who, in the days of the anti-slavery movement, cited against
+it the intemperate language of many abolitionists. There
+were aristocrats in England, who, during the struggle for
+the freedom and unity of Italy, sought to discredit the
+patriotic party by accusing them of tyrannicide. But the
+sound sense of both nations refused to be led away by such
+arguments, because it held those two causes to be in their
+essence righteous. In all revolutionary movements there
+are elements of excess and violence, which sober men may
+regret, but which must not disturb our judgment as to the
+substantial merits of an issue. The revolutionist of one
+generation is, like Garibaldi or Mazzini, the hero of the
+next; and the verdict of posterity applauds those who, even
+in his own day, were able to discern the justice of the
+<!-- Page 232 --><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" />cause under the errors or faults of its champion. Doubly
+is it the duty of a great and far-sighted statesman not to
+be repelled by such errors, when he can, by espousing a
+revolutionary movement, purify it of its revolutionary
+character, and turn it into a legitimate constitutional struggle.
+This is what Mr. Gladstone has done. If his policy be in
+itself dangerous and disloyal to the true interests of the
+people of our islands, let it be condemned. But if it be
+the policy which has the best promise for the peace, the
+prosperity, and the mutual good will of those peoples, he
+and those who follow him would be culpable indeed were
+they to be deterred by the condemnation which they have so
+often expressed, and which they still express, for some of
+the past acts of a particular party, from declaring that the
+aims of that party were substantially right aims, and from
+now pressing upon the country what their conscience
+approves.</p>
+
+<p>However, as the Home Rule Liberals and Nationalists,
+taken together, are in a minority (although a minority which
+obtains recruits at many bye-elections) in the present Parliament,
+it is not from them that fresh proposals are
+expected. They will, of course, continue to speak, write,
+and agitate on behalf of the views they hold. But practical
+attempt to deal with Irish troubles must for the present
+come from the Tory Ministry; for in the English system of
+government those who command a Parliamentary majority
+are responsible for legislation as well as administration, and
+are censured not merely if their legislation is bad, but if it
+is not forthcoming when events call for it.</p>
+
+<p>Why, it may be asked, should Lord Salisbury's Government
+burn its fingers over Ireland, as so many governments
+have burnt their fingers before? Why not let Ireland
+alone, giving to foreign affairs and to English and Scottish
+reforms all the attention which these too much neglected
+matters need?</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 233 --><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" />Well would it be for England, as well as for English
+Ministries, if Ireland could be simply let alone, her maladies
+left to be healed by the soft, slow hand of nature. But
+Irish troubles call aloud to be dealt with, and that promptly.
+They stand in the way of all other reforms, indeed of all
+other business. Letting alone has been tried, and it has
+succeeded no better, even in times less urgent than the
+present, than the usual policy of coercion followed by
+concession, or concession followed by coercion.</p>
+
+<p>There are three aspects of the Irish question, three
+channels by which the troubles of the &quot;distressful island&quot;
+stream down upon us, forcing whoever now rules or may
+come to rule in England to attempt some plan for dealing
+with them. I will take them in succession.</p>
+
+<p>The first is the Parliamentary difficulty. In the British
+House of Commons, with its six hundred and seventy
+members, there are nearly ninety Irish Nationalists. They
+are a well-disciplined body, voting as one man, though
+capable of speaking enough for a thousand. They have no
+interest in English or Scotch or colonial or Indian affairs,
+but only in Irish, and look upon the vote which they have
+the right of giving upon the former solely as a means of
+furthering their own Irish aims. They are, therefore, in the
+British Parliament not merely a foreign body, indifferent to
+the great British and imperial issues confided to it, but
+a hostile body, opposed to its present constitution, seeking
+to discredit it in its authority over Ireland, and to make
+more and more palpable and incurable the incompetence
+for Irish business whereof they accuse it. Several modes
+of doing this are open to them. They may, as some of
+the more actively bitter among them did in the Parliaments
+of 1874 and 1880, obstruct business by long and frequent
+speeches, dilatory motions, and all those devices which in
+America are called filibustering. The House of Commons
+may, no doubt, try to check these tactics by more stringent
+<!-- Page 234 --><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />rules of procedure, but the attempts already made in this
+direction have had but slight success, and every restriction
+of debate, since it trenches on the freedom of English and
+Scotch no less than of Irish members, injures Parliament as
+a whole. They may disgust the British people with the
+House of Commons by keeping it (as they have done in
+former years) so constantly occupied with Irish business as
+to leave it little time for English and Scotch measures.
+They may throw the weight of their collective vote into the
+scale of one or other British party, according to the amount
+of concession it will make to them, or, by always voting
+against the Ministry of the day, they may cause frequent
+and sudden changes of Government. This plan also they
+have followed in time past; for the moment it is not so
+applicable, because the Tories and dissentient Liberals,
+taken together, possess a majority in the House of
+Commons. But at any moment the alliance of those two
+sections may vanish, or another General Election may leave
+Tories and Liberals so nearly balanced that the Irish vote
+could turn the scale. Whoever reflects on the nature of
+Parliamentary Government will perceive that it is based on
+the assumption that the members of the ruling assembly,
+however much they may differ on other subjects, agree in
+desiring the strength, dignity, and welfare of the assembly
+itself, and in caring for the main national interests which it
+controls. He will therefore be prepared to expect countless
+and multiform difficulties in working such a Government,
+where a large section of the assembly seeks not to use,
+but to make useless, its forms and rules&mdash;not to preserve,
+but to lower and destroy, its honour, its credit, its efficiency.
+In vain are Irish members blamed for these tactics, for they
+answer that the interests of their own country require them
+to seek first her welfare, which can in their view be secured
+only by removing her from the direct control of what they
+deem a foreign assembly. Now that the demand for Irish
+<!-- Page 235 --><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" />self-government has obtained the sympathy of the bulk of
+English Liberals, they are unlikely forthwith to resume the
+systematic obstruction of past years. But they will be able,
+without alienating their English friends, to render the
+conduct of Parliamentary business so difficult that every
+English Ministry will be forced either to crush them, if it
+can, or to appease them by a series of concessions.</p>
+
+<p>The second difficulty is that of maintaining social order
+in Ireland. What that difficulty is, and whence it arises,
+every one knows. It is chronic, but every second or third
+winter, when there has been a wet season, or the price of
+live stock declines, it becomes specially acute. The tenants
+refuse to pay rents which they declare to be impossible.
+The landlords, or the harsher among them, try to enforce
+rents by evictions; evictions are resisted by outrages and
+boycotting. Popular sentiment supports those who commit
+outrages, because it considers the tenantry to be engaged in
+a species of war, a righteous war, against the landlord.
+Evidence can seldom be obtained, and juries acquit in the
+teeth of evidence. Thus the enforcement of the law strains
+all the resources of authority, while a habit of lawlessness
+and discontent is transmitted from generation to generation.
+Of the remedies proposed for this chronic evil the most
+obvious is the strengthening of the criminal law. We have
+been trying this for more than one hundred years, since
+Whiteboyism appeared, and trying it in vain. Since the
+Union, Coercion Acts, of more or less severity, have been
+almost always in force in Ireland, passed for two or three
+years, then dropped for a year or two, then renewed in a
+form slightly varying, but always with the same result of
+driving the disease in for a time, but not curing it. Mr.
+Gladstone proposed to buy out the landlords and then
+leave an Irish Parliament to restore social order, with that
+authority which it would derive from having the will of
+the people behind it; because he held that when the
+<!-- Page 236 --><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" />people felt the law to be of their own making, and not
+imposed from without, their sentiment would be enlisted on
+its side, and the necessity for a firm Government recognized.
+This plan, has, however, been rejected, so the choice was left
+of a fresh Coercion Act, or of some scheme, necessarily a
+costly scheme, for getting rid of the source of trouble by
+transferring the land of Ireland to the peasantry. The
+present Government, while guided by Sir M. Hicks-Beach,
+who had some knowledge of Ireland, did its best to persuade
+the landlords to accept reduced rents, while the
+Nationalist leaders, on their side, sought to restrain the
+people from outrages. But the armistice did not last. The
+Ministry yielded to the foolish counsels of its more violent
+supporters, and entrusted Irish affairs to the hands of a
+Chief Secretary without previous knowledge of the island.
+An unusually severe Coercion Act has been brought in and
+passed by the aid of the dissentient Liberals. And we
+now see this Act administered with a mixture of virulence
+and incompetence to which even the dreary annals of Irish
+misgovernment present few parallels. The feeling of the
+English people is rising against the policy carried out in
+their name. So far from being solved, the problem of
+social order becomes every day more acute.</p>
+
+<p>There remains the question of a reform of local government.
+For many years past, every English Ministry has
+undertaken to frame a measure creating a new system of
+popular rural self-government in England. It is the first
+large task of domestic legislation which we ask from Parliament.
+When such a scheme is proposed, can Ireland be
+left out of it? Should she be left out, the argument that
+she is being treated unequally and unfairly, as compared
+with England, would gain immense force; because the
+present local government of Ireland is admittedly less
+popular, less efficient, altogether less defensible, than even
+that of England which we are going to reform. If, there<!-- Page 237 --><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" />fore,
+the theory that the Imperial Parliament is both anxious
+and able to do its duty by Ireland is to be maintained,
+Ireland, too, must have her scheme of local government.
+And a scheme of local government is a large project, the
+discussion of which must pass into a discussion of the
+government of the island as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>Since, then, we may conclude that whatever Ministry is
+in power will be bound to take up the state of Ireland&mdash;since
+Parliament and the nation will be occupied with the
+subject during the coming sessions fully as much as they
+have been during those that have recently passed&mdash;the next
+inquiry is, What will the tendency of opinion and legislation
+be? Will the reasons and forces described above bring us
+to Home Rule? and if so, when, how, and why?</p>
+
+<p>There are grounds for answering these questions in the
+negative. A majority of the House of Commons, including
+the present Ministry and such influential Liberals as Mr.
+Bright, Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain, stand pledged
+to resist it, and seem&mdash;such is the passion which controversy
+engenders&mdash;more disposed to resist it than they
+were in 1885. But this ground is less strong than it may
+appear. We have had too many changes of opinion&mdash;ay,
+and of action too&mdash;upon Irish affairs not to be prepared for
+further changes. A Ministry in power learns much which
+an Opposition fails to learn. Home Rule is an elastic expression,
+and some of those who were loudest in denouncing
+Mr. Gladstone's Bill will find it easy to explain, should they
+bring in a Bill of their own for giving self-government to
+Ireland, that their measure is a different thing, and free
+from the objections brought against his. Nor, if such a
+conversion should come, need it be deemed a dishonest one,
+for events are potent teachers, and governments now seek
+rather to follow than to form opinion. Although a decent
+interval must be allowed, no one will be astonished if the
+Tory leaders should move ere long in the direction indicated.<!-- Page 238 --><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" />
+Toryism itself, as has been remarked already, contains
+nothing opposed to the idea.</p>
+
+<p>Far greater obstacles exist in the aversion which (as
+already observed) so many Englishmen of both parties have
+entertained for any scheme which should seem to leave the
+Protestant minority at the mercy of the peasant and Roman
+Catholic majority, and to carry us some way toward the
+ultimate separation of the islands. These alarms are
+genuine and deep-seated. One who (like the present writer)
+thinks them, if not baseless, yet immensely overstrained, is,
+of course, convinced that they may be allayed. But time
+must first pass, and the plan that is to allay them may
+have to be framed on somewhat different lines from those
+of Mr. Gladstone's measure. It is even possible that a
+conflict more sharp and painful than any of recent years
+may intervene before a settlement is reached.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, great as are the obstacles in the way, bitter
+as are the reproaches with which Mr. Gladstone is pursued
+by the richer classes in England, there is good reason to
+believe that the current is setting toward his policy. In
+proceeding to state the grounds for this view, I must frankly
+own that I am no longer (as in most of the preceding pages)
+merely setting forth facts on which impartial men in England
+would agree. The forecast which I seek to give may be
+tinged by my own belief that the grant of self-government
+is the best, if not the only method, now open to us of
+establishing peace between the islands, relieving the English
+Parliament of work it is ill fitted to discharge, allowing
+Ireland opportunities to learn those lessons in politics which
+her people so much need. The future, even the near future,
+is more than usually dim. Yet, if we examine those three
+branches of the Irish question which have been enumerated
+above, we shall see how naturally, in each of them, the concession
+of self-government seems to open, I will not say the
+most direct, but the least dangerous way, out of our troubles.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 239 --><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" />The Parliamentary difficulty arises from the fact that the
+representatives of Ireland have the feelings of foreigners
+sitting in a foreign assembly, whose honour and usefulness
+they do not desire. While these are their feelings they
+cannot work properly in it, and it cannot work properly
+with them. The inconvenience may be endured, but the
+English will grow tired of it, and be disposed to rid themselves
+of it, if they see their way to do so without greater
+mischief. There are but two ways out of the difficulty.
+One is to get rid of the Irish members altogether; the
+other is to make them, by the concession of their just
+demands, contented and loyal members of a truly united
+Parliament. The experience of the Parliament of 1880,
+which was mainly occupied with Irish business, and began,
+being a strongly Liberal Parliament, with a bias toward the
+Irish popular party, showed how difficult it is for a House
+of Commons which is ignorant of Ireland to legislate
+wisely for it. In the House of Lords there is not a
+single Nationalist; indeed, up till 1886, that exalted
+chamber contained only one peer, Lord Dalhousie (formerly
+member for Liverpool), who had ever said a word in favour
+of Home Rule. The more that England becomes sensible,
+as she must become sensible, of the deficiencies of the
+present machinery for appreciating the needs and giving
+effect to the wishes of Irishmen, the more disposed will she
+be to grant them some machinery of their own.</p>
+
+<p>As regards social order, I have shown that the choice
+which lies before the opponents of Home Rule is either to
+continue the policy of coercing the peasantry by severe
+special legislation, or to remove the source of friction by
+buying out the landlords for the benefit of the tenants.
+The present Ministry have chosen the former alternative,
+but they dangle before the eyes of their supporters some
+prospect that they may ultimately revert to the latter. Now,
+the only way that has yet been pointed out of buying out
+<!-- Page 240 --><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" />the landlords, without imposing tremendous liabilities of
+loss upon the British Treasury, is the creation of a strong
+Home Rule Government in Dublin. Supposing, however,
+that some other plan could be discovered, which would
+avoid the fatal objections to which an extension of the plan
+of the (Salisbury) Land Purchase Act of 1885 is open, such
+a plan would remove one of the chief objections to an Irish
+Parliament, by leaving no estates for such a Parliament to
+confiscate. As for coercion every day, I might say, every
+bye-election shows us how it becomes more and more odious
+to the British democracy. They dislike severity; they dislike
+the inequality involved in passing harsher laws for Ireland
+than those that apply to England and Scotland. They find
+themselves forced to sympathize with acts of violence in
+Ireland which they would condemn in Great Britain,
+because these acts seem the only way of resisting harsh
+and unjust laws. When the recoil comes, it will be more
+violent than in former days. The wish to discover some
+other course will be very strong, and the obvious other
+course will be to leave it to an Irish authority to enforce
+social order in its own way&mdash;probably a more rough-and-ready
+way than that of British officials. The notion which
+has possessed most Englishmen, that Irish self-government
+would be another name for anarchy, is curiously erroneous.
+Conflicts there may be, but a vigorous rule will emerge.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, as to local government. If a popular system is
+established in Ireland&mdash;one similar to that which it is proposed
+to establish in England&mdash;the control of its assemblies
+and officials will, over four-fifths of the island, fall into
+Nationalist hands. Their power will be enormously increased,
+for they will then command the machinery of
+administration, and the power of taxing. What with taxing
+landlords, aiding recalcitrant tenants, stopping the wheels
+of any central authority which may displease or oppose
+them, they will be in so strong a position that the creation
+<!-- Page 241 --><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" />of an Irish Parliament may appear to be a comparatively
+small further step, may even appear (as the wisest Nationalists
+now think it would prove) in the light of a check upon the
+abuse of local powers. These eventualities will unquestionably,
+when English opinion has realized them, make such a
+Parliament as the present pause before it commits rural local
+government to the Irish democracy. But it could not refuse
+to do something; and if it tried to restrain popular representative
+bodies by the veto of a bureaucracy in Dublin,
+there would arise occasions for quarrel and irritation more
+serious than now exist.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70" /><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> Those who once begin to repair an
+old and tottering building are led on, little by little, into
+changes they did not at starting contemplate. So it will be
+if once the task is undertaken of reforming the confessedly
+bad and indefensible system of Irish administration. We
+may stop at some half-way house on the way, but Home Rule
+stands at the end of the road.</p>
+
+<p>Supposing, then, that the Nationalist party, retaining its
+present strength and unity, perseveres in its present
+demands, there is every prospect that these demands will
+be granted. But will it persevere? There are among the
+English Dissentients those who prophesy that it will break
+up, as such parties have broken up before&mdash;will lose hope and
+wither away. Or the support of the Irish peasantry may be
+withdrawn&mdash;a result which some English politicians expect
+from a final settlement of the land question in the interest
+of the tenants. Any of these contingencies is possible, but at
+present most improbable. The moment when long-cherished
+aims begin to seem attainable is not that at which men are
+disposed to abandon them.</p>
+
+<p>There are, however, other reasons which suggest the
+likelihood of a change in English sentiment on the whole
+<!-- Page 242 --><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" />matter. The surprise with which the Bill of last April was
+received has worn off. The alarm is wearing off too.
+Those who set their teeth at what seemed to them a surrender
+to the Parnellites and their Irish-American allies,
+having relieved their temper by an emphatic No, have begun
+to ponder things more calmly. The English people are
+listening to the arguments from Irish history that are now
+addressed to them. They will be moved by the solid
+grounds of policy which that history suggests; will understand
+that what they have deemed insensate hatred is the
+natural result of long misgovernment, and will disappear
+with time and the removal of its causes. Many of the best
+minds of both nations will be at work to discover some
+method of reconciling Irish self-government with imperial
+supremacy and union free from the objections brought
+against the Bills of 1886. It is reasonable to expect that
+they may greatly improve upon these measures, which
+were prepared under pressure from a clamorous Opposition.
+What Mr. Disraeli once called the historical
+conscience of the country will appreciate those great
+underlying principles to which Mr. Gladstone's policy
+appeals. It has been accused of being a policy of despair;
+and may have commended itself to some who supported it
+as being simply a means of ridding England of responsibility.
+But to others it seemed, and more truly, a policy of faith;
+not, indeed, of thoughtless optimism, but of faith according
+to the definition which calls it &quot;the substance of things
+hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.&quot; Faith, by
+which nations as well as men must live, means nothing less
+than a conviction that great principles, permanent truths of
+human nature, lie at the bottom of all sound politics, and
+ought to be boldly and consistently applied, even when
+temporary difficulties surround their application. Such a
+principle is the belief in the power of freedom and self-government
+to cure the faults of a nation, in the tendency of re<!-- Page 243 --><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" />sponsibility
+to teach wisdom, and to make men see that
+justice and order are the surest sources of prosperity. Such a
+principle is the perception that national hatreds do not live
+on of themselves, but will expire when oppression has ceased,
+as a fire burns out without fuel. Such a principle is the
+recognition of the force of national sentiment, and of the duty
+of allowing it all the satisfaction that is compatible with
+the maintenance of imperial unity. Such, again, is the appreciation
+of those natural economic laws which show that
+nations, when disturbing passions have ceased, follow their
+own permanent interests, and that an island which finds its
+chief market in England and draws its capital from England
+will prefer a connection with England to the poverty and
+insignificance of isolation. It is the honour of Mr. Gladstone
+to have built his policy of conciliation upon principles like
+these, as upon a rock; and already the good effects are
+seen in the new friendliness which has arisen between the
+English masses and the people of Ireland, and in the better
+temper with which, despite the acrimony of some prominent
+politicians, the relations of the two peoples are discussed.
+When one looks round the horizon it is still far from clear;
+nor can we say from which quarter fair weather will arrive.
+But the air is fresher, and the clouds are breaking overhead.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>POSTSCRIPT.</p>
+
+<p>What has happened since the above paragraphs were
+written, ten months ago, has confirmed more quickly and
+completely than the writer expected the forecasts they
+contain. Home Rule is no longer a word of terror, even
+to those English and Scotch voters who were opposed to it
+in July, 1886. Most sensible men in the Tory and Dissentient
+Liberal camps have come to see that it is inevitable;
+<!-- Page 244 --><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" />and, while they continue to resist it for the sake of what
+is called consistency, or because they do not yet see in
+what form it is to be granted, they are disposed to regard
+its speedy arrival as the best method of retreat from an
+indefensible position.</p>
+
+<p>The repressive policy which the present Ministry are
+attempting in Ireland&mdash;for in the face of their failures one
+cannot say that they are carrying out any policy&mdash;is rendering
+Coercion Acts more and more detested by the English
+people. The actualities of Ireland, the social condition
+of her peasantry, the unwisdom of the dominant caste,
+the incompetence of the bureaucracy which affects to
+rule her, are being, by the full accounts we now receive,
+brought home to the mind of England and Scotland as they
+never were before, and produce their appropriate effect
+upon the heart and conscience of the people. The recognition
+by the Liberal party of the rights of Ireland, the visits
+of English Liberals to Ireland, the work done by Irishmen
+in English constituencies, are creating a feeling of unity and
+reciprocal interest between the masses of the people on
+both sides of the Channel without example in the seven
+hundred years that have passed since Strongbow's landing.</p>
+
+<p>This was the thing most needed to make Home Rule
+safe and full of promise, because it affords a guarantee that
+in such political contests as may arise in future, the division
+will not be, as heretofore, between the Irish people on the
+one side and the power of Britain on the other, but between
+two parties, each of which will have adherents in both
+islands. We may now at last hope that national hatreds
+will vanish; that England will unlearn her arrogance and
+Ireland her suspicion; that the basis is being laid for a
+harmonious co-operation of both nations in promoting the
+welfare and greatness of a common Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the Irish patriots of 1798 and 1848 desired
+Separation, because they thought that Ireland, attached to<!-- Page 245 --><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" />
+England, could never be more than the obscure satellite of
+a greater State. When Ireland has been heartily welcomed
+by the democracy of Great Britain as an equal partner, the
+ground for any such desire will have disappeared, and Union
+will rest on a foundation firmer than has ever before existed.
+Ireland will feel, when those rights of self-government have
+been secured for which she has pleaded so long, that she
+owes them, not only to her own tenacity and courage, but
+to the magnanimity, the justice, and the freely given
+sympathy of the English and Scottish people.</p>
+
+<p><i>October</i>, 1887.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69" /><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> This article, which originally appeared in the American <i>New
+Princeton Review</i>, has been added to in a few places, in order to
+bring its narrative of facts up to date.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70" /><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> The experience of the last few months, which has shown us rural
+Boards of Guardians and municipal bodies over four-fifths of Ireland
+displaying their zeal in the Nationalist cause, has amply confirmed this
+anticipation, expressed nearly a year ago.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SOME_ARGUMENTS_CONSIDERED71" id="SOME_ARGUMENTS_CONSIDERED71" /><!-- Page 246 --><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" />SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71" /><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY JOHN MORLEY.</p>
+
+
+<p>It is a favourite line of argument to show that we have no
+choice between the maintenance of the Union and the
+concession to Ireland of national independence. The evils
+of Irish independence are universally reckoned by Englishmen
+to be so intolerable that we shall never agree to it.
+The evils of Home Rule are even more intolerable still.
+Therefore, it is said, if we shall never willingly bring the
+latter upon our heads, <i>&agrave; fortiori</i> we ought on no account
+to invite the former. The business in hand, however, is not
+a theorem, but a problem; it is not a thesis to be proved,
+but a malady to be cured; and the world will thank only
+the reasoner who winds up, not with Q.E.D., but with
+Q.E.F. To reason that a patient ought not to take a given
+medicine because it may possibly cause him more pain than
+some other medicine which he has no intention of taking, is
+curiously oblique logic. The question is not oblique; it is
+direct. Will the operation do more harm to his constitution
+than the slow corrosions of a disorder grown inveterate?
+Are the conditions of the connection between
+<!-- Page 247 --><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" />England and Ireland, as laid down in the Act of Union,
+incapable of improvement? Is the present working of these
+conditions more prosperous and hopeful, or happier for
+Irish order and for English institutions, than any practicable
+proposal that it is within the compass of statesmanship to
+devise, and of civic sense to accept and to work? That is
+the question.</p>
+
+<p>Some people contend that the burden of making out
+a case rests on the advocate of change, and not on those
+who support things as they are. But who supports things
+as they are? Things as they are have become insupportable.
+If you make any of the constitutional changes that
+have been proposed, we are told, parliamentary government,
+as Englishmen now know it, is at an end; and our critic
+stands amazed at those &quot;who deem it a slighter danger
+to innovate on the Act of Union than to remodel the
+procedure of the House of Commons.&quot; As if that were the
+alternative. Great changes in the rules may do other good
+things, but no single competent authority believes that in
+this particular they will do the thing that we want. We
+cannot avoid constitutional changes. It is made matter of
+crushing rebuke that the Irish proposals of the late Government
+were an innovation on the old constitution of the
+realm. But everybody knows that, while ancient forms
+have survived, the last hundred years have witnessed a long
+succession of silent but most profound innovations. It was
+shortsighted to assume that the redistribution of political
+power that took place in 1884-5 was the last chapter of the
+history of constitutional change. It ought to have been
+foreseen that new possessors of power, both Irish and
+British, would press for objects the pursuit of which would
+certainly involve further novelties in the methods and
+machinery of government. Every given innovation must
+be rigorously scrutinized, but in the mere change or in the
+fact of innovation there is no valid reproach. When one of
+<!-- Page 248 --><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" />the plans for the better government of Ireland is described
+as depriving parliamentary institutions of their elasticity and
+strength, as weakening the Executive at home, and lessening
+the power of the country to resist foreign attack, no careful
+observer of the events of the last seven years can fail to see
+that all this evil has already got its grip upon us. Mr. Dicey
+himself admits it. &quot;Great Britain,&quot; he says, &quot;if left to
+herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy
+given by unity of sentiment and community of interests.
+The obstruction and the uncertainty of our political aims,
+the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued,
+arise in part at least from the connection with Ireland.&quot;
+So then, after all, it is feebleness and inconsistency, not
+elasticity and strength, that mark our institutions as they
+stand; feebleness and inconsistency, distraction and uncertainty.
+The supporter of things as they are is decidedly
+as much concerned in making out a case as the advocate
+of change.</p>
+
+<p>The strength of the argument from Nationality is great,
+and full of significance; but Nationality is not the whole
+essence of either the argument from History or the argument
+from Self-government. Their force lies in considerations
+of political expediency as tested by practical experience.</p>
+
+<p>The point of the argument from the lessons of History is
+that for some reason or another the international concern,
+whose unlucky affairs we are now trying to unravel, has
+always been carried on at a loss: the point of the argument
+from Self-government is that the loss would have been
+avoided if the Irish shareholders had for a certain number
+of the transactions been more influentially represented on
+the Board. That is quite apart from the sentiment of pure
+nationality. The failure has come about, not simply because
+the laws were not made by Irishmen as such, but because
+they were not made by the men who knew most about
+Ireland. The vice of the connection between the two
+<!-- Page 249 --><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" />countries has been the stupidity of governing a country
+without regard to the interests or customs, the peculiar
+objects and peculiar experiences, of the great majority of
+the people who live in it. It is not enough to say that the
+failures of England in Ireland have to a great extent flowed
+from causes too general to be identified with the intentional
+wrong-doing either of rulers or of subjects. We readily
+admit that, but it is not the point. It is not enough to
+insist that James I., in his plantations and transplantations,
+probably meant well to his Irish subjects. Probably
+he did. That is not the question. If it is &quot;absolutely
+certain that his policy worked gross wrong,&quot; what is the
+explanation and the defence? We are quite content with
+Mr. Dicey's own answer. &quot;Ignorance and want of sympathy
+produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity. An
+intended reform produced injustice, litigation, misery, and
+discontent. The case is noticeable, for it is a type of a
+thousand subsequent English attempts to reform and improve
+Ireland.&quot; This description would apply, with hardly
+a word altered, to the wrong done by the Encumbered
+Estates Act in the reign of Queen Victoria. That memorable
+measure, as Mr. Gladstone said, was due not to the
+action of a party, but to the action of a Parliament. Sir
+Robert Peel was hardly less responsible for it than Lord
+John Russell. &quot;We produced it,&quot; said Mr. Gladstone,
+&quot;with a general, lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good
+intention of taking capital to Ireland. What did we do?
+We sold the improvements of the tenants&quot; (House of
+Commons, April 16). It is the same story, from the first
+chapter to the last, in education, poor law, public works,
+relief Acts, even in coercion Acts&mdash;lazy, uninformed, and
+irreflective good intention. That is the argument from
+history. When we are asked what good law an Irish
+Parliament would make that could not equally well be
+made by the Parliament at Westminster, this is the answer.<!-- Page 250 --><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" />
+It is not the will, it is the intelligence, that is wanting. We
+all know what the past has been. Why should the future
+be different?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is an inherent condition of human affairs,&quot; said Mill
+in a book which, in spite of some chimeras, is a wholesome
+corrective of the teaching of our new jurists, &quot;that no intention,
+however sincere, of protecting the interests of others
+can make it safe or salutary to tie up their own hands.
+Still more obviously true is it, that by their own hands only
+can any positive and durable improvement of their circumstances
+in life be worked out&quot; (<i>Repres. Government</i>, p. 57).
+It is these wise lessons from human experience to which the
+advocate of Home Rule appeals, and not the wild doctrine
+that any body of persons claiming to be united by a sense
+of nationality possesses <i>an inherent and divine right</i> to be
+treated as an independent community. It is quite true that
+circumstances sometimes justify a temporary dictatorship.
+In that there is nothing at variance with Liberalism. But
+the Parliamentary dictatorship in Ireland has lasted a great
+deal too long to be called temporary, and its stupid shambling
+operations are finally and decisively condemned by their
+consequences. That is a straightforward utilitarian argument,
+and has nothing whatever to do with inherent and
+divine rights, or any other form of political moonshine.</p>
+
+<p>There are some who believe that an honest centralized
+administration of impartial officials, and not Local Self-Government,
+would best meet the real wants of the people.
+In other words, everything is to be for the people, nothing
+by the people&mdash;which has not hitherto been a Liberal principle.
+Something, however, may be said for this view,
+provided that the source of the authority of such an
+administration be acceptable. Austrian administration in
+Lombardy was good rather than bad, yet it was hated and
+resisted because it was Austrian and not Italian. No
+rational person can hold for an instant that the source of
+<!-- Page 251 --><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" />a scheme of government is immaterial to its prosperity.
+More than that, when people look for success in the government
+of Ireland to &quot;honest centralized administration,&quot; we
+cannot but wonder what fault they find with the administration
+of Ireland to-day in respect of its honesty or its
+centralization. What administration ever carried either
+honesty or centralization to a higher pitch than the Irish
+administration of Mr. Forster? What could be less successful?
+Those who have been most directly concerned in the
+government of Ireland, whether English or Irish, even while
+alive to the perils of any other principle, habitually talk of
+centralization as the curse of the system. Here, again, why
+should we expect success in the future from a principle that
+has so failed in the past?</p>
+
+<p>Again, how are we to get a strong centralized administration
+in the face of a powerful and hostile parliamentary
+representation? It is very easy to talk of the benefits that
+might have been conferred on Ireland by such humanity
+and justice as was practised by Turgot in his administration
+of the Generality of Limoges. But Turgot was not confronted
+by eighty-six Limousin members of an active
+sovereign body, all interested in making his work difficult,
+and trusted by a large proportion of the people of the
+province with that as their express commission. It is
+possible to have an honest centralized administration of
+great strength and activity in India, but there is no Parliament
+in India. If India, or any province of it, ever gets
+representative government and our parliamentary system,
+from that hour, if there be any considerable section of
+Indian feeling averse from European rule, the present
+administrative system will be paralyzed, as the preliminary
+to being revolutionized. It is conceivable, if any one
+chooses to think so, that a body of impartial officials could
+manage the national business in Ireland much better without
+the guidance of public opinion and common sentiment
+<!-- Page 252 --><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" />than with it. But if you intend to govern the country as
+you think best&mdash;and that is the plain and practical English
+of centralized administration&mdash;why ask the country to send
+a hundred men to the great tribunal of supervision to inform
+you how it would like to be governed? The Executive cannot
+set them aside as if they were a hundred dummies; in
+refusing to be guided, it cannot escape being harassed, by
+them. You may amend procedure, but that is no answer,
+unless you amend the Irish members out of voice and vote.
+They will still count. You cannot gag and muzzle them
+effectually, and if you could, they would still be there, and
+their presence would still make itself incessantly felt. Partly
+from a natural desire to lessen the common difficulties of
+government, and partly from a consciousness, due to the
+prevailing state of the modern political atmosphere, that
+there is something wrong in this total alienation of an
+Executive from the possessors of parliamentary power, the
+officials will incessantly be tempted to make tacks out of
+their own course; and thus they lose the coherency and
+continuity of absolutism without gaining the pliant strength
+of popular government. This is not a presumption of what
+would be likely to happen, but an account of what does
+happen, and what justified Mr. Disraeli in adding a weak
+Executive to the alien Church and the absentee aristocracy,
+as the three great curses of Ireland. Nothing has occurred
+since 1844 to render the Executive stronger, but much to
+the contrary. There is, and there can be, no weaker or less
+effective Government in the world than a highly centralized
+system working alongside of a bitterly inimical popular
+representation. I say nothing of the effect of the fluctuations
+of English parties on Irish administration. I say
+nothing of the tendency in an Irish government, awkwardly
+alternating with that to which I have just adverted, to look
+over the heads of the people of Ireland, and to consider
+mainly what will be thought by the ignorant public in<!-- Page 253 --><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" />
+England. But these sources of incessant perturbation must
+not be left out. The fault of Irish centralization is not
+that it is strong, but that it is weak. Weak it must remain
+until Parliament either approves of the permanent suspension
+of the Irish writs, or else devises constitutional
+means for making Irish administration responsible to Irish
+representatives.</p>
+
+<p>If experience is decisive against the policy of the past,
+experience too, all over the modern world, indicates the
+better direction for the future. I will not use my too scanty
+space in repeating any of the great wise commonplaces in
+praise of self-government. Here they are superfluous.
+In the case of Ireland they have all been abundantly
+admitted in a long series of measures, from Catholic
+Emancipation down to Lord O'Hagan's Jury Law and the
+Franchise and Redistribution Acts of a couple of years ago.
+The principle of self-government has been accepted, ratified,
+and extended in a hundred ways. It is only a question of
+the form that self-government shall take. Against the form
+proposed by the late Ministry a case is built up that rests
+on a series of prophetic assumptions. These assumptions,
+from the nature of the case, can only be met by a counter-statement
+of fair and reasonable probabilities. Let us
+enumerate some of them.</p>
+
+<p>1. It is inferred that, because the Irish leaders have
+used violent language and resorted to objectionable expedients
+against England during the last six years, they
+would continue in the same frame of mind after the reasons
+for it had disappeared. In other words, because they have
+been the enemies of a Government which refused to listen
+to a constitutional demand, therefore they would continue
+to be its enemies after the demand had been listened to.
+On this reasoning, the effect is to last indefinitely and
+perpetually, notwithstanding the cessation of the cause.
+Our position is that all the reasonable probabilities of
+<!-- Page 254 --><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" />human conduct point the other way. The surest way
+of justifying violent language and fostering treasonable
+designs, is to refuse to listen to the constitutional demand.</p>
+
+<p>2. The Irish, we are told, hate the English with an
+irreconcilable hatred, and would unquestionably use any
+Constitution as an instrument for satisfying their master
+passion. Irrational hatred, they say, can be treated by
+rational men with composure. The Czechs of Bohemia are
+said to be irreconcilable, yet the South Germans bear with
+their hatred; and if we cannot cure we might endure the
+antipathy of Ireland. Now, as for the illustration, I may
+remark that the hatred of the Czechs would be much too
+formidable for German composure, if the Czechs did not
+happen to possess a provincial charter and a special
+constitution of their own. If the Irish had the same, their
+national dislike&mdash;so far as it exists&mdash;might be expected to
+become as bearable as the Germans have found the feeling
+of the Czechs. But how deep does Irish dislike go? Is it
+directed against Englishmen, or against an English official
+system? The answers of every impartial observer to the
+whole group of such questions as these favour the conclusion
+that the imputed hatred of England in Ireland has
+been enormously exaggerated and overcoloured by Ascendency
+politicians for good reasons of their own; that with
+the great majority of Irishmen it has no deep roots; that
+it is not one of those passionate international animosities
+that blind men to their own interests, or lead them to
+sacrifice themselves for the sake of injuring their foe; and,
+finally, that it would not survive the amendment of the
+system that has given it birth.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72" /><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a><!-- Page 255 --><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" /></p>
+
+<p>3. It is assumed that there is a universal desire for
+Separation. That there is a strong sentiment of nationality
+we of course admit; it is part of the case, and not the
+worst part. But the sentiment of nationality is a totally
+different thing from a desire for Separation. Scotland
+might teach our pseudo-Unionists so much as that. Nowhere
+in the world is the sentiment of nationality stronger,
+yet there is not a whisper of Separation. That there is
+a section of Irishmen who desire Separation is notorious,
+but everything that has happened since the Government
+of Ireland Bill was introduced, including the remarkable
+declarations of Mr. Parnell in accepting the Bill (June 7),
+and including the proceedings at Chicago, shows that the
+separatist section is a very small one either in Ireland or
+in America, and that it has become sensibly smaller since,
+and in consequence of, the proposed concession of a
+limited statutory constitution. The Irish are quite shrewd
+enough to know that Separation, if it were attainable&mdash;and
+they are well aware that it is not&mdash;would do no good
+to their markets; and to that knowledge, as well as to
+many other internal considerations, we may confidently
+look for the victory of strong centripetal over very weak
+centrifugal tendencies. Even if we suppose these centrifugal
+tendencies to be stronger than I would allow them to be,
+how shall we best resist them&mdash;by strengthening the hands
+and using the services of the party which, though nationalist,
+is also constitutional; or by driving that party also,
+in despair of a constitutional solution, to swell the ranks of
+Extremists and Irreconcilables?</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 256 --><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" />4. Whatever may be the ill-feeling towards England, it
+is at least undeniable that there are bitter internal animosities
+in Ireland, and a political constitution, our opponents
+argue, can neither assuage religious bigotry nor remove
+agrarian discontent.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, no doubt, that the old feud between Protestant
+and Catholic might, perhaps, not instantly die down to the
+last smouldering embers of it all over Ireland. But we
+may remark that there is no perceptible bad blood between
+Protestant and Catholic, outside of one notorious corner.
+Second, the real bitterness of the feud arose from the fact
+that Protestantism was associated with an exclusive and
+hostile ascendency, which would now be brought to an
+end. Whatever feeling about what is called Ulster exists
+in the rest of Ireland, arises not from the fact that there
+are Protestants in Ulster, but that the Protestants are anti-National.
+Third, the Catholics would no longer be one
+compact body for persecuting, obscurantist, or any other
+evil purposes; the abatement of the national struggle would
+allow the Catholics to fall into the two natural divisions of
+Clerical and Liberal. What we may be quite sure of is that
+the feud will never die so long as sectarian pretensions are
+taken as good reasons for continuing bad government.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, again, that a constitution would not necessarily
+remove agrarian discontent. But it is just as true that you
+will never remove agrarian discontent without a constitution.
+Mr. Dicey, on consideration, will easily see why. Here
+we come to an illustration, and a very impressive illustration
+it is, of the impotence of England to do for Ireland the
+good which Ireland might do for herself. Nobody just
+now is likely to forget the barbarous condition of the broad
+fringe of wretchedness on the west coast of Ireland. Of
+this Lord Dufferin truly said in 1880 that no legislation
+could touch it, that no alteration in the land laws could
+effectually ameliorate it, and that it must continue until
+<!-- Page 257 --><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" />the world's end unless something be contrived totally to
+change the conditions of existence in that desolate region.
+Parliament lavishly pours water into the sieve in the shape
+of Relief Acts. Even in my own short tenure of office
+I was responsible for one of these terribly wasteful and
+profoundly unsatisfactory measures. Instead of relief, what
+a statesman must seek is prevention of this great evil and
+strong root of evil; and prevention means a large, though
+it cannot be a very swift, displacement of the population.
+But among the many experts with whom I have discussed
+this dolorous and perplexing subject, I never found one
+of either political party who did not agree that a removal
+of the surplus population was only practicable if carried
+out by an Irish authority, backed by the solid weight of
+Irish opinion. Any exertion of compulsory power by a
+British Minister would raise the whole country-side in
+squalid insurrection, government would become impossible,
+and the work of transplantation would end in ghastly
+failure. It is misleading and untrue, then, to say that there
+is no possible relation between self-government and agrarian
+discontent, misery, and backwardness; and when Mr.
+Dicey and others tell us that the British Parliament is able
+to do all good things for Ireland, I would respectfully ask
+them how a British Parliament is to deal with the Congested
+Districts.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly as much may be said of the prevention of the
+mischievous practice of Subdivision. Some contend that
+the old disposition to subdivide is dying out; others, however,
+assure us that it is making its appearance even among
+the excellent class who purchased their holdings under the
+Church Act. That Act did not prohibit subdivision, but
+it is prohibited in the Act of 1881. Still the prohibition
+can only be made effective, if operations take place on
+anything like a great scale, on condition that representative,
+authorities resident on the spot have the power of enforcing
+<!-- Page 258 --><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" />it, and have an interest in enforcing it. Some of the pseudo-Unionists
+are even against any extension of local self-government,
+and if it be unaccompanied by the creation of
+a central native authority they are right. What such people
+fail to see is that, in resisting political reconstruction, they
+are at the same time resisting the only available remedies
+for some of the worst of agrarian maladies.</p>
+
+<p>The ruinous interplay between agrarian and political
+forces, each using the other for ends of its own, will never
+cease so long as the political demand is in every form
+resisted. That, we are told, is all the fault of the politicians.
+Be it so; then the Government must either
+suppress the politicians outright, or else it must interest
+them in getting the terms of its land settlement accepted
+and respected. Home Rule on our scheme was, among
+other things, part of an arrangement for &quot;settling the
+agrarian feud.&quot; It was a means of interposing between
+the Irish tenant and the British State an authority interested
+enough and strong enough to cause the bargain to be kept.
+It is said that the Irish authority would have had neither
+interest nor strength enough to resist the forces making
+for repudiation. Would those forces be any less irresistible
+if the whole body of the Irish peasantry stood, as Land
+Purchase <i>minus</i> Self-Government makes them to stand,
+directly face to face with the British State? This is a
+question that our opponents cannot evade, any more than
+they can evade that other question, which lies unnoticed
+at the back of all solutions of the problem by way of
+peasant ownership&mdash;Whether it is possible to imagine the
+land of Ireland handed over to Irishmen, and yet the
+government of Ireland kept exclusively and directly by
+Englishmen? Such a divorce is conceivable under a rule
+like that of the British in India: with popular institutions
+it is inconceivable and impossible.</p>
+
+<p>5. It is argued that Home Rule on Mr. Gladstone's
+<!-- Page 259 --><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" />plan would not work, because it follows in some respects
+the colonial system, whereas the conditions at the root of
+the success of the system in the Colonies do not exist in
+Ireland. They are distant, Ireland is near; they are
+prosperous, Ireland is poor; they are proud of the connection
+with England, Ireland resents it. But the question
+is not whether the conditions are identical with those of
+any colony; it is enough if in themselves they seem to
+promise a certain basis for government. It might justly
+be contended that proximity is a more favourable condition
+than distance; without it there could not be that close and
+constant intercommunication which binds the material
+interests of Ireland to those of Great Britain, and so
+provides the surest guarantee for union. If Ireland were
+suddenly to find herself as far off as Canada, then indeed
+one might be very sorry to answer for the Union. Again,
+though Ireland has to bear her share of the prevailing
+depression in the chief branch of her production, it is a
+great mistake to suppose that outside of the margin of
+chronic wretchedness in the west and south-west, the condition
+not only of the manufacturing industries of the north,
+but of the agricultural industry in the richer parts of the
+middle and south, is so desperately unprosperous as to
+endanger a political constitution. Under our stupidily [Transcriber: sic]
+centralized system, Irishmen have no doubt acquired the
+enervating trick of attributing every misfortune, great or
+small, public or private, to the Government. When they
+learn the lessons of responsibility, they will unlearn this
+fatal habit, and not before.</p>
+
+<p>I do not see, therefore, that the differences in condition
+between Ireland and the Colonies make against Home
+Rule. What I do see is ample material out of which would
+arise a strong and predominant party of order. The bulk
+of the nation are sons and daughters of a Church which has
+been hostile to revolution in every country but Ireland, and
+<!-- Page 260 --><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" />which would be hostile to it there from the day that the
+cause of revolution ceased to be the cause of self-government.
+If the peasantry were made to realize that at last
+the land settlement, wisely and equitably made, was what
+it must inexorably remain, and what no politicians could
+help them to alter, they would be as conservative as the
+peasantry under a similar condition in every other spot
+on the surface of the globe. There is no reason to expect
+that the manufacturers, merchants, and shopkeepers of
+Ireland would be less willing or less able to play an active
+and useful part in the affairs of their country than the same
+classes in England or Scotland. It will be said that this
+is mere optimist prophesying. But why is that to be flung
+aside under the odd name of sentimentalism, while pessimist
+prophesying is to be taken for gospel?</p>
+
+<p>The only danger is lest we should allot new responsibilities
+to Irishmen with a too grudging and restrictive
+hand. For true responsibility there must be real power.
+It is easy to say that this power would be misused, and
+that the conditions both of Irish society and of the proposed
+Constitution must prevent it from being used for good.
+It is easy to say that separation would be a better end.
+Life is too short to discuss that. Separation is not the
+alternative either to Home Rule or to the <i>status quo</i>. If
+the people of Ireland are not to be trusted with real power
+over their own affairs, it would be a hundred times more
+just to England, and more merciful to Ireland, to take
+away from her that semblance of free government which
+torments and paralyzes one country, while it robs the other
+of national self-respect and of all the strongest motives and
+best opportunities of self-help. The <i>status quo</i> is drawing
+very near to its inevitable end. The two courses then
+open will be Home Rule on the one hand, and some shy
+bungling underhand imitation of a Crown Colony on the
+other. We shall have either to listen to the Irish repre<!-- Page 261 --><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" />sentatives
+or to suppress them. Unless we have lost all
+nerve and all political faculty we shall, before many months
+are over, face these alternatives. Liberals are for the first;
+Tories at present incline to the second. It requires very
+moderate instinct for the forces at work in modern politics
+to foresee the path along which we shall move, in the interests
+alike of relief to Great Britain and of a sounder national
+life for Ireland. The only real question is not Whether we
+are to grant Home Rule, but How.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71" /><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> The following pages, with one or two slight alterations, are
+extracted, by the kind permission of Mr. James Knowles, from two
+articles which were published in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i> at the beginning
+of the present year, in reply to Professor Dicey's statement of the
+English case against Home Rule.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72" /><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> The late J.E. Cairnes, after describing the clearances after the
+famine, goes on to say, &quot;I own I cannot wonder that a thirst for
+revenge should spring from such calamities; that hatred, even undying
+hatred, for what they could not but regard as the cause and symbol of
+their misfortunes&mdash;English rule in Ireland&mdash;should possess the sufferers....
+The disaffection now so widely diffused throughout Ireland may
+possibly in some degree be fed from historical traditions, and have
+its remote origin in the confiscations of the seventeenth century; but
+all that gives it energy, all that renders it dangerous, may, I believe, be
+traced to exasperation produced by recent transactions, and more
+especially to the bitter memories left by that most flagrant abuse of
+the rights of property and most scandalous disregard of the claims of
+humanity&mdash;the wholesale clearances of the period following the
+famine.&quot;&mdash;<i>Political Essays</i>, p. 198.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LESSONS_OF_IRISH_HISTORY_IN" id="LESSONS_OF_IRISH_HISTORY_IN" /><!-- Page 262 --><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" />LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN
+THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY W.E. GLADSTONE.</p>
+
+
+<p>Ireland for more than seven hundred years has been part
+of the British territory, and has been with slight exceptions
+held by English arms, or governed in the last resort from
+this side the water. Scotland was a foreign country until
+1603, and possessed absolute independence until 1707.
+Yet, whether it was due to the standing barrier of the sea,
+or whatever may have been the cause, much less was known
+by Englishmen of Ireland than of Scotland. Witness the
+works of Shakespeare, whose mind, unless as to book-knowledge,
+was encyclop&aelig;dic, and yet who, while he seems at
+home in Scotland, may be said to tell us nothing of Ireland,
+unless it is that&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73" /><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>During more recent times, the knowledge of Scotland on
+this side the border, which before was greatly in advance,
+has again increased in afar greater degree than the knowledge
+of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>It is to Mr. Lecky that we owe the first serious effort,
+both in his <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i> and in his <i>History of
+England in the Eighteenth Century</i>, to produce a better
+<!-- Page 263 --><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" />state of things. He carefully and completely dovetailed the
+affairs of Ireland into English History, and the debt is one
+to be gratefully acknowledged. But such remedies, addressing
+themselves in the first instance to the lettered mind of
+the country, require much time to operate upon the mass,
+and upon the organs of superficial and transitory opinion,
+before the final stage, when they enter into our settled and
+familiar traditions. Meantime, since Ireland threatens to
+absorb into herself our Parliamentary life, there is a greatly
+enhanced necessity for becoming acquainted with the true
+state of the account between the islands that make up the
+United Kingdom, and with the likelihoods of the future in
+Ireland, so far as they are to be gathered from her past
+history.</p>
+
+<p>That history, until the eighteenth century begins, has a
+dismal simplicity about it. Murder, persecution, confiscation
+too truly describe its general strain; and policy is on the
+whole subordinated to violence as the standing instrument
+of government. But after, say, the reign of William III.,
+the element of representation begins to assert itself. Simplicity
+is by degrees exchanged for complexity; the play of
+human motives, singularly diversified, now becomes visible
+in the currents of a real public life. It has for a very long
+time been my habit, when consulted by young political
+students, to recommend them carefully to study the characters
+and events of the American Independence. Quite apart
+from the special and temporary reasons bearing upon the
+case, I would now add a twin recommendation to examine
+and ponder the lessons of Irish history during the eighteenth
+century. The task may not be easy, but the reward will
+be ample.</p>
+
+<p>The mainspring of public life had, from a venerable
+antiquity, lain <i>de jure</i> within Ireland herself. The heaviest
+fetter upon this life was the Law of Poynings; the most
+ingenious device upon record for hamstringing legislative
+<!-- Page 264 --><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" />independence, because it cut off the means of resumption
+inherent in the nature of Parliaments such as were those of
+the three countries. But the Law of Poynings was an Irish
+Law. Its operation effectually aided on the civil side those
+ruder causes, under the action of which Ireland had lain
+for four centuries usually passive, and bleeding at every pore.
+The main factors of her destiny worked, in practice, from
+this side the water. But from the reign of Anne, or perhaps
+from the Revolution onwards,</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Novus s&aelig;corum nascitur ordo.&quot;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Of the three great nostrums so liberally applied by
+England, extirpation and persecution had entirely failed,
+but confiscation had done its work. The great Protestant
+landlordism of Ireland<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74" /><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> had been strongly and effectually
+built up. But, like other human contrivances, while it held
+Ireland fast, it had also undesigned results. The repressed
+principle of national life, the struggles of which had theretofore
+been extinguished in blood, slowly sprang up anew in
+a form which, though extremely narrow, and extravagantly
+imperfect, was armed with constitutional guarantees; and,
+the regimen of violence once displaced, these guarantees
+were sure to operate. What had been transacted in England
+under Plantagenets and Stuarts was, to a large extent,
+transacted anew by the Parliament of Ireland in the
+eighteenth century. That Parliament, indeed, deserves
+almost every imaginable epithet of censure. It was corrupt,
+servile, selfish, cruel. But when we have said all this, and
+said it truly, there is more to tell. It was alive, and it was
+national. Even absenteeism, that obstinately clinging curse,
+though it enfeebled and distracted, could not, and did not,
+annihilate nationality. The Irish Legislation was, moreover,
+compressed and thwarted by a foreign executive; but even
+<!-- Page 265 --><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" />to this tremendous agent the vital principle was too strong
+eventually to succumb.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lecky well observes that the Irish case supplied
+&quot;one of the most striking examples upon record&quot;<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75" /><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> of an
+unconquerable efficacy in even the most defective Parliament.
+I am, however, doubtful whether in this proposition
+we have before us the whole case. This efficacy is not
+invariably found even in tolerably constructed Parliaments.
+Why do we find it in a Parliament of which the constitution
+and the environment were alike intolerable? My answer
+is, because that Parliament found itself faced by a British
+influence which was entirely anti-national, and was thus
+constrained to seek for strength in the principle of nationality.</p>
+
+<p>Selfishness is a rooted principle of action in nations not
+less than in single persons. It seems to draw a certain
+perfume from the virtue of patriotism, which lies upon its
+borders. It stalks abroad with a semblance of decency,
+nay, even of excellence. And under this cover a paramount
+community readily embraces the notion, that a dependent
+community may be made to exist not for its own sake, but
+for the sake of an extraneous society of men. With this
+idea, the European nations, utterly benighted in comparison
+with the ancient Greeks, founded their transmarine dependencies.
+But a vast maritime distance, perhaps aided by
+some filtration of sound ideas, prevented the application of
+this theory in its nakedness and rigour to the American
+Colonies of England. In Ireland we had not even the title
+of founders to allege. Nay, we were, in point of indigenous
+civilization, the junior people. But the maritime severance,
+sufficient to prevent accurate and familiar knowledge, was
+not enough to bar the effective exercise of overmastering
+power. And power was exercised, at first from without, to
+<!-- Page 266 --><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" />support the Pale, to enlarge it, to make it include Ireland.
+When this had been done, power began, in the seventeenth
+century, to be exercised from within Ireland, within the
+precinct of its government and its institutions. These were
+carefully corrupted, from the multiplication of the Boroughs
+by James I. onwards, for the purpose. The struggle became
+civil, instead of martial; and it was mainly waged by agencies
+on the spot, not from beyond the Channel. When the
+rule of England passed over from the old violence into legal
+forms and doctrines, the Irish reaction against it followed
+the example. And the legal idea of Irish nationality took
+its rise in very humble surroundings; if the expression
+may be allowed, it was born in the slums of politics.
+Ireland reached the nadir of political depression when, at
+and after the Boyne, she had been conquered not merely
+by an English force, but by continental mercenaries. The
+ascendant Protestantism of the island had never stood so
+low in the aspect it presented to this country; inasmuch
+as the Irish Parliament, for the first time, I believe, declared
+itself dependent upon England,<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76" /><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> and either did not
+desire, or did not dare, to support its champion Molyneux,
+when his work asserting Irish independence was burned in
+London. It petitioned for representation in the English
+Parliament, not in order to uplift the Irish people, but in
+order to keep them down. In its sympathies and in its
+aims the overwhelming mass of the population had no
+share. It was Swift who, by the <i>Drapier's Letters</i>, for the
+first time called into existence a public opinion flowing
+from and representing Ireland as a whole. He reasserted
+the doctrine of Molyneux, and denounced Wood's halfpence
+not only as a foul robbery, but as a constitutional and as a
+national insult. The patience of the Irish Protestants was
+tried very hard, and they were forced, as Sir Charles Duffy
+states in his vivid book, to purchase the power of oppress<!-- Page 267 --><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" />ing
+their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen at a great
+price.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77" /><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> Their pension list was made to provide the grants
+too degrading to be tolerated in England. The Presbyterians
+had to sit down under the Episcopal monopoly;
+but the enjoyment of that monopoly was not left to the
+Irish Episcopalians. In the time of Henry VIII. it had been
+necessary to import an English Archbishop Browne<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78" /><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> and
+an English Bishop Bale, or there might not have been
+a single Protestant in Ireland. It was well to enrich the
+rolls of the Church of Ireland with the piety and learning
+of Ussher, and to give her in Bedell one name, at least,
+which carries the double crown of the hero and the saint.
+But, after the Restoration, by degrees the practice degenerated,
+and Englishmen were appointed in numbers to the
+Irish Episcopate in order to fortify and develop by numerical
+force what came to be familiarly known as the English
+interest. So that the Primate Boulter, during his government
+of Ireland, complains<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79" /><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> that Englishmen are still less
+than one-half the whole body of Bishops, although the
+most important sees were to a large extent in their hands.
+The same practice was followed in the higher judicial
+offices. Fitzgibbon was the first Irishman who became
+Lord Chancellor.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80" /><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> The Viceroy, commonly absent, was
+represented by Lords Justices, who again were commonly
+English; and Primate Boulter, a most acute and able man,
+jealous of an Irish Speaker in that character, recommends
+that the commander of the forces should take his place.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81" /><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a>
+When, later on, the Viceroy resided, it was a rule that the
+Chief Secretary should be an Englishman. On the occasion
+when Lord Castlereagh was by way of exception admitted
+<!-- Page 268 --><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" />to that office, an apology was found for it in his entire
+devotion to English policy and purposes. &quot;His appointment,&quot;
+says Lord Cornwallis, &quot;gives me great satisfaction,
+as he is so very unlike an Irishman!&quot;<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82" /><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> Resources were
+also found in the military profession, and among the voters
+for the Union we find the names of eight<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83" /><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> English generals.</p>
+
+<p>The arrangements under Poynings's Law, and the commercial
+proscription, drove the iron ever deeper and deeper
+into the souls of Irishmen. It is but small merit in the
+Irish Parliament of George I. and George II., if under
+these circumstances a temper was gradually formed in, and
+transmitted by, them, which might one day achieve the
+honours of patriotism. It was in dread of this most healthful
+process, that the English Government set sedulously to
+work for its repression. The odious policy was maintained
+by a variety of agencies; by the misuse of Irish revenue, a
+large portion of which was unhappily under their control;
+by maintaining the duration of the Irish House of Commons
+for the life of the Sovereign; and, worst of all, by extending
+the range of corruption within the walls, through the
+constant multiplication of paid offices tenable by members
+of Parliament without even the check of re-election on
+acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>Thus by degrees those who sat in the Irish Houses
+came to feel both that they had a country, and that their
+country had claims upon them. The growth of a commercial
+interest in the Roman Catholic body must have
+accelerated the growth of this idea, as that interest naturally
+fell into line with the resistance to the English prescriptive
+laws. But the rate of progress was fearfully slow. It was
+hemmed in on every side by the obstinate unyielding
+pressure of selfish interests: the interest of the Established
+Church against the Presbyterians; the interest of the
+<!-- Page 269 --><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" />Protestant laity, or tithe-payers, against the clergy; the
+bold unscrupulous interest of a landlords' Parliament against
+the occupier of the soil; which, together with the grievance
+of the system of tithe-proctors, established in Ireland
+through the Whiteboys the fatal alliance between resistance
+to wrong and resistance to law, and supplied there the yet
+more disastrous facility of sustaining and enforcing wrong
+under the name of giving support to public tranquillity. Yet,
+forcing on its way amidst all these difficulties by a natural
+law, in a strange haphazard and disjointed method, and
+by a zigzag movement, there came into existence, and by
+degrees into steady operation, a sentiment native to Ireland
+and having Ireland for its vital basis, and yet not deserving
+the name of Irish patriotism, because its care was not for
+a nation, but for a sect. For a sect, in a stricter sense than
+may at first sight be supposed. The battle was not between
+Popery and a generalized Protestantism, though, even if it
+had been so, it would have been between a small minority
+and the vast majority of the Irish people. It was not a
+party of ascendency, but a party of monopoly, that ruled.
+It must always be borne in mind that the Roman Catholic
+aristocracy had been emasculated, and reduced to the
+lowest point of numerical and moral force by the odious
+action of the penal laws, and that the mass of the Roman
+Catholic population, clerical and lay, remained under the
+grinding force of many-sided oppression, and until long
+after the accession of George III. had scarcely a consciousness
+of political existence. As long as the great
+bulk of the nation could be equated to zero, the Episcopal
+monopolists had no motive for cultivating the good-will of
+the Presbyterians, who like the Roman Catholics maintained
+their religion, with the trivial exception of the
+<i>Regium Donum</i>, by their own resources, and who differed
+from them in being not persecuted, but only disabled. And
+this monopoly, which drew from the sacred name of religion
+<!-- Page 270 --><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" />its title to exist, offered through centuries an example of
+religious sterility to which a parallel can hardly be found
+among the communions of the Christian world. The
+sentiment, then, which animated the earlier efforts of the
+Parliament might be <i>Iricism</i>, but did not become patriotism
+until it had outgrown, and had learned to forswear or to
+forget, the conditions of its infancy. Neither did it for a
+long time acquire the courage of its opinions; for, when
+Lucas, in the middle of the century, reasserted the doctrine
+of Molyneux and of Swift, the Grand Jury of Dublin took
+part against him, and burned his book.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84" /><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> And the Parliament,<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85" /><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a>
+prompted by the Government, drove him into exile.
+And yet the smoke showed that there was fire. The infant,
+that confronted the British Government in the Parliament
+House, had something of the young Hercules about him.
+In the first exercises of strength he acquired more strength,
+and in acquiring more strength he burst the bonds that had
+confined him.</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Es machte mir zu eng, ich mussie fort.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86" /><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The reign of George IV. began with resolute efforts of
+the Parliament not to lengthen, as in England under his
+grandfather, but to shorten its own commission, and to
+become septennial. Surely this was a noble effort. It
+meant the greatness of their country, and it meant also
+personal self-sacrifice. The Parliament which then existed,
+elected under a youth of twenty-two, had every likelihood of
+giving to the bulk of its members a seat for life. This they
+asked to change for a <i>maximum</i> term of seven years. This
+from session to session, in spite of rejection after rejection in
+England, they resolutely fought to obtain. It was an English
+amendment which, on a doubtful pretext; changed seven
+years to eight. Without question some acted under the
+pressure of constituents; but only a minority of the members
+<!-- Page 271 --><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" />had constituents, and popular exigencies from such a quarter
+might have been bought off by an occasional vote, and
+could not have induced a war with the Executive and with
+England so steadily continued, unless a higher principle had
+been at work.</p>
+
+<p>The triumph came at last; and from 1768 onwards the
+Commons never wholly relapsed into their former quiescence.
+True, this was for a Protestant House, constituency, and
+nation; but ere long they began to enlarge their definition
+of nationality. Flood and Lucas, the commanders in the
+real battle, did not dream of giving the Roman Catholics
+a political existence, but to their own constituents they
+performed an honourable service and gave a great boon.
+Those, who had insincerely supported the measure, became
+the dupes of their own insincerity. In the very year of this
+victory, a Bill for a slight relaxation of the penal laws was
+passed, but met its death in England.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87" /><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> Other Bills followed,
+and one of them became an Act in 1771. A beginning had
+thus been made on behalf of religious liberty, as a corollary
+to political emancipation. It was like a little ray of light
+piercing its way through the rocks into a cavern and supplying
+the prisoner at once with guidance and with hope.
+Resolute action, in withholding or shortening supply, convinced
+the Executive in Dublin, and the Ministry in London,
+that serious business was intended. And it appeared,
+even in this early stage, how necessary it was for a fruitful
+campaign on their own behalf to enlarge their basis, and
+enlist the sympathies of hitherto excluded fellow-subjects.</p>
+
+<p>It may seem strange that the first beginnings of successful
+endeavour should have been made on behalf not of
+the &quot;common Protestantism,&quot; but of Roman Catholics.
+But, as Mr. Lecky has shown, the Presbyterians had been
+greatly depressed and distracted, while the Roman Catholics
+had now a strong position in the commerce of the country,
+<!-- Page 272 --><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" />and in Dublin knocked, as it were, at the very doors of the
+Parliament. There may also have been an apprehension of
+republican sentiments among the Protestants of the north,
+from which the Roman Catholics were known to be free.
+Not many years, however, passed before the softening and
+harmonizing effects, which naturally flow from a struggle for
+liberty, warmed the sentiment of the House in favour of the
+Presbyterians.</p>
+
+<p>A Bill was passed by the Irish Parliament in 1778,
+which greatly mitigated the stringency of the penal laws.
+Moreover, in its preamble was recited, as a ground for this
+legislation, that for &quot;a long series of years&quot; the Roman
+Catholics had exhibited an &quot;uniform peaceable behaviour.&quot;
+In doing and saying so much, the Irish Parliament virtually
+bound itself to do more.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88" /><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> In this Bill was contained a clause
+which repealed the Sacramental Test, and thereby liberated
+the Presbyterians from disqualification. But the Bill had
+to pass the ordeal of a review in England, and there the
+clause was struck out. The Bill itself, though mutilated,
+was wisely passed by a majority of 127 to 89. Even in
+this form it excited the enthusiastic admiration of Burke.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89" /><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a>
+Nor were the Presbyterians forgotten at the epoch when,
+in 1779-80, England, under the pressure of her growing
+difficulties, made large commercial concessions to Ireland.
+The Dublin Parliament renewed the Bill for the removal of
+the Sacramental Test. And it was carried by the Irish
+Parliament in the very year which witnessed in London the
+disgraceful riots of Lord George Gordon, and forty-eight
+years before the Imperial Parliament conceded, on this side
+the Channel, any similar relief. Other contemporary signs
+bore witness to the growth of toleration; for the Volunteers,
+founded in 1778, and originally a Protestant body,
+after a time received Roman Catholics into their ranks.
+<!-- Page 273 --><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" />These impartial proceedings are all the more honourable
+to Irish sentiment in general, because Lord Charlemont, its
+champion out of doors, and Flood, long the leader of the
+Independent party in the Parliament, were neither of them
+prepared to surrender the system of Protestant ascendency.</p>
+
+<p>In order to measure the space which had at this period
+been covered by the forward movement of liberality and
+patriotism, it is necessary to look back to the early years of
+the Georgian period, when Whiggism had acquired a decisive
+ascendency, and the spirits of the great deep were let
+loose against Popery. But the temper of proscription in the
+two countries exhibited specific differences. Extravagant
+in both, it became in Ireland vulgar and indecent. In
+England, it was Tilburina,<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90" /><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> gone mad in white satin; in
+Ireland it was Tilburina's maid, gone mad in white linen.
+The Lords Justices of Ireland, in 1715, recommended the
+Parliament to put an end to all other distinctions in Ireland
+&quot;but that of Protestant and Papist.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91" /><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> And the years that
+followed seem to mark the lowest point of constitutional
+depression for the Roman Catholic population in particular,
+as well as for Ireland at large. The Commons, in
+1715, prayed for measures to discover any Papist enlisting
+in the King's service, in order that he might be expelled
+&quot;and punished with the utmost severity of the law.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92" /><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a>
+When an oath of abjuration had been imposed which prevented
+nearly all priests from registering, a Bill was passed
+by the Commons in 1719 for branding the letter P on
+the cheek of all priests, who were unregistered, with a red-hot
+iron. The Privy Council &quot;disliked&quot; this punishment,
+and substituted for it the loathsome measure by which safe
+guardians are secured for Eastern harems. The English
+Government could not stomach this beastly proposal; and,
+says Mr. Lecky,<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93" /><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> unanimously restored the punishment of
+<!-- Page 274 --><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" />branding. The Bill was finally lost in Ireland, but only
+owing to a clause concerning leases. It had gone to
+England winged with a prayer from the Commons that it
+might be recommended &quot;in the most effectual manner to
+his Majesty,&quot; and by the assurance of the Viceroy in reply
+that they might depend on his due regard to what was
+desired.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94" /><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> In the same year passed the Act which declared
+the title of the British Parliament to make laws for the
+government of Ireland. On the accession of George II., a
+considerable body of Roman Catholics offered an address
+of congratulation. It was received by the Lords Justices
+with silent contempt, and no one knows whether it ever
+reached its destination. Finally, the acute state-craft of
+Primate Boulter resisted habitually the creation of an &quot;Irish
+interest,&quot; and above all any capacity of the Roman Catholics
+to contribute to its formation; and in the first year of
+George II. a clause was introduced in committee into a
+harmless Bill<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95" /><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> for the regulation of elections, which disfranchised
+at a single stroke all the Roman Catholic voters in
+Ireland who up to that period had always enjoyed the
+franchise.</p>
+
+<p>It is painful to record the fact that the remarkable progress
+gradually achieved was in no way due to British
+influence. For nearly forty years from the arrival of Archbishop
+Boulter in Ireland, the government of Ireland was in
+the hands of the Primates. The harshness of administration
+was gradually tempered, especially in the brief viceroyalty
+of Lord Chesterfield; but the British policy was steadily
+opposed to the enlargement of Parliamentary privilege, or
+the creation of any Irish interest, however narrow its basis,
+while the political extinction of the mass of the people was
+complete. The pecuniary wants, however, of the Government,
+extending beyond the hereditary revenue, required
+a resort to the national purse. The demands which were
+<!-- Page 275 --><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" />accordingly made, and these alone, supplied the Parliament
+with a vantage-ground, and a principle of life. The action
+of this principle brought with it civilizing and humanizing
+influences, which had become clearly visible in the early
+years of George III., and which were cherished by the
+war of American Independence, as by a strong current of
+fresh air in a close and murky dungeon.</p>
+
+<p>The force of principles, and the significance of political
+achievements, is to be estimated in no small degree by
+the slenderness of the means available to those who promote
+them. And the progress brought about in the Irish Parliament
+is among the most remarkable on record, because
+it was effected against the joint resistance of a hostile
+Executive and of an intolerable constitution. Of the three
+hundred members, about two-thirds were nominated by
+individual patrons and by close corporations. What was
+still worse, the action of the Executive was increasingly
+directed, as the pulse of the national life came to beat more
+vigorously, to the systematic corruption of the Parliament
+borough pensions and paid offices. In the latter part of
+the century, more than one-third of the members of Parliament
+were dismissible at pleasure from public emoluments.
+If the base influence of the Executive allied itself with the
+patriotic party, everything might be hoped. For we must
+bear in mind not only the direct influence of this expenditure
+on those who were in possession, but the enormous
+power of expectancy on those who were not. Conversely,
+when the Government were determined to do wrong, there
+were no means commonly available of forcing it to do right,
+in any matter that touched either religious bigotry or selfish
+interest. With so miserable an apparatus, and in the face
+of the ever-wakeful Executive sustained by British power,
+it is rather wonderful how much than how little was effected.
+I am not aware of a single case in which a measure on
+behalf of freedom was proposed by British agency, and
+<!-- Page 276 --><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" />rejected by the Irish Parliament. On the other hand, we
+have a long list of the achievements of that Parliament
+due to a courage and perseverance which faced and overcame
+a persistent English opposition. Among other exploits,
+it established periodical elections, obtained the writ
+of Habeas Corpus, carried the independence of the judges,
+repealed the Test Act, limited the abominable expenditure
+on pensions, subjected the acceptance of office from the
+crown to the condition of re-election, and achieved, doubtless
+with the powerful aid of the volunteers, freedom of
+trade with England, and the repeal of Poynings's Act, and
+of the British Act of 1719.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96" /><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a></p>
+
+<p>All this it did without the manifestation, either within
+the walls or among the Roman Catholic population, of any
+disposition to weaken the ties which bound Ireland to the
+empire. All this it did; and what had the British Parliament
+been about during the same period, with its vastly
+greater means both of self-defence and of action? It had
+been building up the atrocious criminal code, tampering in
+the case of Wilkes with liberty of election, and tampering with
+many other liberties; driving, too, the American Colonies
+into rebellion, while, as to good legislation, the century
+is almost absolutely blank, until between 1782 and 1793
+we have the establishment of Irish freedom, the economical
+reform of Mr. Burke, the financial reforms of Mr. Pitt, the
+new libel law of Mr. Fox, and the legislative constitution
+of Canada, in which both these great statesmen concurred.</p>
+
+<p>But we have not yet reached the climax of Irish advancement.
+When, in 1782 and 1783, the legislative relations
+of the two countries were fundamentally rectified by the
+formal acknowledgment of Irish nationality, the beginning of
+a great work was accomplished; but its final consummation,
+though rendered practicable and even easy, depended wholly
+on the continuing good intention of the British Cabinet.
+<!-- Page 277 --><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" />The Acts of 1782 and 1783 required a supplemental arrangement,
+to obviate those secondary difficulties in the working
+of the two Legislatures, which supplied Mr. Pitt with his
+main parliamentary plea for the Union. What was yet
+more important was the completion of the scheme in
+Ireland itself. And this under three great heads: (1) The
+purification of Parliament by a large measure of reform;
+(2) the abolition of all Roman Catholic disabilities; (3)
+the establishment of a proper relation between the Legislative
+and the Executive powers. It is often urged, with
+cynical disregard to justice and reason, that with the
+Grattan Parliament we had corruption, coercion, discontent,
+and finally rebellion. But the political mischiefs, which
+disfigure the brief life of the Grattan Parliament, and the
+failure to obtain the two first of the three great purposes
+I have named, were all in the main due to the third grand
+flaw in the Irish case after 1782. I mean the false position,
+and usually mischievous character, of the Irish Executive,
+which, with its army of placemen and expectants in Parliament,
+was commonly absolute master of the situation. Well
+does Mr. Swift MacNeill,<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97" /><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> in his very useful work, quote the
+words of Mr. Fox in 1797: &quot;The advantages, which the form
+of a free Government seemed to promise, have been counteracted
+by the influence of the Executive Government, and
+of the British Cabinet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There were five Viceroys between 1782 and 1790.
+Then came a sixth, Lord Westmoreland, the worst of them
+all, whose political judgment was on a par with his knowledge
+of the English language.<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98" /><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> The great settlement of
+1782-3 was in the main worked by men who were radically
+adverse to its spirit and intention. But they were omnipotent
+in their control of the unreformed. Parliament of Ireland,
+more and more drenched, under their unceasing and pesti<!-- Page 278 --><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" />lent
+activity, with fresh doses of corruption. Westmoreland
+and his myrmidons actually persuaded Pitt, in 1792, that
+Irish Protestantism and its Parliament were unconquerably
+adverse to the admission of Roman Catholics to the franchise;
+but when the proposal was made from the Throne in
+1793, notwithstanding the latent hostility of the Castle, the
+Parliament passed the Bill with little delay, and &quot;without
+any serious opposition.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99" /><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> The votes against it were one
+and three on two divisions<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100" /><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> respectively. A minority of
+sixty-nine supported, against the Government, a clause for
+extending the measure to seats in Parliament. That clause,
+lost by a majority of ninety-four, might apparently have been
+carried, but for &quot;Dublin Castle,&quot; by an even larger majority.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not here examine the interesting question, whether
+the mission of Lord Fitzwilliam was wholly due to the
+action of those Whig statesmen who were friendly to the
+war, but disinclined to a junction with Mr. Pitt except
+on condition of a fundamental change in the administration
+of Ireland. Nor shall I dwell upon his sudden, swift, and
+disastrous recall. But I purpose here to invite attention to
+the most remarkable fact in the whole history of the Irish
+Parliament. When the Viceroy's doom was known, when
+the return to the policy and party of ascendency lay darkly
+lowering in the immediate future, this diminutive and
+tainted Irish Parliament, with a chivalry rare even in the
+noblest histories, made what can hardly be called less than
+a bold attempt to arrest the policy of retrogression adopted
+by the Government in London. Lord Fitzwilliam was the
+declared friend of Roman Catholic Emancipation, which
+was certain to be followed by reform; and he had struck
+a death-blow at bigotry and monopoly in the person of
+their heads, Mr. Beresford and Mr. Cooke. The Bill of
+Emancipation was introduced on the 12th of February,<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101" /><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a>
+with only three dissentient voices. On the 14th, when the
+<!-- Page 279 --><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" />London Cabinet had declared dissent from the proceedings
+of their Viceroy without recalling him, Sir L. Parsons at
+once moved an address, imploring him to continue among
+them, and only postponed it at the friendly request of Mr.
+Ponsonby.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102" /><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> On the 2nd of March, when the recall was a
+fact, the House voted that Lord Fitzwilliam merited &quot;the
+thanks of that House, and the confidence of the people.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103" /><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a>
+On the 5th the Duke of Leinster moved, and the House of
+Peers carried, a similar resolution.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104" /><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a></p>
+
+<p>At this epoch I pause. Here there opens a new and
+disastrous drama of disgrace to England and misery to
+Ireland. This is the point at which we may best learn the
+second and the greatest lesson taught by the history of
+Ireland in the eighteenth century. It is this, that, awful
+as is the force of bigotry, hidden under the mask of religion,
+but fighting for plunder and for power with all the advantages
+of possession, of prescription, and of extraneous
+support, there is a David that can kill this Goliath. That
+conquering force lies in the principle of nationality.</p>
+
+<p>It was the growing sense of nationality that prompted
+the Irish Parliament to develop its earlier struggles for
+privilege on the narrow ground into a genuine contest for
+freedom, civil and religious, on a ground as broad as
+Ireland, nay, as humanity at large. If there be such things
+as contradictions in the world of politics, they are to be found
+in nationality on the one side, and bigotry of all kinds on
+the other, but especially religious bigotry, which is of all the
+most baneful. Whatever is given to the first of these two
+is lost to the second. I speak of a reasonable and reasoning,
+not of a blind and headstrong nationality; of a nationality
+which has regard to circumstances and to traditions, and
+which only requires that all relations, of incorporation or
+of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to
+the laws of Nature's own enactment. Such a nationality
+<!-- Page 280 --><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" />was the growth of the last century in Ireland. As each
+Irishman began to feel that he had a country, to which
+he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a
+true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood,
+and into the sense of brotherhood, with those who
+shared the allegiance and the property, the obligation
+and the heritage. And this idea of country, once well conceived,
+presents itself as a very large idea, and as a framework
+for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a
+common life. Hence it was that, on the coming of Lord
+Fitzwilliam, the whole generous emotion of the country leapt
+up with one consent, and went forth to meet him. Hence
+it was that religious bigotry was no longer an appreciable
+factor in the public life of Ireland. Hence it was that
+on his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his
+recall, it became necessary to divide again the host that
+had, welcomed him&mdash;to put one part of it in array as
+Orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed; and
+to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger mass
+by repulsion and proscription, by stripping Roman Catholics
+of arms in the face of licence and of cruelty, and, finally, by
+clothing the extreme of lawlessness with the forms of law.</p>
+
+<p>Within the last twelve months we have seen, in the streets
+of Belfast, the painful proof that the work of Beresford and
+of Castlereagh has been found capable for the moment of
+revival. To aggravate or sustain Irish disunion, religious
+bigotry has been again evoked in Ireland. If the curse be
+an old one, there is also an old cure, recorded in the grand
+pharmacopoeia of history; and if the abstract force of policy
+and prudence are insufficient for the work, we may yet find
+that the evil spirit will be effectually laid by the gentle
+influence of a living and working Irish nationality. <i>Quod
+faxit Deus.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73" /><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> <i>2 Henry VI.</i>, act iii. sc. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74" /><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Lecky's <i>History of England in the Eighteenth Century</i>, chap, vii.
+vol. ii, p. 205.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75" /><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> Lecky's <i>History of England in the Eighteenth Century</i>, vol. ii.
+p. 227.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76" /><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Duffy's <i>Bird's-Eye View</i>, p. 164.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77" /><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Duffy's <i>Bird's-Eye View</i>, p. 166.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78" /><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> See Ball's <i>History of the Church of Ireland</i>, a valuable work,
+deserving of more attention than it seems to have received.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79" /><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> Boulter's <i>Letters</i>, i. 138, <i>et alibi</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80" /><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Lecky's <i>History of England in the Eighteenth Century</i>, ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81" /><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Boulter's <i>Letters</i>, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82" /><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> Cornwallis's <i>Correspondence</i>, ii. 441.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83" /><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> Grattan's <i>Life and Times</i>, v. 173.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84" /><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Lecky, ii. 430.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85" /><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Duffy, p. 177.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86" /><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Schiller's <i>Wallenstein</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87" /><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> Lecky, iv. 489.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88" /><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> Lecky, iv. 477-479; Brown, <i>Laws against Catholics</i>, pp. 329-332.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89" /><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Lecky, pp. 499-501.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90" /><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Sheridan's <i>Critic</i>, act iii. sc. I.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91" /><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> Plowden's <i>History</i> (1809), ii. 70.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92" /><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Brown, <i>Laws against Catholics</i>, p. 289.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93" /><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Lecky, i. 297.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94" /><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Plowden, i. 297.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95" /><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> 1 Geo. II. c. ix. sect 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96" /><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> See Lecky, vi. 521.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97" /><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> <i>The Irish Parliament</i>, p. 64. Cassell: 1885.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98" /><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> See Lecky, vi. 492, 493.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99" /><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Lecky, vi. 567.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100" /><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> Plowden's <i>Historical Review</i>, ii. 335.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101" /><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Ibid., ii. 353.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102" /><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> Plowden's <i>Historical Review</i>, ii. 498.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103" /><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> Ibid., ii. 357.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104" /><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> Ibid., ii. 505.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14518 ***</div>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14518 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14518)
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+Project Gutenberg's Handbook of Home Rule (1887), by W. E. Gladstone et al.
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Handbook of Home Rule (1887)
+
+Author: W. E. Gladstone et al.
+
+Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14518]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HANDBOOK OF HOME RULE (1887) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Aaron Reed and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           HANDBOOK
+                              OF
+                          HOME RULE
+
+                            BEING
+               _ARTICLES ON THE IRISH QUESTION_
+
+                              BY
+             THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
+        THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P., LORD THRING
+               JAMES BRYCE, M.P., CANON MACCOLL
+              E.L. GODKIN, AND R. BARRY O'BRIEN
+
+                      _WITH PREFACE BY_
+              THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G.
+
+                          EDITED BY
+                      JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+                        SECOND EDITION
+
+                            LONDON
+       KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., I, PATERNOSTER SQUARE
+                             1887
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S NOTE.
+
+
+Of the articles contained in this volume, those by Mr. Gladstone, Mr.
+E.L. Godkin on "A Lawyer's Objections to Home Rule," and Mr. Barry
+O'Brien appear for the first time. The others are reprinted from the
+_Contemporary Review_, the _Nineteenth Century_, and the _New Princeton
+Review_, to the proprietors and editors of which periodicals
+respectively the thanks of the several writers and of the editor are
+tendered. In most of these reprints some passages of transitory interest
+have been omitted, and some few additions have been made.
+
+The object of the writers has been to treat the difficult questions
+connected with the Government of Ireland in a dispassionate spirit; and
+the volume is offered to the public in the hope that it may, at a time
+of warm controversy over passing events, help to lead thoughtful men
+back to the consideration of the principles which underlie those
+questions, and which it seeks to elucidate by calm discussion and by
+references to history.
+
+_October_, 1887.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+PREFACE. BY THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G.
+
+AMERICAN HOME RULE.
+BY E.L. GODKIN
+
+HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS.
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY.
+BY LORD THRING
+
+THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL AND THE IRISH LAND BILL.
+BY LORD THRING
+
+THE "UNIONIST" POSITION.
+BY CANON MACCOLL
+
+A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE.
+BY E.L. GODKIN
+
+THE "UNIONIST" CASE FOR HOME RULE.
+BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN
+
+IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES.
+BY LORD THRING
+
+THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION.
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.
+BY THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P.
+
+LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
+BY THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The present seems an excellent moment for bringing forward the arguments
+in favour of a new policy for Ireland, which are to be found in the
+articles contained in this volume.
+
+We are realizing the first results of the verdict given at the election
+of 1886. And this I interpret as saying that the constituencies were not
+then ready to depart from the lines of policy which, up to last year,
+nearly all politicians of both parties in Parliament had laid down for
+their guidance in Irish affairs.
+
+We have had the Session occupied almost wholly with Lord Salisbury's
+proposals for strengthening the power of the central Government to
+maintain law and order in Ireland, and for dealing with the most
+pressing necessities of the Land question in that country.
+
+It is well, before the policy of the Government is practically tested,
+that the views of thoughtful men holding different opinions should be
+clearly set forth, not in the shape of polemical speeches, but in
+measured articles which specially appeal to those who have not hitherto
+joined the fighting ranks of either side, and who are sure to intervene
+with great force at the next election, when the Irish question is again
+submitted to the constituencies.
+
+I feel that I can add little or nothing to the weight of the arguments
+contained in these papers, but I should like to give some reasons why I
+earnestly hope that they will receive careful consideration.
+
+The writers have endeavoured to approach their work with impartiality,
+and to free themselves from those prejudices which make it difficult for
+Englishmen to discuss Irish questions in a fresh and independent train
+of thought, and realize how widely Irish customs, laws, traditions, and
+sentiments differ from our own.
+
+We are apt to think that what has worked well here will work well in
+Ireland; that Irishmen who differ from us are unreasonable; and that
+their proposals for change must be mistaken. We do not make allowance
+for the soreness of feeling prevailing among men who have long objected
+to the system by which Ireland has been governed, and who find that
+their earnest appeals for reform have been, until recent times,
+contemptuously disregarded by English politicians. Time after time
+moderate counsels have been rejected until too late. Acts of an
+exceptional character intended to secure law and order have been very
+numerous, and every one of them has caused fresh irritation; while
+remedial measures have been given in a manner which has not won the
+sympathy of the people, because they have not been the work of the Irish
+themselves, and have not been prepared in their own way.
+
+Parliament seems during the past Session to have fallen into the same
+error. By the power of an English majority, measures have been passed
+which are vehemently opposed by the political leaders and the majority
+of the Irish nation, and which are only agreeable to a small minority in
+Ireland. This action can only succeed if the Irish can be persuaded to
+relinquish the national sentiments of Home Rule; and yet this was never
+stronger or more vigorous than at the present time. It is supported by
+millions of Irish settled in America and in Australia; and here I would
+say that it has often struck me that the strong feeling of
+dissatisfaction, or, I might say, of disaffection, among the Irish is
+fed and nurtured by the marked contrast existing between the social
+condition of large numbers of the Irish in the South and West of Ireland
+and the views and habits of their numerous relatives in the United
+States.
+
+The social condition of many parts of Ireland is as backward, or perhaps
+more backward, than the condition of the rural population of England at
+the end of last or the beginning of this century. The Irish peasantry
+still live in poor hovels, often in the same room with animals; they
+have few modern comforts; and yet they are in close communication with
+those who live at ease in the cities and farms of the United States.
+They are also imbued with all the advanced political notions of the
+American Republic, and are sufficiently educated to read the latest
+political doctrines in the Press which circulates among them. Their
+social condition at home is a hundred years behind their state of
+political and mental culture. They naturally contrast the misery of many
+Irish peasants with the position of their relatives in the New World.
+This cannot but embitter their views against English rulers, and
+strengthen their leaning to national sentiments. Their national
+aspirations have never died out since 1782. They have taken various
+forms; but if the movements arising from them have been put down, fresh
+movements have constantly sprung up. The Press has grown into an immense
+power, and its influences have all been used to strengthen the zeal for
+Irish nationality, while, at the same time, the success of the national
+movements in Italy, Hungary, Greece, and Germany have had the same
+effect. Lastly, the sentiment of Home Rule has gained the sympathy of
+large bodies of electors in the constituencies of Great Britain, and,
+under the circumstances, it is difficult to suppose that, even if the
+country remains quiet, constitutional agitation will vanish or the Irish
+relinquish their most cherished ambition.
+
+We hear, from men who ought to know something of Ireland, that if the
+Land question is once settled, and dual ownership practically abolished,
+the tenants will be satisfied, and the movement for Home Rule will no
+longer find active support in Ireland. Without going into the whole of
+this argument, I should like to say two things: first, that I do not
+know how a large scheme of Land Purchase can be carried through
+Parliament with safety to Imperial interests without establishing, at
+the same time, some strong Irish Government in Dublin to act between the
+Imperial Government and the tenants of Ireland; and, second, that the
+feeling for Home Rule has a vitality of its own which will survive the
+Land question, even if independently settled.
+
+Home Rule is an expression of national feeling which cannot be
+extinguished in Ireland, and the only safe method of dealing with it is
+to turn its force and power to the support of an Irish Government
+established for the management of local Irish affairs. There are those
+who think that this must lead to separation. I cannot believe in this
+fear, for I know of no English statesman who looks upon complete
+separation of Ireland from Great Britain as possible. The geographical
+position of Ireland, the social and commercial connection between the
+two peoples, renders such a thing impossible. The Irish know this, and
+they are not so foolish as to think that they could gain their
+independence by force of arms; but I do not believe that they desire it.
+They are satisfied to obtain the management of their own local affairs
+under the _ægis_ of the flag of England. The papers in this volume show
+how this can be done with due regard to Imperial interests and the
+rights of minorities.
+
+I shall not enlarge on this part of the subject, but I wish to draw
+attention to the working of the Irish Government, and the position which
+it holds in the country, for it is through its administration that the
+policy of the Cabinet will be carried out. At the outset I feel bound to
+deprecate the exaggerated condemnation which the "Castle" receives from
+its opponents. It has its defects. Notwithstanding efforts of various
+ministers to enlarge the circle from which its officials are drawn, it
+is still too narrow for the modern development of Irish society, and it
+has from time to time been recruited from partisans without sufficient
+regard to the efficiency and requirements of the public service. But, on
+the whole, its members, taken as individuals, can well bear comparison
+with those of other branches of the Civil Service. They are diligent;
+they desire to do their duty with impartiality, and to hold an even
+balance between many opposing interests in Ireland. Whatever party is in
+office, they loyally carry out the policy of their chiefs. They are,
+probably, more plastic to the leadership of the heads of departments
+than members of some English offices, and they are more quickly moved by
+the influences around them. Sometimes they may relapse into an attitude
+of indifference and inertness if their chiefs are not active; but, on
+the other hand, they will act with vigour and decision if they are led
+by men who know their own minds and desire to be firm in the government
+of the country.
+
+When speaking of the chiefs of the Irish Civil Service, who change
+according to the political party in office, we must not overlook the
+legal officers, who exercise a most powerful influence on Irish
+administration. They consist of the Lord Chancellor, the Attorney and
+Solicitor General, and, until 1883, there was also an officer called the
+Law Adviser, who was the maid-of-all-work of Castle administration. In
+England, those who hold similar legal offices take no part in the daily
+administration of public affairs. The Lord Chancellor, as a member of
+the Cabinet, takes his share in responsibility for the policy of the
+Government. The law officers are consulted in special cases, and take
+their part from time to time in debates in the House of Commons. In
+Ireland, however, the Chancellor is constantly consulted by the
+Lord-Lieutenant on any difficult matter of administration, and the
+Attorney and Solicitor General are in constant communication with the
+Lord-Lieutenant, if he carries out the daily work of administration, and
+with the Chief and the Under Secretary.
+
+Governments differ as to the use they make of these officials. Some
+Governments have endeavoured to confine their work to cases where a mere
+legal opinion has to be obtained; but, when the country is in a
+disturbed state, even these limited references become very frequent, and
+questions of policy as well as of law are often discussed with the law
+officers. It is needless to say that, with their knowledge of Ireland
+and the traditions of Castle government (it is rare that all the law
+officers are new to office, and, consequently, they carry on the
+traditions from one Government to another), they often exercise a
+paramount influence over the policy of the Irish Government, and
+practically control it.
+
+They are connected with the closest and most influential order in Irish
+society--the legal order, consisting of the judges and Bar of Ireland.
+This adds to the general weight of their advice, but it has a special
+bearing when cases of legal reform or administration are under
+consideration; it then requires unwonted courage and independence for
+the law officers of the Crown to support changes which the lay members
+of the Government deem necessary.
+
+I have known conspicuous instances of the exercise of these high
+qualities by law officers enabling reforms to be carried, but as a rule,
+particularly when the initiative of legal reform is left to them, the
+Irish law officers do not care to move against the feeling of the legal
+world in Dublin. The lawyers, like other bodies, oppose the diminution
+of offices and honours belonging to them, or of the funds which, in the
+way of fees and salaries, are distributed among members of the bar; and
+they become bitterly hostile to any permanent official who is known to
+be a firm legal reformer. It would be impossible for me not to
+acknowledge the great service often done to the Government by the able
+men who have filled the law offices, yet I feel that under certain
+circumstances, when their influence has been allowed too strongly to
+prevail, it has tended to narrow the views of the Irish Government, and
+to keep it within a circle too narrow for the altered circumstances of
+modern life.
+
+The chief peculiarity of the Irish Administration is its extreme
+centralization. In this two departments may be mentioned as typical of
+the whole--the police and administration of local justice.
+
+The police in Dublin and throughout Ireland are under the control of the
+Lord-Lieutenant, and both these forces are admirable of their kind. They
+are almost wholly maintained by Imperial funds. The Dublin force costs
+about £150,000 a year. The Royal Irish Constabulary costs over a million
+in quiet, and a million and a half in disturbed times. Local authorities
+have nothing to do with their action or management. Local justice is
+administered by unpaid magistrates as in England, but they have been
+assisted, and gradually are being supplanted, by magistrates appointed
+by the Lord-Lieutenant and paid by the State.
+
+This state of things arose many years ago from the want of confidence
+between resident landlords and the bulk of the people. When agrarian or
+religious differences disturbed a locality the people distrusted the
+local magistrates, and by degrees the system of stipendiary, or, as they
+are called, resident magistrates, spread over the country. To maintain
+the judicial independence and impartiality of these magistrates is of
+the highest importance. At one time this was in some danger, for the
+resident magistrates not only heard cases at petty sessions, but, as
+executive peace officers, to a very great extent took the control of the
+police in their district, not only at riots, but in following up and
+discovering offenders. Their position as judicial and executive officers
+was thus very unfortunately mixed up. Between 1882 and 1883 the Irish
+Government did their utmost to separate and distinguish between these
+two functions, and it is to be hoped that the same policy has been and
+will be now continued, otherwise grave mischief in the administration of
+justice will arise. The existence of this staff of stipendiary
+magistrates could not fail to weaken the influence of the gentry in
+local affairs, and, at the same time, other causes were at work to
+undermine still further their power. The spread of education, the
+ballot, the extension of the franchise, communication with America, all
+tended to strengthen the political leaning of the tenants towards the
+National party in Ireland, and to widen the political differences
+between the richer and poorer classes in the country. The result of this
+has been, that not only have even the best landlords gradually lost
+their power in Parliamentary elections and on elective boards, but the
+Government, which greatly relied on them for support, has become
+isolated.
+
+The system of centralization is felt all over the country. It was the
+cause of weakness in the disturbed years of 1880 and 1881, and, although
+the Irish Executive strengthened themselves by placing officers over
+several counties, on whom they devolved a great deal of responsibility,
+they did not by these steps meet the real difficulty, which was that
+everything that went wrong, whether as to police or magisterial
+decisions, was attributed to the management of the Castle.
+
+In this country, local authorities and benches of magistrates, quite
+independent of the Home Office, are held responsible for mistakes in
+police action or irregularities in local justice. The consequence is
+that there is a strong buffer to protect the character and power of the
+Home Office.
+
+The absence of such protection in Ireland obviously has a very
+prejudicial effect on the permanent influence and popularity of the
+Irish Government. But as long as our system of government from England
+exists, this centralization cannot be avoided, for it would not be
+possible to transfer the responsibility of the police to local
+representative bodies, as they are too much opposed to the landlords and
+the Government to be trusted when strong party differences arise; nor,
+for the same reason, would it be possible to fall back on local men to
+administer justice. The fact is, that, out of the Protestant part of
+Ulster, the Irish Government receives the cordial support of only the
+landed proprietors, and a part of the upper middle classes in the towns.
+The feeling of the mass of the people has been so long against them that
+no change in the direction of trust in any centralized government of
+anti-national character can be expected.
+
+It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find any Municipal
+Council, Boards of Guardians, or Local Boards, in Leinster, Munster, or
+Connaught, whose members do not consist of a majority of Nationalists.
+At nearly all such assemblies, whenever any important political movement
+takes place in the country, or when the Irish Government take any action
+which is displeasing to the Nationalists, resolutions are discussed and
+carried in a spirit of sharp hostility to the Government.
+
+In Parliamentary elections we also find clear evidence of the strength
+of the Nationalists, and the extreme weakness of their opponents. This
+is a test which those who accept popular representative government
+cannot disregard, particularly at an election when for the first time
+the new constituencies were called upon to exercise the privileges
+entrusted to them by Parliament. Such was the election of 1885, followed
+in 1886 by another General Election. In 1885 contests took place in most
+of the Irish constituencies. They were between Liberals allied with
+Conservatives, and Parnellites. In 1886 the contests were between those
+who called themselves Unionists and Parnellites, and the Irish policy of
+Mr. Gladstone was specially referred to the electors.
+
+In regard to the number of members returned on the two sides, the result
+of each election was almost identical, but in 1886 there were fewer
+contests. We may, then, assume that the relative forces of Parnellites
+and Unionists were accurately represented at the election of 1885. If we
+take the votes at the election of 1885 for candidates standing as
+Nationalists, we shall find, roughly speaking, that they obtained in
+round numbers about 300,000 votes, and candidates who stood either as
+Liberals or Conservatives about 143,000. But the case is really stronger
+than these figures represent it, because in some constituencies the
+contests were between Liberals and Conservatives, and there can be no
+doubt that in those constituencies a number of Nationalist votes were
+given for one or both of such candidates--votes which, therefore, would
+have to be deducted from the 143,000, leaving a still heavier majority
+on the Nationalist side.[1]
+
+If we look at individual constituencies, we find that in South Kerry
+only 133 persons voted for the "Unionist" candidate, while 2742 voted
+for the Nationalist. In six out of seven constituencies in Cork where
+contests took place 27,692 votes were given for the Nationalists, and
+only 1703 for their opponents. In Dublin, in the division which may be
+considered the West End constituency of the Irish metropolis, the most
+successful man of commerce in Ireland, a leader of society, whose
+liberality towards those in his employment is only equalled by his
+munificence in all public works, was defeated by over 1900 votes. He did
+not stand in 1886, but his successor was defeated by a still larger
+majority. These elections show the numbers in Ireland on which the
+Government and those who oppose Mr. Parnell's policy can count for
+support.
+
+It is absurd to say that these results are caused by terrorism exercised
+over the minds of the electors by the agitators in Ireland; the same
+results occurred in every part of three provinces, and in part of
+Ulster, and the universality of the feeling proves the dominant feeling
+of the Irish electors. They show the extreme difficulty, the
+impossibility, of gaining that support and confidence which a Government
+needs in a free country. As it is, the Irish Government stands isolated
+in Ireland, and relies for support solely on England. Is a policy
+opposed to national feeling, which has been often, and by different
+Ministers, tried in Ireland, likely to succeed in the hands of a
+Government such as I have described, and isolated, as I think few will
+deny it to be? It is impossible in the long run to maintain it. The
+roots of strength are wanting.
+
+If we turn from Dublin to London, we do not find greater prospects of
+success. Twice within fourteen months Lord Salisbury has formed a
+Government. In 1885 his Cabinet, on taking office, deliberately decided
+to rule Ireland without exceptional laws; after a few months, they
+announced that they must ask Parliament for fresh powers. They resigned
+before they had defined their measures. But within six months Lord
+Salisbury was once more Prime Minister, and again commenced his
+administration by governing Ireland under the ordinary law. This attempt
+did not continue longer than the first, for when Parliament met in 1887,
+preparations were at once made to carry the Criminal Law Amendment Act,
+which occupied so large a portion of the late Session.
+
+This is not the action of men who have strong faith in their principles.
+Nor can it be shown that the continuous support so necessary for success
+will be given to this policy. No doubt it may be urged that the
+operation of the Act is not limited in duration; but, notwithstanding
+that, few politicians believe that the constituencies of Great Britain
+will long support the application of exceptional criminal laws to any
+part of the United Kingdom.
+
+This would be wholly inconsistent with past experience In relation to
+these measures, which points entirely the other way; and the publication
+in English newspapers and constant discussion on English platforms of
+the painful incidents which seem, unfortunately, inseparable from a
+rigid administration of the law in Ireland, together with the prolonged
+debates, such incidents give rise to, in Parliament, aggravate the
+difficulties of administration, and lead the Irish people to believe
+that exceptional legislation will be as short-lived in the future as it
+has been in the past.
+
+It was this evidence of want of continuity of policy in 1885, and the
+startling disclosure of the weakness of the anti-national party in
+Ireland at the election in the autumn of that year, which finally
+convinced me that the time had come when we could no longer turn to a
+mixed policy of remedial and exceptional criminal legislation as the
+means of winning the constituencies of that country in support of our
+old system of governing Ireland. That system has failed for eighty-six
+years, and obviously cannot succeed when worked with representative
+institutions. As the people of Great Britain will not for a moment
+tolerate the withdrawal of representative government from Ireland, we
+must adopt some new plan. What I have here written deals with but a
+fragment of the arguments for Home Rule, some of which are admirably set
+forth by the able men who have written the articles to which this is the
+preface. I earnestly wish that they may arrest the attention of many
+excellent Irishmen who still cling to the old traditions of English
+rule, and cause them to realize that the only way of relieving their
+country from the intolerable uncertainty which hangs over her
+commercial, social, and political interests and paralyzes all efforts
+for the improvement of her people, will be to form a Constitution
+supported by all classes of the community. I trust that they will join
+in this work before it is too late, for they may yet exercise a powerful
+and salutary influence in the settlement of this great question.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: There was one case--North Louth--in which two Nationalists
+opposed one another, and I have left that case out of the calculation.]
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN HOME RULE
+
+BY E.L. GODKIN
+
+
+American experience has been frequently cited, in the course of the
+controversy now raging in England over the Irish question, both by way
+of warning and of example. For instance, I have found in the _Times_ as
+well as in other journals--the _Spectator_, I think, among the
+number--very contemptuous dismissals of the plan of offering Ireland a
+government like that of an American State, on the ground that the
+Americans are loyal to the central authority, while in Ireland there is
+a strong feeling of hostility to it, which would probably increase under
+Home Rule. The Queen's writ, it has been remarked, cannot be said to run
+in large parts of Ireland, while in every part of the United States the
+Federal writ is implicitly obeyed, and the ministers of Federal
+authority find ready aid and sympathy from the people. If I remember
+rightly, the Duke of Argyll has been very emphatic in pointing out the
+difference between giving local self-government to a community in which
+the tendencies of popular feeling are "centrifugal," and giving it to
+one in which these tendencies are "centripetal." The inference to be
+drawn was, of course, that as long as Ireland disliked the Imperial
+government the concession of Home Rule would be unsafe, and would only
+become safe when the Irish people showed somewhat the same sort of
+affection for the English connection which the people of the State of
+New York now feel for the Constitution of the United States.
+
+Among the multitude of those who have taken part in the controversy on
+one side or the other, no one has, so far as I have observed, pointed
+out that the state of feeling in America toward the central government
+with which the state of feeling in Ireland towards the British
+Government is now compared, did not exist when the American Constitution
+was set up; that the political tendencies in America at that time were
+centrifugal, not centripetal, and that the extraordinary love and
+admiration with which Americans now regard the Federal government are
+the result of eighty years' experience of its working. The first
+Confederation was as much as the people could bear in the way of
+surrendering local powers when the War of Independence came to an end.
+It was its hopeless failure to provide peace and security which led to
+the framing of the present Constitution. But even with this experience
+still fresh, the adoption of the Constitution was no easy matter. I
+shall not burden this article with historical citations showing the very
+great difficulty which the framers of the Constitution had in inducing
+the various States to adopt it, or the magnitude and variety of the
+fears and suspicions with which, many of the most influential men in all
+parts of the country regarded it. Any one who wishes to know how
+numerous and diversified these fears and suspicions were, cannot do
+better than read the series of papers known as "The Federalist," written
+mainly by Hamilton and Madison, to commend the new plan to the various
+States. It was adopted almost as a matter of necessity, that is, as the
+only way out of the Slough of Despond in which the Confederation had
+plunged the union of the States; but the objections to it which were
+felt at the beginning were only removed by actual trial. Hamilton's two
+colleagues, as delegates from New York, Yates and Lansing, withdrew in
+disgust from the Convention, as soon as the Constitution was outlined,
+and did not return. The notion that the Constitution was produced by the
+craving of the American people for something of that sort to love and
+revere, and that it was not bestowed on them until they had given ample
+assurance that they would lavish affection on it, has no foundation
+whatever in fact. The devotion of Americans to the Union is, indeed, as
+clear a case of cause and effect as is to be found in political history.
+They have learned to like the Constitution because the country has
+prospered under it, and because it has given them all the benefits of
+national life without interference with local liberties. If they had not
+set up a central government until the centrifugal sentiment had
+disappeared from the States, and the feeling of loyalty for a central
+authority had fully shown itself, they would assuredly never have set it
+up at all.
+
+Moreover, it has to be borne in mind that the adoption of the
+Constitution did not involve the surrender of any local franchises, by
+which the people of the various States set great store. The States
+preserved fully four-fifths of their autonomy, or in fact nearly all of
+it which closely concerned the daily lives of individuals. Set aside the
+post-office, and a citizen of the State of New York, not engaged in
+foreign trade, might, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, have passed
+a long and busy life without once coming in contact with a United States
+official, and without being made aware in any of his doings, by any
+restriction or regulation, that he was living under any government but
+that of his own State. If he went abroad he had to apply for a United
+States passport. If he quarrelled with a foreigner, or with the citizen
+of another State, he might be sued in the Federal Court. If he imported
+foreign goods he had to pay duties to the collector of a Federal
+Custom-house. If he invented something, or wrote a book, he had to
+apply to the Department of the Interior for a patent or a copyright. But
+how few there were in the first seventy years of American history who
+had any of these experiences! No one supposes, or has ever supposed,
+that had the Federalists demanded any very large sacrifice of local
+franchises, or attempted to set up even a close approach to a
+centralized Government, the adoption of the Constitution would have been
+possible. If, for instance, such a transfer of both administration and
+legislation to the central authority as took place in Ireland after the
+Union had been proposed, it would have been rejected with derision. You
+will get no American to argue with you on this point. If you ask him
+whether he thinks it likely that a highly centralized government could
+have been created in 1879--such a one, for example, as Ireland has been
+under since 1800--or whether if created it would by this time have won
+the affection of the people, or filled them with centripetal tendencies,
+he will answer you with a smile.
+
+The truth is that nowhere, any more than in Ireland, do people love
+their Government from a sense of duty or because they crave an object of
+political affection, or even because it exalts them in the eyes of
+foreigners. They love it because they are happy or prosperous under it;
+because it supplies security in the form best suited to their tastes and
+habits, or in some manner ministers to their self-love. Loyalty to the
+king as the Lord's anointed, without any sense either of favours
+received or expected, has played a great part in European politics, I
+admit; but, for reasons which I will not here take up space in stating,
+a political arrangement, whether it be an elected monarch or a
+constitution, cannot be made, in our day, to reign in men's hearts
+except as the result of benefits so palpable that common people, as well
+as political philosophers, can see them and count them.
+
+Many of the opponents of Home Rule, too, point to the vigour with which
+the United States Government put down the attempt made by the South to
+break up the Union as an example of the American love of "imperial
+unity," and of the spirit in which England should now meet the Irish
+demands for local autonomy. This again is rather surprising, because you
+will find no one in America who will maintain for one moment that troops
+could have been raised in 1860 to undertake the conquest of the South
+for the purpose of setting up a centralized administration, or, in other
+words, for the purpose of wiping out State lines, or diminishing State
+authority. No man or party proposed anything of this kind at the
+outbreak of the war, or would have dared to propose it. The object for
+which the North rose in arms, and which Lincoln had in view when he
+called for troops, was the restoration of the Union just as it was when
+South Carolina seceded, barring the extension of slavery into the
+territories. During the first year of the war, certainly, the revolted
+States might at any time have had peace on the _status quo_ basis, that
+is, without the smallest diminution of their rights and immunities under
+the Constitution. It was only when it became evident that the war would
+have to be fought out to a finish, as the pugilists say--that is, that
+it would have to end in a complete conquest of the Southern
+territory--that the question, what would become of the States as a
+political organization after the struggle was over, began to be debated
+at all. What did become of them? How did Americans deal with Home Rule,
+after it had been used to set on foot against the central authority what
+the newspapers used to delight in calling "the greatest rebellion the
+world ever saw"? The answer to these questions is, it seems to me, a
+contribution of some value to the discussion of the Irish problem in its
+present stage, if American precedents can throw any light whatever on
+it.
+
+There was a Joint Committee of both Houses of Congress appointed in
+1866 to consider the condition of the South with reference to the safety
+or expediency of admitting the States lately in rebellion to their old
+relations to the Union, including representation in Congress. It
+contained, besides such fanatical enemies of the South as Thaddeus
+Stevens, such very conservative men as Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Grimes, Mr.
+Morrill, and Mr. Conkling. Here is the account they gave of the
+condition of Southern feeling one year after Lee's surrender:--
+
+"Examining the evidence taken by your committee still further, in
+connection with facts too notorious to be disputed, it appears that the
+Southern press, with few exceptions, and those mostly of newspapers
+recently established by Northern men, abounds with weekly and daily
+abuse of the institutions and people of the loyal States; defends the
+men who led, and the principles which incited, the rebellion; denounces
+and reviles Southern men who adhered to the Union; and strives
+constantly and unscrupulously, by every means in its power, to keep
+alive the fire of hate and discord between the sections; calling upon
+the President to violate his oath of office, overturn the Government by
+force of arms, and drive the representatives of the people from their
+seats in Congress. The national banner is openly insulted, and the
+national airs scoffed at, not only by an ignorant populace, but at
+public meetings, and once, among other notable instances, at a dinner
+given in honour of a notorious rebel who had violated his oath and
+abandoned his flag. The same individual is elected to an important
+office in the leading city of his State, although an unpardoned rebel,
+and so offensive that the President refuses to allow him to enter upon
+his official duties. In another State the leading general of the rebel
+armies is openly nominated for Governor by the Speaker of the House of
+Delegates, and the nomination is hailed by the people with shouts of
+satisfaction, and openly endorsed by the press....
+
+"The evidence of an intense hostility to the Federal Union, and an
+equally intense love of the late Confederacy, nurtured by the war is
+decisive. While it appears that nearly all are willing to submit, at
+least for the time being, to the Federal authority, it is equally clear
+that the ruling motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will
+be derived from a representation in Congress. Officers of the Union army
+on duty, and Northern men who go south to engage in business, are
+generally detested and proscribed. Southern men who adhered to the Union
+are bitterly hated and relentlessly persecuted. In some localities
+prosecutions have been instituted in State courts against Union officers
+for acts done in the line of official duty, and similar prosecutions are
+threatened elsewhere as soon as the United States troops are removed.
+All such demonstrations show a state of feeling against which it is
+unmistakably necessary to guard.
+
+"The testimony is conclusive that after the collapse of the Confederacy
+the feeling of the people of the rebellious States was that of abject
+submission. Having appealed to the tribunal of arms, they had no hope
+except that by the magnanimity of their conquerors, their lives, and
+possibly their property, might be preserved. Unfortunately the general
+issue of pardons to persons who had been prominent in the rebellion, and
+the feeling of kindliness and conciliation manifested by the Executive,
+and very generally indicated through the Northern press, had the effect
+to render whole communities forgetful of the crime they had committed,
+defiant towards the Federal Government, and regardless of their duties
+as citizens. The conciliatory measures of the Government do not seem to
+have been met even half-way. The bitterness and defiance exhibited
+towards the United States under such circumstances is without a parallel
+in the history of the world. In return for our leniency we receive only
+an insulting denial of our authority. In return for our kind desire for
+the resumption of fraternal relations we receive only an insolent
+assumption of rights and privileges long since forfeited. The crime we
+have punished is paraded as a virtue, and the principles of republican
+government which we have vindicated at so terrible a cost are denounced
+as unjust and oppressive.
+
+"If we add to this evidence the fact that, although peace has been
+declared by the President, he has not, to this day, deemed it safe to
+restore the writ of _habeas corpus_, to relieve the insurrectionary
+States of martial law, nor to withdraw the troops from many localities,
+and that the commanding general deems an increase of the army
+indispensable to the preservation of order and the protection of loyal
+and well-disposed people in the South, the proof of a condition of
+feeling hostile to the Union and dangerous to the Government throughout
+the insurrectionary States would seem to be overwhelming."
+
+This Committee recommended a series of coercive measures, the first of
+which was the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution,
+which disqualified for all office, either under the United States or
+under any State, any person who having in any capacity taken an oath of
+allegiance to the United States afterwards engaged in rebellion or gave
+aid and comfort to the rebels. This denied the _jus honorum_ to all the
+leading men at the South who had survived the war. In addition to it, an
+Act was passed in March, 1867, which put all the rebel States under
+military rule until a constitution should have been framed by a
+Convention elected by all males over twenty-one, except such as would be
+excluded from office by the above-named constitutional amendment if it
+were adopted, which at that time it had not been. Another Act was passed
+three weeks later, prescribing, for voters in the States lately in
+rebellion, what was known as the "ironclad oath," which excluded from
+the franchise not only all who had borne arms against the United States,
+but all who, having ever held any office for which the taking an oath of
+allegiance to the United States was a qualification, had afterwards ever
+given "aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." This practically
+disfranchised all the white men of the South over twenty-five years old.
+
+On this legislation there grew up, as all the world now knows, what was
+called the "carpet-bag" _regime_. Swarms of Northern adventurers went
+down to the Southern States, organized the ignorant negro voters,
+constructed State constitutions to suit themselves, got themselves
+elected to all the chief offices, plundered the State treasuries,
+contracted huge State debts, and stole the proceeds in connivance with
+legislatures composed mainly of negroes, of whom the most intelligent
+and instructed had been barbers and hotel-waiters. In some of the
+States, such as South Carolina and Mississippi, in which the negro
+population were in the majority, the government became a mere
+caricature. I was in Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, in 1872,
+during the session of the legislature, when you could obtain the passage
+of almost any measure you pleased by a small payment--at that time seven
+hundred dollars--to an old negro preacher who controlled the coloured
+majority. Under the pretence of fitting up committee-rooms, the private
+lodging-rooms at the boarding-houses of the negro members, in many
+instances, were extravagantly furnished with Wilton and Brussels
+carpets, mirrors, and sofas. A thousand dollars were expended for two
+hundred elegant imported china spittoons. There were only one hundred
+and twenty-three members in the House of Representatives, but the
+residue were, perhaps, transferred to the private chambers of the
+legislators.
+
+Now, how did the Southern whites deal with this state of things? Well, I
+am sorry to say they manifested their discontent very much in the way
+in which the Irish have for the last hundred years been manifesting
+theirs. If, as the English opponents of Home Rule seem to think,
+readiness to commit outrages, and refusal to sympathize with the victims
+of outrages, indicate political incapacity, the whites of the South
+showed, in the period between 1866 and 1876, that they were utterly
+unfit to be entrusted with the work of self-government. They could not
+rise openly in revolt because the United States troops were everywhere
+at the service of the carpet-baggers, for the suppression of armed
+resistance. They did not send petitions to Congress, or write letters to
+the Northern newspapers, or hold indignation meetings. They simply
+formed a huge secret society on the model of the "Molly Maguires" or
+"Moonlighters," whose special function was to intimidate, flog,
+mutilate, or murder political opponents in the night time. This society
+was called the "Ku-Klux Klan." Let me give some account of its
+operation, and I shall make it as brief as possible. It had become so
+powerful in 1871 that President Grant in that year, in his message to
+Congress, declared that "a condition of things existed in some of the
+States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the
+carrying of the mails and the collecting of the revenue dangerous." A
+Joint Select Committee of Congress was accordingly appointed, early in
+1872, to "inquire into the condition of affairs in the late
+insurrectionary States, so far as regards the execution of the laws and
+the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of the United
+States." Its report now lies before me, and it reads uncommonly like the
+speech of an Irish Secretary in the House of Commons bringing in a
+"Suppression of Crime Bill." The Committee say--
+
+"There is a remarkable concurrence of testimony to the effect that, in
+those of the late rebellious States into whose condition we have
+examined, the courts and juries administer justice between man and man
+in all ordinary cases, civil and criminal; and while there is this
+concurrence on this point, the evidence is equally decisive that redress
+cannot be obtained against those who commit crimes in disguise and at
+night. The reasons assigned are that identification is difficult, almost
+impossible; that, when this is attempted, the combinations and oaths of
+the order come in and release the culprit by perjury, either upon the
+witness-stand or in the jury-box; and that the terror inspired by their
+acts, as well as the public sentiment in their favour in many
+localities, paralyzes the arm of civil power.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The murders and outrages which have been perpetrated in many counties
+of Middle and West Tennessee, during the past few months, have been so
+numerous, and of such an aggravated character, as almost baffles
+investigation. In these counties a reign of terror exists which is so
+absolute in its nature that the best of citizens are unable or unwilling
+to give free expression to their opinions. The terror inspired by the
+secret organization known as the Ku-Klux Klan is so great, that the
+officers of the law are powerless to execute its provisions, to
+discharge their duties, or to bring the guilty perpetrators of these
+outrages to the punishment they deserve. Their stealthy movements are
+generally made under cover of night, and under masks and disguises,
+which render their identification difficult, if not impossible. To add
+to the secrecy which envelops their operations, is the fact that no
+information of their murderous acts can be obtained without the greatest
+difficulty and danger in the localities where they are committed. No one
+dares to inform upon them, or take any measures to bring them to
+punishment, because no one can tell but that he may be the next victim
+of their hostility or animosity. The members of this organization, with
+their friends, aiders, and abettors, take especial pains to conceal all
+their operations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Your committee believe that during the past six months, the murders--to
+say nothing of other outrages--would average one a day, or one for every
+twenty-four hours; that in the great majority of these cases they have
+been perpetrated by the Ku-Klux above referred to, and few, if any, have
+been brought to punishment. A number of the counties of this State
+(Tennessee) are entirely at the mercy of this organization, and roving
+bands of nightly marauders bid defiance to the civil authorities, and
+threaten to drive out every man, white or black, who does not submit to
+their arbitrary dictation. To add to the general lawlessness of these
+communities, bad men of every description take advantage of the
+circumstances surrounding them, and perpetrate acts of violence, from
+personal or pecuniary motives, under the plea of political necessity."
+
+Here is some of the evidence on which the report was based.
+
+A complaint of outrages committed in Georgia was referred by the general
+of the army, in June, 1869, to the general of the Department of the
+South for thorough investigation and report. General Terry, in his
+report, made August 14, 1869, says[2]--
+
+"In many parts of the State there is practically no government. The
+worst of crimes are committed, and no attempt is made to punish those
+who commit them. Murders have been and are frequent; the abuse, in
+various ways, of the blacks is too common to excite notice. There can be
+no doubt of the existence of numerous insurrectionary organizations
+known as 'Ku-Klux Klans,' who, shielded by their disguise, by the
+secrecy of their movements, and by the terror which they inspire,
+perpetrate crime with impunity. There is great reason to believe that in
+some cases local magistrates are in sympathy with the members of these
+organizations. In many places they are overawed by them and dare not
+attempt to punish them. To punish such offenders by civil proceedings
+would be a difficult task, even were magistrates in all cases disposed
+and had they the courage to do their duty, for the same influences which
+govern them equally affect juries and witnesses."
+
+Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Merrill, who assumed command (in Louisiana) on
+the 26th of March, and commenced investigation into the state of
+affairs, says (p. 1465)--
+
+"From the best information I can get, I estimate the number of cases of
+whipping, beating, and personal violence of various grades, in this
+county, since the first of last November, at between three and four
+hundred, excluding numerous minor cases of threats, intimidation, abuse,
+and small personal violence, as knocking down with a pistol or gun, etc.
+The more serious outrages, exclusive of murders and whippings, noted
+hereafter, have been the following:--"
+
+He then proceeds with the details of sixty-eight cases, giving the names
+of the parties injured, white and black, and including the tearing up of
+the railway, on the night before a raid was made by the Ku-Klux on the
+county treasury building. The rails were taken up, to prevent the
+arrival of the United States troops, who, it was known, were to come on
+Sunday morning. The raid was made on that Sunday night while the troops
+were lying at Chester, twenty-two miles distant, unable to reach
+Yorkville, because of the rails being torn up.
+
+Another witness said: "To give the details of the whipping of men to
+compel them to change their mode of voting, the tearing of them away
+from their families at night, accompanied with insults and outrage, and
+followed by their murder, would be but repeating what has been described
+in other States, showing that it is the same organization in all,
+working by the same means for the same end. Five murders are shown to
+have been committed in Monroe County, fifteen in Noxubee, one in
+Lowndes, by the testimony taken in the city of Washington; but the
+extent to which school-houses were burnt, teachers whipped, and outrages
+committed in this State, cannot be fully given until the testimony taken
+by the sub-committee shall have been printed and made ready to report."
+
+There are about eighty, closely printed, large octavo pages of this kind
+of testimony given by sufferers from the outrages.
+
+Something was done to suppress the Ku-Klux by a Federal Act passed in
+1871, which made offences of this kind punishable in the Federal Courts.
+Considerable numbers of them were arrested, tried, and convicted, and
+sent to undergo their punishment in the Northern jails. But there was no
+complete pacification of the South until the carpet-bag governments were
+refused the support of the Federal troops by President Hayes, on his
+accession to power in 1876. Then the carpet-bag _régime_ disappeared
+like a house of cards. The chief carpet-baggers fled, and the government
+passed at once into the hands of the native whites. I do not propose to
+defend or explain the way in which they have since then kept it in their
+hands, by suppressing or controlling the negro vote. This is not
+necessary to my purpose.
+
+What I seek to show is that the Irish are not peculiar in their manner
+of expressing their discontent with a government directed or controlled
+by the public opinion of another indifferent or semi-hostile community
+which it is impossible to resist in open warfare; that Anglo-Saxons
+resort to somewhat the same methods under similar circumstances, and
+that lawlessness and cruelty, considered as expressions of political
+animosity, do not necessarily argue any incapacity for the conduct of an
+orderly and efficient government, although I admit freely that they do
+argue a low state of civilization.
+
+I will add one more illustration which, although more remote than those
+which I have taken from the Southern States during the reconstruction
+period, is not too remote for my purpose, and is in some respects
+stronger than any of them. I do not know a more orderly community in the
+world, or one which, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, when
+manufactures began to multiply, and the Irish immigration began to pour
+in, had a higher average of intelligence than the State of Connecticut.
+Down to 1818 all voters in that State had to be members of the
+Congregational Church. It had no large cities, and this, with the aid of
+its seat of learning, Yale College, preserved in it, I think, in greater
+purity than even Massachusetts, the old Puritan simplicity of manners,
+the Puritan spirit of order and thrift, and the business-like view of
+government which grew out of the practice of town government. A less
+sentimental community, I do not think, exists anywhere, or one in which
+the expression of strong feeling on any subject but religion is less
+cultivated or viewed with less favour. In the matter of managing their
+own political affairs in peace or war, I do not expect the Irish to
+equal the Connecticut people for a hundred years to come, no matter how
+much practice they may have in the interval, and I think that fifty
+years ago it was only picked bodies of Englishmen who could do so. Yet,
+in 1833, in the town of Canterbury, one of the most orderly and
+intelligent in the State, an estimable and much-esteemed lady, Miss
+Prudence Crandall, was carrying on a girls' school, when something
+happened to touch her conscience about the condition of the free negroes
+of the North. She resolved, in a moment of enthusiasm, to undertake the
+education of negro girls only. What follows forms one of the most famous
+episodes in the anti-slavery struggle in America, and is possibly
+familiar to many of the older readers of this article. I shall extract
+the account of it as given briefly in the lately published life of
+William Lloyd Garrison, by his sons. Some of the details are much worse
+than is here described.
+
+"The story of this remarkable case cannot be pursued here except in
+brief.... It will be enough to say that the struggle between the modest
+and heroic young Quaker woman and the town lasted for nearly two years;
+that the school was opened in April; that attempts were immediately made
+under the law to frighten the pupils away and to fine Miss Crandall for
+harbouring them; that in May an Act prohibiting private schools for
+non-resident coloured persons, and providing for the expulsion of the
+latter, was procured from the legislature, amid the greatest rejoicing
+in Canterbury (even to the ringing of church bells); that, under this
+Act, Miss Crandall was in June arrested and temporarily imprisoned in
+the county jail, twice tried (August and October) and convicted; that
+her case was carried up to the Supreme Court of Errors, and her
+persecutors defeated on a technicality (July, 1834), and that pending
+this litigation the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to
+isolate the school from the countenance and even the physical support of
+the townspeople. The shops and the meeting-house were closed against
+teacher and pupils, carriage in the public conveyances was denied them,
+physicians would not wait upon them, Miss Crandall's own family and
+friends were forbidden, under penalty of heavy fines, to visit her, the
+well was filled with manure and water from other sources refused, the
+house itself was smeared with filth, assailed with rotten eggs and
+stones, and finally set on fire" (vol. i. p. 321).
+
+Miss Crandall is still living in the West, in extreme old age, and the
+Connecticut legislature voted her a small pension two years ago, as a
+slight expiation of the ignominy and injustice from which she had
+suffered at the hands of a past generation.
+
+The _Spectator_ frequently refers to the ferocious hatred displayed
+toward the widow of Curtin, the man who was cruelly murdered by
+moonlighters somewhere in Kerry, as an evidence of barbarism which
+almost, if not quite, justifies the denial of self-government to a
+people capable of producing such monsters in one spot and on one
+occasion. Let me match this from Mississippi with a case which I
+produce, not because it was singular, but because it was notorious at
+the North, where it occurred, in 1877. One Chisholm, a native of the
+State, and a man of good standing and character, became a Republican
+after the war, and was somewhat active in organizing the negro voters in
+his district. He was repeatedly warned by some of his neighbours to
+desist and abandon politics, but continued resolutely on his course. A
+mob, composed of many of the leading men in the town, then attacked him
+in his house. He made his escape, with his wife and young daughter and
+son, a lad of fourteen, to the jail. His assailants broke the jail open,
+and killed him and his son, and desperately wounded the daughter. The
+poor lad received such a volley of bullets, that his blood went in one
+rush to the floor, and traced the outlines of his trunk on the ceiling
+of the room below, where it remained months afterwards, an eye-witness
+told me, as an illustration of the callousness of the jailer. The
+leading murderers were tried. They had no defence. The facts were not
+disputed. The judge and the bar did their duty, but the jury acquitted
+the prisoners without leaving their seats. Mrs. Chisholm, the widow,
+found neither sympathy nor friends at the scene of the tragedy. She had
+to leave the State, and found refuge in Washington, where she now holds
+a clerkship in the Treasury department.
+
+Let me cite as another illustration the violent ways in which popular
+discontent may find expression in communities whose political capacity
+and general respect for the law and its officers, as well as for the
+sanctity of contracts, have never been questioned. Large tracts of land
+were formerly held along the Hudson river in the State of New York, by a
+few families, of which the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons were the
+chief, either under grants from the Dutch at the first settlement of the
+colony, or from the English Crown after the conquest. That known as the
+"Manor of Rensselaerwick," held by the Van Rensselaers, comprised a
+tract of country extending twenty-four miles north and south, and
+forty-eight miles east and west, lying on each side of the Hudson river.
+It was held by the tenants for perpetual leases. The rents were, on the
+Van Rensselaer estate, fourteen bushels of wheat for each hundred acres,
+and four fat hens, and one day's service with a carriage and horses, to
+each farm of one hundred and sixty acres. Besides this, there was a fine
+on alienation amounting to about half a year's rent. The Livingston
+estates were let in much the same way.
+
+In 1839, Stephen Van Rensselaer, the proprietor, or "Patroon" as he was
+called, died, with $400,000 due to him as arrears from the tenants, for
+which, being a man of easy temper, he had forborne to press them. But he
+left the amount in trust by his will for the payment of his debts, and
+his heirs proceeded to collect it, and persisted in the attempt during
+the ensuing seven years. What then happened I shall describe in the
+words of Mr. John Bigelow. Mr. Tilden was a member of the State
+Legislature in 1846, and was appointed Chairman of a Committee to
+investigate the rent troubles, and make the report which furnished the
+basis for the legislation by which they were subsequently settled. Mr.
+Bigelow, who has edited Mr. Tilden's _Public Writings and Speeches_,
+prefaces the report with the following explanatory note:--
+
+"Attempts were made to enforce the collection of these rents. The
+tenants resisted. They established armed patrols, and, by the adoption
+of various disguises, were enabled successfully to defy the civil
+authorities. Eventually it became necessary to call out the military,
+but the result was only partially satisfactory. These demonstrations of
+authority provoked the formation of 'anti-rent clubs' throughout the
+manorial district, with a view of acquiring a controlling influence in
+the legislature. Small bands, armed and disguised as Indians, were also
+formed to hold themselves in readiness at all times to resist the
+officers of the law whenever and wherever they attempted to serve legal
+process upon the tenants. The principal roads throughout the infected
+district were guarded by the bands so carefully, and the animosity
+between the tenants and the civil authorities was so intense, that at
+last it became dangerous for any one not an anti-renter to be found in
+these neighbourhoods. It was equally dangerous for the landlords to make
+any appeal to the law or for the collection of rents or for protection
+of their persons. When Governor Wright entered upon his duties in Albany
+in 1845, he found that the anti-rent party had a formidable
+representation in the legislature, and that the questions involved were
+assuming an almost national importance."
+
+The sheriff made gallant attempts to enforce the law, but his deputies
+were killed, and a legal investigation in which two hundred persons were
+examined, failed to reveal the perpetrators of the crime. The militia
+were called out, but they were no more successful than the sheriff. In
+the case of one murder committed in Delaware County in 1845, however,
+two persons were convicted, but their sentence was commuted to
+imprisonment for life. Various others concerned in the disturbances were
+convicted of minor offences, but when Governor Young succeeded Governor
+Seward after an election in which the anti-renters showed considerable
+voting strength, he pardoned them all on the ground that their crimes
+were political. The dispute was finally settled by a compromise--that
+is, the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons both sold their estates,
+giving quit-claim deeds to the tenants for what they chose to pay, and
+the granting of agricultural leases for a longer term than twelve years
+was forbidden by the State Constitution of 1846.
+
+This anti-rent agitation is described by Professor Johnston of
+Princeton, in the _Cyclopædia of Political Science_, as "a reign of
+terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law
+and the payment of rent throughout the district." Suppose all the land
+of the State had been held under similar tenures; that the controversy
+had lasted one hundred years; that the rents had been high; and that the
+Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons had had the aid of the Federal army
+in enforcing distraints and evictions, and in enabling them to set local
+opinion at defiance, what do you suppose the state of morals and manners
+would have been in New York by this time? What would have been the
+feelings of the people towards the Federal authority had the matter been
+finally adjusted with the strong hand, in accordance, not with the views
+of the people of the State, but of the landholders of South Carolina or
+of the district of Columbia? I am afraid they would have been terribly
+Irish.
+
+
+I know very well the risk I run, in citing all these precedents and
+parallels, of seeming to justify, or at all events to palliate, Irish
+lawlessness. But I am not doing anything of the kind. I am trying to
+illustrate a somewhat trite remark which I recently made: "that
+government is a very practical business, and that those succeed best in
+it who bring least sentiment or enthusiasm to the conduct of their
+affairs." The government of Ireland, like the government of all other
+countries, is a piece of business--a very difficult piece of business, I
+admit--and therefore horror over Irish doings, and the natural and human
+desire to "get even with" murderers and moonlighters, by denying the
+community which produces them something it would like much to possess,
+should have no influence with those who are charged with Irish
+government. It is only in nurseries and kindergartens that we can give
+offenders their exact due and withhold their toffee until they have
+furnished satisfactory proofs of repentance. Rulers of men have to
+occupy themselves mainly with the question of drying up the sources of
+crime, and often, in order to accomplish this, to let much crime and
+disorder go unwhipped of justice.
+
+With the state of mind which cannot bear to see any concessions made to
+the Irish Nationalists because they are such wicked men, in which so
+many excellent Englishmen, whom we used to think genuine political
+philosophers, are now living, we are very familiar in the United States.
+It is a state of mind which prevailed in the Republican party with
+regard to the South, down to the election of 1884, and found constant
+expression on the stump and in the newspapers in what is described, in
+political slang, as "waving the bloody shirt." It showed itself after
+the war in unwillingness to release the South from military rule; then
+in unwillingness to remove the disfranchisement of the whites or to
+withdraw from the carpet-bag State governments the military support
+without which they could not have existed for a day; and, last of all,
+in dread of the advent of a Democratic Federal Administration in which
+Southerners or "ex-rebels" would be likely to hold office. At first the
+whole Republican party was more or less permeated by these ideas; but
+the number of those who held them gradually diminished, until in 1884 it
+was at last possible to elect a Democratic President. Nevertheless a
+great multitude witnessed the entrance into the White House of a
+President who is indebted for his election mainly to the States formerly
+in rebellion, with genuine alarm. They feared from it something
+dreadful, in the shape either of a violation of the rights of the
+freedmen, or of an assault on the credit and stability of the Federal
+Government. Nothing but actual experiment would have disabused them.
+
+I am very familiar with the controversy with them, for I have taken some
+part in it ever since the passage of the reconstruction Acts, and I know
+very well how they felt, and am sometimes greatly impressed by the
+similarity between their arguments and those of the opponents of Irish
+Home Rule. One of their fixed beliefs for many years, though it is now
+extinct, was that Southerners were so bent on rebelling again, and were
+generally so prone to rebellion, that the awful consequences of their
+last attempt in the loss of life and property, had made absolutely no
+impression on them. The Southerner was, in fact, in their eyes, what Mr.
+Gladstone says the Irishman is in the eyes of some Englishmen: "A _lusus
+naturæ_; that justice, common sense, moderation, national prosperity had
+no meaning for him; that all he could appreciate was strife and
+perpetual dissension. It was for many years useless to point out to them
+the severity of the lesson taught by the Civil War as to the physical
+superiority of the North, or the necessity of peace and quiet to enable
+the new generation of Southerners to restore their fortunes, or even
+gain a livelihood. Nor was it easy to impress them with the
+inconsistency of arguing that it was slavery which made Southerners what
+they were before they went to war, and maintaining at the same time that
+the disappearance of slavery would produce no change in their manners,
+ideas, or opinions. All this they answered by pointing to speeches
+delivered by some fiery adorer of "the lost cause," to the Ku-Klux
+outrages, to political murders, like that of Chisholm, to the building
+of monuments to the Confederate dead, or to some newspaper expression of
+reverence for Confederate nationality. In fact, for fully ten years
+after the close of the war the collection of Southern "outrages" and
+their display before Northern audiences, was the chief work of
+Republican politicians. In 1876, during the Hayes-Tilden canvass, the
+opening speech which furnished what is called "the key-note of the
+campaign" was made by Mr. Wheeler, the Republican candidate for the
+Vice-Presidency, and his advice to the Vermonters, to whom it was
+delivered, was "to vote as they shot," that is, to go to the polls with
+the same feelings and aims as those with which they enlisted in the war.
+
+I need hardly tell English readers how all this has ended. The
+withdrawal of the Federal troops from the South by President Hayes, and
+the consequent complete restoration of the State governments to the
+discontented whites, have fully justified the expectations of those who
+maintained that it is no less true in politics than in physics, that if
+you remove what you see to be the cause, the effect will surely
+disappear. It is true, at least in the Western world, that if you give
+communities in a reasonable degree the management of their own affairs,
+the love of material comfort and prosperity which is now so strong among
+all civilized, and even partially civilized men, is sure in the long run
+to do the work of creating and maintaining order; or, as Mr. Gladstone
+has expressed it, in setting up a government, "the best and surest
+foundation we can find to build on is the foundation afforded by the
+affections, the convictions, and the will of men."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: Report of Secretary of War, 1869-70, vol. i. p. 89.]
+
+
+
+
+HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS.
+
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+
+In the Home Rule contest of the last eighteen months no argument has
+been more frequently used against the Liberal party than the charge of
+sudden, and therefore, it would seem, dishonest change of view. "You
+were opposed to an Irish Parliament at the election of 1880 and for some
+time afterward; you are not entitled to advocate it in 1886." "You
+passed a Coercion Bill in 1881, your Ministry (though against the
+protests of an active section of its supporters) passed another Coercion
+Bill in 1882; you have no right to resist a third such Bill in 1887,
+and, if you do, your conduct can be due to nothing but party spite and
+revenge at your own exclusion from office." Reproaches of this kind are
+now the stock-in-trade, not merely of the ordinary politician, who, for
+want of a case, abuses the plaintiff's attorney, but of leading men,
+and, still more, of leading newspapers, who might be thought bound to
+produce from recent events and an examination of the condition of
+Ireland some better grounds for the passion they display. It is
+noticeable that such reproaches come more often from the so-called
+Liberal Unionists than from the present Ministry. Perhaps, with their
+belief that all Liberals are unprincipled revolutionaries, the Tories
+deem a sin more or less to be of small account. Perhaps a recollection
+of their own remarkable gyrations, before and after the General
+Election of 1885, may suggest that the less said about the past the
+better for everybody. Be the cause what it may, it is surprising to find
+that a section commanding so much ability as the group of Dissentient
+Liberals does, should rely rather on the charge of inconsistency than on
+the advocacy of any counter-policy of their own. It is not large and
+elevated, but petty, minds that rejoice to say to an opponent (and all
+the more so if he was once a friend), "You must either be wrong now, or
+have been wrong then, because you have changed your opinion. I have not
+changed; I was right then, and I am right now." Such an argument not
+only dispenses with the necessity of sifting the facts, but it fosters
+the satisfaction of the person who employs it. Consistency is the pet
+virtue of the self-righteous, and the man who values himself on his
+consistency can seldom be induced to see that to shut one's eyes to the
+facts which time develops, to refuse to reconsider one's position by the
+light they shed, to cling to an old solution when the problem is
+substantially new, is a proof, not of fortitude and wisdom, but rather
+of folly and conceit.
+
+Such persons may be left to the contemplation of their own virtues. But
+there are many fair-minded men of both political parties, or of neither,
+who, while acquitting those Liberal members who supported Home Rule in
+1886 and opposed Coercion in 1887 of the sordid or spiteful motives with
+which the virulence of journalism credits them, have nevertheless been
+surprised at the apparent swiftness and completeness of the change in
+their opinions. It would be idle to deny that, in startling the minds of
+steady-going people, this change did, for the moment, weaken the
+influence and weight of those who had changed. This must be so. A man
+who says now what he denied six years ago cannot expect to be believed
+on his _ipse dixit_. He must set forth the grounds of his conviction. He
+must explain how his views altered, and why reasons which formerly
+satisfied him satisfy him no longer. It may be that the Liberal party
+have omitted to do this as they ought. Occupied by warm and incessant
+discussions, and conscious, I venture to believe, of their own honesty,
+few of its members have been at the trouble of showing what were the
+causes which modified their views, and what the stages of the process
+which carried them from the position of 1880 to that of 1886.
+
+Of that process I shall attempt in the following pages to give a sketch.
+Such a sketch, though mainly retrospective, is pertinent to the issues
+which now divide the country. It will indicate the origin and the
+strength of the chief reasons by which Liberals are now governed. And,
+if executed with proper fairness and truth, it may, as a study in
+contemporary history, be of some little interest to those who in future
+will attempt to understand our present conflict. The causes which
+underlie changes of opinion are among the most obscure phenomena in
+history, because those who undergo, these changes are often only half
+conscious of them, and do not think of recording that which is
+imperceptible in its growth, and whose importance is not realized till
+it already belongs to the past.
+
+The account which follows is based primarily on my own recollection of
+the phases of opinion and feeling through which I myself, and the
+friends whom I knew most intimately in the House of Commons, passed
+during the Parliament which sat from 1880 till 1885. But I should not
+think of giving it to the public if I did not believe that what happened
+to our minds happened to many others also, and that the record of our
+own slow movement from the position of 1880 to that of 1886 is
+substantially a record of the movement of the Liberal party at large. We
+were fairly typical members of that party, loyal to our leaders, but
+placing the principles for which the Liberal party exists above the
+success of the party itself; with our share of prepossessions and
+prejudices, yet with reasonably open minds, and (as we believed)
+inferior to no other section of the House of Commons in patriotism and
+in attachment to the Constitution. I admit frankly that when we entered
+Parliament we knew less about the Irish question than we ought to have
+known, and that even after knowledge had been forced upon us, we were
+more deferential to our leaders than was good either for us or for them.
+But these are faults always chargeable on the great majority of members.
+It is because those of whom I speak were in these respects fairly
+typical, that it seems worth while to trace the history of their
+opinions. If any one should accuse me of attributing to an earlier year
+sentiments which began to appear in a later one, I can only reply that I
+am aware of this danger, as one which always besets those who recall
+their past states of mind, and that I have done my utmost to avoid it.
+
+The change I have to describe was slow and gradual. It was
+reluctant--that is to say, it seemed rather forced upon us by the
+teaching of events than the work of our own minds. Each session marked a
+further stage in it; and I therefore propose to examine its progress
+session by session.
+
+Session of 1880.--The General Election of 1880 turned mainly on the
+foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government. Few Liberal candidates
+said much about Ireland. Absorbed in the Eastern and Afghan questions,
+they had not watched the progress of events in Ireland with the
+requisite care, nor realized the gravity of the crisis which was
+approaching. They were anxious to do justice to Ireland, in the way of
+amending both the land laws and local government, but saw no reason for
+going further. Nearly all of them refused, even when pressed by Irish
+electors in their constituencies, to promise to vote for that
+"parliamentary inquiry into the demand for Home Rule," which was then
+propounded by those electors as a sort of test question. We (_i.e._ the
+Liberal candidates of 1880) then declared that we thought an Irish
+Parliament would involve serious constitutional difficulties, and that
+we saw no reason why the Imperial Parliament should not do full justice
+to Ireland. Little was said about Coercion. Hopes were expressed that it
+would not be resorted to, but very few (if any) pledged themselves
+against it.
+
+When Mr. Forster was appointed Irish Secretary in Mr. Gladstone's
+Government which the General Election brought into power, we (by which I
+mean throughout the new Liberal members) were delighted. We knew him to
+be conscientious, industrious, kind-hearted. We believed him to be
+penetrating and judicious. We applauded his conduct in not renewing the
+Coercion Act which Lord Beaconsfield's Government had failed to renew
+before dissolving Parliament, and which indeed there was scarcely time
+left after the election to renew, a fact which did not save Mr. Forster
+from severe censure on the part of the Tories.
+
+The chief business of the session was the Compensation for Disturbance
+Bill, which Mr. Forster brought in for the sake of saving from immediate
+eviction tenants whom a succession of bad seasons had rendered utterly
+unable to pay their rents. This Bill was pressed through the House of
+Commons with the utmost difficulty, and at an expenditure of time which
+damaged the other work of the session, though the House continued to sit
+into September. The Executive Government declared it to be necessary, in
+order not only to relieve the misery of the people, but to secure the
+tranquillity of the country. Nevertheless, the whole Tory party, and a
+considerable section of the Liberal party, opposed it in the interests
+of the Irish landlords, and of economic principles in general,
+principles which (as commonly understood in England) it certainly
+trenched on. When it reached the House of Lords it was contemptuously
+rejected, and the unhappy Irish Secretary left to face as he best might
+the cries of a wretched peasantry and the rising tide of outrage. What
+was even more remarkable, was the coolness with which the Liberal party
+took the defeat of a Bill their leaders had pronounced absolutely
+needed. Had it been an English Bill of the same consequence to England
+as it was to Ireland, the country would have been up in arms against the
+House of Lords, demanding the reform or the abolition of a Chamber which
+dared to disregard the will of the people. But nothing of the kind
+happened. It was only an Irish measure. We relieved ourselves by a few
+strong words, and the matter dropped.
+
+It was in this session that the Liberal party first learnt what sort of
+a spirit was burning in the hearts of Irish members. There had been
+obstruction in the last years of the previous Parliament, but, as the
+Tories were in power, they had to bear the brunt of it. Now that a
+Liberal Ministry reigned, it fell on the Liberals. At first it incensed
+us. Full of our own good intentions towards Ireland, we thought it
+contrary to nature that Irish members should worry us, their friends, as
+they had worried Tories, their hereditary enemies. Presently we came to
+understand how matters stood. The Irish members made little difference
+between the two great English parties. Both represented to them a
+hostile domination. Both were ignorant of the condition of their
+country. Both cared so little about Irish questions that nothing less
+than deeds of violence out of doors or obstruction within doors could
+secure their attention. Concessions had to be extorted from both by the
+same devices; Coercion might be feared at the hands of both. Hence the
+Irish party was resolved to treat both parties alike, and play off the
+one against the other in the interests of Ireland alone, using the
+questions which divide Englishmen and Scotchmen merely as levers
+whereby to effect their own purposes, because themselves quite
+indifferent to the substantial merits of those questions. To us new
+members this was an alarming revelation. We found that the House of
+Commons consisted of two distinct and dissimilar bodies: a large British
+body (including some few Tories and Liberals from Ireland), which,
+though it was distracted by party quarrels, really cared for the welfare
+of the country and the dignity of the House, and would set aside its
+quarrels in the presence of a great emergency; and a small Irish body,
+which, though it spoke the English language, was practically foreign,
+felt no interest in, no responsibility for, the business of Britain or
+the Empire, and valued its place in the House only as a means of making
+itself so disagreeable as to obtain its release. When we had grasped
+this fact, we began to reflect on its causes and conjecture its effects.
+We had read of the same things in the newspapers, but what a difference
+there is between reading a drama in your study and seeing it acted on
+the stage! We realized what Irish feeling was when we heard these angry
+cries, and noted how appeals that would have affected English partisans
+fell on deaf ears. I remember how one night in the summer of 1880, when
+the Irish members kept us up very late over some trivial Bill of theirs,
+refusing to adjourn till they had extorted terms, a friend, sitting
+beside me, said, "See how things come round. They keep us out of bed
+till five o'clock in the morning because our ancestors bullied theirs
+for six centuries." And we saw that the natural relations of an
+Executive, even a Liberal Executive, to the Irish members were those of
+strife. Whose fault it was we were unable to decide. Perhaps the
+Government was too stiff; perhaps the members were vexatious. Anyhow,
+this strife was evidently the normal state of things, wholly unlike that
+which existed between Scotch members, to whichever party they belonged,
+and the executive authorities of Scotland.
+
+Thus the session of 1880, though it did not bring us consciously nearer
+to Home Rule, impressed three facts upon us: first, that the House of
+Lords regarded Ireland solely from the point of view of English
+landlords, sympathizing with Irish landlords; secondly, that the House
+of Commons knew so little or cared so little about Ireland that when the
+Executive declared a measure essential to the peace of Ireland, it
+scarcely resented the rejection of that measure by the House of Lords;
+thirdly, that the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons were a
+foreign body, foreign in the sense in which a needle which a man
+swallows is foreign, not helping the organism to discharge its
+functions, but impeding them, and setting up irritation. We did not yet
+draw from these facts all the conclusions we should now draw. But the
+facts were there, and they began to tell upon our minds.
+
+SESSION OF 1881.--The winter of 1880-81 was a terrible one in Ireland.
+The rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill had borne the
+fruit which Mr. Forster had predicted, and which the House of Lords had
+ignored. Outrages were numerous and serious. The cry in England for
+repressive measures had gone on rising from November, when it occasioned
+a demonstration at the Guildhall banquet. Several Liberal members (of
+whom I was one) went to Ireland at Christmas, to see with our own eyes
+how things stood. We were struck by the difficulty of obtaining
+trustworthy information in Dublin, where the richer classes, with whom
+we chiefly came in contact, merely abused the Land League, while the
+Land Leaguers declared that the accounts of outrages were grossly
+exaggerated. The most prominent, Mr. Michael Davitt, assured me, and I
+believe with perfect truth, that he had exerted himself to
+discountenance outrage, and that if, as he expected, he was locked up by
+the Government, outrages would increase. When one reached the disturbed
+districts, where, of course, one talked to members as well of the
+landlord class as of the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged
+from the medley of contradictions was that, though there was much
+agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity, the disorders were
+not so bad as people in England believed, and might have been dealt with
+by a vigorous administration of the existing law. Unfortunately, the
+so-called "better classes," full of bitterness against the Liberal
+Ministry and Mr. Forster (whom they did not praise till it was too
+late), had not assisted the Executive, and had allowed things to reach a
+pass at which it found the work of governing very difficult.
+
+When the Coercion Bill of 1881 was introduced, many English Liberals
+were inclined to resist it. The great majority voted for it, but within
+two years they bitterly repented their votes. Our motives, which I
+mention by way of extenuation, not of defence, were these. The Executive
+Government declared that it could not deal with crime by the ordinary
+law. If its followers refused exceptional powers, they must displace the
+Ministry, and let in the Tories, who would doubtless obtain such powers,
+and probably use them worse. We had still confidence in Mr. Forster's
+judgment, and a deference to Irish Executive Governments generally which
+Parliamentary experience is well fitted to dissipate. The violence with
+which the Nationalist members resisted the introduction of the Bill had
+roused our blood, and the foolish attempts which the Radical and Irish
+electors in some constituencies had made to deter their members from
+supporting it had told the other way, and disposed these members to vote
+for it, in order to show that they were not to be cowed by threats.
+Finally, we were assured that votes given for the Coercion Bill would
+purchase a thorough-going Land Bill, and our anxiety for the latter
+induced us, naturally, but erringly, to acquiesce in the former.
+
+When that Land Bill went into Committee we perceived how much harm the
+Coercion Bill had done in intensifying the bitterness of Irish members.
+Although the Ministry was fighting for their interests against the Tory
+party and the so-called Whiggish section of its own supporters, who were
+seeking to cut down the benefits which the measure offered to Irish
+tenants, the Nationalist members regarded it, and in particular Mr.
+Forster, as their foe. They resented what they deemed the insult put
+upon their country. They saw those who had been fighting, often, no
+doubt, by unlawful methods, for the national cause, thrown into prison
+and kept there without trial. They anticipated (not without reason) the
+same fortune for themselves. Hence the friendliness which the Liberal
+party sought to show them met with no response, and Mr. Forster was
+worried with undiminished vehemence. In the discussions on the Bill we
+found the Ministry generally resisting all amendments which came from
+Irish members. When these amendments seemed to us right, we voted for
+them, but they were almost always defeated by the union of the Tories
+with the steady Ministerialists. Subsequent events have proved that many
+were right, but, whether they were right or wrong, the fact which
+impressed us was that in matters which concerned Ireland only, and lay
+within the exclusive knowledge of Irishmen, Irish members were
+constantly outvoted by English and Scotch members, who knew nothing at
+all of the merits of the case, but simply obeyed the party whip. This
+happened even when the Irish members who sat on the Liberal side (such
+as Mr. Dickson and his Liberal colleagues from Ulster) joined the
+Nationalist section in demanding some extension of the Bill which the
+Ministry refused. And we perceived that nothing incensed the Irish
+members more than the feeling that their arguments were addressed to
+deaf ears; that they were overborne, not by reason, but by sheer weight
+of numbers. Even if they convinced the Ministry, they could seldom hope
+to obtain its assent, because the Ministry had to consider the House of
+Lords, sure to reject amendments which favoured the tenant, while to
+detach a number of Ministerialists sufficient to carry an amendment
+against the Treasury Bench, the Moderate Liberals, and the Tories, was
+evidently hopeless.
+
+At the end of the session the House of Lords came again upon the scene.
+It seriously damaged the Bill by its amendments, and would have
+destroyed it but for the skill with which the head of the Government
+handled these amendments, accepting the least pernicious, so as to
+enable the Upper House without loss of dignity to recede from those
+which were wholly inadmissible. Several times it seemed as if the
+conflict would have to pass from Westminster to the country, and, in
+contemplating the chances of a popular agitation or a dissolution, we
+were regretfully obliged to own that the English people cared too little
+and knew too little about Irish questions to give us much hope of
+defeating the House of Lords and the Tories upon these issues.
+
+An incident which occurred towards the end of the session seems, though
+trifling in itself, so illustrative of the illogical position in which
+we stood towards Ireland, as to deserve mention. Mr. Forster, still
+Chief Secretary, had brought in a Bill for extinguishing the Queen's
+University in Ireland, and creating in place of it a body to be called
+the Royal University, which, however, was not to be a real university at
+all, but only a set of examiners plus some salaried fellowships, to be
+held at various places of instruction. Regarding this as a gross
+educational blunder, which would destroy a useful existing body, and
+create a sham university in its place, and finding several Parliamentary
+friends on whose judgment I could rely to be of the same opinion, I gave
+notice of opposition to the Bill. Mr. Forster came to me, and pressed
+with great warmth that the opposition should be withdrawn. The Bill, he
+said, would satisfy the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and complete the work
+of the Land Bill in pacifying Ireland. The Irish members wanted it: what
+business had an English member to interfere to defeat their wishes, and
+thwart the Executive? The reply was obvious. Not to speak of the
+simplicity of expecting the hierarchy to be satisfied by this small
+concession, what were such arguments but the admission of Home Rule in
+its worst form? "You resist the demand of the Irish members to legislate
+for Ireland; you have just been demanding, and obtaining, the support of
+English members against those amendments of the Land Bill which Irish
+members declare to be necessary. Now you bid us surrender our own
+judgment, ignore our own responsibility, and blindly pass a Bill which
+we, who have studied these university questions as they affect both
+Ireland and England, believe to be thoroughly mischievous to the
+prospects of higher education in Ireland, only because the Irish
+members, as you say, desire it. Do one thing or the other. Either give
+them the power and the responsibility, or leave both with the Imperial
+Parliament. You are now asking us to surrender the power, but to remain
+still subject to the responsibility. We will not bear the latter without
+the former. We shall prefer Home Rule." Needless to add that this
+device--a sample of the petty sops by which successive generations of
+English statesmen, Whigs and Tories alike, have sought to win over a
+priesthood which uses and laughs at them--failed as completely as its
+predecessors to settle the University question or to range the bishops
+on the side of the Government.
+
+The autumn and winter of 1881 revealed the magnitude of the mischief
+done by making a Coercion Bill precede a Relief Bill. The Land Bill was
+the largest concession made to the demands of the people since Catholic
+Emancipation. It was a departure, justified by necessity, but still a
+departure from our established principles of legislation. It ought to
+have brought satisfaction and confidence, if not gratitude, with it;
+ought to have led Ireland to believe in the sincere friendliness of
+England, and produced a new cordiality between the islands. It did
+nothing of the kind. It was held to have been extorted from our fears;
+its grace and sweetness were destroyed by the concomitant severities
+which the Coercion Act had brought into force, as wholesome food becomes
+distasteful when some bitter compound has been sprinkled over it. We
+were deeply mortified at this result of our efforts. What was the malign
+power which made the boons we had conferred shrivel up, "like fairy
+gifts fading away"? We still believed the Coercion Act to have been
+justified, but lamented the fate which baffled the main object of our
+efforts, the winning over Ireland to trust the justice and the capacity
+of the Imperial Parliament. And thus the two facts which stood out from
+the history of this eventful session were, first, that even in
+legislating for the good of Ireland we were legislating against the
+wishes of Ireland, imposing on her enactments which her representatives
+opposed, and which we supported only at the bidding of the Ministry;
+and, secondly, that at the end of a long session, entirely devoted to
+her needs, we found her more hostile and not less disturbed than she had
+been at its beginning. We began to wonder whether we should ever succeed
+better on our present lines. But we still mostly regarded Home Rule as a
+disagreeable solution.
+
+SESSION OF 1882.--Still graver were the lessons of the first four months
+of this year. Mr. Forster went on filling the prisons of Ireland with
+persons whom he arrested under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, and
+never brought to trial. But the country grew no more quiet. At last he
+had nine hundred and forty men under lock and key, many of them not
+"village ruffians," whose power a few weeks' detention was to break, but
+political offenders, and even popular leaders. How long could this go
+on? Where was it to stop? It became plain that the Act was a failure,
+and that the people, trained to combination by a century and a half's
+practice, were too strong for the Executive. Either the scheme and plan
+of the Act had been wrong, or its administration had been incompetent.
+Whichever was the source of the failure (most people will now blame
+both), the fault must be laid at the door of the Irish Executive; not of
+Mr. Forster himself, but of those on whom he relied. It had been a
+Dublin Castle Bill, conceived and carried out by the incompetent
+bureaucracy which has so long pretended to govern Ireland. Such a proof
+of incompetence destroyed whatever confidence in that bureaucracy then
+remained to us, and the disclosures which the Phoenix Park murders and
+the subsequent proceedings against the Invincibles brought out, proved
+beyond question that the Irish Executive had only succeeded in giving a
+more dark and dangerous form, the form of ruthless conspiracy, to the
+agitation it was combating.
+
+When therefore the Prevention of Crime Bill of 1882 was brought in, some
+of us felt unable to support it, and specially bound to resist those of
+its provisions which related to trials without a jury, and to
+boycotting. It was impossible, on the morrow of the Phoenix Park
+murders, to deny that some coercive measure might be needed; but we had
+so far lost faith in repression, and in the officials who were to
+administer it, as to desire to limit it to what was absolutely
+necessary, and we protested against enacting for Ireland a criminal code
+which was not to be applied to Great Britain. Our resistance might have
+been more successful but for the manner in which the Nationalist members
+conducted their opposition. When they began to obstruct--not that under
+the circumstances we felt entitled to censure them for obstructing a
+Bill dealing so harshly with their countrymen--we were obliged to
+desist, and our experience of the stormy scenes of the summer of 1882
+deepened our sense of the passionate bitterness with which they regarded
+English members, scarcely making an exception in favour of those who
+were most disposed to sympathize with them. Many and many a time when we
+listened to their fierce cries, we seemed to hear in them the
+battle-cries of the centuries of strife between Celt and Englishman from
+Athenry to Vinegar Hill; many a time we felt that this rage and mistrust
+were chiefly of England's making; and yet not of England's, but rather
+of the overmastering fate which had prolonged to our own days the
+hatreds and the methods of barbarous times:
+
+            hêmeis d' ouk aitioi esmen
+    Alla Zeus kai Moira kai êerophoitis Herinus.
+
+So much of the session as the Crime Bill had spared was consumed by the
+Arrears Bill, over which we had again a "crisis" with the House of
+Lords. This was the third session that had been practically given up to
+Irishmen. The freshness and force of the Parliament of 1880--a
+Parliament full of zeal and ability--had now been almost spent, yet few
+of the plans of domestic legislation spread before the constituencies of
+1880 had been realized. The Government had been anxious to legislate,
+their majority had been ready to support them, but Ireland had blocked
+the way; and now the only expedient for improving the procedure of the
+House was to summon Parliament in an extra autumn session. Here was
+another cause for reflection. England and Scotland were calling for
+measures promised years ago, but no time could be found to discuss them.
+Nothing was done to reorganize local government, to reform the liquor
+laws, to improve secondary education, to deal with the housing of the
+poor, or a dozen other urgent questions, because we were busy with
+Ireland; and yet how little more loyal or contented did Ireland seem to
+be for all we had done. We began to ask whether Home Rule might not be
+as much an English and Scotch question as an Irish question. It was, at
+any rate, clear that to allow Ireland to manage her own affairs would
+open a prospect for England and Scotland to obtain time to attend to
+theirs.[3]
+
+This feeling was strengthened by the result of the attempts made in the
+autumn session of 1882, to improve the procedure of the House of
+Commons. We had cherished the hope that more drastic remedies against
+obstruction and better arrangements for the conduct of business, might
+relieve much of the pressure Irish members had made us suffer. The
+passing of the New Rules shattered this hope, for it was plain they
+would not accomplish what was needed. Some blamed the Government for not
+framing a more stringent code. Some blamed the Tory and the Irish
+Oppositions (now beginning to work in concert) for cutting down the
+proposals of the Government. But most of us saw, and came to see still
+more clearly in the three succeeding sessions, that the evil was too
+deep-rooted to be cured by any changes of procedure, unless they went so
+far as to destroy freedom of debate for English members also. The
+presence in a deliberative assembly of a section numbering (or likely
+soon to number) one-seventh of the whole--a section seeking to lower the
+character of the assembly, and to derange its mechanism, with no further
+interest in the greater part of its business except that of preventing
+it from conducting that business--this was the phenomenon which
+confronted us, and we felt that no rules of debate would overcome the
+dangers it threatened.
+
+It is from this year 1882 that I date the impression which we formed,
+that Home Rule was sure to come. "It may be a bold experiment," we said
+to one another in the lobbies; "there are serious difficulties in the
+way, though the case for it is stronger than we thought two years ago.
+But if the Irishmen persist as they are doing now, they will get it. It
+is only a question of their tenacity."
+
+It was impossible not to be struck during the conflicts of 1881 and 1882
+with the small amount of real bitterness which the conduct of the Irish
+members, irritating as it often was, provoked among the Liberals, who of
+course bore the brunt of the conflict. The Nationalists did their best
+to injure a Government which was at the same time being denounced by the
+Tories as too favourable to Irish claims; they lowered the character of
+Parliament by scenes far more painful than those of the session of 1887,
+on which so much indignation has been lately expended; they said the
+hardest things they could think of against us in the House; they
+attacked us in our constituencies. Their partisans (for I do not charge
+this on the leaders) interrupted and broke up our meetings.
+Nevertheless, all this did not provoke responsive hatred from the
+Liberals. There could not be a greater contrast than that between the
+way in which the great bulk of the Liberal members all through the
+Parliament of 1880 behaved towards their Irish antagonists, and the
+violence with which the Tory members, under much slighter provocation,
+conduct themselves towards those antagonists now. I say this not to the
+credit of our temper, which was no better than that of other men heated
+by the struggles of a crowded assembly. It was due entirely to our
+feeling that there was a great balance of wrong standing to the debit of
+England; that if the Irish were turbulent, it was the ill-treatment of
+former days that had made them so; and that, whatever might be their
+methods, they were fighting for their country. Although, therefore,
+there was little social intercourse between us and them, there was
+always a hope and a wish that the day might come when the Liberal party
+should resume its natural position of joining the representatives of the
+Irish people in obtaining radical reforms in Irish government. And the
+remarkable speech of February 9, 1882, in which Mr. Gladstone declared
+his mind to be open on the subject, and invited the Nationalists to
+propound a practicable scheme of self-government, had encouraged us to
+hope that this day might soon arrive.
+
+SESSION OF 1883.--Three facts stood out in the history of this
+comparatively quiet session, each of which brought us further along the
+road we had entered.
+
+One was the omission of Parliament to complete the work begun by the
+Land Bill of 1881, of improving the condition of the Irish peasantry and
+reorganizing Irish administration. The Nationalist members brought in
+Bills for these purposes, including one for amending the Land Act by
+admitting leaseholders to its benefits and securing tenants against
+having their improvements reckoned against them in the fixing of rents.
+Though we could not approve all the contents of these Bills, we desired
+to see the Government either take them up and amend them, or introduce
+Bills of its own to do what was needed. Some of us spoke strongly in
+this sense, nor will any one now deny that we were right. Sound policy
+called aloud for the completion of the undertaking of 1881. The
+Government however refused, alleging, no doubt with some truth, that
+Ireland could not have all the time of Parliament, but must let England
+and Scotland have their turn. Nor was anything done towards the creation
+of new local institutions in Ireland, or the reform of the Castle
+bureaucracy. We were profoundly disheartened. We saw golden
+opportunities slipping away, and doubted more than ever whether
+Westminster was the place in which to legislate for Irish grievances.
+
+Another momentous fact was the steady increase in the number of
+Nationalist members. Every seat that fell vacant in Ireland was filled
+by them. The moderate Irish party, most of whom had by this time crossed
+the floor of the House, and were sitting among us, had evidently no
+future. They were estimable, and, in some cases, able men, from whom we
+had hoped much, as a link between the Liberal party and the Irish
+people. But they seemed to have lost their hold on the people, nor were
+they able to give us much practical counsel as to Irish problems. It was
+clear that they would vanish at the next General Election, and
+Parliament be left to settle accounts with the extreme men, whose
+spirits rose as those of our friends steadily sank.
+
+Lastly: it was in this session that the alliance of the Nationalists and
+the Tory Opposition became a potent factor in politics. Its first
+conspicuous manifestation was in the defeat of the Government by the
+allied forces on the Affirmation Bill, when the least respectable
+privates in both armies vied with one another in boisterous rejoicings
+over the announcement of numbers in the division. I do not refer to this
+as ground for complaint. It was in the course of our usual political
+warfare that two groups, each hating and fearing the Ministry, should
+unite to displace it. But we now saw what power the Irish section must
+exert when it came to hold the balance of numbers in the House. Till
+this division, the Government had commanded a majority of the whole
+House. This would probably not outlast a dissolution. What then? Could
+the two English parties, differing so profoundly from one another,
+combine against the third party? Evidently not. We must, therefore, look
+forward to unstable Governments, if not to a total dislocation of our
+Parliamentary system.
+
+Session of 1884.--I pass over the minor incidents of this year,
+including the continued neglect of remedial legislation for Ireland to
+dwell on its dominant and most impressive lesson. It was the year of the
+Franchise Bill, which, as regards Ireland, worked an extension, not
+merely of the county but also of the borough franchise, and produced,
+owing to the economic condition of the humbler classes in that country,
+a far more extensive change than in England or Scotland. When the Bill
+was introduced the question at once arose--Should Ireland be included?
+
+There were two ways of treating Ireland between which Parliament had to
+choose.
+
+One was to leave her out of the Bill, on the ground that the masses of
+her population could not be trusted with the franchise, as being
+ignorant, sympathetic to crime, hostile to the English Government. This
+course was the logical concomitant of exceptional coercive legislation,
+such as had been passed in 1881 and 1882. It was quite compatible with
+generous remedial legislation. But it placed Ireland in an unequal and
+lower position, treating her, as the Coercion Acts did, as a dependent
+country, inhabited by a population unfit for the same measure of power
+which the inhabitants of Britain might receive.
+
+The other course was to bestow on Ireland the same extended franchise
+which the English county occupiers were to receive, applying the
+principle of equality, and disregarding the obvious consequences. These
+consequences were both practical and logical. The practical consequence
+was the increase in numbers and weight of the Irish party in Parliament
+hostile to Parliament itself. The logical consequence was the duty of
+complying with the wishes of the enfranchised nation. Whatever reasons
+were good for giving this enlarged suffrage to the Irish masses, were
+good for respecting the will which they might use to express it. If the
+Irish were deemed fit to exercise the same full constitutional rights
+in legislation as the English, must they not be fit for the same rights
+of trial by jury, a free press, and all the privileges of personal
+freedom?
+
+Of these two courses the Cabinet chose the latter, those of its members
+whom we must suppose, from the language they now hold, to have then
+hesitated, either stifling their fears or not apprehending the
+consequences of their boldness. It might have been expected, and indeed
+was generally expected, that the Tory party would refuse to follow. They
+talked largely about the danger of an extended Irish suffrage, and
+pointed out that it would be a weapon in the hands of disloyalty. But
+when the moment for resistance came, they swerved, and never divided in
+either House against the application of the Bill to Ireland. They might
+have failed to defeat the measure; but they would have immensely
+strengthened their position, logically and morally, had they given
+effect by their votes to the sentiments they were known to entertain,
+and which not a few Liberals shared.
+
+The effect of this uncontested grant to Ireland of a suffrage
+practically universal was immense upon our minds, and the longer we
+reflected on it the more significant did it become. It meant to us that
+the old methods were abandoned, and, as we supposed, for ever. We had
+deliberately given the Home Rule party arms against English control far
+more powerful than they previously possessed. We had deliberately
+asserted our faith in the Irish people. Impossible after this to fall
+back on Coercion Bills. Impossible to refuse any request compatible with
+the general safety of the United Kingdom, which Ireland as a nation
+might prefer. Impossible to establish that system of Crown Colony
+Government which we had come to perceive was the only real and solid
+alternative to self-government. To those of us who had been feeling that
+the Irish difficulty was much the greatest of all England's
+difficulties, this stood out beyond the agitation of the autumn and the
+compromise of the winter as the great political event of 1884.[4]
+
+Although this sketch is in the main a record of Parliamentary opinion, I
+ought not to pass over the influence which the study of their
+constituents' ideas exerted upon members for the larger towns. We found
+the vast bulk of our supporters--English supporters, for after 1882 it
+was understood that the Irish voters were our enemies--sympathetic with
+the Irish people. They knew and thought little about Home Rule,
+believing that their member understood that question better than they
+did, and willing, so long as he was sound on English issues, to trust
+him. But they pitied Irish tenants, and condemned Irish landlords.
+Though they acquiesced in a Coercion Bill when proposed by a Liberal
+Cabinet, because they concluded that nothing less than necessity would
+lead such a Cabinet to propose one, they so much disliked any
+exceptional or repressive legislation that it was plain they would not
+long tolerate it. Any popular leader denouncing coercion was certain to
+have the sentiment of the English masses with him, while as to
+suspending Irish representation or carrying out consistently the policy
+of treating Ireland as a subject country, there was no chance in the
+world of their approval. Those of us, therefore, who represented large
+working-class constituencies became convinced that the solution of the
+Irish problem must be sought in conciliation and self-government, if
+only because the other solution, Crown Colony Government, was utterly
+repugnant to the English masses, in whom the Franchise Bill of 1884,
+completing that of 1867, had vested political supremacy.[5]
+
+Session of 1885.--The allied powers of Toryism and Nationalism gained in
+this year the victory they had so long striven for. In February they
+reduced the Ministerial majority to fourteen; in June they overthrew the
+Ministry. No one supposed that on either occasion the merits of the
+issue had anything to do with the Nationalist vote: that vote was given
+simply and solely against the Government, as the Government which had
+passed the Coercion Acts of 1881 and 1882--Acts demanded by the Tory
+party, and which had not conceded an Irish Parliament. At last the Irish
+party had attained its position as the arbiter of power and office. Some
+of us said, as we walked away from the House, under the dawning light of
+that memorable 9th of June, "This means Home Rule." Our forecast was
+soon to be confirmed. Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, formed upon the
+resignation of Mr. Gladstone's, announced that it would not propose to
+renew any part of the Coercion Act of 1882, which was to expire in
+August. Here was a surrender indeed! But the Tory leaders went further.
+They did not excuse themselves on the ground of want of time. They took
+credit for their benevolence towards Ireland; they discovered excellent
+reasons why the Act should be dropped. They even turned upon Lord
+Spencer, whose administration they had hitherto blamed for its leniency,
+and attacked him in Parliament, among the cheers of his Irish enemies.
+From that time till the close of the General Election in December
+everything was done, short of giving public pledges, to keep the Irish
+leaders and the Irish voters in good humour. The Tory party in fact
+posed as the true friends of Ireland, averse from coercion, and with
+minds perfectly open on the subject of self-government.
+
+This change of front, so sudden, so unblushing, completed the process
+which had been going on in our minds. By 1882 we had come to feel that
+Home Rule was inevitable, though probably undesirable. Before long we
+had asked ourselves whether it was really undesirable, whether it might
+not be a good thing both for England, whose Parliament and Cabinet
+system it would relieve from impending dangers, while leaving free scope
+for domestic legislation, and for Ireland, which could hardly manage her
+affairs worse than we were managing them for her, and might manage them
+better. And thus, by the spring of 1885, many of us were prepared for a
+large scheme of local self-government in Ireland, including a central
+legislative body in Dublin.[6]
+
+Now when it was plain that the English party which had hitherto called
+for repression, and had professed itself anxious for a patriotic union
+of all parties to maintain order and a continuity of policy in Ireland,
+was ready to bid for Irish help at the polls by throwing over repression
+and reversing the policy it had advocated, we felt that the sooner
+Ireland was taken out of English party politics the better. What
+prospect was there of improving Ireland by the superior wisdom and
+fairness of the British Parliament, if British leaders were to make
+their Irish policy turn on interested bargains with Nationalist leaders?
+Repression, which we clearly saw to be the only alternative to
+self-government, seemed to be by common consent abandoned. I remember
+how, at a party of members in the beginning of July, some one said,
+"Well, there's an end for ever of coercion at any rate," and every one
+assented as to an obvious truth. Accordingly the result of the new
+departure of the Salisbury Cabinet in 1885 was to convince even doubters
+that Home Rule must come, and to make those already convinced anxious to
+see it come quickly, and to find the best form that could be given it.
+Many of us expected the Tory Government to propose it. Rumour declared
+the new Lord Lieutenant to be in favour of it. His government was
+extremely conciliatory in Ireland, even to the recalcitrant corporation
+of Limerick. Not to mention less serious and less respected Tory
+Ministers, Lord Salisbury talked at Newport about the dualism of the
+Austro-Hungarian Monarchy with the air of a man who desired to have a
+workable scheme, analogous, if not similar, suggested for Ireland and
+Great Britain. The Irish Nationalists appeared to place their hopes in
+this quarter, for they attacked the Liberal party with unexampled
+bitterness, and threw all their voting strength into the Tory scale.
+
+As it has lately been attempted to blacken the character of the Irish
+leaders, it deserves to be remarked that whatever has been charged
+against them was said or done by them before the spring of 1885, and
+was, practically, perfectly well known to the Tory leaders when they
+accepted the alliance of the Irish party in the House of Commons, and
+courted their support in the election of 1885. To those who remember
+what went on in the House in the sessions of 1884 and 1885, the horror
+now professed by the Tory leaders for the conduct and words of the Irish
+party would be matter for laughter if it were not also matter for just
+indignation.
+
+Why, it may be asked, if the persuasion that Home Rule was certain, and
+even desirable, had become general among the Liberals who had sat
+through the Parliament of 1880, was it not more fully expressed at the
+election of 1885? This is a fair question, which I shall try to answer.
+
+In the first place, the electors made few inquiries about Ireland. They
+disliked the subject; they had not realized its supreme importance.
+Those of us who felt anxious to explain our views (as was my own case)
+had to volunteer to do so, for we were not asked about them. The Irish
+party in the constituencies was in violent opposition to Liberal
+candidates; it did not interrogate, but denounced. Further, it was felt
+that the issue was mainly one to be decided in Ireland itself. The
+question of Home Rule was being submitted, not, as heretofore, to a
+limited constituency, but to the whole Irish people. Till their will had
+been constitutionally declared at the polls it was not proper that
+Englishmen or Scotchmen should anticipate its tenour. We should even
+have been accused, had we volunteered our opinions, of seeking to affect
+the result in Ireland, and, not only of playing for the Irish vote in
+Great Britain, as we saw the Tories doing, but of prejudicing the
+chances of those Liberal candidates who, in Irish constituencies, were
+competing with extreme Nationalists. A third reason was that most
+English and Scotch Liberals did not know how far their own dispositions
+towards Home Rule were shared by their leaders. Mr. Gladstone's
+declaration in his Midlothian address was no doubt a decided intimation
+of his views, and was certainly understood by some (as by myself) to
+imply the grant to Ireland of a Parliament; but, strong as its words
+were, its importance does not seem to have been fully appreciated at the
+moment. And the opinions of a statesman whose unequalled Irish
+experience and elevated character gave him a weight only second to that
+of Mr. Gladstone--I mean Lord Spencer--had not been made known. We had
+consequently no certainty that there were leaders prepared to give
+prompt effect to the views we entertained. Lastly, we were not prepared
+with a practical scheme of self-government for Ireland. The Nationalist
+members had propounded none which we could either adopt or criticize.
+Convinced as we were that Home Rule would come and must come, we felt
+the difficulties surrounding every suggestion that had yet been made,
+and had not hammered out any plan which we could lay before the electors
+as approved by Liberal opinion.[7] We were forced to confine ourselves
+to generalities.
+
+Whether it would have been better for us to have done our thinking and
+scheme-making in public, and thereby have sooner forced the details of
+the problem upon the attention of the country, need not now be inquired.
+Any one can now see that something was lost by the omission. But those
+who censure a course that has actually been taken usually fail to
+estimate the evils that would have followed from the taking of the
+opposite course. Such evils might in this instance have been as great as
+those we have encountered.
+
+I have spoken of the importance we attached to the decision of Ireland
+itself, and of the attitude of expectancy which, while that decision was
+uncertain, Englishmen were forced to maintain. We had not long to wait.
+Early in December it was known that five-sixths of the members returned
+from Ireland were Nationalists, and that the majorities which had
+returned them were crushing. If ever a people spoke its will, the Irish
+people spoke theirs at the election of 1885. The last link in the chain
+of conviction, which events had been forging since 1880, was now
+supplied. In passing the Franchise Bill of 1884, we had asked Ireland to
+declare her mind. She had now answered. If the question was not a
+mockery, and representative government a sham, we were bound to accept
+the answer, subject only, but subject always, to the interests of the
+whole United Kingdom. In other words, we were bound to devise such a
+scheme of self-government for Ireland as would give full satisfaction to
+her wishes, while maintaining the ultimate supremacy of the Imperial
+Parliament and the unity of the British Empire.
+
+Very few words are needed to summarize the outline which, omitting many
+details which would have illustrated and confirmed its truth, I have
+attempted to present of the progress of opinion among Liberal members of
+the Parliament of 1880.
+
+1. Our experience of the Coercion Bills of 1881 and 1882 disclosed the
+enormous mischief which such measures do in alienating the minds of
+Irishmen, and the difficulty of enlisting Irish sentiment on behalf of
+the law. The results of the Act of 1881 taught us that the repression of
+open agitation means the growth of far more dangerous conspiracy; those
+of the Act of 1882 proved that even under an administration like Lord
+Spencer's repression works no change for the better in the habits and
+ideas of the people.
+
+2. The conduct of the House of Lords in 1880 and 1881, and the malign
+influence which its existence exerted whenever remedial legislation for
+Ireland came in question, convinced us that full and complete justice
+will never be done to Ireland by the British Parliament while the Upper
+House (as at present constituted) remains a part of that Parliament.
+
+3. The break-down of the procedure of the House of Commons, and the
+failure of the efforts to amend it, proved that Parliament cannot work
+so long as a considerable section of its members seek to impede its
+working. To enable it to do its duty by England and Scotland, it was
+evidently necessary, either to make the Irish members as loyal to
+Parliament as English and Scotch members usually are, or else to exclude
+them.
+
+4. The discussions of Irish Bills in the House of Commons made us
+realize how little English members knew about Ireland; how utterly
+different were their competence for, and their attitude towards, Irish
+questions and English questions. We perceived that we were legislating
+in the dark for a country whose economic and social condition we did not
+understand--a country to which we could not apply our English ideas of
+policy; a country whose very temper and feeling were strange to us. We
+were really fitter to pass laws for Canada or Australia than for this
+isle within sight of our shores.
+
+5. I have said that we were legislating in the dark. But there were two
+quarters from which light was proffered, the Irish members and the Irish
+Executive. We rejected the first, and could hardly help doing so, for to
+accept it would have been to displace our own leaders. We followed the
+light which the Executive gave. But in some cases (as notably in the
+case of the Coercion Bill of 1881) it proved to be a "wandering fire,"
+leading us into dangerous morasses. And we perceived that at all times
+legislation at the bidding of the Executive, against the wishes of Irish
+members, was not self-government or free government. It was despotism.
+The rule of Ireland by the British Parliament was really "the rule of a
+dependency through an official, responsible no doubt, but responsible
+not to the ruled, but to an assembly of which they form less than a
+sixth part."[8] As this assembly closed its ears to the one-sixth, and
+gave effect to the will of the official, this was essentially arbitrary
+government, and wanted those elements of success which free government
+contains.
+
+This experience had, by 1884, convinced us that the present relations of
+the British Parliament to Ireland were bad, and could not last; that the
+discontent of Ireland was justified; that the existing system, in
+alienating the mind of Ireland, tended, not merely to Repeal, but to
+Separation; that the simplest, and probably the only effective, remedy
+for the increasing dangers was the grant of an Irish Legislature. Two
+events clinched these conclusions. One was the Tory surrender of June,
+1885. Self-government, we had come to see, was the only alternative to
+Coercion, and now Coercion was gone. The other was the General Election
+of December, 1885, when newly-enfranchised Ireland, through five-sixths
+of her representatives, demanded a Parliament of her own.
+
+These were not, as is sometimes alleged, conclusions of despair. We were
+mostly persons of a cautious and conservative turn of mind, as men
+imbued with the spirit of the British Constitution ought to be. The
+first thing was to convince us that the existing relations of the
+islands were faulty, and could not be maintained. This was a negative
+result, and while we remained in that stage we were despondent. Many
+Liberal members will remember the gloom that fell on us in 1882 and 1883
+whenever we thought or spoke of Ireland. But presently the clouds
+lifted. We still felt the old objections to any Home Rule scheme, though
+we now saw that they were less formidable than the evils of the present
+system. But we came to feel that the grant of self-government was a
+right thing in itself. It was not merely a means of ridding ourselves of
+our difficulties, not merely a boon yielded because long demanded. It
+was a return to broad and deep principles, a conformity to those
+natural laws which govern human society as well as the inanimate
+world--an effort to enlist the better and higher feelings of mankind in
+the creation of a truer union between the two nations than had ever yet
+existed. When we perceived this, hope returned. It is strong with us
+now, for, though we see troubles, perhaps even dangers, in the immediate
+future, we are confident that the principles on which Liberal policy
+towards Ireland is based will in the long run work out a happy issue for
+her, as they have in and for every other country that has trusted to
+them.
+
+One last word as to Consistency. We learnt in the Parliament of 1880
+many facts about Ireland we had not known before; we felt the force and
+bearing of other facts previously accepted on hearsay, but not realized.
+We saw the Irish problem change from what it had been in 1880 into the
+new phase which stood apparent at the end of 1885, Coercion abandoned by
+its former advocates, Self-government demanded by the nation. Were we to
+disregard all these new facts, ignore all these new conditions, and
+cling to old ideas, some of which we perceived to be mistaken, while
+others, still true in themselves, were out-weighed by arguments of far
+wider import? We did not so estimate our duty. We foresaw the taunts of
+foes and the reproaches of friends. But we resolved to give effect to
+the opinions we slowly, painfully, even reluctantly formed, opinions all
+the stronger because not suddenly adopted, and founded upon evidence
+whose strength no one can appreciate till he has studied the causes of
+Irish discontent in Irish history, and been forced (as we were) to face
+in Parliament the practical difficulties of the government of Ireland by
+the British House of Commons.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 3: I may mention here another fact whose significance
+impressed some among us. Parliament, which usually sinned in not doing
+for Ireland what Ireland asked, occasionally passed bills for Ireland
+which were regarded as setting very bad precedents for England. By some
+bargain between the Irish Office and the Nationalist members, measures
+were put through which may have been right as respects Ireland, but
+which embodied principles mischievous as respects Great Britain. We felt
+that if it was necessary to enact such statutes, it would be better that
+they should proceed from an Irish Legislature rather than from the
+Imperial Parliament, which might be embarrassed by its own acts when
+asked to extend the same principles to England. The Labourers' Act of
+July, 1885, is the most conspicuous example.]
+
+[Footnote 4: At Easter, 1885, I met a number of leading Ulster Liberals
+in Belfast, told them that Home Rule was certainly coming, and urged
+them to prepare some plan under which any special interests they
+conceived the Protestant part of Ulster to have, would be effectually
+safe-guarded. They were startled, and at first discomposed, but
+presently told me I was mistaken; to which I could only reply that time
+would show, and perhaps sooner then even English Liberals expected.]
+
+[Footnote 5: My recollection of a conversation with a distinguished
+public man in July, 1882, enables me to say that this fact had impressed
+itself upon us as early as that year. He doubted the fact, but admitted
+that, if true, it was momentous. The passing of the Franchise Bill made
+it, in our view, more momentous than ever.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Some thought that its functions should be very limited,
+while large powers were granted to county boards or provincial councils.
+But most had, I think, already perceived that the grant of a merely
+local self-government, while retaining an irresponsible central
+bureaucracy, would do more harm than good. It seemed at first sight a
+safer experiment than the creation of a central legislative body. But,
+like many middle courses, it combined the demerits and wanted the merits
+of each of the extreme courses. It would not make the country tranquil,
+as firm and long-continued repression might possibly do. Neither would
+it satisfy the people's demands, and divert them from struggles against
+England to disputes and discussions among themselves, as the gift of
+genuine self-government might do.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Some of us had tried to do so. I prepared such a scheme in
+the autumn of 1885, and submitted it to some specially competent
+friends. Their objections, made from what would now be called the
+Unionist point of view, were weighty. But their effect was to convince
+me that the scheme erred on the side of caution; and I believe the
+experience of other Liberals who worked at the problem to have been the
+same as my own--viz. that a small and timid scheme is more dangerous
+than a large and bold one. Thus the result of our thinking from July,
+1885, till April, 1886, was to make us more and more disposed to reject
+half-and-half solutions. Some of us (of whom I was one) expressed this
+feeling by saying in our election addresses in 1885, "the further we go
+in giving the Irish people the management of their own affairs (subject
+to the maintenance of the unity of the empire) the better."]
+
+[Footnote 8: Quoted from an article contributed by myself to the
+American _Century Magazine_, which I refer to because, written in the
+spring of 1883, it expresses the ideas here stated.]
+
+
+
+
+HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY
+
+BY LORD THRING
+
+
+The principal charge made against the scheme of Home Rule contained in
+the Irish Government Bill, 1886, is that it is incompatible with the
+maintenance of the unity of the Empire and the supremacy of the Imperial
+Parliament. A further allegation states that the Bill is useless, as
+agrarian exasperation lies at the root of Irish discontent and Irish
+disloyalty, and that no place would be found for a Home Rule Bill even
+in Irish aspirations if an effective Land Bill were first passed. An
+endeavour will be made in the following pages to secure a verdict of
+acquittal on both counts--as to the charge relating to Imperial unity
+and the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, by proving that the
+accusation is absolutely unfounded, and based partly on a misconception
+of the nature of Imperial ties, and partly on a misapprehension of the
+effect of the provisions of the Home Rule Bill as bearing on Imperial
+questions; and as to the inutility of the Home Rule Bill in view of the
+necessity of Land Reform, by showing that without a Home Rule Bill no
+Land Bill worth consideration as a means of pacifying Ireland can be
+passed.
+
+The complete partisan spirit in which Home Rule has been treated is the
+more to be deplored as the subject is one which does not lend itself
+readily to the trivialities of party debates. It raises questions of
+principle, not of detail. It ascends at once into the highest region of
+politics. It is conversant with the great questions of constitutional
+and international law, and leads to an inquiry into the very nature of
+governments and the various modes in which communities of men are
+associated together either as simple or composite nations. To describe
+those modes in detail would be to give a history of the various
+despotic, monarchical, oligarchical, and democratic systems of
+government which have oppressed or made happy the children of men. Such
+a description is calculated to perplex and mislead from its very extent;
+not so an inquiry into the powers of government, and a classification of
+those powers. They are limited in extent, and, if we confine ourselves
+to English names and English necessities, we shall readily attain to an
+apprehension of the mode in which empires, nations, and political
+societies are bound together, at least in so far as such knowledge is
+required for the understanding of the nature of Imperial supremacy, and
+the mode in which Home Rule in Ireland is calculated to affect that
+supremacy.
+
+The powers of government are divisible into two great classes--1.
+Imperial powers; 2. State powers, using "State" in the American sense of
+a political community subordinated to some other power, and not in the
+sense of an independent nation. The Imperial powers are in English law
+described as the prerogatives of the Crown, and consist in the main of
+the powers of making peace and war, of maintaining armies and fleets and
+regulating commerce, and making treaties with foreign nations. State
+powers are complete powers of local self-government, described in our
+colonial Constitutions as powers to make laws "for the peace, order, and
+good government of the Colony or State" in which such powers are to be
+exercised.
+
+Intermediate between the Imperial and State powers are a class of
+powers required to prevent disputes and facilitate intercourse between
+the various parts of an empire or other composite system of States--for
+example, the coinage of money, and other regulations relating to the
+currency; the laws relating to copyright, or other exclusive rights to
+the use and profits of any works or inventions; and so forth. These
+powers may be described as quasi-Imperial powers.
+
+Having arrived at a competent knowledge of the materials out of which
+governments are formed, it may be well to proceed to a consideration of
+the manner in which those materials have been worked up in building the
+two great Anglo-Saxon composite nations--namely, the American Union and
+the British Empire--for, if we find that the arrangements proposed by
+the Irish Home Rule Bill are strictly in accordance with the principles
+on which the unity of the American Union was based and on which the
+Imperial power of Great Britain has rested for centuries, the conclusion
+must be that the Irish Home Rule Bill is not antagonistic to the unity
+of the Empire or to the supremacy of the British Parliament.
+
+In discussing these matters it will be convenient to begin with the
+American Union, as it is less extensive in area and more homogeneous in
+its construction than the British Empire. The thirteen revolted American
+colonies, on the conclusion of their war with England, found themselves
+in the position of thirteen independent States having no connection with
+each other. The common tie of supremacy exercised by the mother country
+was broken, and each State was an independent nation, possessed both of
+Imperial and Local rights.
+
+The impossibility of a cluster of thirteen small independent nations
+maintaining their independence against foreign aggression became
+immediately apparent, and, to remedy this evil, the thirteen States
+appointed delegates to form a convention authorized to weld them into
+one body as respected Imperial powers. This was attempted to be done by
+the establishment of a central body called a Congress, consisting of
+delegates from the component States, and invested with all the powers
+designated above as Imperial and quasi-Imperial powers. The expenses
+incurred by the confederacy were to be defrayed out of a common fund, to
+be supplied by requisitions made on the several States. In effect, the
+confederacy of the thirteen States amounted to little more than an
+offensive and defensive alliance between thirteen independent nations,
+as the central power had States for its subjects and not individuals,
+and could only enforce the law against any disobedient State by calling
+on the twelve other States to make war on the refractory member of the
+union. A system dependent for its efficacy on the concurrence of so many
+separate communities contained in itself the seeds of dissolution, and
+it soon became apparent that one of two things must occur--either the
+American States must cease as such to be a nation, or the component
+members of that union must each be prepared to relinquish a further
+portion of the sovereign or quasi-sovereign powers which it possessed.
+Under those circumstances, what was the course taken by the thirteen
+States? They perceived that it was quite possible to maintain complete
+unity and compactness as a nation if, in addition to investing the
+Supreme Government with Imperial and quasi-Imperial powers, they added
+full power to impose federal taxes on the component States and
+established an Executive furnished with ample means to carry all federal
+powers into effect through the medium of federal officers. The
+government so formed consisted of a President and two elected Houses
+called Congress, and, as a balance-wheel of the Constitution, a Supreme
+Court was established, to which was confided the task of deciding in
+case of dispute all questions arising under the Constitution of the
+United States or relating to international law. The Executive of the
+United States, with the President as its source and head, was furnished
+with full authority and power to enforce the federal laws. The army and
+navy were under its command, and it was provided with courts of justice,
+and subordinate officers to enforce the decrees of those courts
+throughout the length and breadth of the Union. Above all, a complete
+system of federal taxation supplied the Central Government with the
+necessary funds to perform effectually all the functions of a supreme
+national government.
+
+The nature of the Constitution of the United States will be best
+understood by considering the position in which its subjects stand to
+the Central Government and their own State Governments. In effect, every
+inhabitant of the United States has a double nationality. He belongs to
+one great nation called the United States, or, as it would be more aptly
+called to show its absolute unity, the American Republic, having
+jurisdiction over the whole surface of ground comprised in the area of
+the United States. He is also a citizen of a smaller local and partially
+self-governing body--more important than a county, but not approaching
+the position of a nation--called a State.
+
+It is no part of the object of this article to enter into the details of
+the American government, its advantages or defects. This much, however,
+is clear--the American Constitution has lasted nearly one hundred years,
+and shows no signs of decay or disruption. It has stood the strain of
+the greatest war of modern times, and has emerged from the conflict
+stronger than before. Even during the war the antagonism of the rebels
+was directed, not against the Union, but against the efforts of the
+Northern States to suppress slavery, or, in other words, to destroy, as
+the Southern States believed (not unjustly as the event showed), their
+property in slaves, and consequently the only means they had of making
+their estates profitable. One conclusion, then, we may draw, that a
+nation in which the Imperial powers and the State powers are vested in
+different authorities is no less compact and powerful, as respects all
+national capacities, than a nation in which both classes of powers are
+wielded by the same functionaries; and one lesson more may be learnt
+from the American War of Secession--namely, that in a nation having such
+a division of powers, any conflict between the two classes results in
+the Supreme or Imperial powers prevailing over the Local governmental
+powers, and not in the latter invading or driving a wedge into the
+Supreme powers. In fact, the tendency in case of a struggle is towards
+an undue centralization of the nation by reason of the encroachment by
+the Supreme authority, rather than towards a weakening of the national
+unity by separatist action on the part of the constituent members of the
+nation.
+
+In comparing the Constitution of the United States with the Constitution
+of the British Empire, we find an apparent resemblance in form as
+respects the Anglo-Saxon colonies, but underlying the surface a total
+difference of principle. The United States is an aggregate of
+homogeneous and contiguous States which, in order to weld themselves
+into a nation, gave up a portion of their rights to a central authority,
+reserving to themselves all powers of government which they did not
+expressly relinquish.
+
+The British Empire is an aggregate of many communities under one common
+head, and is thus described by Mr. Burke in 1774, in language which may
+seem to have been somewhat too enthusiastic at the time when it was
+spoken, but at the present day does not more than do justice to an
+Empire which comprises one-sixth of the habitable globe in extent and
+population:--
+
+"I look, I say, on the Imperial rights of Great Britain, and the
+privileges which the colonies ought to enjoy under those rights, to be
+just the most reconcilable things in the world. The Parliament of Great
+Britain sits at the head of her extensive Empire in two capacities: one
+as the local legislature of this island, providing for all things at
+home immediately and by no other instrument than the executive power;
+the other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what I call her Imperial
+character, in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all
+the several Legislatures, and guides and controls them all without
+annihilating any. As all these provincial Legislatures are only
+co-ordinate with each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her,
+else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual
+justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance."[9]
+
+The means by which the possessions of Great Britain were acquired have
+been as various as the possessions themselves. The European, Asiatic,
+and African possessions became ours by conquest and cession; the
+American by conquest, treaty, and settlement; the Australasian by
+settlement, and by that dubious system of settlement known by the name
+of annexation. Now, what is the link which fastens each of these
+possessions to the mother country? Surely it is the inherent and
+indestructible right of the British Crown to exercise Imperial
+powers--in other words, the supremacy of the Queen and the British
+Parliament? What, again, is the common bond of union between these vast
+colonial possessions, differing in laws, in religion, and in the
+character of the population? The same answer must be given: the joint
+and several tie, so to speak, is the same--namely, the sovereignty of
+Great Britain. It is true that the mode in which the materials composing
+the British Empire have been cemented together is exactly the reverse of
+the manner of the construction of the American Union. In the case of the
+Union, independent States voluntarily relinquished a portion of their
+sovereignty to secure national unity, and entrusted the guardianship of
+that unity to a representative body chosen by themselves. Such a union
+was based on contract, and could only be constructed by communities
+which claimed to be independent. Far different have been the
+circumstances under which England has developed itself into the British
+Empire. England began as a sovereign power, having its sovereignty
+vested at first solely in the Sovereign, but gradually in the Sovereign
+and Parliament. This sovereignty neither the Crown nor the Parliament
+can, jointly or severally, get rid of, for it is of the very essence of
+a sovereign power that it cannot, by Act of Parliament or otherwise,
+bind its successors.[10] This principle of supremacy has never been lost
+sight of by the British Parliament. Their right to alter or suspend a
+colonial Constitution has never been disputed. Contract never enters
+into the question. The dominant authority delegates to its subordinate
+communities as much or as little power as it deems advantageous for each
+body, and, if it sees fit, resumes a portion or the whole of the
+delegated authority. The last point of difference to be noted between
+the American Constitution and the Constitution of the British Empire is
+the fact that as Minerva sprang from the brain of Jupiter fully
+equipped, so the American Constitution came forth from the hands of its
+framers complete and, what is of more importance, practically in
+material matters unchangeable except by the agony of an internecine war
+or some overwhelming passions. The British Empire, on the other hand,
+is, as respects its component members, ever in progress and flux. An
+Anglo-Saxon colony, no less than a human being, has its infancy under
+the maternal care of a governor, its boyhood subject to the government
+of a representative council and an Executive appointed by the Crown, its
+manhood under Home Rule and responsible government, in which the
+Executive are bound to vacate their offices whenever they are out-voted
+in the Legislature. Changes are ever taking place in the growth, so to
+speak, of the several British possessions, but what is the result?
+Nobody ever dreams of these changes injuring the Imperial tie or the
+supremacy of the British Parliament, that alone towers above all,
+unchangeable and unimpaired; and, what is most notable, loyalty and
+devotion to the Crown--that is to say, the Imperial tie--so far from
+being weakened by the transition of a colony from a state of dependence
+in local affairs to the higher degree of a self-governing colony, are,
+on the contrary, strengthened almost in direct proportion as the central
+interference with local affairs is diminished. On this point an
+unimpeachable witness--Mr. Merivale--says: "What, then, are the lessons
+to be learnt from a consideration of the American Constitution and of
+our colonial system? Surely these: that Imperial unity and Imperial
+supremacy are in no degree dependent on the control exercised by the
+central power on its dependent members." Facts, however, are more
+conclusive than any arguments; and we have only to look back to the
+state some forty years ago of Canada, New Zealand, and the various
+colonies of Australia, and compare that state with their condition
+to-day, to come to the conclusion that the fullest power of local
+government is perfectly consistent with the unity of the Empire and the
+supremacy of the British Parliament. Under the old colonial
+Constitutions the Executive of those colonies was under the control of
+the Crown; and Mr. Merivale says "that the political existence consisted
+of a series of quarrels and reconciliations between the two opposing
+authorities--the colonial legislative body and the Executive nominated
+by the Crown." England resolved to give up the control of the Executive,
+and to grant complete responsible government--that is to say, the
+Governor of each colony was instructed that his Executive Council (or
+Ministry, as we should call it) must resign whenever they were out-voted
+by the legislative body. The effect of this change, this relaxing, as
+would be supposed, of the Imperial tie, was magical, and is thus
+described by Mr. Merivale:[11]
+
+"The magnitude of that change--the extraordinary rapidity of its
+beneficial effects--it is scarcely possible to exaggerate. None but
+those who have traced it can realize the sudden spring made by a young
+community under its first release from the old tie of subjection,
+moderate as that tie really was. The cessation, as if by magic, of the
+old irritant sores between colony and mother country is the first
+result. Not only are they at concord, but they seem to leave hardly any
+traces in the public mind behind them. Confidence and affection towards
+the home, still fondly so termed by the colonist as well as the
+emigrant, seem to supersede at once distrust and hostility. Loyalty,
+which was before the badge of a class suspected by the rest of the
+community, became the common watchword of all, and, with some
+extravagance in the sentiment, there arises no small share of its
+nobleness and devotion. Communities, which but a few years ago would
+have wrangled over the smallest item of public expenditure to which they
+were invited by the Executive to contribute, have vied with each other
+in their subscriptions to purposes of British interests in response to
+calls of humanity, or munificence for objects but indistinctly heard of
+at the distance of half the world."
+
+The Dominion of Canada has been so much talked about that it may be well
+to give a summary of its Constitution, though, in so far as regards its
+relations to the mother country, it differs in no material respect from
+any other self-governing colony. The Dominion consists of seven
+provinces, each of which has a Legislature of its own, but is at the
+same time subject to the Legislature of the Dominion, in the same manner
+as each State in the American Union has a Legislature of its own, and is
+at the same time subject to the control of Congress. The distinguishing
+feature between the system of the American States and the associated
+colonies of the Dominion of Canada is this--that all Imperial powers,
+everything that constitutes a people a nation as respects foreigners,
+are reserved to the mother country. The division, then, of the Dominion
+and its provinces consists only in a division of Local powers. It is
+impossible to mark accurately the line between Dominion and Provincial
+powers, but, speaking generally, Dominion powers relate to such
+matters--for example, the regulation of trade and commerce, postal
+service, currency, and so forth--as require to be dealt with on a
+uniform principle throughout the whole area of a country; while the
+Provincial powers relate to provincial and municipal institutions,
+provincial licensing, and other subjects restricted to the limits of the
+province. As a general rule, the Legislature of the Dominion and the
+Legislature of each province have respectively exclusive jurisdiction
+within the limits of the subjects entrusted to them; but, as respects
+agriculture and immigration, the Dominion Parliament have power to
+overrule any Act of the provincial Legislatures, and, as respects
+property and civil rights in Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick,
+the Dominion Parliament may legislate with a view to uniformity, but
+their legislation is not valid unless it is accepted by the Legislature
+of each province to which it applies.
+
+The executive authority in the Dominion Government, as in all the
+self-governing colonies, is carried on by the Governor in the name of
+the Queen, but with the advice of a Council: that is to say, as to all
+Imperial matters, he is under the control of the mother country; as to
+all local matters, he acts on the advice of his local Council. The
+result of the whole is that the citizenship of an inhabitant of the
+Dominion of Canada is a triple tie. Suppose him to reside in the
+province of Quebec. First, he is a citizen of that province, and bound
+to obey all the laws which it is within the competence of the provincial
+Legislature to pass. Next, he is a citizen of the Dominion of Canada,
+and acknowledges its jurisdiction in all matters outside the legitimate
+sphere of the province. Lastly, and above all, he is a subject of her
+Majesty. He is to all intents and purposes, as respects the vast company
+of nations, an Englishman, entitled to all the privileges as he is to
+all the glory of the mother country so far as such privileges can be
+enjoyed and glory participated in without actual residence in England.
+One startling point of likeness in events and unlikeness in consequences
+is to be found in the history of Ireland and Canada. In 1798 Ireland
+rebelled. Protestant and Catholic were arrayed in arms against each
+other. The rebellion was quenched in blood, and measures of repression
+have been in force, with slight intervals of suspension, ever since,
+with this result--that the Ireland of 1886 is scarcely less disloyal and
+discontented than the Ireland of 1798. In 1837 and 1838 Canada rebelled.
+Protestants and Catholics, differing in nationality as well as in
+religion, were arrayed in arms against each other. The rebellion was
+quelled with the least possible violence, a free Constitution was given,
+and the Canada of 1886 is the largest, most loyal, and most contented
+colony in her Majesty's dominions.
+
+Assuming, then, thus much to be proved by the Constitution of the United
+States that national unity of the closest description is consistent with
+complete Home Rule in the component members of the nation, and by the
+history of Canada and the British colonial empire that an Imperial tie
+is sufficient to bind together for centuries dependencies differing in
+situation, in nationality, in religion, in laws, in everything that
+distinguishes peoples one from another, and further and more
+particularly that emancipation of the Anglo-Saxon colonies from control
+in their internal affairs strengthens instead of weakening Imperial
+unity, let us turn to Ireland and inquire whether there is anything in
+the circumstances under which Home Rule was proposed to be granted to
+Ireland, or in the measures intended to establish that Home Rule, fairly
+leading to the inference that disruption of the Empire or an impairment
+of Imperial powers would probably be a consequence of passing the Irish
+Government Bill and the Irish Land Bill. And, first, as to the
+circumstances which would seem to recommend the Irish Home Rule Bill.
+
+Ireland, from the very commencement of her connection with England, has
+chafed under the restraints which that connection imposed. The closer
+the apparent union between the two countries the greater the real
+disunion. The Act of 1800, _in words and in law_, effected not a union
+merely, but a consolidation of the two countries. The effect of those
+words and that law was to give rise to a restless discontent, which has
+constantly found expression in efforts to procure the repeal of the Act
+of Union and the reestablishment of a National Parliament in Dublin. How
+futile have been the efforts of the British Parliament to diminish by
+concession or repress by coercion Irish aspirations or Irish discontent
+it is unnecessary to discuss here. All men admit the facts, however
+different the conclusions which they draw from those facts. What Burke
+said of America on moving in 1775 his resolution on conciliation with
+the colonies was true in 1885 with respect to Ireland:--
+
+"The fact is undoubted, that under former Parliaments the state of
+America [read for America, Ireland] has been kept in continual
+agitation. Everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, if
+it did not produce, was at least followed by an heightening of the
+distemper, until, by a variety of experiments, that important country
+has been brought into her present situation--a situation which I will
+not miscall, which I dare not name, which I scarcely know how to
+comprehend in the terms of any description."[12]
+
+At length, after the election of 1885, Mr. Gladstone and the majority of
+his followers came to the conclusion that an opportunity had presented
+itself for providing Ireland with a Constitution conferring on the
+people of that country the largest measure of self-government consistent
+with the absolute supremacy of the Crown and the Imperial Parliament and
+the entire unity of the Empire. A scheme was proposed which was accepted
+in principle by the representatives of the National party in Ireland as
+a fair and sufficient adjustment of the Imperial claims of Great Britain
+and the Local claims of Ireland. The scheme was shortly this. A
+Legislative Assembly was proposed to be established in Ireland with
+power to make all laws necessary for the good government of Ireland--in
+other words, invested with the same powers of local self-government as a
+colonial Assembly. The Irish Assembly was in one respect unlike a
+colonial Legislature. It consisted of one House only, but this House was
+divided into two orders, each of which, in case of differences on any
+important legislative matter, voted separately. This form was adopted in
+order to minimize the chances of collision between the two orders, by
+making it imperative on each order to hear the arguments of the other
+before proceeding to a division, thus throwing on the dissentient order
+the full responsibility of its dissent, with a complete knowledge of the
+consequences likely to ensue therefrom. The clause conferring on the
+Irish Legislature full powers of local self-government was immediately
+followed by a provision excepting, by enumeration, from any interference
+on the part of the Irish Legislature, all Imperial powers, and declaring
+any enactment void which infringed on that provision. This exception (as
+is well known) is not found in colonial Constitutional Acts. In them the
+restriction of the words of the grant to Local powers only has been
+held sufficient to safeguard the supremacy of the British Parliament and
+the unity of the Empire. The reason for making a difference in the case
+of the Home Rule Bill was political, not legal. Separation was declared
+by the enemies of the Bill to be the real intention of its supporters,
+and destruction of the unity of the Empire to be its certain
+consequence. It seemed well that Ireland, by her representatives, should
+accept as a satisfactory charter of Irish liberty a document which
+contained an express submission to Imperial power and a direct
+acknowledgment of Imperial unity. Similarly with respect to the
+supremacy of the British Parliament. In the colonial Constitutions all
+reference to this supremacy is omitted as being too clear to require
+notice. In the case of the Irish Home Rule Bill instructions were given
+to preserve in express words the supremacy of the British Parliament in
+order to pledge Ireland to an express admission of that supremacy by the
+same vote which accepted Local powers. It is true that the wording by
+the draftsman of the sentence reserving the supremacy of Parliament was
+justly found fault with as inaccurate and doubtful, but that defect
+would have been cured by an amendment in Committee; and, even if there
+had not been any such clause in the Bill, it is clear, from what has
+been said above, that the Imperial Legislature could not, if it would,
+renounce its supremacy or abdicate its sovereign powers. The executive
+government in Ireland was continued in the Queen, to be carried on by
+the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of her Majesty, with the aid of such
+officers and Council as to her Majesty might from time to time seem fit.
+Her Majesty was also a constituent part of the Legislature, with power
+to delegate to the Lord Lieutenant the prerogative of assenting to or
+dissenting from Bills, and of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving
+Parliament. Under these provisions the Lord Lieutenant resembled the
+Governor of a colony with responsible government. He was invested with a
+double authority--first, Imperial; secondly, Local. As an Imperial
+officer, he was bound to veto any Bill injuriously affecting Imperial
+interests or inconsistent with general Imperial policy; as a Local
+officer, it was his duty to act in all local matters according to the
+advice of his Council, whose tenure of office depended on their being in
+harmony with, and supported by, a majority of the Legislative Assembly.
+Questions relating to the constitutionality of any particular law were
+not left altogether to the decision of the Governor. If a Bill
+containing a provision infringing Imperial rights passed the
+Legislature, its validity might be decided in the first instance by the
+ordinary courts of law, but the ultimate appeal lay to the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council, and, with a view to secure absolute
+impartiality in the Committee, it was provided that Ireland should be
+represented on that body by persons who either were or had been Irish
+judges. Not the least important provision of the Bill, as respects the
+maintenance of Imperial interests, was the continuance of Imperial
+taxation. The Customs and Excise duties were directed to be levied, as
+heretofore, in pursuance of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament,
+and were excepted from the control of the Irish Legislature, which had
+full power, with that exception, to impose such taxes in Ireland as they
+might think expedient. The Bill further provided that neither the
+Imperial taxes of Excise nor any Local taxes that might be imposed by
+the Irish Legislature should be paid into the Irish Exchequer. An
+Imperial officer, called the Receiver-General, was appointed, into whose
+hands the produce of every tax, both Imperial and Local, was required to
+be paid, and it was the duty of the Receiver-General to take care that
+all claims of the English Exchequer, including especially the
+contribution payable by Ireland for Imperial purposes, were satisfied
+before a farthing found its way into the Irish Exchequer for Irish
+purposes. The Receiver-General was provided with an Imperial Court to
+enforce his rights of Imperial taxation, and adequate means for
+enforcing all Imperial powers by Imperial civil officers. The Bill did
+not provide for the representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament
+on all Imperial questions, including questions relating to Imperial
+taxation, but it is fully understood that in any Bill which might
+hereafter be brought forward relating to Home Rule those defects would
+be remedied.
+
+An examination, then, of the Home Rule Bill, that "child of revolution
+and parent of separation," appears to lead irresistibly to two
+conclusions. First, that Imperial rights and Imperial powers,
+representation for Imperial purposes, Imperial taxation--in short, every
+link that binds a subordinate member of an Empire to its supreme
+head--have been maintained unimpaired and unchanged. Secondly, that, in
+granting Home Rule to discontented Ireland, that form of responsible
+government has been adopted which, as Mr. Merivale declares--and his
+declaration subsequent events have more than verified--when conferred on
+the discontented colonies, changed restless aspirations for separation
+into quiet loyalty.
+
+That such a Bill as the Home Rule Bill should be treated as an invasion
+of Imperial rights is a proof of one, or perhaps of both, the following
+axioms--that Bills are never read by their accusers, and that party
+spirit will distort the plainest facts. The union of Great Britain and
+Ireland was not, so far as Imperial powers were concerned, disturbed by
+the Bill, and an Irishman remains a citizen of the British Empire under
+the Home Rule Bill, with the same obligations and the same privileges,
+on the same terms as before. All the Bill did was to make his Irish
+citizenship distinct from his Imperial citizenship, in the same manner
+as the citizenship of a native of the State of New York is distinct
+from his citizenship as a member of the United States. Now it has been
+found that the Central power in the United States has been more than a
+match for the State powers, and can it be conceived for a moment that
+the Imperial power of Great Britain should not be a match for the Local
+power of Ireland--a State which has not one-seventh of the population or
+one-twentieth part of the income of the dominant community?
+
+One argument remains to be noticed which the opponents of Home Rule urge
+as absolutely condemnatory of the measure, whereas, if properly weighed,
+it is conclusive in its favour. Home Rule, they say, is a mere question
+of sentiment. "National aspirations" are the twaddle of English
+enthusiasts who know nothing of Ireland. What is really wanted is the
+reform of the Land Law. Settle the agrarian problem, and Home Rule may
+be relegated to the place supposed to be paved with good intentions. The
+Irish will straightway change their character, and become a law-abiding,
+contented, loyal people. Be it so. But suppose it to be proved that the
+establishment of an Irish Government, or, in other words, Home Rule, is
+an essential condition of agrarian reform--that the latter cannot be had
+without the former--surely Home Rule should stand none the worse in the
+estimation of its opponents if it not only secures a safe basis for
+putting an end to agrarian exasperation, but also gratifies the feeling
+of the Irish people as expressed by the majority of its representatives
+in Parliament? Now, what is the nature of the Irish Land Question? This
+we must understand before considering the remedy. In Ireland (meaning by
+Ireland that part of the country which is in the hands of tenants, and
+falls within the compass of a Land Bill) the tenure of land is wholly
+unlike that which is found in the greater part of England. Instead of
+large farms in which the landlord makes all the improvements and the
+tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the land and receives
+the produce, small holdings are found in which the tenant does the
+improvements (if any) and pays a fixed rent-charge to the owner. In
+England the tenant does not perform the obligations or in any way aspire
+to the character of owner. If he thinks he can get a cheaper farm, he
+quits his former one, regarding his interest in the land as a mere
+matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Not so the Irish tenant. He has
+made what he calls improvements, he claims a quasi-ownership in the
+land, and has the characteristic Celtic attachment for the patch of
+ground forming his holding, however squalid it may be, however
+inadequate for his support. In short, in Ireland there is a dual
+ownership--that of the proprietor, who has no interest in the soil so
+long as the tenant pays his rent and fulfils the conditions of his
+tenancy; and that of the tenant, who, subject to the payment of his rent
+and performance of the fixed conditions, acts, thinks, and carries
+himself as the owner of his holding. A system, then, of agrarian reform
+in Ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of
+putting an end to this dual ownership--that is to say, of making the
+tenant the sole proprietor of his holding, and compensating the landlord
+for his interest in the ownership. The problem is further narrowed by
+the circumstance that the tenant cannot be expected to advance any
+capital or pay an increased rent, so that the means of compensating the
+landlord must be found out of the existing rent.
+
+The plan adopted in Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill was to commute the
+rent-charges, offering the landlord, as a general rule, twenty years'
+purchase on the net rental of the estate (that is to say, the rent
+received by him after deducting all outgoings), and paying him the
+purchase-money in £3 per cent. stock taken at par. The stock was to be
+advanced by the English Government to an Irish State department at 3-1/8
+per cent. interest, and the Bill provided that the tenant, instead of
+rent, was to pay an annuity of £4 per cent. on a capital sum equal in
+amount to twenty times the gross rental.
+
+The notable feature which distinguished this plan from all other schemes
+was the security given for the repayment of the purchase-money: hitherto
+the English Government has lent the money directly to the landlord or
+tenant, and has become the mortgagee of the land--in other words, has
+become in effect the landlord of the land sold to the tenant until the
+repayment of the loan has been completed. To carry into effect under
+such a system any extensive scheme of agrarian reform (and if not
+extensive such a reform would be of no value in pacifying Ireland)
+presupposes a readiness on the part of the English Government to become
+virtually the landlord of a large portion of Ireland, with the attendant
+odium of absenteeism and alien domination. Under a land scheme such as
+that of 1886, all these difficulties would be overcome. The Irish, not
+the English, Government would be the virtual landlord. It would be the
+interest of Ireland that the annuities due from the tenants should be
+regularly paid, as, subject to the prior charge of the English
+Exchequer, they would form part of the Irish revenues. The cardinal
+difference, then, between Mr. Gladstone's scheme and any other land
+scheme that has seen the light is this--that in Mr. Gladstone's scheme
+the English loans would have been lent to the Irish Government on the
+security of the whole Irish revenues, whereas in every other scheme they
+have been lent by the English Government to the Irish creditors on the
+security of individual patches of land.
+
+The whole question, then, of the relation between Home Rule and agrarian
+reform may be summed up as follows:--Agrarian reform is necessary for
+the pacification of Ireland; agrarian reform cannot be efficiently
+carried into effect without an Irish Government; an Irish Government can
+only be established by a Home Rule Bill: therefore a Home Rule Bill is
+necessary for the pacification of Ireland. It is idle to say, as has
+been said on numerous platforms, that plans no doubt can be devised for
+agrarian reform without Home Rule. The Irish revenues are the only
+collateral security that can be obtained for loans of English money, and
+Irish revenues are only available for the purpose on the establishment
+of an Irish Government. Baronial guarantees, union guarantees, county
+guarantees, debenture schemes, have all been tried and found wanting,
+and vague assertions as to possibilities are idle unless they are based
+on intelligible working plans.
+
+The foregoing arguments will be equally valid if, instead of making the
+tenants peasant-proprietors, it were thought desirable that the Irish
+State should be the proprietor and the tenants be the holders of the
+land at perpetual rents and subject to fixed conditions. Again, it might
+be possible to pay the landlords by annual sums instead of capital sums.
+Such matters are really questions of detail. The substance is to
+interpose the Irish Government between the tenant and the English
+mortgagee, and to make the loans general charges on the whole of the
+Irish Government revenues as paid into the hands of an Imperial Receiver
+instead of placing them as special charges, each fixed on its own small
+estate or holding. The fact that Mr. Gladstone's land scheme was
+denounced as confiscation of £100,000,000 of the English taxpayers'
+property, while Lord Ashbourne's Act is pronounced by the same party
+wise and prudent, shows the political blindness of party spirit in its
+most absurd form. Lord Ashbourne's Act requires precisely the same
+expenditure to do the same work as Mr. Gladstone's Bill requires, but in
+Mr. Gladstone's scheme the whole Irish revenue was pledged as collateral
+security, and the Irish Government was interposed between the ultimate
+creditor and the Irish tenant, while under Lord Ashbourne's Act the
+English Government figures without disguise as the landlord of each
+tenant, exacting a debt which the tenant is unwilling to pay as being
+due to what he calls an alien Government.
+
+An endeavour has been made in the preceding pages to prove that Home
+Rule in no respect infringes on Imperial rights or Imperial unity, for
+the simple reason that the Imperial power remains exactly in the same
+position as it was before, the Home Rule Bill dealing only with Local
+matters. At all events, Burke thought that the Imperial supremacy alone
+constituted a real union between England and Ireland. He says--
+
+"My poor opinion is, that the closest connection between Great Britain
+and Ireland is essential to the well-being--I had almost said to the
+very being--of the three kingdoms; for that purpose I humbly conceive
+that the whole of the superior, and what I should call Imperial
+politics, ought to have its residence here, and that Ireland, locally,
+civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look up to
+Great Britain in all matters of peace and war. In all these points to be
+joined with her, and, in a word, with her to live and to die."[13]
+
+How strange to Burke would have seemed the doctrine that the restoration
+of a limited power of self-government to Ireland, excluding commerce,
+and excluding all matters not only Imperial, but those in which
+uniformity is required, should be denounced as a disruption of the
+Empire!
+
+It remains to notice one other charge made against the Gladstonian Home
+Rule Bill, namely, that of impairing the supremacy of the British
+Parliament. That allegation has been shown also to be founded on a
+mistake. Next, it is said that the Gladstonian scheme does not provide
+securities against executive and legislative oppression. The answer is
+complete. The executive authority being vested in the Queen, it will be
+the duty of the Governor not to allow executive oppression; still more
+will it be his duty to veto any act of legislative oppression. Further,
+it is stated that difficulties will arise with respect to the power of
+the Privy Council to nullify unconstitutional Acts. But it is hard to
+see why a power which is exercised with success in the United States,
+where all the States are equal, and without dispute in our colonies,
+which are all dependent, should not be carried into effect with equal
+ease in Ireland, which is more closely bound to us and more completely
+under our power than the colonies are, or than the several States are
+under the power of the Central Government.
+
+To conclude: the cause of Irish discontent is the conjoint operation of
+the passion for nationality and the vicious system of land tenure, and
+the scheme of the Irish Home Rule Bill and the Land Bill removes the
+whole fabric on which Irish discontent is raised. The Irish, by the
+great majority of their representatives, have accepted the Home Rule
+Bill as a satisfactory settlement of the nationality question. The
+British Parliament can, through the medium of the Home Rule Bill and the
+establishment of an Irish Legislature, carry through a final settlement
+of agrarian disputes with less injustice to individuals than could a
+Parliament sitting in Dublin, and, be it added, with scarcely any
+appreciable risk to the British taxpayer. Of course it may be said that
+an Irish Parliament will go farther--that Home Rule is a step to
+separation, and a reform of the Land Laws a spoliation of the landlords.
+To those who urge such arguments I would recommend the perusal of the
+speech of Burke on Conciliation with America, and especially the
+following sentences, substituting "Ireland" for "the colonies:"--
+
+"But [the Colonies] Ireland will go further. Alas! alas! when will this
+speculating against fact and reason end? What will quiet these panic
+fears which we entertain of the hostile effect of a conciliatory
+conduct? Is it true that no case can exist in which it is proper for the
+Sovereign to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects? Is
+there anything peculiar in this case to make it a rule for itself? Is
+all authority of course lost when it is not pushed to the extreme? Is it
+a certain maxim that the fewer causes of discontentment are left by
+Government the more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel?"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 9: Burke's Speech on American Taxation, vol. i. p. 174]
+
+[Footnote 10: This is the opinion of both English and American lawyers.
+See Blackstone's Comm., i. 90; Austin on Jurisprudence, i. 226. As to
+American cases, see Corley on Constitutional Limitations, pp. 2-149.]
+
+[Footnote 11: "Lectures on the Colonies," p, 641.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Burke, vol. i. p. 181.]
+
+[Footnote 13: "Letter on Affairs of Ireland," i. 462.]
+
+
+
+
+THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL AND THE IRISH LAND BILL
+
+BY LORD THRING
+
+
+A mere enumeration or analysis of the contents of the Irish Government
+Bill, 1886, and the Land (Ireland) Bill, 1886, would convey scarcely any
+intelligible idea to the mind of an ordinary reader. It is, therefore,
+proposed in the following pages, before entering on the details of each
+Bill, to give a summary of the reasons which led to its introduction,
+and of the principles on which it is founded. To begin with the Irish
+Government Bill--
+
+The object of the Irish Government Bill is to confer on the Irish people
+the largest measure of self-government consistent with the absolute
+supremacy of the Crown and Imperial Parliament and the entire unity of
+the Empire. To carry into effect this object it was essential to create
+a separate though subordinate legislature; thus occasion was given to
+opponents to apply the name of Separatists to the supporters of the
+Bill--a term true in so far only as it denoted the intention to create a
+separate legislature, but false and calumnious when used in the sense in
+which it was intended to be understood--of imputing to the promoters of
+the Bill the intention to disunite or in any way to disintegrate the
+Empire. Indeed, the very object of the measure was, by relaxing a little
+the legal bonds of union, to draw closer the actual ties between England
+and Ireland, in fact, to do as we have done in our Colonies, by
+decentralizing the subordinate functions of government to strengthen the
+central supremacy of natural affection and Imperial unity. The example
+of the effects of giving complete self-government to our Colonies would
+seem not unfavourable to trying the same experiment in Ireland. Some
+forty years ago, Canada, New Zealand, and the various colonies of
+Australia were discontented and uneasy at the control exercised by the
+Government of England over their local affairs. What did England do? She
+gave to each of those communities the fullest power of local government
+consistent with the unity of the Empire. The result was that the real
+union was established in the same degree as the apparent tie of control
+over local affairs was loosened. Are there any reasons to suppose that
+the condition of Ireland is such as to render the example of the
+Colonies applicable? Let us look a little at the past history of that
+country. Up to 1760 Ireland was governed practically as a conquered
+country. The result was that in 1782, in order to save Imperial unity,
+we altogether relaxed the local tie and made Ireland legislatively
+independent. The Empire was thus saved, but difficulties naturally arose
+between two independent legislatures. The true remedy would have been to
+have imposed on Grattan's Parliament the conditions imposed by the Irish
+Government Bill on the statutory Parliament created by that Bill; the
+course actually taken was that, instead of leaving the Irish with their
+local government, and arranging for the due supremacy of England, the
+Irish Legislature was destroyed under the guise of Union, and Irish
+representatives were transferred to an assembly in which they had little
+weight, and in which they found no sympathy. The result was that from
+the date of the Union to the present day Ireland has been constantly
+working for the reinstatement of its National Legislature, and has been
+governed by a continuous system of extraordinary legislature called
+coercion; the fact being that between 1800, the date of the Act of
+Union, and 1832, the date of the great Reform Act, there were only
+eleven years free from coercion, while in the fifty-three years since
+that period there have been only two years entirely free from special
+repressive legislation. So much, therefore, is clear, that Irish
+discontent at not being allowed to manage their own affairs has
+gradually increased instead of diminishing. The conclusion then would
+seem irresistible, that if coercion has failed, the only practical mode
+of governing Ireland satisfactorily is to give the people power to
+manage their local affairs. Coming, then, to the principle of the Bill,
+the first step is to reconcile local government with Imperial supremacy,
+in other words, to divide Imperial from local powers; for if this
+division be accurately made, and the former class of powers be reserved
+to the British Crown and British Parliament, while the latter only are
+intrusted to the Irish Parliament, it becomes a contradiction in terms
+to say that Imperial unity is dissolved by reserving to the Imperial
+authority all its powers, or that Home Rule is a sundering of the
+Imperial tie when that tie is preserved inviolable. Imperial powers,
+then, are the prerogatives of the Crown with respect to peace and war,
+and making treaties with foreign nations; in short, the power of
+regulating the relations of the Empire towards foreign nations. These
+are the _jura summi imperii_, the very insignia of supremacy; the
+attributes of sovereign authority in every form of government, be it
+despotism, limited monarchy, or republic; the only difference is that in
+a system of government under one supreme head, they are vested in that
+head alone, in a federal government, as in America or Switzerland, they
+reside in the composite body forming the federal supreme authority.
+Various subsidiary powers necessarily attend the above supreme powers;
+for example, the power of maintaining armies and navies, of commanding
+the militia, and other incidental powers. Closely connected with the
+power of making peace and war is the power of regulating commerce with
+foreign nations. Next in importance to the reservations necessary to
+constitute the Empire a Unity with regard to foreign nations, are the
+powers required to prevent disputes and to facilitate intercourse
+between the various parts of the Empire. These are the coinage of money
+and other regulations relating to currency, to copyright or other
+exclusive rights to the use or profit of any works or inventions. The
+above subjects must be altogether excluded from the powers of the
+subordinate legislature; it ceases to be subordinate as soon as it is
+invested with these Imperial, or quasi-Imperial, powers.
+
+Assuming, however, the division between Imperial and local powers to be
+accurately determined, how is the subordinate legislative body to be
+kept within its due limits? The answer is very plain,--an Imperial court
+must be established to decide in the last resort whether the subordinate
+legislature has or has not infringed Imperial rights. Such a court has
+been in action in the United States of America ever since their union,
+and no serious conflict has arisen in carrying its decisions into
+effect, and the Privy Council, acting as the Supreme Court in respect to
+Colonial appeals, has been accepted by all the self-governing colonies
+as a just and impartial expositor of the meaning of their several
+constitutions.
+
+Next in importance to the right division of Imperial and local powers is
+a correct understanding of the relation borne by the executive of an
+autonomous country to the mother country. In every part of the British
+Empire which enjoys home rule the legislature consists of the Queen and
+the two local legislative bodies. The administrative power resides in
+the Queen alone. The Queen has the appointment of all the officers of
+the government; money bills can be introduced into the legislature only
+with the consent of the Queen. The initiative power of taxation then is
+vested in the Queen, the executive head, in practice represented by the
+Governor. But such a power of initiation is of course useless unless the
+legislative body is willing to support the executive, and grants it the
+necessary funds for carrying on the government. What, then, is the
+contrivance by which the governmental machine is prevented from being
+stopped by a difference between the executive and legislative
+authorities? It is the same in the mother country, and in every British
+home-rule country, with this difference only--that beyond the limits of
+the mother country the Queen is represented by a governor to whom are
+delegated such a measure of powers as is necessary for the supreme head
+of a local self-governing community. The contrivance is this in the
+mother country:--the Queen acts upon the advice of a cabinet council; in
+home-rule dependencies the Governor acts on the advice of a local
+council. If this cabinet council in the mother country, or local council
+in a dependency, ceases to command a majority in the popular legislative
+body, it resigns, and the Governor is obliged to select a council which,
+by commanding such a majority, can obtain the supplies necessary to
+carry on the government. The consequence then is, that in a home-rule
+community, if a serious difficulty arises between the legislative and
+executive authority, the head of the executive, the governor, refers the
+ultimate decision of the question to the general body of electors by
+dissolving the popular legislative body. It has been urged in the
+discussion on the Irish Government Bill that the powers of the executive
+in relation to the legislative body ought to be expressed in the Bill
+itself; but it is clear to anybody acquainted with the rudiments of
+legislation that the details of such a system (in other words, the mode
+in which a governor ought to act under the endless variety of
+circumstances which may occur in governing a dependency) never have been
+and never can be expressed in an Act of Parliament. But how little
+difficulty this absence of definition has caused may be judged from the
+fact that neither in England nor in any of her home-rule dependencies
+has any vital collision arisen between the executive and legislative
+authorities, and that all the home-rule colonies have managed to
+surmount the obstacles which the opponents of Home Rule argued would be
+fatal to their existence. The main principles have now been stated on
+which the Irish Government Bill is framed, and it remains to give a
+summary of the provisions of the Bill, the objects and bearing of which
+will be readily understood from the foregoing observations. The first
+clause provides that--
+
+"On and after the appointed day there shall be established in Ireland a
+Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and an Irish legislative
+body."
+
+This is the first step in all English constitutional systems, to vest
+the power of legislation in the Queen and the legislative body. Such a
+legislature might have had conferred on it the independent powers vested
+in Grattan's Parliament: but the second clause at once puts an end to
+any doubt as to the subordination of the Irish legislative body; for
+while on the one hand it confers full powers of local self-government,
+by declaring that the Legislature may make any laws for the peace,
+order, and good government of Ireland, it subjects that power to
+numerous exceptions and restrictions. The exceptions are contained in
+the third clause, and the restrictions in the fourth. The exceptions are
+as follows:--
+
+"The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws relating to the
+following matters or any of them:--
+
+"(1.) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession to the
+Crown, or a Regency;
+
+"(2.) The making of peace or war;
+
+"(3.) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval
+forces, or the defence of the realm;
+
+"(4.) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the
+relations between the various parts of Her Majesty's dominions;
+
+"(5.) Dignities or titles of honour;
+
+"(6.) Prize or booty of war;
+
+"(7.) Offences against the law of nations; or offences committed in
+violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between Her
+Majesty and any foreign State; or offences committed on the high seas;
+
+"(8.) Treason, alienage, or naturalization;
+
+"(9.) Trade, navigation, or quarantine;
+
+"(10.) The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this Act
+mentioned with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in
+Ireland;
+
+"(11.) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks;
+
+"(12.) The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal tender; or weights
+and measures; or
+
+"(13.) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use or
+profits of any works or inventions."
+
+Of these exceptions the first four preserve the imperial rights which
+have been insisted on above, and maintain the position of Ireland as an
+integral portion of that Empire of which Great Britain is the head. The
+remaining exceptions are either subsidiary to the first four, or relate,
+as is the case with exceptions 10 to 13, to matters on which it is
+desirable that uniformity should exist throughout the whole Empire. The
+restrictions in clause 4 are:--
+
+"The Irish Legislature shall not make any law--
+
+"(1.) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or
+prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
+
+"(2.) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account
+of religious belief; or
+
+"(3.) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain
+any place of denominational education or any denominational institution
+or charity; or
+
+"(4.) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school
+receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at
+that school; or
+
+"(5.) Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty in Council
+first obtained on an address presented by the legislative body of
+Ireland, or the consent of the corporation interested, the rights,
+property, or privileges of any existing corporation incorporated by
+royal charter or local and general Act of Parliament; or
+
+"(6.) Imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties of excise, as
+defined by this Act, or either of such duties, or affecting any Act
+relating to such duties or either of them; or
+
+"(7.) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared to be
+alterable by the Irish Legislature."
+
+These restrictions differ from the exceptions, inasmuch as they do not
+prevent the Legislature of Ireland from dealing with the subjects to
+which they refer, but merely impose on it an obligation not to handle
+the specified matters in a manner detrimental to the interests of
+certain classes of Her Majesty's subjects. For example, restrictions 1
+to 4 are practically concerned in securing religious freedom;
+restriction 5 protects existing charters; restriction 6 is necessary, as
+will be seen hereinafter, to carrying into effect the financial scheme
+of the bill; restriction 7 is a consequence of the very framework of the
+Bill: it provides for the stability of the Irish constitution, by
+declaring that the Irish Legislature is not competent to alter the
+constitutional act to which it owes its existence, except on those
+points on which it is expressly permitted to make alterations.
+
+Clause 5 is an exposition, so to speak, of the consequence which would
+seem to flow from the fact of the Queen being a constitutional part of
+the Legislature. It states that the royal prerogatives with respect to
+the summoning, prorogation, and dissolution of the Irish legislative
+body are to be the same as the royal prerogatives in relation to the
+Imperial Parliament. The next clause (6) is comparatively immaterial;
+it merely provides that the duration of the Irish legislative body is to
+be quinquennial. As it deals with a matter of detail, it perhaps would
+have more aptly found a place in a subsequent part of the Bill. Clause 7
+passes from the legislative to the executive authority; it declares:--
+
+(1.) The executive government of Ireland shall continue vested in Her
+Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of Her
+Majesty with the aid of such officers and such council as to Her Majesty
+may from time to time seem fit.
+
+(2.) Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by
+Her Majesty, the Lord Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of
+Her Majesty to bills passed by the Irish legislative body, and shall
+exercise the prerogatives of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning,
+proroguing, and dissolving of the Irish legislative body, and any
+prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her
+Majesty.
+
+Bearing in mind what has been said in the preliminary observations in
+respect of the relation between the executive and the legislative
+authority, it will be at once understood how much this clause implies,
+according to constitutional maxims, of the dependence on the one hand of
+the Irish executive in respect of imperial matters, and of its
+independence in respect of local matters. The clause is practically
+co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local
+powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers
+to the Imperial Legislature. The governor is an imperial officer, and
+will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny,
+and to veto any bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the
+other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided
+by the advice of the Irish executive council. The system is, as has been
+shown above, self-acting. The governor, for local purposes, must have a
+council which is in harmony with the legislative body. If a council,
+supported by the legislative body and the governor do not agree, the
+governor must give way unless he can, by dismissing his council and
+dissolving the legislative body, obtain both a council and a legislative
+body which will support his views. As respects imperial questions, the
+case is different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and
+in the last resort a determination of the executive council, backed by
+the legislative body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act
+of rebellion on the part of the Irish people, and be dealt with
+accordingly.
+
+The above clauses contain the pith and marrow of the whole scheme. The
+exact constitution of the legislative body, and the orders into which it
+should be divided, the exclusion or non-exclusion of the Irish members
+from the Imperial Parliament, indeed, the whole of the provisions found
+in the remainder of this Bill, are matters which might be altered
+without destroying, or even violently disarranging, the Home-rule scheme
+as above described.
+
+Clauses 9, 10, and 11 provide for the constitution of the legislative
+body; it differs materially from the colonial legislative bodies, and
+from the Legislature of the United States. For the purpose of
+deliberation it consists of one House only; for the purpose of voting on
+all questions (except interlocutory applications and questions of
+order), it is divided into two classes, called in the Bill "Orders,"
+each of which votes separately, with the result that a question on which
+the two orders disagree is deemed to be decided in the negative. The
+object of this arrangement is to diminish the chances of collision
+between the two branches of the Legislature, which have given rise to so
+much difficulty both in England and the colonies. Each order will have
+ample opportunity of learning the strength and hearing the arguments of
+the other order. They will therefore, each of them, proceed to a
+division with a full sense of the responsibility attaching to their
+action. A further safeguard is provided against a final conflict between
+the first and second orders. If the first order negative a proposition,
+that negative is in force only for a period of three years, unless a
+dissolution takes place sooner, in which case it is terminated at once;
+the lost bill or clause may then be submitted to the whole House, and if
+decided in the affirmative, and assented to by the Queen, becomes law.
+The first order of the Irish legislative body comprises 103 members. It
+is intended to consist ultimately wholly of elective members; but for
+the next immediate period of thirty years the rights of the Irish
+representative peers are, as will be seen, scrupulously reserved. The
+plan is this: of the 103 members composing the first order, seventy-five
+are elective, and twenty-eight peerage members. The qualification of the
+elective members is an annual income of £200, or the possession of a
+capital sum of £4000 free from all charges. The elections are to be
+conducted in the electoral districts set out in the schedule to the
+Bill. The electors must possess land or tenements within the district of
+the annual value of £25. The twenty-eight peerage members consist of the
+existing twenty-eight representative peers, and any vacancies in their
+body during the next thirty years are to be filled up in the manner at
+present in use respecting the election of Irish representative peers.
+The Irish representative peers cease to sit in the English Parliament;
+but a member of that body is not required to sit in the Irish Parliament
+without his assent, and the place of any existing peer refusing to sit
+in the Irish Parliament will be filled up as in the case of an ordinary
+vacancy. The elective members of the first order sit for ten years;
+every five years one half their number will retire. The members of the
+first order do not vacate their seats on a dissolution of the
+legislative body. At the expiration of thirty years, that is to say,
+upon the exhaustion of all the existing Irish representative peers, the
+whole of the upper order will consist of elective members. The second
+order consists of 204 members, that is to say, of the 103 existing Irish
+members (who are transferred to the Irish Parliament), and of 101
+additional members to be elected by the county districts and the
+represented towns, in the same manner as that in which the present 101
+members for counties and towns are elected--each constituency returning
+two instead of one member. If an existing member does not assent to his
+transfer, his seat is vacated.
+
+A power is given to the Legislature of Ireland to enable the Royal
+University of Ireland to return two members.
+
+The provisions with respect to this second order fall within the class
+of enactments which are alterable by the Irish Legislature. After the
+first dissolution of parliament the Irish Legislature may deal with the
+second order in any manner they think fit, with the important
+restrictions:--(1) That in the distribution of members they must have
+due regard to population; (2) that they must not increase or diminish
+the number of members.
+
+The transfer to the Irish legislative body of the Irish representative
+peers, and of the Irish members, involves their exclusion under ordinary
+circumstances from the Imperial Parliament, with this great exception,
+that whenever an alteration is proposed to be made in the fundamental
+provisions of the Irish Government Bill, a mode of procedure is devised
+for recalling both orders of the Irish legislative body to the Imperial
+Parliament for the purpose of obtaining their consent to such alteration
+(clause 39).
+
+Further, it is right to state here that Mr. Gladstone in his speech on
+the second reading of the Bill proposed to provide, "that when any
+proposal for taxation was made affecting the condition of Ireland, Irish
+members should have an opportunity of appearing in the House to take a
+share in the transaction of that business."
+
+Questions arising as to whether the Irish Parliament has or not
+exceeded its constitutional powers may be determined by the ordinary
+courts of law in the first instance; the ultimate appeal lies to the
+Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. An additional safeguard is
+provided by declaring that before a provision in a Bill becomes law, the
+Lord Lieutenant may take the opinion of the Judicial Committee of the
+Privy Council as to its legality, and further, that without subjecting
+private litigants to the expense of trying the constitutionality of an
+Act, the Lord Lieutenant may, of his own motion, move the judicial
+committee to determine the question. With a view to secure absolute
+impartiality in the committee, Ireland will be represented on that body
+by persons who are or have been Irish judges (clause 25).
+
+The question of finance forms a separate portion of the Bill, the
+provisions of which are contained in clauses twelve to twenty, while the
+machinery for carrying those enactments into effect will be found in
+Part III. of the Land Bill. The first point to be determined was the
+amount to be contributed by Ireland to imperial expenses. Under the Act
+of Union it was intended that Ireland should pay 2/17ths, or in the
+proportion of 1 to 7-1/2 of the total expenditure of the United Kingdom.
+This amount being found exorbitant, it was gradually reduced, until at
+the present moment it amounts to something under the proportion of 1 to
+11-1/2. The bill fixes the proportion at 1/15th, or 1 to 14, this sum
+being arrived at by a comparison between the amount of the income-tax,
+death-duties, and valuation of property in Great Britain, and the amount
+of the same particulars in Ireland. The amount to be contributed by
+Ireland to the imperial expenditure being thus ascertained, the more
+difficult part of the problem remained to provide the fund out of which
+the contribution should be payable, and the mode in which its payment
+should be secured. The plan which commended itself to the framers of the
+Bill, as combining the advantage of insuring the fiscal unity of Great
+Britain and Ireland, with absolute security to the British exchequer,
+was to continue the customs and excise duties under imperial control,
+and to pay them into the hands of an imperial officer. This plan is
+carried into effect by the conjoint operation of the clauses of the
+Irish Government Bill and the Irish Land Bill above referred to. The
+customs and excise duties are directed to be levied as heretofore in
+pursuance of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament, and are excepted
+from the control of the Irish Legislature, which may, with that
+exception, impose any taxes in Ireland it may think expedient. The
+imperial officer who is appointed under the Land Bill bears the title of
+Receiver-General, and into his hands not only the imperial taxes (the
+customs and excise duties), but also all local taxes imposed by the
+Irish Parliament are in the first instance paid. (See Clauses 25-27 of
+the Land Bill.) The Receiver-General having thus in his hands all
+imperial and local funds levied in Ireland, his duty is to satisfy all
+imperial claims before paying over any moneys to the Irish Exchequer.
+Further, an Imperial Court of Exchequer is established in Ireland to
+watch over the interests of the Receiver-General, and all revenue cases
+are to be tried, and all defaults punished in that court. Any neglect of
+the local authorities to carry into effect the decrees of the Imperial
+Court will amount to treason, and it will be the duty of the Imperial
+Government to deal with it accordingly.
+
+Supposing the Bill to have passed, the account of the Exchequer in
+Ireland would have stood thus:--
+
+                         RECEIPTS.
+
+1. _Imperial Taxes_:
+   (1) Customs . . . . . . . . . . £1,880,000
+   (2) Excise  . . . . . . . . . .  4,300,000
+                                    --------- £6,180,000
+
+2. _Local Taxes_:
+   (1) Stamps . . . . . . . . . . .   £600,000
+   (2) Income-Tax at 6_d_. in £ . .    550,000
+                                     --------- £1,150,000
+
+3. _Non-Tax Revenue_:
+   (Post Office, Telegraph, etc.) . . . . .    £1,020,000
+                                               ----------
+                                               £8,350,000
+
+                       EXPENDITURE.
+
+1. _Contribution to Imperial Exchequer_ on basis of
+     1/15th of Imperial Expenditure, viz.:
+   (1) Debt Charge . . . . . . . .  £1,466,000
+   (2) Army and Navy . . . . . . .   1,666,000
+   (3) Civil Charges . . . . . . .     110,000
+                                     --------- £3,242,000
+2. _Sinking Fund_ on 1/15th of
+      Capital of Debt . . . . . . . . . . . . .   360,000
+3. _Charge for Constabulary_[14]  . . . . . . . 1,000,000
+4. _Local Civil Charges_
+      other than Constabulary . . . . . . . . . 2,510,000
+5. _Collection of Revenue_:
+      (1) Imperial Taxes . . . . . .   £170,000
+      (2) Local Taxes  . . . . . . . .   60,000
+      (3) Non-Tax Revenue  . . . . . .  604,000
+                                        -------   834,000
+6. _Balance_ or Surplus . . . . . . . . . . . .   404,000
+                                                 --------
+                                               £8,350,000
+
+The Imperial contribution payable by Ireland to Great Britain cannot be
+increased for thirty years, though it may be diminished if the charges
+for the army and navy and Imperial civil expenditure for any year be
+less than fifteen times the contribution paid by Ireland, in which case
+1/15th of the diminution will be deducted from the annual Imperial
+contribution. Apart from the Imperial charges there are other charges
+strictly Irish, for the security of the payment of which the Bill
+provides. This it does by imposing an obligation on the Irish
+legislative body to enact sufficient taxes to meet such charges, and by
+directing them to be paid by the Imperial Receiver-General, who is
+required to keep an imperial and an Irish account, carrying the customs
+and excise duties, in the first instance, to the imperial account, and
+the local taxes to the Irish account, transferring to the Irish account
+the surplus remaining after paying the imperial charges on the imperial
+account. On this Irish account are charged debts due from the Government
+of Ireland, pensions, and other sums due to the civil servants, and the
+salaries of the judges of the supreme courts in Ireland.
+
+Some provisions of importance remain to be noticed. Judges of the
+superior and county courts in Ireland are to be removable from office
+only on address to the Crown, presented by both orders of the
+Legislative body voting separately. Existing Civil servants are retained
+in their offices at their existing salaries; if the Irish Government
+desire their retirement, they will be entitled to pensions; on the other
+hand, if at the end of two years the officers themselves wish to retire,
+they can do so, and will be entitled to the same pensions as if their
+office had been abolished. The pensions are payable by the
+Receiver-General out of the Irish account above mentioned.
+
+The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament over all parts of the Empire is
+an inherent quality of which Parliament cannot divest itself, inasmuch
+as it cannot bind its successors or prevent them from repealing any
+prior Act. In order, however, to prevent any misapprehension on this
+point clause 37 was inserted, the efficacy of which, owing in great
+measure to a misprint, has been doubted. It is enough to state here that
+it was intended by express legislation to reserve all powers to the
+Imperial Parliament, and had the Bill gone into Committee the question
+would have been placed beyond the reach of cavil by a slight alteration
+in the wording of the clause. This summary may be concluded by the
+statement that the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords over
+actions and suits arising in Ireland (except in respect of
+constitutional questions reserved for the determination of the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council as explained above), and with respect to
+claims for Irish Peerages, is preserved intact.
+
+The object of the Land Bill was a political one: to promote the
+contentment of the people, and the cause of good government in Ireland,
+by settling once and for ever the vexed question relating to land. To do
+this effectually it was necessary to devise a system under which the
+tenants, as a class, should become interested in the maintenance of
+social order, and be furnished with substantial inducements to rally
+round the institutions of their country. On the other hand, it was just
+and right that the landlords should participate in the benefits of any
+measure proposed for remedying the evils attendant upon the tenure of
+land in Ireland; and should be enabled to rid themselves, on fair terms,
+of their estates in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes,
+or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves
+from the responsibilities of ownership. Further, it was felt by the
+framers of the Bill that a moral obligation rested on the Imperial
+Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending
+the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a question so
+fraught with danger, and so involved in difficulty, to be determined by
+the Irish Government on its first entry on official existence. Such were
+the governing motives for bringing in the Land Bill.
+
+To understand an Irish Land Bill it is necessary to dismiss at once all
+ideas of the ordinary relations between landlord and tenant in England,
+and to grasp a true conception of the condition of an Irish tenanted
+estate. In England the relation between the landlord and tenant of a
+farm resembles, with a difference in the subject-matter, the relation
+between the landlord and tenant of a furnished house. In the case of the
+house, the landlord keeps it in a state fit for habitation, and the
+tenant pays rent for the privilege of living in another man's house. In
+the case of the farm, the landlord provides the farm with house,
+farm-buildings, gates, and other permanent improvements required to fit
+it for cultivation by the tenant, and the tenant pays rent for the
+privilege of cultivating the farm, receiving the proceeds of that
+cultivation. The characters of owner and tenant, however long the
+connection between them may subsist, are quite distinct. The tenant does
+no acts of ownership, and never regards the land as belonging to
+himself, quitting it without hesitation if he can make more money by
+taking another farm. In Ireland the whole situation is different:
+instead of a farm of some one hundred or two hundred acres, the tenant
+has a holding varying, say, from five to fifty acres, for which he pays
+an annual rent-charge to the landlord. He, or his ancestors have, in the
+opinion of the tenant, acquired a quasi-ownership in the land by making
+all the improvements, and he is only removable on non-payment of the
+fixed rent, or non-fulfilment of certain specified conditions. In short,
+in Ireland the ownership is dual: the landlord is merely the lord of a
+quasi-copyhold manor, consisting of numerous small tenements held by
+quasi-copyholders who, so long as they pay what may be called the
+manorial rents, and fulfil the manorial conditions, regard themselves as
+independent owners of their holdings. An Irish Land Bill, then, dealing
+with tenanted estates, is, in fact, merely a Bill for converting the
+small holders of tenements held at a fixed rent into fee-simple owners
+by redemption of the rent due to the landlord and a transfer of the land
+to the holders. Every scheme, therefore, for settling the Land question
+in Ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of paying
+off the rent-charges due to the landlord. The tenant cannot, of course,
+raise the capital sufficient for paying off the redemption money; some
+State authority must, therefore, intervene and advance the whole or the
+greater part of that money, and recoup itself for the advance by the
+creation in its own favour of an annual charge on the holding sufficient
+to repay in a certain number of years both the principal and interest
+due in respect of the advance.
+
+The first problem, then, in an Irish Land Bill, is to settle the
+conditions of this annuity in such a manner as to satisfy the landlord
+and tenant; the first, as to the price of his estate; the second, as to
+the amount of the annuity to be paid by him, at the same time to provide
+the State authority with adequate security for the repayment of the
+advance, or, in other words, for the punctual payments of the annuity
+which is to discharge the advance. Next in importance to the financial
+question of the adjustment of the annuity comes the administrative
+difficulty of investigating the title, and thus securing to the tenant
+the possession of the fee simple, and to the State authority the
+position of a mortgagee. Under ordinary circumstances the investigation
+of the title to an estate involves the examination of every document
+relating thereto for a period of forty years, and the distribution of
+the purchase-money amongst the head renters, mortgagees, and other
+encumbrancers, who, in addition to the landlord, are found to be
+interested in the ownership of almost every Irish estate. Such a
+process is costly, even in the case of large estates, and involves an
+expense almost, and, indeed, speaking generally, absolutely prohibitory
+in the case of small properties. Some mode, then, must be devised for
+reducing this expense within manageable limits, or any scheme for
+dealing with Irish land, however well devised from a financial point of
+view, will sink under the burden imposed by the expense attending the
+transfer of the land to the new proprietors. Having thus stated the two
+principal difficulties attending the Land question in Ireland, it may be
+well before entering on the details of the Sale and Purchase of Land
+(Ireland) Bill, to mention the efforts which have been made during the
+last fifteen years to surmount those difficulties. The Acts having this
+object in view are the Land Acts of 1870, 1872, and 1881, brought in by
+Mr. Gladstone, and the Land Purchase Act of 1885, brought in by the
+Conservative Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Lord Ashbourne). The Act of
+1870, as amended by the Act of 1872, provided that the State authority
+might advance two-thirds of the purchase-money. An attempt was made to
+get over the difficulties of title by providing that the Landed Estates
+Court or Board of Works shall undertake the investigation of the title
+and the transfer and distribution of the purchase-money at a fixed
+price. The Act of 1881 increased the advance to three-quarters, leaving
+the same machinery to deal with the title. Both under the Acts of 1870
+and 1881 the advance was secured by an annuity of 5 per cent., payable
+for the period of thirty-five years, and based on the loan of the money
+by the English Exchequer at 3-1/2 per cent. interest. These Acts
+produced very little effect. The expense of dealing with the titles in
+the Landed Estates Court proved overwhelming, and neither the Board of
+Works, under the Act of 1872, nor the Land Commission, under the Act of
+1881, found themselves equal to the task of completing inexpensively the
+transfer of the land; further, the tenants had no means of providing
+even the quarter of the purchase-money required by the Act of 1881. In
+1885 Lord Ashbourne determined to remove all obstacles at the expense of
+the English Exchequer. By the Land Act of that year he authorized the
+whole of the purchase-money to be advanced by the State, with a
+guarantee by the landlord, to be carried into effect by his allowing
+one-fifth of the purchase-money to remain in the hands of the agents of
+the State Authority until one-fifth of the purchase-money had been
+repaid by the annual payments of the tenants. The principal was to be
+recouped by an annuity of 4 per cent., extending over a period of
+forty-nine years, instead of an annuity of 5 per cent. extending over a
+period of thirty-five years. The English Exchequer was to advance the
+money on the basis of interest at 3-1/8 per cent., instead of at 3-1/2
+per cent. Though sufficient time has not yet elapsed to show whether the
+great bribe offered by the Act of 1885, at the expense of the British
+taxpayer, will succeed in overcoming the apathy of the tenants, it
+cannot escape notice that if the Act of 1885 succeeds better than the
+previous Acts, it will owe that success solely to the greater amount of
+risk which it imposes on the English Exchequer, and not to any
+improvement in the scheme in respect of securing greater certainty of
+sale to the Irish landlord, or of diminishing the danger of loss to the
+English taxpayer.
+
+Such being the state of legislation, and such the circumstances of the
+land question in Ireland in the year 1886, the Irish Government Bill
+afforded Mr. Gladstone the means and the opportunity of bringing in a
+Land Bill which would secure to the Irish landlord the certainty of
+selling his land at a fair price, without imposing any practical
+liability on the English Exchequer, and would, at the same time,
+diminish the annual sums payable by the tenant; while it also conferred
+a benefit on the Irish Exchequer. These advantages were, as will be
+seen, gained, firstly, by the pledge of English credit on good security,
+instead of advancing money on a mere mortgage on Irish holdings, made
+directly to the English Government; and, secondly, by the interposition
+of the Irish Government, as the immediate creditor of the Irish tenant.
+The scheme of the Land Purchase Bill is as follows:--The landlord of an
+agricultural estate occupied by tenants may apply to a department of the
+new Irish Government to purchase his estate. The tenants need not be
+consulted, as the purchase, if completed, will necessarily better their
+condition, and thus at the very outset the difficulty of procuring the
+assent of the tenants, which has hitherto proved so formidable an
+obstacle to all Irish land schemes, disappears. The landlord may require
+the department to which he applies (called in the Bill the State
+Authority) to pay him the statutory price of his estate, not in cash,
+but in consols valued at par. This price, except in certain unusual
+cases of great goodness or of great badness of the land, is twenty
+years' purchase of the _net_ rental. The _net_ rental is the _gross_
+rental after deducting from that rent tithe rent-charge, the average
+percentage for expenses in respect of bad debts, any rates paid by the
+landlord, and any like outgoings. The _gross_ rental of an estate is the
+gross rent of all the holdings on the estate, payable in the year ending
+in November, 1885. Where a judicial rent has been fixed, it is the
+judicial rent; where no judicial rent has been fixed, it is the rent to
+be determined in the manner provided by the Bill.
+
+To state this shortly, the Bill provides that an Irish landlord may
+require the State Authority to pay him for his estate, in consols valued
+at par, a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount of the annual sum
+which he has actually put into his pocket out of the proceeds of the
+estate. The determination of the statutory price is, so far as the
+landlord is concerned, the cardinal point of the Bill, and in order
+that no injustice may be done the landlord, an Imperial
+Commission--called the Land Commission--is appointed by the Bill, whose
+duty it is to fix the statutory price, and, where there is no judicial
+rent, to determine the amount of rent which, in the character of gross
+rental, is to form the basis of the statutory price. The Commission also
+pay the purchase-money to the landlord, or distribute it amongst the
+parties entitled, and generally the Commission act as intermediaries
+between the landlord and the Irish State Authority, which has no power
+of varying the terms to which the landlord is entitled under the Bill,
+or of judging of the conditions which affect the statutory price. If the
+landlord thinks the price fixed by the Land Commission, as the statutory
+price inequitable, he may reject their offer and keep his estate.
+
+Supposing, however, the landlord to be satisfied with the statutory
+price offered by the Land Commission, the sale is concluded, and the
+Land Commission make an order carrying the required sum of consols
+(which is for convenience hereinafter called the purchase-money,
+although it consists of stock and not of cash) to the account of the
+estate in their books after deducting 1 per cent. for the cost of
+investigation of title and distribution of the purchase-money, and upon
+the purchase-money being thus credited to the estate, the landlord
+ceases to have any interest in the estate, and the tenants, by virtue of
+the order of the Land Commission, become owners in fee simple of their
+holdings, subject to the payment to the Irish State Authority of an
+annuity. The amount of the annuity is stated in the Bill. It is a sum
+equal to £4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount
+of the gross rental of the holding. The illustration given by Mr.
+Gladstone in his speech will at once explain these apparently intricate
+matters of finance. A landlord is entitled to the Hendon estate,
+producing £1200 a year gross rental; to find the net rental, the Land
+Commission deduct from this gross rental outgoings estimated at about 20
+per cent., or £240 a year. This makes the net rental £960 a year, and
+the price payable to the landlord is £19,200 (twenty years' purchase of
+£960, or £960 multiplied by 20), which, as above stated, will be paid in
+consols. The tenants will pay, as the maximum amount for their holdings,
+£4 per cent. for forty-nine years on the capitalized value of twenty
+years' purchase of the gross rent. This will amount to £960 instead of
+£1,200, which they have hitherto paid; a saving of £240 a year will thus
+be effected, from which, however, must be deducted the half rates to
+which they will become liable, formerly paid by the landlord. This £4
+per cent. charge payable by the tenants will continue for forty-nine
+years, but at the end of that time each tenant will become a free owner
+of his estate without any annual payment. Next, as to the position of
+the State Authority. The State Authority receives £960 from the tenants;
+it pays out of that sum £4 per cent., not upon the gross rental, but
+upon the net rental capitalized, that is to say, £768 to the Imperial
+Exchequer. The State Authority, therefore, receives,£960, and assuming
+that the charge of collecting the rental is 2 per cent., that is to say,
+£19 4_s._, the State Authority will, out of £960, have to disburse only
+£787 4_s._, leaving it a gainer of £172 16_s._, or nearly 18 per cent.
+The result then between the several parties is, the landlord receives
+£19,200; the tenantry pay £240 a year less than they have hitherto paid,
+and at the end of forty-nine years are exempt altogether from payment;
+the gain of Irish State Authority is £172 16_s._ a year. Another mode of
+putting the case shortly is as follows: The English Exchequer lends the
+money to the Irish State Authority at 3-1/8 per cent. and an annuity of
+4 per cent. paid during forty-nine years will, as has been stated above,
+repay both principal and interest for every £100 lent at 3-1/8 per
+cent. On the sale of an estate under the Bill, the landlord receives
+twenty years' purchase; the tenant pays £4 per cent. on twenty years'
+purchase of the gross rental; the Irish State Authority receives £4 per
+cent. on the gross rental; the English Exchequer receives 4 per cent. on
+the net rental only. The repayment of the interest due by the Irish
+Authority to the English Exchequer is in no wise dependent on the
+punctual payment of their annuities by the Irish tenants, nor does the
+English Government in any way figure as the landlord or creditor of the
+Irish tenants. The annuities payable by the tenants are due to the Irish
+Government, and collected by them, while the interest due to the English
+Government is a charge on the whole of the Irish Government funds; and
+further, these funds themselves are paid into the hands of the Imperial
+officer, whose duty it is to liquidate the debt due to his master, the
+Imperial Exchequer, before a sixpence can be touched by the Irish
+Government. It is not, then, any exaggeration to say that the Land
+Purchase Bill of 1886 provides for the settlement of the Irish Land
+question without any appreciable risk to the English Exchequer, and with
+the advantage of securing a fair price for the landlord, a diminution of
+annual payments to the tenant with the ultimate acquisition of the fee
+simple, also a gain of no inconsiderable sum to the Irish Exchequer. In
+order to obviate the difficulties attending the investigation of title
+and transfer of the property, the Bill provides, as stated above, that
+on the completion of the agreement for the sale between the landlord and
+the Commission, the holding shall vest at once in the tenants: it then
+proceeds to declare that the claims of all persons interested in the
+land shall attach to the purchase-money in the same manner as though it
+were land. The duty of ascertaining these claims and distributing the
+purchase-money is vested in the Land Commission, who undertake the task
+in exchange for the 1 per cent. which they have, as above stated,
+deducted from the purchase-money as the cost of conducting the complete
+transfer of the estate from the landlord to the tenants. The difficulty
+of the process of dealing with the purchase-money depends, of course, on
+the intricacy of the title. If the vendor is the sole unencumbered
+owner, he is put in immediate possession of the stock constituting the
+price of the estate. If there are encumbrances, as is usually the case,
+they are paid off by the Land Commission. Capital sums are paid in full;
+jointures and other life charges are valued according to the usual
+tables. Drainage and other temporary charges are estimated at their
+present value, permanent rent-charges are valued by agreement, or in
+case of disagreement, by the Land Commission; a certain minimum number
+of years' purchase being assigned by the Bill to any permanent
+rent-charge which amounts only to one-fifth part of the rental of the
+estate on which it is charged, this provision being made to prevent
+injustice being done to the holders of rent-charges which are amply
+secured.
+
+It remains to notice certain other points of some importance. The
+landlord entitled to require the State to purchase his property is the
+immediate landlord, that is to say, the person entitled to the receipt
+of the rent of the estate; no encumbrancer can avail himself of the
+privilege, the reason being that the Bill is intended to assist solvent
+landlords, and not to create a new Encumbered Estates Court. The
+landlord may sell this privilege, and possibly by means of this power of
+sale may be able to put pressure on his encumbrancers to reduce their
+claims in order to obtain immediate payment. The Land Commission, in
+their character of quasi-arbitrators between the landlord and the Irish
+State Authority, have ample powers given to enable them to do justice.
+If the statutory price, as settled according to the Act, is too low,
+they may raise it to twenty-two years' purchase instead of twenty years'
+purchase. If it is too high, they may refuse to buy unless the landlord
+will reduce it to a proper price. In the congested districts scheduled
+in the Bill the land, on a sale, passes to the Irish State Authority, as
+landlords, and not to the tenants; the reason being that it is
+considered that the tenants would be worsened, rather than bettered, by
+having their small plots vested in them in fee simple. For the same
+cause it is provided that in any part of Ireland tenants of holdings
+under £4 a year may object to become the owners of their holdings, which
+will thereupon vest, on a sale, in the Irish State Authority. Lastly,
+the opportunity is taken of establishing a registry of title in respect
+of all property dealt with under the Bill. The result of such a registry
+would be that any property entered therein would ever thereafter be
+capable of being transferred with the same facility, and at as little
+expense, as stock in the public funds.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 14: Any charge in excess of one million was to be borne by
+Imperial Exchequer.]
+
+
+
+
+THE "UNIONIST" POSITION.
+
+BY CANON MACCOLL
+
+
+Is it not time that the opponents of Home Rule for Ireland should define
+their position? They defeated Mr. Gladstone's scheme last year in
+Parliament and in the constituencies; and they defeated it by the
+promise of a counter policy which was to consist, in brief, of placing
+Ireland on the same footing as Great Britain in respect to Local
+Government; or, if there was to be any difference, it was to be in the
+direction of a larger and more generous measure for Ireland than for the
+rest of the United Kingdom. This certainly was the policy propounded by
+the distinguished leader of the Liberal Unionists in his speech at
+Belfast, in November, 1885, and repeated in his electoral speeches last
+year. In the Belfast speech Lord Hartington said: "My opinion is that it
+is desirable for Irishmen that institutions of local self-government
+such as are possessed by England and Scotland, and such as we hope to
+give in the next session in greater extent to England and Scotland,
+should also be extended to Ireland." But this extension of local
+self-government to Ireland would require, in Lord Hartington's opinion,
+a fundamental change in the fabric of Irish Government. "I would not
+shrink," he says, "from a great and bold reconstruction of the Irish
+Government," a reconstruction leading up gradually to some real and
+substantial form of Home Rule. His Lordship's words are: "I submit with
+some confidence to you these principles, which I have endeavoured to lay
+down, and upon which, I think, the extension of Local Government in
+Ireland must proceed. First, you must have some adequate guarantees both
+for the maintenance of the essential unity of the Empire and for the
+protection of the minority in Ireland. And, secondly, you must also
+admit this principle: the work of complete self-government of Ireland,
+the grant of full control over the management of its own affairs, is not
+a grant that can be made by any Parliament of this country in a day. It
+must be the work of continuous and careful effort." Elsewhere in the
+same speech Lord Hartington says: "Certainly I am of opinion that
+nothing can be done in the direction of giving Ireland anything like
+complete control over her own affairs either in a day, or a session, or
+probably in a Parliament." "Complete control over her own affairs," "the
+work of complete self-government of Ireland, the grant of full control
+over the management of its own affairs:" this is the policy which Lord
+Hartington proclaimed in Ulster, the promise which he, the proximate
+Liberal leader, held out to Ireland on the eve of the General Election
+of 1885. It was a policy to be begun "in the next session," though not
+likely to be completed "in a day, or a session, or probably in a
+Parliament."
+
+Next to Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington the most important member of
+the Liberal party at that time was undoubtedly Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr.
+Chamberlain's Irish policy was proclaimed in the _Radical Programme,
+which was published before the General Election as the Radical leader's
+manifesto to the constituencies. This scheme, which Mr. Chamberlain had
+submitted as a responsible minister to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone in
+June, 1885, culminated in a National Council which was to control a
+series of local bodies and govern the whole of Ireland. "His National
+Council was to consist of two orders; one-third of its members were to
+be elected by the owners of property, and two-thirds by ratepayers. The
+National Council also was to be a single one, and Ulster was not to have
+a separate Council. As the Council was to be charged with the
+supervision and legislation about education, which is the burning
+question between Catholics and Protestants, it is clear that Mr.
+Chamberlain at that time contemplated no special protection for
+Ulster."[15] Moreover, in a letter dated April 23rd, 1886, and published
+in the _Daily News_ of May 17th, 1886, Mr. Chamberlain declared that he
+"had not changed his opinion in the least" since his first public
+declaration on Irish policy in 1874. "I then said that I was in favour
+of the principles of Home Rule, as defined by Mr. Butt, but that I would
+do nothing which would weaken in any way Imperial unity, and that I did
+not agree with all the details of his plan.... Mr. Butt's proposals were
+in the nature of a federal scheme, and differ entirely from Mr.
+Gladstone's, which are on the lines of Colonial independence. Mr. Butt
+did not propose to give up Irish representation at Westminster." It is
+true that Mr. Butt did not propose to give up Irish representation at
+Westminster; but it is also true that he proposed to give it up in the
+sense in which Mr. Chamberlain wishes to retain it. Mr. Butt's words, in
+the debate to which Mr. Chamberlain refers, are, "that the House should
+meet _without Irish members_ for the discussion of English and Scotch
+business; and when there was any question affecting the Empire at large,
+Irish members might be summoned to attend. He saw no difficulty in the
+matter."[16]
+
+There is no need to quote Mr. Gladstone's declarations on the Irish
+question at the General Election of 1885, and previously. He has been
+accused of springing a surprise on the country when he proposed Home
+Rule in the beginning of 1886. That is not, at all events, the opinion
+of Lord Hartington. In a speech delivered at the Eighty Club in March,
+1886, his Lordship, with his usual manly candour, declared as follows:
+"I am not going to say one word of complaint or charge against Mr.
+Gladstone for the attitude which he has taken on this question. I think
+no one who has read or heard, during a long series of years, the
+declarations of Mr. Gladstone on the question of self-government for
+Ireland, can be surprised at the tone of his present declarations....
+When I look back to those declarations that Mr. Gladstone made in
+Parliament, which have not been unfrequent; when I look back to the
+increased definiteness given to those declarations in his address to the
+electors of Midlothian, and in his Midlothian speeches; I say, when I
+consider all these things, I feel that I have not, and that no one has,
+any right to complain of the tone of the declarations which Mr.
+Gladstone has recently made upon this subject."
+
+So much as to the state of Liberal opinion on the Irish question at the
+General Election of 1885. The leaders of all sections of the party put
+the Irish question in the foreground of their programme for the session
+of 1886. We all remember Sir Charles Dilke's public announcement that he
+and Mr. Chamberlain were going to visit Ireland in the autumn of 1885,
+to study the Irish question on the spot, with a view to maturing a plan
+for the first session of the new Parliament.
+
+What about the Conservative party? Lord Salisbury's Newport speech was
+avowedly the programme of his Cabinet. It was the Conservative answer to
+Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian manifesto. He dealt with the Irish question
+in guarded language; but it was language which plainly showed that he
+recognized, not less clearly than the Liberal leaders, the crucial
+change which the assimilation of the Irish franchise to that of Great
+Britain had wrought in Irish policy. His keen eye saw at once the
+important bearing which that enfranchisement had on the traditional
+policy of coercion: "You had passed an Act of Parliament, giving in
+unexampled abundance, and with unexampled freedom, supreme power to the
+great mass of the Irish people--supreme power as regards their own
+locality.... To my mind the renewal of exceptional legislation against a
+population whom you had treated legislatively to this marked confidence
+was so gross in its inconsistency that you could not possibly hope,
+during the few remaining months that were at your disposal before the
+present Parliament expired, to renew any legislation which expressed on
+one side a distrust of what on the other side your former legislation
+had so strongly emphasized. The only result of your doing it would have
+been, not that you would have passed the Act, but that you would have
+promoted by the very inconsistency of the position that you were
+occupying--by the untenable character of the arguments that you were
+advancing--you would have produced so intense an exasperation amongst
+the Irish people, that you would have caused ten times more evil, ten
+times more resistance to law than your Crimes Act, even if it had been
+renewed, would possibly have been able to check." Lord Salisbury went on
+to say that "the effect of the Crimes Act had been very much
+exaggerated," and that "boycotting is of that character which
+legislation has very great difficulty in reaching." "Boycotting does not
+operate through outrage. Boycotting is the act of a large majority of a
+community resolving to do a number of things which are themselves legal,
+and which are only illegal by the intention with which they are done."
+
+Next to Lord Salisbury the most prominent member of the Conservative
+party at that date was Lord Randolph Churchill. On the 3rd of January,
+1885, when it was rumoured that Mr. Gladstone's Government, then in
+office, intended to renew a few of the clauses of the Crimes Act, Lord
+Randolph Churchill made a speech at Bow against any such policy. The
+following quotation will suffice as a specimen of his opinion: "It comes
+to this, that the policy of the Government in Ireland is to declare on
+the one hand, by the passing of the Reform Bill, that the Irish people
+are perfectly capable of exercising for the advantage of the Empire the
+highest rights and privileges of citizenship; and by the proposal to
+renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously declare, on the other hand,
+that the Irish people are perfectly incapable of performing for the
+advantage of society the lowest and most ordinary duties of
+citizenship.... All I can say is that, if such an incoherent, such a
+ridiculous, such a dangerously ridiculous combination of acts can be
+called a policy, then, thank God, the Conservative party have no
+policy."
+
+Within a few months of the delivery of that speech a Conservative
+Government was in office, with Lord Randolph Churchill as its leader in
+the House of Commons; and one of the first acts of the new leader was to
+separate himself ostentatiously from the Irish policy of Lord Spencer
+and from the policy of coercion in general. Lord Randolph Churchill, as
+the organ of the Government in the House of Commons, repudiated in
+scornful language any atom of sympathy with the policy pursued by Lord
+Spencer in Ireland; and Lord Carnarvon, the new Viceroy, declared that
+"the era of coercion" was past, and that the Conservative Government
+intended to govern Ireland by the ordinary law. Lord Carnarvon, in
+addition, and very much to his credit, sought and obtained an interview
+with Mr. Parnell, and discussed with him, in sympathetic language, the
+question of Home Rule. In his own explanation of this interview Lord
+Carnarvon admitted that he desired to see established in Ireland some
+form of self-government which would satisfy "the national sentiment."
+
+It is idle, therefore, to assert that the question of Home Rule for
+Ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the country as a surprise
+by Mr. Gladstone in the beginning of 1886. The question was brought
+prominently before the public in the General Election of 1885 as one
+that must be faced in the new Parliament. All parties were committed to
+that policy, and the only difference was as to the character and limits
+of the measure of self-government to be granted to Ireland; whether it
+was to be large enough to satisfy "the national sentiment," as Lord
+Carnarvon, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Gladstone, and others desired; or
+whether it was to consist only of a system of county boards under the
+control of a reformed Dublin Castle. There was a general agreement that
+the grant to Ireland of electoral equality with England necessitated
+equality of political treatment, and that, above all things, there was
+to be no renewal of the stale policy of Coercion until the Irish people
+had got an opportunity of proving or disproving their fitness for
+self-government, unless, indeed, there should happen to be a
+recrudescence of crime which would render exceptional legislation
+necessary. The election of 1886 turned almost entirely on the question
+of Irish government, and it is not too much to say that Conservatives
+and Liberal Unionists vied with Home Rulers in repudiating a return to
+the policy of coercion until the effect of some kind of self-government
+had been tried. Of course, there were the usual platitudes about the
+necessity of maintaining law and order; but there was a _consensus_ of
+profession that coercion should not be resorted to unless there was a
+fresh outbreak of crime and disorder in Ireland.
+
+Such were the professions of the opponents of Home Rule in 1885 and in
+1886. They have now been in office for eighteen months, and what do we
+behold? They have passed a perpetual Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the
+question of any kind of self-government has been relegated to an
+uncertain future. In his recent speech at Birmingham (Sept. 29), Mr.
+Chamberlain has declared that the question is not ripe for solution, and
+that the question of disestablishment, in Wales, Scotland, and England
+successively, as well as the questions of Local Option, local government
+for Great Britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take
+precedence of it. That means the postponement of the reform of Irish
+Government to the Greek Kalends. What justification can be made for this
+change of front? No valid justification has been offered. So far from
+there having been any increase of crime in the interval, there has been
+a very marked decrease. When the Coercion Bill received the royal assent
+last August, Ireland was more free from crime than it had been for many
+years past. Nothing had happened to account for the return to the policy
+of coercion in violation of the promise to try the experiment of
+conciliation. The National League was in full vigour in 1885-1886, when
+the policy of coercion was abandoned; boycotting was just as prevalent,
+and outrages were much more numerous.
+
+Under these circumstances it is the opponents of Home Rule, not its
+advocates, who owe an explanation to the public. They defeated Mr.
+Gladstone's Bill, but promised a Bill of their own. Where is their Bill?
+We hear nothing of it. They have made a complete change of front. They
+now tell us that the grievance of Ireland is entirely economic, and that
+the true solution of the Irish question is the abolition of dual
+ownership in land combined with a firm administration of the existing
+law. England and Scotland are to have a large measure of local
+government next year; but Ireland is to wait till a more convenient
+season. A more complete reversal of the policy proclaimed last summer by
+the so-called Unionists cannot be imagined.
+
+Still, however, the "Unionists" hope to be able some day to offer some
+form of self-government to Ireland. For party purposes they are wise in
+postponing that day to the latest possible period, for its advent will
+probably dissolve the union of the "Unionists." Lord Salisbury, Lord
+Hartington, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Chamberlain cannot agree upon any scheme
+which all can accept without a public recantation of previous
+professions. Mr. Bright is opposed to Home Rule "in any shape or form."
+Mr. Chamberlain, on the other hand, is in favour of a great National
+Council, on Mr. Butt's lines or on the lines of the Canadian plan;
+either of which would give the National Council control over education
+and the maintenance of law and order. Latterly, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain
+has advocated a separate treatment for Ulster. But the first act of an
+Ulster Provincial Assembly would probably be to declare the union of
+that Province with the rest of Ireland. Ulster, be it remembered,
+returns a majority of Nationalists to the Imperial Parliament. To
+exclude Ulster from any share in the settlement offered to the other
+three Provinces would therefore be impracticable; and Mr. Bright has
+lately expressed his opinion emphatically in that sense. In any case,
+Lord Hartington could be no party to any scheme so advanced as Mr.
+Chamberlain's. For although he declared, in his Belfast speech, that
+"complete self-government" was the goal of his policy for Ireland, he
+was careful to explain that "the extension of Irish management over
+Irish affairs must be a growth from small beginnings." But this "growth
+from small beginnings" would be, in Lord Salisbury's opinion, a very
+dangerous and mischievous policy. The establishment of self-government
+in Ireland, as distinct from what is commonly known as Home Rule, he
+pronounced in his Newport speech to be "a very difficult question;" and
+in the following passage he placed his finger upon the kernel of the
+difficulty:--"A local authority is more exposed to the temptation, and
+has more of the facility for enabling a majority to be unjust to the
+minority, than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and
+extends its jurisdiction over a wide area. That is one of the weaknesses
+of local authorities. In a large central authority the wisdom of several
+parts of the country will correct the folly or the mistakes of one. In a
+local authority that correction to a much greater extent is wanting; and
+it would be impossible to leave that out of sight in the extension of
+any such local authority to Ireland."
+
+This seems to me a much wiser and more statesmanlike view than a system
+of elective boards scattered broadcast over Ireland. A multitude of
+local boards all over Ireland, without a recognized central authority to
+control them, would inevitably become facile instruments in the hands of
+the emissaries of disorder and sedition. And, even apart from any such
+sinister influences, they would be almost certain to yield to the
+temptation of being oppressive, extravagant, and corrupt, if there were
+no executive power to command their confidence and enforce obedience.
+Without the previous creation of some authority of that kind it would be
+sheer madness to offer Ireland the fatal boon of local self-government.
+It would enormously increase without conciliating the power of the
+Nationalists, and would make the administration of Ireland by
+constitutional means simply impossible. The policy of the Liberal
+Unionists is thus much too large or much too small. It is too small to
+conciliate, and therefore too large to be given with safety. All these
+proposed concessions are liable to one insuperable objection; they would
+each and all enable the Irish to extort Home Rule, but under
+circumstances which would rob it of its grace and repel gratitude. Mill
+has some admirable observations bearing on this subject, and I venture
+to quote the following passage: "The greatest imperfection of popular
+local institutions, and the chief cause of the failure which so often
+attends them, is the low calibre of the men by whom they are almost
+always carried on. That these should be of a very miscellaneous
+character is, indeed, part of the usefulness of the institution; it is
+that circumstance chiefly which renders it a school of political
+capacity and general intelligence. But a school supposes teachers as
+well as scholars; the utility of the instruction greatly depends on its
+bringing inferior minds into contact with superior, a contact which in
+the ordinary course of life is altogether exceptional, and the want of
+which contributes more than anything else to keep the generality of
+mankind on one level of contented ignorance.... It is quite hopeless to
+induce persons of a high class, either socially or intellectually, to
+take a share of local administration in a corner by piecemeal as members
+of a Paving Board or a Drainage Commission."[17]
+
+Mr. Mill goes on to argue that it is essential to the safe working of
+any scheme of local self-government that it should be under the control
+of a central authority in harmony with public opinion.
+
+When the "Unionists" begin, if they ever do begin, seriously to
+deliberate on the question of self-government for Ireland, they will
+find that they have only two practicable alternatives--the maintenance
+of the present system, or some scheme of Home Rule on the lines of Mr.
+Gladstone's much misunderstood Bill. And the ablest men among the
+"Unionists" are beginning to perceive this. The _Spectator_ has in a
+recent article implored Mr. Chamberlain to desist from any further
+proposal in favour of self-government for Ireland, because the
+inevitable result would be to split up the Unionist party; and Mr.
+Chamberlain, as we have seen, has accepted the advice. Another very able
+and very logical opponent of Home Rule has candidly avowed that the
+only alternative to Home Rule is the perpetuation of "things as they
+are." Ireland, he thinks, "possesses none of the conditions necessary
+for local self-government." His own view, therefore, is "that in
+Ireland, as in France, an honest, centralized administration of
+impartial officials, and not local self-government, would best meet the
+real wants of the people."
+
+"The name of 'Self-government' has a natural fascination for Englishmen;
+but a policy which cannot satisfy the wishes of Home Rulers, which
+may--it is likely enough--be of no benefit to the Irish people, which
+will certainly weaken the Government in its contest with lawlessness and
+oppression, is not a policy which obviously commends itself to English
+good sense."[18]
+
+Well may this distinguished "Supporter of things as they are" declare:
+"The maintenance of the Union [on such terms] must necessarily turn out
+as severe a task as ever taxed a nation's energies; for to maintain the
+Union with any good effect, means that, while refusing to accede to the
+wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every
+fair demand from Ireland; must strenuously, and without fear or favour,
+assert the equal rights of landlords and tenants, of Protestants and
+Catholics; and must, at the same time, put down every outrage and reform
+every abuse."
+
+What hope is there of this? Our only guide to the probabilities of the
+future is our experience of the past And what has that been in Ireland?
+In every year since the Legislative Union there have been multitudes of
+men in England as upright, as enlightened, as well-intentioned towards
+Ireland, as Professor Dicey, and with better opportunities of
+translating their thoughts into acts. Yet what has been the result? _Si
+monumenlum requiris circumspice_. Behold Ireland at this moment, and
+examine every year of its history since the Union. Do the annals of any
+constitutional Government in the world present so portentous a monument
+of Parliamentary failure, so vivid an example of a moral and material
+ruin "paved with good intentions"? Therein lies the pathos of it. Not
+from malice, not from cruelty, not from wanton injustice, not even from
+callous indifference to suffering and wrong, does our misgovernment of
+Ireland come. If the evil had its root in deliberate wrong-doing on the
+part of England it would probably have been cured long ago. But each
+generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has
+protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and
+then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to
+some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish
+problem. The generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of
+British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had
+become of the prosperity and contentment which the promoters of the
+Union had promised to Ireland. The next generation made vicarious
+penance, and preferred the enactment of Catholic emancipation to the
+alternative of civil war; and then wondered in its turn that Ireland
+still remained unpacified. Then came a terrible famine, followed by
+evictions on a scale so vast and cruel that the late Sir Robert Peel
+declared that no parallel could be found for such a tale of inhumanity
+in "the records of any country, civilized or barbarous." Another
+generation, pluming itself on its enlightened views and kind intentions,
+passed the Encumbered Estates Act, which delivered the Irish tenants
+over to the tender mercies of speculators and money-lenders; and then
+Parliament for a time closed its eyes and ears, and relied upon force
+alone to keep Ireland quiet. It rejected every suggestion of reform in
+the Land laws; and a great Minister, himself an Irish landlord,
+dismissed the whole subject in the flippant epigram that "tenant-right
+was landlord-wrong." Since then the Irish Church has been
+disestablished, and two Land Acts have been passed; yet we seem to be as
+far as ever from the pacification of Ireland. Surely it is time to
+inquire whether the evil is not inherent in our system of governing
+Ireland, and whether there is any other cure than that which De Beaumont
+suggested, namely, the destruction of the system. It is probable that
+there is not in all London a more humane or a more kind-hearted man than
+Lord Salisbury. Yet Lord Salisbury's Government will do some harsh and
+inequitable things in Ireland this winter, just as Liberal Governments
+have done during their term of office. The fault is not in the men, but
+in the system which they have to administer. I see no reason to doubt
+that Sir M. Hicks-Beach did the best he could under the circumstances;
+but, unfortunately, bad is the best. In a conversation which I had with
+Dr. Döllinger while he was in full communion with his Church, I ventured
+to ask him whether he thought that a new Pope, of Liberal ideas, force
+of character, and commanding ability, would make any great difference in
+the Papal system. "No," he replied, "the Curial system is the growth of
+centuries, and there can be no change of any consequence while it lasts.
+Many a Pope has begun with brave projects of reform; but the struggle
+has been brief, and the end has been invariably the same: the Pope has
+been forced to succumb. His _entourage_ has been too much for him. He
+has found himself enclosed in a system which was too strong for him,
+wheel within wheel; and while the system lasts the most enlightened
+ideas and the best intentions are in the long run unavailing." This
+criticism applies, _mutatis mutandis_, to what may be called the Curial
+system of Dublin Castle. It is a species of political Ultramontanism,
+exercising supreme power behind the screen of an official infallibility
+on which there is practically no check, since Parliament has never
+hitherto refused to grant it any power which it demanded for enforcing
+its decrees.
+
+There is, moreover, another consideration which must convince any
+dispassionate mind which ponders it, that the British Parliament is
+incompetent to manage Irish affairs, and must become increasingly
+incompetent year by year. In ordinary circumstances Parliament sits
+about twenty-seven weeks out of the fifty-two. Five out of the
+twenty-seven may safely be subtracted for holidays, debates on the
+Address, and other debates apart from ordinary business. That leaves
+twenty-two weeks, and out of these two nights a week are at the disposal
+of the Government and three at the disposal of private members; leaving
+in all forty-four days for the Government and sixty-six for private
+members. Into those forty-four nights Government must compress all its
+yearly programme of legislation for the whole of the British Empire,
+from the settlement of some petty dispute about land in the Hebrides, to
+some question of high policy in Egypt, India, or other portions of the
+Queen's world-wide empire; and all this amidst endless distractions,
+enforced attendance through dreary debates and vapid talk, and a running
+fire of cross-examination from any volunteer questioner out of the six
+hundred odd members who sit outside the Government circle. The
+consequence is, that Parliament is getting less able every year to
+overtake the mass of business which comes before it. Each year
+contributes its quota of inevitable arrears to the accumulated mass of
+previous Sessions, and the process will go on multiplying in increasing
+ratio as the complex and multiform needs of modern life increase. The
+large addition recently made to the electorate of the United Kingdom is
+already forcing a crop of fresh subjects on the attention of Parliament,
+as well as presenting old ones from new points of view. Plans of
+devolution and Grand Committees will fail to cope with this evil. To
+overcome it we need some organic change in our present Parliamentary
+system, some form of decentralization, which shall leave the Imperial
+Parliament supreme over all subordinate bodies, yet relegate to the
+historic and geographical divisions of the United Kingdom the management
+severally of their own local affairs.
+
+I should have better hope from governing Ireland (if it were possible)
+as we govern India, than from the present Unionist method of leaving
+"things as they are." A Viceroy surrounded by a Council of trained
+officials, and in semi-independence of Parliament, would have settled
+the Irish question, land and all, long ago. But imagine India governed
+on the model of Ireland: the Viceroy and the most important member of
+his Government changing with every change of Administration at
+Westminster;[19] his Council and the official class in general
+consisting almost exclusively of native Mussulmans, deeply prejudiced by
+religious and traditional enmity against the great mass of the
+population; himself generally subordinate to his Chief Secretary, and
+exposed to the daily criticism of an ignorant Parliament and to the
+determined hostility of eighty-six Hindoos, holding seats in Parliament
+as the representatives of the vast majority of the people of India, and
+resenting bitterly the domination of the hereditary oppressors of their
+race. How long could the Government of India be carried on under such
+conditions?
+
+Viewing it all round, then, it must be admitted that the problem of
+governing Ireland while leaving things as they are is a sufficiently
+formidable one. Read the remarkable admissions which the facts have
+forced from intelligent opponents of Home Rule like Mr. Dicey, and add
+to them all the other evils which are rooted in our existing system of
+Irish government, and then consider what hope there is, under "things as
+they are," of "sedulously doing justice to every demand from Ireland,"
+"strenuously, and without fear or favour, asserting the equal rights of
+landlords and tenants, Protestants and Catholics," "putting down every
+outrage, and reforming every abuse;" and all the "while refusing to
+accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen" for a fundamental change
+in a political arrangement that has for centuries produced all the
+mischief which the so-called Unionist party are forced to admit, and
+much more besides, while it has at the same time frustrated every
+serious endeavour to bring about the better state of things which they
+expect from--what? From "things as they are!" As well expect grapes from
+thorns, or figs from thistles. While the tree remains the same, no
+amount of weeding, or pruning, or manuring, or change of culture, will
+make it bring forth different fruit. Mr. Dicey, among others, has
+demolished what Lord Beaconsfield used to call the "bit-by-bit"
+reformers of Irish Government--those who would administer homoeopathic
+doses of local self-government, but always under protest that the supply
+was to stop short of what would satisfy the hunger of the patient. But a
+continuance of "things as they are," gilded with a thin tissue of
+benevolent hopes and aspirations, is scarcely a more promising remedy
+for the ills of Ireland. Is it not time to try some new treatment--one
+which has been tried in similar cases, and always with success? One only
+policy has never been tried in Ireland--honest Home Rule.
+
+Certainly, if Home Rule is to be refused till all the prophets of evil
+are refuted, Ireland must go without Home Rule for ever. "If the sky
+fall, we shall catch larks." But he would be a foolish bird-catcher who
+waited for that contingency. And not less foolish is the statesman who
+sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has been
+mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild prediction falsified
+by the event; for that would ensure his never moving at all. _Sedet
+æternumque sedebit_. A proper enough attitude, perhaps, on the part of
+an eristic philosopher speculating on politics in the silent shade of
+academic groves, but hardly suitable for a practical politician who has
+to take action on one of the most burning questions of our time. Human
+affairs are not governed by mathematical reasoning. You cannot
+demonstrate the precise results of any legislative measure beforehand as
+you can demonstrate the course of a planet in the solar system.
+"Probability," as Bishop Butler says, "is the guide of life;" and an
+older philosopher than Butler has warned us that to demand demonstrative
+proof in the sphere of contingent matter is the same kind of absurdity
+as to demand probable reasoning in mathematics. You cannot confute a
+prophet before the event; you can only disbelieve him. The advocates of
+Home Rule believe that their policy would in general have an exactly
+contrary effect to that predicted by their opponents. In truth, every
+act of legislation is, before experience, amenable to such destructive
+criticism as these critics urge against Home Rule. I have not a doubt
+that they could have made out an unanswerable "case" against the Great
+Charter at Runnymede; and they would find it easy to prove on _à priori_
+grounds that the British Constitution is one of the most absurd,
+mischievous, and unworkable instruments that ever issued from human
+brains or from the evolution of events. By their method of reasoning the
+Great Charter and other fundamental portions of the Constitution ought
+to have brought the Government of the British Empire to a deadlock long
+ago. Every suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, every Act of Attainder,
+every statute for summary trial and conviction before justices of the
+peace, is a violation of the fundamental article of the Constitution,
+which requires that no man shall be imprisoned or otherwise punished
+except after lawful trial by his peers.[20] Consider also the magazines
+of explosive materials which lie hidden in the constitutional
+prerogatives of the Crown, if they could only be ignited by the match of
+an ingenious theorist. The Crown, as Lord Sherbrooke once somewhat
+irreverently expressed it, "can turn every cobbler in the land into a
+peer," and could thus put an end, as the Duke of Wellington declared, to
+"the Constitution of this country."[21] "The Crown is not bound by Act
+of Parliament unless named therein by special and particular words."[22]
+The Crown can make peace or war without consulting Parliament, can by
+secret treaty saddle the nation with the most perilous obligations, and
+give away all such portions of the empire as do not rest on Statute. The
+prerogative of mercy, too, would enable an eccentric Sovereign, aided by
+an obsequious Minister, to open the jails and let all the convicted
+criminals in the land loose upon society.[22] But criticism which proves
+too much in effect proves nothing.
+
+In short, every stage in the progress of constitutional reform has, in
+matter of fact, been marked by similar predictions falsified by results,
+and the prophets who condemn Home Rule have no better credentials;
+indeed, much worse, for they proclaim the miserable failure of "things
+as they are," whereas their predecessors were in their day satisfied
+with things as they were.[23]
+
+It is, high time, therefore, to call upon the opponents of Home Rule to
+tell us plainly where they stand. They claim a mandate from the country
+for their policy. They neither asked nor received a mandate to support
+the system of Government which prevailed in Ireland at the last
+election, and still less the policy of coercion which they have
+substituted for that system. Do they mean to go back or forward? They
+cannot stand still. They have already discovered that one act of
+repression leads to another, and they will find ere long that they have
+no alternative except Home Rule or the suppression of Parliamentary
+Government in Ireland. Men may talk lightly of the ease with which
+eighty-six Irish members may be kept in order in Parliament. They forget
+that the Irish people are behind the Irish members. How is Ireland to be
+governed on Parliamentary principles if the voice of her representatives
+is to be forcibly silenced or disregarded? Could even Yorkshire or
+Lancashire be governed permanently in that way? Let it be observed that
+we have now reached this pass, namely, that the opponents of Home Rule
+are opposed to the Irish members, not on any particular form of
+self-government for Ireland, but on any form; in other words, they
+resist the all but unanimous demand of Ireland for what "Unionists" of
+all parties declared a year ago to be a reasonable demand. No candidate
+at the last election ventured to ask the suffrages of any constituency
+as "a supporter of things as they are." Yet that is practically the
+attitude now assumed by the Ministerial party, both Conservatives and
+Liberal Unionists. It is an attitude of which the country is getting
+weary, as the bye-elections have shown. But the "Unionists," it must be
+admitted, are in a sore dilemma. Their strength, such as it is, lies in
+doing nothing for the reform of Irish Government. Their bond of union
+consists of nothing else but opposition to Mr. Gladstone's policy. They
+dare not attempt to formulate any policy of their own, knowing well that
+they would go to pieces in the process. Their hope and speculation is
+that something may happen to remove Mr. Gladstone from the political
+arena before the next dissolution. But, after all, Mr. Gladstone did not
+create the Irish difficulty. It preceded him and will survive him,
+unless it is settled to the satisfaction of the Irish people before his
+departure. And the difficulty of the final settlement will increase with
+every year of delay. Nor will the difficulty be confined to Ireland. The
+Irish question is already reacting upon kindred, though not identical,
+problems in England and Scotland, and the longer it is kept open, so
+much the worse will it be for what are generally regarded as
+Conservative interests. It is not the Moderate Liberals or Conservatives
+who are gaining ground by the prolongation of the controversy, and the
+disappearance of Mr. Gladstone from the scene would have the effect of
+removing from the forces of extreme Radicalism a conservative influence,
+which his political opponents will discover when it is too late to
+restore it. Their regret will then be as unavailing as the lament of
+William of Deloraine over his fallen foe--
+
+    "I'd give the lands of Deloraine
+    Dark Musgrave were alive again."
+
+The Irish landlords have already begun to realize the mistake they made
+when they rejected Mr. Gladstone's policy of Home Rule and Land
+Purchase. It is the old story of the Sibyl's books. No British
+Government will ever again offer such terms to the Irish landlords as
+they refused to accept from Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand, Home Rule
+is inevitable. Can any reflective person really suppose that the
+democracy of Great Britain will consent to refuse to share with the
+Irish people the boon of self-government which will be offered to
+themselves next year? Any attempt to exclude the Irish from the benefits
+of such a scheme, after all the promises of the last general election,
+would almost certainly wreck the government; for constituencies have
+ways and means of impressing their wills on their representatives in
+Parliament even without a dissolution. If, on the other hand, Ireland
+should be included in a general scheme of local Government, the question
+of who shall control the police will arise. In Great Britain the police,
+of course, will be under local control. To refuse this to Ireland would
+be to offer a boon with a stigma attached to it. The Irish members
+agreed to let the control of the constabulary remain, under Mr.
+Gladstone's scheme, for some years in the hands of the British
+Government; but they would not agree to this while Dublin Castle ruled
+the country. Moreover, the formidable difficulty suggested by Lord
+Salisbury and Mr. John Stuart Mill (see pp. 115, 116) would appear the
+moment men began seriously to consider the question of local government
+for Ireland. The government of Dublin Castle would have to go, but
+something would have to be put in its place; and when that point has
+been reached it will probably be seen that nothing much better or safer
+can be found than some plan on the main lines of Mr. Gladstone's Bill.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 15: Speech at Manchester, May 7, 1886, by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre,
+who was a member of the Cabinet to which Mr. Chamberlain's scheme was
+submitted.]
+
+[Footnote 16: _Hansard_, vol. 220, pp. 708, 715.]
+
+[Footnote 17: _Considerations on Representative Government_, p. 281.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Dicey's _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 25-31, and
+Letter in _Spectator_ of September 17th, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 19: From the beginning of 1880 till now there have been six
+Viceroys and ten Chief Secretaries in Dublin--namely, Duke of
+Marlborough, Earls Cowper and Spencer, Earls of Carnarvon and Aberdeen,
+and the Marquis of Londonderry; Mr. Lowther, Mr. Forster, Lord F.
+Cavendish, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Campbell Bannerman, Sir W. Hart Dyke, Mr.
+W.H. Smith, Mr. J. Morley, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, and Mr. A. Balfour. A
+fine example, truly, of stable government and continuous policy!]
+
+[Footnote 20: Creasy's _Imperial and Colonial Constitutions of the
+Britannic Empire,_ p. 155.]
+
+[Footnote 21: May's _Const. Hist._, i. 313.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Blackstone's _Commentaries_, by Stephen, ii. 491, 492,
+497, 507.]
+
+[Footnote 23: We need not go far afield for illustrations. A few samples
+will suffice. "It was natural," says Mill (_Rep. Gov._, p. 311), "to
+feel strong doubts before trial had been made how such a provision [as
+the Supreme Court of the United States] would work; whether the tribunal
+would have the courage to exercise its constitutional power; if it did,
+whether it would exercise it wisely, and whether the Government would
+consent peaceably to its decision. The discussions on the American
+Constitution, before its final adoption, give evidence that these
+natural apprehensions were strongly felt; but they are now entirely
+quieted, since, during the two generations and more which have
+subsequently elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify them, though there
+have at times been disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became
+the badges of parties respecting the limits of the authority of the
+Federal and State Governments." The Austrian opponents of Home Rule in
+Hungary predicted that it would lead straight to separation. The
+opponents of the Canadian Constitution prophesied that Canada would in a
+few years be annexed to the United States; and Home Rule in Australia
+was believed by able statesmen to involve independence at an early date.
+Mr. Dicey himself tells us "that the wisest thinkers of the eighteenth
+century (including Burke) held that the independence of the American
+Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain. There were
+apparently solid reasons for this belief: experience has proved it to be
+without foundation." The various changes in our own Constitution, and
+even in our Criminal Code, were believed by "men of light and leading"
+at the time to portend national ruin. All the judges in the land, all
+the bankers, and the professions generally, petitioned against
+alteration in the law which sent children of ten to the gallows for the
+theft of a pocket-handkerchief. The great Lord Ellenborough declared in
+the House of Lords that "the learned judges were unanimously agreed"
+that any mitigation in that law would imperil "the public security." "My
+Lords," he exclaimed, "if we suffer this Bill to pass we shall not know
+where we stand; we shall not know whether we are on our heads or on our
+feet." Mr. Perceval, when leader of the House of Commons in 1807,
+declared that "he could not conceive a time or change of circumstances
+which would render further concessions to the Catholics consistent with
+the safety of the State." (_Croker Papers_, i. 12.) Croker was a very
+astute man; but here is his forecast of the Reform Act of 1832: "No
+kings, no lords, no inequalities in the social system; all will be
+levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers and small farmers: this,
+perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly by confiscations and
+persecutions." "There can be no longer any doubt that the Reform Bill is
+a stepping-stone in England to a Republic, and in Ireland to
+separation." Croker met the Queen in 1832, considered her very
+good-looking, but thought it not unlikely that "she may live to be plain
+Miss Guelph." Even Sir Robert Peel wrote: "If I am to be believed, I
+foresee revolution as the consequence of this Bill;" and he "felt that
+it had ceased to be an object of ambition to any man of equable and
+consistent mind to enter into the service of the Crown." And as late as
+1839, so robust a character as Sir James Graham thought the world was
+coming to an end because the young Queen gave her confidence to a Whig
+Minister. "I begin to share all your apprehensions and forebodings," he
+writes to Croker, "with regard to the probable issue of the present
+struggle. The Crown in alliance with Democracy baffles every calculation
+on the balance of power in our mixed form of Government. Aristocracy and
+Church cannot contend against Queen and people mixed; they must yield in
+the first instance, when the Crown, unprotected, will meet its fate, and
+the accustomed round of anarchy and despotism will run its course." And
+he prays that he may "lie cold before that dreadful day." (_Ibid._, ii.
+113, 140, 176, 181, 356.) Free Trade created a similar panic. "Good
+God!" Croker exclaimed, "what a chaos of anarchy and misery do I foresee
+in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing
+an _average_ duty of 8_s._ into a _fixed_ duty of 8_s._, the fact being
+that the fixed duty means _no duty at all_; and _no duty at all_ will be
+the overthrow of the existing social and political system of our
+country!" (_Ibid._, iii. 13.) And what have become of Mr. Lowe's gloomy
+vaticinations as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate
+Reform Bill of 1866, followed as it was by a much more democratic
+measure?]
+
+
+
+
+A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE.
+
+BY E.L. GODKIN.
+
+
+Mr. Dicey in his _Case against Home Rule_ does me the honour to refer to
+an article which I wrote a year ago on "American Home Rule,"[24]
+expressing in one place "disagreement in the general conclusion to which
+the article is intended to lead," and in another "inability to follow
+the inference" which he supposes me to draw "against all attempts to
+enforce an unpopular law." Now the object of that article, I may be
+permitted to explain, was twofold. I desired, in the first place, to
+combat the notion which, it seemed to me, if I might judge from a great
+many of the speeches and articles on the Irish question, was widely
+diffused even among thoughtful Englishmen that the manner in which the
+Irish have expressed their discontent--that is, through outrage and
+disorder--was indicative of incapacity for self-government, and even
+imposed upon the Englishmen the duty, in the interest of morality (I
+think it was the _Spectator_ who took this view), and as a disciplinary
+measure, of refusing to such a people the privilege of managing their
+own affairs. I tried to show by several noted examples occurring in this
+country that prolonged displays of lawlessness, and violence, and even
+cruelty, such as the anti-rent movement in the State of New York, the
+Ku-Klux outrages in the South, and the persecution of Miss Prudence
+Crandall in Connecticut, were not inconsistent with the possession of
+marked political capacity. I suggested that it was hardly adult politics
+to take such things into consideration in passing on the expediency of
+conceding local self-government to a subject community. There was to me
+something almost childish in the arguments drawn from Irish lawlessness
+in the discussion of Home Rule, and in the moral importance attached by
+some Englishmen to the refusal to such wicked men as the Irish of the
+things they most desire. It is only in kindergartens, I said, that
+rulers are able to do equal and exact justice, and see that the naughty
+are brought to grief and the good made comfortable. Statesmen occupy
+themselves with the more serious business of curing discontent. They
+concern themselves but little, if at all, with the question whether it
+might not be manifested by less objectionable methods.
+
+The Irish methods of manifesting it, I endeavoured to show, were not
+exceptional, and did not prove either inability to make laws or
+unwillingness to obey them. I illustrated this by examples drawn from
+the United States. I might, had I had more time and space, have made
+these examples still more numerous and striking. I might have given very
+good reasons for believing that, were Ireland a state in the American
+Union, there probably would not have been any rent paid in the island
+within the last fifty years, and that the armed resistance of the
+tenants would have had the open or secret sympathy of the great bulk of
+the American people. In truth, the importance of Irish crime as a
+political symptom is grossly exaggerated by English writers. I venture
+to assert that more murders unconnected with robbery are committed in
+the State of Kentucky in one year than in Ireland in ten, and the
+condition of some other Southern and Western States is nearly as bad.
+All good Americans lament this and are ashamed of it, but it never
+enters into the heads of even the most lugubrious American moralists
+that Kentucky or any other State should be disfranchised and remanded to
+the condition of a Territory, because the offences against the person
+committed in it are so numerous, and the punishment of them, owing to
+popular sympathy or apathy, so difficult.
+
+There are a great many Englishmen who think that when they show that
+Grattan's Parliament was a venal and somewhat disorderly body, which
+occasionally indulged in mixed metaphor, they have proved the
+impossibility of giving Ireland a Parliament now. But then, as they are
+obliged to admit, Walpole's Parliament was very corrupt, and no one
+would say that for that reason it would have been wise to suspend
+constitutional government in England in the eighteenth century. It is
+only through the pernicious habit of thinking of Irishmen as exceptions
+to all political rules that Grattan's Parliament is considered likely,
+had it lasted, to have come down to our time unreformed and unimproved.
+
+Those have misunderstood me who suppose that I draw from the success of
+the anti-rent movement in this State between 1839 and 1846 an inference
+against "all attempts to enforce an unpopular law." Such was not by any
+means my object. What I sought to show by the history of this movement
+was that there was nothing peculiar or inexplicable in the hostility to
+rent-paying in Ireland. The rights of the New York landlords were as
+good in law and morals as the rights of the Irish landlords, and their
+mode of asserting them far superior. Moreover, those who resisted them
+were not men of a different race, religion, or nationality, and had, as
+Mr. Dicey says, "none of the excuses that can be urged in extenuation of
+half-starved tenants." Their mode of setting the law at defiance was
+exactly similar to that adopted by the Irish, and it was persisted in
+for a period of ten years, or until they had secured a substantial
+victory. The history of the anti-rent agitation in New York also
+illustrates strikingly, as it seems to me, the perspicacity of a remark
+made, in substance, long ago by Mr. Disraeli, which, in my eyes at
+least, threw a great deal of light on the Irish problem, namely, that
+Ireland was suffering from suppressed revolution. As Mr. Dicey says,
+"The crises called revolutions are the ultimate and desperate cures for
+the fundamental disorganization of society. The issue of a revolutionary
+struggle shows what is the true sovereign power in the revolutionized
+state. So strong is the interest of mankind, at least in any European
+country, in favour of some sort of settled rule, that civil disturbance
+will, if left to itself, in general end in the supremacy of some power
+which by securing the safety at last gains the attachment of the people.
+The Reign of Terror begets the Empire; even wars of religion at last
+produce peace, albeit peace may be nothing better than the iron
+uniformity of despotism. Could Ireland have been left for any lengthened
+period to herself, some form of rule adapted to the needs of the country
+would in all probability have been established. Whether Protestants or
+Catholics would have been the predominant element in the State; whether
+the landlords would have held their own, or whether the English system
+of tenure would long ago have made way for one more in conformity with
+native traditions; whether hostile classes and races would at last have
+established some _modus vivendi_ favourable to individual freedom, or
+whether despotism under some of its various forms would have been
+sanctioned by the acquiescence of its subjects, are matters of uncertain
+speculation. A conclusion which, though speculative, is far less
+uncertain, is that Ireland, if left absolutely to herself, would have
+arrived, like every other country, at some lasting settlement of her
+difficulties" (p. 87). That is to say, that in Ireland as in New York
+the attempt to enforce unpopular land laws would have been abandoned,
+had local self-government existed. For "revolution" is, after all, only
+a fine name for the failure or refusal of the rulers of a country to
+persist in executing laws which the bulk of the population find
+obnoxious. When the popular hostility to the law is strong enough to
+make its execution impossible, as it was in New York in the rent affair,
+it is accepted as the respectable solution of a very troublesome
+problem. When, as in Ireland, it is strong enough to produce turbulence
+and disorder, but not strong enough to tire out and overcome the
+authorities, it simply ruins the political manners of the people. If the
+Irish landlords had had from the beginning to face the tenants
+single-handed and either hold them down by superior physical force, or
+come to terms with them as the New York landlords had to do, conditions
+of peace and good will would have assuredly been discovered long ago.
+The land question, in other words, would have been adjusted in
+accordance with "Irish ideas," that is, in some way satisfactory to the
+tenants. The very memory of the conflict would probably by this time
+have died out, and the two classes would be living in harmony on the
+common soil. If in New York, on the other hand, the Van Rensselaers and
+Livingstons had been able to secure the aid of martial law and of the
+Federal troops in asserting their claims, and in preventing local
+opinion having any influence whatever on the settlement of the dispute,
+there can be no doubt that a large portion of this State would to-day be
+as poor and as savage, and apparently as little fitted for the serious
+business of government, as the greater part of Ireland is.
+
+There is, in truth, no reason to doubt that the idea of property in
+land, thoroughly accepted though it be in the United States, is
+nevertheless held under the same limitations as in the rest of the
+world. No matter what the law may say in any country, in no country is
+the right of the landed proprietor in his acres as absolute as his right
+in his movables. A man may own as much land as he can purchase, and may
+assert his ownership in its most absolute form against one, two, or
+three occupants, but the minute he began to assert it against a large
+number of occupants, that is, to act as if his rights were such that he
+had only to buy a whole state or a whole island in order to be able to
+evict the entire population, he would find in America, as he finds in
+Ireland, that he cannot have the same title to land as to personal
+property. He would, for instance, if he tried to oust the people of a
+whole district or of a village from their homes on any plea of
+possession, or of a contract, find that he was going too far, and that
+no matter what the judges might say, or the sheriff might try to do for
+him, his legal position was worth very little to him. Consequently a
+large landlord in America, if he were lucky enough to get tenants at
+all, would be very chary indeed about quarrelling with more than one of
+them at a time. The tenants would no more submit to wholesale ejectment
+than the farmers in Missouri would submit some years ago to a tax levy
+on their property to pay county bonds given in aid of a railroad. The
+goods of some of them were seized, but a large body of them attended the
+sale armed with rifles, having previously issued a notice that the place
+would be very "unhealthy" for outside bidders.
+
+The bearing of this condition of American opinion on the Irish question
+will be plainer if I remind English readers that the Irish in the United
+States numbered in 1880 nearly 2,000,000, and that the number of persons
+of Irish parentage is probably between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000. In short
+there are, as well as one can judge, more Irish nationalists in the
+United States than in Ireland. The Irish-Americans are to-day the only
+large and prosperous Irish community in the world. The children of the
+Irish born in the United States or brought there in their infancy are
+just as Irish in their politics as those who have grown up at home.
+Patrick Ford, for instance, the editor of the _Irish World_, who is such
+a shape of dread to some Englishmen, came to America in childhood, and
+has no personal knowledge nor recollection of Irish wrongs. Of the part
+this large Irish community plays in stimulating agitation--both agrarian
+and political--at home I need not speak; Englishmen are very familiar
+with it, and are very indignant over it. The Irish-Americans not only
+send over a great deal of American money to their friends at home, but
+they send over American ideas, and foremost among them American
+hostility to large landowners, and American belief in Home Rule. Now, to
+me, one of the most curious things in the English state of mind about
+the Irish problem is the apparent expectation that this Irish-American
+interference is transient, and will probably soon die out. It is quite
+true, as Englishmen are constantly told, that "the best Americans," that
+is, the literary people and the commercial magnates, whom travelling
+Englishmen see on the Atlantic coast, dislike the Irish anti-English
+agitation. But it is also true that the disapproval of the "best
+Americans" is not of the smallest practical consequence, particularly as
+it is largely due to complete indifference to, and ignorance of, the
+whole subject. There are probably not a dozen of them who would venture
+to express their disapproval publicly. The mass of the population,
+particularly in the West, sympathize, though half laughingly, with the
+efforts of the transplanted Irish to "twist the British lion's tail,"
+and all the politicians either sympathize with them, or pretend to do
+so. I am not now expressing any opinion as to whether this state of
+things is good or bad. What I wish to point out is that this
+Irish-American influence on Irish affairs is very powerful, and may, for
+all practical purposes, be considered permanent, and must be taken into
+account as a constant element in the Irish problem. I will indeed
+venture on the assertion that it is the appearance of the
+Irish-Americans on the scene which has given the Irish question its
+present seriousness. The attempts of the Irish at physical resistance to
+English authority have been steadily diminishing in gravity during the
+present century--witness the descent from the rebellion of 1798 to Smith
+O'Brien's rebellion and the Fenian rising of 1867. On the other hand the
+power of the Irish to act as a disturbing agency in English politics has
+greatly increased, and the reason is that the stream of Irish discontent
+is fed by thousands of rills from the United States. Every emigrant's
+letter, every Irish-American newspaper, every returned emigrant with
+money in his pocket and a good coat on his back, helps to swell it, and
+there is not the slightest sign, that I can see, of its drying up.
+
+Where Mr. Dicey is most formidable to the Home Rulers, as it seems to
+me, is in his chapter on "Home Rule as Federalism," which is the form in
+which the Irish ask for it. He attacks this in two ways. One is by
+maintaining that the necessary conditions for a federal union between
+Great Britain and Ireland do not exist. This disposes at one blow of all
+the experience derived from the working of the foreign federations, on
+which the advocates of Home Rule have relied a good deal. The other is
+what I may call predictions that the federation even if set up would not
+work. Either the state of facts on which all other federations have been
+built does not exist in Ireland, or if it now exists, will not, owing to
+the peculiarities of Irish character, continue to exist. In other words,
+the federation will either fail at the outset, or fail in the long run.
+No one can admire more than I do the force and ingenuity and wealth of
+illustration with which Mr. Dicey supports this thesis. But
+unfortunately the arguments by which he assails Irish federalism might
+be, or might have been, used against all federations whatever. They
+might have been used, as I shall try to show, against the most
+successful of them all, the Government of the United States. I was
+reminded, while reading Mr. Dicey's account of the impossibility of an
+Anglo-Irish federation, of Mr. Madison's rehearsal in the _Federalist_
+(No. 38) of the objections made to the Federal Constitution after the
+Convention had submitted it to the States. These objections covered
+every feature in it but one; and that, the mode of electing the
+President, curiously enough, is the only one which can be said to have
+utterly failed. A more impressive example of the danger of _à priori_
+attacks on any political arrangement, history does not contain. Mr.
+Madison says: "This one tells me that the proposed Constitution ought to
+be rejected, because it is not a confederation of the states, but a
+government over individuals. Another admits that it ought to be a
+government over individuals to a certain extent, but by no means to the
+extent proposed. A third does not object to the government over
+individuals, or to the extent proposed, but to the want of a bill of
+rights. A fourth concurs in the absolute necessity of a bill of rights,
+but contends that it ought to be declaratory not of the personal rights
+of individuals, but of the rights reserved to the states in their
+political capacity. A fifth is of opinion that a bill of rights of any
+sort would be superfluous and misplaced, and that the plan would be
+unexceptionable but for the fatal power of regulating the times and
+places of election. An objector in a large state exclaims loudly against
+the unreasonable equality of representation in the Senate. An objector
+in a small state is equally loud against the dangerous inequality in the
+House of Representatives. From one quarter we are alarmed with the
+amazing expense, from the number of persons who are to administer the
+new government. From another quarter, and sometimes from the same
+quarter, on another occasion the cry is that the Congress will be but
+the shadow of a representation, and that the government would be far
+less objectionable if the number and the expense were doubled. A patriot
+in a state that does not import or export discerns insuperable
+objections against the power of direct taxation. The patriotic adversary
+in a state of great exports and imports is not less dissatisfied that
+the whole burden of taxes may be thrown on consumption. This politician
+discovers in the constitution a direct and irresistible tendency to
+monarchy. That is equally sure it will end in aristocracy. Another is
+puzzled to say which of these shapes it will ultimately assume, but sees
+clearly it must be one or other of them. Whilst a fourth is not wanting,
+who with no less confidence affirms that the Constitution is so far from
+having a bias towards either of these dangers, that the weight on that
+side will not be sufficient to keep it upright and firm against the
+opposite propensities. With another class of adversaries to the
+Constitution, the language is, that the legislative, executive, and
+judiciary departments are intermixed in such a manner as to contradict
+all the ideas of regular government and all the requisite precautions in
+favour of liberty. Whilst this objection circulates in vague and general
+expressions, there are not a few who lend their sanction to it. Let each
+one come forward with his particular explanation, and scarcely any two
+are exactly agreed on the subject. In the eyes of one the junction of
+the Senate with the President in the responsible function of appointing
+to offices, instead of vesting this power in the executive alone, is the
+vicious part of the organization. To another the exclusion of the House
+of Representatives, whose numbers alone could be a due security against
+corruption and partiality in the exercise of such a power, is equally
+obnoxious. With a third the admission of the President into any share of
+a power which must ever be a dangerous engine in the hands of the
+executive magistrate is an unpardonable violation of the maxims of
+republican jealousy. No part of the arrangement, according to some, is
+more inadmissible than the trial of impeachments by the Senate, which is
+alternately a member both of the legislative and executive departments,
+when this power so evidently belonged to the judiciary department. We
+concur fully, reply others, in the objection to this part of the plan,
+but we can never agree that a reference of impeachments to the judiciary
+authority would be an amendment of the error; our principal dislike to
+the organization arises from the extensive powers already lodged in that
+department. Even among the zealous patrons of a council of state, the
+most irreconcilable variance is discovered concerning the mode in which
+it ought to be constituted."
+
+Mr. Madison's challenge to the opponents of the American Constitution to
+agree on some plan of their own, and his humorous suggestion that if the
+American people had to wait for some such agreement to be reached they
+would go for a long time without a government, are curiously applicable
+to the opponents of Irish Home Rule. They are very fertile in reasons
+for thinking that neither the Gladstone plan nor any other plan can
+succeed, but no two of them, so far as I know, have yet hit upon any
+other mode of pacifying Ireland, except the use of force for a certain
+period to maintain order, and oddly enough, even when they agree on this
+remedy, they are apt to disagree about the length of time during which
+it should be tried.
+
+Mr. Dicey, in conceding the success of the American Constitution, seems
+to me unmindful, if I may use the expression, of the judgments he would
+probably have passed on it had it been submitted to him at the outset
+were he in the frame of mind to which a prolonged study of the Irish
+problem has now brought him. The Supreme Court, for instance, which he
+now recognizes as an essential feature of the Federal Constitution, and
+the absence of which in the Gladstonian arrangement he treats as a fatal
+defect, would have undoubtedly appeared to him a preposterous
+contrivance. It would have seemed to him impossible that a legislature
+like Congress, with the traditions of parliamentary omnipotence still
+strong in the minds of the members, would ever submit to have its acts
+nullified by a board composed of half a dozen elderly lawyers. Nor would
+he have treated as any more reasonable the expectation that the State
+tribunals, which had existed in each colony from its foundation, and had
+earned the respect and confidence of the people, would quietly submit to
+have their jurisdiction curtailed, their decisions overruled, causes
+torn from their calendar, and prisoners taken out of their custody by
+new courts of semi-foreign origin, which the State neither paid nor
+controlled. He would, too, very probably have been most incredulous
+about the prospect of the growth of loyalty on the part of New-Yorkers
+and Massachusetts men to a new-fangled government, which was to make
+itself only slightly felt in their daily lives, and was to sit a
+fortnight away in an improvised village in the midst of a Virginian
+forest.
+
+He would, too, have ridiculed the notion that State legislatures would
+refrain, in obedience to the Constitution, from passing any law which
+local sentiment strongly favoured or local convenience plainly demanded,
+such as a law impairing the obligation of obnoxious contracts, or
+levying duties on imports or exports. The possibility that the State
+militia could ever be got to obey federal officers, or form an efficient
+part of a federal army, he would have scouted. On the feebleness of the
+front which federation would present to a foreign enemy he would have
+dwelt with emphasis, and would have pointed with confidence to the
+probability that in the event of a war some of the states would make
+terms with him or secretly favour his designs. National allegiance and
+local allegiance would divide and perplex the feelings of loyal
+citizens. Unless the national sentiment predominated--and it could not
+predominate without having had time to grow--the federation would go to
+pieces at any of those crises when the interests or wishes of any of the
+states conflicted with the interests or wishes of the Union. That the
+national sentiment could grow at all rapidly, considering the maturity
+of the communities which composed the Union and the differences of
+origin, creed, and manners which separated them, no calm observer of
+human nature would believe for one moment.
+
+The American Constitution is flecked throughout with those flaws which a
+lawyer delights to discover and point out, and which the framers of a
+federal contract can only excuse by maintaining that they are
+inevitable. It is true that Mr. Dicey does not even now acknowledge the
+success of the American Constitution to be complete. He points out that
+if the "example either of America or of Switzerland is to teach us
+anything worth knowing, the history of these countries must be read as a
+whole. It will then be seen that the two most successful confederacies
+in the world have been kept together only by the decisive triumph
+through force of arms of the central power over real or alleged State
+rights" (p. 192).
+
+It is odd that such objectors do not see that the decisive triumph of
+the central power in the late civil war in America was, in reality, a
+striking proof of the success of the federation. The armies which
+General Grant commanded, and the enormous resources in money and
+devotion from which he was able to draw, were the product of the Federal
+Union and of nothing else. One of the greatest arguments its founders
+used in its favour was that if once established it would supply
+overwhelming force for the suppression of any attempt to break it up.
+They did not aim at setting up a government which neither foreign malice
+nor domestic treason, would ever assail, for they knew that this was
+something beyond the reach of human endeavour. They tried to set up one
+which, if attacked either from within or from without, would make a
+successful resistance, and we now know that they accomplished their
+object. Somewhat the same answer may be made to the objection, which is
+supposed to have fatal applicability to the case of Ireland, that among
+the "special faults of federalism" is that it does not provide
+"sufficient protection of the legal rights of unpopular minorities," and
+that "the moral of it all is that the [American] Federal Government is
+not able to protect the rights of individuals against strong local
+sentiment" (p. 194 of Mr. Dicey's book). He says, moreover, if I
+understand the argument rightly, that it was bound to protect free
+speech in the States because "there is not and never was a word in the
+Articles of the Constitution forbidding American citizens to criticize
+the institutions of the State." It would seem from this as if Mr. Dicey
+were under the impression that in America the citizen of a State has a
+right to do in his State whatever he is not forbidden to do by the
+Federal Constitution, and in doing it has a right to federal protection.
+But the Federal Government can only do what the Constitution expressly
+authorizes it to do, and the Constitution does not authorize it to
+protect a citizen in criticizing the institutions of his own State. This
+arrangement, too, is just as good federalism as the committal of free
+speech to federal guardianship would have been. The goodness or badness
+of the federal system is in no way involved in the matter.
+
+The question to what extent a minority shall rely on the federation for
+protection, and to what extent on its own State, is a matter settled by
+the contract which has created the federation. The settlement of this
+is, in fact, the great object of a Constitution. Until it is settled
+somehow, either by writing or by understanding, there is, and can be, no
+federation. If I, as a citizen of the State of New York, could call on
+the United States Government to protect me under all circumstances and
+against all wrongs, it would show that I was not living under a
+federation at all, but under a centralized republic. The reason why I
+have to rely on the United States for protection against some things and
+not against others is that it was so stipulated when the State of New
+York entered the Union. There is nothing in the nature of the federal
+system to prevent the United States Government from protecting my
+freedom of speech. Nor is there anything in the federal system which
+forbids its protecting me against the establishment of a State Church,
+which, as a matter of fact, it does not do. Nor is there anything in the
+federal system compelling the Government to protect me against the
+establishment of an order of nobility, which, as a matter of fact, it
+does do. The reason why it does not do one of these things and does the
+other is simply and solely that it was so stipulated, after much
+discussion, in the contract. Most thinking men are to-day of opinion
+that the United States ought to have exclusive jurisdiction of marriage,
+so that the law of marriage might be uniform in all parts of the Union.
+The reason why they do not possess such jurisdiction is not that
+Congress is not fully competent to pass such a law or the federal courts
+to execute it, but that no such jurisdiction is conferred by the
+Constitution. In fact it seems to me just as reasonable to cite the ease
+of divorce in various States of the Union as a defect in the federal
+system, as to cite the oppression of local minorities in matters not
+placed under federal authority by the organic law.
+
+If one may judge from a great deal of writing on American matters which
+one sees in English journals and the demands for federal interference in
+America in State affairs which they constantly make, the greatest
+difficulty Irish Home Rule has to contend with is the difficulty which
+men bred in a united monarchy and under an omnipotent Parliament
+experience in grasping what I may call the federal idea. The influence
+of association on their minds is so strong that they can hardly conceive
+of a central power, worthy of the name of a government, standing by and
+witnessing disorders or failures of justice in any place within its
+borders, without stepping in to set matters right, no matter what the
+Constitution may say. They remind me often of an old verger in
+Westminster Abbey during the American civil war who told me that "he
+always knew a government without a head couldn't last." Permanence and
+peace were in his mind inseparably linked with kingship. That even Mr.
+Dicey has not been able to escape this influence appears frequently in
+his discussions of federalism. He, of course, thoroughly understands the
+federal system as a jurist, but when he comes to discuss it as a
+politician he has evidently some difficulty in seeing how a government
+with a power to enforce _any_ commands can be restrained by contract
+from enforcing _all_ commands which may seem to be expedient or
+salutary. Consequently the cool way in which the Federal Government here
+looks on at local disorders seems to him a sign, not of the fidelity of
+the President and Congress to the federal pact, but of some inherent
+weakness in the federal system.
+
+The true way to judge the federal system, however, either in the United
+States or elsewhere, is by observing the manner in which it has
+performed the duties assigned to it by the Constitution. If the
+Government at Washington performs these faithfully, its failure to
+prevent lawlessness in New York or the oppression of minorities in
+Connecticut is of no more consequence than its failure to put down
+brigandage in Macedonia. Possibly it would have been better to saddle it
+with greater responsibility for local peace; but the fact is that the
+framers of the Constitution decided not to do so. They did not mean to
+set up a government which would see that every man living under it got
+his due. They could not have got the States to accept such a
+government. They meant to set up a government which should represent
+the nation worthily in all its relations with foreigners, which should
+carry on war effectively, protect life and property on the high seas,
+furnish a proper currency, put down all resistance to its lawful
+authority, and secure each State against domestic violence on the demand
+of its Legislature.
+
+There is no common form for federal contracts, and no rules describing
+what such a contract must contain in order that the Government may be
+federal and not unitarian. There is no hard and fast line which must,
+under the federal system, divide the jurisdiction of the central
+Government from the jurisdiction of each State Government. The way in
+which the power is divided between the two must necessarily depend on
+the traditions, manners, aims, and needs of the people of the various
+localities. The federal system is not a system manufactured on a
+regulation model, which can be sent over the world like iron huts or
+steam launches, in detached pieces, to be put together when the scene of
+operation is reached. Therefore I am unable to see the force of the
+argument that, as the conditions under which all existing federations
+were established differ in some respects from those under which the
+proposed federal union between England and Ireland would have to be
+established, therefore the success of these confederations, such as it
+is, gives them no value as precedents. A system which might have worked
+very well for the New England States would not have worked well for a
+combination which included also the middle and southern States. And the
+framers of the American Constitution were not so simple-minded as to
+inquire, either before beginning their labours or before ending them--as
+Mr. Dicey would apparently have the English and Irish do--whether this
+or that style of constitution was "the correct thing" in federalism.
+Assuming that the people desired to form a nation as regarded the world
+outside, they addressed themselves to the task of discovering how much
+power the various States were willing to surrender for this purpose.
+That was ascertained, as far as it could be ascertained, by assembling
+their delegates in convention, and discussing the wishes and fears and
+suggestions of the different localities in a friendly and conciliatory
+spirit. They had no precedents to guide them. There had not existed a
+federal government, either in ancient or modern times, whose working
+afforded an example by which the imagination or the understanding of the
+American people was likely to be affected in the smallest degree. They,
+therefore, had to strike out an entirely new path for themselves, and
+they ended by producing an absolutely new kind of federation, which was
+half Unitarian, that is, in some respects a union of states, and in
+others a centralized government; and it was provided for a Territory one
+end of which was more than a month's distance from the other.
+
+It is not in its details, therefore, but in the manner of its
+construction, that the American Constitution furnishes anything in the
+way of guidance or suggestion to those who are now engaged in trying to
+find a _modus vivendi_ between England and Ireland. The same thing may
+be said of the Swiss Constitution and of the Austro-Hungarian
+Constitution. Both of them contain many anomalies--that is, things that
+are not set down in the books as among the essentials of federalism. But
+both are adapted to the special wants of the people who live under them,
+and were framed in reference to those wants.
+
+The Austro-Hungarian Delegations are another exception to the rule.
+These Delegations undoubtedly control the ministry of the Empire, or at
+all events do in practice displace it by their votes. It is made
+formally responsible to them by the Constitution. All that Mr. Dicey can
+say to this is that "the real responsibility of the Ministry to the
+Delegations admits of a good deal of doubt," and that, at all events,
+it is not like the responsibility of Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury to
+the British Parliament. This may be true, but the more mysterious or
+peculiar it is the better it illustrates the danger of speaking of any
+particular piece of machinery or of any particular division of power as
+an essential feature of a federal constitution.
+
+We are told by the critics of the Gladstonian scheme that federalism is
+not "a plan for disuniting the parts of a united state." But whether it
+is or not once more depends on circumstances. Federalism, like the
+British or French Constitution, is an arrangement intended to satisfy
+the people who set it up by gratifying some desire or removing some
+cause of discontent. If that discontent be due to unity, federalism
+disunites; if it be due to disunion, federalism unites. In the case of
+the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for instance, it clearly is a "plan for
+disuniting the parts of a united state." Austria and Hungary were united
+in the sense in which the opponents of Home Rule use the word for many
+years before 1867, but the union did not work, that is, did not produce
+moral as well as legal unity. A constitution was therefore invented
+which disunites the two countries for the purposes of domestic
+legislation, but leaves them united for the purposes of foreign
+relations. This may be a queer arrangement. Although it has worked well
+enough thus far, it may not continue to work well, but it does work well
+now. It has succeeded in converting Hungary from a discontented and
+rebellious province and a source of great weakness to Austria into a
+loyal and satisfied portion of the Empire. In other words, it has
+accomplished its purpose. It was not intended to furnish a symmetrical
+piece of federalism. It was intended to conciliate the Hungarian people.
+When therefore the professional federal architects make their tour of
+inspection and point out to the Home Ruler what flagrant departures from
+the correct federal model the Austro-Hungarian Constitution contains,
+how improbable it is that so enormous a structure can endure, and how,
+after all, the Hungarians have not got rid of the Emperor, who commands
+the army and represents the brute force of the old _régime_, I do not
+think he need feel greatly concerned. This may be all true, and yet the
+Austro-Hungarian federalism is a valuable thing. It has proved that the
+federal remedy is good for more than one disease, that it can cure both
+too much unity and too little. The truth is that there are only two
+essentials of a federal government. One is an agreement between the
+various communities who are to live under it as to the manner in which
+the power is to be divided between the general and local governments;
+the other is an honest desire on the part of all concerned to make it
+succeed. As a general rule, whatever the parties agree on and desire to
+make work is likely to work, just as a Unitarian government is sure to
+succeed if the people who live under it determine that it shall succeed.
+If a federal plan be settled in the only right way, by amicable and
+mutually respectful discussion between representative men, all the more
+serious obstacles are certain to be revealed and removed. Those which
+are not brought to light by such discussions are pretty sure to be
+comparatively trifling, and to disappear before the general success of
+arrangement. But by a "mutually respectful discussion" I mean discussion
+in which good faith and intelligence of all concerned are acknowledged
+on both sides.
+
+In what I have said by way of criticism of a book which may be taken as
+a particularly full exposition of the legal criticism that may be
+levelled at Mr. Gladstone's scheme, I have not touched on the arguments
+against Home Rule which Mr. Dicey draws from the amount of disturbance
+it would cause in English political habits and arrangements. I freely
+admit the weight of these arguments. The task of any English statesman
+who gives Home Rule to Ireland in the only way in which it can be
+given--with the assent of the British people--will be a very arduous
+one. But this portion of Mr. Dicey's book, producing, as it does, the
+distinctively English objections to Home rule, is to me much the most
+instructive, because it shows the difficulty there would be in creating
+the state of mind in England about any federal relation to Ireland which
+would be necessary to make it succeed. I do not think it an exaggeration
+to say that two-thirds of the English objections to Home Rule as
+federalism are unconscious expressions of distrust of Irish sincerity or
+intelligence thrown into the form of prophecy, and prophets, as we all
+know, cannot be refuted. For instance, "the changes necessitated by
+federalism would all tend to weaken the power of Great Britain" (Dicey,
+p. 173). The question of the command of the army could not be arranged;
+the Irish army could not be depended on by the Crown (p. 174); the
+central Government would be feeble against foreign aggression, and the
+Irish Parliament would give aid to a foreign enemy (pp. 176-7).
+Federalism would aggravate or increase instead of diminishing the actual
+Irish disloyalty to the Crown (pp. 179-80); the Irish expectations of
+material prosperity from Home Rule are baseless or grossly exaggerated
+(p. 182); the probability is, it would produce increased poverty and
+hardship; there would be frequent quarrels between the two countries
+over questions of nullification, secession, and federal taxation (p.
+184); neither side would acquiesce in the decision either of the Privy
+Council or of any other tribunal on these questions; Home Rulers would
+be the first to resist these decisions (p. 185). Irish federation "would
+soon generate a demand that the whole British Empire should be turned
+into a Confederacy" (p. 188). Finally, as "the one prediction which may
+be made with absolute confidence," "federalism would not generate the
+goodwill between England and Ireland which, could it be produced, would
+be an adequate compensation even for the evils and inconveniences of a
+federal system" (p. 191).
+
+Now I do not myself believe these things, but what else can any advocate
+of Home Rule say in answer to them? They are in their very nature the
+utterances of a prophet--an able, acute, and fair-minded prophet, I
+grant, but still a prophet--and before a prophet the wisest man has to
+be silent, or content himself by answering in prophecy also. What makes
+the sceptical frame of mind in which Mr. Dicey approaches the Home Rule
+question so important is not simply that it probably represents that of
+a very large body of educated Englishmen, but that it is one in which a
+federal system cannot be produced. Faith, hope, and charity are
+political as well as social virtues. The minute you leave the region of
+pure despotism and try any form of government in which the citizen has
+in the smallest degree to co-operate in the execution of the laws, you
+have need of these virtues at every step. As soon as you give up the
+attempt to rule men by drumhead justice, you have to begin to trust in
+some degree to their intelligence, to their love of order, to their
+self-respect, and to their desire for material prosperity, and the
+nearer you get to what is called free government the larger this trust
+has to be. It has to be very large indeed in order to carry on such a
+government as that of Great Britain or of the United States; it has to
+be larger still in order to set up and administer a federal government.
+In such a government the worst that can happen is very patent. The
+opportunities which the best-drawn federal constitution offers for
+outbreaks of what Americans call "pure cussedness"--that is, for the
+indulgence of anarchical tendencies and impulses--is greater than in any
+other. Therefore, to set it up, or even to discuss it with any profit,
+your faith in the particular variety of human nature, which is to live
+under it, has to be great. No communities can live under it together
+and make it work which do not respect each other. I say respect, I do
+not say love, each other. The machine can be made to go a good while
+without love, and if it goes well it will bring love before long; but
+mutual respect is necessary from the first day. This is why Mr. Dicey's
+book is discouraging. The arguments which he addressed to Englishmen
+would not, I think, be formidable but for the mood in which he finds
+Englishmen, and that this mood makes against Home Rule there can be
+little doubt.
+
+I am often asked by Americans why the English do not call an Anglo-Irish
+convention in the American fashion, and discuss the Irish question with
+the Irish, find out exactly what they will take to be quiet, and settle
+with them in a rational way. I generally answer that, in the first
+place, a convention is a constitution-making agency with which the
+English public is totally unfamiliar, and that, in the second place,
+Englishmen's temper is too imperial, or rather imperious, to make the
+idea of discussion on equal terms with the Irish at all acceptable. They
+are, in fact, so far from any such arrangement that--preposterous and
+even funny as it seems to the American mind--to say that an English
+statesman is carrying on any sort of communication with the
+representatives of the Irish people is to bring against him, in English
+eyes, a very damaging accusation. When a man like Mr. Matthew Arnold
+writes to the _Times_ to contend that Englishmen should find out what
+the Irish want solely for the purpose of not letting them have it, and a
+journal like the _Spectator_ maintains that the sole excuse for
+extending the suffrage in Ireland, as it has lately been extended in
+England, was that the Irish as a minority would not be able to make any
+effective use of it; and when another political philosopher writes a
+long and very solemn letter in which, while conceding that in governing
+Ireland a sympathetic regard for Irish feelings and interests should be
+displayed, he mentions, as one of the leading facts of the situation,
+that in "the Irish character there is a grievous lack of independence,
+of self-respect, of courage, and above all of truthfulness"--when men of
+this kind talk in this way, it is easy to see that the mental and moral
+conditions necessary to the successful formation of a federal union are
+still far off. No federal government, and no government requiring
+loyalty and fidelity for its successful working, was ever set up by, or
+even discussed between, two parties, one of which thought the other so
+unreasonable that it should be carefully denied everything it asked for
+and as unfit for any sort of political co-operation as mendacity,
+cowardice, and slavishness could make it.
+
+Finally let me say that there is nothing in Mr. Dicey's book which has
+surprised me more, considering with what singular intellectual integrity
+he attacks every point, than his failure to make any mention or to take
+any account of the large part which time and experience must necessarily
+play in bringing to perfection any political arrangement which is made
+to order, if I may use the expression, no matter how carefully it may be
+drafted. Hume says on this point with great wisdom, "To balance the
+large state or society, whether monarchical or republican, on general
+laws, is a work of so great difficulty, that no human genius, however
+comprehensive, is able by the mere dint of reason or reflection to
+effect it. The judgments of many must unite in the work, experience must
+guide their labour, time must bring it to perfection, and the feeling of
+inconveniences must correct the mistakes which they inevitably fall into
+in their first trial and experiments."[25]
+
+This has proved true of the American and Swiss federations; it will
+probably prove true of the Austro-Hungarian federation and of any that
+may be set up by Great Britian [Transcriber: sic.] and her colonies. It
+will prove still more true of any attempt that may be made at
+federation between Great Britain and Ireland. No corrections which could
+be made in the Gladstonian or any other constitution would make it work
+exactly on the lines laid down by its framers. Even if it were revised
+in accordance with Mr. Dicey's criticism, it would probably be found, as
+in the case of the American Constitution, that few of the dangers which
+were most feared for it had beset it, and that some of the
+inconveniences which were most distinctly foreseen as likely to arise
+from it were among the things which had materially contributed to its
+success. History is full of the gentle ridicule which the course of
+events throws on statesmen and philosophers.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 24: Printed in the earlier part of this volume.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Essay on the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences.]
+
+
+
+
+THE "UNIONIST" CASE FOR HOME RULE.
+
+BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN.
+
+
+I am often asked, What are the best books to read on the Irish question?
+and I never fail to mention Mr. Lecky's _Leaders of Public Opinion in
+Ireland_ and the _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_; Mr.
+Goldwin Smith's _Irish History and Irish Character, Three English
+Statesmen, The Irish Question_, and Professor Dicey's admirable work,
+_England's Case against Home Rule_.
+
+Indeed, the case for Home Rule, as stated in these books, is
+unanswerable; and it redounds to the credit of Mr. Lecky, Mr. Goldwin
+Smith, and Mr. Dicey that their narrative of facts should in no wise be
+prejudiced by their political opinions.
+
+That their facts are upon one side and their opinions on the other is a
+minor matter. Their facts, I venture to assert, have made more Home
+Rulers than their opinions can unmake.
+
+To put this assertion to the test I propose to quote some extracts from
+the works above mentioned. These extracts shall be full and fair.
+Nothing shall be left out that can in the slightest degree qualify any
+statement of fact in the context. Arguments will be omitted, for I wish
+to place facts mainly before my readers. From these facts they can draw
+their own conclusions. Neither shall I take up space with comments of my
+own. I shall call my witnesses and let them speak for themselves.
+
+I.--MR. LECKY.
+
+In the introduction to the new edition of the _Leaders of Public Opinion
+in Ireland_, published in 1871--seventy-one years after Mr. Pitt's
+Union, which was to make England and Ireland one nation--we find the
+following "contrast" between "national life" in the two countries:--
+
+"There is, perhaps, no Government in the world which succeeds more
+admirably in the functions of eliciting, sustaining, and directing
+public opinion than that of England. It does not, it is true, escape its
+full share of hostile criticism, and, indeed, rather signally
+illustrates the saying of Bacon, that 'the best Governments are always
+subject to be like the finest crystals, in which every icicle and grain
+is seen which in a fouler stone is never perceived;' but whatever
+charges may be brought against the balance of its powers, or against its
+legislative efficiency, few men will question its eminent success as an
+organ of public opinion. In England an even disproportionate amount of
+the national talent takes the direction of politics. The pulse of an
+energetic national life is felt in every quarter of the land. The
+debates of Parliament are followed with a warm, constant, and
+intelligent interest by all sections of the community. It draws all
+classes within the circle of political interests, and is the centre of a
+strong and steady patriotism, equally removed from the apathy of many
+Continental nations in time of calm, and from their feverish and
+spasmodic energy in time of excitement. Its decisions, if not instantly
+accepted, never fail to have a profound and calming influence on the
+public mind. It is the safety-valve of the nation. The discontents, the
+suspicions, the peccant humours that agitate the people, find there
+their vent, their resolution, and their end.
+
+"It is impossible, I think, not to be struck by the contrast which, in
+this respect, Ireland presents to England. If the one country furnishes
+us with an admirable example of the action of a healthy public opinion,
+the other supplies us with the most unequivocal signs of its disease.
+The Imperial Parliament exercises for Ireland legislative functions, but
+it is almost powerless upon opinion--it allays no discontent, and
+attracts no affection. Political talent, which for many years was at
+least as abundant among Irishmen as in any equally numerous section of
+the people, has been steadily declining, and marked decadence in this
+respect among the representatives of the nation reflects but too truly
+the absence of public spirit in their constituents.
+
+"The upper classes have lost their sympathy with and their moral
+ascendency over their tenants, and are thrown for the most part into a
+policy of mere obstruction. The genuine national enthusiasm never flows
+in the channel of imperial politics. With great multitudes sectarian
+considerations have entirely superseded national ones, and their
+representatives are accustomed systematically to subordinate all party
+and all political questions to ecclesiastical interests; and while
+calling themselves Liberals, they make it the main object of their home
+politics to separate the different classes of their fellow-countrymen
+during the period of their education, and the main object of their
+foreign policy to support the temporal power of the Pope. With another
+and a still larger class the prevailing feeling seems to be an
+indifference to all Parliamentary proceedings; an utter scepticism about
+constitutional means of realizing their ends; a blind, persistent hatred
+of England. Every cause is taken up with an enthusiasm exactly
+proportioned to the degree in which it is supposed to be injurious to
+English interests. An amount of energy and enthusiasm which if rightly
+directed would suffice for the political regeneration of Ireland is
+wasted in the most insane projects of disloyalty; while the diversion of
+so much public feeling from Parliamentary politics leaves the
+Parliamentary arena more and more open to corruption, to place-hunting,
+and to imposture.
+
+"This picture is in itself a very melancholy one, but there are other
+circumstances which greatly heighten the effect. In a very ignorant or a
+very wretched population it is natural that there should be much vague,
+unreasoning discontent; but the Irish people are at present neither
+wretched nor ignorant. Their economical condition before the famine was,
+indeed, such that it might well have made reasonable men despair. With
+the land divided into almost microscopic farms, with a population
+multiplying rapidly to the extreme limits of subsistence, accustomed to
+the very lowest standard of comfort, and marrying earlier than in any
+other northern country in Europe, it was idle to look for habits of
+independence or self-reliance, or for the culture which follows in the
+train of leisure and comfort. But all this has been changed. A fearful
+famine and the long-continued strain of emigration have reduced the
+nation from eight millions to less than five, and have effected, at the
+price of almost intolerable suffering, a complete economical revolution.
+The population is now in no degree in excess of the means of
+subsistence. The rise of wages and prices has diffused comfort through
+all classes. ... Probably no country in Europe has advanced so rapidly
+as Ireland within the last ten years, and the tone of cheerfulness, the
+improvement of the houses, the dress, and the general condition of the
+people must have struck every observer.[26] ... If industrial
+improvement, if the rapid increase of material comforts among the poor,
+could allay political discontent, Ireland should never have been so
+loyal as at present.
+
+"Nor can it be said that ignorance is at the root of the discontent. The
+Irish people have always, even in the darkest period of the penal laws,
+been greedy for knowledge, and few races show more quickness in
+acquiring it. The admirable system of national education established in
+the present century is beginning to bear abundant fruit, and, among the
+younger generation at least, the level of knowledge is quite as high as
+in England. Indeed, one of the most alarming features of Irish
+disloyalty is its close and evident connection with education. It is
+sustained by a cheap literature, written often with no mean literary
+skill, which penetrates into every village, gives the people their first
+political impressions, forms and directs their enthusiasm, and seems
+likely in the long leisure of the pastoral life to exercise an
+increasing power. Close observers of the Irish character will hardly
+have failed to notice the great change which since the famine has passed
+over the amusements of the people. The old love of boisterous
+out-of-door sports has almost disappeared, and those who would have once
+sought their pleasures in the market or the fair now gather in groups in
+the public-house, where one of their number reads out a Fenian
+newspaper. Whatever else this change may portend, it is certainly of no
+good omen for the future loyalty of the people.
+
+"It was long customary in England to underrate this disaffection by
+ascribing it to very transitory causes. The quarter of a century that
+followed the Union was marked by almost perpetual disturbance; but this
+it was said was merely the natural ground swell of agitation which
+followed a great reform. It was then the popular theory that it was the
+work of O'Connell, who was described during many years as the one
+obstacle to the peace of Ireland, and whose death was made the subject
+of no little congratulation, as though Irish discontent had perished
+with its organ. It was as if, the Æolian harp being shattered, men wrote
+an epitaph upon the wind. Experience has abundantly proved the folly of
+such theories. Measured by mere chronology, a little more than seventy
+years have passed since the Union, but famine and emigration have
+compressed into these years the work of centuries. The character,
+feelings, and conditions of the people have been profoundly altered. A
+long course of remedial legislation has been carried, and during many
+years the national party has been without a leader and without a
+stimulus. Yet, so far from subsiding, disloyalty in Ireland is probably
+as extensive, and is certainly as malignant, as at the death of
+O'Connell, only in many respects the public opinion of the country has
+palpably deteriorated. O'Connell taught an attachment to the connection,
+a loyalty to the crown, a respect for the rights of property, a
+consistency of Liberalism, which we look for in vain among his
+successors; and that faith in moral force and constitutional agitation
+which he made it one of his greatest objects to instil into the people
+has almost vanished with the failure of his agitation."[27]
+
+Few Irish Nationalists have drawn a weightier indictment against the
+Union than this. After a trial of seventy years, Mr. Lecky sums up the
+case against the Union in these pregnant sentences:--
+
+"The Imperial Parliament allays no discontent, and attracts no
+affection;" "The genuine national enthusiasm never flows in the channel
+of imperial politics;" the people have "an utter scepticism about
+constitutional means of realizing their ends," and are imbued with "a
+blind, persistent hatred of England." Worse still, neither the material
+progress of the country, nor the education of the people, has
+reconciled them to the Imperial Parliament. Indeed, their disloyalty has
+increased with their prosperity and enlightenment. This is the story
+which Mr. Lecky has to tell. But why are the Irish disloyal? Mr. Lecky
+shall answer the question.
+
+"The causes of this deep-seated disaffection I have endeavoured in some
+degree to investigate in the following essays. To the merely dramatic
+historian the history of Ireland will probably appear less attractive
+than that of most other countries, for it is somewhat deficient in great
+characters and in splendid episodes; but to a philosophic student of
+history it presents an interest of the very highest order. In no other
+history can we trace more clearly the chain of causes and effects, the
+influence of past legislation, not only upon the material condition, but
+also upon the character of a nation. In no other history especially can
+we investigate more fully the evil consequences which must ensue from
+disregarding that sentiment of nationality which, whether it be wise or
+foolish, whether it be desirable or the reverse, is at least one of the
+strongest and most enduring of human passions. This, as I conceive, lies
+at the root of Irish discontent. It is a question of nationality as
+truly as in Hungary or in Poland. Special grievances or anomalies may
+aggravate, but do not cause it, and they become formidable only in as
+far as they are connected with it. What discontent was felt against the
+Protestant Established Church was felt chiefly because it was regarded
+as an English garrison sustaining an anti-national system; and the
+agrarian difficulty never assumed its full intensity till by the repeal
+agitation the landlords had been politically alienated from the
+people."[28]
+
+Let those who imagine that the Irish question can be completely settled
+by the redress of material grievances take those words to heart.
+
+
+But, it is said, Scotch national sentiment is as strong as Irish, why
+should not a legislative union be as acceptable to Ireland as to
+Scotland? Mr. Lecky shall answer this question too.
+
+"It is hardly possible to advert to the Scotch Union, without pausing
+for a moment to examine why its influence on the loyalty of the people
+should have ultimately been so much happier than that of the legislative
+union which, nearly a century later, was enacted between England and
+Ireland. A very slight attention to the circumstances of the case will
+explain the mystery, and will at the same time show the extreme
+shallowness of those theorists who can only account for it by reference
+to original peculiarities of national character. The sacrifice of a
+nationality is a measure which naturally produces such intense and such
+enduring discontent that it never should be exacted unless it can be
+accompanied by some political or material advantages to the lesser
+country that are so great and at the same time so evident as to prove a
+corrective. Such a corrective in the case of Scotland, was furnished by
+the commercial clauses. The Scotch Parliament was very arbitrary and
+corrupt, and by no means a faithful representation of the people. The
+majority of the nation were certainly opposed to the Union, and,
+directly or indirectly, it is probable that much corruption was employed
+to effect it; but still the fact remains that by it one of the most
+ardent wishes of all Scottish patriots was attained, that there had been
+for many years a powerful and intelligent minority who were prepared to
+purchase commercial freedom even at the expense of the fusion of
+legislatures, and that in consequence of the establishment of free trade
+the next generation of Scotchmen witnessed an increase of material
+well-being that was utterly unprecedented in the history of their
+country. Nothing equivalent took place in Ireland. The gradual abolition
+of duties between England and Ireland was, no doubt, an advantage to the
+lesser country, but the whole trade to America and the other English
+colonies had been thrown open to Irishmen between 1775 and 1779. Irish
+commerce had taken this direction; the years between 1779 and the
+rebellion of 1798 were probably the most prosperous in Irish history,
+and the generation that followed the Union was one of the most
+miserable. The sacrifice of nationality was extorted by the most
+enormous corruption in the history of representative institutions. It
+was demanded by no considerable section of the Irish people. It was
+accompanied by no signal political or material benefit that could
+mitigate or counteract its unpopularity, and it was effected without a
+dissolution, in opposition to the votes of the immense majority of the
+representatives of the counties and considerable towns, and to
+innumerable addresses from every part of the country. Can any impartial
+man be surprised that such a measure, carried in such a manner, should
+have proved unsuccessful?"[29]
+
+
+In the _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_ Mr. Lecky traces the
+current of events which have led to the present situation. He shows how
+the Treaty of Limerick was shamelessly violated, and how the native
+population was oppressed and degraded.
+
+"The position of Ireland was at this time [1727] one of the most
+deplorable that can be conceived.... The Roman Catholics had been
+completely prostrated by the battle of the Boyne and by the surrender of
+Limerick. They had stipulated indeed for religious liberty, but the
+Treaty of Limerick was soon shamelessly violated, and it found no
+avengers. Sarsfield and his brave companions had abandoned a country
+where defeat left no opening for their talents, and had joined the Irish
+Brigade which had been formed in the service of France.... But while the
+Irish Roman Catholics abroad found free scope for their ambition in the
+service of France, those who remained at home had sunk into a condition
+of utter degradation. All Catholic energy and talent had emigrated to
+foreign lands, and penal laws of atrocious severity crushed the
+Catholics who remained."[30]
+
+Mr. Lecky's account of these "penal laws" is upon the whole, I think,
+the best that has been written.
+
+"The last great Protestant ruler of England was William III., who is
+identified in Ireland with the humiliation of the Boyne, with the
+destruction of Irish trade, and with the broken Treaty of Limerick. The
+ceaseless exertions of the extreme Protestant party have made him more
+odious in the eyes of the people than he deserves to be; for he was
+personally far more tolerant than the great majority of his
+contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted under his
+successors. It required, indeed, four or five reigns to elaborate a
+system so ingeniously contrived to demoralize, to degrade, and to
+impoverish the people of Ireland. By this code the Roman Catholics were
+absolutely excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from the
+corporations, from the bench, and from the bar. They could not vote at
+Parliamentary elections or at vestries; they could not act as
+constables, or sheriffs, or jurymen, or serve in the army or navy, or
+become solicitors, or even hold the positions of gamekeeper or watchman.
+Schools were established to bring up their children as Protestants; and
+if they refused to avail themselves of these, they were deliberately
+assigned to hopeless ignorance, being excluded from the university, and
+debarred, under crushing penalties, from acting as schoolmasters, as
+ushers, or as private tutors, or from sending their children abroad to
+obtain the instruction they were refused at home. They could not marry
+Protestants, and if such a marriage were celebrated it was annulled by
+law, and the priest who officiated might be hung. They could not buy
+land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from Protestants, or hold
+life-annuities, or leases for more than thirty-one years, or any lease
+on such terms that the profits of the land exceeded one-third of the
+rent. If any Catholic leaseholder by his industry so increased his
+profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did not immediately make
+a corresponding increase in his payments, any Protestant who gave the
+information could enter into possession of his farm. If any Catholic had
+secretly purchased either his old forfeited estate, or any other land,
+any Protestant who informed against him might become the proprietor. The
+few Catholic landowners who remained were deprived of the right which
+all other classes possessed of bequeathing their lands as they pleased.
+If their sons continued Catholics, it was divided equally between them.
+If, however, the eldest son consented to apostatize, the estate was
+settled upon him, the father from that hour became only a life-tenant,
+and lost all power of selling, mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of it.
+If the wife of a Catholic abandoned the religion of her husband, she was
+immediately free from his control, and the Chancellor was empowered to
+assign to her a certain proportion of her husband's property. If any
+child, however young, professed itself a Protestant, it was at once
+taken from the father's care, and the Chancellor could oblige the father
+to declare upon oath the value of his property, both real and personal,
+and could assign for the present maintenance and future portion of the
+converted child such proportion of that property as the court might
+decree. No Catholic could be guardian either to his own children or to
+those of another person; and therefore a Catholic who died while his
+children were minors had the bitterness of reflecting upon his death-bed
+that they must pass into the care of Protestants. An annuity of from
+twenty to forty pounds was provided as a bribe for every priest who
+would become a Protestant. To convert a Protestant to Catholicism was a
+capital offence. In every walk of life the Catholic was pursued by
+persecution or restriction. Except in the linen trade, he could not have
+more than two apprentices. He could not possess a horse of the value of
+more than five pounds, and any Protestant, on giving him five pounds,
+could take his horse. He was compelled to pay double to the militia. He
+was forbidden, except under particular conditions, to live in Galway or
+Limerick. In case of war with a Catholic power, the Catholics were
+obliged to reimburse the damage done by the enemy's privateers. The
+Legislature, it is true, did not venture absolutely to suppress their
+worship, but it existed only by a doubtful connivance--stigmatized as if
+it were a species of licensed prostitution, and subject to conditions
+which, if they had been enforced, would have rendered its continuance
+impossible. An old law which prohibited it, and another which enjoined
+attendance at the Anglican worship, remained unrepealed, and might at
+any time be revived; and the former was, in fact, enforced during the
+Scotch rebellion of 1715. The parish priests, who alone were allowed to
+officiate, were compelled to be registered, and were forbidden to keep
+curates or to officiate anywhere except in their own parishes. The
+chapels might not have bells or steeples. No crosses might be publicly
+erected. Pilgrimages to the holy wells were forbidden. Not only all
+monks and friars, but also all Catholic archbishops, bishops, deacons,
+and other dignitaries, were ordered by a certain day to leave the
+country; and if after that date they were found in Ireland they were
+liable to be first imprisoned and then banished; and if after that
+banishment they returned to discharge their duty in their dioceses, they
+were liable to the punishment of death. To facilitate the discovery of
+offences against the code, two justices of the peace might at any time
+compel any Catholic of eighteen years of age to declare when and where
+he last heard Mass, what persons were present, and who officiated; and
+if he refused to give evidence they might imprison him for twelve
+months, or until he paid a fine of twenty pounds. Any one who harboured
+ecclesiastics from beyond the seas was subject to fines which for the
+third offence amounted to confiscation of all his goods. A graduated
+scale of rewards was offered for the discovery of Catholic bishops,
+priests, and schoolmasters; and a resolution of the House of Commons
+pronounced 'the prosecuting and informing against Papists' 'an
+honourable service to the Government.'
+
+"Such were the principal articles of this famous code--a code which
+Burke truly described as 'well digested and well disposed in all its
+parts; a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted
+for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the
+debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the
+perverted ingenuity of man.'"[31]
+
+The effects of these laws Mr. Lecky has described thus:
+
+"The economical and moral effects of the penal laws were, however,
+profoundly disastrous. The productive energies of the nation were
+fatally diminished. Almost all Catholics of energy and talent who
+refused to abandon their faith emigrated to foreign lands. The relation
+of classes was permanently vitiated; for almost all the proprietary of
+the country belonged to one religion, while the great majority of their
+tenants were of another. The Catholics, excluded from almost every
+possibility of eminence, deprived of their natural leaders, and
+consigned by the Legislature to utter ignorance, soon sank into the
+condition of broken and dispirited helots. A total absence of industrial
+virtues, a cowering and abject deference to authority, a recklessness
+about the future, a love of secret illegal combinations, became general
+among them. Above all, they learned to regard law as merely the
+expression of force, and its moral weight was utterly destroyed. For the
+greater part of a century, the main object of the Legislature was to
+extirpate a religion by the encouragement of the worst, and the
+punishment of some of the best qualities of our nature. Its rewards were
+reserved for the informer, for the hypocrite, for the undutiful son, or
+for the faithless wife. Its penalties were directed against religious
+constancy and the honest discharge of ecclesiastical duty.
+
+"It would, indeed, be scarcely possible to conceive a more infamous
+system of legal tyranny than that which in the middle of the eighteenth
+century crushed every class and almost every interest in Ireland."[32]
+
+But laws were not only passed against the native race and the national
+religion. Measures were taken to destroy the industries of the country,
+and to involve natives and colonists, Protestants and Catholics, in
+common ruin. Mr. Lecky shall tell the story.
+
+"The commercial and industrial condition of the country was, if
+possible, more deplorable than its political condition, and was the
+result of a series of English measures which for deliberate and selfish
+tyranny could hardly be surpassed. Until the reign of Charles II. the
+Irish shared the commercial privileges of the English; but as the island
+had not been really conquered till the reign of Elizabeth, and as its
+people were till then scarcely removed from barbarism, the progress was
+necessarily slow. In the early Stuart reigns, however, comparative
+repose and good government were followed by a sudden rush of prosperity.
+The land was chiefly pasture, for which it was admirably adapted; the
+export of live cattle to England was carried on upon a large scale, and
+it became a chief source of Irish wealth. The English landowners,
+however, took the alarm. They complained that Irish rivalry in the
+cattle market was reducing English rents; and accordingly, by an Act
+which was first passed in 1663, and was made perpetual in 1666, the
+importation of cattle into England was forbidden.
+
+"The effect of a measure of this kind, levelled at the principal article
+of the commerce of the nation, was necessarily most disastrous. The
+profound modification which it introduced into the course of Irish
+industry was sufficiently shown by the estimate of Sir W. Petty, who
+declares that before the statute three-fourths of the trade of Ireland
+was with England, but not one-fourth of it since that time. In the very
+year when this Bill was passed another measure was taken not less fatal
+to the interest of the country. In the first Navigation Act, Ireland was
+placed on the same terms as England; but in the Act as amended in 1663
+she was omitted, and was thus deprived of the whole Colonial trade. With
+the exception of a very few specified articles no European merchandise
+could be imported into the British Colonies except directly from
+England, in ships built in England, and manned chiefly by English
+sailors. No articles, with a few exceptions, could be brought from the
+Colonies to Europe without being first unladen in England. In 1670 this
+exclusion of Ireland was confirmed, and in 1696 it was rendered more
+stringent, for it was enacted that no goods of any sort could be
+imported directly from the Colonies to Ireland. It will be remembered
+that at this time the chief British Colonies were those of America, and
+that Ireland, by her geographical position, was naturally of all
+countries most fitted for the American trade.
+
+"As far, then, as the Colonial trade was concerned, Ireland at this time
+gained nothing whatever by her connection with England. To other
+countries, however, her ports were still open, and in time of peace a
+foreign commerce was unrestricted. When forbidden to export their cattle
+to England, the Irish turned their land chiefly into sheep-walks, and
+proceeded energetically to manufacture the wool. Some faint traces of
+this manufacture may be detected from an early period, and Lord
+Strafford, when governing Ireland, had mentioned it with a
+characteristic comment. Speaking of the Irish he says, 'There was little
+or no manufactures amongst them, but some small beginnings towards a
+cloth trade, which I had and so should still discourage all I could,
+unless otherwise directed by His Majesty and their Lordships. It might
+be feared that they would beat us out of the trade itself by
+underselling us, which they were able to do.' With the exception,
+however, of an abortive effort by this governor, the Irish wool
+manufacture was in no degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned with
+special favour in many Acts of Parliament; and it was in a great degree
+on the faith of this long-continued legislative sanction that it was so
+greatly expanded. The poverty of Ireland, the low state of civilization
+of a large proportion of its inhabitants, the effects of the civil wars
+which had so recently convulsed it, and the exclusion of its products
+from the English Colonies, were doubtless great obstacles to
+manufacturing enterprise; but, on the other hand, Irish wool was very
+good, living was cheaper, taxes were lighter than in England, a spirit
+of real industrial energy began to pervade the country, and a
+considerable number of English manufacturers came over to colonize it.
+There appeared for a time every probability that the Irish would become
+an industrial nation, and, had manufactures arisen, their whole social,
+political, and economical condition would have been changed. But English
+jealousy again interposed. By an Act of crushing and unprecedented
+severity, which was introduced in 1698 and carried in 1699, the export
+of the Irish woollen manufactures, not only to England, but also to all
+other countries, was absolutely forbidden.
+
+"The effects of this measure were terrible almost beyond conception. The
+main industry of the country was at a blow completely and irretrievably
+annihilated. A vast population was thrown into a condition of utter
+destitution. Several thousands of manufacturers left the country, and
+carried their skill and enterprise to Germany, France, and Spain. The
+western and southern districts of Ireland are said to have been nearly
+depopulated. Emigration to America began on a large scale, and the blow
+was so severe that long after, a kind of chronic famine prevailed."[33]
+
+Mr. Lecky relates with pride how the penal code was relaxed, and the
+commercial restrictions were removed, while the Irish Parliament,
+essentially a Protestant and landlord body, still existed, and shows how
+the cause of Catholic Emancipation was retarded by the Union.
+
+"The Relief Bill of '93 naturally suggests a consideration of the
+question so often agitated in Ireland, whether the Union was really a
+benefit to the Roman Catholic cause. It has been argued that Catholic
+Emancipation was an impossibility as long as the Irish Parliament
+lasted; for in a country where the great majority were Roman Catholics,
+it would be folly to expect the members of the dominant creed to
+surrender a monopoly on which their ascendency depended. The arguments
+against this view are, I believe, overwhelming. The injustice of the
+disqualification was far more striking before the Union than after it.
+In the one case, the Roman Catholics were excluded from the Parliament
+of a nation of which they were the great majority; in the other, they
+were excluded from the Parliament of an empire in which they were a
+small minority. Grattan, Plunket, Curran, Burrowes, and Ponsonby were
+the great supporters of Catholic Emancipation, and the great opponents
+of the Union. Clare and Duigenan were the two great opponents of
+emancipation, and the great supporters of the Union. At a time when
+scarcely any public opinion existed in Ireland, when the Roman Catholics
+were nearly quiescent, and when the leaning of Government was generally
+liberal, the Irish Protestants admitted their fellow-subjects to the
+magistracy, to the jury-box, and to the franchise. By this last measure
+they gave them an amount of political power which necessarily implied
+complete emancipation. Even if no leader of genius had arisen in the
+Roman Catholic ranks, and if no spirit of enthusiasm had animated their
+councils, the influence possessed by a body who formed three fourths of
+the population, who were rapidly rising in wealth, and who could send
+their representatives to Parliament, would have been sufficient to
+ensure their triumph. If the Irish Legislature had continued, it would
+have been found impossible to resist the demand for reform; and every
+reform, by diminishing the overgrown power of a few Protestant
+landholders, would have increased that of the Roman Catholics. The
+concession accorded in 1793 was, in fact, far greater and more important
+than that accorded in 1829, and it placed the Roman Catholics, in a
+great measure, above the mercy of Protestants. But this was not all. The
+sympathies of the Protestants were being rapidly enlisted in their
+behalf. The generation to which Charlemont and Flood belonged had passed
+away, and all the leading intellects of the country, almost all the
+Opposition, and several conspicuous members of the Government, were
+warmly in favour of emancipation. The rancour which at present exists
+between the members of the two creeds appears then to have been almost
+unknown, and the real obstacle to emancipation was not the feelings of
+the people, but the policy of the Government. The Bar may be considered
+on most subjects a very fair exponent of the educated opinion of the
+nation; and Wolf Tone observed, in 1792, that it was almost unanimous in
+favour of the Catholics; and it is not without importance, as showing
+the tendencies of the rising generation, that a large body of the
+students of Dublin University in 1795 presented an address to Grattan,
+thanking him for his labours in the cause. The Roman Catholics were
+rapidly gaining the public opinion of Ireland, when the Union arrayed
+against them another public opinion which was deeply prejudiced against
+their faith, and almost entirely removed from their influence. Compare
+the twenty years before the Union with the twenty years that followed
+it, and the change is sufficiently manifest. There can scarcely be a
+question that if Lord Fitzwilliam had remained in office the Irish
+Parliament would readily have given emancipation. In the United
+Parliament for many years it was obstinately rejected, and if O'Connell
+had never arisen it would probably never have been granted unqualified
+by the veto. In 1828 when the question was brought forward in
+Parliament, sixty-one out of ninety-three Irish members, forty-five out
+of sixty-one Irish county members, voted in its favour. Year after year
+Grattan and Plunket brought forward the case of their fellow-countrymen
+with an eloquence and a perseverance worthy of their great cause; but
+year after year they were defeated. It was not till the great tribune
+had arisen, till he had moulded his co-religionists into one compact and
+threatening mass, and had brought the country to the verge of
+revolution, that the tardy boon was conceded. Eloquence and argument
+proved alike unavailing when unaccompanied by menace, and Catholic
+Emancipation was confessedly granted because to withhold it would be to
+produce a rebellion."[34]
+
+Many people will think that this is a sufficiently weighty condemnation
+of the Union, but what follows is a still graver reflection on that
+untoward measure.
+
+"In truth the harmonious co-operation of Ireland with England depends
+much less upon the framework of the institutions of the former country
+than upon the dispositions of its people and upon the classes who guide
+its political life. With a warm and loyal attachment to the connection
+pervading the nation, the largest amount of self-government might be
+safely conceded, and the most defective political arrangement might
+prove innocuous. This is the true cement of nations, and no change,
+however plausible in theory, can be really advantageous which
+contributes to diminish it. Theorists may argue that it would be better
+for Ireland to become in every respect a province of England; they may
+contend that a union of Legislatures, accompanied by a corresponding
+fusion of characters and identification of hopes, interests, and
+desires, would strengthen the empire; but as a matter of fact this was
+not what was effected in 1800. The measure of Pitt centralized, but it
+did not unite, or rather, by uniting the Legislatures it divided the
+nations. In a country where the sentiment of nationality was as intense
+as in any part of Europe, it destroyed the national Legislature contrary
+to the manifest wish of the people, and by means so corrupt,
+treacherous, and shameful that they are never likely to be forgotten. In
+a country where, owing to the religious difference, it was peculiarly
+necessary that a vigorous lay public opinion should be fostered to
+dilute or restrain the sectarian spirit, it suppressed the centre and
+organ of political life, directed the energies of the community into the
+channels of sectarianism, drove its humours inwards, and thus began a
+perversion of public opinion which has almost destroyed the elements of
+political progress. In a country where the people have always been
+singularly destitute of self-reliance, and at the same time eminently
+faithful to their leaders, it withdrew the guidance of affairs from the
+hands of the resident gentry, and, by breaking their power, prepared the
+ascendency of the demagogue or the rebel. In two plain ways it was
+dangerous to the connection: it incalculably increased the aggregate
+disloyalty of the people, and it destroyed the political supremacy of
+the class that is most attached to the connection. The Irish Parliament,
+with all its faults, was an eminently loyal body. The Irish people
+through the eighteenth century, in spite of great provocations, were on
+the whole a loyal people till the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and even
+then a few very moderate measures of reform might have reclaimed them.
+Burke, in his _Letters on a Regicide Peace_, when reviewing the elements
+of strength on which England could confide in her struggle with
+revolutionary France, placed in the very first rank the co-operation of
+Ireland. At the present day, it is to be feared that most impartial men
+would regard Ireland, in the event of a great European war, rather as a
+source of weakness than of strength. More than seventy years have passed
+since the boasted measure of Pitt, and it is unfortunately incontestable
+that the lower orders in Ireland are as hostile to the system of
+government under which they live as the Hungarian people have ever been
+to Austrian, or the Roman to Papal rule; that Irish disloyalty is
+multiplying enemies of England wherever the English tongue is spoken;
+and that the national sentiment runs so strongly that multitudes of
+Irish Catholics look back with deep affection to the Irish Parliament,
+although no Catholic could sit within its walls, and although it was
+only during the last seven years of its independent existence that
+Catholics could vote for its members. Among the opponents of the Union
+were many of the most loyal, as well as nearly all the ablest men in
+Ireland; and Lord Charlemont, who died shortly before the measure was
+consummated, summed up the feelings of many in the emphatic sentence
+with which he protested against it. 'It would more than any other
+measure,' he said, 'contribute to the separation of two countries the
+perpetual connection of which is one of the warmest wishes of my heart.'
+
+"In fact, the Union of 1800 was not only a great crime, but was also,
+like most crimes, a great blunder. The manner in which it was carried
+was not only morally scandalous; it also entirely vitiated it as a work
+of statesmanship. No great political measure can be rationally judged
+upon its abstract merits, and without considering the character and the
+wishes of the people for whom it is intended. It is now idle to discuss
+what might have been the effect of a Union if it had been carried before
+1782, when the Parliament was still unemancipated; if it had been the
+result of a spontaneous movement of public opinion; if it had been
+accompanied by the emancipation of the Catholics. Carried as it was
+prematurely, in defiance of the national sentiment of the people and of
+the protests of the unbribed talent of the country, it has deranged the
+whole course of political development, driven a large proportion of the
+people into sullen disloyalty, and almost destroyed healthy public
+opinion. In comparing the abundance of political talent in Ireland
+during the last century with the striking absence of it at present,
+something no doubt may be attributed to the absence of protection for
+literary property in Ireland in the former period, which may have
+directed an unusual portion of the national talent to politics, and
+something to the Colonial and Indian careers which have of late years
+been thrown open to competition; but when all due allowances have been
+made for these, the contrast is sufficiently impressive. Few impartial
+men can doubt that the tone of political life and the standard of
+political talent have been lowered, while sectarian animosity has been
+greatly increased, and the extent to which Fenian principles have
+permeated the people is a melancholy comment upon the prophesies that
+the Union would put an end to disloyalty in Ireland."[35]
+
+Mr. Lecky's views as to what ought to have been done in 1800 deserve to
+be set forth.
+
+"While, however, the Irish policy of Pitt appears to be both morally and
+politically deserving of almost unmitigated condemnation, I cannot agree
+with those who believe that the arrangement of 1782 could have been
+permanent. The Irish Parliament would doubtless have been in time
+reformed, but it would have soon found its situation intolerable.
+Imperial policy must necessarily have been settled by the Imperial
+Parliament, in which Ireland had no voice; and, unlike Canada or
+Australia, Ireland is profoundly affected by every change of Imperial
+policy. Connection with England was of overwhelming importance to the
+lesser country, while the tie uniting them would have been found
+degrading by one nation and inconvenient to the other. Under such
+circumstances a Union of some kind was inevitable. It was simply a
+question of time, and must have been demanded by Irish opinion. At the
+same time, it would not, I think, have been such a Union as that of
+1800. The conditions of Irish and English politics are so extremely
+different, and the reasons for preserving in Ireland a local centre of
+political life are so powerful, that it is probable a Federal Union
+would have been preferred. Under such a system the Irish Parliament
+would have continued to exist, but would have been restricted to purely
+local subjects, while an Imperial Parliament, in which Irish
+representatives sat, would have directed the policy of the empire."[36]
+
+
+MR. GOLDWIN SMITH.
+
+None of the recent opponents of Home Rule have written against that
+policy with more brilliance and epigrammatic keenness than Mr. Goldwin
+Smith. But no one has stated with more force the facts and
+considerations which, operating on men's mind for years past, have made
+the Liberal party Home Rulers now. His _coup d'oeil_ remains the most
+pointed indictment ever drawn from the historical annals of Ireland
+against the English methods of governing that country. Twenty years ago
+he anticipated the advice recently given by Mr. Gladstone. In 1867 he
+wrote:--
+
+"I have myself sought and found in the study of Irish history the
+explanation of the paradox, that a people with so many gifts, so
+amiable, naturally so submissive to rulers, and everywhere but in their
+own country industrious, are in their own country bywords of idleness,
+lawlessness, disaffection, and agrarian crime."[37] He explains the
+paradox thus: "But it is difficult to distinguish the faults of the
+Irish from their misfortunes. It has been well said of their past
+industrial character and history,--'We were reckless, ignorant,
+improvident, drunken, and idle. We were idle, for we had nothing to do;
+we were reckless, for we had no hope; we were ignorant, for learning was
+denied us; we were improvident, for we had no future; we were drunken,
+for we sought to forget our misery. That time has passed away for ever.'
+No part of this defence is probably more true than that which connects
+the drunkenness of the Irish people with their misery. Drunkenness is,
+generally speaking, the vice of despair; and it springs from the despair
+of the Irish peasant as rankly as from that of his English fellow. The
+sums of money which have lately been transmitted by Irish emigrants to
+their friends in Ireland seem a conclusive answer to much loose
+denunciation of the national character, both in a moral and an
+industrial point of view.... There seems no good reason for believing
+that the Irish Kelts are averse to labour, provided they be placed, as
+people of all races require to be placed, for two or three generations
+in circumstances favourable to industry."[38] He shows that the Irish
+have not been so placed. "Still more does justice require that allowance
+should be made on historical grounds for the failings of the Irish
+people. If they are wanting in industry, in regard for the rights of
+property, in reverence for the law, history furnishes a full explanation
+of their defects, without supposing in them any inherent depravity, or
+even any inherent weakness. They have never had the advantage of the
+training through which other nations have passed in their gradual rise
+from barbarism to civilization. The progress of the Irish people was
+arrested at almost a primitive stage, and a series of calamities,
+following close upon each other, have prevented it from ever fairly
+resuming its course. The pressure of overwhelming misery has now been
+reduced; government has become mild and just; the civilizing agency of
+education has been introduced; the upper classes are rapidly returning
+to their duty, and the natural effect is at once seen in the improved
+character of the people. Statesmen are bound to be well acquainted with
+the historical sources of the evil with which they have to deal,
+especially when those evils are of such a nature as, at first aspect, to
+imply depravity in a nation. There are still speakers and writers who
+seem to think that the Irish are incurably vicious, because the
+accumulated effects of so many centuries cannot be removed at once by a
+wave of the legislator's wand. Some still believe, or affect to believe,
+that the very air of the island is destructive of the characters and
+understandings of all who breathe it."[39]
+
+Elsewhere he adds, referring to the land system:
+
+"How many centuries of a widely different training have the English
+people gone through in order to acquire their boasted love of law."[40]
+
+Of the "training" through which the Irish went, he says--
+
+"The existing settlement of land in Ireland, whether dating from the
+confiscations of the Stuarts, or from those of Cromwell, rests on a
+proscription three or four times as long as that on which the settlement
+of land rests over a considerable part of France. It may, therefore, be
+considered as placed upon discussion in the estimation of all sane men;
+and, this being the case, it is safe to observe that no inherent want of
+respect for property is shown by the Irish people if a proprietorship
+which had its origin within historical memory in flagrant wrong is less
+sacred in their eyes than it would be if it had its origin in immemorial
+right."[41]
+
+The character which he gives of Irish landlordism deserves to be quoted:
+
+"The Cromwellian landowners soon lost their religious character, while
+they retained all the hardness of the fanatic and the feelings of
+Puritan conquerors towards a conquered Catholic people. 'I have eaten
+with them,' said one, 'drunk with them, fought with them; but I never
+prayed with them.' Their descendants became, probably, the very worst
+upper class with which a country was ever afflicted. The habits of the
+Irish gentry grew beyond measure brutal and reckless, and the coarseness
+of their debaucheries would have disgusted the crew of Comus. Their
+drunkenness, their blasphemy, their ferocious duelling, left the squires
+of England far behind. If there was a grotesque side to their vices
+which mingles laughter with our reprobation, this did not render their
+influence less pestilent to the community of which the motive of destiny
+had made them social chiefs. Fortunately, their recklessness was sure,
+in the end, to work, to a certain extent, its own cure; and in the
+background of their swinish and uproarious drinking-bouts, the
+Encumbered Estates Act rises to our view."[42]
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith deals with agrarian crime thus:
+
+"The atrocities perpetrated by the Whiteboys, especially in the earlier
+period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew somewhat less inhuman),
+are such as to make the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in
+speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be
+unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or
+to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the
+part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive
+at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian
+conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was
+very small. In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 crimes, 627 were Whiteboy,
+or agrarian, and even of the remainder, many, being crimes of violence,
+were probably committed from the same motive.
+
+"In plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered the Whiteboy
+code were to the people the organs of a wild law of social morality by
+which, on the whole, the interest of the peasant was protected. They
+were not regular tribunals; neither were the secret tribunals of Germany
+in the Middle Ages, the existence of which, and the submission of the
+people to their jurisdiction, implied the presence of much violence, but
+not of much depravity, considering the wildness of the times. The
+Whiteboys 'found in their favour already existing a general and settled
+hatred of the law among the great body of the peasantry.'[43] We have
+seen how much the law, and the ministers of the law, had done to deserve
+the peasant's love. We have seen, too, in what successive guises
+property had presented itself to his mind: first as open rapine; then as
+robbery carried on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code;
+finally as legalized and systematic oppression. Was it possible that he
+should have formed so affectionate a reverence either for law or
+property as would be proof against the pressure of starvation?"[44] "A
+people cannot be expected to love and reverence oppression because it is
+consigned to the statute-book, and called law."[45]
+
+These extracts are taken from _Irish History and Irish Character_, which
+was published in 1861. But in 1867 Mr. Goldwin Smith wrote a series of
+letters to the _Daily News_, which were republished in 1868 under the
+title of _The Irish Question_; and these letters form, perhaps, the most
+statesmanlike and far-seeing pronouncement that has ever been made on
+the Irish difficulty.
+
+In the preface Mr. Goldwin Smith begins:
+
+"The Irish legislation of the last forty years, notwithstanding the
+adoption of some remedial measures, has failed through the indifference
+of Parliament to the sentiments of Irishmen; and the harshness of
+English public opinion has embittered the effects on Irish feeling of
+the indifference of Parliament. Occasionally a serious effort has been
+made by an English statesman to induce Parliament to approach Irish
+questions in that spirit of sympathy, and with that anxious desire to be
+just, without which a Parliament in London cannot legislate wisely for
+Ireland. Such efforts have hitherto met with no response; is it too much
+to hope that it will be otherwise in the year now opening?"[46]
+
+The only comment I shall make on these words is: they were penned more
+than half a century after Mr. Pitt's Union, which was to shower down
+blessings on the Irish people.
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith's first letter was written on the 23rd of November,
+1867, the day of the execution of the Fenians Allen, Larkin, and
+O'Brien. He says--
+
+"There can be no doubt, I apprehend, that the Irish difficulty has
+entered on a new phase, and that Irish disaffection has, to repeat an
+expression which I heard used in Ireland, come fairly into a line with
+the other discontented nationalities of Europe. Active Fenianism
+probably pervades only the lowest class; passive sympathy, which the
+success of the movement would at once convert into active co-operation,
+extends, it is to be feared, a good deal higher.
+
+"England has ruin before her, unless she can hit on a remedy, and
+overcome any obstacles of class interest or of national pride which
+would prevent its application, the part of Russia in Poland, or of
+Austria in Italy--a part cruel, hateful, demoralizing, contrary to all
+our high principles and professions, and fraught with dangers to our own
+freedom. Our position will be worse than that of Russia in this respect,
+that, while her Poland is only a province, our Fenianism is an element
+pervading every city of the United Kingdom in which Irish abound, and
+allying itself with kindred misery, discontent, and disorder.
+Wretchedness, the result of misgovernment, has caused the Irish people
+to multiply with the recklessness of despair, and now here are their
+avenging hosts in the midst of us, here is the poison of their
+disaffection running through every member of our social frame. Not only
+so, but the same wretchedness has sent millions of emigrants to form an
+Irish nation in the United States, where the Irish are a great political
+power, swaying by their votes the councils of the American Republic, and
+in immediate contact with those Transatlantic possessions of England,
+the retention of which it is now patriotic to applaud, and will one day
+be patriotic to have dissuaded.
+
+" ... That Ireland is not at this moment, materially speaking, in a
+particularly suffering state, but, on the contrary, the farmers are
+rather prosperous, and wages, even when allowance is made for the rise
+in the price of provisions, considerably higher than they were, only
+adds to the significance of this widespread disaffection.
+
+"The Fenian movement is not religious, nor radically economical (though
+no doubt it has in it a socialistic element), but national, and the
+remedy for it must be one which cures national discontent. This is the
+great truth which the English people have to lay to heart."[47]
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith then dispels the notion that the Irish question is a
+religious one.
+
+"When Fenianism first appeared, the Orangemen, in accordance with their
+fixed idea, ascribed it to the priests. They were undeceived, I was
+told, by seeing a priest run away from the Fenians in fear of his
+life."[48]
+
+Neither was it a question of the land.
+
+"The land question, no doubt, lies nearer to the heart of the matter,
+and it is the great key to Irish history in the past; but I do not
+believe that even this is fundamental."
+
+He then states what is "fundamental."[49]
+
+"The real root of the disaffection which exhibits itself at present in
+the guise of Fenianism, and which has been suddenly kindled into flame
+by the arming of the Irish in the American civil war, but which existed
+before in a nameless and smouldering state, is, as I believe, the want
+of national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects of
+national reverence and attachment, and consequently of anything
+deserving to be called national life. The English Crown and Parliament
+the Irish have never learnt, nor have they had any chance of learning,
+to love, or to regard as national, notwithstanding the share which was
+given them, too late, in the representation. The greatness of England is
+nothing to them. Her history is nothing, or worse. The success of
+Irishmen in London consoles the Irish in Ireland no more than the
+success of Italian adventurers in foreign countries (which was very
+remarkable) consoled the Italian people. The drawing off of Irish
+talent, in fact, turns to an additional grievance in their minds. Dublin
+is a modern Tara, a metropolis from which the glory has departed; and
+the viceroyalty, though it pleases some of the tradesmen, fails
+altogether to satisfy the people. 'In Ireland we can make no appeal to
+patriotism, we can have no patriotic sentiments in our schoolbooks, no
+patriotic emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything
+patriotic is rebellious.' These were the words uttered in my hearing,
+not by a complaining demagogue, but by a desponding statesman. They
+seemed to me pregnant with fatal truths.
+
+"If the craving for national institutions, and the disaffection bred in
+this void of the Irish people's heart, seem to us irrational and even
+insane, in the absence of any more substantial grievance, we ought to
+ask ourselves what would become of our own patriotism if we had no
+national institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence,
+even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in intention, by
+a neighbouring people whom we regarded as aliens, and who, in fact,
+regarded us pretty much in the same light. Let us first judge ourselves
+fairly, and then judge the Irish, remembering always that they are more
+imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of national feeling
+and affection more than ourselves."[50]
+
+And all this was written sixty-seven years after the Union of 1800.
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith then deals with the subject of the Irish and Scotch
+unions much in the same way as Mr. Lecky.
+
+"The incorporation of the Scotch nation with the English, being
+conducted on the right principles by the great Whig statesman of Anne,
+has been perfectly successful. The attempt to incorporate the Irish
+nation with the English and Scotch, the success of which would have
+been, if possible, a still greater blessing, being conducted by very
+different people and on very different principles, has unhappily failed.
+What might have been the result if even the Hanoverian sovereigns had
+done the personal duty to their Irish kingdom which they have
+unfortunately neglected, it is now too late to inquire. The Irish Union
+has missed its port, and, in order to reach it, will have to tack again.
+We may hold down a dependency, of course, by force, in Russian and
+Austrian fashion; but force will never make the hearts of two nations
+one, especially when they are divided by the sea. Once get rid of this
+deadly international hatred, and there will be hope of real union in the
+future."[51]
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith finally proposes a "plan" by which the "deadly
+international hatred" might be got rid of, and a "real union" brought
+about. Here it is.
+
+"1. The residence of the Court at Dublin, not merely to gratify the
+popular love of royalty and its pageantries, which no man of sense
+desires to stimulate, but to assure the Irish people, in the only way
+possible as regards the mass of them, that the sovereign of the United
+Kingdom is really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for
+and honoured with the other subjects of the realm. This would also tend
+to make Dublin a real capital, and to gather and retain there a portion
+of the Irish talent which now seeks its fortune elsewhere.
+
+"2. An occasional session (say once in every three years) of the
+Imperial Parliament in Dublin, partly for the same purposes as the last
+proposal, but also because the circumstances of Ireland are likely to
+be, for some time at least, really peculiar, and the personal
+acquaintance of our legislators with them is the only sufficient
+security for good Irish legislation. There could be no serious
+difficulty in holding a short session in the Irish capital, where there
+is plenty of accommodation for both Houses.
+
+"3. A liberal measure of local self-government for Ireland. I would not
+vest the power in any single assembly for all Ireland, because Ulster is
+really a different country from the other provinces. I would give each
+province a council of its own, and empower that council to legislate
+(subject, of course, to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament) on all
+matters not essential to the political and legal unity of the empire, in
+which I would include local education. The provincial councils should of
+course be elective, and the register of electors might be the same as
+that of electors to the Imperial Parliament. In England itself the
+extension of local institutions, as political training schools for the
+masses, as checks upon the sweeping action of the great central
+assembly, and as the best organs of legislation in all matters requiring
+(as popular education, among others, does) adaptation to the
+circumstances of particular districts, would, I think, have formed a
+part of any statesmanlike revision of our political system. Here, also,
+much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing the
+present business of quarter sessions, other than the judicial business,
+together with such other matters as the central legislative might think
+fit to vest in local hands, to an assembly elected by the county."[52]
+
+Thus it will be seen that twenty years ago Mr. Goldwin Smith anticipated
+Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of provincial councils, and got a good way on
+the road to an Irish Parliament.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MR. DICEY.
+
+A fairer controversalist, or an abler supporter of the "paper Union,"
+than Mr. Dicey there is not; nevertheless no man has fired more
+effective shots into Mr. Pitt's unfortunate arrangement of 1800.
+
+How well has the "failure" of that arrangement been described in these
+pithy sentences--"Eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of
+the Treaty of Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do
+not yet form an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more
+wretched (for the whole European world has made progress, and Ireland
+with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness, and Irish disaffection to
+England is, if not deeper, more widespread than in 1800. An Act meant by
+its authors to be a source of the prosperity and concord which, though
+slowly, followed upon the Union with Scotland, has not made Ireland
+rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the
+feud between Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of
+Irish tenants, has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and
+has, therefore, not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment
+which can fairly be brought against the Act of Union."[53]
+
+What follows reflects honour on Mr. Dicey as an honest opponent who does
+not shrink from facts; but what a wholesale condemnation of the policy
+of the Imperial Parliament!
+
+"On one point alone (it may be urged) all men, of whatever party or of
+whatever nation, who have seriously studied the annals of Ireland are
+agreed--the history is a record of incessant failure on the part of the
+Government, and of incessant misery on the part of the people. On this
+matter, if on no other, De Beaumont, Froude, and Lecky are at one. As to
+the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may and do
+differ; that England, whether from her own fault or the fault of the
+Irish people, or from perversity of circumstances, has failed in Ireland
+of achieving the elementary results of good government is as certain as
+any fact of history or of experience. Every scheme has been tried in
+turn, and no scheme has succeeded or has even, it may be suggested,
+produced its natural effects. Oppression of the Catholics has increased
+the adherents and strengthened the hold of Catholicism. Protestant
+supremacy, while it lasted, did not lead even to Protestant contentment,
+and the one successful act of resistance to the English dominion was
+effected by a Protestant Parliament supported by an army of volunteers,
+led by a body of Protestant officers. The independence gained by a
+Protestant Parliament led, after eighteen years, to a rebellion so
+reckless and savage that it caused, if it did not justify, the
+destruction of the Parliament and the carrying of the Union. The Act of
+Union did not lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on
+the face of it (though the appearance, it must be admitted, was
+delusive) to be a copy of the law which bound England and Scotland into
+a common country inspired by common patriotism, produced conspiracy and
+agitation, and at last placed England and Ireland further apart,
+morally, than they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of
+Union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not combined with
+Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were emancipated, but emancipation,
+instead of producing loyalty, brought forth the cry for repeal. The
+Repeal movement ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the
+attempted rebellion in 1848. Suppressed rebellion begot Fenianism, to be
+followed in its turn by the agitation for Home Rule. The movement
+relies, it is said, and there is truth in the assertion, on
+constitutional methods for obtaining redress. But constitutional
+measures are supplemented by boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of
+dynamite. A century of reform has given us Mr. Parnell instead of
+Grattan, and it is more than possible that Mr. Parnell may be succeeded
+by leaders in whose eyes Mr. Davitt's policy may appear to be tainted
+with moderation. No doubt, in each case the failure of good measures
+admits, like every calamity in public or private life, of explanation,
+and after the event it is easy to see why, for example, the Poor Law,
+when extended to Ireland, did not produce even the good effects such as
+they are which in England are to be set against its numerous evils; or
+why an emigration of unparalleled proportions has diminished population
+without much diminishing poverty; why the disestablishment of the
+Anglican Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to
+England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts have not
+contented Irish farmers. It is easy enough, in short, and this without
+having any recourse to theory of race, and without attributing to
+Ireland either more or less of original sin than falls to the lot of
+humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship--and all
+statesmanship, it should be remembered, is imperfect--has failed in
+obtaining good results at all commensurate with its generally good
+intentions. Failure, however, is none the less failure because its
+causes admit of analysis. It is no defence to bankruptcy that an
+insolvent can, when brought before the Court, lucidly explain the errors
+which resulted in disastrous speculations. The failure of English
+statesmanship, explain it as you will, has produced the one last and
+greatest evil which misgovernment can cause. It has created hostility to
+the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work in Ireland
+because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the
+actions of the courts, are in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in
+full sympathy with law-breakers."[54]
+
+No Home Ruler has described the evils of English misrule in Ireland with
+such vigour as this.
+
+"Bad administration, religious persecution, above all, a thoroughly
+vicious land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping confiscations as to
+make it, at any rate, a plausible assertion that all land in Ireland has
+during the course of Irish history been confiscated at least thrice
+over, are admittedly some of the causes, if they do not constitute the
+whole cause, of the one immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy
+of England. This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the
+law of the land prevailing among large numbers of Irish people. The
+existence of this disaffection, whatever be the inference to be drawn
+from it, is undeniable. A series of so-called Coercion Acts, passed both
+before and since the Act of Union, give undeniable evidence, if evidence
+were wanted, of the ceaseless and, as it would appear, almost
+irrepressible resistance in Ireland offered by the people to the
+enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest inclination to underrate
+the lasting and formidable character of this opposition between opinion
+and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious
+and infinitely painful topic, question for a moment that the ultimate
+strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at the lowest the acquiescence,
+of the mass of the population. Judges, constables, and troops become
+almost powerless when the conscience of the people permanently opposes
+the execution of the law. Severity produces either no effect or bad
+effects; executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs; and
+jurymen and witnesses meet with the execration and often with the fate
+of criminals. On such a point it is best to take the opinion of a
+foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions from which no Englishman
+or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free.
+
+"'Quand vous en êtes arroês à ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie
+de regueurs tous vos efforts pour rétabler l'ordre et la paix seront
+inutiles. En vain, pour réprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez à
+votre aide toutes les sévérités du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez
+des lois cruelles pour arrêter le cours de révoltantes cruautés;
+vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre délit se rattachant à ces
+grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre impuissance, vous
+suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaries proclamerez des comtés entiers
+en état de suspicion légale, voilerez le principe de la liberté
+individuelle, créerez des cours martiales, des commissions
+extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur,
+multiplierez à l'excès les exécutions capitales.'"[55]
+
+The next passage is a trenchant condemnation of the "Union."
+
+"There exists in Europe no country so completely at unity with itself as
+Great Britain. Fifty years of reform have done their work, and have
+removed the discontents, the divisions, the disaffection, and the
+conspiracies which marked the first quarter, or the first half of this
+century. Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the
+force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community
+of interests. The distraction and the uncertainty of our political aims,
+the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise, in
+part at least, from the connection with Ireland. Neither Englishmen nor
+Irishmen are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for communities
+differing in historical associations and in political conceptions to
+keep step together in the path of progress. For other evils arising from
+the connection the blame must rest on English Statesmen. All the
+inherent vices of party government, all the weaknesses of the
+parliamentary system, all the evils arising from the perverse notion
+that reform ought always to be preceded by a period of lengthy and more
+than half factitious agitation met by equally factitious resistance,
+have been fostered and increased by the interaction of Irish and English
+politics. No one can believe that the inveterate habit of ruling one
+part of the United Kingdom on principles which no one would venture to
+apply to the government of any other part of it, can have produced
+anything but the most injurious effect on the stability of our
+Government and the character of our public men. The advocates of Home
+Rule find by far their strongest arguments for influencing English
+opinion, in the proofs which they produce that England, no less than
+Ireland, has suffered from a political arrangement under which legal
+union has failed to secure moral union. _These arguments, whatever their
+strength, are, however, it must be noted, more available to a
+Nationalist than to an advocate of federalism_."[56]
+
+The words which I have italicised are an expression of opinion; but
+nothing can alter the damning statement of fact--"legal union has failed
+to secure moral union." Nevertheless, Mr. Dicey advocates the
+maintenance of this legal union as it stands.
+
+"On the whole, then, it appears that, whatever changes or calamities the
+future may have in store, the maintenance of the Union is at this day
+the one sound policy for England to pursue. It is sound because it is
+expedient; it is sound because it is just."[57]
+
+
+I shall not discuss the question of Home Rule with the eminent writers
+whose works I have cited. It is enough that they demonstrate the failure
+of the Union. So convinced was Mr. Lecky, in 1871, of its failure, that
+he suggested a readjustment of the relations of the two countries on a
+federal basis;[58] and Mr. Goldwin Smith, in 1868, contended that the
+Irish difficulty could only be settled by the establishment of
+Provincial Councils, and an occasional session of the Imperial
+Parliament in Dublin. Mr. Dicey clings to the existing Union while
+demonstrating its failure, because he has persuaded himself that the
+only alternative is separation.
+
+Irishmen may be pardoned for acting on Mr. Dicey's facts, and
+disregarding his prophecies. The mass of Irishmen believe, with Grattan,
+that the ocean protests against separation as the sea protests against
+such a union as was attempted in 1800.[59]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 26: Omissions here and elsewhere are merely for purposes of
+space. In some places the omitted parts would strengthen the Irish case;
+in no place would they weaken it.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Lecky, _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, new edit.
+(1871), Introduction, pp. viii., xiv.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Lecky, _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, new edit.
+(1871), Introduction, pp. xiv., xv.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Lecky, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+vol. ii. pp. 59, 60.]
+
+[Footnote 30: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 33, 34.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 120-123.]
+
+[Footnote 32: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 125, 126.]
+
+[Footnote 33: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 34-37.]
+
+[Footnote 34: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 134-137.]
+
+[Footnote 35: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 192-195.]
+
+[Footnote 36: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 195, 196.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Goldwin Smith, _Three English Statesmen_, p. 274.]
+
+[Footnote 38: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 13, 14.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Ibid., p. 194.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Ibid., p. 142.]
+
+[Footnote 41: _Irish History and Irish Character_, p. 101.]
+
+[Footnote 42: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 139, 140.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Sir George Cornewall Lewis, _Irish Disturbances_, p. 97.]
+
+[Footnote 44: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 153-157.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Ibid., pp. 70, 71]
+
+[Footnote 46: _The Irish Question_, Preface, pp. iii., iv.]
+
+[Footnote 47: _The Irish Question_, pp. 3-5.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Ibid., p. 6.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Ibid., p. 7.]
+
+[Footnote 50: _The Irish Question_, pp. 7-9.]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Irish Question_, p. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 52: _The Irish Question_, pp. 16-18.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, p. 128.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 72-74.]
+
+[Footnote 55: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 92-94.--The
+foreigner is De Beaumont.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 151, 152.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Ibid., p. 288.]
+
+[Footnote 58: I hope I am not doing Mr. Lecky an injustice in this
+statement. I rely on the extract quoted from the _Leaders of Public
+Opinion in Ireland,_ at p. 176 of this volume; but see Introduction, p.
+xix.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Irish House of Commons, January 15th, 1800.]
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES.
+
+BY LORD THRING.[60]
+
+
+Ireland is a component member of the most complex political body the
+world has yet known; any inquiry, then, into the fitness of any
+particular form of government for that country involves an investigation
+of the structures of various composite nations, or nations made up of
+numerous political communities more or less differing from each other.
+From the examination of the nature of the common tie, and the
+circumstances which caused it to be adopted or imposed on the component
+peoples, we cannot but derive instruction, and be furnished with
+materials which will enable us to take a wide view of the question of
+Home Rule, and assist us in judging between the various remedies
+proposed for the cure of Irish disorders.
+
+The nature of the ties which bind, or have bound, the principal
+composite nations of the world together may be classified as--
+
+    1. Confederate unions.
+    2. Federal unions.
+    3. Imperial unions.
+
+A confederate union may be defined to mean an alliance between the
+governments of independent States, which agree to appoint a common
+superior authority having power to make peace and war and to demand
+contributions of men and money from the confederate States. Such
+superior authority has no power of enforcing its decrees except through
+the medium of the governments of the constituent States; or, in other
+words, in case of disobedience, by armed force.
+
+A federal union differs from a confederate union in the material fact
+that the common superior authority, instead of acting on the individual
+subjects of the constituent States through the medium of their
+respective governments, has a power, in respect of all matters within
+its jurisdiction, of enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding
+directly on the individual citizens.
+
+The distinguishing characteristics of an imperial union are, that it
+consists of an aggregate of communities, one of which is dominant, and
+that the component communities have been brought into association, not
+by arrangement between themselves, but by colonization, cession, and by
+other means emanating from the resources or power of the dominant
+community.
+
+The above-mentioned distinction between a Government having communities
+only for its subjects, and incapable of enforcing its orders by any
+other means than war, and a Government acting directly on individuals,
+must be constantly borne in mind, for in this lies the whole difference
+between a confederate and federal union; that is to say, between a
+confederacy which, in the case of the United States, lasted a few short
+years, and a federal union which, with the same people as subjects, has
+lasted nearly a century, and has stood the strain of the most terrible
+war of modern times.
+
+The material features of the Constitution of the United States have been
+explained in a previous article.[61] All that is necessary to call to
+mind here is, that the Government of the United States exercises a power
+of taxation throughout the whole Union by means of its own officers, and
+enforces its decrees through the medium of its own Courts. A Supreme
+Court has also been established, which has power to adjudicate on the
+constitutionality of all laws passed by the Legislature of the United
+States, or of any State, and to decide on all international questions.
+
+Switzerland was till 1848 an example of a confederate union or league of
+semi-independent States, which, unlike other confederacies, had existed
+with partial interruptions for centuries. This unusual vitality is
+attributed by Mill[62] to the circumstance that the confederate
+government felt its weakness so strongly that it hardly ever attempted
+to exercise any real authority. Its present government, finally settled
+in 1874, but based on fundamental laws passed in 1848, is a federal
+union formed on the pattern of the American Constitution. It consists of
+a federal assembly comprising two Chambers--the Upper Chamber composed
+of forty-four members chosen by the twenty-two cantons, two for each
+canton; the Lower consisting of 145 members chosen by direct election at
+the rate of one deputy for every 20,000 persons. The chief executive
+authority is deputed to a federal council consisting of seven members
+elected for three years by the federal assembly, and having at their
+head a president and vice-president, who are the first magistrates of
+the republic. There is also a federal tribunal, having similar functions
+to those of the supreme court of the United States of America,
+consisting of nine members elected for six years by the federal
+assembly.
+
+The Empire of Germany is a federal union, differing from the United
+States and Switzerland in having an hereditary emperor as its head. It
+comprises twenty-six States, who have "formed an eternal union for the
+protection of the realm, and the care of the welfare of the German
+people."[63] The King of Prussia, under the title of German Emperor,
+represents the empire in all its relations to foreign nations, and has
+the power of making peace and war, but if the war be more than a
+defensive war he must have the assent of the Upper House. The
+legislative body of the empire consists of two Houses--the Upper, called
+the Bundesrath, representing the several component States in different
+proportions according to their relative importance; the lower, the
+Reichstag, elected by the voters in 397 electoral districts, which are
+distributed amongst the constituent States in unequal numbers, regard
+being had to the population and circumstances of each State.
+
+The Austro-Hungarian Empire is a federal union, differing alike in its
+origin and construction from the federal unions above mentioned. In the
+beginning Austria and Hungary were independent countries--Austria a
+despotism, Hungary a constitutional monarchy, with ancient laws and
+customs dating back to the foundation of the kingdom in 895. In the
+sixteenth century the supreme power in both countries--that is to say,
+the despotic monarchy in Austria and the constitutional monarchy in
+Hungary--became vested in the same person; as might have been
+anticipated, the union was not a happy one. If we dip into Heeren's
+_Political System of Europe_ at intervals selected almost at random, the
+following notices will be found in relation to Austria and
+Hungary:--Between 1671 and 1700 "political unity in the Austrian
+monarchy was to have been enforced especially in the principal country
+(Hungary), for this was regarded as the sole method of establishing
+power; the consequence was an almost perpetual revolutionary state of
+affairs."[64] Again, in the next chapter, commenting on the period
+between 1740 and 1786: "Hungary, in fact the chief, was treated like a
+conquered province; subjected to the most oppressive commercial
+restraints, it was regarded as a colony from which Austria exacted what
+she could for her own advantage. The injurious consequences of this
+internal discord are evident." Coming to modern times we find that
+oppression followed oppression with sickening monotony, and that at last
+the determination of Austria to stamp out the Constitution in Hungary
+gave rise to the insurrection of 1849, which Austria suppressed with the
+assistance of Russia, and as a penalty declared the Hungarian
+Constitution to be forfeited, and thereupon Hungary was incorporated
+with Austria, as Ireland was incorporated with Great Britain in 1800.
+Both events were the consequences of unsuccessful rebellions; but the
+junction which, in the case of Hungary, was enforced by the sword, was
+in Ireland more smoothly carried into effect by corruption. Hungary,
+sullen and discontented, waited for Austria's calamity as her
+opportunity, and it came after the battle of Sadowa. Austria had just
+emerged from a fearful conflict, and Count Beust[65] felt that unless
+some resolute effort was made to meet the views of the constitutional
+party in Hungary, the dismemberment of the empire must be the result.
+Now, what was the course he took? Was it a tightening of the bonds
+between Austria and Hungary? On the contrary, to maintain the unity of
+the empire he dissolved its union and restored to Hungary its ancient
+constitutional privileges. Austria and Hungary each had its own
+Parliament for local purposes. To manage the imperial concerns of peace
+and war, and the foreign relations, a controlling body, called the
+Delegations, was established, consisting of 120 members, of whom half
+represent and are chosen by the Legislature of Austria, and the other
+half by that of Hungary; the Upper House of each country returning
+twenty members, and the Lower House forty.[66] Ordinarily the delegates
+sit and vote in two Chambers, but if they disagree the two branches
+must meet together and give their final vote without debate, which is
+binding on the whole empire.[67]
+
+The question arises, What is the magnetic influence which induces
+communities of men to combine together in federal unions? Undoubtedly it
+is the feeling of nationality; and what is nationality? Mr. Mill
+says,[68] "a portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality
+if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not
+exist between them and any others; which make them co-operate with each
+other more willingly than other people; desire to be under the same
+government, and desire that it should be a government by themselves or a
+portion of themselves exclusively." He then proceeds to state that the
+feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes.
+Sometimes it is the identity of race and descent; community of language
+and community of religion greatly contribute to it; geographical limits
+are one of its causes; but the strongest of all is identity of political
+antecedents: the possession of a national history and consequent
+community of recollections--collective pride and humiliation, pleasure
+and regret--connected with the same incidents in the past.
+
+The only point to be noted further in reference to the foregoing federal
+unions, is that the same feeling of nationality which, in the United
+States, Switzerland, and the German Empire, produced a closer legal bond
+of union, in the case of Austria-Hungary operated to dissolve the
+amalgamation formed in 1849 of the two States, and to produce a federal
+union of States in place of a single State.
+
+One conclusion seems to follow irresistibly from any review of the
+construction of the various States above described: that the stability
+of a nation bears no relation whatever to the legal compactness or
+homogeneity of its component parts. Russia and France, the most compact
+political societies in Europe, do not, to say the least, rest on a
+firmer basis than Germany and Switzerland, the inhabitants of which are
+subjected to the obligations of a double nationality. Above all, no
+European nation, except Great Britain, can for a moment bear comparison
+with the United States in respect of the devotion of its people to their
+Constitution.
+
+An imperial union, though resembling somewhat in outward form a federal
+union, differs altogether from it both in principle and origin. Its
+essential characteristic is that one community is absolutely dominant
+while all the others are subordinate. In the case of a federal union
+independent States have agreed to resign a portion of their powers to a
+central Government for the sake of securing the common safety. In an
+imperial union the dominant or imperial State delegates to each
+constituent member of the union such a portion of local government as
+the dominant State considers the subordinate member entitled to,
+consistently with the integrity of the empire. The British Empire
+furnishes the best example of an imperial union now existing in the
+world. Her Majesty, as common head, is the one link which binds the
+empire together and connects with each other every constituent member.
+The Indian Empire and certain military dependencies require no further
+notice in these pages; but a summary of our various forms of colonial
+government is required to complete our knowledge of the forms of Home
+Rule possibly applicable to Ireland.
+
+The colonies, in relation to their forms of government, may be
+classified as follows:--
+
+I. Crown colonies, in which laws may be made by the Governor alone, or
+with the concurrence of a Council nominated by the Crown.
+
+2. Colonies possessing representative institutions, but not responsible
+government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, but the
+Home Government retains the control of the executive.
+
+3. Colonies possessing representative institutions and responsible
+government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, and the
+Home Government has no control over any public officer except the
+Governor.
+
+The British Colonial Governments thus present an absolute gradation of
+rule; beginning with absolute despotism and ending with almost absolute
+legal independence, except in so far as a veto on legislation and the
+presence of a Governor named by the Crown mark the dependence of the
+colony on the mother country.
+
+It is to be remembered, moreover, that the colonies which have received
+this complete local freedom are the great colonies of the earth--nations
+themselves possessing territories as large or larger than any European
+State--namely, Canada, the Cape, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland,
+South Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania. And this change from dependence
+to freedom has been effected with the good-will both of the mother
+country and the colony, and without it being imputed to the colonists,
+when desiring a larger measure of self-government, that they were
+separatists, anarchists, or revolutionists.
+
+Such are the general principles of colonial government, but one colony
+requires special mention, from the circumstance of its Constitution
+having been put forward as a model for Ireland; this is the Dominion of
+Canada. The Government of Canada is, in effect, a subordinate federal
+union; that is to say, it possesses a central Legislature, having the
+largest possible powers of local self-government consistent with the
+supremacy of the empire, with seven inferior provincial Governments,
+exercising powers greater than those of an English county, but not so
+great as those of an American State. The advantage of such a form of
+government is that, without weakening the supremacy of the empire or of
+the central local power, it admits of considerable diversities being
+made in the details of provincial government, where local peculiarities
+and antecedents render it undesirable to make a more complete
+assimilation of the Governments of the various provinces.
+
+Materials have now been collected which will enable the reader to judge
+of the expediency or inexpediency of the course taken by Mr. Gladstone's
+Government in dealing with Ireland. Three alternatives were open to
+them--
+
+    1. To let matters alone.
+    2. To pass a Coercion Bill.
+    3. To change the government of Ireland, and at
+    the same time to pass a Land Bill.
+
+The two last measures are combined under the head of one alternative, as
+it will be shown in the sequel that no effective Land Bill can be passed
+without granting Home Rule in Ireland.
+
+Now, the short answer to the first alternative is, that no party in the
+State--Conservative, Whig, Radical, Unionist, Home Ruler,
+Parnellite--thought it possible to leave things alone. That something
+must be done was universally admitted.
+
+The second alternative has found favour with the present Government, and
+certainly is a better example of the triumph of hope over experience,
+than even the proverbial second marriage.
+
+Eighty-six years have elapsed since the Union. During the first
+thirty-two years only eleven years, and during the last fifty-four years
+only two years have been free from special repressive legislation; yet
+the agitation for repeal of the Union, and general discontent, are more
+violent in 1887 than in any one of the eighty-six previous years. In
+the name of common-sense, is there any reason for supposing that the
+Coercion Bill of 1887 will have a better or more enduring effect than
+its numerous predecessors? The _primâ facie_ case is at all events in
+favour of the contention that, when so many trials of a certain remedy
+have failed, it would be better not to try the same remedy again, but to
+have recourse to some other medicine. What, then, was the position of
+Mr. Gladstone's Government at the close of the election of 1885? What
+were the considerations presented to them as supreme supervisors and
+guardians of the British Empire? They found that vast colonial empire
+tranquil and loyal beyond previous expectation--the greater colonies
+satisfied with their existing position; the lesser expecting that as
+they grew up to manhood they would be treated as men, and emancipated
+from childish restraints. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were
+contented with their sturdy dependent independence, loyal to the
+backbone. One member only stood aloof, sulky and dissatisfied, and
+though in law integrally united with the dominant community, practically
+was dissociated from it by forming within Parliament (the controlling
+body of the whole) a separate section, of which the whole aim was to
+fetter the action of the entire supreme body in order to bring to an
+external severance the practical disunion which existed between that
+member and Great Britain. This member--Ireland--as compared with other
+parts of the empire, was small and insignificant; measured against Great
+Britain, its population was five millions to thirty-one millions, and
+its estimated capital was only one twenty-fourth part of the capital of
+the United Kingdom. Measured against Australia, its trade with Great
+Britain was almost insignificant. Its importance arose from the force of
+public opinion in Great Britain, which deemed England pledged to protect
+the party in Ireland which desired the Union to be maintained, and from
+the power of obstructing English legislation through the medium of the
+Irish contingent, willing and ready on every occasion to intervene in
+English debates. The first step to be taken obviously was to find out
+what the great majority of Irish members wanted. The answer was, that
+they would be contented to quit the British Parliament on having a
+Parliament established on College Green, with full powers of local
+government, and that they would accept on behalf of their country a
+certain fixed annual sum to be paid to the Imperial Exchequer, on
+condition that such sum should not be increased without the consent of
+the Irish representatives. Here there were two great points gained
+without any sacrifice of principle. Ireland could not be said to be
+taxed without representation when her representatives agreed to a
+certain fixed sum to be paid till altered with their consent; while at
+the same time all risk of obstruction to English legislation by Irish
+means was removed by the proposal that the Irish representatives should
+exercise local powers in Dublin instead of imperial powers at
+Westminster.
+
+On the basis of the above arrangement the Bill of Mr. Gladstone was
+founded. Absolute local autonomy was conferred on Ireland; the assent of
+the Irish members to quit the Imperial Parliament was accepted; and the
+Bill provided that after a certain day the representative Irish peers
+should cease to sit in the House of Lords, and the Irish members vacate
+their places in the House of Commons. Provisions were then made for the
+absorption in the Irish Legislative Body of both the Irish
+representative peers and Irish members.
+
+The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament was maintained by an
+express provision excepting from any interference on the part of Irish
+Legislature all imperial powers, and declaring any enactment void which
+infringed that provision; further, an enactment was inserted for the
+purpose of securing to the English Legislature in the last resource the
+absolute power to make any law for the government of Ireland, and
+therefore to repeal, or suspend, the Irish Constitution.
+
+Technically these reservations of supremacy to the English Legislature
+were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of constitutional law that a
+sovereign Legislature, such as the Queen and two Houses of Parliament in
+England, cannot bind their successors, and consequently can repeal or
+alter any law, however fundamental, and annul any restrictions on
+alteration, however strongly expressed. Practically they were never
+likely to be called into operation, as it is the custom of Parliament to
+adhere, under all but the most extraordinary and unforeseen
+circumstances, to any compact made by Act of Parliament between itself
+and any subordinate legislative body. The Irish Legislature was
+subjected to the same controlling power which has for centuries been
+applied to prevent any excess of jurisdiction in our Colonial
+Legislatures, by a direction that an appeal as to the constitutionality
+of any laws which they might pass should lie to the Judicial Committee
+of the Privy Council. This supremacy of the imperial judicial power over
+the action of the Colonial Legislatures was a system which the founders
+of the American Constitution copied in the establishment of their
+supreme Court, and thereby secured for that legislative system a
+stability which has defied the assaults of faction and the strain of
+civil war.
+
+The Executive Government of Ireland was continued in her Majesty, and
+was to be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on her behalf, by the aid of
+such officers and such Council as her Majesty might from time to time
+see fit. The initiative power of recommending taxation was also vested
+in the Queen, and delegated to the Lord Lieutenant. These clauses are
+co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local
+powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers
+to the Imperial Legislature. The Governor is an imperial officer, and
+will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny,
+and to veto any Bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the
+other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided
+by the advice of the Irish Executive Council. The system is self-acting.
+The Governor, for local purposes, must have a Council which is in
+harmony with the Legislative Body. If the Governor and a Council,
+supported by the Legislative Body, do not agree, the Governor must give
+way, unless he can, by dismissing his Council, and dissolving the
+Legislative Body, obtain both a Council and a Legislative Body which
+will support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case is
+different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and in the
+last resort a determination of the Executive Council, backed by the
+Legislative Body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act of
+rebellion on the part of the Irish people, and be dealt with
+accordingly.
+
+In acceding to the claims of the National Party for Home Rule in Ireland
+another question had to be considered: the demands of the English
+garrison, as it is called--or, in plain words, of the class of Irish
+landlords--for protection. They urged that to grant Home Rule in Ireland
+would be to hand them over to their enemies, their tenants, and to lead
+to an immediate, or to all events a proximate, confiscation of their
+properties. Without admitting the truth of these apprehensions to the
+full extent, or indeed to any great extent, it was undoubtedly felt by
+the framers of the Home Rule Bill that a moral obligation rested on the
+Imperial Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations
+attending the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a
+question so fraught with danger, so involved in difficulty, to be
+determined by the Irish Government on its first entry on official
+existence. Hence the Land Bill, the scheme of which was to frame a
+system under which the tenants, by being made owners of the soil, should
+become interested as a class in the maintenance of social order, while
+the landlords should be enabled to rid themselves on fair terms of their
+estates, in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for
+pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the
+responsibilities of ownership. Of the land scheme brought into
+Parliament in 1886, it need only here be said that it proposed to lend
+the Irish Government 3 per cent. stock at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, the
+Irish Government undertaking to purchase, from any Irish landlord
+desirous of selling, his estate at (as a general rule) twenty years'
+purchase on the net rental. The money thus disbursed by the Irish
+Government was repaid to them by an annuity, payable by the tenant for
+forty-nine years, of 4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times
+the gross rental; the result being that, were the Bill passed into law,
+the tenant would become immediate owner of the land, subject to the
+payment of an annuity considerably less than the previous rent--that the
+Irish Government would make a considerable profit on the transaction,
+inasmuch as it would receive from the tenant interest calculated on the
+basis of the _gross_ rental, whilst it would pay to the English
+Government interest calculated on the basis of the _net_ rental--and
+that the English Government would sustain no loss if the interest were
+duly received by them.
+
+The effect of such a plan appears almost magical: Ireland is transformed
+at one stroke from a nation of landlords into a nation of peasant
+proprietors--apparently without loss to any one, and with gain to
+everybody concerned, except the British Government, who neither gain nor
+lose in the matter. The practicability, however, of such a scheme
+depends altogether on the security against loss afforded to the British
+tax-payer, for he is industrious and heavily burdened, and cannot be
+expected to assent to any plan which will land him in any appreciable
+loss. Here it is that the plan of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill differs from
+all other previous plans. Act after Act has been passed enabling the
+tenant to borrow money from the British Government on the security of
+the holding, for the purpose of enabling him to purchase the fee-simple.
+In such transactions the British Government becomes the mortgagee, and
+can only recover its money, if default is made in payment, by ejecting
+the tenant and becoming the landlord. In proportion, then, as any
+existing purchase Act succeeds, in the same proportion the risk of the
+British taxpayer increases. He is ever placed in the most invidious of
+all lights; instead of posing as the generous benefactor who holds forth
+his hand to rescue the landlord and tenant from an intolerable position,
+he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the still more
+hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant of his holding, is
+seeking to introduce another man into property which really belongs to
+the ejected tenant. Such a position may be endurable when the number of
+purchasing tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform
+in Ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable
+difference in the relations of landlord and tenant; still more, if it
+become general. Now, what is the remedy of such a state of things?
+Surely to interpose the Irish Government between the Irish debtor and
+his English creditor, and to provide that the Irish revenues in bulk,
+not the individual holdings of each tenant, shall be the security for
+the English creditor. This was the scheme embodied in the Land Act of
+1886. The punctual payment of all money due from the Government of
+Ireland to the Government of Great Britain was to have been secured by
+the continuance in the hands of the British Government of the Excise and
+Customs duties, and by the appointment of an Imperial Receiver-General,
+assisted by subordinate officers, and protected by an Imperial Court.
+This officer would have received not only all the imperial taxes, but
+also the local taxes; and it would have been his duty to satisfy the
+claims of the British Government before he allowed any sum to pass into
+the Irish Exchequer. In effect, the British Government, in relation to
+the levying of imperial taxes, would have stood in the same relation to
+Ireland as Congress does to the United States in respect to the levying
+of federal taxes. The fiscal unity of Great Britain and Ireland would
+have been in this way secured, and the British Government protected
+against any loss of interest for the large sums to be expended in
+carrying into effect in Ireland any agrarian reform worthy of the name.
+
+The Irish Bills of 1886, as above represented, had at least three
+recommendations:
+
+1. They created a state of things in Ireland under which it was possible
+to make a complete agrarian reform without exposing the English
+Exchequer to any appreciable risk.
+
+2. They enabled the Irish to govern themselves as respects local
+matters, while preserving intact the supremacy of the British Parliament
+and the integrity of the Empire.
+
+3. They enabled the British Parliament to govern the British Empire
+without any obstructive Irish interference.
+
+To the first of these propositions no attempt at an answer has been
+made. The Land Bill was never considered on its merits; indeed, was
+never practically discussed, but was at once swept into oblivion by the
+wave which overwhelmed the Home Rule Bill.
+
+The contention against the second proposition was concerned in proving
+that the supremacy of the British Parliament was not maintained: the
+practical answer to this objection has been given above. Pushed to its
+utmost, it could only amount to proof that an amendment ought to have
+been introduced in Committee, declaring, in words better selected than
+those introduced for that purpose in the Bill, that nothing in the Act
+should affect the supremacy of the British Parliament. In short, the
+whole discussion here necessarily resolved itself into a mere verbal
+squabble as to the construction of a clause in a Bill not yet in
+Committee, and had no bottom or substance.
+
+It was also urged that the concession of self-government to Ireland was
+but another mode of handing over the Loyalist party--or, as it is
+sometimes called, the English garrison--to the tender mercies of the
+Parnellites. The reply to this would seem to be, that as respects
+property the Land Bill effectually prevented any interference of the
+Irish Parliament with the land; nay, more, enabled any Irishman desirous
+of turning his land into money to do so on the most advantageous terms
+that ever had been--and with a falling market it may be confidently
+prophesied ever can be--offered to the Irish landlord; while as respect
+life and liberty, were it possible that they should be endangered, it
+was the duty of the imperial officer, the Lord Lieutenant, to take means
+for the preservation of peace and good order; and behind him, to enforce
+his behests, stand the strong battalions who, to our sorrow be it
+spoken, have so often been called upon to put down disturbance and
+anarchy in Ireland.
+
+Competing plans have been put forward, with more or less detail, for
+governing Ireland. The suggestion that Ireland should be governed as a
+_Crown_ colony need only be mentioned to be rejected. It means in
+effect, that Ireland should sink from the rank of an equal or
+independent member of the British Empire to the grade of the most
+dependent of her colonies, and should be governed despotically by
+English officials, without representation in the English Parliament or
+any machinery of local self-government. Another proposal has been to
+give four provincial Governments to Ireland, limiting their powers to
+local rating, education, and legislation in respect of matters which
+form the subjects of private Bill legislation at present; in fact, to
+place them somewhat on the footing of the provinces of Canada, while
+reserving to the English Parliament the powers vested in the Dominion of
+Canada. Such a scheme would seem adapted to whet the appetite of the
+Irish for nationality, without supplying them with any portion of the
+real article. It would supply no basis on which a system of agrarian
+reform could be founded, as it would be impossible to leave the
+determination of a local question, which is a unit in its dangers and
+its difficulties, to four different Legislatures; above all, the hinge
+on which the question turns--the sufficiency of the security for the
+British taxpayer--could not be afforded by provincial resources. Indeed,
+no alternative for the Land Bill of 1886 has been suggested which does
+not err in one of the following points: either it pledges English credit
+on insufficient security, or it requires the landowners to accept Irish
+debentures or some form of Irish paper money at par; in other words, it
+makes English taxes a fund for relieving Irish landlords, or else it
+compels the Irish landowner, if he sells at all, to sell at an
+inadequate price. Before parting with Canada, it may be worth while
+noticing that another, and more feasible, alternative is to imitate more
+closely the Canadian Constitution, and to vest the central or Dominion
+powers in a central Legislature in Dublin, parcelling out the provincial
+powers, as they have been called, amongst several provincial
+Legislatures. This scheme might be made available as a means of
+protecting Ulster from the supposed danger of undue interference from
+the Central Government, and for making, possibly, other diversities in
+the local administration of various parts of Ireland in order to meet
+special local exigencies.
+
+A leading writer among the dissentient Liberals has intimated that one
+of two forms of representative colonial government might be imposed on
+Ireland--either the form in which the executive is conducted by
+colonial officials, or the form of the great irresponsible colonies. The
+first of these forms is open to the objection, that it perpetuates those
+struggles between English executive measures and Irish opinion which has
+made Ireland for centuries ungovernable, and led to the establishment of
+the union and destruction of Irish independence in 1800; the second
+proposal would destroy the fiscal unity of the empire--leave the
+agrarian feud unextinguished, and aggravate the objections which have
+been urged against the Home Rule Bill of 1886. A question still remains,
+in relation to the _form_ of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, which would not
+have deserved attention but for the prominence given to it in some of
+the discussions upon the subject. The Bill of 1886 provides "that the
+Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good government of
+Ireland," but subjects their power to numerous exceptions and
+restrictions. The Act establishing the Dominion of Canada enumerates
+various matters in respect of which the Legislature of Canada is to have
+exclusive power, but prefaces the enumeration with a clause "that the
+Dominion Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good
+government of Canada in relation to all matters not within the
+jurisdiction of the provincial Legislatures, although such matters may
+not be specially mentioned." In effect, therefore, the difference
+between the Irish Bill and the Canadian Act is one of expression and not
+of substance, and, although the Bill is more accurate in its form, it
+would scarcely be worth while to insist on legislating by exception
+instead of by enumeration if, by the substitution of the latter form for
+the former, any material opposition would be conciliated.
+
+What, then, are the conclusions intended to be drawn from the foregoing
+premises?
+
+1. That coercion is played out, and can no longer be regarded as a
+remedy for the evils of Irish misrule.
+
+2. That some alternative must be found, and that the only alternative
+within the range of practical politics is some form of Home Rule.
+
+3. That there is no reason for thinking that the grant of Home Rule to
+Ireland--a member only, and not one of the most important members, of
+the British Empire--will in any way dismember, or even in the slightest
+degree risk the dismemberment of the Empire.
+
+4. That Home Rule presupposes and admits the supremacy of the British
+Parliament.
+
+5. That theory is in favour of Home Rule, as the nationality of Ireland
+is distinct, and justifies a desire for local independence; while the
+establishment of Home Rule is a necessary condition to the effectual
+removal of agrarian disturbances in Ireland.
+
+6. That precedent is in favour of granting Home Rule to Ireland--_e.g._
+the success of the new Constitution in Austria-Hungary, and the happy
+effects resulting from the establishment of the Dominion of Canada.
+
+7. That the particular form of Home Rule granted is comparatively
+immaterial.
+
+8. That the Home Rule Bill of 1886 may readily be amended in such a
+manner as to satisfy all real and unpartisan objectors.
+
+9. That the Land Bill of 1886 is the best that has ever been devised,
+having regard to the advantages offered to the new Irish Government, the
+landlord, and the tenant.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 60: Reprinted by permission, with certain omissions, from the
+_Contemporary Review_, August, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 61: "Home Rule and Imperial Unity:" _Contemporary Review_,
+March, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Mill on _Representative Government_, p. 310.]
+
+[Footnote 63: See _Statesman's Year-Book_: Switzerland and Germany.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Heeren's _Political System of Europe_, p. 152.]
+
+[Footnote 65: _Memoirs of Count Beust_, vol. i., Introduction, p.
+xliii.]
+
+[Footnote 66: _Statesman's Year-Book._]
+
+[Footnote 67: The Emperor of Austria is the head of the empire, with the
+title of King in Hungary. Austria-Hungary is treated as a federal, not
+as an imperial union, on the ground that Austria was never rightfully a
+dominant community over Hungary.]
+
+[Footnote 68: _Representative Government_, p. 295.]
+
+
+
+
+THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION[69]
+
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+
+For half a century or more no question of English domestic politics has
+excited so much interest outside England as that question of resettling
+her relations with Ireland, which was fought over in the last
+Parliament, and still confronts the Parliament that has lately been
+elected. Apart from its dramatic interest, apart from its influence on
+the fortune of parties, and its effect on the imperial position of Great
+Britain, it involves so many large principles of statesmanship, and
+raises so many delicate points of constitutional law, as to deserve the
+study of philosophical thinkers no less than of practical politicians in
+every free country.
+
+The circumstances which led to the introduction of the Government of
+Ireland Bill, in April, 1886, are familiar to Americans as well as
+Englishmen. Ever since the crowns and parliaments of Great Britain and
+Ireland were united, in A.D. 1800, there has been in Ireland a party
+which protested against that union as fraudulently obtained and
+inexpedient in itself. For many years this party, led by Daniel
+O'Connell, maintained an agitation for Repeal. After his death a more
+extreme section, which sought the complete independence of Ireland,
+raised the insurrection of 1848, and subsequently, under the guidance of
+other hands, formed the Fenian conspiracy, whose projected insurrection
+was nipped in the bud in 1867, though the conspiracy continued to menace
+the Government and the tranquillity of the island. In 1872 the Home Rule
+party was formed, demanding, not the Repeal of the Union, but the
+creation of an Irish Legislature, and the agitation, conducted in
+Parliament in a more systematic and persistent way than heretofore, took
+also a legitimate constitutional form. To this demand English and Scotch
+opinion was at first almost unanimously opposed. At the General Election
+of 1880, which, however, turned mainly on the foreign policy of Lord
+Beaconsfield's Government, not more than three or four members were
+returned by constituencies in Great Britain who professed to consider
+Home Rule as even an open question. All through the Parliament, which
+sat from 1880 till 1885, the Nationalist party, led by Mr. Parnell, and
+including at first less than half, ultimately about half, of the Irish
+members, was in constant and generally bitter opposition to the
+Government of Mr. Gladstone. But during these five years a steady,
+although silent and often unconscious, process of change was passing in
+the minds of English and Scotch members, especially Liberal members, due
+to their growing sense of the mistakes which Parliament committed in
+handling Irish questions, and of the hopelessness of the efforts which
+the Executive was making to pacify the country on the old methods. The
+adoption of a Home Rule policy by one of the great English parties was,
+therefore, not so sudden a change as it seemed. The process had been
+going on for years, though in its earlier stages it was so gradual and
+so unwelcome as to be faintly felt and reluctantly admitted by the minds
+that were undergoing it. In the spring of 1886 the question could be no
+longer evaded or postponed. It was necessary to choose between one of
+two courses; the refusal of the demand for self-government, coupled with
+the introduction of a severe Coercion Bill, or the concession of it by
+the introduction of a Home Rule Bill. There were some few who suggested,
+as a third course, the granting of a limited measure of local
+institutions, such as county boards; but most people felt, as did Mr.
+Gladstone's Ministry, that this plan would have had most of the dangers
+and few of the advantages of either of the two others.
+
+How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into the House of Commons
+on April 8th, amid circumstances of curiosity and excitement
+unparalleled since 1832; how, after debates of almost unprecedented
+length, it was defeated in June, by a majority of thirty; how the policy
+it embodied was brought before the country at the General Election, and
+failed to win approval--all this is too well known to need
+recapitulation here. But the causes of the disaster have not been well
+understood, for it is only now--now, when the smoke of the battle has
+cleared away from the field--that these causes have begun to stand
+revealed in their true proportions.
+
+Besides some circumstances attending the production of the Bill, to
+which I shall refer presently, and which told heavily against it, there
+were three feelings which worked upon men's minds, disposing them to
+reject it.
+
+The first of these was dislike and fear of the Irish Nationalist
+members. In the previous House of Commons this party had been uniformly
+and bitterly hostile to the Liberal Government. Measures intended for
+the good of Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been ungraciously
+received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no thanks were
+due--inadequate concessions, which must be made the starting-point for
+fresh demands. Obstruction had been freely practised to defeat not only
+bills restraining the liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other
+measures. Some few members of the Irish party had systematically sought
+to delay all English and Scotch legislation, and, in fact, to bring the
+work of Parliament to a dead stop. Much violent language had been used,
+even where the provocation was slight. The outbreaks of crime which had
+repeatedly occurred in Ireland had been, not, indeed, defended, but so
+often passed over in silence by Nationalist speakers, that English
+opinion was inclined to hold them practically responsible for disorders
+which, so it was thought, they had neither wished nor tried to prevent.
+(I am, of course, expressing no opinion as to the justice of this view,
+nor as to the excuses to be made for the Parliamentary tactics of the
+Irish party, but merely stating how their conduct struck many
+Englishmen.) There could be no doubt as to the hostility which they,
+still less as to that which their fellow-countrymen in the United
+States, had expressed toward England, for they had openly wished success
+to Russia while war seemed impending with her, and the so-called Mahdi
+of the Soudan was vociferously cheered at many a Nationalist meeting. At
+the Election of 1885 they had done their utmost to defeat Liberal
+candidates in every English and Scotch constituency where there existed
+a body of Irish voters, and had thrown some twenty seats or more into
+the hands of the Tories. Now, to many Englishmen, the proposal to create
+an Irish Parliament seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand
+over to these Irish members the government of Ireland, with all the
+opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland
+and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the
+tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to
+extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule
+had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would contain
+different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr.
+Parnell's nominees. Neither of these arguments could overcome the
+suspicious antipathy which many Englishmen felt, nor dissolve the
+association in their minds between the Nationalist leaders and the
+forces of disorder. The Parnellites (thus they reasoned) are bad men;
+what they seek is therefore likely to be bad, and whether bad in itself
+or not, they will make a bad use of it. In such reasonings there was
+more of sentiment and prejudice than of reason, but sentiment and
+prejudice are proverbially harder than arguments to expel from minds
+where they have made a lodgment.
+
+The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial grounds for
+alarm. As everybody knows, she is not, either in religion or in blood,
+or in feelings and ideas, a homogeneous country. Three-fourths of the
+people are Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant
+fourth subdivided into bodies not fond of one another, who have little
+community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish colony in Ulster, many
+English families have settled here and there through the country. They
+have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and
+many of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since they
+came, still look on themselves as rather English than Irish. The last
+fifty years, whose wonderful changes have in most parts of the world
+tended to unite and weld into one compact body the inhabitants of each
+part of the earth's surface, connecting them by the ties of commerce,
+and of a far easier and swifter intercourse than was formerly possible,
+have in Ireland worked in the opposite direction. It has become more and
+more the habit of the richer class in Ireland to go to England for its
+enjoyment, and to feel itself socially rather English than Irish. Thus
+the chasm between the immigrants and the aborigines has grown deeper.
+The upper class has not that Irish patriotism which it showed in the
+days of the National Irish Parliament (1782-1800), and while there is
+thus less of a common national feeling to draw rich and poor together,
+the strife of landlords and tenants has continued, irritating the minds
+of both parties, and gathering them into two hostile camps. As everybody
+knows, the Nationalist agitation has been intimately associated with the
+Land agitation--has, in fact, found a strong motive-force in the desire
+of the tenants to have their rents reduced, and themselves secured
+against eviction. Now, many people in England assumed that an Irish
+Parliament would be under the control of the tenants and the humbler
+class generally, and would therefore be hostile to the landlords. They
+went farther, and made the much bolder assumption that as such a
+Parliament would be chosen by electors, most of whom were Roman
+Catholics, it would be under the control of the Catholic priesthood, and
+hostile to Protestants. Thus they supposed that the grant of
+self-government to Ireland would mean the abandonment of the upper and
+wealthier class, the landlords and the Protestants, to the tender
+mercies of their enemies. Such abandonment, it was proclaimed on a
+thousand platforms, would be disgraceful in itself, dishonouring to
+England, a betrayal of the very men who had stood by her in the past,
+and were prepared to stand by her in the future, if only she would stand
+by them. It was, of course, replied by the defenders of the Home Rule
+Bill, that what the so-called English party in Ireland really stood by
+was their own ascendency over the Irish masses--an oppressive
+ascendency, which had caused most of the disorders of the country. As to
+religion, there were many Protestants besides Mr. Parnell himself among
+the Nationalist leaders. There was no ill-feeling (except in Ulster)
+between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ireland. There was no reason
+to expect that either the Catholic hierarchy or the priesthood generally
+would be supreme in an Irish Parliament, and much reason to expect the
+contrary. As regards Ulster, where, no doubt, there were special
+difficulties, due to the bitter antagonism of the Orangemen (not of the
+Protestants generally) and Catholics, Mr. Gladstone had undertaken to
+consider any special provisions which could be suggested as proper to
+meet those difficulties. These replies, however, made little impression.
+They were pronounced, and pronounced all the more confidently the more
+ignorant of Ireland the speaker was, to be too hypothetical. To many
+Englishmen the case seemed to be one of two hostile factions contending
+in Ireland for the last sixty years, and that the gift of
+self-government might enable one of them to tyrannize over the other.
+True, that party was the majority, and, according to the principles of
+democratic government, therefore entitled to prevail. But it is one
+thing to admit a principle and another to consent to its application.
+The minority had the sympathy of the upper classes in England, because
+the minority contained the landlords. It had the sympathy of a part of
+the middle class, because it contained the Protestants. And of those
+Englishmen who were impartial as between the Irish factions, there were
+some who held that England must in any case remain responsible for the
+internal peace and the just government of Ireland, and could not grant
+powers whose possession might tempt the one party to injustice, and the
+other to resist injustice by violence.
+
+There was another anticipation, another forecast of evils to follow,
+which told most of all upon English opinion. This was the notion that
+Home Rule was only a stage in the road to the complete separation of the
+two islands. The argument was conceived as follows: "The motive passions
+of the Irish agitation have all along been hatred toward England and a
+desire to make Ireland a nation, holding her independent place among the
+nations of the world. This design was proclaimed by the Young Irelanders
+of 1848 and by the Fenian rebels of 1866; it has been avowed, in
+intervals of candour, by the present Nationalists themselves. The grant
+of an Irish Parliament will stimulate rather than appease this thirst
+for separate national existence. The nearer complete independence seems,
+the more will it be desired. Hatred to England will still be an active
+force, because the amount of control which England retains will irritate
+Irish pride, as well as limit Irish action; while all the misfortunes
+which may befall the new Irish Government will be blamed, not on its own
+imprudence, but on the English connection. And as the motives for
+seeking separation will remain, so the prospect of obtaining it will
+seem better. Agitation will have a better vantage-ground in an Irish
+Parliament than it formerly had among the Irish members of a British
+Legislature; and if actual resistance to the Queen's authority should be
+attempted, it will be attempted under conditions more favourable than
+the present, because the rebels will have in their hands the machinery
+of Irish Government, large financial resources, and a _prima facie_
+title to represent the will of the Irish people. As against a rebellious
+party in Ireland, England has now two advantages--an advantage of
+theory, an advantage of fact. The advantage of theory is that she does
+not admit Ireland to be a distinct nation, but maintains that in the
+United Kingdom there is but one nation, whereof some inhabit Great
+Britain and some Ireland. The advantage of fact is that, through her
+control of the constabulary, the magistrates, the courts of justice,
+and, in fine, the whole administrative system of Ireland, she can easily
+quell insurrectionary movements. By creating an Irish Parliament and
+Government she would strip herself of both these advantages."
+
+I need hardly say that I do not admit the fairness of this statement of
+the case, because some of the premises are untrue, and because it
+misrepresents the nature of the Irish Government which Mr. Gladstone's
+Bill would have created. But I am trying to state the case as it was
+sedulously and skilfully presented to Englishmen. And it told all the
+more upon English waverers, because the considerations above mentioned
+seemed, if well founded, to destroy and cut away the chief ground on
+which Home Rule had been advocated, viz. that it would relieve England
+from the constant pressure of Irish discontent and agitation, and bring
+about a time of tranquillity, permitting good feeling to grow up between
+the peoples. If Home Rule was, after all, to be nothing more than a
+half-way house to independence, an Irish Parliament only a means of
+extorting a more complete emancipation from imperial control, was it not
+much better to keep things as they were, and go on enduring evils, the
+worst of which were known already? Hence the advocates of the Bill
+denied not the weight of the argument, but its applicability.
+Separation, they urged, is impossible, for it is contrary to the nature
+of things, which indicates that the two islands must go together. It is
+not desired by the Irish people, for it would injure them far more than
+it could possibly injure England, since Ireland finds in England the
+only market for her produce, the only source whence capital flows to
+her. A small revolutionary party has, no doubt, conspired to obtain it.
+But the only sympathy they received was due to the fact that the
+legitimate demand of Ireland for a recognition of her national feeling
+and for the management of her own local affairs was contemptuously
+ignored by England. The concession of that demand will banish the notion
+even from those minds which now entertain it, whereas its continued
+refusal may perpetuate that alienation of feeling which is at the bottom
+of all the mischief, the one force that makes for separation.
+
+It is no part of my present purpose to examine these arguments and
+counter arguments, but only to show what were the grounds on which a
+majority of the English voters refused to pronounce in favour of the
+Home Rule Bill. The reader will have observed that the issues raised
+were not only numerous, but full of difficulty. They were issues of
+fact, involving a knowledge both of the past history of Ireland and of
+her present state. They were also issues of inference, for even
+supposing the broad facts to be ascertained, these facts were
+susceptible of different interpretations, and men might, and did,
+honestly draw opposite conclusions from them. A more obscure and
+complicated problem, or rather group of problems, has seldom been
+presented to a nation for its decision. But the nation did not possess
+the requisite knowledge. Closely connected as Ireland seems to be with
+England, long as the Irish question has been a main trouble in English
+politics, the English and Scottish people know amazingly little about
+Ireland. Even in the upper class, you meet with comparatively few
+persons who have set foot on Irish soil, and, of course, far fewer who
+have ever examined the condition of the island and the sources of her
+discontent. Irish history, which is, no doubt, dismal reading, is a
+blank page to the English. In January, 1886, one found scarce any
+politicians who had ever heard of the Irish Parliament of 1782. And in
+that year, 1886, an Englishman anxious to discover the real state of the
+country did not know where to go for information. What appeared in the
+English newspapers, or, rather, in the one English newspaper which keeps
+a standing "own correspondent" in Dublin, was (as it still is) a grossly
+and almost avowedly partisan report, in which opinions are skilfully
+mixed with so-called facts, selected, consciously or unconsciously, to
+support the writer's view. The Nationalist press is, of course, not less
+strongly partisan on its own side, so that not merely an average
+Englishman, but even the editor of an English newspaper, who desires to
+ascertain the true state of matters and place it before his English
+readers, has had, until within the last few months, when events in
+Ireland began to be fully reported in Great Britain, no better means at
+his disposal for understanding Ireland than for understanding Bulgaria.
+I do not dwell upon this ignorance as an argument for Home Rule, though,
+of course, it is often so used. I merely wish to explain the
+bewilderment in which Englishmen found themselves when required to
+settle by their votes a question of immense difficulty. Many, on both
+sides, simply followed their party banners. Tories voted for Lord
+Salisbury; thorough-going admirers of Mr. Gladstone voted for Mr.
+Gladstone. But there was on the Liberal side a great mass who were
+utterly perplexed by the position. Contradictory statements of fact, as
+well as contradictory arguments, were flung at their heads in
+distracting profusion. They felt themselves unable to determine what was
+true and who was right. But one thing seemed clear to them. The policy
+of Home Rule was a new policy. They had been accustomed to censure and
+oppose it. Only nine months before, the Irish Nationalists had
+emphasized their hostility to the Liberal party by doing their utmost to
+defeat Liberal candidates in English constituencies. Hence, when it was
+proclaimed that Home Rule was the true remedy which the Liberal party
+must accept, they were startled and discomposed.
+
+Now, the English are not a nimble-minded people. They cannot, to use a
+familiar metaphor, turn round in their own length. Their momentum is
+such as to carry them on for some distance in the direction wherein they
+have been moving, even after the order to stop has been given. They need
+time to appreciate, digest, and comprehend a new proposition. Timid they
+are not, nor, perhaps, exceptionally cautious, but they do not like to
+be hurried, and insist on looking at a proposition for a good while
+before they come to a decision regarding it. It is one of the qualities
+which make them a great people. As has been observed, this proposition
+was novel, was most serious, and raised questions which they felt that
+their knowledge was insufficient to determine. Accordingly, a certain
+section of the Liberal party refused to accept it. A great number,
+probably the majority, of these doubtful men abstained from voting.
+Others voted against the Home Rule Liberal candidates, not necessarily
+because they condemned the policy, but because, as they were not
+satisfied that it was right, they deemed delay a less evil than the
+committal of the nation to a new departure, which might prove
+irrevocable.
+
+It must not, however, be supposed that it was only hesitation which
+drove many Liberals into the host arrayed against the Irish Government
+Bill. I have already said that among the leaders there were some, and
+those men of great influence, who condemned its principles. This was
+true also of a considerable, though a relatively smaller, section of the
+rank and file. And it was only what might have been expected. The
+proposal to undo much of the work done in 1800, to alter fundamentally
+the system which had for eighty-six years regulated the relations of the
+two islands, by setting up a Parliament in Ireland, was a proposal which
+not only had not formed a part of the accepted creed of the Liberal
+party, but fell outside party lines altogether. It might, no doubt, be
+argued, as was actually done, and as those who understand the history of
+the Liberal party have more and more come to see, that Liberal
+principles recommended it, since they involve faith in the people, and
+faith in the curative tendency of local self-government. But this was by
+no means axiomatic. Taking the whole complicated facts of the case, and
+taking Liberalism as it had been practically understood in England, a
+man might in July, 1886, deem himself a good Liberal and yet think that
+the true interests of both peoples would be best served by maintaining
+the existing Parliamentary system. Similarly, there was nothing in
+Toryism or Tory principles to prevent a fair-minded and patriotic Tory
+from approving the Home Rule scheme. It was a return to the older
+institutions of the monarchy, and not inconsistent with any of the
+doctrines which the Tory party had been accustomed to uphold. The
+question, in short, was one of those which cut across ordinary party
+lines, creating new divisions among politicians; and there might have
+been and ought to have been Liberal Home Rulers and Tory Home Rulers,
+Liberal opponents of Home Rule and Tory opponents of Home Rule.
+
+But here comes in a feature, a natural but none the less a regrettable
+feature, of the English party system. As the object of the party in
+opposition is to turn out the party in power and seat itself in their
+place, every Opposition regards with the strongest prejudice the
+measures proposed by a ruling Ministry. Cases sometimes occur where
+these measures are so obviously necessary, or so evidently approved by
+the nation, that the Opposition accepts them. But in general it scans
+them with a hostile eye. Human nature is human nature; and when the
+defeat of Government can be secured by defeating a Government Bill, the
+temptation to the Opposition to secure it is irresistible. Now, the Tory
+party is far more cohesive than the Liberal party, far more obedient to
+its leaders, far less disposed to break into sections, each of which
+thinks and acts for itself. Accordingly, that division of opinion in the
+Tory party which might have been expected, and which would have occurred
+if those who composed the Tory party had been merely so many reflecting
+men, and not members of a closely compacted political organization, did
+not occur. Liberals were divided, as such a question would naturally
+divide them. Tories were not divided; they threw their whole strength
+against the Bill. I am far from suggesting that they did so against
+their consciences. Whatever may be said as to two or three of the
+leaders, whose previous language and conduct seemed to indicate that
+they would themselves, had the election of 1885 gone differently, have
+been inclined to a Home Rule policy, many of the Tory chiefs, as well
+as the great mass of the party, honestly disapproved Mr. Gladstone's
+measure. But their party motives and party affiliations gave it no
+chance of an impartial verdict at their hands. They went into the
+jury-box with an invincible prepossession against the scheme of their
+opponents. When all these difficulties are duly considered, and
+especially when regard is had to those which I have last enumerated, the
+suddenness with which the new policy was launched, and the fact that as
+coming from one party it was sure beforehand of the hostility of the
+other, no surprise can be felt at its fate. Those who, in England, now
+look back over the spring and summer of 1886 are rather surprised that
+it should come so near succeeding. To have been rejected by a majority
+of only thirty in Parliament, and of little over ten per cent. of the
+total number of electors who voted at the general election, is a defeat
+far less severe than any one who knew England would have predicted.
+
+That the decision of the country is regarded by nobody as a final
+decision goes without saying. It was not regarded as final, even in the
+first weeks after it was given. This was not because the majority was
+comparatively small, for a smaller majority the other way would have
+been conclusive. It is because the country had not time enough for full
+consideration and deliberate judgment. The Bill was brought in on April
+14th, the elections began on July 1st; no one can say what might have
+been the result of a long discussion, during which the first feelings of
+alarm (for alarm there was) might have worn off. And the decision is
+without finality, also, because the decision of the country was merely
+against the particular plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and not in favour
+of any alternative plan for dealing with Ireland, most certainly not for
+the coercive method which has since been adopted. One particular
+solution of the Irish problem was refused. The problem still stands
+confronting us, and when other modes of solving it have been in turn
+rejected, the country may come back to this mode.
+
+We may now turn from the past to the future. Yet the account which has
+been given of the feelings and ideas arrayed against the Bill does not
+wholly belong to the past. They are the feelings to which the opponents
+of any plan of self-government for Ireland still appeal, and which will
+have to be removed or softened down before it can be accepted by the
+English. In particular, the probability of separation, and the supposed
+dangers to the Protestants and the landlords from an Irish Parliament,
+will continue to form the themes of controversy so long as the question
+remains unsettled.
+
+What are the prospects of its settlement? What is the position which it
+now occupies? How has it affected the current politics of England?
+
+It broke up the Liberal party in Parliament. The vast numerical majority
+of that party in the country supported, and still supports, Mr.
+Gladstone and the policy of Irish self-government. But the dissentient
+minority includes many men of influence, and constitutes in the House of
+Commons a body of about seventy members, who hold the balance between
+parties. For the present they are leagued with the Tory Ministry to
+resist Home Rule, and their support insures a parliamentary majority to
+that Ministry. But it is, of course, necessary for them to rally to Lord
+Salisbury, not only on Irish questions, but on all questions; for, under
+our English system, a Ministry defeated on any serious issue is bound to
+resign, or dissolve Parliament. Now, to maintain an alliance for a
+special purpose, between members of opposite parties, is a hard matter.
+Agreement about Ireland does not, of itself, help men to agree about
+foreign policy, or bimetallism, or free trade, or changes in land laws,
+or ecclesiastical affairs. When these and other grave questions come up
+in Parliament, the Tory Ministry and their Liberal allies must, on
+every occasion, negotiate a species of concordat, whereby the liberty
+of both is fettered. One party may wish to resist innovation, the other
+to yield to it, or even to anticipate it. Each is obliged to forego
+something in order to humour the other; neither has the pleasure or the
+credit of taking a bold line on its own responsibility. There is, no
+doubt, less difference between the respective tenets of the great
+English parties than there was twenty years ago, when Mr. Disraeli had
+not yet completed the education of one party, and economic laws were
+still revered by the other. But, besides its tenets, each party has its
+tendencies, its sympathies, its moral atmosphere; and these differ so
+widely as to make the co-operation of Tories and Liberals constrained
+and cumbrous. Moreover, there are the men to be considered, the leaders
+on each side, whose jealousies, rivalries, suspicions, personal
+incompatibilities, neither old habits of joint action nor corporate
+party feeling exist to soften. On the whole, therefore, it is unlikely
+that the league of these two parties, united for one question only, and
+that a question which will pass into new phases, can be durable. Either
+the league will dissolve, or the smaller party will be absorbed into the
+larger. In England, as in America, third parties rarely last. The
+attraction of the larger mass is irresistible, and when the crisis which
+created a split or generated a new group has passed, or the opinion the
+new group advocates has been either generally discredited or generally
+adopted, the small party melts away, its older members disappearing from
+public life, its younger ones finding their career in the ranks of one
+of the two great standing armies of politics. If the dissentient, or
+anti-Home Rule, Liberal party lives till the next general election, it
+cannot live longer, for at that election it will be ground to powder
+between the upper and nether millstones of the regular Liberals and the
+regular Tories.
+
+The Irish struggle of 1886 has had another momentous consequence. It
+has brought the Nationalist or Parnellite party into friendly relations
+with the mass of English Liberals. When the Home Rule party was founded
+by Mr. Butt, some fifteen years ago, it had more in common with the
+Liberal than with the Tory party. But as it demanded what both English
+parties were then resolved to refuse, it was forced into antagonism to
+both; and from 1877 onward (Mr. Butt being then dead) the antagonism
+became bitter, and, of course, specially bitter as toward the statesmen
+in power, because it was they who continued to refuse what the
+Nationalists sought. Mr. Parnell has always stated, with perfect
+candour, that he and his friends must fight for their own hand
+unhampered by English alliances, and getting the most they could for
+Ireland from the weakness of either English party. This position they
+still retain. If the Tory party will give them Home Rule, they will help
+the Tory party. However, as the Tory party has gained office by opposing
+Home Rule, this contingency may seem not to lie within the immediate
+future. On the other hand, the Gladstonian Liberals have lost office for
+their advocacy of Home Rule, and now stand pledged to maintain the
+policy they have proclaimed. The Nationalists have, therefore, for the
+first time since the days immediately following the Union of A.D. 1800
+(a measure which the Whigs of those days resisted), a great English
+party admitting the justice of their claim, and inviting them to agitate
+for it by purely constitutional methods. For such an alliance the
+English Liberals are hotly reproached, both by the Tories and by the
+dissentients who follow Lord Harrington and Mr. Chamberlain. They are
+accused of disloyalty to England. The past acts and words of the
+Nationalists are thrown in their teeth, and they are told that in
+supporting the Irish claim they condone such acts, they adopt such
+words. They reply by denying the adoption, and by pointing out that the
+Tories themselves were from 1881 till 1886 in a practical, and often
+very close, though unavowed, Parliamentary alliance with the
+Nationalists in the House of Commons. The student of history will,
+however, conceive that the Liberals have a stronger and higher defence
+than any _tu quoque_. Issues that involve the welfare of peoples are far
+too serious for us to apply to them the same sentiments of personal
+taste and predilection which we follow in inviting a dinner party, or
+selecting companions for a vacation tour. If a man has abused your
+brother, or got drunk in the street, you do not ask him to go with you
+to the Yellowstone Park. But his social offences do not prevent you from
+siding with him in a political convention. So, in politics itself, one
+must distinguish between characters and opinions. If a man has shown
+himself unscrupulous or headstrong, you may properly refuse to vote him
+into office, or to sit in the same Cabinet with him, because you think
+these faults of his dangerous to the country. But if the cause he pleads
+be a just one, you have no more right to be prejudiced against it by his
+conduct than a judge has to be swayed by dislike to the counsel who
+argues a case. There were moderate men in America, who, in the days of
+the anti-slavery movement, cited against it the intemperate language of
+many abolitionists. There were aristocrats in England, who, during the
+struggle for the freedom and unity of Italy, sought to discredit the
+patriotic party by accusing them of tyrannicide. But the sound sense of
+both nations refused to be led away by such arguments, because it held
+those two causes to be in their essence righteous. In all revolutionary
+movements there are elements of excess and violence, which sober men may
+regret, but which must not disturb our judgment as to the substantial
+merits of an issue. The revolutionist of one generation is, like
+Garibaldi or Mazzini, the hero of the next; and the verdict of posterity
+applauds those who, even in his own day, were able to discern the
+justice of the cause under the errors or faults of its champion. Doubly
+is it the duty of a great and far-sighted statesman not to be repelled
+by such errors, when he can, by espousing a revolutionary movement,
+purify it of its revolutionary character, and turn it into a legitimate
+constitutional struggle. This is what Mr. Gladstone has done. If his
+policy be in itself dangerous and disloyal to the true interests of the
+people of our islands, let it be condemned. But if it be the policy
+which has the best promise for the peace, the prosperity, and the mutual
+good will of those peoples, he and those who follow him would be
+culpable indeed were they to be deterred by the condemnation which they
+have so often expressed, and which they still express, for some of the
+past acts of a particular party, from declaring that the aims of that
+party were substantially right aims, and from now pressing upon the
+country what their conscience approves.
+
+However, as the Home Rule Liberals and Nationalists, taken together, are
+in a minority (although a minority which obtains recruits at many
+bye-elections) in the present Parliament, it is not from them that fresh
+proposals are expected. They will, of course, continue to speak, write,
+and agitate on behalf of the views they hold. But practical attempt to
+deal with Irish troubles must for the present come from the Tory
+Ministry; for in the English system of government those who command a
+Parliamentary majority are responsible for legislation as well as
+administration, and are censured not merely if their legislation is bad,
+but if it is not forthcoming when events call for it.
+
+Why, it may be asked, should Lord Salisbury's Government burn its
+fingers over Ireland, as so many governments have burnt their fingers
+before? Why not let Ireland alone, giving to foreign affairs and to
+English and Scottish reforms all the attention which these too much
+neglected matters need?
+
+Well would it be for England, as well as for English Ministries, if
+Ireland could be simply let alone, her maladies left to be healed by the
+soft, slow hand of nature. But Irish troubles call aloud to be dealt
+with, and that promptly. They stand in the way of all other reforms,
+indeed of all other business. Letting alone has been tried, and it has
+succeeded no better, even in times less urgent than the present, than
+the usual policy of coercion followed by concession, or concession
+followed by coercion.
+
+There are three aspects of the Irish question, three channels by which
+the troubles of the "distressful island" stream down upon us, forcing
+whoever now rules or may come to rule in England to attempt some plan
+for dealing with them. I will take them in succession.
+
+The first is the Parliamentary difficulty. In the British House of
+Commons, with its six hundred and seventy members, there are nearly
+ninety Irish Nationalists. They are a well-disciplined body, voting as
+one man, though capable of speaking enough for a thousand. They have no
+interest in English or Scotch or colonial or Indian affairs, but only in
+Irish, and look upon the vote which they have the right of giving upon
+the former solely as a means of furthering their own Irish aims. They
+are, therefore, in the British Parliament not merely a foreign body,
+indifferent to the great British and imperial issues confided to it, but
+a hostile body, opposed to its present constitution, seeking to
+discredit it in its authority over Ireland, and to make more and more
+palpable and incurable the incompetence for Irish business whereof they
+accuse it. Several modes of doing this are open to them. They may, as
+some of the more actively bitter among them did in the Parliaments of
+1874 and 1880, obstruct business by long and frequent speeches, dilatory
+motions, and all those devices which in America are called
+filibustering. The House of Commons may, no doubt, try to check these
+tactics by more stringent rules of procedure, but the attempts already
+made in this direction have had but slight success, and every
+restriction of debate, since it trenches on the freedom of English and
+Scotch no less than of Irish members, injures Parliament as a whole.
+They may disgust the British people with the House of Commons by keeping
+it (as they have done in former years) so constantly occupied with Irish
+business as to leave it little time for English and Scotch measures.
+They may throw the weight of their collective vote into the scale of one
+or other British party, according to the amount of concession it will
+make to them, or, by always voting against the Ministry of the day, they
+may cause frequent and sudden changes of Government. This plan also they
+have followed in time past; for the moment it is not so applicable,
+because the Tories and dissentient Liberals, taken together, possess a
+majority in the House of Commons. But at any moment the alliance of
+those two sections may vanish, or another General Election may leave
+Tories and Liberals so nearly balanced that the Irish vote could turn
+the scale. Whoever reflects on the nature of Parliamentary Government
+will perceive that it is based on the assumption that the members of the
+ruling assembly, however much they may differ on other subjects, agree
+in desiring the strength, dignity, and welfare of the assembly itself,
+and in caring for the main national interests which it controls. He will
+therefore be prepared to expect countless and multiform difficulties in
+working such a Government, where a large section of the assembly seeks
+not to use, but to make useless, its forms and rules--not to preserve,
+but to lower and destroy, its honour, its credit, its efficiency. In
+vain are Irish members blamed for these tactics, for they answer that
+the interests of their own country require them to seek first her
+welfare, which can in their view be secured only by removing her from
+the direct control of what they deem a foreign assembly. Now that the
+demand for Irish self-government has obtained the sympathy of the bulk
+of English Liberals, they are unlikely forthwith to resume the
+systematic obstruction of past years. But they will be able, without
+alienating their English friends, to render the conduct of Parliamentary
+business so difficult that every English Ministry will be forced either
+to crush them, if it can, or to appease them by a series of concessions.
+
+The second difficulty is that of maintaining social order in Ireland.
+What that difficulty is, and whence it arises, every one knows. It is
+chronic, but every second or third winter, when there has been a wet
+season, or the price of live stock declines, it becomes specially acute.
+The tenants refuse to pay rents which they declare to be impossible. The
+landlords, or the harsher among them, try to enforce rents by evictions;
+evictions are resisted by outrages and boycotting. Popular sentiment
+supports those who commit outrages, because it considers the tenantry to
+be engaged in a species of war, a righteous war, against the landlord.
+Evidence can seldom be obtained, and juries acquit in the teeth of
+evidence. Thus the enforcement of the law strains all the resources of
+authority, while a habit of lawlessness and discontent is transmitted
+from generation to generation. Of the remedies proposed for this chronic
+evil the most obvious is the strengthening of the criminal law. We have
+been trying this for more than one hundred years, since Whiteboyism
+appeared, and trying it in vain. Since the Union, Coercion Acts, of more
+or less severity, have been almost always in force in Ireland, passed
+for two or three years, then dropped for a year or two, then renewed in
+a form slightly varying, but always with the same result of driving the
+disease in for a time, but not curing it. Mr. Gladstone proposed to buy
+out the landlords and then leave an Irish Parliament to restore social
+order, with that authority which it would derive from having the will of
+the people behind it; because he held that when the people felt the law
+to be of their own making, and not imposed from without, their sentiment
+would be enlisted on its side, and the necessity for a firm Government
+recognized. This plan, has, however, been rejected, so the choice was
+left of a fresh Coercion Act, or of some scheme, necessarily a costly
+scheme, for getting rid of the source of trouble by transferring the
+land of Ireland to the peasantry. The present Government, while guided
+by Sir M. Hicks-Beach, who had some knowledge of Ireland, did its best
+to persuade the landlords to accept reduced rents, while the Nationalist
+leaders, on their side, sought to restrain the people from outrages. But
+the armistice did not last. The Ministry yielded to the foolish counsels
+of its more violent supporters, and entrusted Irish affairs to the hands
+of a Chief Secretary without previous knowledge of the island. An
+unusually severe Coercion Act has been brought in and passed by the aid
+of the dissentient Liberals. And we now see this Act administered with a
+mixture of virulence and incompetence to which even the dreary annals of
+Irish misgovernment present few parallels. The feeling of the English
+people is rising against the policy carried out in their name. So far
+from being solved, the problem of social order becomes every day more
+acute.
+
+There remains the question of a reform of local government. For many
+years past, every English Ministry has undertaken to frame a measure
+creating a new system of popular rural self-government in England. It is
+the first large task of domestic legislation which we ask from
+Parliament. When such a scheme is proposed, can Ireland be left out of
+it? Should she be left out, the argument that she is being treated
+unequally and unfairly, as compared with England, would gain immense
+force; because the present local government of Ireland is admittedly
+less popular, less efficient, altogether less defensible, than even that
+of England which we are going to reform. If, therefore, the theory that
+the Imperial Parliament is both anxious and able to do its duty by
+Ireland is to be maintained, Ireland, too, must have her scheme of local
+government. And a scheme of local government is a large project, the
+discussion of which must pass into a discussion of the government of the
+island as a whole.
+
+Since, then, we may conclude that whatever Ministry is in power will be
+bound to take up the state of Ireland--since Parliament and the nation
+will be occupied with the subject during the coming sessions fully as
+much as they have been during those that have recently passed--the next
+inquiry is, What will the tendency of opinion and legislation be? Will
+the reasons and forces described above bring us to Home Rule? and if so,
+when, how, and why?
+
+There are grounds for answering these questions in the negative. A
+majority of the House of Commons, including the present Ministry and
+such influential Liberals as Mr. Bright, Lord Hartington, Mr.
+Chamberlain, stand pledged to resist it, and seem--such is the passion
+which controversy engenders--more disposed to resist it than they were
+in 1885. But this ground is less strong than it may appear. We have had
+too many changes of opinion--ay, and of action too--upon Irish affairs
+not to be prepared for further changes. A Ministry in power learns much
+which an Opposition fails to learn. Home Rule is an elastic expression,
+and some of those who were loudest in denouncing Mr. Gladstone's Bill
+will find it easy to explain, should they bring in a Bill of their own
+for giving self-government to Ireland, that their measure is a different
+thing, and free from the objections brought against his. Nor, if such a
+conversion should come, need it be deemed a dishonest one, for events
+are potent teachers, and governments now seek rather to follow than to
+form opinion. Although a decent interval must be allowed, no one will be
+astonished if the Tory leaders should move ere long in the direction
+indicated. Toryism itself, as has been remarked already, contains
+nothing opposed to the idea.
+
+Far greater obstacles exist in the aversion which (as already observed)
+so many Englishmen of both parties have entertained for any scheme which
+should seem to leave the Protestant minority at the mercy of the peasant
+and Roman Catholic majority, and to carry us some way toward the
+ultimate separation of the islands. These alarms are genuine and
+deep-seated. One who (like the present writer) thinks them, if not
+baseless, yet immensely overstrained, is, of course, convinced that they
+may be allayed. But time must first pass, and the plan that is to allay
+them may have to be framed on somewhat different lines from those of Mr.
+Gladstone's measure. It is even possible that a conflict more sharp and
+painful than any of recent years may intervene before a settlement is
+reached.
+
+Nevertheless, great as are the obstacles in the way, bitter as are the
+reproaches with which Mr. Gladstone is pursued by the richer classes in
+England, there is good reason to believe that the current is setting
+toward his policy. In proceeding to state the grounds for this view, I
+must frankly own that I am no longer (as in most of the preceding pages)
+merely setting forth facts on which impartial men in England would
+agree. The forecast which I seek to give may be tinged by my own belief
+that the grant of self-government is the best, if not the only method,
+now open to us of establishing peace between the islands, relieving the
+English Parliament of work it is ill fitted to discharge, allowing
+Ireland opportunities to learn those lessons in politics which her
+people so much need. The future, even the near future, is more than
+usually dim. Yet, if we examine those three branches of the Irish
+question which have been enumerated above, we shall see how naturally,
+in each of them, the concession of self-government seems to open, I will
+not say the most direct, but the least dangerous way, out of our
+troubles.
+
+The Parliamentary difficulty arises from the fact that the
+representatives of Ireland have the feelings of foreigners sitting in a
+foreign assembly, whose honour and usefulness they do not desire. While
+these are their feelings they cannot work properly in it, and it cannot
+work properly with them. The inconvenience may be endured, but the
+English will grow tired of it, and be disposed to rid themselves of it,
+if they see their way to do so without greater mischief. There are but
+two ways out of the difficulty. One is to get rid of the Irish members
+altogether; the other is to make them, by the concession of their just
+demands, contented and loyal members of a truly united Parliament. The
+experience of the Parliament of 1880, which was mainly occupied with
+Irish business, and began, being a strongly Liberal Parliament, with a
+bias toward the Irish popular party, showed how difficult it is for a
+House of Commons which is ignorant of Ireland to legislate wisely for
+it. In the House of Lords there is not a single Nationalist; indeed, up
+till 1886, that exalted chamber contained only one peer, Lord Dalhousie
+(formerly member for Liverpool), who had ever said a word in favour of
+Home Rule. The more that England becomes sensible, as she must become
+sensible, of the deficiencies of the present machinery for appreciating
+the needs and giving effect to the wishes of Irishmen, the more disposed
+will she be to grant them some machinery of their own.
+
+As regards social order, I have shown that the choice which lies before
+the opponents of Home Rule is either to continue the policy of coercing
+the peasantry by severe special legislation, or to remove the source of
+friction by buying out the landlords for the benefit of the tenants. The
+present Ministry have chosen the former alternative, but they dangle
+before the eyes of their supporters some prospect that they may
+ultimately revert to the latter. Now, the only way that has yet been
+pointed out of buying out the landlords, without imposing tremendous
+liabilities of loss upon the British Treasury, is the creation of a
+strong Home Rule Government in Dublin. Supposing, however, that some
+other plan could be discovered, which would avoid the fatal objections
+to which an extension of the plan of the (Salisbury) Land Purchase Act
+of 1885 is open, such a plan would remove one of the chief objections to
+an Irish Parliament, by leaving no estates for such a Parliament to
+confiscate. As for coercion every day, I might say, every bye-election
+shows us how it becomes more and more odious to the British democracy.
+They dislike severity; they dislike the inequality involved in passing
+harsher laws for Ireland than those that apply to England and Scotland.
+They find themselves forced to sympathize with acts of violence in
+Ireland which they would condemn in Great Britain, because these acts
+seem the only way of resisting harsh and unjust laws. When the recoil
+comes, it will be more violent than in former days. The wish to discover
+some other course will be very strong, and the obvious other course will
+be to leave it to an Irish authority to enforce social order in its own
+way--probably a more rough-and-ready way than that of British officials.
+The notion which has possessed most Englishmen, that Irish
+self-government would be another name for anarchy, is curiously
+erroneous. Conflicts there may be, but a vigorous rule will emerge.
+
+Lastly, as to local government. If a popular system is established in
+Ireland--one similar to that which it is proposed to establish in
+England--the control of its assemblies and officials will, over
+four-fifths of the island, fall into Nationalist hands. Their power will
+be enormously increased, for they will then command the machinery of
+administration, and the power of taxing. What with taxing landlords,
+aiding recalcitrant tenants, stopping the wheels of any central
+authority which may displease or oppose them, they will be in so strong
+a position that the creation of an Irish Parliament may appear to be a
+comparatively small further step, may even appear (as the wisest
+Nationalists now think it would prove) in the light of a check upon the
+abuse of local powers. These eventualities will unquestionably, when
+English opinion has realized them, make such a Parliament as the present
+pause before it commits rural local government to the Irish democracy.
+But it could not refuse to do something; and if it tried to restrain
+popular representative bodies by the veto of a bureaucracy in Dublin,
+there would arise occasions for quarrel and irritation more serious than
+now exist.[70] Those who once begin to repair an old and tottering
+building are led on, little by little, into changes they did not at
+starting contemplate. So it will be if once the task is undertaken of
+reforming the confessedly bad and indefensible system of Irish
+administration. We may stop at some half-way house on the way, but Home
+Rule stands at the end of the road.
+
+Supposing, then, that the Nationalist party, retaining its present
+strength and unity, perseveres in its present demands, there is every
+prospect that these demands will be granted. But will it persevere?
+There are among the English Dissentients those who prophesy that it will
+break up, as such parties have broken up before--will lose hope and
+wither away. Or the support of the Irish peasantry may be withdrawn--a
+result which some English politicians expect from a final settlement of
+the land question in the interest of the tenants. Any of these
+contingencies is possible, but at present most improbable. The moment
+when long-cherished aims begin to seem attainable is not that at which
+men are disposed to abandon them.
+
+There are, however, other reasons which suggest the likelihood of a
+change in English sentiment on the whole matter. The surprise with
+which the Bill of last April was received has worn off. The alarm is
+wearing off too. Those who set their teeth at what seemed to them a
+surrender to the Parnellites and their Irish-American allies, having
+relieved their temper by an emphatic No, have begun to ponder things
+more calmly. The English people are listening to the arguments from
+Irish history that are now addressed to them. They will be moved by the
+solid grounds of policy which that history suggests; will understand
+that what they have deemed insensate hatred is the natural result of
+long misgovernment, and will disappear with time and the removal of its
+causes. Many of the best minds of both nations will be at work to
+discover some method of reconciling Irish self-government with imperial
+supremacy and union free from the objections brought against the Bills
+of 1886. It is reasonable to expect that they may greatly improve upon
+these measures, which were prepared under pressure from a clamorous
+Opposition. What Mr. Disraeli once called the historical conscience of
+the country will appreciate those great underlying principles to which
+Mr. Gladstone's policy appeals. It has been accused of being a policy of
+despair; and may have commended itself to some who supported it as being
+simply a means of ridding England of responsibility. But to others it
+seemed, and more truly, a policy of faith; not, indeed, of thoughtless
+optimism, but of faith according to the definition which calls it "the
+substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith,
+by which nations as well as men must live, means nothing less than a
+conviction that great principles, permanent truths of human nature, lie
+at the bottom of all sound politics, and ought to be boldly and
+consistently applied, even when temporary difficulties surround their
+application. Such a principle is the belief in the power of freedom and
+self-government to cure the faults of a nation, in the tendency of
+responsibility to teach wisdom, and to make men see that justice and
+order are the surest sources of prosperity. Such a principle is the
+perception that national hatreds do not live on of themselves, but will
+expire when oppression has ceased, as a fire burns out without fuel.
+Such a principle is the recognition of the force of national sentiment,
+and of the duty of allowing it all the satisfaction that is compatible
+with the maintenance of imperial unity. Such, again, is the appreciation
+of those natural economic laws which show that nations, when disturbing
+passions have ceased, follow their own permanent interests, and that an
+island which finds its chief market in England and draws its capital
+from England will prefer a connection with England to the poverty and
+insignificance of isolation. It is the honour of Mr. Gladstone to have
+built his policy of conciliation upon principles like these, as upon a
+rock; and already the good effects are seen in the new friendliness
+which has arisen between the English masses and the people of Ireland,
+and in the better temper with which, despite the acrimony of some
+prominent politicians, the relations of the two peoples are discussed.
+When one looks round the horizon it is still far from clear; nor can we
+say from which quarter fair weather will arrive. But the air is fresher,
+and the clouds are breaking overhead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+What has happened since the above paragraphs were written, ten months
+ago, has confirmed more quickly and completely than the writer expected
+the forecasts they contain. Home Rule is no longer a word of terror,
+even to those English and Scotch voters who were opposed to it in July,
+1886. Most sensible men in the Tory and Dissentient Liberal camps have
+come to see that it is inevitable; and, while they continue to resist
+it for the sake of what is called consistency, or because they do not
+yet see in what form it is to be granted, they are disposed to regard
+its speedy arrival as the best method of retreat from an indefensible
+position.
+
+The repressive policy which the present Ministry are attempting in
+Ireland--for in the face of their failures one cannot say that they are
+carrying out any policy--is rendering Coercion Acts more and more
+detested by the English people. The actualities of Ireland, the social
+condition of her peasantry, the unwisdom of the dominant caste, the
+incompetence of the bureaucracy which affects to rule her, are being, by
+the full accounts we now receive, brought home to the mind of England
+and Scotland as they never were before, and produce their appropriate
+effect upon the heart and conscience of the people. The recognition by
+the Liberal party of the rights of Ireland, the visits of English
+Liberals to Ireland, the work done by Irishmen in English
+constituencies, are creating a feeling of unity and reciprocal interest
+between the masses of the people on both sides of the Channel without
+example in the seven hundred years that have passed since Strongbow's
+landing.
+
+This was the thing most needed to make Home Rule safe and full of
+promise, because it affords a guarantee that in such political contests
+as may arise in future, the division will not be, as heretofore, between
+the Irish people on the one side and the power of Britain on the other,
+but between two parties, each of which will have adherents in both
+islands. We may now at last hope that national hatreds will vanish; that
+England will unlearn her arrogance and Ireland her suspicion; that the
+basis is being laid for a harmonious co-operation of both nations in
+promoting the welfare and greatness of a common Empire.
+
+Many of the Irish patriots of 1798 and 1848 desired Separation, because
+they thought that Ireland, attached to England, could never be more
+than the obscure satellite of a greater State. When Ireland has been
+heartily welcomed by the democracy of Great Britain as an equal partner,
+the ground for any such desire will have disappeared, and Union will
+rest on a foundation firmer than has ever before existed. Ireland will
+feel, when those rights of self-government have been secured for which
+she has pleaded so long, that she owes them, not only to her own
+tenacity and courage, but to the magnanimity, the justice, and the
+freely given sympathy of the English and Scottish people.
+
+_October_, 1887.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 69: This article, which originally appeared in the American
+_New Princeton Review_, has been added to in a few places, in order to
+bring its narrative of facts up to date.]
+
+[Footnote 70: The experience of the last few months, which has shown us
+rural Boards of Guardians and municipal bodies over four-fifths of
+Ireland displaying their zeal in the Nationalist cause, has amply
+confirmed this anticipation, expressed nearly a year ago.]
+
+
+
+
+SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.[71]
+
+BY JOHN MORLEY.
+
+
+It is a favourite line of argument to show that we have no choice
+between the maintenance of the Union and the concession to Ireland of
+national independence. The evils of Irish independence are universally
+reckoned by Englishmen to be so intolerable that we shall never agree to
+it. The evils of Home Rule are even more intolerable still. Therefore,
+it is said, if we shall never willingly bring the latter upon our heads,
+_à fortiori_ we ought on no account to invite the former. The business
+in hand, however, is not a theorem, but a problem; it is not a thesis to
+be proved, but a malady to be cured; and the world will thank only the
+reasoner who winds up, not with Q.E.D., but with Q.E.F. To reason that a
+patient ought not to take a given medicine because it may possibly cause
+him more pain than some other medicine which he has no intention of
+taking, is curiously oblique logic. The question is not oblique; it is
+direct. Will the operation do more harm to his constitution than the
+slow corrosions of a disorder grown inveterate? Are the conditions of
+the connection between England and Ireland, as laid down in the Act of
+Union, incapable of improvement? Is the present working of these
+conditions more prosperous and hopeful, or happier for Irish order and
+for English institutions, than any practicable proposal that it is
+within the compass of statesmanship to devise, and of civic sense to
+accept and to work? That is the question.
+
+Some people contend that the burden of making out a case rests on the
+advocate of change, and not on those who support things as they are. But
+who supports things as they are? Things as they are have become
+insupportable. If you make any of the constitutional changes that have
+been proposed, we are told, parliamentary government, as Englishmen now
+know it, is at an end; and our critic stands amazed at those "who deem
+it a slighter danger to innovate on the Act of Union than to remodel the
+procedure of the House of Commons." As if that were the alternative.
+Great changes in the rules may do other good things, but no single
+competent authority believes that in this particular they will do the
+thing that we want. We cannot avoid constitutional changes. It is made
+matter of crushing rebuke that the Irish proposals of the late
+Government were an innovation on the old constitution of the realm. But
+everybody knows that, while ancient forms have survived, the last
+hundred years have witnessed a long succession of silent but most
+profound innovations. It was shortsighted to assume that the
+redistribution of political power that took place in 1884-5 was the last
+chapter of the history of constitutional change. It ought to have been
+foreseen that new possessors of power, both Irish and British, would
+press for objects the pursuit of which would certainly involve further
+novelties in the methods and machinery of government. Every given
+innovation must be rigorously scrutinized, but in the mere change or in
+the fact of innovation there is no valid reproach. When one of the
+plans for the better government of Ireland is described as depriving
+parliamentary institutions of their elasticity and strength, as
+weakening the Executive at home, and lessening the power of the country
+to resist foreign attack, no careful observer of the events of the last
+seven years can fail to see that all this evil has already got its grip
+upon us. Mr. Dicey himself admits it. "Great Britain," he says, "if left
+to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given
+by unity of sentiment and community of interests. The obstruction and
+the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency
+with which they are pursued, arise in part at least from the connection
+with Ireland." So then, after all, it is feebleness and inconsistency,
+not elasticity and strength, that mark our institutions as they stand;
+feebleness and inconsistency, distraction and uncertainty. The supporter
+of things as they are is decidedly as much concerned in making out a
+case as the advocate of change.
+
+The strength of the argument from Nationality is great, and full of
+significance; but Nationality is not the whole essence of either the
+argument from History or the argument from Self-government. Their force
+lies in considerations of political expediency as tested by practical
+experience.
+
+The point of the argument from the lessons of History is that for some
+reason or another the international concern, whose unlucky affairs we
+are now trying to unravel, has always been carried on at a loss: the
+point of the argument from Self-government is that the loss would have
+been avoided if the Irish shareholders had for a certain number of the
+transactions been more influentially represented on the Board. That is
+quite apart from the sentiment of pure nationality. The failure has come
+about, not simply because the laws were not made by Irishmen as such,
+but because they were not made by the men who knew most about Ireland.
+The vice of the connection between the two countries has been the
+stupidity of governing a country without regard to the interests or
+customs, the peculiar objects and peculiar experiences, of the great
+majority of the people who live in it. It is not enough to say that the
+failures of England in Ireland have to a great extent flowed from causes
+too general to be identified with the intentional wrong-doing either of
+rulers or of subjects. We readily admit that, but it is not the point.
+It is not enough to insist that James I., in his plantations and
+transplantations, probably meant well to his Irish subjects. Probably he
+did. That is not the question. If it is "absolutely certain that his
+policy worked gross wrong," what is the explanation and the defence? We
+are quite content with Mr. Dicey's own answer. "Ignorance and want of
+sympathy produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity. An intended
+reform produced injustice, litigation, misery, and discontent. The case
+is noticeable, for it is a type of a thousand subsequent English
+attempts to reform and improve Ireland." This description would apply,
+with hardly a word altered, to the wrong done by the Encumbered Estates
+Act in the reign of Queen Victoria. That memorable measure, as Mr.
+Gladstone said, was due not to the action of a party, but to the action
+of a Parliament. Sir Robert Peel was hardly less responsible for it than
+Lord John Russell. "We produced it," said Mr. Gladstone, "with a
+general, lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good intention of taking
+capital to Ireland. What did we do? We sold the improvements of the
+tenants" (House of Commons, April 16). It is the same story, from the
+first chapter to the last, in education, poor law, public works, relief
+Acts, even in coercion Acts--lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good
+intention. That is the argument from history. When we are asked what
+good law an Irish Parliament would make that could not equally well be
+made by the Parliament at Westminster, this is the answer. It is not
+the will, it is the intelligence, that is wanting. We all know what the
+past has been. Why should the future be different?
+
+"It is an inherent condition of human affairs," said Mill in a book
+which, in spite of some chimeras, is a wholesome corrective of the
+teaching of our new jurists, "that no intention, however sincere, of
+protecting the interests of others can make it safe or salutary to tie
+up their own hands. Still more obviously true is it, that by their own
+hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their
+circumstances in life be worked out" (_Repres. Government_, p. 57). It
+is these wise lessons from human experience to which the advocate of
+Home Rule appeals, and not the wild doctrine that any body of persons
+claiming to be united by a sense of nationality possesses _an inherent
+and divine right_ to be treated as an independent community. It is quite
+true that circumstances sometimes justify a temporary dictatorship. In
+that there is nothing at variance with Liberalism. But the Parliamentary
+dictatorship in Ireland has lasted a great deal too long to be called
+temporary, and its stupid shambling operations are finally and
+decisively condemned by their consequences. That is a straightforward
+utilitarian argument, and has nothing whatever to do with inherent and
+divine rights, or any other form of political moonshine.
+
+There are some who believe that an honest centralized administration of
+impartial officials, and not Local Self-Government, would best meet the
+real wants of the people. In other words, everything is to be for the
+people, nothing by the people--which has not hitherto been a Liberal
+principle. Something, however, may be said for this view, provided that
+the source of the authority of such an administration be acceptable.
+Austrian administration in Lombardy was good rather than bad, yet it was
+hated and resisted because it was Austrian and not Italian. No rational
+person can hold for an instant that the source of a scheme of
+government is immaterial to its prosperity. More than that, when people
+look for success in the government of Ireland to "honest centralized
+administration," we cannot but wonder what fault they find with the
+administration of Ireland to-day in respect of its honesty or its
+centralization. What administration ever carried either honesty or
+centralization to a higher pitch than the Irish administration of Mr.
+Forster? What could be less successful? Those who have been most
+directly concerned in the government of Ireland, whether English or
+Irish, even while alive to the perils of any other principle, habitually
+talk of centralization as the curse of the system. Here, again, why
+should we expect success in the future from a principle that has so
+failed in the past?
+
+Again, how are we to get a strong centralized administration in the face
+of a powerful and hostile parliamentary representation? It is very easy
+to talk of the benefits that might have been conferred on Ireland by
+such humanity and justice as was practised by Turgot in his
+administration of the Generality of Limoges. But Turgot was not
+confronted by eighty-six Limousin members of an active sovereign body,
+all interested in making his work difficult, and trusted by a large
+proportion of the people of the province with that as their express
+commission. It is possible to have an honest centralized administration
+of great strength and activity in India, but there is no Parliament in
+India. If India, or any province of it, ever gets representative
+government and our parliamentary system, from that hour, if there be any
+considerable section of Indian feeling averse from European rule, the
+present administrative system will be paralyzed, as the preliminary to
+being revolutionized. It is conceivable, if any one chooses to think so,
+that a body of impartial officials could manage the national business in
+Ireland much better without the guidance of public opinion and common
+sentiment than with it. But if you intend to govern the country as you
+think best--and that is the plain and practical English of centralized
+administration--why ask the country to send a hundred men to the great
+tribunal of supervision to inform you how it would like to be governed?
+The Executive cannot set them aside as if they were a hundred dummies;
+in refusing to be guided, it cannot escape being harassed, by them. You
+may amend procedure, but that is no answer, unless you amend the Irish
+members out of voice and vote. They will still count. You cannot gag and
+muzzle them effectually, and if you could, they would still be there,
+and their presence would still make itself incessantly felt. Partly from
+a natural desire to lessen the common difficulties of government, and
+partly from a consciousness, due to the prevailing state of the modern
+political atmosphere, that there is something wrong in this total
+alienation of an Executive from the possessors of parliamentary power,
+the officials will incessantly be tempted to make tacks out of their own
+course; and thus they lose the coherency and continuity of absolutism
+without gaining the pliant strength of popular government. This is not a
+presumption of what would be likely to happen, but an account of what
+does happen, and what justified Mr. Disraeli in adding a weak Executive
+to the alien Church and the absentee aristocracy, as the three great
+curses of Ireland. Nothing has occurred since 1844 to render the
+Executive stronger, but much to the contrary. There is, and there can
+be, no weaker or less effective Government in the world than a highly
+centralized system working alongside of a bitterly inimical popular
+representation. I say nothing of the effect of the fluctuations of
+English parties on Irish administration. I say nothing of the tendency
+in an Irish government, awkwardly alternating with that to which I have
+just adverted, to look over the heads of the people of Ireland, and to
+consider mainly what will be thought by the ignorant public in England.
+But these sources of incessant perturbation must not be left out. The
+fault of Irish centralization is not that it is strong, but that it is
+weak. Weak it must remain until Parliament either approves of the
+permanent suspension of the Irish writs, or else devises constitutional
+means for making Irish administration responsible to Irish
+representatives.
+
+If experience is decisive against the policy of the past, experience
+too, all over the modern world, indicates the better direction for the
+future. I will not use my too scanty space in repeating any of the great
+wise commonplaces in praise of self-government. Here they are
+superfluous. In the case of Ireland they have all been abundantly
+admitted in a long series of measures, from Catholic Emancipation down
+to Lord O'Hagan's Jury Law and the Franchise and Redistribution Acts of
+a couple of years ago. The principle of self-government has been
+accepted, ratified, and extended in a hundred ways. It is only a
+question of the form that self-government shall take. Against the form
+proposed by the late Ministry a case is built up that rests on a series
+of prophetic assumptions. These assumptions, from the nature of the
+case, can only be met by a counter-statement of fair and reasonable
+probabilities. Let us enumerate some of them.
+
+1. It is inferred that, because the Irish leaders have used violent
+language and resorted to objectionable expedients against England during
+the last six years, they would continue in the same frame of mind after
+the reasons for it had disappeared. In other words, because they have
+been the enemies of a Government which refused to listen to a
+constitutional demand, therefore they would continue to be its enemies
+after the demand had been listened to. On this reasoning, the effect is
+to last indefinitely and perpetually, notwithstanding the cessation of
+the cause. Our position is that all the reasonable probabilities of
+human conduct point the other way. The surest way of justifying violent
+language and fostering treasonable designs, is to refuse to listen to
+the constitutional demand.
+
+2. The Irish, we are told, hate the English with an irreconcilable
+hatred, and would unquestionably use any Constitution as an instrument
+for satisfying their master passion. Irrational hatred, they say, can be
+treated by rational men with composure. The Czechs of Bohemia are said
+to be irreconcilable, yet the South Germans bear with their hatred; and
+if we cannot cure we might endure the antipathy of Ireland. Now, as for
+the illustration, I may remark that the hatred of the Czechs would be
+much too formidable for German composure, if the Czechs did not happen
+to possess a provincial charter and a special constitution of their own.
+If the Irish had the same, their national dislike--so far as it
+exists--might be expected to become as bearable as the Germans have
+found the feeling of the Czechs. But how deep does Irish dislike go? Is
+it directed against Englishmen, or against an English official system?
+The answers of every impartial observer to the whole group of such
+questions as these favour the conclusion that the imputed hatred of
+England in Ireland has been enormously exaggerated and overcoloured by
+Ascendency politicians for good reasons of their own; that with the
+great majority of Irishmen it has no deep roots; that it is not one of
+those passionate international animosities that blind men to their own
+interests, or lead them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of injuring
+their foe; and, finally, that it would not survive the amendment of the
+system that has given it birth.[72]
+
+3. It is assumed that there is a universal desire for Separation. That
+there is a strong sentiment of nationality we of course admit; it is
+part of the case, and not the worst part. But the sentiment of
+nationality is a totally different thing from a desire for Separation.
+Scotland might teach our pseudo-Unionists so much as that. Nowhere in
+the world is the sentiment of nationality stronger, yet there is not a
+whisper of Separation. That there is a section of Irishmen who desire
+Separation is notorious, but everything that has happened since the
+Government of Ireland Bill was introduced, including the remarkable
+declarations of Mr. Parnell in accepting the Bill (June 7), and
+including the proceedings at Chicago, shows that the separatist section
+is a very small one either in Ireland or in America, and that it has
+become sensibly smaller since, and in consequence of, the proposed
+concession of a limited statutory constitution. The Irish are quite
+shrewd enough to know that Separation, if it were attainable--and they
+are well aware that it is not--would do no good to their markets; and to
+that knowledge, as well as to many other internal considerations, we may
+confidently look for the victory of strong centripetal over very weak
+centrifugal tendencies. Even if we suppose these centrifugal tendencies
+to be stronger than I would allow them to be, how shall we best resist
+them--by strengthening the hands and using the services of the party
+which, though nationalist, is also constitutional; or by driving that
+party also, in despair of a constitutional solution, to swell the ranks
+of Extremists and Irreconcilables?
+
+4. Whatever may be the ill-feeling towards England, it is at least
+undeniable that there are bitter internal animosities in Ireland, and a
+political constitution, our opponents argue, can neither assuage
+religious bigotry nor remove agrarian discontent.
+
+It is true, no doubt, that the old feud between Protestant and Catholic
+might, perhaps, not instantly die down to the last smouldering embers of
+it all over Ireland. But we may remark that there is no perceptible bad
+blood between Protestant and Catholic, outside of one notorious corner.
+Second, the real bitterness of the feud arose from the fact that
+Protestantism was associated with an exclusive and hostile ascendency,
+which would now be brought to an end. Whatever feeling about what is
+called Ulster exists in the rest of Ireland, arises not from the fact
+that there are Protestants in Ulster, but that the Protestants are
+anti-National. Third, the Catholics would no longer be one compact body
+for persecuting, obscurantist, or any other evil purposes; the abatement
+of the national struggle would allow the Catholics to fall into the two
+natural divisions of Clerical and Liberal. What we may be quite sure of
+is that the feud will never die so long as sectarian pretensions are
+taken as good reasons for continuing bad government.
+
+It is true, again, that a constitution would not necessarily remove
+agrarian discontent. But it is just as true that you will never remove
+agrarian discontent without a constitution. Mr. Dicey, on consideration,
+will easily see why. Here we come to an illustration, and a very
+impressive illustration it is, of the impotence of England to do for
+Ireland the good which Ireland might do for herself. Nobody just now is
+likely to forget the barbarous condition of the broad fringe of
+wretchedness on the west coast of Ireland. Of this Lord Dufferin truly
+said in 1880 that no legislation could touch it, that no alteration in
+the land laws could effectually ameliorate it, and that it must continue
+until the world's end unless something be contrived totally to change
+the conditions of existence in that desolate region. Parliament lavishly
+pours water into the sieve in the shape of Relief Acts. Even in my own
+short tenure of office I was responsible for one of these terribly
+wasteful and profoundly unsatisfactory measures. Instead of relief, what
+a statesman must seek is prevention of this great evil and strong root
+of evil; and prevention means a large, though it cannot be a very swift,
+displacement of the population. But among the many experts with whom I
+have discussed this dolorous and perplexing subject, I never found one
+of either political party who did not agree that a removal of the
+surplus population was only practicable if carried out by an Irish
+authority, backed by the solid weight of Irish opinion. Any exertion of
+compulsory power by a British Minister would raise the whole
+country-side in squalid insurrection, government would become
+impossible, and the work of transplantation would end in ghastly
+failure. It is misleading and untrue, then, to say that there is no
+possible relation between self-government and agrarian discontent,
+misery, and backwardness; and when Mr. Dicey and others tell us that the
+British Parliament is able to do all good things for Ireland, I would
+respectfully ask them how a British Parliament is to deal with the
+Congested Districts.
+
+Nearly as much may be said of the prevention of the mischievous practice
+of Subdivision. Some contend that the old disposition to subdivide is
+dying out; others, however, assure us that it is making its appearance
+even among the excellent class who purchased their holdings under the
+Church Act. That Act did not prohibit subdivision, but it is prohibited
+in the Act of 1881. Still the prohibition can only be made effective, if
+operations take place on anything like a great scale, on condition that
+representative, authorities resident on the spot have the power of
+enforcing it, and have an interest in enforcing it. Some of the
+pseudo-Unionists are even against any extension of local
+self-government, and if it be unaccompanied by the creation of a central
+native authority they are right. What such people fail to see is that,
+in resisting political reconstruction, they are at the same time
+resisting the only available remedies for some of the worst of agrarian
+maladies.
+
+The ruinous interplay between agrarian and political forces, each using
+the other for ends of its own, will never cease so long as the political
+demand is in every form resisted. That, we are told, is all the fault of
+the politicians. Be it so; then the Government must either suppress the
+politicians outright, or else it must interest them in getting the terms
+of its land settlement accepted and respected. Home Rule on our scheme
+was, among other things, part of an arrangement for "settling the
+agrarian feud." It was a means of interposing between the Irish tenant
+and the British State an authority interested enough and strong enough
+to cause the bargain to be kept. It is said that the Irish authority
+would have had neither interest nor strength enough to resist the forces
+making for repudiation. Would those forces be any less irresistible if
+the whole body of the Irish peasantry stood, as Land Purchase _minus_
+Self-Government makes them to stand, directly face to face with the
+British State? This is a question that our opponents cannot evade, any
+more than they can evade that other question, which lies unnoticed at
+the back of all solutions of the problem by way of peasant
+ownership--Whether it is possible to imagine the land of Ireland handed
+over to Irishmen, and yet the government of Ireland kept exclusively and
+directly by Englishmen? Such a divorce is conceivable under a rule like
+that of the British in India: with popular institutions it is
+inconceivable and impossible.
+
+5. It is argued that Home Rule on Mr. Gladstone's plan would not work,
+because it follows in some respects the colonial system, whereas the
+conditions at the root of the success of the system in the Colonies do
+not exist in Ireland. They are distant, Ireland is near; they are
+prosperous, Ireland is poor; they are proud of the connection with
+England, Ireland resents it. But the question is not whether the
+conditions are identical with those of any colony; it is enough if in
+themselves they seem to promise a certain basis for government. It might
+justly be contended that proximity is a more favourable condition than
+distance; without it there could not be that close and constant
+intercommunication which binds the material interests of Ireland to
+those of Great Britain, and so provides the surest guarantee for union.
+If Ireland were suddenly to find herself as far off as Canada, then
+indeed one might be very sorry to answer for the Union. Again, though
+Ireland has to bear her share of the prevailing depression in the chief
+branch of her production, it is a great mistake to suppose that outside
+of the margin of chronic wretchedness in the west and south-west, the
+condition not only of the manufacturing industries of the north, but of
+the agricultural industry in the richer parts of the middle and south,
+is so desperately unprosperous as to endanger a political constitution.
+Under our stupidily [Transcriber: sic] centralized system, Irishmen have
+no doubt acquired the enervating trick of attributing every misfortune,
+great or small, public or private, to the Government. When they learn
+the lessons of responsibility, they will unlearn this fatal habit, and
+not before.
+
+I do not see, therefore, that the differences in condition between
+Ireland and the Colonies make against Home Rule. What I do see is ample
+material out of which would arise a strong and predominant party of
+order. The bulk of the nation are sons and daughters of a Church which
+has been hostile to revolution in every country but Ireland, and which
+would be hostile to it there from the day that the cause of revolution
+ceased to be the cause of self-government. If the peasantry were made to
+realize that at last the land settlement, wisely and equitably made, was
+what it must inexorably remain, and what no politicians could help them
+to alter, they would be as conservative as the peasantry under a similar
+condition in every other spot on the surface of the globe. There is no
+reason to expect that the manufacturers, merchants, and shopkeepers of
+Ireland would be less willing or less able to play an active and useful
+part in the affairs of their country than the same classes in England or
+Scotland. It will be said that this is mere optimist prophesying. But
+why is that to be flung aside under the odd name of sentimentalism,
+while pessimist prophesying is to be taken for gospel?
+
+The only danger is lest we should allot new responsibilities to Irishmen
+with a too grudging and restrictive hand. For true responsibility there
+must be real power. It is easy to say that this power would be misused,
+and that the conditions both of Irish society and of the proposed
+Constitution must prevent it from being used for good. It is easy to say
+that separation would be a better end. Life is too short to discuss
+that. Separation is not the alternative either to Home Rule or to the
+_status quo_. If the people of Ireland are not to be trusted with real
+power over their own affairs, it would be a hundred times more just to
+England, and more merciful to Ireland, to take away from her that
+semblance of free government which torments and paralyzes one country,
+while it robs the other of national self-respect and of all the
+strongest motives and best opportunities of self-help. The _status quo_
+is drawing very near to its inevitable end. The two courses then open
+will be Home Rule on the one hand, and some shy bungling underhand
+imitation of a Crown Colony on the other. We shall have either to listen
+to the Irish representatives or to suppress them. Unless we have lost
+all nerve and all political faculty we shall, before many months are
+over, face these alternatives. Liberals are for the first; Tories at
+present incline to the second. It requires very moderate instinct for
+the forces at work in modern politics to foresee the path along which we
+shall move, in the interests alike of relief to Great Britain and of a
+sounder national life for Ireland. The only real question is not Whether
+we are to grant Home Rule, but How.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 71: The following pages, with one or two slight alterations,
+are extracted, by the kind permission of Mr. James Knowles, from two
+articles which were published in the _Nineteenth Century_ at the
+beginning of the present year, in reply to Professor Dicey's statement
+of the English case against Home Rule.]
+
+[Footnote 72: The late J.E. Cairnes, after describing the clearances
+after the famine, goes on to say, "I own I cannot wonder that a thirst
+for revenge should spring from such calamities; that hatred, even
+undying hatred, for what they could not but regard as the cause and
+symbol of their misfortunes--English rule in Ireland--should possess the
+sufferers.... The disaffection now so widely diffused throughout Ireland
+may possibly in some degree be fed from historical traditions, and have
+its remote origin in the confiscations of the seventeenth century; but
+all that gives it energy, all that renders it dangerous, may, I believe,
+be traced to exasperation produced by recent transactions, and more
+especially to the bitter memories left by that most flagrant abuse of
+the rights of property and most scandalous disregard of the claims of
+humanity--the wholesale clearances of the period following the
+famine."--_Political Essays_, p. 198.]
+
+
+
+
+LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+BY W.E. GLADSTONE.
+
+
+Ireland for more than seven hundred years has been part of the British
+territory, and has been with slight exceptions held by English arms, or
+governed in the last resort from this side the water. Scotland was a
+foreign country until 1603, and possessed absolute independence until
+1707. Yet, whether it was due to the standing barrier of the sea, or
+whatever may have been the cause, much less was known by Englishmen of
+Ireland than of Scotland. Witness the works of Shakespeare, whose mind,
+unless as to book-knowledge, was encyclopædic, and yet who, while he
+seems at home in Scotland, may be said to tell us nothing of Ireland,
+unless it is that--
+
+    "The uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms."[73]
+
+During more recent times, the knowledge of Scotland on this side the
+border, which before was greatly in advance, has again increased in afar
+greater degree than the knowledge of Ireland.
+
+It is to Mr. Lecky that we owe the first serious effort, both in his
+_Leaders of Public Opinion_ and in his _History of England in the
+Eighteenth Century_, to produce a better state of things. He carefully
+and completely dovetailed the affairs of Ireland into English History,
+and the debt is one to be gratefully acknowledged. But such remedies,
+addressing themselves in the first instance to the lettered mind of the
+country, require much time to operate upon the mass, and upon the organs
+of superficial and transitory opinion, before the final stage, when they
+enter into our settled and familiar traditions. Meantime, since Ireland
+threatens to absorb into herself our Parliamentary life, there is a
+greatly enhanced necessity for becoming acquainted with the true state
+of the account between the islands that make up the United Kingdom, and
+with the likelihoods of the future in Ireland, so far as they are to be
+gathered from her past history.
+
+That history, until the eighteenth century begins, has a dismal
+simplicity about it. Murder, persecution, confiscation too truly
+describe its general strain; and policy is on the whole subordinated to
+violence as the standing instrument of government. But after, say, the
+reign of William III., the element of representation begins to assert
+itself. Simplicity is by degrees exchanged for complexity; the play of
+human motives, singularly diversified, now becomes visible in the
+currents of a real public life. It has for a very long time been my
+habit, when consulted by young political students, to recommend them
+carefully to study the characters and events of the American
+Independence. Quite apart from the special and temporary reasons bearing
+upon the case, I would now add a twin recommendation to examine and
+ponder the lessons of Irish history during the eighteenth century. The
+task may not be easy, but the reward will be ample.
+
+The mainspring of public life had, from a venerable antiquity, lain _de
+jure_ within Ireland herself. The heaviest fetter upon this life was the
+Law of Poynings; the most ingenious device upon record for hamstringing
+legislative independence, because it cut off the means of resumption
+inherent in the nature of Parliaments such as were those of the three
+countries. But the Law of Poynings was an Irish Law. Its operation
+effectually aided on the civil side those ruder causes, under the action
+of which Ireland had lain for four centuries usually passive, and
+bleeding at every pore. The main factors of her destiny worked, in
+practice, from this side the water. But from the reign of Anne, or
+perhaps from the Revolution onwards,
+
+    "Novus sæcorum nascitur ordo."
+
+Of the three great nostrums so liberally applied by England, extirpation
+and persecution had entirely failed, but confiscation had done its work.
+The great Protestant landlordism of Ireland[74] had been strongly and
+effectually built up. But, like other human contrivances, while it held
+Ireland fast, it had also undesigned results. The repressed principle of
+national life, the struggles of which had theretofore been extinguished
+in blood, slowly sprang up anew in a form which, though extremely
+narrow, and extravagantly imperfect, was armed with constitutional
+guarantees; and, the regimen of violence once displaced, these
+guarantees were sure to operate. What had been transacted in England
+under Plantagenets and Stuarts was, to a large extent, transacted anew
+by the Parliament of Ireland in the eighteenth century. That Parliament,
+indeed, deserves almost every imaginable epithet of censure. It was
+corrupt, servile, selfish, cruel. But when we have said all this, and
+said it truly, there is more to tell. It was alive, and it was national.
+Even absenteeism, that obstinately clinging curse, though it enfeebled
+and distracted, could not, and did not, annihilate nationality. The
+Irish Legislation was, moreover, compressed and thwarted by a foreign
+executive; but even to this tremendous agent the vital principle was
+too strong eventually to succumb.
+
+Mr. Lecky well observes that the Irish case supplied "one of the most
+striking examples upon record"[75] of an unconquerable efficacy in even
+the most defective Parliament. I am, however, doubtful whether in this
+proposition we have before us the whole case. This efficacy is not
+invariably found even in tolerably constructed Parliaments. Why do we
+find it in a Parliament of which the constitution and the environment
+were alike intolerable? My answer is, because that Parliament found
+itself faced by a British influence which was entirely anti-national,
+and was thus constrained to seek for strength in the principle of
+nationality.
+
+Selfishness is a rooted principle of action in nations not less than in
+single persons. It seems to draw a certain perfume from the virtue of
+patriotism, which lies upon its borders. It stalks abroad with a
+semblance of decency, nay, even of excellence. And under this cover a
+paramount community readily embraces the notion, that a dependent
+community may be made to exist not for its own sake, but for the sake of
+an extraneous society of men. With this idea, the European nations,
+utterly benighted in comparison with the ancient Greeks, founded their
+transmarine dependencies. But a vast maritime distance, perhaps aided by
+some filtration of sound ideas, prevented the application of this theory
+in its nakedness and rigour to the American Colonies of England. In
+Ireland we had not even the title of founders to allege. Nay, we were,
+in point of indigenous civilization, the junior people. But the maritime
+severance, sufficient to prevent accurate and familiar knowledge, was
+not enough to bar the effective exercise of overmastering power. And
+power was exercised, at first from without, to support the Pale, to
+enlarge it, to make it include Ireland. When this had been done, power
+began, in the seventeenth century, to be exercised from within Ireland,
+within the precinct of its government and its institutions. These were
+carefully corrupted, from the multiplication of the Boroughs by James I.
+onwards, for the purpose. The struggle became civil, instead of martial;
+and it was mainly waged by agencies on the spot, not from beyond the
+Channel. When the rule of England passed over from the old violence into
+legal forms and doctrines, the Irish reaction against it followed the
+example. And the legal idea of Irish nationality took its rise in very
+humble surroundings; if the expression may be allowed, it was born in
+the slums of politics. Ireland reached the nadir of political depression
+when, at and after the Boyne, she had been conquered not merely by an
+English force, but by continental mercenaries. The ascendant
+Protestantism of the island had never stood so low in the aspect it
+presented to this country; inasmuch as the Irish Parliament, for the
+first time, I believe, declared itself dependent upon England,[76] and
+either did not desire, or did not dare, to support its champion
+Molyneux, when his work asserting Irish independence was burned in
+London. It petitioned for representation in the English Parliament, not
+in order to uplift the Irish people, but in order to keep them down. In
+its sympathies and in its aims the overwhelming mass of the population
+had no share. It was Swift who, by the _Drapier's Letters_, for the
+first time called into existence a public opinion flowing from and
+representing Ireland as a whole. He reasserted the doctrine of Molyneux,
+and denounced Wood's halfpence not only as a foul robbery, but as a
+constitutional and as a national insult. The patience of the Irish
+Protestants was tried very hard, and they were forced, as Sir Charles
+Duffy states in his vivid book, to purchase the power of oppressing
+their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen at a great price.[77] Their
+pension list was made to provide the grants too degrading to be
+tolerated in England. The Presbyterians had to sit down under the
+Episcopal monopoly; but the enjoyment of that monopoly was not left to
+the Irish Episcopalians. In the time of Henry VIII. it had been
+necessary to import an English Archbishop Browne[78] and an English
+Bishop Bale, or there might not have been a single Protestant in
+Ireland. It was well to enrich the rolls of the Church of Ireland with
+the piety and learning of Ussher, and to give her in Bedell one name, at
+least, which carries the double crown of the hero and the saint. But,
+after the Restoration, by degrees the practice degenerated, and
+Englishmen were appointed in numbers to the Irish Episcopate in order to
+fortify and develop by numerical force what came to be familiarly known
+as the English interest. So that the Primate Boulter, during his
+government of Ireland, complains[79] that Englishmen are still less than
+one-half the whole body of Bishops, although the most important sees
+were to a large extent in their hands. The same practice was followed in
+the higher judicial offices. Fitzgibbon was the first Irishman who
+became Lord Chancellor.[80] The Viceroy, commonly absent, was
+represented by Lords Justices, who again were commonly English; and
+Primate Boulter, a most acute and able man, jealous of an Irish Speaker
+in that character, recommends that the commander of the forces should
+take his place.[81] When, later on, the Viceroy resided, it was a rule
+that the Chief Secretary should be an Englishman. On the occasion when
+Lord Castlereagh was by way of exception admitted to that office, an
+apology was found for it in his entire devotion to English policy and
+purposes. "His appointment," says Lord Cornwallis, "gives me great
+satisfaction, as he is so very unlike an Irishman!"[82] Resources were
+also found in the military profession, and among the voters for the
+Union we find the names of eight[83] English generals.
+
+The arrangements under Poynings's Law, and the commercial proscription,
+drove the iron ever deeper and deeper into the souls of Irishmen. It is
+but small merit in the Irish Parliament of George I. and George II., if
+under these circumstances a temper was gradually formed in, and
+transmitted by, them, which might one day achieve the honours of
+patriotism. It was in dread of this most healthful process, that the
+English Government set sedulously to work for its repression. The odious
+policy was maintained by a variety of agencies; by the misuse of Irish
+revenue, a large portion of which was unhappily under their control; by
+maintaining the duration of the Irish House of Commons for the life of
+the Sovereign; and, worst of all, by extending the range of corruption
+within the walls, through the constant multiplication of paid offices
+tenable by members of Parliament without even the check of re-election
+on acceptance.
+
+Thus by degrees those who sat in the Irish Houses came to feel both that
+they had a country, and that their country had claims upon them. The
+growth of a commercial interest in the Roman Catholic body must have
+accelerated the growth of this idea, as that interest naturally fell
+into line with the resistance to the English prescriptive laws. But the
+rate of progress was fearfully slow. It was hemmed in on every side by
+the obstinate unyielding pressure of selfish interests: the interest of
+the Established Church against the Presbyterians; the interest of the
+Protestant laity, or tithe-payers, against the clergy; the bold
+unscrupulous interest of a landlords' Parliament against the occupier of
+the soil; which, together with the grievance of the system of
+tithe-proctors, established in Ireland through the Whiteboys the fatal
+alliance between resistance to wrong and resistance to law, and supplied
+there the yet more disastrous facility of sustaining and enforcing wrong
+under the name of giving support to public tranquillity. Yet, forcing on
+its way amidst all these difficulties by a natural law, in a strange
+haphazard and disjointed method, and by a zigzag movement, there came
+into existence, and by degrees into steady operation, a sentiment native
+to Ireland and having Ireland for its vital basis, and yet not deserving
+the name of Irish patriotism, because its care was not for a nation, but
+for a sect. For a sect, in a stricter sense than may at first sight be
+supposed. The battle was not between Popery and a generalized
+Protestantism, though, even if it had been so, it would have been
+between a small minority and the vast majority of the Irish people. It
+was not a party of ascendency, but a party of monopoly, that ruled. It
+must always be borne in mind that the Roman Catholic aristocracy had
+been emasculated, and reduced to the lowest point of numerical and moral
+force by the odious action of the penal laws, and that the mass of the
+Roman Catholic population, clerical and lay, remained under the grinding
+force of many-sided oppression, and until long after the accession of
+George III. had scarcely a consciousness of political existence. As long
+as the great bulk of the nation could be equated to zero, the Episcopal
+monopolists had no motive for cultivating the good-will of the
+Presbyterians, who like the Roman Catholics maintained their religion,
+with the trivial exception of the _Regium Donum_, by their own
+resources, and who differed from them in being not persecuted, but only
+disabled. And this monopoly, which drew from the sacred name of religion
+its title to exist, offered through centuries an example of religious
+sterility to which a parallel can hardly be found among the communions
+of the Christian world. The sentiment, then, which animated the earlier
+efforts of the Parliament might be _Iricism_, but did not become
+patriotism until it had outgrown, and had learned to forswear or to
+forget, the conditions of its infancy. Neither did it for a long time
+acquire the courage of its opinions; for, when Lucas, in the middle of
+the century, reasserted the doctrine of Molyneux and of Swift, the Grand
+Jury of Dublin took part against him, and burned his book.[84] And the
+Parliament,[85] prompted by the Government, drove him into exile. And
+yet the smoke showed that there was fire. The infant, that confronted
+the British Government in the Parliament House, had something of the
+young Hercules about him. In the first exercises of strength he acquired
+more strength, and in acquiring more strength he burst the bonds that
+had confined him.
+
+    "Es machte mir zu eng, ich mussie fort."[86]
+
+The reign of George IV. began with resolute efforts of the Parliament
+not to lengthen, as in England under his grandfather, but to shorten its
+own commission, and to become septennial. Surely this was a noble
+effort. It meant the greatness of their country, and it meant also
+personal self-sacrifice. The Parliament which then existed, elected
+under a youth of twenty-two, had every likelihood of giving to the bulk
+of its members a seat for life. This they asked to change for a
+_maximum_ term of seven years. This from session to session, in spite of
+rejection after rejection in England, they resolutely fought to obtain.
+It was an English amendment which, on a doubtful pretext; changed seven
+years to eight. Without question some acted under the pressure of
+constituents; but only a minority of the members had constituents, and
+popular exigencies from such a quarter might have been bought off by an
+occasional vote, and could not have induced a war with the Executive and
+with England so steadily continued, unless a higher principle had been
+at work.
+
+The triumph came at last; and from 1768 onwards the Commons never wholly
+relapsed into their former quiescence. True, this was for a Protestant
+House, constituency, and nation; but ere long they began to enlarge
+their definition of nationality. Flood and Lucas, the commanders in the
+real battle, did not dream of giving the Roman Catholics a political
+existence, but to their own constituents they performed an honourable
+service and gave a great boon. Those, who had insincerely supported the
+measure, became the dupes of their own insincerity. In the very year of
+this victory, a Bill for a slight relaxation of the penal laws was
+passed, but met its death in England.[87] Other Bills followed, and one
+of them became an Act in 1771. A beginning had thus been made on behalf
+of religious liberty, as a corollary to political emancipation. It was
+like a little ray of light piercing its way through the rocks into a
+cavern and supplying the prisoner at once with guidance and with hope.
+Resolute action, in withholding or shortening supply, convinced the
+Executive in Dublin, and the Ministry in London, that serious business
+was intended. And it appeared, even in this early stage, how necessary
+it was for a fruitful campaign on their own behalf to enlarge their
+basis, and enlist the sympathies of hitherto excluded fellow-subjects.
+
+It may seem strange that the first beginnings of successful endeavour
+should have been made on behalf not of the "common Protestantism," but
+of Roman Catholics. But, as Mr. Lecky has shown, the Presbyterians had
+been greatly depressed and distracted, while the Roman Catholics had now
+a strong position in the commerce of the country, and in Dublin
+knocked, as it were, at the very doors of the Parliament. There may also
+have been an apprehension of republican sentiments among the Protestants
+of the north, from which the Roman Catholics were known to be free. Not
+many years, however, passed before the softening and harmonizing
+effects, which naturally flow from a struggle for liberty, warmed the
+sentiment of the House in favour of the Presbyterians.
+
+A Bill was passed by the Irish Parliament in 1778, which greatly
+mitigated the stringency of the penal laws. Moreover, in its preamble
+was recited, as a ground for this legislation, that for "a long series
+of years" the Roman Catholics had exhibited an "uniform peaceable
+behaviour." In doing and saying so much, the Irish Parliament virtually
+bound itself to do more.[88] In this Bill was contained a clause which
+repealed the Sacramental Test, and thereby liberated the Presbyterians
+from disqualification. But the Bill had to pass the ordeal of a review
+in England, and there the clause was struck out. The Bill itself, though
+mutilated, was wisely passed by a majority of 127 to 89. Even in this
+form it excited the enthusiastic admiration of Burke.[89] Nor were the
+Presbyterians forgotten at the epoch when, in 1779-80, England, under
+the pressure of her growing difficulties, made large commercial
+concessions to Ireland. The Dublin Parliament renewed the Bill for the
+removal of the Sacramental Test. And it was carried by the Irish
+Parliament in the very year which witnessed in London the disgraceful
+riots of Lord George Gordon, and forty-eight years before the Imperial
+Parliament conceded, on this side the Channel, any similar relief. Other
+contemporary signs bore witness to the growth of toleration; for the
+Volunteers, founded in 1778, and originally a Protestant body, after a
+time received Roman Catholics into their ranks. These impartial
+proceedings are all the more honourable to Irish sentiment in general,
+because Lord Charlemont, its champion out of doors, and Flood, long the
+leader of the Independent party in the Parliament, were neither of them
+prepared to surrender the system of Protestant ascendency.
+
+In order to measure the space which had at this period been covered by
+the forward movement of liberality and patriotism, it is necessary to
+look back to the early years of the Georgian period, when Whiggism had
+acquired a decisive ascendency, and the spirits of the great deep were
+let loose against Popery. But the temper of proscription in the two
+countries exhibited specific differences. Extravagant in both, it became
+in Ireland vulgar and indecent. In England, it was Tilburina,[90] gone
+mad in white satin; in Ireland it was Tilburina's maid, gone mad in
+white linen. The Lords Justices of Ireland, in 1715, recommended the
+Parliament to put an end to all other distinctions in Ireland "but that
+of Protestant and Papist."[91] And the years that followed seem to mark
+the lowest point of constitutional depression for the Roman Catholic
+population in particular, as well as for Ireland at large. The Commons,
+in 1715, prayed for measures to discover any Papist enlisting in the
+King's service, in order that he might be expelled "and punished with
+the utmost severity of the law."[92] When an oath of abjuration had been
+imposed which prevented nearly all priests from registering, a Bill was
+passed by the Commons in 1719 for branding the letter P on the cheek of
+all priests, who were unregistered, with a red-hot iron. The Privy
+Council "disliked" this punishment, and substituted for it the loathsome
+measure by which safe guardians are secured for Eastern harems. The
+English Government could not stomach this beastly proposal; and, says
+Mr. Lecky,[93] unanimously restored the punishment of branding. The
+Bill was finally lost in Ireland, but only owing to a clause concerning
+leases. It had gone to England winged with a prayer from the Commons
+that it might be recommended "in the most effectual manner to his
+Majesty," and by the assurance of the Viceroy in reply that they might
+depend on his due regard to what was desired.[94] In the same year
+passed the Act which declared the title of the British Parliament to
+make laws for the government of Ireland. On the accession of George II.,
+a considerable body of Roman Catholics offered an address of
+congratulation. It was received by the Lords Justices with silent
+contempt, and no one knows whether it ever reached its destination.
+Finally, the acute state-craft of Primate Boulter resisted habitually
+the creation of an "Irish interest," and above all any capacity of the
+Roman Catholics to contribute to its formation; and in the first year of
+George II. a clause was introduced in committee into a harmless Bill[95]
+for the regulation of elections, which disfranchised at a single stroke
+all the Roman Catholic voters in Ireland who up to that period had
+always enjoyed the franchise.
+
+It is painful to record the fact that the remarkable progress gradually
+achieved was in no way due to British influence. For nearly forty years
+from the arrival of Archbishop Boulter in Ireland, the government of
+Ireland was in the hands of the Primates. The harshness of
+administration was gradually tempered, especially in the brief
+viceroyalty of Lord Chesterfield; but the British policy was steadily
+opposed to the enlargement of Parliamentary privilege, or the creation
+of any Irish interest, however narrow its basis, while the political
+extinction of the mass of the people was complete. The pecuniary wants,
+however, of the Government, extending beyond the hereditary revenue,
+required a resort to the national purse. The demands which were
+accordingly made, and these alone, supplied the Parliament with a
+vantage-ground, and a principle of life. The action of this principle
+brought with it civilizing and humanizing influences, which had become
+clearly visible in the early years of George III., and which were
+cherished by the war of American Independence, as by a strong current of
+fresh air in a close and murky dungeon.
+
+The force of principles, and the significance of political achievements,
+is to be estimated in no small degree by the slenderness of the means
+available to those who promote them. And the progress brought about in
+the Irish Parliament is among the most remarkable on record, because it
+was effected against the joint resistance of a hostile Executive and of
+an intolerable constitution. Of the three hundred members, about
+two-thirds were nominated by individual patrons and by close
+corporations. What was still worse, the action of the Executive was
+increasingly directed, as the pulse of the national life came to beat
+more vigorously, to the systematic corruption of the Parliament borough
+pensions and paid offices. In the latter part of the century, more than
+one-third of the members of Parliament were dismissible at pleasure from
+public emoluments. If the base influence of the Executive allied itself
+with the patriotic party, everything might be hoped. For we must bear in
+mind not only the direct influence of this expenditure on those who were
+in possession, but the enormous power of expectancy on those who were
+not. Conversely, when the Government were determined to do wrong, there
+were no means commonly available of forcing it to do right, in any
+matter that touched either religious bigotry or selfish interest. With
+so miserable an apparatus, and in the face of the ever-wakeful Executive
+sustained by British power, it is rather wonderful how much than how
+little was effected. I am not aware of a single case in which a measure
+on behalf of freedom was proposed by British agency, and rejected by
+the Irish Parliament. On the other hand, we have a long list of the
+achievements of that Parliament due to a courage and perseverance which
+faced and overcame a persistent English opposition. Among other
+exploits, it established periodical elections, obtained the writ of
+Habeas Corpus, carried the independence of the judges, repealed the Test
+Act, limited the abominable expenditure on pensions, subjected the
+acceptance of office from the crown to the condition of re-election, and
+achieved, doubtless with the powerful aid of the volunteers, freedom of
+trade with England, and the repeal of Poynings's Act, and of the British
+Act of 1719.[96]
+
+All this it did without the manifestation, either within the walls or
+among the Roman Catholic population, of any disposition to weaken the
+ties which bound Ireland to the empire. All this it did; and what had
+the British Parliament been about during the same period, with its
+vastly greater means both of self-defence and of action? It had been
+building up the atrocious criminal code, tampering in the case of Wilkes
+with liberty of election, and tampering with many other liberties;
+driving, too, the American Colonies into rebellion, while, as to good
+legislation, the century is almost absolutely blank, until between 1782
+and 1793 we have the establishment of Irish freedom, the economical
+reform of Mr. Burke, the financial reforms of Mr. Pitt, the new libel
+law of Mr. Fox, and the legislative constitution of Canada, in which
+both these great statesmen concurred.
+
+But we have not yet reached the climax of Irish advancement. When, in
+1782 and 1783, the legislative relations of the two countries were
+fundamentally rectified by the formal acknowledgment of Irish
+nationality, the beginning of a great work was accomplished; but its
+final consummation, though rendered practicable and even easy, depended
+wholly on the continuing good intention of the British Cabinet. The
+Acts of 1782 and 1783 required a supplemental arrangement, to obviate
+those secondary difficulties in the working of the two Legislatures,
+which supplied Mr. Pitt with his main parliamentary plea for the Union.
+What was yet more important was the completion of the scheme in Ireland
+itself. And this under three great heads: (1) The purification of
+Parliament by a large measure of reform; (2) the abolition of all Roman
+Catholic disabilities; (3) the establishment of a proper relation
+between the Legislative and the Executive powers. It is often urged,
+with cynical disregard to justice and reason, that with the Grattan
+Parliament we had corruption, coercion, discontent, and finally
+rebellion. But the political mischiefs, which disfigure the brief life
+of the Grattan Parliament, and the failure to obtain the two first of
+the three great purposes I have named, were all in the main due to the
+third grand flaw in the Irish case after 1782. I mean the false
+position, and usually mischievous character, of the Irish Executive,
+which, with its army of placemen and expectants in Parliament, was
+commonly absolute master of the situation. Well does Mr. Swift
+MacNeill,[97] in his very useful work, quote the words of Mr. Fox in
+1797: "The advantages, which the form of a free Government seemed to
+promise, have been counteracted by the influence of the Executive
+Government, and of the British Cabinet."
+
+There were five Viceroys between 1782 and 1790. Then came a sixth, Lord
+Westmoreland, the worst of them all, whose political judgment was on a
+par with his knowledge of the English language.[98] The great settlement
+of 1782-3 was in the main worked by men who were radically adverse to
+its spirit and intention. But they were omnipotent in their control of
+the unreformed. Parliament of Ireland, more and more drenched, under
+their unceasing and pestilent activity, with fresh doses of corruption.
+Westmoreland and his myrmidons actually persuaded Pitt, in 1792, that
+Irish Protestantism and its Parliament were unconquerably adverse to the
+admission of Roman Catholics to the franchise; but when the proposal was
+made from the Throne in 1793, notwithstanding the latent hostility of
+the Castle, the Parliament passed the Bill with little delay, and
+"without any serious opposition."[99] The votes against it were one and
+three on two divisions[100] respectively. A minority of sixty-nine
+supported, against the Government, a clause for extending the measure to
+seats in Parliament. That clause, lost by a majority of ninety-four,
+might apparently have been carried, but for "Dublin Castle," by an even
+larger majority.
+
+I shall not here examine the interesting question, whether the mission
+of Lord Fitzwilliam was wholly due to the action of those Whig statesmen
+who were friendly to the war, but disinclined to a junction with Mr.
+Pitt except on condition of a fundamental change in the administration
+of Ireland. Nor shall I dwell upon his sudden, swift, and disastrous
+recall. But I purpose here to invite attention to the most remarkable
+fact in the whole history of the Irish Parliament. When the Viceroy's
+doom was known, when the return to the policy and party of ascendency
+lay darkly lowering in the immediate future, this diminutive and tainted
+Irish Parliament, with a chivalry rare even in the noblest histories,
+made what can hardly be called less than a bold attempt to arrest the
+policy of retrogression adopted by the Government in London. Lord
+Fitzwilliam was the declared friend of Roman Catholic Emancipation,
+which was certain to be followed by reform; and he had struck a
+death-blow at bigotry and monopoly in the person of their heads, Mr.
+Beresford and Mr. Cooke. The Bill of Emancipation was introduced on the
+12th of February,[101] with only three dissentient voices. On the 14th,
+when the London Cabinet had declared dissent from the proceedings of
+their Viceroy without recalling him, Sir L. Parsons at once moved an
+address, imploring him to continue among them, and only postponed it at
+the friendly request of Mr. Ponsonby.[102] On the 2nd of March, when the
+recall was a fact, the House voted that Lord Fitzwilliam merited "the
+thanks of that House, and the confidence of the people."[103] On the 5th
+the Duke of Leinster moved, and the House of Peers carried, a similar
+resolution.[104]
+
+At this epoch I pause. Here there opens a new and disastrous drama of
+disgrace to England and misery to Ireland. This is the point at which we
+may best learn the second and the greatest lesson taught by the history
+of Ireland in the eighteenth century. It is this, that, awful as is the
+force of bigotry, hidden under the mask of religion, but fighting for
+plunder and for power with all the advantages of possession, of
+prescription, and of extraneous support, there is a David that can kill
+this Goliath. That conquering force lies in the principle of
+nationality.
+
+It was the growing sense of nationality that prompted the Irish
+Parliament to develop its earlier struggles for privilege on the narrow
+ground into a genuine contest for freedom, civil and religious, on a
+ground as broad as Ireland, nay, as humanity at large. If there be such
+things as contradictions in the world of politics, they are to be found
+in nationality on the one side, and bigotry of all kinds on the other,
+but especially religious bigotry, which is of all the most baneful.
+Whatever is given to the first of these two is lost to the second. I
+speak of a reasonable and reasoning, not of a blind and headstrong
+nationality; of a nationality which has regard to circumstances and to
+traditions, and which only requires that all relations, of incorporation
+or of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to the laws of
+Nature's own enactment. Such a nationality was the growth of the last
+century in Ireland. As each Irishman began to feel that he had a
+country, to which he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a
+true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood, and into
+the sense of brotherhood, with those who shared the allegiance and the
+property, the obligation and the heritage. And this idea of country,
+once well conceived, presents itself as a very large idea, and as a
+framework for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a common
+life. Hence it was that, on the coming of Lord Fitzwilliam, the whole
+generous emotion of the country leapt up with one consent, and went
+forth to meet him. Hence it was that religious bigotry was no longer an
+appreciable factor in the public life of Ireland. Hence it was that on
+his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his recall, it became
+necessary to divide again the host that had, welcomed him--to put one
+part of it in array as Orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed;
+and to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger mass by
+repulsion and proscription, by stripping Roman Catholics of arms in the
+face of licence and of cruelty, and, finally, by clothing the extreme of
+lawlessness with the forms of law.
+
+Within the last twelve months we have seen, in the streets of Belfast,
+the painful proof that the work of Beresford and of Castlereagh has been
+found capable for the moment of revival. To aggravate or sustain Irish
+disunion, religious bigotry has been again evoked in Ireland. If the
+curse be an old one, there is also an old cure, recorded in the grand
+pharmacopoeia of history; and if the abstract force of policy and
+prudence are insufficient for the work, we may yet find that the evil
+spirit will be effectually laid by the gentle influence of a living and
+working Irish nationality. _Quod faxit Deus._
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 73: _2 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+chap, vii. vol. ii, p. 205.]
+
+[Footnote 75: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+vol. ii. p. 227.]
+
+[Footnote 76: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 164.]
+
+[Footnote 77: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 166.]
+
+[Footnote 78: See Ball's _History of the Church of Ireland_, a valuable
+work, deserving of more attention than it seems to have received.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Boulter's _Letters_, i. 138, _et alibi_.]
+
+[Footnote 80: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+ii.]
+
+[Footnote 81: Boulter's _Letters_, vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 82: Cornwallis's _Correspondence_, ii. 441.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Grattan's _Life and Times_, v. 173.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Lecky, ii. 430.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Duffy, p. 177.]
+
+[Footnote 86: Schiller's _Wallenstein_.]
+
+[Footnote 87: Lecky, iv. 489.]
+
+[Footnote 88: Lecky, iv. 477-479; Brown, _Laws against Catholics_, pp.
+329-332.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Lecky, pp. 499-501.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Sheridan's _Critic_, act iii. sc. I.]
+
+[Footnote 91: Plowden's _History_ (1809), ii. 70.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Brown, _Laws against Catholics_, p. 289.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Lecky, i. 297.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Plowden, i. 297.]
+
+[Footnote 95: 1 Geo. II. c. ix. sect 7.]
+
+[Footnote 96: See Lecky, vi. 521.]
+
+[Footnote 97: _The Irish Parliament_, p. 64. Cassell: 1885.]
+
+[Footnote 98: See Lecky, vi. 492, 493.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Lecky, vi. 567.]
+
+[Footnote 100: Plowden's _Historical Review_, ii. 335.]
+
+[Footnote 101: Ibid., ii. 353.]
+
+[Footnote 102: Plowden's _Historical Review_, ii. 498.]
+
+[Footnote 103: Ibid., ii. 357.]
+
+[Footnote 104: Ibid., ii. 505.]
+
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
+
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Handbook of Home Rule (1887), by W. E. Gladstone et al.
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Handbook of Home Rule (1887)
+
+Author: W. E. Gladstone et al.
+
+Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14518]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HANDBOOK OF HOME RULE (1887) ***
+
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+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Aaron Reed and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
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+
+
+
+<h1>HANDBOOK OF HOME RULE<!-- Page i --><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i" /><!-- Page ii --><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii" /></h1>
+
+<p class="titlepagesmall">BEING</p>
+<p class="titlepagebig"><i>ARTICLES ON THE IRISH QUESTION</i></p>
+<p class="titlepagesmall">BY</p>
+
+<p class="titlepagebig">THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P.<br />
+THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P., LORD THRING<br />
+JAMES BRYCE, M.P., CANON MACCOLL<br />
+E.L. GODKIN, AND R. BARRY O'BRIEN
+<br /></p>
+
+<p class="titlepagesmall"><i>WITH PREFACE BY</i></p>
+<p class="titlepagebig">THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G.
+<br /></p>
+
+<p class="titlepagesmall">EDITED BY</p>
+<p class="titlepagebig">JAMES BRYCE, M.P.<br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="titlepagebig">SECOND EDITION<br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="titlepagebig">LONDON</p>
+<p class="titlepagesmall">KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH &amp; CO., I, PATERNOSTER SQUARE<br />
+1887</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><!-- Page iii --><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii" /><a name="EDITORS_NOTE" id="EDITORS_NOTE" />EDITOR'S NOTE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Of the articles contained in this volume, those by Mr.
+Gladstone, Mr. E.L. Godkin on &quot;A Lawyer's Objections
+to Home Rule,&quot; and Mr. Barry O'Brien appear
+for the first time. The others are reprinted from the
+<i>Contemporary Review</i>, the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, and the
+<i>New Princeton Review</i>, to the proprietors and editors of
+which periodicals respectively the thanks of the several
+writers and of the editor are tendered. In most of these
+reprints some passages of transitory interest have been
+omitted, and some few additions have been made.</p>
+
+<p>The object of the writers has been to treat the difficult
+questions connected with the Government of Ireland in a
+dispassionate spirit; and the volume is offered to the public
+in the hope that it may, at a time of warm controversy over
+passing events, help to lead thoughtful men back to the
+consideration of the principles which underlie those questions,
+and which it seeks to elucidate by calm discussion
+and by references to history.</p>
+
+<p><i>October</i>, 1887.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><!-- Page iv --><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv" /><!-- Page v --><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v" />
+CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<p><a href="#PREFACE">PREFACE.</a><br />
+BY THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#AMERICAN_HOME_RULE">AMERICAN HOME RULE.</a><br />
+BY E.L. GODKIN</p>
+
+<p><a href="#HOW_WE_BECAME_HOME_RULERS">HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS.</a><br />
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#HOME_RULE_AND_IMPERIAL_UNITY">HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY.</a><br />
+BY LORD THRING</p>
+
+<p><a href="#THE_IRISH_GOVERNMENT_BILL">THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL AND THE IRISH LAND BILL.</a><br />
+BY LORD THRING</p>
+
+
+<p><a href="#THE_UNIONISTquot_POSITION">THE &quot;UNIONIST&quot; POSITION.</a><br />
+BY CANON MACCOLL</p>
+
+<p><a href="#A_LAWYERS_OBJECTIONS_TO">A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE.</a><br />
+BY E.L. GODKIN</p>
+
+<p><a href="#THE_UNIONISTquot_CASE_FOR_HOME">THE &quot;UNIONIST&quot; CASE FOR HOME RULE.</a><br />
+BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN</p>
+
+<p><a href="#IRELANDS_ALTERNATIVES">IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES.</a><br />
+BY LORD THRING</p>
+
+<p><a href="#THE_PAST_AND_FUTURE_OF_THE">THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION.</a><br />
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#SOME_ARGUMENTS_CONSIDERED71">SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.</a><br />
+BY THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#LESSONS_OF_IRISH_HISTORY_IN">LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.</a><br />
+BY THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE" /><!-- Page vi --><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi" /><!-- Page vii --><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii" />PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The present seems an excellent moment for bringing forward
+the arguments in favour of a new policy for Ireland,
+which are to be found in the articles contained in this
+volume.</p>
+
+<p>We are realizing the first results of the verdict given
+at the election of 1886. And this I interpret as saying
+that the constituencies were not then ready to depart from
+the lines of policy which, up to last year, nearly all politicians
+of both parties in Parliament had laid down for their
+guidance in Irish affairs.</p>
+
+<p>We have had the Session occupied almost wholly with
+Lord Salisbury's proposals for strengthening the power of
+the central Government to maintain law and order in Ireland,
+and for dealing with the most pressing necessities of the
+Land question in that country.</p>
+
+<p>It is well, before the policy of the Government is
+practically tested, that the views of thoughtful men holding
+different opinions should be clearly set forth, not in the
+shape of polemical speeches, but in measured articles which
+specially appeal to those who have not hitherto joined the
+fighting ranks of either side, and who are sure to intervene
+with great force at the next election, when the Irish question
+is again submitted to the constituencies.<!-- Page viii --><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii" /></p>
+
+<p>I feel that I can add little or nothing to the weight of
+the arguments contained in these papers, but I should like
+to give some reasons why I earnestly hope that they will
+receive careful consideration.</p>
+
+<p>The writers have endeavoured to approach their work
+with impartiality, and to free themselves from those prejudices
+which make it difficult for Englishmen to discuss
+Irish questions in a fresh and independent train of thought,
+and realize how widely Irish customs, laws, traditions, and
+sentiments differ from our own.</p>
+
+<p>We are apt to think that what has worked well here
+will work well in Ireland; that Irishmen who differ from
+us are unreasonable; and that their proposals for change
+must be mistaken. We do not make allowance for the
+soreness of feeling prevailing among men who have long
+objected to the system by which Ireland has been governed,
+and who find that their earnest appeals for reform have
+been, until recent times, contemptuously disregarded by
+English politicians. Time after time moderate counsels
+have been rejected until too late. Acts of an exceptional
+character intended to secure law and order have been very
+numerous, and every one of them has caused fresh irritation;
+while remedial measures have been given in a manner
+which has not won the sympathy of the people, because
+they have not been the work of the Irish themselves, and
+have not been prepared in their own way.</p>
+
+<p>Parliament seems during the past Session to have fallen
+into the same error. By the power of an English majority,
+measures have been passed which are vehemently opposed
+by the political leaders and the majority of the Irish nation,
+and which are only agreeable to a small minority in Ireland.
+This action can only succeed if the Irish can be persuaded
+to relinquish the national sentiments of Home Rule; and yet
+<!-- Page ix --><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix" />this was never stronger or more vigorous than at the present
+time. It is supported by millions of Irish settled in America
+and in Australia; and here I would say that it has often struck
+me that the strong feeling of dissatisfaction, or, I might say,
+of disaffection, among the Irish is fed and nurtured by the
+marked contrast existing between the social condition of
+large numbers of the Irish in the South and West of Ireland
+and the views and habits of their numerous relatives in the
+United States.</p>
+
+<p>The social condition of many parts of Ireland is as
+backward, or perhaps more backward, than the condition of
+the rural population of England at the end of last or the
+beginning of this century. The Irish peasantry still live
+in poor hovels, often in the same room with animals;
+they have few modern comforts; and yet they are in close
+communication with those who live at ease in the cities and
+farms of the United States. They are also imbued with all
+the advanced political notions of the American Republic,
+and are sufficiently educated to read the latest political
+doctrines in the Press which circulates among them. Their
+social condition at home is a hundred years behind their
+state of political and mental culture. They naturally contrast
+the misery of many Irish peasants with the position of
+their relatives in the New World. This cannot but embitter
+their views against English rulers, and strengthen
+their leaning to national sentiments. Their national aspirations
+have never died out since 1782. They have taken
+various forms; but if the movements arising from them
+have been put down, fresh movements have constantly
+sprung up. The Press has grown into an immense power,
+and its influences have all been used to strengthen the zeal for
+Irish nationality, while, at the same time, the success of the
+national movements in Italy, Hungary, Greece, and Germany
+<!-- Page x --><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x" />have had the same effect. Lastly, the sentiment of Home
+Rule has gained the sympathy of large bodies of electors in
+the constituencies of Great Britain, and, under the circumstances,
+it is difficult to suppose that, even if the country
+remains quiet, constitutional agitation will vanish or the
+Irish relinquish their most cherished ambition.</p>
+
+<p>We hear, from men who ought to know something of
+Ireland, that if the Land question is once settled, and dual
+ownership practically abolished, the tenants will be satisfied,
+and the movement for Home Rule will no longer find active
+support in Ireland. Without going into the whole of this
+argument, I should like to say two things: first, that I do
+not know how a large scheme of Land Purchase can be
+carried through Parliament with safety to Imperial interests
+without establishing, at the same time, some strong Irish
+Government in Dublin to act between the Imperial Government
+and the tenants of Ireland; and, second, that the
+feeling for Home Rule has a vitality of its own which will
+survive the Land question, even if independently settled.</p>
+
+<p>Home Rule is an expression of national feeling which
+cannot be extinguished in Ireland, and the only safe method
+of dealing with it is to turn its force and power to the
+support of an Irish Government established for the management
+of local Irish affairs. There are those who think that
+this must lead to separation. I cannot believe in this
+fear, for I know of no English statesman who looks upon
+complete separation of Ireland from Great Britain as
+possible. The geographical position of Ireland, the social
+and commercial connection between the two peoples, renders
+such a thing impossible. The Irish know this, and they
+are not so foolish as to think that they could gain their
+independence by force of arms; but I do not believe that
+they desire it. They are satisfied to obtain the manage<!-- Page xi --><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi" />ment
+of their own local affairs under the <i>&aelig;gis</i> of the flag
+of England. The papers in this volume show how this
+can be done with due regard to Imperial interests and the
+rights of minorities.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not enlarge on this part of the subject, but I wish
+to draw attention to the working of the Irish Government,
+and the position which it holds in the country, for it is through
+its administration that the policy of the Cabinet will be carried
+out. At the outset I feel bound to deprecate the exaggerated
+condemnation which the &quot;Castle&quot; receives from its opponents.
+It has its defects. Notwithstanding efforts of various
+ministers to enlarge the circle from which its officials are
+drawn, it is still too narrow for the modern development
+of Irish society, and it has from time to time been recruited
+from partisans without sufficient regard to the efficiency and
+requirements of the public service. But, on the whole, its
+members, taken as individuals, can well bear comparison
+with those of other branches of the Civil Service. They
+are diligent; they desire to do their duty with impartiality,
+and to hold an even balance between many opposing interests
+in Ireland. Whatever party is in office, they loyally
+carry out the policy of their chiefs. They are, probably,
+more plastic to the leadership of the heads of departments
+than members of some English offices, and they are more
+quickly moved by the influences around them. Sometimes
+they may relapse into an attitude of indifference and
+inertness if their chiefs are not active; but, on the other
+hand, they will act with vigour and decision if they are led
+by men who know their own minds and desire to be firm
+in the government of the country.</p>
+
+<p>When speaking of the chiefs of the Irish Civil Service, who
+change according to the political party in office, we must not
+overlook the legal officers, who exercise a most powerful
+<!-- Page xii --><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii" />influence on Irish administration. They consist of the
+Lord Chancellor, the Attorney and Solicitor General, and,
+until 1883, there was also an officer called the Law Adviser,
+who was the maid-of-all-work of Castle administration. In
+England, those who hold similar legal offices take no part
+in the daily administration of public affairs. The Lord
+Chancellor, as a member of the Cabinet, takes his share in
+responsibility for the policy of the Government. The law
+officers are consulted in special cases, and take their part
+from time to time in debates in the House of Commons.
+In Ireland, however, the Chancellor is constantly consulted
+by the Lord-Lieutenant on any difficult matter of administration,
+and the Attorney and Solicitor General are in
+constant communication with the Lord-Lieutenant, if he
+carries out the daily work of administration, and with the
+Chief and the Under Secretary.</p>
+
+<p>Governments differ as to the use they make of these
+officials. Some Governments have endeavoured to confine
+their work to cases where a mere legal opinion has to be
+obtained; but, when the country is in a disturbed state, even
+these limited references become very frequent, and questions
+of policy as well as of law are often discussed with the law
+officers. It is needless to say that, with their knowledge of
+Ireland and the traditions of Castle government (it is rare
+that all the law officers are new to office, and, consequently,
+they carry on the traditions from one Government to another),
+they often exercise a paramount influence over the policy
+of the Irish Government, and practically control it.</p>
+
+<p>They are connected with the closest and most influential
+order in Irish society&mdash;the legal order, consisting of the
+judges and Bar of Ireland. This adds to the general
+weight of their advice, but it has a special bearing when
+cases of legal reform or administration are under considera<!-- Page xiii --><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii" />tion;
+it then requires unwonted courage and independence
+for the law officers of the Crown to support changes which
+the lay members of the Government deem necessary.</p>
+
+<p>I have known conspicuous instances of the exercise of
+these high qualities by law officers enabling reforms to be
+carried, but as a rule, particularly when the initiative of
+legal reform is left to them, the Irish law officers do not
+care to move against the feeling of the legal world in
+Dublin. The lawyers, like other bodies, oppose the diminution
+of offices and honours belonging to them, or of the funds
+which, in the way of fees and salaries, are distributed among
+members of the bar; and they become bitterly hostile to any
+permanent official who is known to be a firm legal reformer.
+It would be impossible for me not to acknowledge the great
+service often done to the Government by the able men
+who have filled the law offices, yet I feel that under certain
+circumstances, when their influence has been allowed too
+strongly to prevail, it has tended to narrow the views of the
+Irish Government, and to keep it within a circle too narrow
+for the altered circumstances of modern life.</p>
+
+<p>The chief peculiarity of the Irish Administration is its
+extreme centralization. In this two departments may be
+mentioned as typical of the whole&mdash;the police and administration
+of local justice.</p>
+
+<p>The police in Dublin and throughout Ireland are under
+the control of the Lord-Lieutenant, and both these forces
+are admirable of their kind. They are almost wholly maintained
+by Imperial funds. The Dublin force costs about
+&pound;150,000 a year. The Royal Irish Constabulary costs
+over a million in quiet, and a million and a half in disturbed
+times. Local authorities have nothing to do with their
+action or management. Local justice is administered by
+unpaid magistrates as in England, but they have been
+<!-- Page xiv --><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv" />assisted, and gradually are being supplanted, by magistrates
+appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant and paid by the State.</p>
+
+<p>This state of things arose many years ago from the want
+of confidence between resident landlords and the bulk of
+the people. When agrarian or religious differences disturbed
+a locality the people distrusted the local magistrates, and by
+degrees the system of stipendiary, or, as they are called,
+resident magistrates, spread over the country. To maintain
+the judicial independence and impartiality of these magistrates
+is of the highest importance. At one time this was
+in some danger, for the resident magistrates not only heard
+cases at petty sessions, but, as executive peace officers, to
+a very great extent took the control of the police in their
+district, not only at riots, but in following up and discovering
+offenders. Their position as judicial and executive officers
+was thus very unfortunately mixed up. Between 1882 and
+1883 the Irish Government did their utmost to separate
+and distinguish between these two functions, and it is to be
+hoped that the same policy has been and will be now continued,
+otherwise grave mischief in the administration of
+justice will arise. The existence of this staff of stipendiary
+magistrates could not fail to weaken the influence of the
+gentry in local affairs, and, at the same time, other causes
+were at work to undermine still further their power. The
+spread of education, the ballot, the extension of the franchise,
+communication with America, all tended to strengthen
+the political leaning of the tenants towards the National
+party in Ireland, and to widen the political differences between
+the richer and poorer classes in the country. The
+result of this has been, that not only have even the best
+landlords gradually lost their power in Parliamentary elections
+and on elective boards, but the Government, which
+greatly relied on them for support, has become isolated.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page xv --><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv" />The system of centralization is felt all over the country.
+It was the cause of weakness in the disturbed years of 1880
+and 1881, and, although the Irish Executive strengthened
+themselves by placing officers over several counties, on
+whom they devolved a great deal of responsibility, they did
+not by these steps meet the real difficulty, which was that
+everything that went wrong, whether as to police or magisterial
+decisions, was attributed to the management of the
+Castle.</p>
+
+<p>In this country, local authorities and benches of
+magistrates, quite independent of the Home Office, are
+held responsible for mistakes in police action or irregularities
+in local justice. The consequence is that there is
+a strong buffer to protect the character and power of the
+Home Office.</p>
+
+<p>The absence of such protection in Ireland obviously
+has a very prejudicial effect on the permanent influence and
+popularity of the Irish Government. But as long as our
+system of government from England exists, this centralization
+cannot be avoided, for it would not be possible to
+transfer the responsibility of the police to local representative
+bodies, as they are too much opposed to the landlords
+and the Government to be trusted when strong party differences
+arise; nor, for the same reason, would it be possible
+to fall back on local men to administer justice. The
+fact is, that, out of the Protestant part of Ulster, the Irish
+Government receives the cordial support of only the landed
+proprietors, and a part of the upper middle classes in the
+towns. The feeling of the mass of the people has been so
+long against them that no change in the direction of trust in
+any centralized government of anti-national character can be
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find any<!-- Page xvi --><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi" />
+Municipal Council, Boards of Guardians, or Local Boards,
+in Leinster, Munster, or Connaught, whose members do
+not consist of a majority of Nationalists. At nearly all
+such assemblies, whenever any important political movement
+takes place in the country, or when the Irish
+Government take any action which is displeasing to the
+Nationalists, resolutions are discussed and carried in a
+spirit of sharp hostility to the Government.</p>
+
+<p>In Parliamentary elections we also find clear evidence
+of the strength of the Nationalists, and the extreme weakness
+of their opponents. This is a test which those who accept
+popular representative government cannot disregard, particularly
+at an election when for the first time the new
+constituencies were called upon to exercise the privileges
+entrusted to them by Parliament. Such was the election of
+1885, followed in 1886 by another General Election. In 1885
+contests took place in most of the Irish constituencies.
+They were between Liberals allied with Conservatives, and
+Parnellites. In 1886 the contests were between those who
+called themselves Unionists and Parnellites, and the Irish
+policy of Mr. Gladstone was specially referred to the electors.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the number of members returned on the
+two sides, the result of each election was almost identical,
+but in 1886 there were fewer contests. We may, then,
+assume that the relative forces of Parnellites and Unionists
+were accurately represented at the election of 1885.
+If we take the votes at the election of 1885 for candidates
+standing as Nationalists, we shall find, roughly speaking,
+that they obtained in round numbers about 300,000 votes,
+and candidates who stood either as Liberals or Conservatives
+about 143,000. But the case is really stronger than these
+figures represent it, because in some constituencies the contests
+were between Liberals and Conservatives, and there
+<!-- Page xvii --><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii" />can be no doubt that in those constituencies a number of
+Nationalist votes were given for one or both of such candidates&mdash;votes
+which, therefore, would have to be deducted
+from the 143,000, leaving a still heavier majority on the
+Nationalist side.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1" /><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>If we look at individual constituencies, we find that in
+South Kerry only 133 persons voted for the &quot;Unionist&quot;
+candidate, while 2742 voted for the Nationalist. In six out
+of seven constituencies in Cork where contests took place
+27,692 votes were given for the Nationalists, and only 1703
+for their opponents. In Dublin, in the division which may be
+considered the West End constituency of the Irish metropolis,
+the most successful man of commerce in Ireland, a leader
+of society, whose liberality towards those in his employment
+is only equalled by his munificence in all public works, was
+defeated by over 1900 votes. He did not stand in 1886,
+but his successor was defeated by a still larger majority.
+These elections show the numbers in Ireland on which the
+Government and those who oppose Mr. Parnell's policy
+can count for support.</p>
+
+<p>It is absurd to say that these results are caused by
+terrorism exercised over the minds of the electors by
+the agitators in Ireland; the same results occurred in every
+part of three provinces, and in part of Ulster, and the
+universality of the feeling proves the dominant feeling of
+the Irish electors. They show the extreme difficulty, the
+impossibility, of gaining that support and confidence which
+a Government needs in a free country. As it is, the Irish
+Government stands isolated in Ireland, and relies for support
+solely on England. Is a policy opposed to national
+feeling, which has been often, and by different Ministers,
+<!-- Page xviii --><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii" />tried in Ireland, likely to succeed in the hands of a Government
+such as I have described, and isolated, as I think
+few will deny it to be? It is impossible in the long run
+to maintain it. The roots of strength are wanting.</p>
+
+<p>If we turn from Dublin to London, we do not find
+greater prospects of success. Twice within fourteen months
+Lord Salisbury has formed a Government. In 1885 his
+Cabinet, on taking office, deliberately decided to rule
+Ireland without exceptional laws; after a few months, they
+announced that they must ask Parliament for fresh powers.
+They resigned before they had defined their measures. But
+within six months Lord Salisbury was once more Prime
+Minister, and again commenced his administration by
+governing Ireland under the ordinary law. This attempt
+did not continue longer than the first, for when Parliament
+met in 1887, preparations were at once made to carry the
+Criminal Law Amendment Act, which occupied so large
+a portion of the late Session.</p>
+
+<p>This is not the action of men who have strong faith in
+their principles. Nor can it be shown that the continuous
+support so necessary for success will be given to this policy.
+No doubt it may be urged that the operation of the Act
+is not limited in duration; but, notwithstanding that, few
+politicians believe that the constituencies of Great Britain
+will long support the application of exceptional criminal
+laws to any part of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>This would be wholly inconsistent with past experience
+In relation to these measures, which points entirely the
+other way; and the publication in English newspapers and
+constant discussion on English platforms of the painful
+incidents which seem, unfortunately, inseparable from a rigid
+administration of the law in Ireland, together with the prolonged
+debates, such incidents give rise to, in Parliament,
+<!-- Page xix --><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix" />aggravate the difficulties of administration, and lead the
+Irish people to believe that exceptional legislation will be
+as short-lived in the future as it has been in the past.</p>
+
+<p>It was this evidence of want of continuity of policy in
+1885, and the startling disclosure of the weakness of the
+anti-national party in Ireland at the election in the autumn
+of that year, which finally convinced me that the time had come
+when we could no longer turn to a mixed policy of remedial
+and exceptional criminal legislation as the means of winning
+the constituencies of that country in support of our old
+system of governing Ireland. That system has failed for
+eighty-six years, and obviously cannot succeed when worked
+with representative institutions. As the people of Great
+Britain will not for a moment tolerate the withdrawal of
+representative government from Ireland, we must adopt
+some new plan. What I have here written deals with
+but a fragment of the arguments for Home Rule, some
+of which are admirably set forth by the able men who
+have written the articles to which this is the preface. I
+earnestly wish that they may arrest the attention of many
+excellent Irishmen who still cling to the old traditions
+of English rule, and cause them to realize that the only
+way of relieving their country from the intolerable uncertainty
+which hangs over her commercial, social, and
+political interests and paralyzes all efforts for the improvement
+of her people, will be to form a Constitution supported
+by all classes of the community. I trust that they will join
+in this work before it is too late, for they may yet exercise
+a powerful and salutary influence in the settlement of this
+great question.<!-- Page xx --><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx" /><!-- Page 1 --><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> There was one case&mdash;North Louth&mdash;in which two Nationalists
+opposed one another, and I have left that case out of the calculation.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AMERICAN_HOME_RULE" id="AMERICAN_HOME_RULE" />AMERICAN HOME RULE</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY E.L. GODKIN</p>
+
+
+<p>American experience has been frequently cited, in the
+course of the controversy now raging in England over the
+Irish question, both by way of warning and of example.
+For instance, I have found in the <i>Times</i> as well as in other
+journals&mdash;the <i>Spectator</i>, I think, among the number&mdash;very
+contemptuous dismissals of the plan of offering Ireland a
+government like that of an American State, on the ground
+that the Americans are loyal to the central authority, while
+in Ireland there is a strong feeling of hostility to it, which
+would probably increase under Home Rule. The Queen's
+writ, it has been remarked, cannot be said to run in large
+parts of Ireland, while in every part of the United States
+the Federal writ is implicitly obeyed, and the ministers of
+Federal authority find ready aid and sympathy from the
+people. If I remember rightly, the Duke of Argyll has
+been very emphatic in pointing out the difference between
+giving local self-government to a community in which the
+tendencies of popular feeling are &quot;centrifugal,&quot; and giving
+it to one in which these tendencies are &quot;centripetal.&quot; The
+inference to be drawn was, of course, that as long as Ireland
+disliked the Imperial government the concession of Home
+Rule would be unsafe, and would only become safe when
+the Irish people showed somewhat the same sort of affection
+<!-- Page 2 --><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" />for the English connection which the people of the State
+of New York now feel for the Constitution of the United
+States.</p>
+
+<p>Among the multitude of those who have taken part in
+the controversy on one side or the other, no one has, so
+far as I have observed, pointed out that the state of feeling
+in America toward the central government with which the
+state of feeling in Ireland towards the British Government
+is now compared, did not exist when the American Constitution
+was set up; that the political tendencies in America
+at that time were centrifugal, not centripetal, and that the
+extraordinary love and admiration with which Americans
+now regard the Federal government are the result of eighty
+years' experience of its working. The first Confederation
+was as much as the people could bear in the way of surrendering
+local powers when the War of Independence
+came to an end. It was its hopeless failure to provide
+peace and security which led to the framing of the present
+Constitution. But even with this experience still fresh, the
+adoption of the Constitution was no easy matter. I shall
+not burden this article with historical citations showing
+the very great difficulty which the framers of the Constitution
+had in inducing the various States to adopt it,
+or the magnitude and variety of the fears and suspicions
+with which, many of the most influential men in all parts
+of the country regarded it. Any one who wishes to
+know how numerous and diversified these fears and suspicions
+were, cannot do better than read the series of
+papers known as &quot;The Federalist,&quot; written mainly by
+Hamilton and Madison, to commend the new plan to the
+various States. It was adopted almost as a matter of
+necessity, that is, as the only way out of the Slough of
+Despond in which the Confederation had plunged the
+union of the States; but the objections to it which were
+felt at the beginning were only removed by actual trial.<!-- Page 3 --><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" />
+Hamilton's two colleagues, as delegates from New York,
+Yates and Lansing, withdrew in disgust from the Convention,
+as soon as the Constitution was outlined, and did not
+return. The notion that the Constitution was produced by
+the craving of the American people for something of that
+sort to love and revere, and that it was not bestowed on
+them until they had given ample assurance that they would
+lavish affection on it, has no foundation whatever in fact.
+The devotion of Americans to the Union is, indeed, as
+clear a case of cause and effect as is to be found in political
+history. They have learned to like the Constitution because
+the country has prospered under it, and because it has
+given them all the benefits of national life without interference
+with local liberties. If they had not set up a
+central government until the centrifugal sentiment had disappeared
+from the States, and the feeling of loyalty for a
+central authority had fully shown itself, they would assuredly
+never have set it up at all.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, it has to be borne in mind that the adoption
+of the Constitution did not involve the surrender of any
+local franchises, by which the people of the various States
+set great store. The States preserved fully four-fifths of
+their autonomy, or in fact nearly all of it which closely concerned
+the daily lives of individuals. Set aside the post-office,
+and a citizen of the State of New York, not engaged in foreign
+trade, might, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, have
+passed a long and busy life without once coming in contact
+with a United States official, and without being made aware
+in any of his doings, by any restriction or regulation, that
+he was living under any government but that of his own
+State. If he went abroad he had to apply for a United
+States passport. If he quarrelled with a foreigner, or with
+the citizen of another State, he might be sued in the Federal
+Court. If he imported foreign goods he had to pay duties
+to the collector of a Federal Custom-house. If he invented
+<!-- Page 4 --><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" />something, or wrote a book, he had to apply to the Department
+of the Interior for a patent or a copyright. But how
+few there were in the first seventy years of American history
+who had any of these experiences! No one supposes, or
+has ever supposed, that had the Federalists demanded any
+very large sacrifice of local franchises, or attempted to set
+up even a close approach to a centralized Government, the
+adoption of the Constitution would have been possible.
+If, for instance, such a transfer of both administration and
+legislation to the central authority as took place in Ireland
+after the Union had been proposed, it would have been
+rejected with derision. You will get no American to argue
+with you on this point. If you ask him whether he thinks
+it likely that a highly centralized government could have
+been created in 1879&mdash;such a one, for example, as Ireland
+has been under since 1800&mdash;or whether if created it would
+by this time have won the affection of the people, or filled
+them with centripetal tendencies, he will answer you with
+a smile.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is that nowhere, any more than in Ireland,
+do people love their Government from a sense of duty or
+because they crave an object of political affection, or even
+because it exalts them in the eyes of foreigners. They love
+it because they are happy or prosperous under it; because
+it supplies security in the form best suited to their tastes
+and habits, or in some manner ministers to their self-love.
+Loyalty to the king as the Lord's anointed, without any
+sense either of favours received or expected, has played
+a great part in European politics, I admit; but, for reasons
+which I will not here take up space in stating, a political
+arrangement, whether it be an elected monarch or a constitution,
+cannot be made, in our day, to reign in men's
+hearts except as the result of benefits so palpable that
+common people, as well as political philosophers, can see
+them and count them.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 5 --><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" />Many of the opponents of Home Rule, too, point to
+the vigour with which the United States Government put
+down the attempt made by the South to break up the
+Union as an example of the American love of &quot;imperial
+unity,&quot; and of the spirit in which England should now
+meet the Irish demands for local autonomy. This again
+is rather surprising, because you will find no one in
+America who will maintain for one moment that troops
+could have been raised in 1860 to undertake the conquest
+of the South for the purpose of setting up a centralized
+administration, or, in other words, for the purpose of wiping
+out State lines, or diminishing State authority. No man or
+party proposed anything of this kind at the outbreak of the
+war, or would have dared to propose it. The object for
+which the North rose in arms, and which Lincoln had in
+view when he called for troops, was the restoration of the
+Union just as it was when South Carolina seceded, barring
+the extension of slavery into the territories. During the
+first year of the war, certainly, the revolted States might at
+any time have had peace on the <i>status quo</i> basis, that is, without
+the smallest diminution of their rights and immunities
+under the Constitution. It was only when it became
+evident that the war would have to be fought out to a
+finish, as the pugilists say&mdash;that is, that it would have to
+end in a complete conquest of the Southern territory&mdash;that
+the question, what would become of the States as a political
+organization after the struggle was over, began to be
+debated at all. What did become of them? How did
+Americans deal with Home Rule, after it had been used
+to set on foot against the central authority what the newspapers
+used to delight in calling &quot;the greatest rebellion the
+world ever saw&quot;? The answer to these questions is, it
+seems to me, a contribution of some value to the discussion
+of the Irish problem in its present stage, if American precedents
+can throw any light whatever on it.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 6 --><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" />There was a Joint Committee of both Houses of Congress
+appointed in 1866 to consider the condition of the
+South with reference to the safety or expediency of admitting
+the States lately in rebellion to their old relations to the
+Union, including representation in Congress. It contained,
+besides such fanatical enemies of the South as Thaddeus
+Stevens, such very conservative men as Mr. Fessenden,
+Mr. Grimes, Mr. Morrill, and Mr. Conkling. Here is the
+account they gave of the condition of Southern feeling one
+year after Lee's surrender:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Examining the evidence taken by your committee still
+further, in connection with facts too notorious to be disputed,
+it appears that the Southern press, with few exceptions,
+and those mostly of newspapers recently established
+by Northern men, abounds with weekly and daily abuse of
+the institutions and people of the loyal States; defends the
+men who led, and the principles which incited, the rebellion;
+denounces and reviles Southern men who adhered to the
+Union; and strives constantly and unscrupulously, by every
+means in its power, to keep alive the fire of hate and discord
+between the sections; calling upon the President to
+violate his oath of office, overturn the Government by force
+of arms, and drive the representatives of the people from
+their seats in Congress. The national banner is openly
+insulted, and the national airs scoffed at, not only by an
+ignorant populace, but at public meetings, and once, among
+other notable instances, at a dinner given in honour of
+a notorious rebel who had violated his oath and abandoned
+his flag. The same individual is elected to an important
+office in the leading city of his State, although an unpardoned
+rebel, and so offensive that the President refuses to allow
+him to enter upon his official duties. In another State the
+leading general of the rebel armies is openly nominated for
+Governor by the Speaker of the House of Delegates, and
+the nomination is hailed by the people with shouts of
+satisfaction, and openly endorsed by the press....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<!-- Page 7 --><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" />The evidence of an intense hostility to the Federal
+Union, and an equally intense love of the late Confederacy,
+nurtured by the war is decisive. While it appears that
+nearly all are willing to submit, at least for the time being,
+to the Federal authority, it is equally clear that the ruling
+motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will be
+derived from a representation in Congress. Officers of the
+Union army on duty, and Northern men who go south to
+engage in business, are generally detested and proscribed.
+Southern men who adhered to the Union are bitterly hated
+and relentlessly persecuted. In some localities prosecutions
+have been instituted in State courts against Union officers
+for acts done in the line of official duty, and similar prosecutions
+are threatened elsewhere as soon as the United
+States troops are removed. All such demonstrations show
+a state of feeling against which it is unmistakably necessary
+to guard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The testimony is conclusive that after the collapse of
+the Confederacy the feeling of the people of the rebellious
+States was that of abject submission. Having appealed to
+the tribunal of arms, they had no hope except that by the
+magnanimity of their conquerors, their lives, and possibly
+their property, might be preserved. Unfortunately the
+general issue of pardons to persons who had been prominent
+in the rebellion, and the feeling of kindliness and
+conciliation manifested by the Executive, and very
+generally indicated through the Northern press, had the
+effect to render whole communities forgetful of the crime
+they had committed, defiant towards the Federal Government,
+and regardless of their duties as citizens. The
+conciliatory measures of the Government do not seem
+to have been met even half-way. The bitterness and
+defiance exhibited towards the United States under such
+circumstances is without a parallel in the history of the
+world. In return for our leniency we receive only an
+<!-- Page 8 --><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" />insulting denial of our authority. In return for our kind
+desire for the resumption of fraternal relations we receive
+only an insolent assumption of rights and privileges long
+since forfeited. The crime we have punished is paraded
+as a virtue, and the principles of republican government
+which we have vindicated at so terrible a cost are denounced
+as unjust and oppressive.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If we add to this evidence the fact that, although
+peace has been declared by the President, he has not, to
+this day, deemed it safe to restore the writ of <i>habeas corpus</i>,
+to relieve the insurrectionary States of martial law, nor to
+withdraw the troops from many localities, and that the
+commanding general deems an increase of the army indispensable
+to the preservation of order and the protection of
+loyal and well-disposed people in the South, the proof of
+a condition of feeling hostile to the Union and dangerous
+to the Government throughout the insurrectionary States
+would seem to be overwhelming.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This Committee recommended a series of coercive
+measures, the first of which was the adoption of the fourteenth
+amendment to the Constitution, which disqualified
+for all office, either under the United States or under any
+State, any person who having in any capacity taken an oath
+of allegiance to the United States afterwards engaged in
+rebellion or gave aid and comfort to the rebels. This
+denied the <i>jus honorum</i> to all the leading men at the South
+who had survived the war. In addition to it, an Act was
+passed in March, 1867, which put all the rebel States under
+military rule until a constitution should have been framed
+by a Convention elected by all males over twenty-one,
+except such as would be excluded from office by the above-named
+constitutional amendment if it were adopted, which
+at that time it had not been. Another Act was passed
+three weeks later, prescribing, for voters in the States lately
+in rebellion, what was known as the &quot;ironclad oath,&quot; which
+<!-- Page 9 --><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" />excluded from the franchise not only all who had borne
+arms against the United States, but all who, having ever
+held any office for which the taking an oath of allegiance
+to the United States was a qualification, had afterwards
+ever given &quot;aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.&quot; This
+practically disfranchised all the white men of the South
+over twenty-five years old.</p>
+
+<p>On this legislation there grew up, as all the world now
+knows, what was called the &quot;carpet-bag&quot; <i>regime</i>. Swarms
+of Northern adventurers went down to the Southern States,
+organized the ignorant negro voters, constructed State constitutions
+to suit themselves, got themselves elected to all
+the chief offices, plundered the State treasuries, contracted
+huge State debts, and stole the proceeds in connivance with
+legislatures composed mainly of negroes, of whom the most
+intelligent and instructed had been barbers and hotel-waiters.
+In some of the States, such as South Carolina and Mississippi,
+in which the negro population were in the majority,
+the government became a mere caricature. I was in
+Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, in 1872, during
+the session of the legislature, when you could obtain the
+passage of almost any measure you pleased by a small payment&mdash;at
+that time seven hundred dollars&mdash;to an old negro
+preacher who controlled the coloured majority. Under the
+pretence of fitting up committee-rooms, the private lodging-rooms
+at the boarding-houses of the negro members, in
+many instances, were extravagantly furnished with Wilton
+and Brussels carpets, mirrors, and sofas. A thousand dollars
+were expended for two hundred elegant imported china
+spittoons. There were only one hundred and twenty-three
+members in the House of Representatives, but the residue
+were, perhaps, transferred to the private chambers of the
+legislators.</p>
+
+<p>Now, how did the Southern whites deal with this state of
+things? Well, I am sorry to say they manifested their
+<!-- Page 10 --><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" />discontent very much in the way in which the Irish have for
+the last hundred years been manifesting theirs. If, as the
+English opponents of Home Rule seem to think, readiness to
+commit outrages, and refusal to sympathize with the victims
+of outrages, indicate political incapacity, the whites of the
+South showed, in the period between 1866 and 1876, that they
+were utterly unfit to be entrusted with the work of self-government.
+They could not rise openly in revolt because the
+United States troops were everywhere at the service of the
+carpet-baggers, for the suppression of armed resistance.
+They did not send petitions to Congress, or write letters to
+the Northern newspapers, or hold indignation meetings.
+They simply formed a huge secret society on the model of
+the &quot;Molly Maguires&quot; or &quot;Moonlighters,&quot; whose special
+function was to intimidate, flog, mutilate, or murder political
+opponents in the night time. This society was called the
+&quot;Ku-Klux Klan.&quot; Let me give some account of its operation,
+and I shall make it as brief as possible. It had
+become so powerful in 1871 that President Grant in that
+year, in his message to Congress, declared that &quot;a condition
+of things existed in some of the States of the Union rendering
+life and property insecure, and the carrying of the mails
+and the collecting of the revenue dangerous.&quot; A Joint Select
+Committee of Congress was accordingly appointed, early in
+1872, to &quot;inquire into the condition of affairs in the late
+insurrectionary States, so far as regards the execution of the
+laws and the safety of the lives and property of the citizens
+of the United States.&quot; Its report now lies before me, and
+it reads uncommonly like the speech of an Irish Secretary
+in the House of Commons bringing in a &quot;Suppression of
+Crime Bill.&quot; The Committee say&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is a remarkable concurrence of testimony to the
+effect that, in those of the late rebellious States into whose
+condition we have examined, the courts and juries administer
+justice between man and man in all ordinary cases, civil
+<!-- Page 11 --><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />and criminal; and while there is this concurrence on this
+point, the evidence is equally decisive that redress cannot
+be obtained against those who commit crimes in disguise
+and at night. The reasons assigned are that identification
+is difficult, almost impossible; that, when this is attempted,
+the combinations and oaths of the order come in and release
+the culprit by perjury, either upon the witness-stand or in
+the jury-box; and that the terror inspired by their acts, as
+well as the public sentiment in their favour in many localities,
+paralyzes the arm of civil power.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&quot;The murders and outrages which have been perpetrated
+in many counties of Middle and West Tennessee, during
+the past few months, have been so numerous, and of such
+an aggravated character, as almost baffles investigation. In
+these counties a reign of terror exists which is so absolute
+in its nature that the best of citizens are unable or unwilling
+to give free expression to their opinions. The terror inspired
+by the secret organization known as the Ku-Klux
+Klan is so great, that the officers of the law are powerless
+to execute its provisions, to discharge their duties, or
+to bring the guilty perpetrators of these outrages to the
+punishment they deserve. Their stealthy movements are
+generally made under cover of night, and under masks and
+disguises, which render their identification difficult, if not
+impossible. To add to the secrecy which envelops their
+operations, is the fact that no information of their murderous
+acts can be obtained without the greatest difficulty and
+danger in the localities where they are committed. No one
+dares to inform upon them, or take any measures to bring
+them to punishment, because no one can tell but that he
+may be the next victim of their hostility or animosity. The
+members of this organization, with their friends, aiders, and
+abettors, take especial pains to conceal all their operations.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><!-- Page 12 --><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" />&quot;Your committee believe that during the past six
+months, the murders&mdash;to say nothing of other outrages&mdash;would
+average one a day, or one for every twenty-four
+hours; that in the great majority of these cases they have
+been perpetrated by the Ku-Klux above referred to, and
+few, if any, have been brought to punishment. A number
+of the counties of this State (Tennessee) are entirely at the
+mercy of this organization, and roving bands of nightly
+marauders bid defiance to the civil authorities, and threaten
+to drive out every man, white or black, who does not submit
+to their arbitrary dictation. To add to the general lawlessness
+of these communities, bad men of every description
+take advantage of the circumstances surrounding them, and
+perpetrate acts of violence, from personal or pecuniary
+motives, under the plea of political necessity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here is some of the evidence on which the report was
+based.</p>
+
+<p>A complaint of outrages committed in Georgia was referred
+by the general of the army, in June, 1869, to the
+general of the Department of the South for thorough investigation
+and report. General Terry, in his report, made
+August 14, 1869, says<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2" /><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In many parts of the State there is practically no
+government. The worst of crimes are committed, and no
+attempt is made to punish those who commit them. Murders
+have been and are frequent; the abuse, in various ways, of
+the blacks is too common to excite notice. There can
+be no doubt of the existence of numerous insurrectionary
+organizations known as 'Ku-Klux Klans,' who, shielded by
+their disguise, by the secrecy of their movements, and by
+the terror which they inspire, perpetrate crime with impunity.
+There is great reason to believe that in some cases local
+magistrates are in sympathy with the members of these
+organizations. In many places they are overawed by them
+<!-- Page 13 --><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" />and dare not attempt to punish them. To punish such
+offenders by civil proceedings would be a difficult task, even
+were magistrates in all cases disposed and had they the
+courage to do their duty, for the same influences which
+govern them equally affect juries and witnesses.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Merrill, who assumed command
+(in Louisiana) on the 26th of March, and commenced
+investigation into the state of affairs, says (p. 1465)&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From the best information I can get, I estimate the
+number of cases of whipping, beating, and personal violence
+of various grades, in this county, since the first of last
+November, at between three and four hundred, excluding
+numerous minor cases of threats, intimidation, abuse, and
+small personal violence, as knocking down with a pistol
+or gun, etc. The more serious outrages, exclusive of
+murders and whippings, noted hereafter, have been the
+following:&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He then proceeds with the details of sixty-eight cases,
+giving the names of the parties injured, white and black,
+and including the tearing up of the railway, on the night
+before a raid was made by the Ku-Klux on the county
+treasury building. The rails were taken up, to prevent the
+arrival of the United States troops, who, it was known, were
+to come on Sunday morning. The raid was made on that
+Sunday night while the troops were lying at Chester,
+twenty-two miles distant, unable to reach Yorkville, because
+of the rails being torn up.</p>
+
+<p>Another witness said: &quot;To give the details of the
+whipping of men to compel them to change their mode of
+voting, the tearing of them away from their families at night,
+accompanied with insults and outrage, and followed by their
+murder, would be but repeating what has been described in
+other States, showing that it is the same organization in all,
+working by the same means for the same end. Five
+murders are shown to have been committed in Monroe<!-- Page 14 --><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" />
+County, fifteen in Noxubee, one in Lowndes, by the
+testimony taken in the city of Washington; but the extent
+to which school-houses were burnt, teachers whipped, and
+outrages committed in this State, cannot be fully given
+until the testimony taken by the sub-committee shall have
+been printed and made ready to report.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There are about eighty, closely printed, large octavo
+pages of this kind of testimony given by sufferers from the
+outrages.</p>
+
+<p>Something was done to suppress the Ku-Klux by a
+Federal Act passed in 1871, which made offences of this
+kind punishable in the Federal Courts. Considerable
+numbers of them were arrested, tried, and convicted, and
+sent to undergo their punishment in the Northern jails.
+But there was no complete pacification of the South until
+the carpet-bag governments were refused the support of the
+Federal troops by President Hayes, on his accession to
+power in 1876. Then the carpet-bag <i>r&eacute;gime</i> disappeared
+like a house of cards. The chief carpet-baggers fled, and
+the government passed at once into the hands of the native
+whites. I do not propose to defend or explain the way in
+which they have since then kept it in their hands, by
+suppressing or controlling the negro vote. This is not
+necessary to my purpose.</p>
+
+<p>What I seek to show is that the Irish are not peculiar
+in their manner of expressing their discontent with a
+government directed or controlled by the public opinion
+of another indifferent or semi-hostile community which it
+is impossible to resist in open warfare; that Anglo-Saxons
+resort to somewhat the same methods under similar circumstances,
+and that lawlessness and cruelty, considered
+as expressions of political animosity, do not necessarily
+argue any incapacity for the conduct of an orderly and
+efficient government, although I admit freely that they do
+argue a low state of civilization.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 15 --><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" />I will add one more illustration which, although more
+remote than those which I have taken from the Southern
+States during the reconstruction period, is not too remote
+for my purpose, and is in some respects stronger than any
+of them. I do not know a more orderly community in the
+world, or one which, down to the outbreak of the Civil
+War, when manufactures began to multiply, and the Irish
+immigration began to pour in, had a higher average of
+intelligence than the State of Connecticut. Down to 1818
+all voters in that State had to be members of the Congregational
+Church. It had no large cities, and this, with the
+aid of its seat of learning, Yale College, preserved in it, I
+think, in greater purity than even Massachusetts, the old
+Puritan simplicity of manners, the Puritan spirit of order and
+thrift, and the business-like view of government which grew
+out of the practice of town government. A less sentimental
+community, I do not think, exists anywhere, or one in which
+the expression of strong feeling on any subject but religion
+is less cultivated or viewed with less favour. In the matter
+of managing their own political affairs in peace or war, I do
+not expect the Irish to equal the Connecticut people for a
+hundred years to come, no matter how much practice they
+may have in the interval, and I think that fifty years ago it
+was only picked bodies of Englishmen who could do so.
+Yet, in 1833, in the town of Canterbury, one of the most
+orderly and intelligent in the State, an estimable and much-esteemed
+lady, Miss Prudence Crandall, was carrying on a
+girls' school, when something happened to touch her
+conscience about the condition of the free negroes of the
+North. She resolved, in a moment of enthusiasm, to
+undertake the education of negro girls only. What follows
+forms one of the most famous episodes in the anti-slavery
+struggle in America, and is possibly familiar to many
+of the older readers of this article. I shall extract the
+account of it as given briefly in the lately published life of<!-- Page 16 --><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" />
+William Lloyd Garrison, by his sons. Some of the details
+are much worse than is here described.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The story of this remarkable case cannot be pursued
+here except in brief.... It will be enough to say that the
+struggle between the modest and heroic young Quaker
+woman and the town lasted for nearly two years; that the
+school was opened in April; that attempts were immediately
+made under the law to frighten the pupils away and to fine
+Miss Crandall for harbouring them; that in May an Act
+prohibiting private schools for non-resident coloured persons,
+and providing for the expulsion of the latter, was procured
+from the legislature, amid the greatest rejoicing in Canterbury
+(even to the ringing of church bells); that, under this
+Act, Miss Crandall was in June arrested and temporarily
+imprisoned in the county jail, twice tried (August and
+October) and convicted; that her case was carried up to
+the Supreme Court of Errors, and her persecutors defeated
+on a technicality (July, 1834), and that pending this
+litigation the most vindictive and inhuman measures were
+taken to isolate the school from the countenance and even
+the physical support of the townspeople. The shops and
+the meeting-house were closed against teacher and pupils,
+carriage in the public conveyances was denied them, physicians
+would not wait upon them, Miss Crandall's own
+family and friends were forbidden, under penalty of heavy
+fines, to visit her, the well was filled with manure and water
+from other sources refused, the house itself was smeared
+with filth, assailed with rotten eggs and stones, and finally
+set on fire&quot; (vol. i. p. 321).</p>
+
+<p>Miss Crandall is still living in the West, in extreme old
+age, and the Connecticut legislature voted her a small
+pension two years ago, as a slight expiation of the ignominy
+and injustice from which she had suffered at the hands of
+a past generation.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Spectator</i> frequently refers to the ferocious hatred
+<!-- Page 17 --><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" />displayed toward the widow of Curtin, the man who was
+cruelly murdered by moonlighters somewhere in Kerry, as
+an evidence of barbarism which almost, if not quite, justifies
+the denial of self-government to a people capable of producing
+such monsters in one spot and on one occasion.
+Let me match this from Mississippi with a case which I
+produce, not because it was singular, but because it was
+notorious at the North, where it occurred, in 1877. One
+Chisholm, a native of the State, and a man of good standing
+and character, became a Republican after the war, and was
+somewhat active in organizing the negro voters in his
+district. He was repeatedly warned by some of his neighbours
+to desist and abandon politics, but continued resolutely
+on his course. A mob, composed of many of the
+leading men in the town, then attacked him in his house.
+He made his escape, with his wife and young daughter and
+son, a lad of fourteen, to the jail. His assailants broke the
+jail open, and killed him and his son, and desperately
+wounded the daughter. The poor lad received such a
+volley of bullets, that his blood went in one rush to the
+floor, and traced the outlines of his trunk on the ceiling of
+the room below, where it remained months afterwards, an
+eye-witness told me, as an illustration of the callousness of
+the jailer. The leading murderers were tried. They had
+no defence. The facts were not disputed. The judge and
+the bar did their duty, but the jury acquitted the prisoners
+without leaving their seats. Mrs. Chisholm, the widow,
+found neither sympathy nor friends at the scene of the
+tragedy. She had to leave the State, and found refuge in
+Washington, where she now holds a clerkship in the
+Treasury department.</p>
+
+<p>Let me cite as another illustration the violent ways in
+which popular discontent may find expression in communities
+whose political capacity and general respect for the law and
+its officers, as well as for the sanctity of contracts, have never
+<!-- Page 18 --><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" />been questioned. Large tracts of land were formerly held
+along the Hudson river in the State of New York, by a few
+families, of which the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons
+were the chief, either under grants from the Dutch at the first
+settlement of the colony, or from the English Crown after the
+conquest. That known as the &quot;Manor of Rensselaerwick,&quot;
+held by the Van Rensselaers, comprised a tract of country
+extending twenty-four miles north and south, and forty-eight
+miles east and west, lying on each side of the Hudson river.
+It was held by the tenants for perpetual leases. The rents
+were, on the Van Rensselaer estate, fourteen bushels of
+wheat for each hundred acres, and four fat hens, and one
+day's service with a carriage and horses, to each farm of
+one hundred and sixty acres. Besides this, there was a fine
+on alienation amounting to about half a year's rent. The
+Livingston estates were let in much the same way.</p>
+
+<p>In 1839, Stephen Van Rensselaer, the proprietor, or
+&quot;Patroon&quot; as he was called, died, with $400,000 due to
+him as arrears from the tenants, for which, being a man
+of easy temper, he had forborne to press them. But he left
+the amount in trust by his will for the payment of his debts,
+and his heirs proceeded to collect it, and persisted in the
+attempt during the ensuing seven years. What then happened
+I shall describe in the words of Mr. John Bigelow.
+Mr. Tilden was a member of the State Legislature in 1846,
+and was appointed Chairman of a Committee to investigate
+the rent troubles, and make the report which furnished the
+basis for the legislation by which they were subsequently
+settled. Mr. Bigelow, who has edited Mr. Tilden's <i>Public
+Writings and Speeches</i>, prefaces the report with the following
+explanatory note:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Attempts were made to enforce the collection of these
+rents. The tenants resisted. They established armed
+patrols, and, by the adoption of various disguises, were
+enabled successfully to defy the civil authorities. Eventually
+<!-- Page 19 --><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />it became necessary to call out the military, but the
+result was only partially satisfactory. These demonstrations
+of authority provoked the formation of 'anti-rent clubs'
+throughout the manorial district, with a view of acquiring a
+controlling influence in the legislature. Small bands, armed
+and disguised as Indians, were also formed to hold themselves
+in readiness at all times to resist the officers of the
+law whenever and wherever they attempted to serve legal
+process upon the tenants. The principal roads throughout
+the infected district were guarded by the bands so carefully,
+and the animosity between the tenants and the civil authorities
+was so intense, that at last it became dangerous for
+any one not an anti-renter to be found in these neighbourhoods.
+It was equally dangerous for the landlords to make
+any appeal to the law or for the collection of rents or for
+protection of their persons. When Governor Wright entered
+upon his duties in Albany in 1845, he found that the anti-rent
+party had a formidable representation in the legislature,
+and that the questions involved were assuming an almost
+national importance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff made gallant attempts to enforce the law,
+but his deputies were killed, and a legal investigation in
+which two hundred persons were examined, failed to reveal
+the perpetrators of the crime. The militia were called out,
+but they were no more successful than the sheriff. In the
+case of one murder committed in Delaware County in 1845,
+however, two persons were convicted, but their sentence
+was commuted to imprisonment for life. Various others
+concerned in the disturbances were convicted of minor
+offences, but when Governor Young succeeded Governor
+Seward after an election in which the anti-renters showed
+considerable voting strength, he pardoned them all on the
+ground that their crimes were political. The dispute was
+finally settled by a compromise&mdash;that is, the Van Rensselaers
+and the Livingstons both sold their estates, giving quit-claim
+<!-- Page 20 --><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" />deeds to the tenants for what they chose to pay, and the
+granting of agricultural leases for a longer term than twelve
+years was forbidden by the State Constitution of 1846.</p>
+
+<p>This anti-rent agitation is described by Professor Johnston
+of Princeton, in the <i>Cyclop&aelig;dia of Political Science</i>, as &quot;a reign
+of terror which for ten years practically suspended the
+operations of law and the payment of rent throughout the
+district.&quot; Suppose all the land of the State had been held
+under similar tenures; that the controversy had lasted one
+hundred years; that the rents had been high; and that the
+Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons had had the aid of
+the Federal army in enforcing distraints and evictions, and
+in enabling them to set local opinion at defiance, what do
+you suppose the state of morals and manners would have
+been in New York by this time? What would have been
+the feelings of the people towards the Federal authority had
+the matter been finally adjusted with the strong hand, in
+accordance, not with the views of the people of the State,
+but of the landholders of South Carolina or of the district
+of Columbia? I am afraid they would have been terribly
+Irish.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>I know very well the risk I run, in citing all these precedents
+and parallels, of seeming to justify, or at all events
+to palliate, Irish lawlessness. But I am not doing anything
+of the kind. I am trying to illustrate a somewhat trite
+remark which I recently made: &quot;that government is a
+very practical business, and that those succeed best in
+it who bring least sentiment or enthusiasm to the conduct
+of their affairs.&quot; The government of Ireland, like
+the government of all other countries, is a piece of
+business&mdash;a very difficult piece of business, I admit&mdash;and
+therefore horror over Irish doings, and the natural and
+human desire to &quot;get even with&quot; murderers and moonlighters,
+by denying the community which produces them
+<!-- Page 21 --><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" />something it would like much to possess, should have no
+influence with those who are charged with Irish government.
+It is only in nurseries and kindergartens that we can give
+offenders their exact due and withhold their toffee until they
+have furnished satisfactory proofs of repentance. Rulers of
+men have to occupy themselves mainly with the question
+of drying up the sources of crime, and often, in order to
+accomplish this, to let much crime and disorder go unwhipped
+of justice.</p>
+
+<p>With the state of mind which cannot bear to see any
+concessions made to the Irish Nationalists because they are
+such wicked men, in which so many excellent Englishmen,
+whom we used to think genuine political philosophers, are
+now living, we are very familiar in the United States. It
+is a state of mind which prevailed in the Republican party
+with regard to the South, down to the election of 1884, and
+found constant expression on the stump and in the newspapers
+in what is described, in political slang, as &quot;waving
+the bloody shirt.&quot; It showed itself after the war in unwillingness
+to release the South from military rule; then in
+unwillingness to remove the disfranchisement of the whites
+or to withdraw from the carpet-bag State governments the
+military support without which they could not have existed
+for a day; and, last of all, in dread of the advent of a
+Democratic Federal Administration in which Southerners
+or &quot;ex-rebels&quot; would be likely to hold office. At first the
+whole Republican party was more or less permeated by these
+ideas; but the number of those who held them gradually
+diminished, until in 1884 it was at last possible to elect a
+Democratic President. Nevertheless a great multitude witnessed
+the entrance into the White House of a President
+who is indebted for his election mainly to the States formerly
+in rebellion, with genuine alarm. They feared from it something
+dreadful, in the shape either of a violation of the rights
+of the freedmen, or of an assault on the credit and stability
+<!-- Page 22 --><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />of the Federal Government. Nothing but actual experiment
+would have disabused them.</p>
+
+<p>I am very familiar with the controversy with them, for I
+have taken some part in it ever since the passage of the
+reconstruction Acts, and I know very well how they felt, and
+am sometimes greatly impressed by the similarity between
+their arguments and those of the opponents of Irish Home
+Rule. One of their fixed beliefs for many years, though it
+is now extinct, was that Southerners were so bent on rebelling
+again, and were generally so prone to rebellion, that the
+awful consequences of their last attempt in the loss of life
+and property, had made absolutely no impression on them.
+The Southerner was, in fact, in their eyes, what Mr. Gladstone
+says the Irishman is in the eyes of some Englishmen:
+&quot;A <i>lusus natur&aelig;</i>; that justice, common sense, moderation,
+national prosperity had no meaning for him; that all he
+could appreciate was strife and perpetual dissension. It
+was for many years useless to point out to them the severity
+of the lesson taught by the Civil War as to the physical
+superiority of the North, or the necessity of peace and quiet
+to enable the new generation of Southerners to restore their
+fortunes, or even gain a livelihood. Nor was it easy to
+impress them with the inconsistency of arguing that it was
+slavery which made Southerners what they were before they
+went to war, and maintaining at the same time that the disappearance
+of slavery would produce no change in their
+manners, ideas, or opinions. All this they answered by
+pointing to speeches delivered by some fiery adorer of &quot;the
+lost cause,&quot; to the Ku-Klux outrages, to political murders,
+like that of Chisholm, to the building of monuments to the
+Confederate dead, or to some newspaper expression of
+reverence for Confederate nationality. In fact, for fully ten
+years after the close of the war the collection of Southern
+&quot;outrages&quot; and their display before Northern audiences, was
+the chief work of Republican politicians. In 1876, during
+<!-- Page 23 --><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" />the Hayes-Tilden canvass, the opening speech which furnished
+what is called &quot;the key-note of the campaign&quot; was
+made by Mr. Wheeler, the Republican candidate for the
+Vice-Presidency, and his advice to the Vermonters, to whom
+it was delivered, was &quot;to vote as they shot,&quot; that is, to go to
+the polls with the same feelings and aims as those with which
+they enlisted in the war.</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly tell English readers how all this has
+ended. The withdrawal of the Federal troops from the
+South by President Hayes, and the consequent complete
+restoration of the State governments to the discontented
+whites, have fully justified the expectations of those who
+maintained that it is no less true in politics than in physics,
+that if you remove what you see to be the cause, the effect
+will surely disappear. It is true, at least in the Western
+world, that if you give communities in a reasonable degree
+the management of their own affairs, the love of material
+comfort and prosperity which is now so strong among all
+civilized, and even partially civilized men, is sure in the long
+run to do the work of creating and maintaining order; or,
+as Mr. Gladstone has expressed it, in setting up a government,
+&quot;the best and surest foundation we can find to build
+on is the foundation afforded by the affections, the convictions,
+and the will of men.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Report of Secretary of War, 1869-70, vol. i. p. 89.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="HOW_WE_BECAME_HOME_RULERS" id="HOW_WE_BECAME_HOME_RULERS" /><!-- Page 24 --><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" />HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS.</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.</p>
+
+
+<p>In the Home Rule contest of the last eighteen months no
+argument has been more frequently used against the Liberal
+party than the charge of sudden, and therefore, it would
+seem, dishonest change of view. &quot;You were opposed to
+an Irish Parliament at the election of 1880 and for some
+time afterward; you are not entitled to advocate it in 1886.&quot;
+&quot;You passed a Coercion Bill in 1881, your Ministry (though
+against the protests of an active section of its supporters)
+passed another Coercion Bill in 1882; you have no right
+to resist a third such Bill in 1887, and, if you do, your
+conduct can be due to nothing but party spite and revenge
+at your own exclusion from office.&quot; Reproaches of this
+kind are now the stock-in-trade, not merely of the ordinary
+politician, who, for want of a case, abuses the plaintiff's
+attorney, but of leading men, and, still more, of leading
+newspapers, who might be thought bound to produce from
+recent events and an examination of the condition of
+Ireland some better grounds for the passion they display.
+It is noticeable that such reproaches come more often from
+the so-called Liberal Unionists than from the present
+Ministry. Perhaps, with their belief that all Liberals are
+unprincipled revolutionaries, the Tories deem a sin more
+or less to be of small account. Perhaps a recollection of
+<!-- Page 25 --><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />their own remarkable gyrations, before and after the General
+Election of 1885, may suggest that the less said about the
+past the better for everybody. Be the cause what it may,
+it is surprising to find that a section commanding so much
+ability as the group of Dissentient Liberals does, should rely
+rather on the charge of inconsistency than on the advocacy of
+any counter-policy of their own. It is not large and elevated,
+but petty, minds that rejoice to say to an opponent (and
+all the more so if he was once a friend), &quot;You must either
+be wrong now, or have been wrong then, because you have
+changed your opinion. I have not changed; I was right
+then, and I am right now.&quot; Such an argument not only
+dispenses with the necessity of sifting the facts, but it fosters
+the satisfaction of the person who employs it. Consistency
+is the pet virtue of the self-righteous, and the man who
+values himself on his consistency can seldom be induced
+to see that to shut one's eyes to the facts which time develops,
+to refuse to reconsider one's position by the light they
+shed, to cling to an old solution when the problem is substantially
+new, is a proof, not of fortitude and wisdom, but
+rather of folly and conceit.</p>
+
+<p>Such persons may be left to the contemplation of their
+own virtues. But there are many fair-minded men of both
+political parties, or of neither, who, while acquitting those
+Liberal members who supported Home Rule in 1886 and
+opposed Coercion in 1887 of the sordid or spiteful motives
+with which the virulence of journalism credits them, have
+nevertheless been surprised at the apparent swiftness and
+completeness of the change in their opinions. It would be
+idle to deny that, in startling the minds of steady-going people,
+this change did, for the moment, weaken the influence and
+weight of those who had changed. This must be so. A
+man who says now what he denied six years ago cannot
+expect to be believed on his <i>ipse dixit</i>. He must set forth
+the grounds of his conviction. He must explain how his
+<!-- Page 26 --><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />views altered, and why reasons which formerly satisfied him
+satisfy him no longer. It may be that the Liberal party
+have omitted to do this as they ought. Occupied by warm
+and incessant discussions, and conscious, I venture to
+believe, of their own honesty, few of its members have been
+at the trouble of showing what were the causes which
+modified their views, and what the stages of the process
+which carried them from the position of 1880 to that of
+1886.</p>
+
+<p>Of that process I shall attempt in the following pages
+to give a sketch. Such a sketch, though mainly retrospective,
+is pertinent to the issues which now divide the country.
+It will indicate the origin and the strength of the chief
+reasons by which Liberals are now governed. And, if
+executed with proper fairness and truth, it may, as a study
+in contemporary history, be of some little interest to those
+who in future will attempt to understand our present conflict.
+The causes which underlie changes of opinion are
+among the most obscure phenomena in history, because
+those who undergo, these changes are often only half conscious
+of them, and do not think of recording that which
+is imperceptible in its growth, and whose importance is not
+realized till it already belongs to the past.</p>
+
+<p>The account which follows is based primarily on my
+own recollection of the phases of opinion and feeling through
+which I myself, and the friends whom I knew most intimately
+in the House of Commons, passed during the Parliament
+which sat from 1880 till 1885. But I should not
+think of giving it to the public if I did not believe that
+what happened to our minds happened to many others also,
+and that the record of our own slow movement from the
+position of 1880 to that of 1886 is substantially a record
+of the movement of the Liberal party at large. We were
+fairly typical members of that party, loyal to our leaders, but
+placing the principles for which the Liberal party exists
+<!-- Page 27 --><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />above the success of the party itself; with our share of
+prepossessions and prejudices, yet with reasonably open
+minds, and (as we believed) inferior to no other section
+of the House of Commons in patriotism and in attachment
+to the Constitution. I admit frankly that when we entered
+Parliament we knew less about the Irish question than we
+ought to have known, and that even after knowledge had
+been forced upon us, we were more deferential to our
+leaders than was good either for us or for them. But these
+are faults always chargeable on the great majority of members.
+It is because those of whom I speak were in these respects
+fairly typical, that it seems worth while to trace the history
+of their opinions. If any one should accuse me of attributing
+to an earlier year sentiments which began to appear
+in a later one, I can only reply that I am aware of this
+danger, as one which always besets those who recall their
+past states of mind, and that I have done my utmost to
+avoid it.</p>
+
+<p>The change I have to describe was slow and gradual.
+It was reluctant&mdash;that is to say, it seemed rather forced
+upon us by the teaching of events than the work of our
+own minds. Each session marked a further stage in it;
+and I therefore propose to examine its progress session by
+session.</p>
+
+<p>Session of 1880.&mdash;The General Election of 1880
+turned mainly on the foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's
+Government. Few Liberal candidates said much about
+Ireland. Absorbed in the Eastern and Afghan questions,
+they had not watched the progress of events in Ireland
+with the requisite care, nor realized the gravity of the crisis
+which was approaching. They were anxious to do justice
+to Ireland, in the way of amending both the land laws and
+local government, but saw no reason for going further.
+Nearly all of them refused, even when pressed by Irish
+electors in their constituencies, to promise to vote for that<!-- Page 28 --><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" />
+&quot;parliamentary inquiry into the demand for Home Rule,&quot;
+which was then propounded by those electors as a sort
+of test question. We (<i>i.e.</i> the Liberal candidates of 1880)
+then declared that we thought an Irish Parliament would
+involve serious constitutional difficulties, and that we saw
+no reason why the Imperial Parliament should not do full
+justice to Ireland. Little was said about Coercion. Hopes
+were expressed that it would not be resorted to, but very
+few (if any) pledged themselves against it.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Forster was appointed Irish Secretary in
+Mr. Gladstone's Government which the General Election
+brought into power, we (by which I mean throughout the
+new Liberal members) were delighted. We knew him to be
+conscientious, industrious, kind-hearted. We believed him to
+be penetrating and judicious. We applauded his conduct in
+not renewing the Coercion Act which Lord Beaconsfield's
+Government had failed to renew before dissolving Parliament,
+and which indeed there was scarcely time left after
+the election to renew, a fact which did not save Mr. Forster
+from severe censure on the part of the Tories.</p>
+
+<p>The chief business of the session was the Compensation
+for Disturbance Bill, which Mr. Forster brought in for the
+sake of saving from immediate eviction tenants whom a
+succession of bad seasons had rendered utterly unable to
+pay their rents. This Bill was pressed through the House
+of Commons with the utmost difficulty, and at an expenditure
+of time which damaged the other work of the session,
+though the House continued to sit into September. The
+Executive Government declared it to be necessary, in order
+not only to relieve the misery of the people, but to secure
+the tranquillity of the country. Nevertheless, the whole
+Tory party, and a considerable section of the Liberal party,
+opposed it in the interests of the Irish landlords, and of
+economic principles in general, principles which (as commonly
+understood in England) it certainly trenched on.<!-- Page 29 --><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" />
+When it reached the House of Lords it was contemptuously
+rejected, and the unhappy Irish Secretary left to face as he
+best might the cries of a wretched peasantry and the rising
+tide of outrage. What was even more remarkable, was the
+coolness with which the Liberal party took the defeat of a
+Bill their leaders had pronounced absolutely needed. Had
+it been an English Bill of the same consequence to England
+as it was to Ireland, the country would have been up in
+arms against the House of Lords, demanding the reform
+or the abolition of a Chamber which dared to disregard the
+will of the people. But nothing of the kind happened. It
+was only an Irish measure. We relieved ourselves by a few
+strong words, and the matter dropped.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this session that the Liberal party first learnt
+what sort of a spirit was burning in the hearts of Irish
+members. There had been obstruction in the last years
+of the previous Parliament, but, as the Tories were in
+power, they had to bear the brunt of it. Now that a
+Liberal Ministry reigned, it fell on the Liberals. At first
+it incensed us. Full of our own good intentions towards
+Ireland, we thought it contrary to nature that Irish members
+should worry us, their friends, as they had worried Tories,
+their hereditary enemies. Presently we came to understand
+how matters stood. The Irish members made little
+difference between the two great English parties. Both
+represented to them a hostile domination. Both were
+ignorant of the condition of their country. Both cared so
+little about Irish questions that nothing less than deeds of
+violence out of doors or obstruction within doors could
+secure their attention. Concessions had to be extorted
+from both by the same devices; Coercion might be feared
+at the hands of both. Hence the Irish party was resolved
+to treat both parties alike, and play off the one against the
+other in the interests of Ireland alone, using the questions
+which divide Englishmen and Scotchmen merely as levers
+<!-- Page 30 --><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" />whereby to effect their own purposes, because themselves
+quite indifferent to the substantial merits of those questions.
+To us new members this was an alarming revelation. We
+found that the House of Commons consisted of two distinct
+and dissimilar bodies: a large British body (including some
+few Tories and Liberals from Ireland), which, though it was
+distracted by party quarrels, really cared for the welfare
+of the country and the dignity of the House, and would
+set aside its quarrels in the presence of a great emergency;
+and a small Irish body, which, though it spoke the English
+language, was practically foreign, felt no interest in, no
+responsibility for, the business of Britain or the Empire,
+and valued its place in the House only as a means of
+making itself so disagreeable as to obtain its release. When
+we had grasped this fact, we began to reflect on its causes
+and conjecture its effects. We had read of the same things
+in the newspapers, but what a difference there is between
+reading a drama in your study and seeing it acted on the
+stage! We realized what Irish feeling was when we heard
+these angry cries, and noted how appeals that would have
+affected English partisans fell on deaf ears. I remember
+how one night in the summer of 1880, when the Irish
+members kept us up very late over some trivial Bill of
+theirs, refusing to adjourn till they had extorted terms, a
+friend, sitting beside me, said, &quot;See how things come
+round. They keep us out of bed till five o'clock in the
+morning because our ancestors bullied theirs for six
+centuries.&quot; And we saw that the natural relations of an
+Executive, even a Liberal Executive, to the Irish members
+were those of strife. Whose fault it was we were unable to
+decide. Perhaps the Government was too stiff; perhaps
+the members were vexatious. Anyhow, this strife was
+evidently the normal state of things, wholly unlike that
+which existed between Scotch members, to whichever party
+they belonged, and the executive authorities of Scotland.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 31 --><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" />Thus the session of 1880, though it did not bring us
+consciously nearer to Home Rule, impressed three facts
+upon us: first, that the House of Lords regarded Ireland
+solely from the point of view of English landlords,
+sympathizing with Irish landlords; secondly, that the
+House of Commons knew so little or cared so little
+about Ireland that when the Executive declared a measure
+essential to the peace of Ireland, it scarcely resented the
+rejection of that measure by the House of Lords; thirdly,
+that the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons were
+a foreign body, foreign in the sense in which a needle which
+a man swallows is foreign, not helping the organism to
+discharge its functions, but impeding them, and setting up
+irritation. We did not yet draw from these facts all the
+conclusions we should now draw. But the facts were there,
+and they began to tell upon our minds.</p>
+
+<p>SESSION OF 1881.&mdash;The winter of 1880-81 was a terrible
+one in Ireland. The rejection of the Compensation for
+Disturbance Bill had borne the fruit which Mr. Forster
+had predicted, and which the House of Lords had ignored.
+Outrages were numerous and serious. The cry in England
+for repressive measures had gone on rising from November,
+when it occasioned a demonstration at the Guildhall banquet.
+Several Liberal members (of whom I was one) went
+to Ireland at Christmas, to see with our own eyes how
+things stood. We were struck by the difficulty of obtaining
+trustworthy information in Dublin, where the richer classes,
+with whom we chiefly came in contact, merely abused the
+Land League, while the Land Leaguers declared that the
+accounts of outrages were grossly exaggerated. The most
+prominent, Mr. Michael Davitt, assured me, and I believe
+with perfect truth, that he had exerted himself to discountenance
+outrage, and that if, as he expected, he was
+locked up by the Government, outrages would increase.
+When one reached the disturbed districts, where, of course,
+<!-- Page 32 --><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" />one talked to members as well of the landlord class as of
+the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged from
+the medley of contradictions was that, though there was
+much agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity,
+the disorders were not so bad as people in England believed,
+and might have been dealt with by a vigorous administration
+of the existing law. Unfortunately, the so-called
+&quot;better classes,&quot; full of bitterness against the Liberal
+Ministry and Mr. Forster (whom they did not praise till
+it was too late), had not assisted the Executive, and had
+allowed things to reach a pass at which it found the work
+of governing very difficult.</p>
+
+<p>When the Coercion Bill of 1881 was introduced, many
+English Liberals were inclined to resist it. The great
+majority voted for it, but within two years they bitterly
+repented their votes. Our motives, which I mention by
+way of extenuation, not of defence, were these. The Executive
+Government declared that it could not deal with crime
+by the ordinary law. If its followers refused exceptional
+powers, they must displace the Ministry, and let in the
+Tories, who would doubtless obtain such powers, and probably
+use them worse. We had still confidence in Mr.
+Forster's judgment, and a deference to Irish Executive
+Governments generally which Parliamentary experience is well
+fitted to dissipate. The violence with which the Nationalist
+members resisted the introduction of the Bill had roused
+our blood, and the foolish attempts which the Radical and
+Irish electors in some constituencies had made to deter
+their members from supporting it had told the other way,
+and disposed these members to vote for it, in order to show
+that they were not to be cowed by threats. Finally, we were
+assured that votes given for the Coercion Bill would purchase
+a thorough-going Land Bill, and our anxiety for the latter
+induced us, naturally, but erringly, to acquiesce in the former.</p>
+
+<p>When that Land Bill went into Committee we perceived
+<!-- Page 33 --><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" />how much harm the Coercion Bill had done in intensifying
+the bitterness of Irish members. Although the Ministry
+was fighting for their interests against the Tory party and
+the so-called Whiggish section of its own supporters, who
+were seeking to cut down the benefits which the measure
+offered to Irish tenants, the Nationalist members regarded
+it, and in particular Mr. Forster, as their foe. They resented
+what they deemed the insult put upon their country. They
+saw those who had been fighting, often, no doubt, by
+unlawful methods, for the national cause, thrown into
+prison and kept there without trial. They anticipated
+(not without reason) the same fortune for themselves.
+Hence the friendliness which the Liberal party sought to
+show them met with no response, and Mr. Forster was
+worried with undiminished vehemence. In the discussions
+on the Bill we found the Ministry generally resisting all
+amendments which came from Irish members. When these
+amendments seemed to us right, we voted for them, but
+they were almost always defeated by the union of the Tories
+with the steady Ministerialists. Subsequent events have
+proved that many were right, but, whether they were right
+or wrong, the fact which impressed us was that in matters
+which concerned Ireland only, and lay within the exclusive
+knowledge of Irishmen, Irish members were constantly
+outvoted by English and Scotch members, who knew
+nothing at all of the merits of the case, but simply obeyed
+the party whip. This happened even when the Irish
+members who sat on the Liberal side (such as Mr. Dickson
+and his Liberal colleagues from Ulster) joined the Nationalist
+section in demanding some extension of the Bill which
+the Ministry refused. And we perceived that nothing
+incensed the Irish members more than the feeling that their
+arguments were addressed to deaf ears; that they were
+overborne, not by reason, but by sheer weight of numbers.
+Even if they convinced the Ministry, they could seldom
+<!-- Page 34 --><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" />hope to obtain its assent, because the Ministry had to
+consider the House of Lords, sure to reject amendments
+which favoured the tenant, while to detach a number of
+Ministerialists sufficient to carry an amendment against the
+Treasury Bench, the Moderate Liberals, and the Tories,
+was evidently hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the session the House of Lords came
+again upon the scene. It seriously damaged the Bill by its
+amendments, and would have destroyed it but for the skill
+with which the head of the Government handled these
+amendments, accepting the least pernicious, so as to enable
+the Upper House without loss of dignity to recede from
+those which were wholly inadmissible. Several times it
+seemed as if the conflict would have to pass from Westminster
+to the country, and, in contemplating the chances
+of a popular agitation or a dissolution, we were regretfully
+obliged to own that the English people cared too little and
+knew too little about Irish questions to give us much hope
+of defeating the House of Lords and the Tories upon these
+issues.</p>
+
+<p>An incident which occurred towards the end of the
+session seems, though trifling in itself, so illustrative of the
+illogical position in which we stood towards Ireland, as to
+deserve mention. Mr. Forster, still Chief Secretary, had
+brought in a Bill for extinguishing the Queen's University
+in Ireland, and creating in place of it a body to be called
+the Royal University, which, however, was not to be a real
+university at all, but only a set of examiners plus some
+salaried fellowships, to be held at various places of instruction.
+Regarding this as a gross educational blunder,
+which would destroy a useful existing body, and create a
+sham university in its place, and finding several Parliamentary
+friends on whose judgment I could rely to be of the
+same opinion, I gave notice of opposition to the Bill. Mr.
+Forster came to me, and pressed with great warmth that
+<!-- Page 35 --><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" />the opposition should be withdrawn. The Bill, he said,
+would satisfy the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and complete
+the work of the Land Bill in pacifying Ireland. The Irish
+members wanted it: what business had an English member
+to interfere to defeat their wishes, and thwart the Executive?
+The reply was obvious. Not to speak of the simplicity of
+expecting the hierarchy to be satisfied by this small concession,
+what were such arguments but the admission of Home
+Rule in its worst form? &quot;You resist the demand of the
+Irish members to legislate for Ireland; you have just been
+demanding, and obtaining, the support of English members
+against those amendments of the Land Bill which Irish
+members declare to be necessary. Now you bid us surrender
+our own judgment, ignore our own responsibility,
+and blindly pass a Bill which we, who have studied these
+university questions as they affect both Ireland and England,
+believe to be thoroughly mischievous to the prospects of
+higher education in Ireland, only because the Irish
+members, as you say, desire it. Do one thing or the
+other. Either give them the power and the responsibility,
+or leave both with the Imperial Parliament. You are now
+asking us to surrender the power, but to remain still subject
+to the responsibility. We will not bear the latter without
+the former. We shall prefer Home Rule.&quot; Needless to
+add that this device&mdash;a sample of the petty sops by which
+successive generations of English statesmen, Whigs and
+Tories alike, have sought to win over a priesthood which
+uses and laughs at them&mdash;failed as completely as its
+predecessors to settle the University question or to range
+the bishops on the side of the Government.</p>
+
+<p>The autumn and winter of 1881 revealed the magnitude
+of the mischief done by making a Coercion Bill precede a
+Relief Bill. The Land Bill was the largest concession made
+to the demands of the people since Catholic Emancipation.
+It was a departure, justified by necessity, but still a de<!-- Page 36 --><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />parture
+from our established principles of legislation. It
+ought to have brought satisfaction and confidence, if not
+gratitude, with it; ought to have led Ireland to believe in
+the sincere friendliness of England, and produced a new
+cordiality between the islands. It did nothing of the kind.
+It was held to have been extorted from our fears; its grace
+and sweetness were destroyed by the concomitant severities
+which the Coercion Act had brought into force, as wholesome
+food becomes distasteful when some bitter compound
+has been sprinkled over it. We were deeply mortified at
+this result of our efforts. What was the malign power which
+made the boons we had conferred shrivel up, &quot;like fairy
+gifts fading away&quot;? We still believed the Coercion Act to
+have been justified, but lamented the fate which baffled the
+main object of our efforts, the winning over Ireland to trust
+the justice and the capacity of the Imperial Parliament. And
+thus the two facts which stood out from the history of this
+eventful session were, first, that even in legislating for the
+good of Ireland we were legislating against the wishes of
+Ireland, imposing on her enactments which her representatives
+opposed, and which we supported only at the bidding
+of the Ministry; and, secondly, that at the end of a long
+session, entirely devoted to her needs, we found her more
+hostile and not less disturbed than she had been at its
+beginning. We began to wonder whether we should ever
+succeed better on our present lines. But we still mostly
+regarded Home Rule as a disagreeable solution.</p>
+
+<p>SESSION OF 1882.&mdash;Still graver were the lessons of
+the first four months of this year. Mr. Forster went on
+filling the prisons of Ireland with persons whom he arrested
+under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, and never
+brought to trial. But the country grew no more quiet. At
+last he had nine hundred and forty men under lock and
+key, many of them not &quot;village ruffians,&quot; whose power a few
+weeks' detention was to break, but political offenders, and
+<!-- Page 37 --><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" />even popular leaders. How long could this go on? Where
+was it to stop? It became plain that the Act was a failure,
+and that the people, trained to combination by a century
+and a half's practice, were too strong for the Executive.
+Either the scheme and plan of the Act had been wrong, or
+its administration had been incompetent. Whichever was
+the source of the failure (most people will now blame both),
+the fault must be laid at the door of the Irish Executive;
+not of Mr. Forster himself, but of those on whom he relied.
+It had been a Dublin Castle Bill, conceived and carried out
+by the incompetent bureaucracy which has so long pretended
+to govern Ireland. Such a proof of incompetence destroyed
+whatever confidence in that bureaucracy then remained to
+us, and the disclosures which the Phoenix Park murders
+and the subsequent proceedings against the Invincibles
+brought out, proved beyond question that the Irish Executive
+had only succeeded in giving a more dark and dangerous
+form, the form of ruthless conspiracy, to the agitation it was
+combating.</p>
+
+<p>When therefore the Prevention of Crime Bill of 1882
+was brought in, some of us felt unable to support it, and
+specially bound to resist those of its provisions which related
+to trials without a jury, and to boycotting. It was impossible,
+on the morrow of the Phoenix Park murders, to deny
+that some coercive measure might be needed; but we had
+so far lost faith in repression, and in the officials who were
+to administer it, as to desire to limit it to what was absolutely
+necessary, and we protested against enacting for Ireland
+a criminal code which was not to be applied to Great
+Britain. Our resistance might have been more successful
+but for the manner in which the Nationalist members conducted
+their opposition. When they began to obstruct&mdash;not
+that under the circumstances we felt entitled to censure
+them for obstructing a Bill dealing so harshly with their
+countrymen&mdash;we were obliged to desist, and our experience
+<!-- Page 38 --><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />of the stormy scenes of the summer of 1882 deepened our
+sense of the passionate bitterness with which they regarded
+English members, scarcely making an exception in favour of
+those who were most disposed to sympathize with them.
+Many and many a time when we listened to their fierce
+cries, we seemed to hear in them the battle-cries of the
+centuries of strife between Celt and Englishman from
+Athenry to Vinegar Hill; many a time we felt that this rage
+and mistrust were chiefly of England's making; and yet not
+of England's, but rather of the overmastering fate which had
+prolonged to our own days the hatreds and the methods of
+barbarous times:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="poem" lang="el" title="hêmeis d ouk aitioi esmen">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&#7969;&#956;&#949;&#8150;&#962; &#948;' &#959;&#8016;&#954; &#945;&#7988;&#964;&#953;&#959;&#953; &#7956;&#963;&#956;&#949;&#957;</span>
+<br />
+<span class="poem" lang="el" title="Alla Zeus kai Moira kai êerophoitis Herinus.">&#7944;&#955;&#955;&#8048; &#918;&#949;&#8058;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#924;&#959;&#8150;&#961;&#945; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#7968;&#949;&#961;&#959;&#966;&#959;&#8150;&#964;&#953;&#962; &#7961;&#961;&#953;&#957;&#8059;&#962;.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>So much of the session as the Crime Bill had spared
+was consumed by the Arrears Bill, over which we had again
+a &quot;crisis&quot; with the House of Lords. This was the third
+session that had been practically given up to Irishmen.
+The freshness and force of the Parliament of 1880&mdash;a Parliament
+full of zeal and ability&mdash;had now been almost spent,
+yet few of the plans of domestic legislation spread before the
+constituencies of 1880 had been realized. The Government
+had been anxious to legislate, their majority had been ready
+to support them, but Ireland had blocked the way; and
+now the only expedient for improving the procedure of the
+House was to summon Parliament in an extra autumn
+session. Here was another cause for reflection. England
+and Scotland were calling for measures promised years ago,
+but no time could be found to discuss them. Nothing was
+done to reorganize local government, to reform the liquor
+laws, to improve secondary education, to deal with the
+housing of the poor, or a dozen other urgent questions,
+because we were busy with Ireland; and yet how little more
+loyal or contented did Ireland seem to be for all we had
+<!-- Page 39 --><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" />done. We began to ask whether Home Rule might not be
+as much an English and Scotch question as an Irish question.
+It was, at any rate, clear that to allow Ireland to
+manage her own affairs would open a prospect for England
+and Scotland to obtain time to attend to theirs.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3" /><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>This feeling was strengthened by the result of the
+attempts made in the autumn session of 1882, to improve
+the procedure of the House of Commons. We had cherished
+the hope that more drastic remedies against obstruction and
+better arrangements for the conduct of business, might
+relieve much of the pressure Irish members had made us
+suffer. The passing of the New Rules shattered this hope,
+for it was plain they would not accomplish what was needed.
+Some blamed the Government for not framing a more
+stringent code. Some blamed the Tory and the Irish Oppositions
+(now beginning to work in concert) for cutting
+down the proposals of the Government. But most of us
+saw, and came to see still more clearly in the three succeeding
+sessions, that the evil was too deep-rooted to be cured
+by any changes of procedure, unless they went so far as to
+destroy freedom of debate for English members also. The
+presence in a deliberative assembly of a section numbering
+(or likely soon to number) one-seventh of the whole&mdash;a
+section seeking to lower the character of the assembly, and
+to derange its mechanism, with no further interest in the
+greater part of its business except that of preventing it from
+<!-- Page 40 --><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" />conducting that business&mdash;this was the phenomenon which
+confronted us, and we felt that no rules of debate would
+overcome the dangers it threatened.</p>
+
+<p>It is from this year 1882 that I date the impression
+which we formed, that Home Rule was sure to come. &quot;It
+may be a bold experiment,&quot; we said to one another in the
+lobbies; &quot;there are serious difficulties in the way, though
+the case for it is stronger than we thought two years ago.
+But if the Irishmen persist as they are doing now, they will
+get it. It is only a question of their tenacity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible not to be struck during the conflicts
+of 1881 and 1882 with the small amount of real bitterness
+which the conduct of the Irish members, irritating as it often
+was, provoked among the Liberals, who of course bore the
+brunt of the conflict. The Nationalists did their best to
+injure a Government which was at the same time being
+denounced by the Tories as too favourable to Irish claims;
+they lowered the character of Parliament by scenes far more
+painful than those of the session of 1887, on which so much
+indignation has been lately expended; they said the hardest
+things they could think of against us in the House; they
+attacked us in our constituencies. Their partisans (for I do
+not charge this on the leaders) interrupted and broke up
+our meetings. Nevertheless, all this did not provoke
+responsive hatred from the Liberals. There could not be
+a greater contrast than that between the way in which the
+great bulk of the Liberal members all through the Parliament
+of 1880 behaved towards their Irish antagonists, and
+the violence with which the Tory members, under much
+slighter provocation, conduct themselves towards those
+antagonists now. I say this not to the credit of our temper,
+which was no better than that of other men heated by the
+struggles of a crowded assembly. It was due entirely to
+our feeling that there was a great balance of wrong standing
+to the debit of England; that if the Irish were turbulent, it
+<!-- Page 41 --><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" />was the ill-treatment of former days that had made them so;
+and that, whatever might be their methods, they were fighting
+for their country. Although, therefore, there was little
+social intercourse between us and them, there was always
+a hope and a wish that the day might come when the
+Liberal party should resume its natural position of joining
+the representatives of the Irish people in obtaining radical
+reforms in Irish government. And the remarkable speech of
+February 9, 1882, in which Mr. Gladstone declared his mind
+to be open on the subject, and invited the Nationalists
+to propound a practicable scheme of self-government, had
+encouraged us to hope that this day might soon arrive.</p>
+
+<p>SESSION OF 1883.&mdash;Three facts stood out in the history
+of this comparatively quiet session, each of which brought us
+further along the road we had entered.</p>
+
+<p>One was the omission of Parliament to complete the
+work begun by the Land Bill of 1881, of improving the
+condition of the Irish peasantry and reorganizing Irish administration.
+The Nationalist members brought in Bills
+for these purposes, including one for amending the Land
+Act by admitting leaseholders to its benefits and securing
+tenants against having their improvements reckoned against
+them in the fixing of rents. Though we could not approve
+all the contents of these Bills, we desired to see the Government
+either take them up and amend them, or introduce
+Bills of its own to do what was needed. Some of us
+spoke strongly in this sense, nor will any one now deny
+that we were right. Sound policy called aloud for the
+completion of the undertaking of 1881. The Government
+however refused, alleging, no doubt with some truth, that
+Ireland could not have all the time of Parliament, but must
+let England and Scotland have their turn. Nor was anything
+done towards the creation of new local institutions in
+Ireland, or the reform of the Castle bureaucracy. We were
+profoundly disheartened. We saw golden opportunities
+<!-- Page 42 --><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" />slipping away, and doubted more than ever whether
+Westminster was the place in which to legislate for Irish
+grievances.</p>
+
+<p>Another momentous fact was the steady increase in the
+number of Nationalist members. Every seat that fell vacant
+in Ireland was filled by them. The moderate Irish party,
+most of whom had by this time crossed the floor of
+the House, and were sitting among us, had evidently no
+future. They were estimable, and, in some cases, able men,
+from whom we had hoped much, as a link between the
+Liberal party and the Irish people. But they seemed to
+have lost their hold on the people, nor were they able to
+give us much practical counsel as to Irish problems. It was
+clear that they would vanish at the next General Election,
+and Parliament be left to settle accounts with the extreme
+men, whose spirits rose as those of our friends steadily sank.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly: it was in this session that the alliance of the
+Nationalists and the Tory Opposition became a potent
+factor in politics. Its first conspicuous manifestation was
+in the defeat of the Government by the allied forces on
+the Affirmation Bill, when the least respectable privates in
+both armies vied with one another in boisterous rejoicings
+over the announcement of numbers in the division. I do
+not refer to this as ground for complaint. It was in the
+course of our usual political warfare that two groups, each
+hating and fearing the Ministry, should unite to displace it.
+But we now saw what power the Irish section must exert
+when it came to hold the balance of numbers in the House.
+Till this division, the Government had commanded a
+majority of the whole House. This would probably not
+outlast a dissolution. What then? Could the two English
+parties, differing so profoundly from one another, combine
+against the third party? Evidently not. We must, therefore,
+look forward to unstable Governments, if not to a total
+dislocation of our Parliamentary system.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 43 --><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />Session of 1884.&mdash;I pass over the minor incidents of
+this year, including the continued neglect of remedial legislation
+for Ireland to dwell on its dominant and most impressive
+lesson. It was the year of the Franchise Bill, which,
+as regards Ireland, worked an extension, not merely of the
+county but also of the borough franchise, and produced,
+owing to the economic condition of the humbler classes in
+that country, a far more extensive change than in England
+or Scotland. When the Bill was introduced the question
+at once arose&mdash;Should Ireland be included?</p>
+
+<p>There were two ways of treating Ireland between which
+Parliament had to choose.</p>
+
+<p>One was to leave her out of the Bill, on the ground that
+the masses of her population could not be trusted with the
+franchise, as being ignorant, sympathetic to crime, hostile
+to the English Government. This course was the logical
+concomitant of exceptional coercive legislation, such as had
+been passed in 1881 and 1882. It was quite compatible
+with generous remedial legislation. But it placed Ireland in
+an unequal and lower position, treating her, as the Coercion
+Acts did, as a dependent country, inhabited by a population
+unfit for the same measure of power which the inhabitants
+of Britain might receive.</p>
+
+<p>The other course was to bestow on Ireland the same
+extended franchise which the English county occupiers were
+to receive, applying the principle of equality, and disregarding
+the obvious consequences. These consequences were
+both practical and logical. The practical consequence was
+the increase in numbers and weight of the Irish party in
+Parliament hostile to Parliament itself. The logical consequence
+was the duty of complying with the wishes of the
+enfranchised nation. Whatever reasons were good for
+giving this enlarged suffrage to the Irish masses, were good
+for respecting the will which they might use to express it.
+If the Irish were deemed fit to exercise the same full
+<!-- Page 44 --><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" />constitutional rights in legislation as the English, must they
+not be fit for the same rights of trial by jury, a free press,
+and all the privileges of personal freedom?</p>
+
+<p>Of these two courses the Cabinet chose the latter,
+those of its members whom we must suppose, from the
+language they now hold, to have then hesitated, either
+stifling their fears or not apprehending the consequences
+of their boldness. It might have been expected, and
+indeed was generally expected, that the Tory party would
+refuse to follow. They talked largely about the danger
+of an extended Irish suffrage, and pointed out that it
+would be a weapon in the hands of disloyalty. But when
+the moment for resistance came, they swerved, and never
+divided in either House against the application of the Bill
+to Ireland. They might have failed to defeat the measure;
+but they would have immensely strengthened their position,
+logically and morally, had they given effect by their votes to
+the sentiments they were known to entertain, and which not
+a few Liberals shared.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this uncontested grant to Ireland of a
+suffrage practically universal was immense upon our minds,
+and the longer we reflected on it the more significant did
+it become. It meant to us that the old methods were
+abandoned, and, as we supposed, for ever. We had
+deliberately given the Home Rule party arms against English
+control far more powerful than they previously possessed.
+We had deliberately asserted our faith in the Irish people.
+Impossible after this to fall back on Coercion Bills. Impossible
+to refuse any request compatible with the general
+safety of the United Kingdom, which Ireland as a nation
+might prefer. Impossible to establish that system of Crown
+Colony Government which we had come to perceive was
+the only real and solid alternative to self-government. To
+those of us who had been feeling that the Irish difficulty
+was much the greatest of all England's difficulties, this stood
+<!-- Page 45 --><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" />out beyond the agitation of the autumn and the compromise
+of the winter as the great political event of 1884.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4" /><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>Although this sketch is in the main a record of Parliamentary
+opinion, I ought not to pass over the influence
+which the study of their constituents' ideas exerted upon
+members for the larger towns. We found the vast bulk of
+our supporters&mdash;English supporters, for after 1882 it was
+understood that the Irish voters were our enemies&mdash;sympathetic
+with the Irish people. They knew and thought little
+about Home Rule, believing that their member understood
+that question better than they did, and willing, so long as
+he was sound on English issues, to trust him. But they
+pitied Irish tenants, and condemned Irish landlords.
+Though they acquiesced in a Coercion Bill when proposed
+by a Liberal Cabinet, because they concluded that nothing
+less than necessity would lead such a Cabinet to propose
+one, they so much disliked any exceptional or repressive
+legislation that it was plain they would not long tolerate it.
+Any popular leader denouncing coercion was certain to have
+the sentiment of the English masses with him, while as to
+suspending Irish representation or carrying out consistently
+the policy of treating Ireland as a subject country, there
+was no chance in the world of their approval. Those of us,
+therefore, who represented large working-class constituencies
+became convinced that the solution of the Irish problem
+must be sought in conciliation and self-government, if only
+because the other solution, Crown Colony Government, was
+utterly repugnant to the English masses, in whom the
+<!-- Page 46 --><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" />Franchise Bill of 1884, completing that of 1867, had vested
+political supremacy.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5" /><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>Session of 1885.&mdash;The allied powers of Toryism and
+Nationalism gained in this year the victory they had so long
+striven for. In February they reduced the Ministerial
+majority to fourteen; in June they overthrew the Ministry.
+No one supposed that on either occasion the merits of the
+issue had anything to do with the Nationalist vote: that
+vote was given simply and solely against the Government,
+as the Government which had passed the Coercion Acts of
+1881 and 1882&mdash;Acts demanded by the Tory party, and
+which had not conceded an Irish Parliament. At last the
+Irish party had attained its position as the arbiter of power
+and office. Some of us said, as we walked away from the
+House, under the dawning light of that memorable 9th of
+June, &quot;This means Home Rule.&quot; Our forecast was soon
+to be confirmed. Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, formed upon
+the resignation of Mr. Gladstone's, announced that it would
+not propose to renew any part of the Coercion Act of 1882,
+which was to expire in August. Here was a surrender
+indeed! But the Tory leaders went further. They did not
+excuse themselves on the ground of want of time. They
+took credit for their benevolence towards Ireland; they discovered
+excellent reasons why the Act should be dropped.
+They even turned upon Lord Spencer, whose administration
+they had hitherto blamed for its leniency, and attacked him
+in Parliament, among the cheers of his Irish enemies. From
+that time till the close of the General Election in December
+everything was done, short of giving public pledges, to keep
+the Irish leaders and the Irish voters in good humour. The
+Tory party in fact posed as the true friends of Ireland, averse
+<!-- Page 47 --><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" />from coercion, and with minds perfectly open on the subject
+of self-government.</p>
+
+<p>This change of front, so sudden, so unblushing, completed
+the process which had been going on in our minds.
+By 1882 we had come to feel that Home Rule was inevitable,
+though probably undesirable. Before long we had asked
+ourselves whether it was really undesirable, whether it might
+not be a good thing both for England, whose Parliament
+and Cabinet system it would relieve from impending dangers,
+while leaving free scope for domestic legislation, and for
+Ireland, which could hardly manage her affairs worse than
+we were managing them for her, and might manage them
+better. And thus, by the spring of 1885, many of us were
+prepared for a large scheme of local self-government in
+Ireland, including a central legislative body in Dublin.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6" /><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>Now when it was plain that the English party which had
+hitherto called for repression, and had professed itself anxious
+for a patriotic union of all parties to maintain order and a
+continuity of policy in Ireland, was ready to bid for Irish
+help at the polls by throwing over repression and reversing
+the policy it had advocated, we felt that the sooner Ireland
+was taken out of English party politics the better. What
+prospect was there of improving Ireland by the superior
+wisdom and fairness of the British Parliament, if British
+leaders were to make their Irish policy turn on interested
+bargains with Nationalist leaders? Repression, which we
+<!-- Page 48 --><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />clearly saw to be the only alternative to self-government,
+seemed to be by common consent abandoned. I remember
+how, at a party of members in the beginning of July, some
+one said, &quot;Well, there's an end for ever of coercion at any
+rate,&quot; and every one assented as to an obvious truth. Accordingly
+the result of the new departure of the Salisbury
+Cabinet in 1885 was to convince even doubters that Home
+Rule must come, and to make those already convinced
+anxious to see it come quickly, and to find the best form
+that could be given it. Many of us expected the Tory
+Government to propose it. Rumour declared the new Lord
+Lieutenant to be in favour of it. His government was extremely
+conciliatory in Ireland, even to the recalcitrant corporation
+of Limerick. Not to mention less serious and less
+respected Tory Ministers, Lord Salisbury talked at Newport
+about the dualism of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy with
+the air of a man who desired to have a workable scheme,
+analogous, if not similar, suggested for Ireland and Great
+Britain. The Irish Nationalists appeared to place their
+hopes in this quarter, for they attacked the Liberal party
+with unexampled bitterness, and threw all their voting
+strength into the Tory scale.</p>
+
+<p>As it has lately been attempted to blacken the character
+of the Irish leaders, it deserves to be remarked that whatever
+has been charged against them was said or done by them
+before the spring of 1885, and was, practically, perfectly well
+known to the Tory leaders when they accepted the alliance
+of the Irish party in the House of Commons, and courted
+their support in the election of 1885. To those who
+remember what went on in the House in the sessions of
+1884 and 1885, the horror now professed by the Tory
+leaders for the conduct and words of the Irish party would
+be matter for laughter if it were not also matter for just
+indignation.</p>
+
+<p>Why, it may be asked, if the persuasion that Home Rule
+<!-- Page 49 --><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" />was certain, and even desirable, had become general among
+the Liberals who had sat through the Parliament of 1880,
+was it not more fully expressed at the election of 1885?
+This is a fair question, which I shall try to answer.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, the electors made few inquiries about
+Ireland. They disliked the subject; they had not realized
+its supreme importance. Those of us who felt anxious to
+explain our views (as was my own case) had to volunteer to
+do so, for we were not asked about them. The Irish party
+in the constituencies was in violent opposition to Liberal
+candidates; it did not interrogate, but denounced. Further,
+it was felt that the issue was mainly one to be decided in
+Ireland itself. The question of Home Rule was being submitted,
+not, as heretofore, to a limited constituency, but to
+the whole Irish people. Till their will had been constitutionally
+declared at the polls it was not proper that Englishmen
+or Scotchmen should anticipate its tenour. We should
+even have been accused, had we volunteered our opinions,
+of seeking to affect the result in Ireland, and, not only of
+playing for the Irish vote in Great Britain, as we saw the
+Tories doing, but of prejudicing the chances of those Liberal
+candidates who, in Irish constituencies, were competing with
+extreme Nationalists. A third reason was that most English
+and Scotch Liberals did not know how far their own dispositions
+towards Home Rule were shared by their leaders.
+Mr. Gladstone's declaration in his Midlothian address was
+no doubt a decided intimation of his views, and was certainly
+understood by some (as by myself) to imply the grant to
+Ireland of a Parliament; but, strong as its words were, its
+importance does not seem to have been fully appreciated at
+the moment. And the opinions of a statesman whose unequalled
+Irish experience and elevated character gave him a
+weight only second to that of Mr. Gladstone&mdash;I mean Lord
+Spencer&mdash;had not been made known. We had consequently
+no certainty that there were leaders prepared to give
+<!-- Page 50 --><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />prompt effect to the views we entertained. Lastly, we were
+not prepared with a practical scheme of self-government for
+Ireland. The Nationalist members had propounded none
+which we could either adopt or criticize. Convinced as we
+were that Home Rule would come and must come, we felt
+the difficulties surrounding every suggestion that had yet
+been made, and had not hammered out any plan which we
+could lay before the electors as approved by Liberal opinion.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7" /><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>
+We were forced to confine ourselves to generalities.</p>
+
+<p>Whether it would have been better for us to have done
+our thinking and scheme-making in public, and thereby have
+sooner forced the details of the problem upon the attention
+of the country, need not now be inquired. Any one can
+now see that something was lost by the omission. But
+those who censure a course that has actually been taken
+usually fail to estimate the evils that would have followed
+from the taking of the opposite course. Such evils might
+in this instance have been as great as those we have
+encountered.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the importance we attached to the
+decision of Ireland itself, and of the attitude of expectancy
+which, while that decision was uncertain, Englishmen were
+forced to maintain. We had not long to wait. Early in
+December it was known that five-sixths of the members
+returned from Ireland were Nationalists, and that the
+<!-- Page 51 --><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" />majorities which had returned them were crushing. If ever
+a people spoke its will, the Irish people spoke theirs at the
+election of 1885. The last link in the chain of conviction,
+which events had been forging since 1880, was now supplied.
+In passing the Franchise Bill of 1884, we had asked Ireland
+to declare her mind. She had now answered. If the
+question was not a mockery, and representative government
+a sham, we were bound to accept the answer, subject only,
+but subject always, to the interests of the whole United
+Kingdom. In other words, we were bound to devise such
+a scheme of self-government for Ireland as would give full
+satisfaction to her wishes, while maintaining the ultimate
+supremacy of the Imperial Parliament and the unity of the
+British Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Very few words are needed to summarize the outline
+which, omitting many details which would have illustrated
+and confirmed its truth, I have attempted to present of the
+progress of opinion among Liberal members of the Parliament
+of 1880.</p>
+
+<p>1. Our experience of the Coercion Bills of 1881 and
+1882 disclosed the enormous mischief which such measures
+do in alienating the minds of Irishmen, and the difficulty of
+enlisting Irish sentiment on behalf of the law. The results
+of the Act of 1881 taught us that the repression of open
+agitation means the growth of far more dangerous conspiracy;
+those of the Act of 1882 proved that even under
+an administration like Lord Spencer's repression works no
+change for the better in the habits and ideas of the people.</p>
+
+<p>2. The conduct of the House of Lords in 1880 and
+1881, and the malign influence which its existence exerted
+whenever remedial legislation for Ireland came in question,
+convinced us that full and complete justice will never be done
+to Ireland by the British Parliament while the Upper House
+(as at present constituted) remains a part of that Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>3. The break-down of the procedure of the House of<!-- Page 52 --><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" />
+Commons, and the failure of the efforts to amend it, proved
+that Parliament cannot work so long as a considerable
+section of its members seek to impede its working. To
+enable it to do its duty by England and Scotland, it was
+evidently necessary, either to make the Irish members as
+loyal to Parliament as English and Scotch members usually
+are, or else to exclude them.</p>
+
+<p>4. The discussions of Irish Bills in the House of
+Commons made us realize how little English members knew
+about Ireland; how utterly different were their competence
+for, and their attitude towards, Irish questions and English
+questions. We perceived that we were legislating in the
+dark for a country whose economic and social condition
+we did not understand&mdash;a country to which we could not
+apply our English ideas of policy; a country whose very
+temper and feeling were strange to us. We were really
+fitter to pass laws for Canada or Australia than for this isle
+within sight of our shores.</p>
+
+<p>5. I have said that we were legislating in the dark. But
+there were two quarters from which light was proffered, the
+Irish members and the Irish Executive. We rejected the first,
+and could hardly help doing so, for to accept it would have
+been to displace our own leaders. We followed the light
+which the Executive gave. But in some cases (as notably
+in the case of the Coercion Bill of 1881) it proved to be a
+&quot;wandering fire,&quot; leading us into dangerous morasses. And
+we perceived that at all times legislation at the bidding of
+the Executive, against the wishes of Irish members, was not
+self-government or free government. It was despotism.
+The rule of Ireland by the British Parliament was really
+&quot;the rule of a dependency through an official, responsible
+no doubt, but responsible not to the ruled, but to an
+assembly of which they form less than a sixth part.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8" /><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> As
+<!-- Page 53 --><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" />this assembly closed its ears to the one-sixth, and gave effect
+to the will of the official, this was essentially arbitrary
+government, and wanted those elements of success which
+free government contains.</p>
+
+<p>This experience had, by 1884, convinced us that the
+present relations of the British Parliament to Ireland were
+bad, and could not last; that the discontent of Ireland was
+justified; that the existing system, in alienating the mind of
+Ireland, tended, not merely to Repeal, but to Separation;
+that the simplest, and probably the only effective, remedy
+for the increasing dangers was the grant of an Irish Legislature.
+Two events clinched these conclusions. One was
+the Tory surrender of June, 1885. Self-government, we had
+come to see, was the only alternative to Coercion, and now
+Coercion was gone. The other was the General Election
+of December, 1885, when newly-enfranchised Ireland,
+through five-sixths of her representatives, demanded a
+Parliament of her own.</p>
+
+<p>These were not, as is sometimes alleged, conclusions of
+despair. We were mostly persons of a cautious and conservative
+turn of mind, as men imbued with the spirit of the
+British Constitution ought to be. The first thing was to
+convince us that the existing relations of the islands were
+faulty, and could not be maintained. This was a negative
+result, and while we remained in that stage we were despondent.
+Many Liberal members will remember the gloom
+that fell on us in 1882 and 1883 whenever we thought or
+spoke of Ireland. But presently the clouds lifted. We still
+felt the old objections to any Home Rule scheme, though
+we now saw that they were less formidable than the evils of
+the present system. But we came to feel that the grant of
+self-government was a right thing in itself. It was not
+merely a means of ridding ourselves of our difficulties, not
+merely a boon yielded because long demanded. It was a
+return to broad and deep principles, a conformity to those
+<!-- Page 54 --><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" />natural laws which govern human society as well as the
+inanimate world&mdash;an effort to enlist the better and higher
+feelings of mankind in the creation of a truer union between
+the two nations than had ever yet existed. When we
+perceived this, hope returned. It is strong with us now,
+for, though we see troubles, perhaps even dangers, in the
+immediate future, we are confident that the principles on
+which Liberal policy towards Ireland is based will in the
+long run work out a happy issue for her, as they have in and
+for every other country that has trusted to them.</p>
+
+<p>One last word as to Consistency. We learnt in the
+Parliament of 1880 many facts about Ireland we had not
+known before; we felt the force and bearing of other facts
+previously accepted on hearsay, but not realized. We saw
+the Irish problem change from what it had been in 1880
+into the new phase which stood apparent at the end of
+1885, Coercion abandoned by its former advocates, Self-government
+demanded by the nation. Were we to disregard
+all these new facts, ignore all these new conditions,
+and cling to old ideas, some of which we perceived to be
+mistaken, while others, still true in themselves, were out-weighed
+by arguments of far wider import? We did not so
+estimate our duty. We foresaw the taunts of foes and the
+reproaches of friends. But we resolved to give effect to the
+opinions we slowly, painfully, even reluctantly formed,
+opinions all the stronger because not suddenly adopted,
+and founded upon evidence whose strength no one can
+appreciate till he has studied the causes of Irish discontent
+in Irish history, and been forced (as we were) to face in
+Parliament the practical difficulties of the government of
+Ireland by the British House of Commons.<!-- Page 55 --><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> I may mention here another fact whose significance impressed
+some among us. Parliament, which usually sinned in not doing for
+Ireland what Ireland asked, occasionally passed bills for Ireland which
+were regarded as setting very bad precedents for England. By some
+bargain between the Irish Office and the Nationalist members, measures
+were put through which may have been right as respects Ireland, but
+which embodied principles mischievous as respects Great Britain. We
+felt that if it was necessary to enact such statutes, it would be better
+that they should proceed from an Irish Legislature rather than from the
+Imperial Parliament, which might be embarrassed by its own acts when
+asked to extend the same principles to England. The Labourers' Act
+of July, 1885, is the most conspicuous example.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> At Easter, 1885, I met a number of leading Ulster Liberals in
+Belfast, told them that Home Rule was certainly coming, and urged
+them to prepare some plan under which any special interests they
+conceived the Protestant part of Ulster to have, would be effectually
+safe-guarded. They were startled, and at first discomposed, but
+presently told me I was mistaken; to which I could only reply that
+time would show, and perhaps sooner then even English Liberals expected.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> My recollection of a conversation with a distinguished public man
+in July, 1882, enables me to say that this fact had impressed itself upon
+us as early as that year. He doubted the fact, but admitted that, if
+true, it was momentous. The passing of the Franchise Bill made it, in
+our view, more momentous than ever.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Some thought that its functions should be very limited, while large
+powers were granted to county boards or provincial councils. But most
+had, I think, already perceived that the grant of a merely local self-government,
+while retaining an irresponsible central bureaucracy, would
+do more harm than good. It seemed at first sight a safer experiment
+than the creation of a central legislative body. But, like many middle
+courses, it combined the demerits and wanted the merits of each of the
+extreme courses. It would not make the country tranquil, as firm and
+long-continued repression might possibly do. Neither would it satisfy
+the people's demands, and divert them from struggles against England
+to disputes and discussions among themselves, as the gift of genuine
+self-government might do.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7" /><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Some of us had tried to do so. I prepared such a scheme in the
+autumn of 1885, and submitted it to some specially competent friends.
+Their objections, made from what would now be called the Unionist
+point of view, were weighty. But their effect was to convince me that
+the scheme erred on the side of caution; and I believe the experience
+of other Liberals who worked at the problem to have been the same as
+my own&mdash;viz. that a small and timid scheme is more dangerous than a
+large and bold one. Thus the result of our thinking from July, 1885, till
+April, 1886, was to make us more and more disposed to reject half-and-half
+solutions. Some of us (of whom I was one) expressed this feeling
+by saying in our election addresses in 1885, &quot;the further we go in giving
+the Irish people the management of their own affairs (subject to the
+maintenance of the unity of the empire) the better.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8" /><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Quoted from an article contributed by myself to the American
+<i>Century Magazine</i>, which I refer to because, written in the spring of
+1883, it expresses the ideas here stated.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="HOME_RULE_AND_IMPERIAL_UNITY" id="HOME_RULE_AND_IMPERIAL_UNITY" />HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY LORD THRING</p>
+
+
+<p>The principal charge made against the scheme of Home
+Rule contained in the Irish Government Bill, 1886, is that it
+is incompatible with the maintenance of the unity of the
+Empire and the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament.
+A further allegation states that the Bill is useless, as agrarian
+exasperation lies at the root of Irish discontent and Irish
+disloyalty, and that no place would be found for a Home
+Rule Bill even in Irish aspirations if an effective Land Bill
+were first passed. An endeavour will be made in the following
+pages to secure a verdict of acquittal on both counts&mdash;as
+to the charge relating to Imperial unity and the supremacy
+of the Imperial Parliament, by proving that the accusation
+is absolutely unfounded, and based partly on a
+misconception of the nature of Imperial ties, and partly on
+a misapprehension of the effect of the provisions of the
+Home Rule Bill as bearing on Imperial questions; and
+as to the inutility of the Home Rule Bill in view of the
+necessity of Land Reform, by showing that without a Home
+Rule Bill no Land Bill worth consideration as a means of
+pacifying Ireland can be passed.</p>
+
+<p>The complete partisan spirit in which Home Rule has
+been treated is the more to be deplored as the subject is
+<!-- Page 56 --><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />one which does not lend itself readily to the trivialities
+of party debates. It raises questions of principle, not of
+detail. It ascends at once into the highest region of
+politics. It is conversant with the great questions of constitutional
+and international law, and leads to an inquiry
+into the very nature of governments and the various modes
+in which communities of men are associated together either
+as simple or composite nations. To describe those modes in
+detail would be to give a history of the various despotic,
+monarchical, oligarchical, and democratic systems of government
+which have oppressed or made happy the children of
+men. Such a description is calculated to perplex and
+mislead from its very extent; not so an inquiry into the
+powers of government, and a classification of those powers.
+They are limited in extent, and, if we confine ourselves to
+English names and English necessities, we shall readily
+attain to an apprehension of the mode in which empires,
+nations, and political societies are bound together, at least
+in so far as such knowledge is required for the understanding
+of the nature of Imperial supremacy, and the mode in
+which Home Rule in Ireland is calculated to affect that
+supremacy.</p>
+
+<p>The powers of government are divisible into two great
+classes&mdash;1. Imperial powers; 2. State powers, using &quot;State&quot;
+in the American sense of a political community subordinated
+to some other power, and not in the sense of an
+independent nation. The Imperial powers are in English
+law described as the prerogatives of the Crown, and consist
+in the main of the powers of making peace and war, of
+maintaining armies and fleets and regulating commerce, and
+making treaties with foreign nations. State powers are
+complete powers of local self-government, described in our
+colonial Constitutions as powers to make laws &quot;for the
+peace, order, and good government of the Colony or State&quot;
+in which such powers are to be exercised.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 57 --><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" />Intermediate between the Imperial and State powers are
+a class of powers required to prevent disputes and facilitate
+intercourse between the various parts of an empire or other
+composite system of States&mdash;for example, the coinage of
+money, and other regulations relating to the currency; the
+laws relating to copyright, or other exclusive rights to the
+use and profits of any works or inventions; and so forth.
+These powers may be described as quasi-Imperial powers.</p>
+
+<p>Having arrived at a competent knowledge of the materials
+out of which governments are formed, it may be well
+to proceed to a consideration of the manner in which those
+materials have been worked up in building the two great
+Anglo-Saxon composite nations&mdash;namely, the American
+Union and the British Empire&mdash;for, if we find that the
+arrangements proposed by the Irish Home Rule Bill are
+strictly in accordance with the principles on which the unity
+of the American Union was based and on which the Imperial
+power of Great Britain has rested for centuries, the conclusion
+must be that the Irish Home Rule Bill is not antagonistic
+to the unity of the Empire or to the supremacy of the
+British Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>In discussing these matters it will be convenient to begin
+with the American Union, as it is less extensive in area and
+more homogeneous in its construction than the British
+Empire. The thirteen revolted American colonies, on the
+conclusion of their war with England, found themselves in
+the position of thirteen independent States having no connection
+with each other. The common tie of supremacy
+exercised by the mother country was broken, and each
+State was an independent nation, possessed both of Imperial
+and Local rights.</p>
+
+<p>The impossibility of a cluster of thirteen small independent
+nations maintaining their independence against foreign
+aggression became immediately apparent, and, to remedy
+this evil, the thirteen States appointed delegates to form
+<!-- Page 58 --><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" />a convention authorized to weld them into one body as
+respected Imperial powers. This was attempted to be
+done by the establishment of a central body called a
+Congress, consisting of delegates from the component States,
+and invested with all the powers designated above as Imperial
+and quasi-Imperial powers. The expenses incurred by
+the confederacy were to be defrayed out of a common fund,
+to be supplied by requisitions made on the several States.
+In effect, the confederacy of the thirteen States amounted to
+little more than an offensive and defensive alliance between
+thirteen independent nations, as the central power had States
+for its subjects and not individuals, and could only enforce the
+law against any disobedient State by calling on the twelve other
+States to make war on the refractory member of the union.
+A system dependent for its efficacy on the concurrence of
+so many separate communities contained in itself the seeds
+of dissolution, and it soon became apparent that one of two
+things must occur&mdash;either the American States must cease
+as such to be a nation, or the component members of that
+union must each be prepared to relinquish a further portion
+of the sovereign or quasi-sovereign powers which it possessed.
+Under those circumstances, what was the course taken by
+the thirteen States? They perceived that it was quite
+possible to maintain complete unity and compactness as
+a nation if, in addition to investing the Supreme Government
+with Imperial and quasi-Imperial powers, they added
+full power to impose federal taxes on the component States
+and established an Executive furnished with ample means
+to carry all federal powers into effect through the medium
+of federal officers. The government so formed consisted of
+a President and two elected Houses called Congress, and,
+as a balance-wheel of the Constitution, a Supreme Court
+was established, to which was confided the task of deciding
+in case of dispute all questions arising under the Constitution
+of the United States or relating to international law.<!-- Page 59 --><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />
+The Executive of the United States, with the President as
+its source and head, was furnished with full authority and
+power to enforce the federal laws. The army and navy
+were under its command, and it was provided with courts of
+justice, and subordinate officers to enforce the decrees of
+those courts throughout the length and breadth of the
+Union. Above all, a complete system of federal taxation
+supplied the Central Government with the necessary funds
+to perform effectually all the functions of a supreme national
+government.</p>
+
+<p>The nature of the Constitution of the United States will
+be best understood by considering the position in which its
+subjects stand to the Central Government and their own
+State Governments. In effect, every inhabitant of the
+United States has a double nationality. He belongs to one
+great nation called the United States, or, as it would be
+more aptly called to show its absolute unity, the American
+Republic, having jurisdiction over the whole surface of
+ground comprised in the area of the United States. He is
+also a citizen of a smaller local and partially self-governing
+body&mdash;more important than a county, but not approaching
+the position of a nation&mdash;called a State.</p>
+
+<p>It is no part of the object of this article to enter into
+the details of the American government, its advantages or
+defects. This much, however, is clear&mdash;the American Constitution
+has lasted nearly one hundred years, and shows no
+signs of decay or disruption. It has stood the strain of the
+greatest war of modern times, and has emerged from the
+conflict stronger than before. Even during the war the antagonism
+of the rebels was directed, not against the Union,
+but against the efforts of the Northern States to suppress
+slavery, or, in other words, to destroy, as the Southern States
+believed (not unjustly as the event showed), their property
+in slaves, and consequently the only means they had of
+making their estates profitable. One conclusion, then, we
+<!-- Page 60 --><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" />may draw, that a nation in which the Imperial powers and
+the State powers are vested in different authorities is no less
+compact and powerful, as respects all national capacities,
+than a nation in which both classes of powers are wielded
+by the same functionaries; and one lesson more may be
+learnt from the American War of Secession&mdash;namely, that
+in a nation having such a division of powers, any conflict
+between the two classes results in the Supreme or Imperial
+powers prevailing over the Local governmental powers, and
+not in the latter invading or driving a wedge into the
+Supreme powers. In fact, the tendency in case of a struggle
+is towards an undue centralization of the nation by reason
+of the encroachment by the Supreme authority, rather than
+towards a weakening of the national unity by separatist
+action on the part of the constituent members of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>In comparing the Constitution of the United States with
+the Constitution of the British Empire, we find an apparent
+resemblance in form as respects the Anglo-Saxon colonies,
+but underlying the surface a total difference of principle.
+The United States is an aggregate of homogeneous and
+contiguous States which, in order to weld themselves into a
+nation, gave up a portion of their rights to a central authority,
+reserving to themselves all powers of government which they
+did not expressly relinquish.</p>
+
+<p>The British Empire is an aggregate of many communities
+under one common head, and is thus described by Mr.
+Burke in 1774, in language which may seem to have been
+somewhat too enthusiastic at the time when it was spoken,
+but at the present day does not more than do justice to an
+Empire which comprises one-sixth of the habitable globe in
+extent and population:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I look, I say, on the Imperial rights of Great Britain,
+and the privileges which the colonies ought to enjoy under
+those rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the
+world. The Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of
+<!-- Page 61 --><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" />her extensive Empire in two capacities: one as the local
+legislature of this island, providing for all things at home
+immediately and by no other instrument than the executive
+power; the other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what
+I call her Imperial character, in which, as from the throne
+of heaven, she superintends all the several Legislatures, and
+guides and controls them all without annihilating any. As
+all these provincial Legislatures are only co-ordinate with
+each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her, else they
+can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual
+justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9" /><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>The means by which the possessions of Great Britain
+were acquired have been as various as the possessions themselves.
+The European, Asiatic, and African possessions
+became ours by conquest and cession; the American by
+conquest, treaty, and settlement; the Australasian by settlement,
+and by that dubious system of settlement known by
+the name of annexation. Now, what is the link which
+fastens each of these possessions to the mother country?
+Surely it is the inherent and indestructible right of the
+British Crown to exercise Imperial powers&mdash;in other words,
+the supremacy of the Queen and the British Parliament?
+What, again, is the common bond of union between these
+vast colonial possessions, differing in laws, in religion, and
+in the character of the population? The same answer must
+be given: the joint and several tie, so to speak, is the same
+&mdash;namely, the sovereignty of Great Britain. It is true that
+the mode in which the materials composing the British
+Empire have been cemented together is exactly the reverse
+of the manner of the construction of the American Union.
+In the case of the Union, independent States voluntarily
+relinquished a portion of their sovereignty to secure national
+unity, and entrusted the guardianship of that unity to a
+representative body chosen by themselves. Such a union
+<!-- Page 62 --><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" />was based on contract, and could only be constructed by
+communities which claimed to be independent. Far different
+have been the circumstances under which England
+has developed itself into the British Empire. England
+began as a sovereign power, having its sovereignty vested at
+first solely in the Sovereign, but gradually in the Sovereign
+and Parliament. This sovereignty neither the Crown nor
+the Parliament can, jointly or severally, get rid of, for it is
+of the very essence of a sovereign power that it cannot, by
+Act of Parliament or otherwise, bind its successors.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10" /><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> This
+principle of supremacy has never been lost sight of by the
+British Parliament. Their right to alter or suspend a colonial
+Constitution has never been disputed. Contract never enters
+into the question. The dominant authority delegates to its
+subordinate communities as much or as little power as it
+deems advantageous for each body, and, if it sees fit, resumes
+a portion or the whole of the delegated authority. The last
+point of difference to be noted between the American Constitution
+and the Constitution of the British Empire is the
+fact that as Minerva sprang from the brain of Jupiter fully
+equipped, so the American Constitution came forth from the
+hands of its framers complete and, what is of more importance,
+practically in material matters unchangeable except by the
+agony of an internecine war or some overwhelming passions.
+The British Empire, on the other hand, is, as respects its
+component members, ever in progress and flux. An Anglo-Saxon
+colony, no less than a human being, has its infancy
+under the maternal care of a governor, its boyhood subject
+to the government of a representative council and an Executive
+appointed by the Crown, its manhood under Home
+Rule and responsible government, in which the Executive
+are bound to vacate their offices whenever they are out-voted
+<!-- Page 63 --><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" />in the Legislature. Changes are ever taking place in the
+growth, so to speak, of the several British possessions, but
+what is the result? Nobody ever dreams of these changes
+injuring the Imperial tie or the supremacy of the British
+Parliament, that alone towers above all, unchangeable and
+unimpaired; and, what is most notable, loyalty and devotion
+to the Crown&mdash;that is to say, the Imperial tie&mdash;so far from
+being weakened by the transition of a colony from a state of
+dependence in local affairs to the higher degree of a self-governing
+colony, are, on the contrary, strengthened almost
+in direct proportion as the central interference with local
+affairs is diminished. On this point an unimpeachable witness&mdash;Mr.
+Merivale&mdash;says: &quot;What, then, are the lessons to
+be learnt from a consideration of the American Constitution
+and of our colonial system? Surely these: that Imperial
+unity and Imperial supremacy are in no degree dependent
+on the control exercised by the central power on its dependent
+members.&quot; Facts, however, are more conclusive
+than any arguments; and we have only to look back to the
+state some forty years ago of Canada, New Zealand, and the
+various colonies of Australia, and compare that state with
+their condition to-day, to come to the conclusion that the
+fullest power of local government is perfectly consistent with
+the unity of the Empire and the supremacy of the British
+Parliament. Under the old colonial Constitutions the
+Executive of those colonies was under the control of the
+Crown; and Mr. Merivale says &quot;that the political existence
+consisted of a series of quarrels and reconciliations between
+the two opposing authorities&mdash;the colonial legislative body
+and the Executive nominated by the Crown.&quot; England
+resolved to give up the control of the Executive, and to
+grant complete responsible government&mdash;that is to say, the
+Governor of each colony was instructed that his Executive
+Council (or Ministry, as we should call it) must resign whenever
+they were out-voted by the legislative body. The
+<!-- Page 64 --><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" />effect of this change, this relaxing, as would be supposed, of
+the Imperial tie, was magical, and is thus described by Mr.
+Merivale:<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11" /><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;The magnitude of that change&mdash;the extraordinary
+rapidity of its beneficial effects&mdash;it is scarcely possible to
+exaggerate. None but those who have traced it can realize
+the sudden spring made by a young community under its
+first release from the old tie of subjection, moderate as that
+tie really was. The cessation, as if by magic, of the old
+irritant sores between colony and mother country is the first
+result. Not only are they at concord, but they seem to leave
+hardly any traces in the public mind behind them. Confidence
+and affection towards the home, still fondly so termed
+by the colonist as well as the emigrant, seem to supersede
+at once distrust and hostility. Loyalty, which was before
+the badge of a class suspected by the rest of the community,
+became the common watchword of all, and, with some extravagance
+in the sentiment, there arises no small share of
+its nobleness and devotion. Communities, which but a few
+years ago would have wrangled over the smallest item of
+public expenditure to which they were invited by the Executive
+to contribute, have vied with each other in their subscriptions
+to purposes of British interests in response to calls
+of humanity, or munificence for objects but indistinctly heard
+of at the distance of half the world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Dominion of Canada has been so much talked
+about that it may be well to give a summary of its Constitution,
+though, in so far as regards its relations to the mother
+country, it differs in no material respect from any other self-governing
+colony. The Dominion consists of seven provinces,
+each of which has a Legislature of its own, but is at
+the same time subject to the Legislature of the Dominion,
+in the same manner as each State in the American Union
+has a Legislature of its own, and is at the same time subject
+<!-- Page 65 --><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" />to the control of Congress. The distinguishing feature between
+the system of the American States and the associated
+colonies of the Dominion of Canada is this&mdash;that all Imperial
+powers, everything that constitutes a people a nation as
+respects foreigners, are reserved to the mother country.
+The division, then, of the Dominion and its provinces consists
+only in a division of Local powers. It is impossible to
+mark accurately the line between Dominion and Provincial
+powers, but, speaking generally, Dominion powers relate to
+such matters&mdash;for example, the regulation of trade and
+commerce, postal service, currency, and so forth&mdash;as require
+to be dealt with on a uniform principle throughout the
+whole area of a country; while the Provincial powers relate
+to provincial and municipal institutions, provincial licensing,
+and other subjects restricted to the limits of the province.
+As a general rule, the Legislature of the Dominion and the
+Legislature of each province have respectively exclusive
+jurisdiction within the limits of the subjects entrusted to
+them; but, as respects agriculture and immigration, the
+Dominion Parliament have power to overrule any Act of
+the provincial Legislatures, and, as respects property and
+civil rights in Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick,
+the Dominion Parliament may legislate with a view to
+uniformity, but their legislation is not valid unless it is
+accepted by the Legislature of each province to which
+it applies.</p>
+
+<p>The executive authority in the Dominion Government,
+as in all the self-governing colonies, is carried on by the
+Governor in the name of the Queen, but with the advice of
+a Council: that is to say, as to all Imperial matters, he is
+under the control of the mother country; as to all local
+matters, he acts on the advice of his local Council. The
+result of the whole is that the citizenship of an inhabitant
+of the Dominion of Canada is a triple tie. Suppose him to
+reside in the province of Quebec. First, he is a citizen of
+<!-- Page 66 --><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" />that province, and bound to obey all the laws which it is
+within the competence of the provincial Legislature to pass.
+Next, he is a citizen of the Dominion of Canada, and
+acknowledges its jurisdiction in all matters outside the
+legitimate sphere of the province. Lastly, and above all,
+he is a subject of her Majesty. He is to all intents and
+purposes, as respects the vast company of nations, an
+Englishman, entitled to all the privileges as he is to all the
+glory of the mother country so far as such privileges can
+be enjoyed and glory participated in without actual residence
+in England. One startling point of likeness in events
+and unlikeness in consequences is to be found in the history
+of Ireland and Canada. In 1798 Ireland rebelled. Protestant
+and Catholic were arrayed in arms against each
+other. The rebellion was quenched in blood, and measures
+of repression have been in force, with slight intervals of
+suspension, ever since, with this result&mdash;that the Ireland
+of 1886 is scarcely less disloyal and discontented than the
+Ireland of 1798. In 1837 and 1838 Canada rebelled.
+Protestants and Catholics, differing in nationality as well as
+in religion, were arrayed in arms against each other. The
+rebellion was quelled with the least possible violence, a free
+Constitution was given, and the Canada of 1886 is the
+largest, most loyal, and most contented colony in her
+Majesty's dominions.</p>
+
+<p>Assuming, then, thus much to be proved by the Constitution
+of the United States that national unity of the
+closest description is consistent with complete Home Rule
+in the component members of the nation, and by the history
+of Canada and the British colonial empire that an Imperial
+tie is sufficient to bind together for centuries dependencies
+differing in situation, in nationality, in religion, in laws, in
+everything that distinguishes peoples one from another, and
+further and more particularly that emancipation of the
+Anglo-Saxon colonies from control in their internal affairs
+<!-- Page 67 --><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" />strengthens instead of weakening Imperial unity, let us turn
+to Ireland and inquire whether there is anything in the
+circumstances under which Home Rule was proposed to be
+granted to Ireland, or in the measures intended to establish
+that Home Rule, fairly leading to the inference that disruption
+of the Empire or an impairment of Imperial powers
+would probably be a consequence of passing the Irish
+Government Bill and the Irish Land Bill. And, first, as to
+the circumstances which would seem to recommend the
+Irish Home Rule Bill.</p>
+
+<p>Ireland, from the very commencement of her connection
+with England, has chafed under the restraints which that
+connection imposed. The closer the apparent union
+between the two countries the greater the real disunion.
+The Act of 1800, <i>in words and in law</i>, effected not a union
+merely, but a consolidation of the two countries. The effect
+of those words and that law was to give rise to a restless
+discontent, which has constantly found expression in efforts
+to procure the repeal of the Act of Union and the reestablishment
+of a National Parliament in Dublin. How
+futile have been the efforts of the British Parliament to
+diminish by concession or repress by coercion Irish aspirations
+or Irish discontent it is unnecessary to discuss here.
+All men admit the facts, however different the conclusions
+which they draw from those facts. What Burke said of
+America on moving in 1775 his resolution on conciliation
+with the colonies was true in 1885 with respect to
+Ireland:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fact is undoubted, that under former Parliaments
+the state of America [read for America, Ireland] has been
+kept in continual agitation. Everything administered as
+remedy to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was
+at least followed by an heightening of the distemper, until,
+by a variety of experiments, that important country has been
+brought into her present situation&mdash;a situation which I will
+<!-- Page 68 --><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" />not miscall, which I dare not name, which I scarcely know
+how to comprehend in the terms of any description.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12" /><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>At length, after the election of 1885, Mr. Gladstone and
+the majority of his followers came to the conclusion that an
+opportunity had presented itself for providing Ireland with
+a Constitution conferring on the people of that country the
+largest measure of self-government consistent with the
+absolute supremacy of the Crown and the Imperial Parliament
+and the entire unity of the Empire. A scheme was
+proposed which was accepted in principle by the representatives
+of the National party in Ireland as a fair and sufficient
+adjustment of the Imperial claims of Great Britain and the
+Local claims of Ireland. The scheme was shortly this. A
+Legislative Assembly was proposed to be established in
+Ireland with power to make all laws necessary for the good
+government of Ireland&mdash;in other words, invested with the
+same powers of local self-government as a colonial Assembly.
+The Irish Assembly was in one respect unlike a colonial
+Legislature. It consisted of one House only, but this House
+was divided into two orders, each of which, in case of
+differences on any important legislative matter, voted
+separately. This form was adopted in order to minimize
+the chances of collision between the two orders, by making
+it imperative on each order to hear the arguments of the
+other before proceeding to a division, thus throwing on the
+dissentient order the full responsibility of its dissent, with a
+complete knowledge of the consequences likely to ensue
+therefrom. The clause conferring on the Irish Legislature
+full powers of local self-government was immediately followed
+by a provision excepting, by enumeration, from any interference
+on the part of the Irish Legislature, all Imperial
+powers, and declaring any enactment void which infringed
+on that provision. This exception (as is well known) is not
+found in colonial Constitutional Acts. In them the restriction
+<!-- Page 69 --><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" />of the words of the grant to Local powers only has been
+held sufficient to safeguard the supremacy of the British
+Parliament and the unity of the Empire. The reason for
+making a difference in the case of the Home Rule Bill was
+political, not legal. Separation was declared by the enemies
+of the Bill to be the real intention of its supporters, and
+destruction of the unity of the Empire to be its certain
+consequence. It seemed well that Ireland, by her representatives,
+should accept as a satisfactory charter of Irish
+liberty a document which contained an express submission
+to Imperial power and a direct acknowledgment of Imperial
+unity. Similarly with respect to the supremacy of the
+British Parliament. In the colonial Constitutions all reference
+to this supremacy is omitted as being too clear to
+require notice. In the case of the Irish Home Rule Bill
+instructions were given to preserve in express words the
+supremacy of the British Parliament in order to pledge
+Ireland to an express admission of that supremacy by the
+same vote which accepted Local powers. It is true that
+the wording by the draftsman of the sentence reserving the
+supremacy of Parliament was justly found fault with as
+inaccurate and doubtful, but that defect would have been
+cured by an amendment in Committee; and, even if there
+had not been any such clause in the Bill, it is clear, from
+what has been said above, that the Imperial Legislature
+could not, if it would, renounce its supremacy or abdicate
+its sovereign powers. The executive government in Ireland
+was continued in the Queen, to be carried on by the Lord
+Lieutenant on behalf of her Majesty, with the aid of such
+officers and Council as to her Majesty might from time to
+time seem fit. Her Majesty was also a constituent part of
+the Legislature, with power to delegate to the Lord
+Lieutenant the prerogative of assenting to or dissenting
+from Bills, and of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving
+Parliament. Under these provisions the Lord Lieutenant
+<!-- Page 70 --><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" />resembled the Governor of a colony with responsible
+government. He was invested with a double authority&mdash;first,
+Imperial; secondly, Local. As an Imperial officer,
+he was bound to veto any Bill injuriously affecting Imperial
+interests or inconsistent with general Imperial policy; as a
+Local officer, it was his duty to act in all local matters
+according to the advice of his Council, whose tenure of
+office depended on their being in harmony with, and
+supported by, a majority of the Legislative Assembly.
+Questions relating to the constitutionality of any particular
+law were not left altogether to the decision of the Governor.
+If a Bill containing a provision infringing Imperial rights
+passed the Legislature, its validity might be decided in the
+first instance by the ordinary courts of law, but the ultimate
+appeal lay to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,
+and, with a view to secure absolute impartiality in the
+Committee, it was provided that Ireland should be represented
+on that body by persons who either were or had been
+Irish judges. Not the least important provision of the Bill,
+as respects the maintenance of Imperial interests, was the
+continuance of Imperial taxation. The Customs and Excise
+duties were directed to be levied, as heretofore, in pursuance
+of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament, and were
+excepted from the control of the Irish Legislature, which
+had full power, with that exception, to impose such taxes in
+Ireland as they might think expedient. The Bill further
+provided that neither the Imperial taxes of Excise nor any
+Local taxes that might be imposed by the Irish Legislature
+should be paid into the Irish Exchequer. An Imperial
+officer, called the Receiver-General, was appointed, into
+whose hands the produce of every tax, both Imperial and
+Local, was required to be paid, and it was the duty of the
+Receiver-General to take care that all claims of the English
+Exchequer, including especially the contribution payable by
+Ireland for Imperial purposes, were satisfied before a farthing
+<!-- Page 71 --><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />found its way into the Irish Exchequer for Irish purposes.
+The Receiver-General was provided with an Imperial Court
+to enforce his rights of Imperial taxation, and adequate
+means for enforcing all Imperial powers by Imperial civil
+officers. The Bill did not provide for the representation of
+Ireland in the Imperial Parliament on all Imperial questions,
+including questions relating to Imperial taxation, but it is
+fully understood that in any Bill which might hereafter be
+brought forward relating to Home Rule those defects would
+be remedied.</p>
+
+<p>An examination, then, of the Home Rule Bill, that
+&quot;child of revolution and parent of separation,&quot; appears to
+lead irresistibly to two conclusions. First, that Imperial
+rights and Imperial powers, representation for Imperial purposes,
+Imperial taxation&mdash;in short, every link that binds a
+subordinate member of an Empire to its supreme head&mdash;have
+been maintained unimpaired and unchanged. Secondly,
+that, in granting Home Rule to discontented Ireland, that
+form of responsible government has been adopted which, as
+Mr. Merivale declares&mdash;and his declaration subsequent events
+have more than verified&mdash;when conferred on the discontented
+colonies, changed restless aspirations for separation into quiet
+loyalty.</p>
+
+<p>That such a Bill as the Home Rule Bill should be treated
+as an invasion of Imperial rights is a proof of one, or perhaps
+of both, the following axioms&mdash;that Bills are never
+read by their accusers, and that party spirit will distort the
+plainest facts. The union of Great Britain and Ireland was
+not, so far as Imperial powers were concerned, disturbed by
+the Bill, and an Irishman remains a citizen of the British
+Empire under the Home Rule Bill, with the same obligations
+and the same privileges, on the same terms as before.
+All the Bill did was to make his Irish citizenship distinct
+from his Imperial citizenship, in the same manner as the
+citizenship of a native of the State of New York is distinct
+<!-- Page 72 --><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" />from his citizenship as a member of the United States. Now
+it has been found that the Central power in the United
+States has been more than a match for the State powers,
+and can it be conceived for a moment that the Imperial
+power of Great Britain should not be a match for the Local
+power of Ireland&mdash;a State which has not one-seventh of
+the population or one-twentieth part of the income of the
+dominant community?</p>
+
+<p>One argument remains to be noticed which the opponents
+of Home Rule urge as absolutely condemnatory of the
+measure, whereas, if properly weighed, it is conclusive in its
+favour. Home Rule, they say, is a mere question of sentiment.
+&quot;National aspirations&quot; are the twaddle of English
+enthusiasts who know nothing of Ireland. What is really
+wanted is the reform of the Land Law. Settle the agrarian
+problem, and Home Rule may be relegated to the place
+supposed to be paved with good intentions. The Irish will
+straightway change their character, and become a law-abiding,
+contented, loyal people. Be it so. But suppose it to be
+proved that the establishment of an Irish Government, or,
+in other words, Home Rule, is an essential condition of
+agrarian reform&mdash;that the latter cannot be had without the
+former&mdash;surely Home Rule should stand none the worse in
+the estimation of its opponents if it not only secures a safe
+basis for putting an end to agrarian exasperation, but also
+gratifies the feeling of the Irish people as expressed by the
+majority of its representatives in Parliament? Now, what
+is the nature of the Irish Land Question? This we must
+understand before considering the remedy. In Ireland
+(meaning by Ireland that part of the country which is in the
+hands of tenants, and falls within the compass of a Land
+Bill) the tenure of land is wholly unlike that which is found
+in the greater part of England. Instead of large farms in
+which the landlord makes all the improvements and the
+tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the land and
+<!-- Page 73 --><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" />receives the produce, small holdings are found in which the
+tenant does the improvements (if any) and pays a fixed rent-charge
+to the owner. In England the tenant does not perform
+the obligations or in any way aspire to the character of
+owner. If he thinks he can get a cheaper farm, he quits his
+former one, regarding his interest in the land as a mere
+matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Not so the Irish
+tenant. He has made what he calls improvements, he
+claims a quasi-ownership in the land, and has the characteristic
+Celtic attachment for the patch of ground forming his
+holding, however squalid it may be, however inadequate for
+his support. In short, in Ireland there is a dual ownership&mdash;that
+of the proprietor, who has no interest in the soil so
+long as the tenant pays his rent and fulfils the conditions of
+his tenancy; and that of the tenant, who, subject to the
+payment of his rent and performance of the fixed conditions,
+acts, thinks, and carries himself as the owner of his holding.
+A system, then, of agrarian reform in Ireland resolves itself
+into an inquiry as to the best mode of putting an end to this
+dual ownership&mdash;that is to say, of making the tenant the sole
+proprietor of his holding, and compensating the landlord for
+his interest in the ownership. The problem is further
+narrowed by the circumstance that the tenant cannot be
+expected to advance any capital or pay an increased rent,
+so that the means of compensating the landlord must be
+found out of the existing rent.</p>
+
+<p>The plan adopted in Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill was to
+commute the rent-charges, offering the landlord, as a general
+rule, twenty years' purchase on the net rental of the estate
+(that is to say, the rent received by him after deducting all
+outgoings), and paying him the purchase-money in &pound;3 per
+cent. stock taken at par. The stock was to be advanced by
+the English Government to an Irish State department at
+3-1/8 per cent. interest, and the Bill provided that the tenant,
+instead of rent, was to pay an annuity of &pound;4 per cent. on a
+<!-- Page 74 --><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" />capital sum equal in amount to twenty times the gross
+rental.</p>
+
+<p>The notable feature which distinguished this plan from
+all other schemes was the security given for the repayment
+of the purchase-money: hitherto the English Government
+has lent the money directly to the landlord or tenant, and
+has become the mortgagee of the land&mdash;in other words, has
+become in effect the landlord of the land sold to the tenant
+until the repayment of the loan has been completed. To
+carry into effect under such a system any extensive scheme
+of agrarian reform (and if not extensive such a reform would
+be of no value in pacifying Ireland) presupposes a readiness
+on the part of the English Government to become virtually
+the landlord of a large portion of Ireland, with the attendant
+odium of absenteeism and alien domination. Under a land
+scheme such as that of 1886, all these difficulties would
+be overcome. The Irish, not the English, Government
+would be the virtual landlord. It would be the interest of
+Ireland that the annuities due from the tenants should be
+regularly paid, as, subject to the prior charge of the English
+Exchequer, they would form part of the Irish revenues. The
+cardinal difference, then, between Mr. Gladstone's scheme
+and any other land scheme that has seen the light is this&mdash;that
+in Mr. Gladstone's scheme the English loans would
+have been lent to the Irish Government on the security of
+the whole Irish revenues, whereas in every other scheme
+they have been lent by the English Government to the Irish
+creditors on the security of individual patches of land.</p>
+
+<p>The whole question, then, of the relation between Home
+Rule and agrarian reform may be summed up as follows:&mdash;Agrarian
+reform is necessary for the pacification of Ireland;
+agrarian reform cannot be efficiently carried into effect without
+an Irish Government; an Irish Government can only be
+established by a Home Rule Bill: therefore a Home Rule
+Bill is necessary for the pacification of Ireland. It is idle to
+<!-- Page 75 --><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" />say, as has been said on numerous platforms, that plans no
+doubt can be devised for agrarian reform without Home
+Rule. The Irish revenues are the only collateral security
+that can be obtained for loans of English money, and Irish
+revenues are only available for the purpose on the establishment
+of an Irish Government. Baronial guarantees, union
+guarantees, county guarantees, debenture schemes, have all
+been tried and found wanting, and vague assertions as to
+possibilities are idle unless they are based on intelligible
+working plans.</p>
+
+<p>The foregoing arguments will be equally valid if, instead
+of making the tenants peasant-proprietors, it were thought
+desirable that the Irish State should be the proprietor and
+the tenants be the holders of the land at perpetual rents and
+subject to fixed conditions. Again, it might be possible to
+pay the landlords by annual sums instead of capital sums.
+Such matters are really questions of detail. The substance
+is to interpose the Irish Government between the tenant
+and the English mortgagee, and to make the loans general
+charges on the whole of the Irish Government revenues as
+paid into the hands of an Imperial Receiver instead of
+placing them as special charges, each fixed on its own small
+estate or holding. The fact that Mr. Gladstone's land
+scheme was denounced as confiscation of &pound;100,000,000 of
+the English taxpayers' property, while Lord Ashbourne's
+Act is pronounced by the same party wise and prudent,
+shows the political blindness of party spirit in its most absurd
+form. Lord Ashbourne's Act requires precisely the same
+expenditure to do the same work as Mr. Gladstone's Bill
+requires, but in Mr. Gladstone's scheme the whole Irish
+revenue was pledged as collateral security, and the Irish
+Government was interposed between the ultimate creditor
+and the Irish tenant, while under Lord Ashbourne's Act
+the English Government figures without disguise as the landlord
+of each tenant, exacting a debt which the tenant is
+<!-- Page 76 --><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" />unwilling to pay as being due to what he calls an alien
+Government.</p>
+
+<p>An endeavour has been made in the preceding pages to
+prove that Home Rule in no respect infringes on Imperial
+rights or Imperial unity, for the simple reason that the
+Imperial power remains exactly in the same position as it
+was before, the Home Rule Bill dealing only with Local
+matters. At all events, Burke thought that the Imperial
+supremacy alone constituted a real union between England
+and Ireland. He says&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My poor opinion is, that the closest connection between
+Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the well-being&mdash;I
+had almost said to the very being&mdash;of the three kingdoms;
+for that purpose I humbly conceive that the whole of the
+superior, and what I should call Imperial politics, ought to
+have its residence here, and that Ireland, locally, civilly, and
+commercially independent, ought politically to look up to
+Great Britain in all matters of peace and war. In all these
+points to be joined with her, and, in a word, with her to live
+and to die.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13" /><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>How strange to Burke would have seemed the doctrine
+that the restoration of a limited power of self-government to
+Ireland, excluding commerce, and excluding all matters not
+only Imperial, but those in which uniformity is required,
+should be denounced as a disruption of the Empire!</p>
+
+<p>It remains to notice one other charge made against the
+Gladstonian Home Rule Bill, namely, that of impairing the
+supremacy of the British Parliament. That allegation has
+been shown also to be founded on a mistake. Next, it is
+said that the Gladstonian scheme does not provide securities
+against executive and legislative oppression. The answer is
+complete. The executive authority being vested in the
+Queen, it will be the duty of the Governor not to allow
+executive oppression; still more will it be his duty to veto
+<!-- Page 77 --><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" />any act of legislative oppression. Further, it is stated that
+difficulties will arise with respect to the power of the Privy
+Council to nullify unconstitutional Acts. But it is hard to
+see why a power which is exercised with success in the
+United States, where all the States are equal, and without
+dispute in our colonies, which are all dependent, should not
+be carried into effect with equal ease in Ireland, which
+is more closely bound to us and more completely under our
+power than the colonies are, or than the several States are
+under the power of the Central Government.</p>
+
+<p>To conclude: the cause of Irish discontent is the conjoint
+operation of the passion for nationality and the vicious
+system of land tenure, and the scheme of the Irish Home
+Rule Bill and the Land Bill removes the whole fabric on
+which Irish discontent is raised. The Irish, by the great
+majority of their representatives, have accepted the Home
+Rule Bill as a satisfactory settlement of the nationality
+question. The British Parliament can, through the medium
+of the Home Rule Bill and the establishment of an Irish
+Legislature, carry through a final settlement of agrarian disputes
+with less injustice to individuals than could a Parliament
+sitting in Dublin, and, be it added, with scarcely any
+appreciable risk to the British taxpayer. Of course it may
+be said that an Irish Parliament will go farther&mdash;that Home
+Rule is a step to separation, and a reform of the Land
+Laws a spoliation of the landlords. To those who urge
+such arguments I would recommend the perusal of the
+speech of Burke on Conciliation with America, and especially
+the following sentences, substituting &quot;Ireland&quot; for
+&quot;the colonies:&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But [the Colonies] Ireland will go further. Alas! alas!
+when will this speculating against fact and reason end?
+What will quiet these panic fears which we entertain of the
+hostile effect of a conciliatory conduct? Is it true that no
+case can exist in which it is proper for the Sovereign to
+<!-- Page 78 --><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" />accede to the desires of his discontented subjects? Is there
+anything peculiar in this case to make it a rule for itself?
+Is all authority of course lost when it is not pushed to the
+extreme? Is it a certain maxim that the fewer causes of
+discontentment are left by Government the more the subject
+will be inclined to resist and rebel?&quot;<!-- Page 79 --><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9" /><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Burke's Speech on American Taxation, vol. i. p. 174</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10" /><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> This is the opinion of both English and American lawyers. See
+Blackstone's Comm., i. 90; Austin on Jurisprudence, i. 226. As to
+American cases, see Corley on Constitutional Limitations, pp. 2-149.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11" /><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> &quot;Lectures on the Colonies,&quot; p, 641.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12" /><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Burke, vol. i. p. 181.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13" /><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> &quot;Letter on Affairs of Ireland,&quot; i. 462.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_IRISH_GOVERNMENT_BILL" id="THE_IRISH_GOVERNMENT_BILL" />THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL
+AND THE IRISH LAND BILL</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY LORD THRING</p>
+
+
+<p>A mere enumeration or analysis of the contents of the
+Irish Government Bill, 1886, and the Land (Ireland) Bill,
+1886, would convey scarcely any intelligible idea to the
+mind of an ordinary reader. It is, therefore, proposed in
+the following pages, before entering on the details of each
+Bill, to give a summary of the reasons which led to its
+introduction, and of the principles on which it is founded.
+To begin with the Irish Government Bill&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The object of the Irish Government Bill is to confer on
+the Irish people the largest measure of self-government
+consistent with the absolute supremacy of the Crown and
+Imperial Parliament and the entire unity of the Empire.
+To carry into effect this object it was essential to create a
+separate though subordinate legislature; thus occasion was
+given to opponents to apply the name of Separatists to the
+supporters of the Bill&mdash;a term true in so far only as it
+denoted the intention to create a separate legislature, but
+false and calumnious when used in the sense in which it
+was intended to be understood&mdash;of imputing to the
+promoters of the Bill the intention to disunite or in any
+way to disintegrate the Empire. Indeed, the very object
+of the measure was, by relaxing a little the legal bonds
+of union, to draw closer the actual ties between England
+<!-- Page 80 --><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" />and Ireland, in fact, to do as we have done in our Colonies,
+by decentralizing the subordinate functions of government
+to strengthen the central supremacy of natural affection and
+Imperial unity. The example of the effects of giving
+complete self-government to our Colonies would seem not
+unfavourable to trying the same experiment in Ireland.
+Some forty years ago, Canada, New Zealand, and the
+various colonies of Australia were discontented and uneasy
+at the control exercised by the Government of England
+over their local affairs. What did England do? She gave
+to each of those communities the fullest power of local
+government consistent with the unity of the Empire. The
+result was that the real union was established in the same
+degree as the apparent tie of control over local affairs was
+loosened. Are there any reasons to suppose that the
+condition of Ireland is such as to render the example of
+the Colonies applicable? Let us look a little at the past
+history of that country. Up to 1760 Ireland was governed
+practically as a conquered country. The result was that in
+1782, in order to save Imperial unity, we altogether relaxed
+the local tie and made Ireland legislatively independent.
+The Empire was thus saved, but difficulties naturally arose
+between two independent legislatures. The true remedy
+would have been to have imposed on Grattan's Parliament
+the conditions imposed by the Irish Government Bill on
+the statutory Parliament created by that Bill; the course
+actually taken was that, instead of leaving the Irish with
+their local government, and arranging for the due supremacy
+of England, the Irish Legislature was destroyed under the
+guise of Union, and Irish representatives were transferred
+to an assembly in which they had little weight, and in which
+they found no sympathy. The result was that from the
+date of the Union to the present day Ireland has been
+constantly working for the reinstatement of its National
+Legislature, and has been governed by a continuous system
+<!-- Page 81 --><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" />of extraordinary legislature called coercion; the fact being
+that between 1800, the date of the Act of Union, and 1832,
+the date of the great Reform Act, there were only eleven
+years free from coercion, while in the fifty-three years since
+that period there have been only two years entirely free
+from special repressive legislation. So much, therefore, is
+clear, that Irish discontent at not being allowed to manage
+their own affairs has gradually increased instead of diminishing.
+The conclusion then would seem irresistible, that if
+coercion has failed, the only practical mode of governing
+Ireland satisfactorily is to give the people power to manage
+their local affairs. Coming, then, to the principle of the
+Bill, the first step is to reconcile local government with
+Imperial supremacy, in other words, to divide Imperial
+from local powers; for if this division be accurately made,
+and the former class of powers be reserved to the British
+Crown and British Parliament, while the latter only are
+intrusted to the Irish Parliament, it becomes a contradiction
+in terms to say that Imperial unity is dissolved by reserving
+to the Imperial authority all its powers, or that Home Rule
+is a sundering of the Imperial tie when that tie is preserved
+inviolable. Imperial powers, then, are the prerogatives of
+the Crown with respect to peace and war, and making
+treaties with foreign nations; in short, the power of regulating
+the relations of the Empire towards foreign nations.
+These are the <i>jura summi imperii</i>, the very insignia of
+supremacy; the attributes of sovereign authority in every
+form of government, be it despotism, limited monarchy, or
+republic; the only difference is that in a system of government
+under one supreme head, they are vested in that head
+alone, in a federal government, as in America or Switzerland,
+they reside in the composite body forming the federal
+supreme authority. Various subsidiary powers necessarily
+attend the above supreme powers; for example, the power
+of maintaining armies and navies, of commanding the
+<!-- Page 82 --><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" />militia, and other incidental powers. Closely connected
+with the power of making peace and war is the power of
+regulating commerce with foreign nations. Next in importance
+to the reservations necessary to constitute the
+Empire a Unity with regard to foreign nations, are the powers
+required to prevent disputes and to facilitate intercourse
+between the various parts of the Empire. These are the
+coinage of money and other regulations relating to currency,
+to copyright or other exclusive rights to the use or profit of
+any works or inventions. The above subjects must be
+altogether excluded from the powers of the subordinate
+legislature; it ceases to be subordinate as soon as it is
+invested with these Imperial, or quasi-Imperial, powers.</p>
+
+<p>Assuming, however, the division between Imperial and
+local powers to be accurately determined, how is the
+subordinate legislative body to be kept within its due limits?
+The answer is very plain,&mdash;an Imperial court must be
+established to decide in the last resort whether the subordinate
+legislature has or has not infringed Imperial rights.
+Such a court has been in action in the United States of
+America ever since their union, and no serious conflict has
+arisen in carrying its decisions into effect, and the Privy
+Council, acting as the Supreme Court in respect to Colonial
+appeals, has been accepted by all the self-governing colonies
+as a just and impartial expositor of the meaning of their
+several constitutions.</p>
+
+<p>Next in importance to the right division of Imperial and
+local powers is a correct understanding of the relation borne
+by the executive of an autonomous country to the mother
+country. In every part of the British Empire which enjoys
+home rule the legislature consists of the Queen and the two
+local legislative bodies. The administrative power resides
+in the Queen alone. The Queen has the appointment of
+all the officers of the government; money bills can be introduced
+into the legislature only with the consent of the<!-- Page 83 --><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />
+Queen. The initiative power of taxation then is vested
+in the Queen, the executive head, in practice represented
+by the Governor. But such a power of initiation is of course
+useless unless the legislative body is willing to support the
+executive, and grants it the necessary funds for carrying on
+the government. What, then, is the contrivance by which the
+governmental machine is prevented from being stopped by
+a difference between the executive and legislative authorities?
+It is the same in the mother country, and in every British
+home-rule country, with this difference only&mdash;that beyond
+the limits of the mother country the Queen is represented
+by a governor to whom are delegated such a measure of
+powers as is necessary for the supreme head of a local self-governing
+community. The contrivance is this in the
+mother country:&mdash;the Queen acts upon the advice of a
+cabinet council; in home-rule dependencies the Governor
+acts on the advice of a local council. If this cabinet council
+in the mother country, or local council in a dependency,
+ceases to command a majority in the popular legislative
+body, it resigns, and the Governor is obliged to select a
+council which, by commanding such a majority, can obtain
+the supplies necessary to carry on the government. The
+consequence then is, that in a home-rule community, if a
+serious difficulty arises between the legislative and executive
+authority, the head of the executive, the governor, refers the
+ultimate decision of the question to the general body of
+electors by dissolving the popular legislative body. It has
+been urged in the discussion on the Irish Government Bill
+that the powers of the executive in relation to the legislative
+body ought to be expressed in the Bill itself; but it is clear
+to anybody acquainted with the rudiments of legislation that
+the details of such a system (in other words, the mode in
+which a governor ought to act under the endless variety of
+circumstances which may occur in governing a dependency)
+never have been and never can be expressed in an Act of<!-- Page 84 --><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" />
+Parliament. But how little difficulty this absence of definition
+has caused may be judged from the fact that neither in
+England nor in any of her home-rule dependencies has any
+vital collision arisen between the executive and legislative
+authorities, and that all the home-rule colonies have
+managed to surmount the obstacles which the opponents
+of Home Rule argued would be fatal to their existence.
+The main principles have now been stated on which the
+Irish Government Bill is framed, and it remains to give
+a summary of the provisions of the Bill, the objects and
+bearing of which will be readily understood from the foregoing
+observations. The first clause provides that&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On and after the appointed day there shall be established
+in Ireland a Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the
+Queen and an Irish legislative body.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This is the first step in all English constitutional systems,
+to vest the power of legislation in the Queen and the legislative
+body. Such a legislature might have had conferred
+on it the independent powers vested in Grattan's Parliament:
+but the second clause at once puts an end to any doubt as
+to the subordination of the Irish legislative body; for while
+on the one hand it confers full powers of local self-government,
+by declaring that the Legislature may make any laws
+for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland, it
+subjects that power to numerous exceptions and restrictions.
+The exceptions are contained in the third clause, and the
+restrictions in the fourth. The exceptions are as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws relating
+to the following matters or any of them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(1.) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession
+to the Crown, or a Regency;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(2.) The making of peace or war;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(3.) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other
+military or naval forces, or the defence of the realm;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(4.) Treaties and other relations with foreign States,
+<!-- Page 85 --><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" />or the relations between the various parts of Her Majesty's
+dominions;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(5.) Dignities or titles of honour;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(6.) Prize or booty of war;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(7.) Offences against the law of nations; or offences
+committed in violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to
+be made, between Her Majesty and any foreign State; or
+offences committed on the high seas;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(8.) Treason, alienage, or naturalization;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(9.) Trade, navigation, or quarantine;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(10.) The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter
+in this Act mentioned with respect to the transmission
+of letters and telegrams in Ireland;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(11.) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(12.) The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal
+tender; or weights and measures; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(13.) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights
+to the use or profits of any works or inventions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Of these exceptions the first four preserve the imperial
+rights which have been insisted on above, and maintain the
+position of Ireland as an integral portion of that Empire of
+which Great Britain is the head. The remaining exceptions
+are either subsidiary to the first four, or relate, as is the case
+with exceptions 10 to 13, to matters on which it is desirable
+that uniformity should exist throughout the whole Empire.
+The restrictions in clause 4 are:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Irish Legislature shall not make any law&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(1.) Respecting the establishment or endowment of
+religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(2.) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege,
+on account of religious belief; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(3.) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish
+or maintain any place of denominational education or
+any denominational institution or charity; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(4.) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to
+<!-- Page 86 --><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" />attend a school receiving public money without attending
+the religious instruction at that school; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(5.) Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty
+in Council first obtained on an address presented by the
+legislative body of Ireland, or the consent of the corporation
+interested, the rights, property, or privileges of any existing
+corporation incorporated by royal charter or local and
+general Act of Parliament; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(6.) Imposing or relating to duties of customs and
+duties of excise, as defined by this Act, or either of such
+duties, or affecting any Act relating to such duties or either
+of them; or</p>
+
+<p>&quot;(7.) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared
+to be alterable by the Irish Legislature.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These restrictions differ from the exceptions, inasmuch
+as they do not prevent the Legislature of Ireland from dealing
+with the subjects to which they refer, but merely impose
+on it an obligation not to handle the specified matters in a
+manner detrimental to the interests of certain classes of Her
+Majesty's subjects. For example, restrictions 1 to 4 are
+practically concerned in securing religious freedom; restriction
+5 protects existing charters; restriction 6 is necessary,
+as will be seen hereinafter, to carrying into effect the financial
+scheme of the bill; restriction 7 is a consequence of the
+very framework of the Bill: it provides for the stability of
+the Irish constitution, by declaring that the Irish Legislature
+is not competent to alter the constitutional act to which it
+owes its existence, except on those points on which it is
+expressly permitted to make alterations.</p>
+
+<p>Clause 5 is an exposition, so to speak, of the consequence
+which would seem to flow from the fact of the Queen being
+a constitutional part of the Legislature. It states that the
+royal prerogatives with respect to the summoning, prorogation,
+and dissolution of the Irish legislative body are to be
+the same as the royal prerogatives in relation to the Imperial<!-- Page 87 --><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" />
+Parliament. The next clause (6) is comparatively immaterial;
+it merely provides that the duration of the Irish legislative
+body is to be quinquennial. As it deals with a matter of
+detail, it perhaps would have more aptly found a place in a
+subsequent part of the Bill. Clause 7 passes from the
+legislative to the executive authority; it declares:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>(1.) The executive government of Ireland shall continue
+vested in Her Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord
+Lieutenant on behalf of Her Majesty with the aid of such
+officers and such council as to Her Majesty may from time
+to time seem fit.</p>
+
+<p>(2.) Subject to any instructions which may from time to
+time be given by Her Majesty, the Lord Lieutenant shall
+give or withhold the assent of Her Majesty to bills passed
+by the Irish legislative body, and shall exercise the prerogatives
+of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning, proroguing,
+and dissolving of the Irish legislative body, and any
+prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to him
+by Her Majesty.</p>
+
+<p>Bearing in mind what has been said in the preliminary
+observations in respect of the relation between the executive
+and the legislative authority, it will be at once understood
+how much this clause implies, according to constitutional
+maxims, of the dependence on the one hand of the Irish
+executive in respect of imperial matters, and of its independence
+in respect of local matters. The clause is practically
+co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete
+local powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves
+all imperial powers to the Imperial Legislature. The
+governor is an imperial officer, and will be bound to watch
+over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny, and to veto
+any bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the
+other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and
+be guided by the advice of the Irish executive council.
+The system is, as has been shown above, self-acting. The
+<!-- Page 88 --><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" />governor, for local purposes, must have a council which is
+in harmony with the legislative body. If a council, supported
+by the legislative body and the governor do not
+agree, the governor must give way unless he can, by dismissing
+his council and dissolving the legislative body,
+obtain both a council and a legislative body which will
+support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case
+is different; here the last word rests with the mother country,
+and in the last resort a determination of the executive council,
+backed by the legislative body, to resist imperial rights, must
+be deemed an act of rebellion on the part of the Irish people,
+and be dealt with accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>The above clauses contain the pith and marrow of the
+whole scheme. The exact constitution of the legislative
+body, and the orders into which it should be divided, the
+exclusion or non-exclusion of the Irish members from the
+Imperial Parliament, indeed, the whole of the provisions
+found in the remainder of this Bill, are matters which might
+be altered without destroying, or even violently disarranging,
+the Home-rule scheme as above described.</p>
+
+<p>Clauses 9, 10, and 11 provide for the constitution of the
+legislative body; it differs materially from the colonial legislative
+bodies, and from the Legislature of the United States.
+For the purpose of deliberation it consists of one House
+only; for the purpose of voting on all questions (except
+interlocutory applications and questions of order), it is
+divided into two classes, called in the Bill &quot;Orders,&quot; each
+of which votes separately, with the result that a question on
+which the two orders disagree is deemed to be decided in
+the negative. The object of this arrangement is to diminish
+the chances of collision between the two branches of the
+Legislature, which have given rise to so much difficulty both
+in England and the colonies. Each order will have ample
+opportunity of learning the strength and hearing the arguments
+of the other order. They will therefore, each of
+<!-- Page 89 --><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" />them, proceed to a division with a full sense of the responsibility
+attaching to their action. A further safeguard is provided
+against a final conflict between the first and second
+orders. If the first order negative a proposition, that negative
+is in force only for a period of three years, unless a dissolution
+takes place sooner, in which case it is terminated at
+once; the lost bill or clause may then be submitted to the
+whole House, and if decided in the affirmative, and assented
+to by the Queen, becomes law. The first order of the Irish
+legislative body comprises 103 members. It is intended to
+consist ultimately wholly of elective members; but for the
+next immediate period of thirty years the rights of the Irish
+representative peers are, as will be seen, scrupulously reserved.
+The plan is this: of the 103 members composing the first
+order, seventy-five are elective, and twenty-eight peerage
+members. The qualification of the elective members is an
+annual income of &pound;200, or the possession of a capital sum
+of &pound;4000 free from all charges. The elections are to be
+conducted in the electoral districts set out in the schedule
+to the Bill. The electors must possess land or tenements
+within the district of the annual value of &pound;25. The
+twenty-eight peerage members consist of the existing
+twenty-eight representative peers, and any vacancies in
+their body during the next thirty years are to be filled up
+in the manner at present in use respecting the election of
+Irish representative peers. The Irish representative peers
+cease to sit in the English Parliament; but a member of
+that body is not required to sit in the Irish Parliament without
+his assent, and the place of any existing peer refusing to
+sit in the Irish Parliament will be filled up as in the case of
+an ordinary vacancy. The elective members of the first
+order sit for ten years; every five years one half their number
+will retire. The members of the first order do not vacate
+their seats on a dissolution of the legislative body. At the
+expiration of thirty years, that is to say, upon the exhaustion
+<!-- Page 90 --><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" />of all the existing Irish representative peers, the whole of
+the upper order will consist of elective members. The
+second order consists of 204 members, that is to say, of the
+103 existing Irish members (who are transferred to the Irish
+Parliament), and of 101 additional members to be elected
+by the county districts and the represented towns, in the
+same manner as that in which the present 101 members for
+counties and towns are elected&mdash;each constituency returning
+two instead of one member. If an existing member does
+not assent to his transfer, his seat is vacated.</p>
+
+<p>A power is given to the Legislature of Ireland to enable
+the Royal University of Ireland to return two members.</p>
+
+<p>The provisions with respect to this second order fall
+within the class of enactments which are alterable by the
+Irish Legislature. After the first dissolution of parliament
+the Irish Legislature may deal with the second order in any
+manner they think fit, with the important restrictions:&mdash;(1)
+That in the distribution of members they must have due
+regard to population; (2) that they must not increase or
+diminish the number of members.</p>
+
+<p>The transfer to the Irish legislative body of the Irish
+representative peers, and of the Irish members, involves
+their exclusion under ordinary circumstances from the Imperial
+Parliament, with this great exception, that whenever
+an alteration is proposed to be made in the fundamental
+provisions of the Irish Government Bill, a mode of procedure
+is devised for recalling both orders of the Irish
+legislative body to the Imperial Parliament for the purpose
+of obtaining their consent to such alteration (clause 39).</p>
+
+<p>Further, it is right to state here that Mr. Gladstone in
+his speech on the second reading of the Bill proposed to
+provide, &quot;that when any proposal for taxation was made
+affecting the condition of Ireland, Irish members should
+have an opportunity of appearing in the House to take a
+share in the transaction of that business.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 91 --><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" />Questions arising as to whether the Irish Parliament has
+or not exceeded its constitutional powers may be determined
+by the ordinary courts of law in the first instance; the
+ultimate appeal lies to the Judicial Committee of the Privy
+Council. An additional safeguard is provided by declaring
+that before a provision in a Bill becomes law, the Lord
+Lieutenant may take the opinion of the Judicial Committee
+of the Privy Council as to its legality, and further, that
+without subjecting private litigants to the expense of trying
+the constitutionality of an Act, the Lord Lieutenant may, of
+his own motion, move the judicial committee to determine
+the question. With a view to secure absolute impartiality
+in the committee, Ireland will be represented on that body
+by persons who are or have been Irish judges (clause 25).</p>
+
+<p>The question of finance forms a separate portion of the
+Bill, the provisions of which are contained in clauses twelve
+to twenty, while the machinery for carrying those enactments
+into effect will be found in Part III. of the Land Bill.
+The first point to be determined was the amount to be
+contributed by Ireland to imperial expenses. Under the
+Act of Union it was intended that Ireland should pay 2/17ths,
+or in the proportion of 1 to 7-1/2 of the total expenditure of
+the United Kingdom. This amount being found exorbitant,
+it was gradually reduced, until at the present moment it
+amounts to something under the proportion of 1 to 11-1/2.
+The bill fixes the proportion at 1/15th, or 1 to 14, this sum
+being arrived at by a comparison between the amount of
+the income-tax, death-duties, and valuation of property in
+Great Britain, and the amount of the same particulars in
+Ireland. The amount to be contributed by Ireland to the
+imperial expenditure being thus ascertained, the more difficult
+part of the problem remained to provide the fund out
+of which the contribution should be payable, and the mode
+in which its payment should be secured. The plan which
+commended itself to the framers of the Bill, as combining
+<!-- Page 92 --><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" />the advantage of insuring the fiscal unity of Great Britain
+and Ireland, with absolute security to the British exchequer,
+was to continue the customs and excise duties under imperial
+control, and to pay them into the hands of an imperial
+officer. This plan is carried into effect by the conjoint
+operation of the clauses of the Irish Government Bill and
+the Irish Land Bill above referred to. The customs and
+excise duties are directed to be levied as heretofore in
+pursuance of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament,
+and are excepted from the control of the Irish Legislature,
+which may, with that exception, impose any taxes in Ireland
+it may think expedient. The imperial officer who is appointed
+under the Land Bill bears the title of Receiver-General,
+and into his hands not only the imperial taxes (the
+customs and excise duties), but also all local taxes imposed
+by the Irish Parliament are in the first instance paid. (See
+Clauses 25-27 of the Land Bill.) The Receiver-General
+having thus in his hands all imperial and local funds levied
+in Ireland, his duty is to satisfy all imperial claims before
+paying over any moneys to the Irish Exchequer. Further,
+an Imperial Court of Exchequer is established in Ireland
+to watch over the interests of the Receiver-General, and all
+revenue cases are to be tried, and all defaults punished in
+that court. Any neglect of the local authorities to carry
+into effect the decrees of the Imperial Court will amount to
+treason, and it will be the duty of the Imperial Government
+to deal with it accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>Supposing the Bill to have passed, the account of the
+Exchequer in Ireland would have stood thus:&mdash;<!-- Page 93 --><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" /></p>
+
+
+
+<pre>
+                         RECEIPTS.
+
+1. <i>Imperial Taxes</i>:
+   (1) Customs . . . . . . . . . . £1,880,000
+   (2) Excise  . . . . . . . . . .  4,300,000
+                                    ---------  £6,180,000
+
+2. <i>Local Taxes</i>:
+   (1) Stamps . . . . . . . . . . .  £600,000
+   (2) Income-Tax at 6<i>d</i>. in £ . . .   550,000
+                                     --------- £1,150,000
+
+3. <i>Non-Tax Revenue</i>:
+   (Post Office, Telegraph, etc.) . . . . .    £1,020,000
+                                               ----------
+                                               £8,350,000
+
+                       EXPENDITURE.
+
+1. <i>Contribution to Imperial Exchequer</i> on basis of
+     1/15th of Imperial Expenditure, viz.:
+   (1) Debt Charge . . . . . . . .  £1,466,000
+   (2) Army and Navy . . . . . . .   1,666,000
+   (3) Civil Charges . . . . . . .     110,000
+                                     --------- £3,242,000
+2. <i>Sinking Fund</i> on 1/15th of
+      Capital of Debt . . . . . . . . . . . . .   360,000
+3. <i>Charge for Constabulary</i><a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14" /><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>  . . . . . . . .  1,000,000
+4. <i>Local Civil Charges</i>
+      other than Constabulary . . . . . . . . . 2,510,000
+5. <i>Collection of Revenue</i>:
+      (1) Imperial Taxes . . . . . .   £170,000
+      (2) Local Taxes  . . . . . . . .   60,000
+      (3) Non-Tax Revenue  . . . . . .  604,000
+                                        -------   834,000
+6. <i>Balance</i> or Surplus . . . . . . . . . . . . .   404,000
+                                                 --------
+                                               £8,350,000
+</pre>
+
+<!--
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 12.5em;">RECEIPTS.</span><br />
+<br />
+1. <i>Imperial Taxes</i>:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(1) Customs . . . . . . . . . . &pound;1,880,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(2) Excise&nbsp; . . . . . . . . . .&nbsp; 4,300,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 17em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;- &pound;6,180,000</span><br />
+<br />
+2. <i>Local Taxes</i>:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(1) Stamps . . . . . . . . . . .&nbsp; &pound;600,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(2) Income-Tax at 6<i>d</i>. in &pound; . .&nbsp;  550,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 17em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;- &pound;1,150,000</span><br />
+<br />
+3. <i>Non-Tax Revenue</i>:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(Post Office, Telegraph, etc.) . . . . . &pound;1,020,000&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &pound;8,350,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 22em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 22em;">&pound;8,350,000</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;">EXPENDITURE.</span><br />
+<br />
+1. <i>Contribution to Imperial Exchequer</i> on basis of<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">1/15th of Imperial Expenditure, viz.:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(1) Debt Charge . . . . . . . . . &pound;1,466,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(2) Army and Navy . . . . . . . .&nbsp; 1,666,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(3) Civil Charges . . . . . . . .&nbsp; &nbsp; 110,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 19em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;- &pound;3,242,000</span><br />
+2. <i>Sinking Fund</i> on 1/15th of<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Capital of Debt . . . . . . . . . . . . .&nbsp; &nbsp; 360,000</span><br />
+3. <i>Charge for Constabulary</i><a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14" /><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> . . . . .  1,000,000<br />
+4. <i>Local Civil Charges</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">other than Constabulary . . . . . . . . .&nbsp; 2,510,000</span><br />
+5. <i>Collection of Revenue</i>:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">(1) Imperial Taxes . . . . . .&nbsp;  &pound;170,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">(2) Local Taxes&nbsp; . . . . . . . .&nbsp;  60,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">(3) Non-Tax Revenue&nbsp; . . . . . .&nbsp; 604,000</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-&nbsp; &nbsp; 834,000</span><br />
+6. <i>Balance</i> or Surplus . . . . . . . . . . . 404,000<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 25em;">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 24em;">&pound;8,350,000</span><br />
+-->
+
+
+
+<p><!-- Page 94 --><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" />The Imperial contribution payable by Ireland to Great
+Britain cannot be increased for thirty years, though it may
+be diminished if the charges for the army and navy and
+Imperial civil expenditure for any year be less than fifteen
+times the contribution paid by Ireland, in which case 1/15th
+of the diminution will be deducted from the annual Imperial
+contribution. Apart from the Imperial charges there are
+other charges strictly Irish, for the security of the payment
+of which the Bill provides. This it does by imposing an
+obligation on the Irish legislative body to enact sufficient
+taxes to meet such charges, and by directing them to be
+paid by the Imperial Receiver-General, who is required to
+keep an imperial and an Irish account, carrying the customs
+and excise duties, in the first instance, to the imperial
+account, and the local taxes to the Irish account, transferring
+to the Irish account the surplus remaining after paying
+the imperial charges on the imperial account. On this Irish
+account are charged debts due from the Government of
+Ireland, pensions, and other sums due to the civil servants,
+and the salaries of the judges of the supreme courts in
+Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Some provisions of importance remain to be noticed.
+Judges of the superior and county courts in Ireland are to
+be removable from office only on address to the Crown,
+presented by both orders of the Legislative body voting
+separately. Existing Civil servants are retained in their
+offices at their existing salaries; if the Irish Government
+desire their retirement, they will be entitled to pensions; on
+the other hand, if at the end of two years the officers themselves
+wish to retire, they can do so, and will be entitled to
+the same pensions as if their office had been abolished.
+The pensions are payable by the Receiver-General out of
+the Irish account above mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament over all parts
+of the Empire is an inherent quality of which Parliament
+<!-- Page 95 --><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />cannot divest itself, inasmuch as it cannot bind its successors
+or prevent them from repealing any prior Act. In order,
+however, to prevent any misapprehension on this point clause
+37 was inserted, the efficacy of which, owing in great measure
+to a misprint, has been doubted. It is enough to state here
+that it was intended by express legislation to reserve all
+powers to the Imperial Parliament, and had the Bill gone
+into Committee the question would have been placed beyond
+the reach of cavil by a slight alteration in the wording of
+the clause. This summary may be concluded by the statement
+that the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords
+over actions and suits arising in Ireland (except in respect
+of constitutional questions reserved for the determination of
+the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as explained
+above), and with respect to claims for Irish Peerages, is
+preserved intact.</p>
+
+<p>The object of the Land Bill was a political one: to
+promote the contentment of the people, and the cause
+of good government in Ireland, by settling once and for
+ever the vexed question relating to land. To do this
+effectually it was necessary to devise a system under which
+the tenants, as a class, should become interested in the
+maintenance of social order, and be furnished with substantial
+inducements to rally round the institutions of their
+country. On the other hand, it was just and right that
+the landlords should participate in the benefits of any
+measure proposed for remedying the evils attendant upon
+the tenure of land in Ireland; and should be enabled to rid
+themselves, on fair terms, of their estates in cases where,
+from apprehension of impending changes, or for pecuniary
+reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the
+responsibilities of ownership. Further, it was felt by the
+framers of the Bill that a moral obligation rested on the
+Imperial Government to remove, if possible, &quot;the fearful
+exasperations attending the agrarian relations in Ireland,&quot;<!-- Page 96 --><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" />
+rather than leave a question so fraught with danger, and so
+involved in difficulty, to be determined by the Irish Government
+on its first entry on official existence. Such were the
+governing motives for bringing in the Land Bill.</p>
+
+<p>To understand an Irish Land Bill it is necessary to
+dismiss at once all ideas of the ordinary relations between
+landlord and tenant in England, and to grasp a true conception
+of the condition of an Irish tenanted estate. In
+England the relation between the landlord and tenant of
+a farm resembles, with a difference in the subject-matter, the
+relation between the landlord and tenant of a furnished
+house. In the case of the house, the landlord keeps it in
+a state fit for habitation, and the tenant pays rent for the
+privilege of living in another man's house. In the case of
+the farm, the landlord provides the farm with house, farm-buildings,
+gates, and other permanent improvements required
+to fit it for cultivation by the tenant, and the tenant pays
+rent for the privilege of cultivating the farm, receiving the
+proceeds of that cultivation. The characters of owner
+and tenant, however long the connection between them may
+subsist, are quite distinct. The tenant does no acts of
+ownership, and never regards the land as belonging to
+himself, quitting it without hesitation if he can make more
+money by taking another farm. In Ireland the whole
+situation is different: instead of a farm of some one hundred
+or two hundred acres, the tenant has a holding varying, say,
+from five to fifty acres, for which he pays an annual rent-charge
+to the landlord. He, or his ancestors have, in the
+opinion of the tenant, acquired a quasi-ownership in the
+land by making all the improvements, and he is only
+removable on non-payment of the fixed rent, or non-fulfilment
+of certain specified conditions. In short, in
+Ireland the ownership is dual: the landlord is merely the
+lord of a quasi-copyhold manor, consisting of numerous
+small tenements held by quasi-copyholders who, so long as
+<!-- Page 97 --><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" />they pay what may be called the manorial rents, and fulfil
+the manorial conditions, regard themselves as independent
+owners of their holdings. An Irish Land Bill, then, dealing
+with tenanted estates, is, in fact, merely a Bill for converting
+the small holders of tenements held at a fixed rent
+into fee-simple owners by redemption of the rent due to the
+landlord and a transfer of the land to the holders. Every
+scheme, therefore, for settling the Land question in Ireland
+resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of paying
+off the rent-charges due to the landlord. The tenant
+cannot, of course, raise the capital sufficient for paying off
+the redemption money; some State authority must, therefore,
+intervene and advance the whole or the greater part of
+that money, and recoup itself for the advance by the creation
+in its own favour of an annual charge on the holding
+sufficient to repay in a certain number of years both the
+principal and interest due in respect of the advance.</p>
+
+<p>The first problem, then, in an Irish Land Bill, is to settle
+the conditions of this annuity in such a manner as to satisfy
+the landlord and tenant; the first, as to the price of his
+estate; the second, as to the amount of the annuity to be
+paid by him, at the same time to provide the State authority
+with adequate security for the repayment of the advance, or,
+in other words, for the punctual payments of the annuity
+which is to discharge the advance. Next in importance to
+the financial question of the adjustment of the annuity
+comes the administrative difficulty of investigating the title,
+and thus securing to the tenant the possession of the fee
+simple, and to the State authority the position of a mortgagee.
+Under ordinary circumstances the investigation of
+the title to an estate involves the examination of every
+document relating thereto for a period of forty years, and
+the distribution of the purchase-money amongst the head
+renters, mortgagees, and other encumbrancers, who, in
+addition to the landlord, are found to be interested in the
+<!-- Page 98 --><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" />ownership of almost every Irish estate. Such a process is
+costly, even in the case of large estates, and involves an
+expense almost, and, indeed, speaking generally, absolutely
+prohibitory in the case of small properties. Some mode,
+then, must be devised for reducing this expense within
+manageable limits, or any scheme for dealing with Irish
+land, however well devised from a financial point of view,
+will sink under the burden imposed by the expense attending
+the transfer of the land to the new proprietors. Having
+thus stated the two principal difficulties attending the Land
+question in Ireland, it may be well before entering on the
+details of the Sale and Purchase of Land (Ireland) Bill, to
+mention the efforts which have been made during the last
+fifteen years to surmount those difficulties. The Acts having
+this object in view are the Land Acts of 1870, 1872, and
+1881, brought in by Mr. Gladstone, and the Land Purchase
+Act of 1885, brought in by the Conservative Lord Chancellor
+of Ireland (Lord Ashbourne). The Act of 1870, as amended
+by the Act of 1872, provided that the State authority might
+advance two-thirds of the purchase-money. An attempt was
+made to get over the difficulties of title by providing that
+the Landed Estates Court or Board of Works shall undertake
+the investigation of the title and the transfer and distribution
+of the purchase-money at a fixed price. The Act of 1881
+increased the advance to three-quarters, leaving the same
+machinery to deal with the title. Both under the Acts of
+1870 and 1881 the advance was secured by an annuity of
+5 per cent., payable for the period of thirty-five years, and
+based on the loan of the money by the English Exchequer
+at 3-1/2 per cent. interest. These Acts produced very little
+effect. The expense of dealing with the titles in the Landed
+Estates Court proved overwhelming, and neither the Board
+of Works, under the Act of 1872, nor the Land Commission,
+under the Act of 1881, found themselves equal to the task
+of completing inexpensively the transfer of the land;
+<!-- Page 99 --><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />further, the tenants had no means of providing even the
+quarter of the purchase-money required by the Act of 1881.
+In 1885 Lord Ashbourne determined to remove all obstacles
+at the expense of the English Exchequer. By the Land
+Act of that year he authorized the whole of the purchase-money
+to be advanced by the State, with a guarantee by
+the landlord, to be carried into effect by his allowing
+one-fifth of the purchase-money to remain in the hands of
+the agents of the State Authority until one-fifth of the
+purchase-money had been repaid by the annual payments
+of the tenants. The principal was to be recouped by an
+annuity of 4 per cent., extending over a period of forty-nine
+years, instead of an annuity of 5 per cent. extending over a
+period of thirty-five years. The English Exchequer was to
+advance the money on the basis of interest at 3-1/8 per cent.,
+instead of at 3-1/2 per cent. Though sufficient time has not
+yet elapsed to show whether the great bribe offered by the
+Act of 1885, at the expense of the British taxpayer, will
+succeed in overcoming the apathy of the tenants, it cannot
+escape notice that if the Act of 1885 succeeds better than
+the previous Acts, it will owe that success solely to the
+greater amount of risk which it imposes on the English
+Exchequer, and not to any improvement in the scheme in
+respect of securing greater certainty of sale to the Irish
+landlord, or of diminishing the danger of loss to the English
+taxpayer.</p>
+
+<p>Such being the state of legislation, and such the circumstances
+of the land question in Ireland in the year 1886,
+the Irish Government Bill afforded Mr. Gladstone the
+means and the opportunity of bringing in a Land Bill
+which would secure to the Irish landlord the certainty of
+selling his land at a fair price, without imposing any
+practical liability on the English Exchequer, and would, at
+the same time, diminish the annual sums payable by the
+tenant; while it also conferred a benefit on the Irish<!-- Page 100 --><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" />
+Exchequer. These advantages were, as will be seen, gained,
+firstly, by the pledge of English credit on good security,
+instead of advancing money on a mere mortgage on Irish
+holdings, made directly to the English Government; and,
+secondly, by the interposition of the Irish Government, as
+the immediate creditor of the Irish tenant. The scheme of
+the Land Purchase Bill is as follows:&mdash;The landlord of an
+agricultural estate occupied by tenants may apply to a
+department of the new Irish Government to purchase his
+estate. The tenants need not be consulted, as the purchase,
+if completed, will necessarily better their condition, and
+thus at the very outset the difficulty of procuring the assent
+of the tenants, which has hitherto proved so formidable an
+obstacle to all Irish land schemes, disappears. The landlord
+may require the department to which he applies (called in
+the Bill the State Authority) to pay him the statutory price
+of his estate, not in cash, but in consols valued at par.
+This price, except in certain unusual cases of great goodness
+or of great badness of the land, is twenty years' purchase
+of the <i>net</i> rental. The <i>net</i> rental is the <i>gross</i> rental after
+deducting from that rent tithe rent-charge, the average
+percentage for expenses in respect of bad debts, any rates
+paid by the landlord, and any like outgoings. The <i>gross</i>
+rental of an estate is the gross rent of all the holdings on
+the estate, payable in the year ending in November, 1885.
+Where a judicial rent has been fixed, it is the judicial rent;
+where no judicial rent has been fixed, it is the rent to be
+determined in the manner provided by the Bill.</p>
+
+<p>To state this shortly, the Bill provides that an Irish
+landlord may require the State Authority to pay him for
+his estate, in consols valued at par, a capital sum equal to
+twenty times the amount of the annual sum which he has
+actually put into his pocket out of the proceeds of the
+estate. The determination of the statutory price is, so far
+as the landlord is concerned, the cardinal point of the Bill,
+<!-- Page 101 --><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" />and in order that no injustice may be done the landlord,
+an Imperial Commission&mdash;called the Land Commission&mdash;is
+appointed by the Bill, whose duty it is to fix the statutory
+price, and, where there is no judicial rent, to determine the
+amount of rent which, in the character of gross rental, is to
+form the basis of the statutory price. The Commission also
+pay the purchase-money to the landlord, or distribute it
+amongst the parties entitled, and generally the Commission
+act as intermediaries between the landlord and the Irish
+State Authority, which has no power of varying the terms
+to which the landlord is entitled under the Bill, or of
+judging of the conditions which affect the statutory price.
+If the landlord thinks the price fixed by the Land Commission,
+as the statutory price inequitable, he may reject
+their offer and keep his estate.</p>
+
+<p>Supposing, however, the landlord to be satisfied with
+the statutory price offered by the Land Commission, the
+sale is concluded, and the Land Commission make an
+order carrying the required sum of consols (which is for
+convenience hereinafter called the purchase-money,
+although it consists of stock and not of cash) to the
+account of the estate in their books after deducting 1 per
+cent. for the cost of investigation of title and distribution
+of the purchase-money, and upon the purchase-money being
+thus credited to the estate, the landlord ceases to have any
+interest in the estate, and the tenants, by virtue of the order
+of the Land Commission, become owners in fee simple of
+their holdings, subject to the payment to the Irish State
+Authority of an annuity. The amount of the annuity is
+stated in the Bill. It is a sum equal to &pound;4 per cent.
+on a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount of the
+gross rental of the holding. The illustration given by
+Mr. Gladstone in his speech will at once explain these apparently
+intricate matters of finance. A landlord is entitled
+to the Hendon estate, producing &pound;1200 a year gross
+<!-- Page 102 --><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />rental; to find the net rental, the Land Commission deduct
+from this gross rental outgoings estimated at about 20 per
+cent., or &pound;240 a year. This makes the net rental &pound;960
+a year, and the price payable to the landlord is &pound;19,200
+(twenty years' purchase of &pound;960, or &pound;960 multiplied by
+20), which, as above stated, will be paid in consols. The
+tenants will pay, as the maximum amount for their holdings,
+&pound;4 per cent. for forty-nine years on the capitalized value of
+twenty years' purchase of the gross rent. This will amount
+to &pound;960 instead of &pound;1,200, which they have hitherto paid;
+a saving of &pound;240 a year will thus be effected, from which,
+however, must be deducted the half rates to which they will
+become liable, formerly paid by the landlord. This &pound;4 per
+cent. charge payable by the tenants will continue for forty-nine
+years, but at the end of that time each tenant will
+become a free owner of his estate without any annual payment.
+Next, as to the position of the State Authority.
+The State Authority receives &pound;960 from the tenants; it
+pays out of that sum &pound;4 per cent., not upon the gross
+rental, but upon the net rental capitalized, that is to say,
+&pound;768 to the Imperial Exchequer. The State Authority,
+therefore, receives,&pound;960, and assuming that the charge of
+collecting the rental is 2 per cent., that is to say, &pound;19 4<i>s.</i>,
+the State Authority will, out of &pound;960, have to disburse
+only &pound;787 4<i>s.</i>, leaving it a gainer of &pound;172 16<i>s.</i>, or nearly
+18 per cent. The result then between the several parties
+is, the landlord receives &pound;19,200; the tenantry pay &pound;240
+a year less than they have hitherto paid, and at the end of
+forty-nine years are exempt altogether from payment; the
+gain of Irish State Authority is &pound;172 16<i>s.</i> a year. Another
+mode of putting the case shortly is as follows: The English
+Exchequer lends the money to the Irish State Authority at
+3-1/8 per cent. and an annuity of 4 per cent. paid during
+forty-nine years will, as has been stated above, repay both
+principal and interest for every &pound;100 lent at 3-1/8 per cent.<!-- Page 103 --><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" />
+On the sale of an estate under the Bill, the landlord receives
+twenty years' purchase; the tenant pays &pound;4 per cent. on
+twenty years' purchase of the gross rental; the Irish State
+Authority receives &pound;4 per cent. on the gross rental; the
+English Exchequer receives 4 per cent. on the net rental
+only. The repayment of the interest due by the Irish
+Authority to the English Exchequer is in no wise dependent
+on the punctual payment of their annuities by the Irish
+tenants, nor does the English Government in any way
+figure as the landlord or creditor of the Irish tenants. The
+annuities payable by the tenants are due to the Irish
+Government, and collected by them, while the interest due
+to the English Government is a charge on the whole of the
+Irish Government funds; and further, these funds themselves
+are paid into the hands of the Imperial officer,
+whose duty it is to liquidate the debt due to his master, the
+Imperial Exchequer, before a sixpence can be touched by
+the Irish Government. It is not, then, any exaggeration to
+say that the Land Purchase Bill of 1886 provides for the
+settlement of the Irish Land question without any appreciable
+risk to the English Exchequer, and with the advantage
+of securing a fair price for the landlord, a diminution of
+annual payments to the tenant with the ultimate acquisition
+of the fee simple, also a gain of no inconsiderable sum to
+the Irish Exchequer. In order to obviate the difficulties
+attending the investigation of title and transfer of the property,
+the Bill provides, as stated above, that on the completion
+of the agreement for the sale between the landlord
+and the Commission, the holding shall vest at once in the
+tenants: it then proceeds to declare that the claims of all
+persons interested in the land shall attach to the purchase-money
+in the same manner as though it were land. The
+duty of ascertaining these claims and distributing the
+purchase-money is vested in the Land Commission, who
+undertake the task in exchange for the 1 per cent. which
+<!-- Page 104 --><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" />they have, as above stated, deducted from the purchase-money
+as the cost of conducting the complete transfer of
+the estate from the landlord to the tenants. The difficulty
+of the process of dealing with the purchase-money depends,
+of course, on the intricacy of the title. If the vendor is the
+sole unencumbered owner, he is put in immediate possession
+of the stock constituting the price of the estate. If
+there are encumbrances, as is usually the case, they are
+paid off by the Land Commission. Capital sums are paid
+in full; jointures and other life charges are valued according
+to the usual tables. Drainage and other temporary charges
+are estimated at their present value, permanent rent-charges
+are valued by agreement, or in case of disagreement, by the
+Land Commission; a certain minimum number of years'
+purchase being assigned by the Bill to any permanent rent-charge
+which amounts only to one-fifth part of the rental of
+the estate on which it is charged, this provision being made
+to prevent injustice being done to the holders of rent-charges
+which are amply secured.</p>
+
+<p>It remains to notice certain other points of some importance.
+The landlord entitled to require the State to
+purchase his property is the immediate landlord, that is to
+say, the person entitled to the receipt of the rent of the
+estate; no encumbrancer can avail himself of the privilege,
+the reason being that the Bill is intended to assist solvent
+landlords, and not to create a new Encumbered Estates
+Court. The landlord may sell this privilege, and possibly
+by means of this power of sale may be able to put pressure
+on his encumbrancers to reduce their claims in order to
+obtain immediate payment. The Land Commission, in
+their character of quasi-arbitrators between the landlord and
+the Irish State Authority, have ample powers given to enable
+them to do justice. If the statutory price, as settled according
+to the Act, is too low, they may raise it to twenty-two
+years' purchase instead of twenty years' purchase. If it is
+<!-- Page 105 --><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" />too high, they may refuse to buy unless the landlord will
+reduce it to a proper price. In the congested districts
+scheduled in the Bill the land, on a sale, passes to the Irish
+State Authority, as landlords, and not to the tenants; the
+reason being that it is considered that the tenants would be
+worsened, rather than bettered, by having their small plots
+vested in them in fee simple. For the same cause it is provided
+that in any part of Ireland tenants of holdings under
+&pound;4 a year may object to become the owners of their
+holdings, which will thereupon vest, on a sale, in the Irish
+State Authority. Lastly, the opportunity is taken of
+establishing a registry of title in respect of all property
+dealt with under the Bill. The result of such a registry
+would be that any property entered therein would ever
+thereafter be capable of being transferred with the same
+facility, and at as little expense, as stock in the public
+funds.<!-- Page 106 --><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14" /><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Any charge in excess of one million was to be borne by Imperial
+Exchequer.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_UNIONISTquot_POSITION" id="THE_UNIONISTquot_POSITION" />THE &quot;UNIONIST&quot; POSITION.</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY CANON MACCOLL</p>
+
+
+<p>Is it not time that the opponents of Home Rule for Ireland
+should define their position? They defeated Mr. Gladstone's
+scheme last year in Parliament and in the constituencies;
+and they defeated it by the promise of a
+counter policy which was to consist, in brief, of placing
+Ireland on the same footing as Great Britain in respect to
+Local Government; or, if there was to be any difference, it
+was to be in the direction of a larger and more generous
+measure for Ireland than for the rest of the United Kingdom.
+This certainly was the policy propounded by the
+distinguished leader of the Liberal Unionists in his speech
+at Belfast, in November, 1885, and repeated in his electoral
+speeches last year. In the Belfast speech Lord Hartington
+said: &quot;My opinion is that it is desirable for Irishmen that
+institutions of local self-government such as are possessed
+by England and Scotland, and such as we hope to give in
+the next session in greater extent to England and Scotland,
+should also be extended to Ireland.&quot; But this extension of
+local self-government to Ireland would require, in Lord
+Hartington's opinion, a fundamental change in the fabric of
+Irish Government. &quot;I would not shrink,&quot; he says, &quot;from
+a great and bold reconstruction of the Irish Government,&quot;
+a reconstruction leading up gradually to some real and
+<!-- Page 107 --><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" />substantial form of Home Rule. His Lordship's words
+are: &quot;I submit with some confidence to you these principles,
+which I have endeavoured to lay down, and upon
+which, I think, the extension of Local Government in
+Ireland must proceed. First, you must have some adequate
+guarantees both for the maintenance of the essential unity
+of the Empire and for the protection of the minority in
+Ireland. And, secondly, you must also admit this principle:
+the work of complete self-government of Ireland, the
+grant of full control over the management of its own affairs,
+is not a grant that can be made by any Parliament of this
+country in a day. It must be the work of continuous and
+careful effort.&quot; Elsewhere in the same speech Lord Hartington
+says: &quot;Certainly I am of opinion that nothing can
+be done in the direction of giving Ireland anything like
+complete control over her own affairs either in a day, or a
+session, or probably in a Parliament.&quot; &quot;Complete control
+over her own affairs,&quot; &quot;the work of complete self-government
+of Ireland, the grant of full control over the management
+of its own affairs:&quot; this is the policy which Lord
+Hartington proclaimed in Ulster, the promise which he, the
+proximate Liberal leader, held out to Ireland on the eve of
+the General Election of 1885. It was a policy to be begun
+&quot;in the next session,&quot; though not likely to be completed
+&quot;in a day, or a session, or probably in a Parliament.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Next to Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington the most
+important member of the Liberal party at that time was
+undoubtedly Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Chamberlain's
+Irish policy was proclaimed in the <i>Radical Programme,
+</i> which was published before the General Election as the
+Radical leader's manifesto to the constituencies. This
+scheme, which Mr. Chamberlain had submitted as a
+responsible minister to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone in
+June, 1885, culminated in a National Council which was to
+control a series of local bodies and govern the whole of<!-- Page 108 --><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" />
+Ireland. &quot;His National Council was to consist of two
+orders; one-third of its members were to be elected by the
+owners of property, and two-thirds by ratepayers. The
+National Council also was to be a single one, and Ulster
+was not to have a separate Council. As the Council was
+to be charged with the supervision and legislation about
+education, which is the burning question between Catholics
+and Protestants, it is clear that Mr. Chamberlain at that
+time contemplated no special protection for Ulster.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15" /><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> Moreover,
+in a letter dated April 23rd, 1886, and published in
+the <i>Daily News</i> of May 17th, 1886, Mr. Chamberlain
+declared that he &quot;had not changed his opinion in the least&quot;
+since his first public declaration on Irish policy in 1874.
+&quot;I then said that I was in favour of the principles of Home
+Rule, as defined by Mr. Butt, but that I would do nothing
+which would weaken in any way Imperial unity, and that I
+did not agree with all the details of his plan.... Mr. Butt's
+proposals were in the nature of a federal scheme, and differ
+entirely from Mr. Gladstone's, which are on the lines of
+Colonial independence. Mr. Butt did not propose to give
+up Irish representation at Westminster.&quot; It is true that Mr.
+Butt did not propose to give up Irish representation at
+Westminster; but it is also true that he proposed to give
+it up in the sense in which Mr. Chamberlain wishes to
+retain it. Mr. Butt's words, in the debate to which Mr.
+Chamberlain refers, are, &quot;that the House should meet <i>without
+Irish members</i> for the discussion of English and Scotch
+business; and when there was any question affecting the
+Empire at large, Irish members might be summoned to
+attend. He saw no difficulty in the matter.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16" /><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>There is no need to quote Mr. Gladstone's declarations
+<!-- Page 109 --><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" />on the Irish question at the General Election of 1885, and
+previously. He has been accused of springing a surprise
+on the country when he proposed Home Rule in the
+beginning of 1886. That is not, at all events, the opinion
+of Lord Hartington. In a speech delivered at the Eighty
+Club in March, 1886, his Lordship, with his usual manly
+candour, declared as follows: &quot;I am not going to say one
+word of complaint or charge against Mr. Gladstone for the
+attitude which he has taken on this question. I think no
+one who has read or heard, during a long series of years, the
+declarations of Mr. Gladstone on the question of self-government
+for Ireland, can be surprised at the tone of his
+present declarations.... When I look back to those
+declarations that Mr. Gladstone made in Parliament,
+which have not been unfrequent; when I look back to the
+increased definiteness given to those declarations in his
+address to the electors of Midlothian, and in his Midlothian
+speeches; I say, when I consider all these things,
+I feel that I have not, and that no one has, any right to complain
+of the tone of the declarations which Mr. Gladstone
+has recently made upon this subject.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So much as to the state of Liberal opinion on the Irish
+question at the General Election of 1885. The leaders of
+all sections of the party put the Irish question in the foreground
+of their programme for the session of 1886. We all
+remember Sir Charles Dilke's public announcement that
+he and Mr. Chamberlain were going to visit Ireland in the
+autumn of 1885, to study the Irish question on the spot,
+with a view to maturing a plan for the first session of the
+new Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>What about the Conservative party? Lord Salisbury's
+Newport speech was avowedly the programme of his Cabinet.
+It was the Conservative answer to Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian
+manifesto. He dealt with the Irish question in
+guarded language; but it was language which plainly showed
+<!-- Page 110 --><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" />that he recognized, not less clearly than the Liberal leaders,
+the crucial change which the assimilation of the Irish
+franchise to that of Great Britain had wrought in Irish
+policy. His keen eye saw at once the important bearing
+which that enfranchisement had on the traditional policy of
+coercion: &quot;You had passed an Act of Parliament, giving
+in unexampled abundance, and with unexampled freedom,
+supreme power to the great mass of the Irish people&mdash;supreme
+power as regards their own locality.... To my
+mind the renewal of exceptional legislation against a population
+whom you had treated legislatively to this marked
+confidence was so gross in its inconsistency that you could
+not possibly hope, during the few remaining months that
+were at your disposal before the present Parliament expired,
+to renew any legislation which expressed on one side a
+distrust of what on the other side your former legislation
+had so strongly emphasized. The only result of your doing
+it would have been, not that you would have passed the
+Act, but that you would have promoted by the very
+inconsistency of the position that you were occupying&mdash;by
+the untenable character of the arguments that you were
+advancing&mdash;you would have produced so intense an exasperation
+amongst the Irish people, that you would
+have caused ten times more evil, ten times more resistance
+to law than your Crimes Act, even if it had
+been renewed, would possibly have been able to check.&quot;
+Lord Salisbury went on to say that &quot;the effect of the
+Crimes Act had been very much exaggerated,&quot; and that
+&quot;boycotting is of that character which legislation has very
+great difficulty in reaching.&quot; &quot;Boycotting does not operate
+through outrage. Boycotting is the act of a large majority
+of a community resolving to do a number of things which
+are themselves legal, and which are only illegal by the intention
+with which they are done.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Next to Lord Salisbury the most prominent member of
+<!-- Page 111 --><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" />the Conservative party at that date was Lord Randolph
+Churchill. On the 3rd of January, 1885, when it was
+rumoured that Mr. Gladstone's Government, then in office,
+intended to renew a few of the clauses of the Crimes Act,
+Lord Randolph Churchill made a speech at Bow against
+any such policy. The following quotation will suffice as a
+specimen of his opinion: &quot;It comes to this, that the policy
+of the Government in Ireland is to declare on the one hand,
+by the passing of the Reform Bill, that the Irish people are
+perfectly capable of exercising for the advantage of the
+Empire the highest rights and privileges of citizenship; and
+by the proposal to renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously
+declare, on the other hand, that the Irish people
+are perfectly incapable of performing for the advantage of
+society the lowest and most ordinary duties of citizenship.... All
+I can say is that, if such an incoherent, such a
+ridiculous, such a dangerously ridiculous combination of
+acts can be called a policy, then, thank God, the Conservative
+party have no policy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Within a few months of the delivery of that speech a
+Conservative Government was in office, with Lord Randolph
+Churchill as its leader in the House of Commons; and one
+of the first acts of the new leader was to separate himself
+ostentatiously from the Irish policy of Lord Spencer and
+from the policy of coercion in general. Lord Randolph
+Churchill, as the organ of the Government in the House of
+Commons, repudiated in scornful language any atom of
+sympathy with the policy pursued by Lord Spencer in
+Ireland; and Lord Carnarvon, the new Viceroy, declared
+that &quot;the era of coercion&quot; was past, and that the Conservative
+Government intended to govern Ireland by the ordinary
+law. Lord Carnarvon, in addition, and very much to his
+credit, sought and obtained an interview with Mr. Parnell,
+and discussed with him, in sympathetic language, the
+question of Home Rule. In his own explanation of this
+<!-- Page 112 --><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" />interview Lord Carnarvon admitted that he desired to see
+established in Ireland some form of self-government which
+would satisfy &quot;the national sentiment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is idle, therefore, to assert that the question of Home
+Rule for Ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the
+country as a surprise by Mr. Gladstone in the beginning of
+1886. The question was brought prominently before the
+public in the General Election of 1885 as one that must be
+faced in the new Parliament. All parties were committed
+to that policy, and the only difference was as to the character
+and limits of the measure of self-government to be granted
+to Ireland; whether it was to be large enough to satisfy
+&quot;the national sentiment,&quot; as Lord Carnarvon, Mr. Chamberlain,
+Mr. Gladstone, and others desired; or whether it was to
+consist only of a system of county boards under the control of
+a reformed Dublin Castle. There was a general agreement
+that the grant to Ireland of electoral equality with England
+necessitated equality of political treatment, and that, above
+all things, there was to be no renewal of the stale policy of
+Coercion until the Irish people had got an opportunity of
+proving or disproving their fitness for self-government,
+unless, indeed, there should happen to be a recrudescence
+of crime which would render exceptional legislation necessary.
+The election of 1886 turned almost entirely on the
+question of Irish government, and it is not too much to say
+that Conservatives and Liberal Unionists vied with Home
+Rulers in repudiating a return to the policy of coercion until
+the effect of some kind of self-government had been tried.
+Of course, there were the usual platitudes about the necessity
+of maintaining law and order; but there was a <i>consensus</i> of
+profession that coercion should not be resorted to unless
+there was a fresh outbreak of crime and disorder in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the professions of the opponents of Home
+Rule in 1885 and in 1886. They have now been in office
+for eighteen months, and what do we behold? They have
+<!-- Page 113 --><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" />passed a perpetual Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the question
+of any kind of self-government has been relegated to an
+uncertain future. In his recent speech at Birmingham
+(Sept. 29), Mr. Chamberlain has declared that the question
+is not ripe for solution, and that the question of disestablishment,
+in Wales, Scotland, and England successively, as
+well as the questions of Local Option, local government for
+Great Britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take
+precedence of it. That means the postponement of the
+reform of Irish Government to the Greek Kalends. What
+justification can be made for this change of front? No
+valid justification has been offered. So far from there
+having been any increase of crime in the interval, there
+has been a very marked decrease. When the Coercion
+Bill received the royal assent last August, Ireland was more
+free from crime than it had been for many years past.
+Nothing had happened to account for the return to the
+policy of coercion in violation of the promise to try the
+experiment of conciliation. The National League was
+in full vigour in 1885-1886, when the policy of coercion
+was abandoned; boycotting was just as prevalent, and
+outrages were much more numerous.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances it is the opponents of Home
+Rule, not its advocates, who owe an explanation to the
+public. They defeated Mr. Gladstone's Bill, but promised
+a Bill of their own. Where is their Bill? We hear nothing
+of it. They have made a complete change of front. They
+now tell us that the grievance of Ireland is entirely economic,
+and that the true solution of the Irish question is the abolition
+of dual ownership in land combined with a firm administration
+of the existing law. England and Scotland are to have
+a large measure of local government next year; but Ireland
+is to wait till a more convenient season. A more complete
+reversal of the policy proclaimed last summer by the so-called
+Unionists cannot be imagined.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 114 --><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" />Still, however, the &quot;Unionists&quot; hope to be able some
+day to offer some form of self-government to Ireland. For
+party purposes they are wise in postponing that day to the
+latest possible period, for its advent will probably dissolve
+the union of the &quot;Unionists.&quot; Lord Salisbury, Lord
+Hartington, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Chamberlain cannot
+agree upon any scheme which all can accept without a
+public recantation of previous professions. Mr. Bright is
+opposed to Home Rule &quot;in any shape or form.&quot; Mr.
+Chamberlain, on the other hand, is in favour of a great
+National Council, on Mr. Butt's lines or on the lines
+of the Canadian plan; either of which would give the
+National Council control over education and the maintenance
+of law and order. Latterly, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain
+has advocated a separate treatment for Ulster. But
+the first act of an Ulster Provincial Assembly would probably
+be to declare the union of that Province with the rest
+of Ireland. Ulster, be it remembered, returns a majority
+of Nationalists to the Imperial Parliament. To exclude
+Ulster from any share in the settlement offered to the other
+three Provinces would therefore be impracticable; and
+Mr. Bright has lately expressed his opinion emphatically in
+that sense. In any case, Lord Hartington could be no party
+to any scheme so advanced as Mr. Chamberlain's. For
+although he declared, in his Belfast speech, that &quot;complete
+self-government&quot; was the goal of his policy for Ireland, he
+was careful to explain that &quot;the extension of Irish management
+over Irish affairs must be a growth from small beginnings.&quot;
+But this &quot;growth from small beginnings&quot; would
+be, in Lord Salisbury's opinion, a very dangerous and mischievous
+policy. The establishment of self-government
+in Ireland, as distinct from what is commonly known
+as Home Rule, he pronounced in his Newport speech to
+be &quot;a very difficult question;&quot; and in the following passage
+he placed his finger upon the kernel of the difficulty:&mdash;<!-- Page 115 --><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" />
+&quot;A local authority is more exposed to the temptation,
+and has more of the facility for enabling a majority to be
+unjust to the minority, than is the case when the authority
+derives its sanction and extends its jurisdiction over a wide
+area. That is one of the weaknesses of local authorities.
+In a large central authority the wisdom of several parts of
+the country will correct the folly or the mistakes of one. In
+a local authority that correction to a much greater extent
+is wanting; and it would be impossible to leave that out
+of sight in the extension of any such local authority to
+Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This seems to me a much wiser and more statesmanlike
+view than a system of elective boards scattered broadcast
+over Ireland. A multitude of local boards all over Ireland,
+without a recognized central authority to control them,
+would inevitably become facile instruments in the hands
+of the emissaries of disorder and sedition. And, even apart
+from any such sinister influences, they would be almost
+certain to yield to the temptation of being oppressive,
+extravagant, and corrupt, if there were no executive power
+to command their confidence and enforce obedience.
+Without the previous creation of some authority of that
+kind it would be sheer madness to offer Ireland the fatal
+boon of local self-government. It would enormously
+increase without conciliating the power of the Nationalists,
+and would make the administration of Ireland by constitutional
+means simply impossible. The policy of the Liberal
+Unionists is thus much too large or much too small. It is
+too small to conciliate, and therefore too large to be given
+with safety. All these proposed concessions are liable to
+one insuperable objection; they would each and all enable
+the Irish to extort Home Rule, but under circumstances
+which would rob it of its grace and repel gratitude. Mill
+has some admirable observations bearing on this subject,
+and I venture to quote the following passage: &quot;The
+<!-- Page 116 --><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />greatest imperfection of popular local institutions, and
+the chief cause of the failure which so often attends them,
+is the low calibre of the men by whom they are almost
+always carried on. That these should be of a very miscellaneous
+character is, indeed, part of the usefulness of the
+institution; it is that circumstance chiefly which renders
+it a school of political capacity and general intelligence.
+But a school supposes teachers as well as scholars; the
+utility of the instruction greatly depends on its bringing
+inferior minds into contact with superior, a contact which
+in the ordinary course of life is altogether exceptional, and
+the want of which contributes more than anything else to
+keep the generality of mankind on one level of contented
+ignorance.... It is quite hopeless to induce persons of a
+high class, either socially or intellectually, to take a share of
+local administration in a corner by piecemeal as members
+of a Paving Board or a Drainage Commission.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17" /><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mill goes on to argue that it is essential to the safe
+working of any scheme of local self-government that it
+should be under the control of a central authority in
+harmony with public opinion.</p>
+
+<p>When the &quot;Unionists&quot; begin, if they ever do begin,
+seriously to deliberate on the question of self-government
+for Ireland, they will find that they have only two practicable
+alternatives&mdash;the maintenance of the present system, or
+some scheme of Home Rule on the lines of Mr. Gladstone's
+much misunderstood Bill. And the ablest men among the
+&quot;Unionists&quot; are beginning to perceive this. The <i>Spectator</i>
+has in a recent article implored Mr. Chamberlain to desist
+from any further proposal in favour of self-government for
+Ireland, because the inevitable result would be to split up
+the Unionist party; and Mr. Chamberlain, as we have seen,
+has accepted the advice. Another very able and very
+logical opponent of Home Rule has candidly avowed that
+<!-- Page 117 --><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" />the only alternative to Home Rule is the perpetuation of
+&quot;things as they are.&quot; Ireland, he thinks, &quot;possesses none
+of the conditions necessary for local self-government.&quot;
+His own view, therefore, is &quot;that in Ireland, as in France,
+an honest, centralized administration of impartial officials,
+and not local self-government, would best meet the real
+wants of the people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The name of 'Self-government' has a natural fascination
+for Englishmen; but a policy which cannot satisfy the
+wishes of Home Rulers, which may&mdash;it is likely enough&mdash;be
+of no benefit to the Irish people, which will certainly
+weaken the Government in its contest with lawlessness and
+oppression, is not a policy which obviously commends itself
+to English good sense.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18" /><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>Well may this distinguished &quot;Supporter of things as they
+are&quot; declare: &quot;The maintenance of the Union [on such
+terms] must necessarily turn out as severe a task as ever
+taxed a nation's energies; for to maintain the Union with
+any good effect, means that, while refusing to accede to
+the wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do
+justice to every fair demand from Ireland; must strenuously,
+and without fear or favour, assert the equal rights of landlords
+and tenants, of Protestants and Catholics; and must,
+at the same time, put down every outrage and reform every
+abuse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What hope is there of this? Our only guide to the
+probabilities of the future is our experience of the past
+And what has that been in Ireland? In every year since
+the Legislative Union there have been multitudes of men
+in England as upright, as enlightened, as well-intentioned
+towards Ireland, as Professor Dicey, and with better
+opportunities of translating their thoughts into acts. Yet
+what has been the result? <i>Si monumenlum requiris circum<!-- Page 118 --><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" />spice</i>.
+Behold Ireland at this moment, and examine every
+year of its history since the Union. Do the annals of any
+constitutional Government in the world present so portentous
+a monument of Parliamentary failure, so vivid an
+example of a moral and material ruin &quot;paved with good
+intentions&quot;? Therein lies the pathos of it. Not from
+malice, not from cruelty, not from wanton injustice, not
+even from callous indifference to suffering and wrong, does
+our misgovernment of Ireland come. If the evil had its
+root in deliberate wrong-doing on the part of England it
+would probably have been cured long ago. But each
+generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers,
+has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own
+achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude,
+has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the
+Irish character as the key to the Irish problem. The
+generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of
+British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered
+what had become of the prosperity and contentment which
+the promoters of the Union had promised to Ireland. The
+next generation made vicarious penance, and preferred the
+enactment of Catholic emancipation to the alternative of
+civil war; and then wondered in its turn that Ireland still
+remained unpacified. Then came a terrible famine, followed
+by evictions on a scale so vast and cruel that the late Sir
+Robert Peel declared that no parallel could be found for
+such a tale of inhumanity in &quot;the records of any country,
+civilized or barbarous.&quot; Another generation, pluming itself
+on its enlightened views and kind intentions, passed the
+Encumbered Estates Act, which delivered the Irish tenants
+over to the tender mercies of speculators and money-lenders;
+and then Parliament for a time closed its eyes and ears, and
+relied upon force alone to keep Ireland quiet. It rejected
+every suggestion of reform in the Land laws; and a great
+Minister, himself an Irish landlord, dismissed the whole
+<!-- Page 119 --><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" />subject in the flippant epigram that &quot;tenant-right was landlord-wrong.&quot;
+Since then the Irish Church has been disestablished,
+and two Land Acts have been passed; yet we
+seem to be as far as ever from the pacification of Ireland.
+Surely it is time to inquire whether the evil is not inherent
+in our system of governing Ireland, and whether there is
+any other cure than that which De Beaumont suggested,
+namely, the destruction of the system. It is probable that
+there is not in all London a more humane or a more kind-hearted
+man than Lord Salisbury. Yet Lord Salisbury's
+Government will do some harsh and inequitable things in
+Ireland this winter, just as Liberal Governments have done
+during their term of office. The fault is not in the men, but
+in the system which they have to administer. I see no
+reason to doubt that Sir M. Hicks-Beach did the best he
+could under the circumstances; but, unfortunately, bad is
+the best. In a conversation which I had with Dr. D&ouml;llinger
+while he was in full communion with his Church, I ventured
+to ask him whether he thought that a new Pope, of Liberal
+ideas, force of character, and commanding ability, would
+make any great difference in the Papal system. &quot;No,&quot; he
+replied, &quot;the Curial system is the growth of centuries, and
+there can be no change of any consequence while it lasts.
+Many a Pope has begun with brave projects of reform; but
+the struggle has been brief, and the end has been invariably
+the same: the Pope has been forced to succumb. His
+<i>entourage</i> has been too much for him. He has found himself
+enclosed in a system which was too strong for him,
+wheel within wheel; and while the system lasts the most
+enlightened ideas and the best intentions are in the long
+run unavailing.&quot; This criticism applies, <i>mutatis mutandis</i>,
+to what may be called the Curial system of Dublin Castle.
+It is a species of political Ultramontanism, exercising
+supreme power behind the screen of an official infallibility
+on which there is practically no check, since Parliament has
+<!-- Page 120 --><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" />never hitherto refused to grant it any power which it demanded
+for enforcing its decrees.</p>
+
+<p>There is, moreover, another consideration which must
+convince any dispassionate mind which ponders it, that the
+British Parliament is incompetent to manage Irish affairs,
+and must become increasingly incompetent year by year.
+In ordinary circumstances Parliament sits about twenty-seven
+weeks out of the fifty-two. Five out of the twenty-seven
+may safely be subtracted for holidays, debates on the
+Address, and other debates apart from ordinary business.
+That leaves twenty-two weeks, and out of these two nights
+a week are at the disposal of the Government and three at
+the disposal of private members; leaving in all forty-four
+days for the Government and sixty-six for private members.
+Into those forty-four nights Government must compress all
+its yearly programme of legislation for the whole of the
+British Empire, from the settlement of some petty dispute
+about land in the Hebrides, to some question of high
+policy in Egypt, India, or other portions of the Queen's
+world-wide empire; and all this amidst endless distractions,
+enforced attendance through dreary debates and vapid talk,
+and a running fire of cross-examination from any volunteer
+questioner out of the six hundred odd members who sit
+outside the Government circle. The consequence is, that
+Parliament is getting less able every year to overtake the
+mass of business which comes before it. Each year contributes
+its quota of inevitable arrears to the accumulated
+mass of previous Sessions, and the process will go on multiplying
+in increasing ratio as the complex and multiform
+needs of modern life increase. The large addition recently
+made to the electorate of the United Kingdom is already
+forcing a crop of fresh subjects on the attention of Parliament,
+as well as presenting old ones from new points of
+view. Plans of devolution and Grand Committees will fail
+to cope with this evil. To overcome it we need some
+<!-- Page 121 --><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" />organic change in our present Parliamentary system, some
+form of decentralization, which shall leave the Imperial
+Parliament supreme over all subordinate bodies, yet relegate
+to the historic and geographical divisions of the United
+Kingdom the management severally of their own local
+affairs.</p>
+
+<p>I should have better hope from governing Ireland (if it
+were possible) as we govern India, than from the present
+Unionist method of leaving &quot;things as they are.&quot; A Viceroy
+surrounded by a Council of trained officials, and in semi-independence
+of Parliament, would have settled the Irish
+question, land and all, long ago. But imagine India
+governed on the model of Ireland: the Viceroy and the
+most important member of his Government changing with
+every change of Administration at Westminster;<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19" /><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> his
+Council and the official class in general consisting almost
+exclusively of native Mussulmans, deeply prejudiced by
+religious and traditional enmity against the great mass of
+the population; himself generally subordinate to his Chief
+Secretary, and exposed to the daily criticism of an ignorant
+Parliament and to the determined hostility of eighty-six
+Hindoos, holding seats in Parliament as the representatives
+of the vast majority of the people of India, and resenting
+bitterly the domination of the hereditary oppressors of their
+race. How long could the Government of India be carried
+on under such conditions?</p>
+
+<p>Viewing it all round, then, it must be admitted that the
+problem of governing Ireland while leaving things as they are
+<!-- Page 122 --><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />is a sufficiently formidable one. Read the remarkable admissions
+which the facts have forced from intelligent opponents
+of Home Rule like Mr. Dicey, and add to them all the other
+evils which are rooted in our existing system of Irish government,
+and then consider what hope there is, under &quot;things
+as they are,&quot; of &quot;sedulously doing justice to every demand
+from Ireland,&quot; &quot;strenuously, and without fear or favour,
+asserting the equal rights of landlords and tenants, Protestants
+and Catholics,&quot; &quot;putting down every outrage, and
+reforming every abuse;&quot; and all the &quot;while refusing to
+accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen&quot; for a fundamental
+change in a political arrangement that has for
+centuries produced all the mischief which the so-called
+Unionist party are forced to admit, and much more besides,
+while it has at the same time frustrated every serious endeavour
+to bring about the better state of things which they
+expect from&mdash;what? From &quot;things as they are!&quot; As well
+expect grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles. While the
+tree remains the same, no amount of weeding, or pruning,
+or manuring, or change of culture, will make it bring forth
+different fruit. Mr. Dicey, among others, has demolished
+what Lord Beaconsfield used to call the &quot;bit-by-bit&quot; reformers
+of Irish Government&mdash;those who would administer
+homoeopathic doses of local self-government, but always
+under protest that the supply was to stop short of what
+would satisfy the hunger of the patient. But a continuance
+of &quot;things as they are,&quot; gilded with a thin tissue of benevolent
+hopes and aspirations, is scarcely a more promising
+remedy for the ills of Ireland. Is it not time to try some
+new treatment&mdash;one which has been tried in similar cases,
+and always with success? One only policy has never been
+tried in Ireland&mdash;honest Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, if Home Rule is to be refused till all the
+prophets of evil are refuted, Ireland must go without Home
+Rule for ever. &quot;If the sky fall, we shall catch larks.&quot; But
+<!-- Page 123 --><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" />he would be a foolish bird-catcher who waited for that
+contingency. And not less foolish is the statesman who
+sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has
+been mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild
+prediction falsified by the event; for that would ensure
+his never moving at all. <i>Sedet &aelig;ternumque sedebit</i>. A
+proper enough attitude, perhaps, on the part of an eristic
+philosopher speculating on politics in the silent shade of
+academic groves, but hardly suitable for a practical politician
+who has to take action on one of the most burning questions
+of our time. Human affairs are not governed by mathematical
+reasoning. You cannot demonstrate the precise
+results of any legislative measure beforehand as you can
+demonstrate the course of a planet in the solar system.
+&quot;Probability,&quot; as Bishop Butler says, &quot;is the guide of life;&quot;
+and an older philosopher than Butler has warned us that
+to demand demonstrative proof in the sphere of contingent
+matter is the same kind of absurdity as to demand probable
+reasoning in mathematics. You cannot confute a prophet
+before the event; you can only disbelieve him. The
+advocates of Home Rule believe that their policy would
+in general have an exactly contrary effect to that predicted
+by their opponents. In truth, every act of legislation is,
+before experience, amenable to such destructive criticism
+as these critics urge against Home Rule. I have not a
+doubt that they could have made out an unanswerable
+&quot;case&quot; against the Great Charter at Runnymede; and they
+would find it easy to prove on <i>&agrave; priori</i> grounds that the
+British Constitution is one of the most absurd, mischievous,
+and unworkable instruments that ever issued from human
+brains or from the evolution of events. By their method
+of reasoning the Great Charter and other fundamental
+portions of the Constitution ought to have brought the
+Government of the British Empire to a deadlock long ago.
+Every suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, every Act of<!-- Page 124 --><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" />
+Attainder, every statute for summary trial and conviction
+before justices of the peace, is a violation of the fundamental
+article of the Constitution, which requires that no
+man shall be imprisoned or otherwise punished except after
+lawful trial by his peers.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20" /><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> Consider also the magazines of
+explosive materials which lie hidden in the constitutional
+prerogatives of the Crown, if they could only be ignited by
+the match of an ingenious theorist. The Crown, as Lord
+Sherbrooke once somewhat irreverently expressed it, &quot;can
+turn every cobbler in the land into a peer,&quot; and could thus
+put an end, as the Duke of Wellington declared, to &quot;the
+Constitution of this country.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21" /><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> &quot;The Crown is not bound
+by Act of Parliament unless named therein by special and
+particular words.&quot;[22] The Crown can make peace or war
+without consulting Parliament, can by secret treaty saddle
+the nation with the most perilous obligations, and give
+away all such portions of the empire as do not rest on
+Statute. The prerogative of mercy, too, would enable an
+eccentric Sovereign, aided by an obsequious Minister, to
+open the jails and let all the convicted criminals in the land
+loose upon society.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22" /><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> But criticism which proves too much
+in effect proves nothing.</p>
+
+<p>In short, every stage in the progress of constitutional
+reform has, in matter of fact, been marked by similar predictions
+falsified by results, and the prophets who condemn
+Home Rule have no better credentials; indeed, much
+worse, for they proclaim the miserable failure of &quot;things
+as they are,&quot; whereas their predecessors were in their day
+satisfied with things as they were.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23" /><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a><!-- Page 125 --><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" /></p>
+
+<p>It is, high time, therefore, to call upon the opponents
+of Home Rule to tell us plainly where they stand. They
+<!-- Page 126 --><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" />claim a mandate from the country for their policy. They
+neither asked nor received a mandate to support the
+system of Government which prevailed in Ireland at the
+last election, and still less the policy of coercion which they
+have substituted for that system. Do they mean to go back
+or forward? They cannot stand still. They have already
+discovered that one act of repression leads to another, and
+they will find ere long that they have no alternative except
+Home Rule or the suppression of Parliamentary Government
+in Ireland. Men may talk lightly of the ease with
+which eighty-six Irish members may be kept in order in
+Parliament. They forget that the Irish people are behind
+the Irish members. How is Ireland to be governed on
+Parliamentary principles if the voice of her representatives
+is to be forcibly silenced or disregarded? Could even
+Yorkshire or Lancashire be governed permanently in that
+way? Let it be observed that we have now reached this
+pass, namely, that the opponents of Home Rule are opposed
+to the Irish members, not on any particular form of self-government
+for Ireland, but on any form; in other words,
+<!-- Page 127 --><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" />they resist the all but unanimous demand of Ireland for
+what &quot;Unionists&quot; of all parties declared a year ago to be
+a reasonable demand. No candidate at the last election
+ventured to ask the suffrages of any constituency as &quot;a supporter
+of things as they are.&quot; Yet that is practically the
+attitude now assumed by the Ministerial party, both Conservatives
+and Liberal Unionists. It is an attitude of which
+the country is getting weary, as the bye-elections have
+shown. But the &quot;Unionists,&quot; it must be admitted, are in
+a sore dilemma. Their strength, such as it is, lies in doing
+nothing for the reform of Irish Government. Their bond
+of union consists of nothing else but opposition to Mr.
+Gladstone's policy. They dare not attempt to formulate
+any policy of their own, knowing well that they would go
+to pieces in the process. Their hope and speculation is
+that something may happen to remove Mr. Gladstone from
+the political arena before the next dissolution. But, after
+all, Mr. Gladstone did not create the Irish difficulty. It
+preceded him and will survive him, unless it is settled to
+the satisfaction of the Irish people before his departure.
+And the difficulty of the final settlement will increase with
+every year of delay. Nor will the difficulty be confined
+to Ireland. The Irish question is already reacting upon
+kindred, though not identical, problems in England and
+Scotland, and the longer it is kept open, so much the worse
+will it be for what are generally regarded as Conservative
+interests. It is not the Moderate Liberals or Conservatives
+who are gaining ground by the prolongation of the controversy,
+and the disappearance of Mr. Gladstone from the
+scene would have the effect of removing from the forces of
+extreme Radicalism a conservative influence, which his
+political opponents will discover when it is too late to
+restore it. Their regret will then be as unavailing as the
+lament of William of Deloraine over his fallen foe&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;I'd give the lands of Deloraine<br /></span>
+<span>Dark Musgrave were alive again.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 128 --><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" />The Irish landlords have already begun to realize the
+mistake they made when they rejected Mr. Gladstone's
+policy of Home Rule and Land Purchase. It is the old
+story of the Sibyl's books. No British Government will
+ever again offer such terms to the Irish landlords as they
+refused to accept from Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand,
+Home Rule is inevitable. Can any reflective person really
+suppose that the democracy of Great Britain will consent
+to refuse to share with the Irish people the boon of self-government
+which will be offered to themselves next year?
+Any attempt to exclude the Irish from the benefits of such a
+scheme, after all the promises of the last general election,
+would almost certainly wreck the government; for constituencies
+have ways and means of impressing their wills on
+their representatives in Parliament even without a dissolution.
+If, on the other hand, Ireland should be included in a general
+scheme of local Government, the question of who shall
+control the police will arise. In Great Britain the police,
+of course, will be under local control. To refuse this to
+Ireland would be to offer a boon with a stigma attached
+to it. The Irish members agreed to let the control of the
+constabulary remain, under Mr. Gladstone's scheme, for some
+years in the hands of the British Government; but they would
+not agree to this while Dublin Castle ruled the country.
+Moreover, the formidable difficulty suggested by Lord Salisbury
+and Mr. John Stuart Mill (see pp. 115, 116) would appear
+the moment men began seriously to consider the question of
+local government for Ireland. The government of Dublin
+Castle would have to go, but something would have to be put
+in its place; and when that point has been reached it will
+probably be seen that nothing much better or safer can be
+found than some plan on the main lines of Mr. Gladstone's
+Bill.<!-- Page 129 --><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15" /><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Speech at Manchester, May 7, 1886, by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, who
+was a member of the Cabinet to which Mr. Chamberlain's scheme was
+submitted.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16" /><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Hansard</i>, vol. 220, pp. 708, 715.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17" /><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Considerations on Representative Government</i>, p. 281.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18" /><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Dicey's <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>, pp. 25-31, and
+Letter in <i>Spectator</i> of September 17th, 1887.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19" /><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> From the beginning of 1880 till now there have been six Viceroys
+and ten Chief Secretaries in Dublin&mdash;namely, Duke of Marlborough,
+Earls Cowper and Spencer, Earls of Carnarvon and Aberdeen, and the
+Marquis of Londonderry; Mr. Lowther, Mr. Forster, Lord F. Cavendish,
+Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Campbell Bannerman, Sir W. Hart Dyke,
+Mr. W.H. Smith, Mr. J. Morley, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, and Mr. A.
+Balfour. A fine example, truly, of stable government and continuous
+policy!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20" /><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Creasy's <i>Imperial and Colonial Constitutions of the Britannic
+Empire,</i> p. 155.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21" /><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> May's <i>Const. Hist.</i>, i. 313.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22" /><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Blackstone's <i>Commentaries</i>, by Stephen, ii. 491, 492, 497, 507.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23" /><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> We need not go far afield for illustrations. A few samples will
+suffice. &quot;It was natural,&quot; says Mill (<i>Rep. Gov.</i>, p. 311), &quot;to feel
+strong doubts before trial had been made how such a provision [as the
+Supreme Court of the United States] would work; whether the tribunal
+would have the courage to exercise its constitutional power; if it did,
+whether it would exercise it wisely, and whether the Government would
+consent peaceably to its decision. The discussions on the American
+Constitution, before its final adoption, give evidence that these natural
+apprehensions were strongly felt; but they are now entirely quieted,
+since, during the two generations and more which have subsequently
+elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify them, though there have at
+times been disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became the
+badges of parties respecting the limits of the authority of the Federal
+and State Governments.&quot; The Austrian opponents of Home Rule in
+Hungary predicted that it would lead straight to separation. The
+opponents of the Canadian Constitution prophesied that Canada would
+in a few years be annexed to the United States; and Home Rule in
+Australia was believed by able statesmen to involve independence at an
+early date. Mr. Dicey himself tells us &quot;that the wisest thinkers of the
+eighteenth century (including Burke) held that the independence of the
+American Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain. There
+were apparently solid reasons for this belief: experience has proved
+it to be without foundation.&quot; The various changes in our own Constitution,
+and even in our Criminal Code, were believed by &quot;men of light
+and leading&quot; at the time to portend national ruin. All the judges in
+the land, all the bankers, and the professions generally, petitioned
+against alteration in the law which sent children of ten to the gallows
+for the theft of a pocket-handkerchief. The great Lord Ellenborough
+declared in the House of Lords that &quot;the learned judges were unanimously
+agreed&quot; that any mitigation in that law would imperil &quot;the
+public security.&quot; &quot;My Lords,&quot; he exclaimed, &quot;if we suffer this Bill
+to pass we shall not know where we stand; we shall not know whether
+we are on our heads or on our feet.&quot; Mr. Perceval, when leader of the
+House of Commons in 1807, declared that &quot;he could not conceive a
+time or change of circumstances which would render further concessions
+to the Catholics consistent with the safety of the State.&quot; (<i>Croker
+Papers</i>, i. 12.) Croker was a very astute man; but here is his forecast
+of the Reform Act of 1832: &quot;No kings, no lords, no inequalities in the
+social system; all will be levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers
+and small farmers: this, perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly
+by confiscations and persecutions.&quot; &quot;There can be no longer any
+doubt that the Reform Bill is a stepping-stone in England to a Republic,
+and in Ireland to separation.&quot; Croker met the Queen in 1832, considered
+her very good-looking, but thought it not unlikely that &quot;she
+may live to be plain Miss Guelph.&quot; Even Sir Robert Peel wrote: &quot;If
+I am to be believed, I foresee revolution as the consequence of this
+Bill;&quot; and he &quot;felt that it had ceased to be an object of ambition to
+any man of equable and consistent mind to enter into the service of the
+Crown.&quot; And as late as 1839, so robust a character as Sir James
+Graham thought the world was coming to an end because the young
+Queen gave her confidence to a Whig Minister. &quot;I begin to share all
+your apprehensions and forebodings,&quot; he writes to Croker, &quot;with regard
+to the probable issue of the present struggle. The Crown in alliance
+with Democracy baffles every calculation on the balance of power in our
+mixed form of Government. Aristocracy and Church cannot contend
+against Queen and people mixed; they must yield in the first instance,
+when the Crown, unprotected, will meet its fate, and the accustomed
+round of anarchy and despotism will run its course.&quot; And he prays
+that he may &quot;lie cold before that dreadful day.&quot; (<i>Ibid.</i>, ii. 113, 140,
+176, 181, 356.) Free Trade created a similar panic. &quot;Good God!&quot;
+Croker exclaimed, &quot;what a chaos of anarchy and misery do I foresee
+in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing
+an <i>average</i> duty of 8<i>s.</i> into a <i>fixed</i> duty of 8<i>s.</i>, the fact being that the
+fixed duty means <i>no duty at all</i>; and <i>no duty at all</i> will be the overthrow
+of the existing social and political system of our country!&quot; (<i>Ibid.</i>,
+iii. 13.) And what have become of Mr. Lowe's gloomy vaticinations
+as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate Reform Bill of
+1866, followed as it was by a much more democratic measure?</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_LAWYERS_OBJECTIONS_TO" id="A_LAWYERS_OBJECTIONS_TO" />A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO
+HOME RULE.</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY E.L. GODKIN.</p>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Dicey in his <i>Case against Home Rule</i> does me the
+honour to refer to an article which I wrote a year ago
+on &quot;American Home Rule,&quot;<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24" /><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> expressing in one place
+&quot;disagreement in the general conclusion to which the
+article is intended to lead,&quot; and in another &quot;inability to
+follow the inference&quot; which he supposes me to draw
+&quot;against all attempts to enforce an unpopular law.&quot; Now
+the object of that article, I may be permitted to explain,
+was twofold. I desired, in the first place, to combat the
+notion which, it seemed to me, if I might judge from a great
+many of the speeches and articles on the Irish question,
+was widely diffused even among thoughtful Englishmen that
+the manner in which the Irish have expressed their discontent&mdash;that
+is, through outrage and disorder&mdash;was indicative
+of incapacity for self-government, and even imposed
+upon the Englishmen the duty, in the interest of morality
+(I think it was the <i>Spectator</i> who took this view), and as
+a disciplinary measure, of refusing to such a people the
+privilege of managing their own affairs. I tried to show by
+several noted examples occurring in this country that
+prolonged displays of lawlessness, and violence, and even
+<!-- Page 130 --><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />cruelty, such as the anti-rent movement in the State of New
+York, the Ku-Klux outrages in the South, and the persecution
+of Miss Prudence Crandall in Connecticut, were not inconsistent
+with the possession of marked political capacity.
+I suggested that it was hardly adult politics to take such
+things into consideration in passing on the expediency of
+conceding local self-government to a subject community.
+There was to me something almost childish in the arguments
+drawn from Irish lawlessness in the discussion of Home
+Rule, and in the moral importance attached by some
+Englishmen to the refusal to such wicked men as the Irish
+of the things they most desire. It is only in kindergartens,
+I said, that rulers are able to do equal and exact justice,
+and see that the naughty are brought to grief and the good
+made comfortable. Statesmen occupy themselves with the
+more serious business of curing discontent. They concern
+themselves but little, if at all, with the question whether it
+might not be manifested by less objectionable methods.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish methods of manifesting it, I endeavoured to
+show, were not exceptional, and did not prove either
+inability to make laws or unwillingness to obey them.
+I illustrated this by examples drawn from the United States.
+I might, had I had more time and space, have made these
+examples still more numerous and striking. I might have
+given very good reasons for believing that, were Ireland
+a state in the American Union, there probably would not
+have been any rent paid in the island within the last fifty
+years, and that the armed resistance of the tenants would
+have had the open or secret sympathy of the great bulk of
+the American people. In truth, the importance of Irish
+crime as a political symptom is grossly exaggerated by
+English writers. I venture to assert that more murders
+unconnected with robbery are committed in the State of
+Kentucky in one year than in Ireland in ten, and the
+condition of some other Southern and Western States is
+<!-- Page 131 --><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />nearly as bad. All good Americans lament this and are
+ashamed of it, but it never enters into the heads of even the
+most lugubrious American moralists that Kentucky or any
+other State should be disfranchised and remanded to the
+condition of a Territory, because the offences against the
+person committed in it are so numerous, and the punishment
+of them, owing to popular sympathy or apathy, so difficult.</p>
+
+<p>There are a great many Englishmen who think that
+when they show that Grattan's Parliament was a venal and
+somewhat disorderly body, which occasionally indulged in
+mixed metaphor, they have proved the impossibility of giving
+Ireland a Parliament now. But then, as they are obliged
+to admit, Walpole's Parliament was very corrupt, and no
+one would say that for that reason it would have been wise
+to suspend constitutional government in England in the
+eighteenth century. It is only through the pernicious habit
+of thinking of Irishmen as exceptions to all political rules
+that Grattan's Parliament is considered likely, had it lasted,
+to have come down to our time unreformed and unimproved.</p>
+
+<p>Those have misunderstood me who suppose that I
+draw from the success of the anti-rent movement in this
+State between 1839 and 1846 an inference against &quot;all
+attempts to enforce an unpopular law.&quot; Such was not by
+any means my object. What I sought to show by the
+history of this movement was that there was nothing peculiar
+or inexplicable in the hostility to rent-paying in Ireland.
+The rights of the New York landlords were as good in law
+and morals as the rights of the Irish landlords, and their
+mode of asserting them far superior. Moreover, those who
+resisted them were not men of a different race, religion, or
+nationality, and had, as Mr. Dicey says, &quot;none of the
+excuses that can be urged in extenuation of half-starved
+tenants.&quot; Their mode of setting the law at defiance was
+exactly similar to that adopted by the Irish, and it was
+<!-- Page 132 --><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" />persisted in for a period of ten years, or until they had
+secured a substantial victory. The history of the anti-rent
+agitation in New York also illustrates strikingly, as it seems
+to me, the perspicacity of a remark made, in substance, long
+ago by Mr. Disraeli, which, in my eyes at least, threw a great
+deal of light on the Irish problem, namely, that Ireland was
+suffering from suppressed revolution. As Mr. Dicey says,
+&quot;The crises called revolutions are the ultimate and desperate
+cures for the fundamental disorganization of society.
+The issue of a revolutionary struggle shows what is the
+true sovereign power in the revolutionized state. So
+strong is the interest of mankind, at least in any European
+country, in favour of some sort of settled rule, that civil
+disturbance will, if left to itself, in general end in the
+supremacy of some power which by securing the safety at
+last gains the attachment of the people. The Reign of
+Terror begets the Empire; even wars of religion at last
+produce peace, albeit peace may be nothing better than the
+iron uniformity of despotism. Could Ireland have been
+left for any lengthened period to herself, some form of rule
+adapted to the needs of the country would in all probability
+have been established. Whether Protestants or Catholics
+would have been the predominant element in the State;
+whether the landlords would have held their own, or whether
+the English system of tenure would long ago have made
+way for one more in conformity with native traditions;
+whether hostile classes and races would at last have
+established some <i>modus vivendi</i> favourable to individual
+freedom, or whether despotism under some of its various
+forms would have been sanctioned by the acquiescence of
+its subjects, are matters of uncertain speculation. A conclusion
+which, though speculative, is far less uncertain, is
+that Ireland, if left absolutely to herself, would have arrived,
+like every other country, at some lasting settlement of her
+difficulties&quot; (p. 87). That is to say, that in Ireland as in<!-- Page 133 --><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" />
+New York the attempt to enforce unpopular land laws
+would have been abandoned, had local self-government
+existed. For &quot;revolution&quot; is, after all, only a fine name
+for the failure or refusal of the rulers of a country to persist
+in executing laws which the bulk of the population find
+obnoxious. When the popular hostility to the law is strong
+enough to make its execution impossible, as it was in New
+York in the rent affair, it is accepted as the respectable
+solution of a very troublesome problem. When, as in
+Ireland, it is strong enough to produce turbulence and
+disorder, but not strong enough to tire out and overcome
+the authorities, it simply ruins the political manners of the
+people. If the Irish landlords had had from the beginning
+to face the tenants single-handed and either hold them
+down by superior physical force, or come to terms with
+them as the New York landlords had to do, conditions of
+peace and good will would have assuredly been discovered
+long ago. The land question, in other words, would have
+been adjusted in accordance with &quot;Irish ideas,&quot; that is,
+in some way satisfactory to the tenants. The very memory
+of the conflict would probably by this time have died out,
+and the two classes would be living in harmony on the
+common soil. If in New York, on the other hand, the
+Van Rensselaers and Livingstons had been able to secure
+the aid of martial law and of the Federal troops in asserting
+their claims, and in preventing local opinion having any
+influence whatever on the settlement of the dispute, there
+can be no doubt that a large portion of this State would
+to-day be as poor and as savage, and apparently as little
+fitted for the serious business of government, as the greater
+part of Ireland is.</p>
+
+<p>There is, in truth, no reason to doubt that the idea of
+property in land, thoroughly accepted though it be in the
+United States, is nevertheless held under the same limitations
+as in the rest of the world. No matter what the law
+<!-- Page 134 --><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />may say in any country, in no country is the right of the
+landed proprietor in his acres as absolute as his right in his
+movables. A man may own as much land as he can purchase,
+and may assert his ownership in its most absolute form
+against one, two, or three occupants, but the minute he began
+to assert it against a large number of occupants, that is, to
+act as if his rights were such that he had only to buy a whole
+state or a whole island in order to be able to evict the entire
+population, he would find in America, as he finds in Ireland,
+that he cannot have the same title to land as to personal property.
+He would, for instance, if he tried to oust the people of
+a whole district or of a village from their homes on any plea
+of possession, or of a contract, find that he was going too
+far, and that no matter what the judges might say, or the
+sheriff might try to do for him, his legal position was worth
+very little to him. Consequently a large landlord in America,
+if he were lucky enough to get tenants at all, would be very
+chary indeed about quarrelling with more than one of them
+at a time. The tenants would no more submit to wholesale
+ejectment than the farmers in Missouri would submit some
+years ago to a tax levy on their property to pay county bonds
+given in aid of a railroad. The goods of some of them were
+seized, but a large body of them attended the sale armed
+with rifles, having previously issued a notice that the place
+would be very &quot;unhealthy&quot; for outside bidders.</p>
+
+<p>The bearing of this condition of American opinion on
+the Irish question will be plainer if I remind English readers
+that the Irish in the United States numbered in 1880 nearly
+2,000,000, and that the number of persons of Irish parentage
+is probably between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000. In short
+there are, as well as one can judge, more Irish nationalists
+in the United States than in Ireland. The Irish-Americans
+are to-day the only large and prosperous Irish community in
+the world. The children of the Irish born in the United
+States or brought there in their infancy are just as Irish in
+<!-- Page 135 --><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />their politics as those who have grown up at home. Patrick
+Ford, for instance, the editor of the <i>Irish World</i>, who
+is such a shape of dread to some Englishmen, came to
+America in childhood, and has no personal knowledge nor
+recollection of Irish wrongs. Of the part this large Irish
+community plays in stimulating agitation&mdash;both agrarian and
+political&mdash;at home I need not speak; Englishmen are very
+familiar with it, and are very indignant over it. The Irish-Americans
+not only send over a great deal of American
+money to their friends at home, but they send over American
+ideas, and foremost among them American hostility to large
+landowners, and American belief in Home Rule. Now, to
+me, one of the most curious things in the English state of
+mind about the Irish problem is the apparent expectation
+that this Irish-American interference is transient, and will
+probably soon die out. It is quite true, as Englishmen are
+constantly told, that &quot;the best Americans,&quot; that is, the
+literary people and the commercial magnates, whom travelling
+Englishmen see on the Atlantic coast, dislike the Irish
+anti-English agitation. But it is also true that the disapproval
+of the &quot;best Americans&quot; is not of the smallest
+practical consequence, particularly as it is largely due to
+complete indifference to, and ignorance of, the whole subject.
+There are probably not a dozen of them who would venture
+to express their disapproval publicly. The mass of the
+population, particularly in the West, sympathize, though
+half laughingly, with the efforts of the transplanted Irish to
+&quot;twist the British lion's tail,&quot; and all the politicians either
+sympathize with them, or pretend to do so. I am not now
+expressing any opinion as to whether this state of things is
+good or bad. What I wish to point out is that this Irish-American
+influence on Irish affairs is very powerful, and
+may, for all practical purposes, be considered permanent,
+and must be taken into account as a constant element in
+the Irish problem. I will indeed venture on the assertion
+<!-- Page 136 --><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" />that it is the appearance of the Irish-Americans on the
+scene which has given the Irish question its present
+seriousness. The attempts of the Irish at physical resistance
+to English authority have been steadily diminishing in
+gravity during the present century&mdash;witness the descent
+from the rebellion of 1798 to Smith O'Brien's rebellion and
+the Fenian rising of 1867. On the other hand the power
+of the Irish to act as a disturbing agency in English politics
+has greatly increased, and the reason is that the stream of
+Irish discontent is fed by thousands of rills from the United
+States. Every emigrant's letter, every Irish-American
+newspaper, every returned emigrant with money in his
+pocket and a good coat on his back, helps to swell it,
+and there is not the slightest sign, that I can see, of its
+drying up.</p>
+
+<p>Where Mr. Dicey is most formidable to the Home
+Rulers, as it seems to me, is in his chapter on &quot;Home Rule
+as Federalism,&quot; which is the form in which the Irish ask
+for it. He attacks this in two ways. One is by maintaining
+that the necessary conditions for a federal union between
+Great Britain and Ireland do not exist. This disposes at
+one blow of all the experience derived from the working of
+the foreign federations, on which the advocates of Home
+Rule have relied a good deal. The other is what I may
+call predictions that the federation even if set up would not
+work. Either the state of facts on which all other federations
+have been built does not exist in Ireland, or if it now
+exists, will not, owing to the peculiarities of Irish character,
+continue to exist. In other words, the federation will
+either fail at the outset, or fail in the long run. No one
+can admire more than I do the force and ingenuity and
+wealth of illustration with which Mr. Dicey supports this
+thesis. But unfortunately the arguments by which he
+assails Irish federalism might be, or might have been, used
+against all federations whatever. They might have been
+<!-- Page 137 --><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" />used, as I shall try to show, against the most successful of
+them all, the Government of the United States. I was reminded,
+while reading Mr. Dicey's account of the impossibility
+of an Anglo-Irish federation, of Mr. Madison's
+rehearsal in the <i>Federalist</i> (No. 38) of the objections made
+to the Federal Constitution after the Convention had submitted
+it to the States. These objections covered every
+feature in it but one; and that, the mode of electing the
+President, curiously enough, is the only one which can be
+said to have utterly failed. A more impressive example
+of the danger of <i>&agrave; priori</i> attacks on any political arrangement,
+history does not contain. Mr. Madison says:
+&quot;This one tells me that the proposed Constitution ought
+to be rejected, because it is not a confederation of the
+states, but a government over individuals. Another admits
+that it ought to be a government over individuals to a
+certain extent, but by no means to the extent proposed.
+A third does not object to the government over individuals,
+or to the extent proposed, but to the want of a bill of rights.
+A fourth concurs in the absolute necessity of a bill of rights,
+but contends that it ought to be declaratory not of the
+personal rights of individuals, but of the rights reserved
+to the states in their political capacity. A fifth is of opinion
+that a bill of rights of any sort would be superfluous and
+misplaced, and that the plan would be unexceptionable but
+for the fatal power of regulating the times and places of
+election. An objector in a large state exclaims loudly
+against the unreasonable equality of representation in the
+Senate. An objector in a small state is equally loud against
+the dangerous inequality in the House of Representatives.
+From one quarter we are alarmed with the amazing expense,
+from the number of persons who are to administer the new
+government. From another quarter, and sometimes from
+the same quarter, on another occasion the cry is that the
+Congress will be but the shadow of a representation, and
+<!-- Page 138 --><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" />that the government would be far less objectionable if the
+number and the expense were doubled. A patriot in a
+state that does not import or export discerns insuperable
+objections against the power of direct taxation. The
+patriotic adversary in a state of great exports and imports
+is not less dissatisfied that the whole burden of taxes may
+be thrown on consumption. This politician discovers in
+the constitution a direct and irresistible tendency to monarchy.
+That is equally sure it will end in aristocracy.
+Another is puzzled to say which of these shapes it will
+ultimately assume, but sees clearly it must be one or other
+of them. Whilst a fourth is not wanting, who with no less
+confidence affirms that the Constitution is so far from
+having a bias towards either of these dangers, that the
+weight on that side will not be sufficient to keep it upright
+and firm against the opposite propensities. With another
+class of adversaries to the Constitution, the language is,
+that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments
+are intermixed in such a manner as to contradict all the
+ideas of regular government and all the requisite precautions
+in favour of liberty. Whilst this objection circulates
+in vague and general expressions, there are not a few who
+lend their sanction to it. Let each one come forward with
+his particular explanation, and scarcely any two are exactly
+agreed on the subject. In the eyes of one the junction
+of the Senate with the President in the responsible function
+of appointing to offices, instead of vesting this power in the
+executive alone, is the vicious part of the organization. To
+another the exclusion of the House of Representatives,
+whose numbers alone could be a due security against corruption
+and partiality in the exercise of such a power, is
+equally obnoxious. With a third the admission of the
+President into any share of a power which must ever be
+a dangerous engine in the hands of the executive magistrate
+is an unpardonable violation of the maxims of republican
+<!-- Page 139 --><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" />jealousy. No part of the arrangement, according to some,
+is more inadmissible than the trial of impeachments by the
+Senate, which is alternately a member both of the legislative
+and executive departments, when this power so evidently
+belonged to the judiciary department. We concur fully,
+reply others, in the objection to this part of the plan, but
+we can never agree that a reference of impeachments to the
+judiciary authority would be an amendment of the error;
+our principal dislike to the organization arises from the
+extensive powers already lodged in that department. Even
+among the zealous patrons of a council of state, the most
+irreconcilable variance is discovered concerning the mode
+in which it ought to be constituted.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Madison's challenge to the opponents of the American
+Constitution to agree on some plan of their own, and his
+humorous suggestion that if the American people had to
+wait for some such agreement to be reached they would
+go for a long time without a government, are curiously
+applicable to the opponents of Irish Home Rule. They
+are very fertile in reasons for thinking that neither the
+Gladstone plan nor any other plan can succeed, but no
+two of them, so far as I know, have yet hit upon any other
+mode of pacifying Ireland, except the use of force for a
+certain period to maintain order, and oddly enough, even
+when they agree on this remedy, they are apt to disagree
+about the length of time during which it should be tried.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dicey, in conceding the success of the American
+Constitution, seems to me unmindful, if I may use the
+expression, of the judgments he would probably have passed
+on it had it been submitted to him at the outset were he
+in the frame of mind to which a prolonged study of the
+Irish problem has now brought him. The Supreme Court,
+for instance, which he now recognizes as an essential
+feature of the Federal Constitution, and the absence of
+which in the Gladstonian arrangement he treats as a fatal
+<!-- Page 140 --><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" />defect, would have undoubtedly appeared to him a preposterous
+contrivance. It would have seemed to him impossible
+that a legislature like Congress, with the traditions
+of parliamentary omnipotence still strong in the minds of
+the members, would ever submit to have its acts nullified
+by a board composed of half a dozen elderly lawyers. Nor
+would he have treated as any more reasonable the expectation
+that the State tribunals, which had existed in each
+colony from its foundation, and had earned the respect and
+confidence of the people, would quietly submit to have their
+jurisdiction curtailed, their decisions overruled, causes torn
+from their calendar, and prisoners taken out of their custody
+by new courts of semi-foreign origin, which the State neither
+paid nor controlled. He would, too, very probably have
+been most incredulous about the prospect of the growth of
+loyalty on the part of New-Yorkers and Massachusetts men
+to a new-fangled government, which was to make itself only
+slightly felt in their daily lives, and was to sit a fortnight
+away in an improvised village in the midst of a Virginian
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>He would, too, have ridiculed the notion that State
+legislatures would refrain, in obedience to the Constitution,
+from passing any law which local sentiment strongly favoured
+or local convenience plainly demanded, such as a law impairing
+the obligation of obnoxious contracts, or levying
+duties on imports or exports. The possibility that the State
+militia could ever be got to obey federal officers, or form an
+efficient part of a federal army, he would have scouted. On
+the feebleness of the front which federation would present
+to a foreign enemy he would have dwelt with emphasis,
+and would have pointed with confidence to the probability
+that in the event of a war some of the states would make
+terms with him or secretly favour his designs. National
+allegiance and local allegiance would divide and perplex
+the feelings of loyal citizens. Unless the national sentiment
+<!-- Page 141 --><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" />predominated&mdash;and it could not predominate without having
+had time to grow&mdash;the federation would go to pieces at any
+of those crises when the interests or wishes of any of the
+states conflicted with the interests or wishes of the Union.
+That the national sentiment could grow at all rapidly, considering
+the maturity of the communities which composed
+the Union and the differences of origin, creed, and manners
+which separated them, no calm observer of human nature
+would believe for one moment.</p>
+
+<p>The American Constitution is flecked throughout with
+those flaws which a lawyer delights to discover and point
+out, and which the framers of a federal contract can only
+excuse by maintaining that they are inevitable. It is true
+that Mr. Dicey does not even now acknowledge the success
+of the American Constitution to be complete. He points
+out that if the &quot;example either of America or of Switzerland
+is to teach us anything worth knowing, the history of
+these countries must be read as a whole. It will then be
+seen that the two most successful confederacies in the
+world have been kept together only by the decisive triumph
+through force of arms of the central power over real or
+alleged State rights&quot; (p. 192).</p>
+
+<p>It is odd that such objectors do not see that the decisive
+triumph of the central power in the late civil war in
+America was, in reality, a striking proof of the success of the
+federation. The armies which General Grant commanded,
+and the enormous resources in money and devotion from
+which he was able to draw, were the product of the Federal
+Union and of nothing else. One of the greatest arguments
+its founders used in its favour was that if once established
+it would supply overwhelming force for the suppression of
+any attempt to break it up. They did not aim at setting
+up a government which neither foreign malice nor domestic
+treason, would ever assail, for they knew that this was
+something beyond the reach of human endeavour. They
+<!-- Page 142 --><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" />tried to set up one which, if attacked either from within or
+from without, would make a successful resistance, and we now
+know that they accomplished their object. Somewhat the
+same answer may be made to the objection, which is supposed
+to have fatal applicability to the case of Ireland, that
+among the &quot;special faults of federalism&quot; is that it does not
+provide &quot;sufficient protection of the legal rights of unpopular
+minorities,&quot; and that &quot;the moral of it all is that the
+[American] Federal Government is not able to protect the
+rights of individuals against strong local sentiment&quot; (p. 194
+of Mr. Dicey's book). He says, moreover, if I understand
+the argument rightly, that it was bound to protect free speech
+in the States because &quot;there is not and never was a word in
+the Articles of the Constitution forbidding American citizens
+to criticize the institutions of the State.&quot; It would seem from
+this as if Mr. Dicey were under the impression that in
+America the citizen of a State has a right to do in his State
+whatever he is not forbidden to do by the Federal Constitution,
+and in doing it has a right to federal protection.
+But the Federal Government can only do what the Constitution
+expressly authorizes it to do, and the Constitution
+does not authorize it to protect a citizen in criticizing the
+institutions of his own State. This arrangement, too, is
+just as good federalism as the committal of free speech to
+federal guardianship would have been. The goodness or
+badness of the federal system is in no way involved in the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>The question to what extent a minority shall rely on the
+federation for protection, and to what extent on its own
+State, is a matter settled by the contract which has
+created the federation. The settlement of this is, in fact,
+the great object of a Constitution. Until it is settled
+somehow, either by writing or by understanding, there is,
+and can be, no federation. If I, as a citizen of the State
+of New York, could call on the United States Government
+<!-- Page 143 --><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" />to protect me under all circumstances and against all
+wrongs, it would show that I was not living under a
+federation at all, but under a centralized republic. The
+reason why I have to rely on the United States for protection
+against some things and not against others is that it was so
+stipulated when the State of New York entered the Union.
+There is nothing in the nature of the federal system to
+prevent the United States Government from protecting my
+freedom of speech. Nor is there anything in the federal
+system which forbids its protecting me against the establishment
+of a State Church, which, as a matter of fact, it does
+not do. Nor is there anything in the federal system compelling
+the Government to protect me against the establishment
+of an order of nobility, which, as a matter of fact, it does
+do. The reason why it does not do one of these things
+and does the other is simply and solely that it was so
+stipulated, after much discussion, in the contract. Most
+thinking men are to-day of opinion that the United States
+ought to have exclusive jurisdiction of marriage, so that the
+law of marriage might be uniform in all parts of the Union.
+The reason why they do not possess such jurisdiction is not
+that Congress is not fully competent to pass such a law or
+the federal courts to execute it, but that no such jurisdiction
+is conferred by the Constitution. In fact it seems to me
+just as reasonable to cite the ease of divorce in various
+States of the Union as a defect in the federal system, as to
+cite the oppression of local minorities in matters not placed
+under federal authority by the organic law.</p>
+
+<p>If one may judge from a great deal of writing on American
+matters which one sees in English journals and the demands
+for federal interference in America in State affairs which
+they constantly make, the greatest difficulty Irish Home
+Rule has to contend with is the difficulty which men bred
+in a united monarchy and under an omnipotent Parliament
+experience in grasping what I may call the federal idea.<!-- Page 144 --><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" />
+The influence of association on their minds is so strong
+that they can hardly conceive of a central power, worthy of
+the name of a government, standing by and witnessing
+disorders or failures of justice in any place within its
+borders, without stepping in to set matters right, no matter
+what the Constitution may say. They remind me often of
+an old verger in Westminster Abbey during the American
+civil war who told me that &quot;he always knew a government
+without a head couldn't last.&quot; Permanence and
+peace were in his mind inseparably linked with kingship.
+That even Mr. Dicey has not been able to escape this
+influence appears frequently in his discussions of federalism.
+He, of course, thoroughly understands the federal system
+as a jurist, but when he comes to discuss it as a politician he
+has evidently some difficulty in seeing how a government
+with a power to enforce <i>any</i> commands can be restrained
+by contract from enforcing <i>all</i> commands which may seem
+to be expedient or salutary. Consequently the cool way
+in which the Federal Government here looks on at local
+disorders seems to him a sign, not of the fidelity of the
+President and Congress to the federal pact, but of some
+inherent weakness in the federal system.</p>
+
+<p>The true way to judge the federal system, however, either
+in the United States or elsewhere, is by observing the
+manner in which it has performed the duties assigned to
+it by the Constitution. If the Government at Washington
+performs these faithfully, its failure to prevent lawlessness in
+New York or the oppression of minorities in Connecticut
+is of no more consequence than its failure to put down
+brigandage in Macedonia. Possibly it would have been
+better to saddle it with greater responsibility for local peace;
+but the fact is that the framers of the Constitution decided
+not to do so. They did not mean to set up a government
+which would see that every man living under it got his due.
+They could not have got the States to accept such a
+<!-- Page 145 --><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" />government. They meant to set up a government which
+should represent the nation worthily in all its relations with
+foreigners, which should carry on war effectively, protect life
+and property on the high seas, furnish a proper currency,
+put down all resistance to its lawful authority, and secure
+each State against domestic violence on the demand of its
+Legislature.</p>
+
+<p>There is no common form for federal contracts, and no
+rules describing what such a contract must contain in order
+that the Government may be federal and not unitarian.
+There is no hard and fast line which must, under the federal
+system, divide the jurisdiction of the central Government
+from the jurisdiction of each State Government. The way
+in which the power is divided between the two must necessarily
+depend on the traditions, manners, aims, and needs
+of the people of the various localities. The federal system
+is not a system manufactured on a regulation model, which
+can be sent over the world like iron huts or steam launches,
+in detached pieces, to be put together when the scene of
+operation is reached. Therefore I am unable to see the
+force of the argument that, as the conditions under which
+all existing federations were established differ in some
+respects from those under which the proposed federal union
+between England and Ireland would have to be established,
+therefore the success of these confederations, such as it is,
+gives them no value as precedents. A system which might
+have worked very well for the New England States would
+not have worked well for a combination which included
+also the middle and southern States. And the framers
+of the American Constitution were not so simple-minded as
+to inquire, either before beginning their labours or before
+ending them&mdash;as Mr. Dicey would apparently have the
+English and Irish do&mdash;whether this or that style of constitution
+was &quot;the correct thing&quot; in federalism. Assuming
+that the people desired to form a nation as regarded the
+<!-- Page 146 --><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" />world outside, they addressed themselves to the task of
+discovering how much power the various States were willing
+to surrender for this purpose. That was ascertained, as far
+as it could be ascertained, by assembling their delegates
+in convention, and discussing the wishes and fears and
+suggestions of the different localities in a friendly and conciliatory
+spirit. They had no precedents to guide them.
+There had not existed a federal government, either in ancient
+or modern times, whose working afforded an example by
+which the imagination or the understanding of the American
+people was likely to be affected in the smallest degree.
+They, therefore, had to strike out an entirely new path for
+themselves, and they ended by producing an absolutely new
+kind of federation, which was half Unitarian, that is, in some
+respects a union of states, and in others a centralized
+government; and it was provided for a Territory one end of
+which was more than a month's distance from the other.</p>
+
+<p>It is not in its details, therefore, but in the manner of its
+construction, that the American Constitution furnishes anything
+in the way of guidance or suggestion to those who
+are now engaged in trying to find a <i>modus vivendi</i> between
+England and Ireland. The same thing may be said of the
+Swiss Constitution and of the Austro-Hungarian Constitution.
+Both of them contain many anomalies&mdash;that is,
+things that are not set down in the books as among the
+essentials of federalism. But both are adapted to the
+special wants of the people who live under them, and were
+framed in reference to those wants.</p>
+
+<p>The Austro-Hungarian Delegations are another exception
+to the rule. These Delegations undoubtedly control
+the ministry of the Empire, or at all events do in practice
+displace it by their votes. It is made formally responsible
+to them by the Constitution. All that Mr. Dicey can say
+to this is that &quot;the real responsibility of the Ministry to the
+Delegations admits of a good deal of doubt,&quot; and that,
+<!-- Page 147 --><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" />at all events, it is not like the responsibility of Mr.
+Gladstone or Lord Salisbury to the British Parliament.
+This may be true, but the more mysterious or peculiar it
+is the better it illustrates the danger of speaking of any
+particular piece of machinery or of any particular division
+of power as an essential feature of a federal constitution.</p>
+
+<p>We are told by the critics of the Gladstonian scheme
+that federalism is not &quot;a plan for disuniting the parts of a
+united state.&quot; But whether it is or not once more depends
+on circumstances. Federalism, like the British or French
+Constitution, is an arrangement intended to satisfy the people
+who set it up by gratifying some desire or removing some
+cause of discontent. If that discontent be due to unity,
+federalism disunites; if it be due to disunion, federalism
+unites. In the case of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for
+instance, it clearly is a &quot;plan for disuniting the parts of
+a united state.&quot; Austria and Hungary were united in
+the sense in which the opponents of Home Rule use the
+word for many years before 1867, but the union did not
+work, that is, did not produce moral as well as legal
+unity. A constitution was therefore invented which disunites
+the two countries for the purposes of domestic
+legislation, but leaves them united for the purposes of
+foreign relations. This may be a queer arrangement.
+Although it has worked well enough thus far, it may not
+continue to work well, but it does work well now. It
+has succeeded in converting Hungary from a discontented
+and rebellious province and a source of great weakness to
+Austria into a loyal and satisfied portion of the Empire. In
+other words, it has accomplished its purpose. It was not
+intended to furnish a symmetrical piece of federalism. It
+was intended to conciliate the Hungarian people. When
+therefore the professional federal architects make their tour
+of inspection and point out to the Home Ruler what
+flagrant departures from the correct federal model the<!-- Page 148 --><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" />
+Austro-Hungarian Constitution contains, how improbable
+it is that so enormous a structure can endure, and how,
+after all, the Hungarians have not got rid of the Emperor,
+who commands the army and represents the brute force
+of the old <i>r&eacute;gime</i>, I do not think he need feel greatly
+concerned. This may be all true, and yet the Austro-Hungarian
+federalism is a valuable thing. It has proved
+that the federal remedy is good for more than one disease,
+that it can cure both too much unity and too little. The
+truth is that there are only two essentials of a federal
+government. One is an agreement between the various
+communities who are to live under it as to the manner in
+which the power is to be divided between the general and
+local governments; the other is an honest desire on the
+part of all concerned to make it succeed. As a general
+rule, whatever the parties agree on and desire to make work
+is likely to work, just as a Unitarian government is sure
+to succeed if the people who live under it determine that
+it shall succeed. If a federal plan be settled in the only
+right way, by amicable and mutually respectful discussion
+between representative men, all the more serious obstacles
+are certain to be revealed and removed. Those which are
+not brought to light by such discussions are pretty sure
+to be comparatively trifling, and to disappear before the
+general success of arrangement. But by a &quot;mutually
+respectful discussion&quot; I mean discussion in which good
+faith and intelligence of all concerned are acknowledged on
+both sides.</p>
+
+<p>In what I have said by way of criticism of a book which
+may be taken as a particularly full exposition of the legal
+criticism that may be levelled at Mr. Gladstone's scheme,
+I have not touched on the arguments against Home Rule
+which Mr. Dicey draws from the amount of disturbance it
+would cause in English political habits and arrangements.
+I freely admit the weight of these arguments. The task of
+<!-- Page 149 --><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" />any English statesman who gives Home Rule to Ireland
+in the only way in which it can be given&mdash;with the assent
+of the British people&mdash;will be a very arduous one. But
+this portion of Mr. Dicey's book, producing, as it does, the
+distinctively English objections to Home rule, is to me
+much the most instructive, because it shows the difficulty
+there would be in creating the state of mind in England
+about any federal relation to Ireland which would be
+necessary to make it succeed. I do not think it an exaggeration
+to say that two-thirds of the English objections to
+Home Rule as federalism are unconscious expressions of distrust
+of Irish sincerity or intelligence thrown into the form of
+prophecy, and prophets, as we all know, cannot be refuted.
+For instance, &quot;the changes necessitated by federalism would
+all tend to weaken the power of Great Britain&quot; (Dicey, p.
+173). The question of the command of the army could not
+be arranged; the Irish army could not be depended on by
+the Crown (p. 174); the central Government would be feeble
+against foreign aggression, and the Irish Parliament would
+give aid to a foreign enemy (pp. 176-7). Federalism would
+aggravate or increase instead of diminishing the actual Irish
+disloyalty to the Crown (pp. 179-80); the Irish expectations
+of material prosperity from Home Rule are baseless or
+grossly exaggerated (p. 182); the probability is, it would
+produce increased poverty and hardship; there would be
+frequent quarrels between the two countries over questions
+of nullification, secession, and federal taxation (p. 184);
+neither side would acquiesce in the decision either of the
+Privy Council or of any other tribunal on these questions;
+Home Rulers would be the first to resist these decisions
+(p. 185). Irish federation &quot;would soon generate a demand
+that the whole British Empire should be turned into a Confederacy&quot;
+(p. 188). Finally, as &quot;the one prediction which
+may be made with absolute confidence,&quot; &quot;federalism would
+not generate the goodwill between England and Ireland
+<!-- Page 150 --><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" />which, could it be produced, would be an adequate compensation
+even for the evils and inconveniences of a federal
+system&quot; (p. 191).</p>
+
+<p>Now I do not myself believe these things, but what else
+can any advocate of Home Rule say in answer to them?
+They are in their very nature the utterances of a prophet&mdash;an
+able, acute, and fair-minded prophet, I grant, but still a
+prophet&mdash;and before a prophet the wisest man has to be
+silent, or content himself by answering in prophecy also.
+What makes the sceptical frame of mind in which Mr.
+Dicey approaches the Home Rule question so important is
+not simply that it probably represents that of a very large
+body of educated Englishmen, but that it is one in which
+a federal system cannot be produced. Faith, hope, and
+charity are political as well as social virtues. The minute
+you leave the region of pure despotism and try any form of
+government in which the citizen has in the smallest degree
+to co-operate in the execution of the laws, you have need
+of these virtues at every step. As soon as you give up the
+attempt to rule men by drumhead justice, you have to begin
+to trust in some degree to their intelligence, to their love of
+order, to their self-respect, and to their desire for material
+prosperity, and the nearer you get to what is called free
+government the larger this trust has to be. It has to be
+very large indeed in order to carry on such a government
+as that of Great Britain or of the United States; it has to
+be larger still in order to set up and administer a federal
+government. In such a government the worst that can
+happen is very patent. The opportunities which the best-drawn
+federal constitution offers for outbreaks of what
+Americans call &quot;pure cussedness&quot;&mdash;that is, for the indulgence
+of anarchical tendencies and impulses&mdash;is greater
+than in any other. Therefore, to set it up, or even to
+discuss it with any profit, your faith in the particular variety
+of human nature, which is to live under it, has to be great.<!-- Page 151 --><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />
+No communities can live under it together and make it work
+which do not respect each other. I say respect, I do not
+say love, each other. The machine can be made to go a
+good while without love, and if it goes well it will bring love
+before long; but mutual respect is necessary from the first
+day. This is why Mr. Dicey's book is discouraging. The
+arguments which he addressed to Englishmen would not, I
+think, be formidable but for the mood in which he finds
+Englishmen, and that this mood makes against Home Rule
+there can be little doubt.</p>
+
+<p>I am often asked by Americans why the English do not
+call an Anglo-Irish convention in the American fashion, and
+discuss the Irish question with the Irish, find out exactly
+what they will take to be quiet, and settle with them in a
+rational way. I generally answer that, in the first place, a
+convention is a constitution-making agency with which the
+English public is totally unfamiliar, and that, in the second
+place, Englishmen's temper is too imperial, or rather imperious,
+to make the idea of discussion on equal terms with the
+Irish at all acceptable. They are, in fact, so far from any
+such arrangement that&mdash;preposterous and even funny as it
+seems to the American mind&mdash;to say that an English statesman
+is carrying on any sort of communication with the
+representatives of the Irish people is to bring against him,
+in English eyes, a very damaging accusation. When a man
+like Mr. Matthew Arnold writes to the <i>Times</i> to contend
+that Englishmen should find out what the Irish want solely
+for the purpose of not letting them have it, and a journal
+like the <i>Spectator</i> maintains that the sole excuse for extending
+the suffrage in Ireland, as it has lately been extended in
+England, was that the Irish as a minority would not be
+able to make any effective use of it; and when another
+political philosopher writes a long and very solemn letter
+in which, while conceding that in governing Ireland a
+sympathetic regard for Irish feelings and interests should
+<!-- Page 152 --><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />be displayed, he mentions, as one of the leading facts
+of the situation, that in &quot;the Irish character there is a
+grievous lack of independence, of self-respect, of courage,
+and above all of truthfulness&quot;&mdash;when men of this kind talk
+in this way, it is easy to see that the mental and moral conditions
+necessary to the successful formation of a federal
+union are still far off. No federal government, and no
+government requiring loyalty and fidelity for its successful
+working, was ever set up by, or even discussed between, two
+parties, one of which thought the other so unreasonable that
+it should be carefully denied everything it asked for and as
+unfit for any sort of political co-operation as mendacity,
+cowardice, and slavishness could make it.</p>
+
+<p>Finally let me say that there is nothing in Mr. Dicey's
+book which has surprised me more, considering with what
+singular intellectual integrity he attacks every point, than
+his failure to make any mention or to take any account of
+the large part which time and experience must necessarily
+play in bringing to perfection any political arrangement
+which is made to order, if I may use the expression, no
+matter how carefully it may be drafted. Hume says on this
+point with great wisdom, &quot;To balance the large state or
+society, whether monarchical or republican, on general
+laws, is a work of so great difficulty, that no human genius,
+however comprehensive, is able by the mere dint of reason
+or reflection to effect it. The judgments of many must
+unite in the work, experience must guide their labour, time
+must bring it to perfection, and the feeling of inconveniences
+must correct the mistakes which they inevitably fall into in
+their first trial and experiments.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25" /><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>This has proved true of the American and Swiss federations;
+it will probably prove true of the Austro-Hungarian
+federation and of any that may be set up by Great Britian [Transcriber: sic.]
+and her colonies. It will prove still more true of any
+<!-- Page 153 --><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" />attempt that may be made at federation between Great
+Britain and Ireland. No corrections which could be made
+in the Gladstonian or any other constitution would make
+it work exactly on the lines laid down by its framers. Even
+if it were revised in accordance with Mr. Dicey's criticism,
+it would probably be found, as in the case of the American
+Constitution, that few of the dangers which were most feared
+for it had beset it, and that some of the inconveniences
+which were most distinctly foreseen as likely to arise from it
+were among the things which had materially contributed to
+its success. History is full of the gentle ridicule which the
+course of events throws on statesmen and philosophers.<!-- Page 154 --><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24" /><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Printed in the earlier part of this volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25" /><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Essay on the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_UNIONISTquot_CASE_FOR_HOME" id="THE_UNIONISTquot_CASE_FOR_HOME" />THE &quot;UNIONIST&quot; CASE FOR HOME
+RULE.</h2>
+
+
+<p class="author">BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN.</p>
+
+
+<p>I am often asked, What are the best books to read on the
+Irish question? and I never fail to mention Mr. Lecky's
+<i>Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland</i> and the <i>History
+of England in the Eighteenth Century</i>; Mr. Goldwin
+Smith's <i>Irish History and Irish Character, Three English
+Statesmen, The Irish Question</i>, and Professor Dicey's admirable
+work, <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, the case for Home Rule, as stated in these
+books, is unanswerable; and it redounds to the credit of
+Mr. Lecky, Mr. Goldwin Smith, and Mr. Dicey that their
+narrative of facts should in no wise be prejudiced by their
+political opinions.</p>
+
+<p>That their facts are upon one side and their opinions
+on the other is a minor matter. Their facts, I venture
+to assert, have made more Home Rulers than their opinions
+can unmake.</p>
+
+<p>To put this assertion to the test I propose to quote
+some extracts from the works above mentioned. These
+extracts shall be full and fair. Nothing shall be left out
+that can in the slightest degree qualify any statement of
+fact in the context. Arguments will be omitted, for I wish
+to place facts mainly before my readers. From these facts
+<!-- Page 155 --><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />they can draw their own conclusions. Neither shall I take
+up space with comments of my own. I shall call my
+witnesses and let them speak for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>I.&mdash;MR. LECKY.</p>
+
+<p>In the introduction to the new edition of the <i>Leaders
+of Public Opinion in Ireland</i>, published in 1871&mdash;seventy-one
+years after Mr. Pitt's Union, which was to make
+England and Ireland one nation&mdash;we find the following
+&quot;contrast&quot; between &quot;national life&quot; in the two countries:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is, perhaps, no Government in the world which
+succeeds more admirably in the functions of eliciting,
+sustaining, and directing public opinion than that of
+England. It does not, it is true, escape its full share of
+hostile criticism, and, indeed, rather signally illustrates the
+saying of Bacon, that 'the best Governments are always
+subject to be like the finest crystals, in which every icicle
+and grain is seen which in a fouler stone is never perceived;'
+but whatever charges may be brought against the
+balance of its powers, or against its legislative efficiency,
+few men will question its eminent success as an organ of
+public opinion. In England an even disproportionate
+amount of the national talent takes the direction of politics.
+The pulse of an energetic national life is felt in every
+quarter of the land. The debates of Parliament are
+followed with a warm, constant, and intelligent interest by
+all sections of the community. It draws all classes within
+the circle of political interests, and is the centre of a strong
+and steady patriotism, equally removed from the apathy of
+many Continental nations in time of calm, and from their
+feverish and spasmodic energy in time of excitement. Its
+decisions, if not instantly accepted, never fail to have a
+profound and calming influence on the public mind. It
+is the safety-valve of the nation. The discontents, the
+<!-- Page 156 --><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" />suspicions, the peccant humours that agitate the people,
+find there their vent, their resolution, and their end.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is impossible, I think, not to be struck by the contrast
+which, in this respect, Ireland presents to England.
+If the one country furnishes us with an admirable example
+of the action of a healthy public opinion, the other supplies
+us with the most unequivocal signs of its disease. The
+Imperial Parliament exercises for Ireland legislative functions,
+but it is almost powerless upon opinion&mdash;it allays no discontent,
+and attracts no affection. Political talent, which
+for many years was at least as abundant among Irishmen
+as in any equally numerous section of the people, has been
+steadily declining, and marked decadence in this respect
+among the representatives of the nation reflects but too
+truly the absence of public spirit in their constituents.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The upper classes have lost their sympathy with and
+their moral ascendency over their tenants, and are thrown
+for the most part into a policy of mere obstruction. The
+genuine national enthusiasm never flows in the channel of
+imperial politics. With great multitudes sectarian considerations
+have entirely superseded national ones, and their
+representatives are accustomed systematically to subordinate
+all party and all political questions to ecclesiastical interests;
+and while calling themselves Liberals, they make it the
+main object of their home politics to separate the different
+classes of their fellow-countrymen during the period of their
+education, and the main object of their foreign policy to
+support the temporal power of the Pope. With another
+and a still larger class the prevailing feeling seems to be
+an indifference to all Parliamentary proceedings; an utter
+scepticism about constitutional means of realizing their
+ends; a blind, persistent hatred of England. Every cause
+is taken up with an enthusiasm exactly proportioned to
+the degree in which it is supposed to be injurious to English
+interests. An amount of energy and enthusiasm which if
+<!-- Page 157 --><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" />rightly directed would suffice for the political regeneration
+of Ireland is wasted in the most insane projects of disloyalty;
+while the diversion of so much public feeling
+from Parliamentary politics leaves the Parliamentary arena
+more and more open to corruption, to place-hunting, and
+to imposture.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This picture is in itself a very melancholy one, but there
+are other circumstances which greatly heighten the effect.
+In a very ignorant or a very wretched population it is
+natural that there should be much vague, unreasoning discontent;
+but the Irish people are at present neither
+wretched nor ignorant. Their economical condition before
+the famine was, indeed, such that it might well have made
+reasonable men despair. With the land divided into almost
+microscopic farms, with a population multiplying rapidly
+to the extreme limits of subsistence, accustomed to the
+very lowest standard of comfort, and marrying earlier than
+in any other northern country in Europe, it was idle to look
+for habits of independence or self-reliance, or for the culture
+which follows in the train of leisure and comfort. But all
+this has been changed. A fearful famine and the long-continued
+strain of emigration have reduced the nation
+from eight millions to less than five, and have effected, at
+the price of almost intolerable suffering, a complete
+economical revolution. The population is now in no
+degree in excess of the means of subsistence. The rise of
+wages and prices has diffused comfort through all classes.
+... Probably no country in Europe has advanced so
+rapidly as Ireland within the last ten years, and the tone of
+cheerfulness, the improvement of the houses, the dress, and
+the general condition of the people must have struck every
+observer.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26" /><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> ... If industrial improvement, if the rapid
+<!-- Page 158 --><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />increase of material comforts among the poor, could allay
+political discontent, Ireland should never have been so
+loyal as at present.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nor can it be said that ignorance is at the root of the
+discontent. The Irish people have always, even in the darkest
+period of the penal laws, been greedy for knowledge, and
+few races show more quickness in acquiring it. The
+admirable system of national education established in the
+present century is beginning to bear abundant fruit, and,
+among the younger generation at least, the level of knowledge
+is quite as high as in England. Indeed, one of the
+most alarming features of Irish disloyalty is its close and
+evident connection with education. It is sustained by a
+cheap literature, written often with no mean literary skill,
+which penetrates into every village, gives the people their first
+political impressions, forms and directs their enthusiasm, and
+seems likely in the long leisure of the pastoral life to exercise
+an increasing power. Close observers of the Irish character
+will hardly have failed to notice the great change which since
+the famine has passed over the amusements of the people.
+The old love of boisterous out-of-door sports has almost
+disappeared, and those who would have once sought their
+pleasures in the market or the fair now gather in groups in
+the public-house, where one of their number reads out a
+Fenian newspaper. Whatever else this change may portend,
+it is certainly of no good omen for the future loyalty of the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was long customary in England to underrate this
+disaffection by ascribing it to very transitory causes. The
+quarter of a century that followed the Union was marked
+by almost perpetual disturbance; but this it was said was
+merely the natural ground swell of agitation which followed
+a great reform. It was then the popular theory that it was
+the work of O'Connell, who was described during many years
+as the one obstacle to the peace of Ireland, and whose death
+<!-- Page 159 --><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" />was made the subject of no little congratulation, as though
+Irish discontent had perished with its organ. It was as if,
+the &AElig;olian harp being shattered, men wrote an epitaph
+upon the wind. Experience has abundantly proved the
+folly of such theories. Measured by mere chronology, a
+little more than seventy years have passed since the Union,
+but famine and emigration have compressed into these years
+the work of centuries. The character, feelings, and conditions
+of the people have been profoundly altered. A long
+course of remedial legislation has been carried, and during
+many years the national party has been without a leader
+and without a stimulus. Yet, so far from subsiding, disloyalty
+in Ireland is probably as extensive, and is certainly
+as malignant, as at the death of O'Connell, only in many
+respects the public opinion of the country has palpably
+deteriorated. O'Connell taught an attachment to the connection,
+a loyalty to the crown, a respect for the rights of
+property, a consistency of Liberalism, which we look for in
+vain among his successors; and that faith in moral force
+and constitutional agitation which he made it one of his
+greatest objects to instil into the people has almost vanished
+with the failure of his agitation.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27" /><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+<p>Few Irish Nationalists have drawn a weightier indictment
+against the Union than this. After a trial of seventy years,
+Mr. Lecky sums up the case against the Union in these
+pregnant sentences:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Imperial Parliament allays no discontent, and
+attracts no affection;&quot; &quot;The genuine national enthusiasm
+never flows in the channel of imperial politics;&quot;
+the people have &quot;an utter scepticism about constitutional
+means of realizing their ends,&quot; and are imbued with &quot;a
+blind, persistent hatred of England.&quot; Worse still, neither
+the material progress of the country, nor the education of
+<!-- Page 160 --><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" />the people, has reconciled them to the Imperial Parliament.
+Indeed, their disloyalty has increased with their prosperity
+and enlightenment. This is the story which Mr. Lecky has
+to tell. But why are the Irish disloyal? Mr. Lecky shall
+answer the question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The causes of this deep-seated disaffection I have
+endeavoured in some degree to investigate in the following
+essays. To the merely dramatic historian the history of
+Ireland will probably appear less attractive than that of most
+other countries, for it is somewhat deficient in great characters
+and in splendid episodes; but to a philosophic student
+of history it presents an interest of the very highest order.
+In no other history can we trace more clearly the chain of
+causes and effects, the influence of past legislation, not only
+upon the material condition, but also upon the character of
+a nation. In no other history especially can we investigate
+more fully the evil consequences which must ensue from
+disregarding that sentiment of nationality which, whether it
+be wise or foolish, whether it be desirable or the reverse,
+is at least one of the strongest and most enduring of
+human passions. This, as I conceive, lies at the root of
+Irish discontent. It is a question of nationality as truly
+as in Hungary or in Poland. Special grievances or
+anomalies may aggravate, but do not cause it, and they
+become formidable only in as far as they are connected
+with it. What discontent was felt against the Protestant
+Established Church was felt chiefly because it was regarded
+as an English garrison sustaining an anti-national system;
+and the agrarian difficulty never assumed its full intensity
+till by the repeal agitation the landlords had been politically
+alienated from the people.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28" /><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>Let those who imagine that the Irish question can be
+<!-- Page 161 --><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" />completely settled by the redress of material grievances
+take those words to heart.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>But, it is said, Scotch national sentiment is as strong as
+Irish, why should not a legislative union be as acceptable
+to Ireland as to Scotland? Mr. Lecky shall answer this
+question too.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is hardly possible to advert to the Scotch Union,
+without pausing for a moment to examine why its influence
+on the loyalty of the people should have ultimately been so
+much happier than that of the legislative union which,
+nearly a century later, was enacted between England and
+Ireland. A very slight attention to the circumstances of
+the case will explain the mystery, and will at the same time
+show the extreme shallowness of those theorists who can
+only account for it by reference to original peculiarities of
+national character. The sacrifice of a nationality is a
+measure which naturally produces such intense and such
+enduring discontent that it never should be exacted unless
+it can be accompanied by some political or material
+advantages to the lesser country that are so great and
+at the same time so evident as to prove a corrective. Such
+a corrective in the case of Scotland, was furnished by the
+commercial clauses. The Scotch Parliament was very
+arbitrary and corrupt, and by no means a faithful representation
+of the people. The majority of the nation were
+certainly opposed to the Union, and, directly or indirectly,
+it is probable that much corruption was employed to effect
+it; but still the fact remains that by it one of the most
+ardent wishes of all Scottish patriots was attained, that there
+had been for many years a powerful and intelligent minority
+who were prepared to purchase commercial freedom even
+at the expense of the fusion of legislatures, and that in
+consequence of the establishment of free trade the next
+generation of Scotchmen witnessed an increase of material
+<!-- Page 162 --><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" />well-being that was utterly unprecedented in the history of
+their country. Nothing equivalent took place in Ireland.
+The gradual abolition of duties between England and
+Ireland was, no doubt, an advantage to the lesser country,
+but the whole trade to America and the other English
+colonies had been thrown open to Irishmen between 1775
+and 1779. Irish commerce had taken this direction; the
+years between 1779 and the rebellion of 1798 were
+probably the most prosperous in Irish history, and the
+generation that followed the Union was one of the most
+miserable. The sacrifice of nationality was extorted by
+the most enormous corruption in the history of representative
+institutions. It was demanded by no considerable
+section of the Irish people. It was accompanied by no signal
+political or material benefit that could mitigate or counteract
+its unpopularity, and it was effected without a dissolution,
+in opposition to the votes of the immense majority
+of the representatives of the counties and considerable
+towns, and to innumerable addresses from every part of the
+country. Can any impartial man be surprised that such
+a measure, carried in such a manner, should have proved
+unsuccessful?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29" /><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland</i> Mr. Lecky
+traces the current of events which have led to the present
+situation. He shows how the Treaty of Limerick was shamelessly
+violated, and how the native population was oppressed
+and degraded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The position of Ireland was at this time [1727] one
+of the most deplorable that can be conceived.... The
+Roman Catholics had been completely prostrated by the
+battle of the Boyne and by the surrender of Limerick.
+They had stipulated indeed for religious liberty, but the
+<!-- Page 163 --><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" />Treaty of Limerick was soon shamelessly violated, and it
+found no avengers. Sarsfield and his brave companions
+had abandoned a country where defeat left no opening for
+their talents, and had joined the Irish Brigade which had
+been formed in the service of France.... But while the
+Irish Roman Catholics abroad found free scope for their
+ambition in the service of France, those who remained at
+home had sunk into a condition of utter degradation. All
+Catholic energy and talent had emigrated to foreign lands,
+and penal laws of atrocious severity crushed the Catholics
+who remained.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30" /><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lecky's account of these &quot;penal laws&quot; is upon
+the whole, I think, the best that has been written.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The last great Protestant ruler of England was
+William III., who is identified in Ireland with the humiliation
+of the Boyne, with the destruction of Irish trade, and
+with the broken Treaty of Limerick. The ceaseless exertions
+of the extreme Protestant party have made him more odious
+in the eyes of the people than he deserves to be; for he was
+personally far more tolerant than the great majority of his
+contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted
+under his successors. It required, indeed, four or five
+reigns to elaborate a system so ingeniously contrived to
+demoralize, to degrade, and to impoverish the people of
+Ireland. By this code the Roman Catholics were absolutely
+excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from
+the corporations, from the bench, and from the bar. They
+could not vote at Parliamentary elections or at vestries;
+they could not act as constables, or sheriffs, or jurymen, or
+serve in the army or navy, or become solicitors, or even
+hold the positions of gamekeeper or watchman. Schools
+were established to bring up their children as Protestants;
+and if they refused to avail themselves of these, they were
+deliberately assigned to hopeless ignorance, being excluded
+<!-- Page 164 --><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" />from the university, and debarred, under crushing penalties,
+from acting as schoolmasters, as ushers, or as private
+tutors, or from sending their children abroad to obtain the
+instruction they were refused at home. They could not
+marry Protestants, and if such a marriage were celebrated
+it was annulled by law, and the priest who officiated might
+be hung. They could not buy land, or inherit or receive
+it as a gift from Protestants, or hold life-annuities, or leases
+for more than thirty-one years, or any lease on such terms
+that the profits of the land exceeded one-third of the rent.
+If any Catholic leaseholder by his industry so increased
+his profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did not
+immediately make a corresponding increase in his payments,
+any Protestant who gave the information could enter into
+possession of his farm. If any Catholic had secretly purchased
+either his old forfeited estate, or any other land, any
+Protestant who informed against him might become the
+proprietor. The few Catholic landowners who remained
+were deprived of the right which all other classes possessed
+of bequeathing their lands as they pleased. If their sons
+continued Catholics, it was divided equally between them.
+If, however, the eldest son consented to apostatize, the
+estate was settled upon him, the father from that hour
+became only a life-tenant, and lost all power of selling,
+mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of it. If the wife of
+a Catholic abandoned the religion of her husband, she was
+immediately free from his control, and the Chancellor
+was empowered to assign to her a certain proportion of her
+husband's property. If any child, however young, professed
+itself a Protestant, it was at once taken from the father's
+care, and the Chancellor could oblige the father to declare
+upon oath the value of his property, both real and personal,
+and could assign for the present maintenance and future
+portion of the converted child such proportion of that
+property as the court might decree. No Catholic could be
+<!-- Page 165 --><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" />guardian either to his own children or to those of another
+person; and therefore a Catholic who died while his
+children were minors had the bitterness of reflecting upon
+his death-bed that they must pass into the care of Protestants.
+An annuity of from twenty to forty pounds was
+provided as a bribe for every priest who would become
+a Protestant. To convert a Protestant to Catholicism was
+a capital offence. In every walk of life the Catholic was
+pursued by persecution or restriction. Except in the linen
+trade, he could not have more than two apprentices. He
+could not possess a horse of the value of more than five
+pounds, and any Protestant, on giving him five pounds, could
+take his horse. He was compelled to pay double to the
+militia. He was forbidden, except under particular conditions,
+to live in Galway or Limerick. In case of war with
+a Catholic power, the Catholics were obliged to reimburse
+the damage done by the enemy's privateers. The Legislature,
+it is true, did not venture absolutely to suppress their
+worship, but it existed only by a doubtful connivance&mdash;stigmatized
+as if it were a species of licensed prostitution,
+and subject to conditions which, if they had been enforced,
+would have rendered its continuance impossible. An old
+law which prohibited it, and another which enjoined
+attendance at the Anglican worship, remained unrepealed,
+and might at any time be revived; and the former was, in
+fact, enforced during the Scotch rebellion of 1715. The
+parish priests, who alone were allowed to officiate, were
+compelled to be registered, and were forbidden to keep
+curates or to officiate anywhere except in their own parishes.
+The chapels might not have bells or steeples. No crosses
+might be publicly erected. Pilgrimages to the holy wells
+were forbidden. Not only all monks and friars, but also
+all Catholic archbishops, bishops, deacons, and other dignitaries,
+were ordered by a certain day to leave the country;
+and if after that date they were found in Ireland they were
+<!-- Page 166 --><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" />liable to be first imprisoned and then banished; and if after
+that banishment they returned to discharge their duty in
+their dioceses, they were liable to the punishment of death.
+To facilitate the discovery of offences against the code, two
+justices of the peace might at any time compel any Catholic
+of eighteen years of age to declare when and where he last
+heard Mass, what persons were present, and who officiated;
+and if he refused to give evidence they might imprison him
+for twelve months, or until he paid a fine of twenty pounds.
+Any one who harboured ecclesiastics from beyond the seas
+was subject to fines which for the third offence amounted
+to confiscation of all his goods. A graduated scale of
+rewards was offered for the discovery of Catholic bishops,
+priests, and schoolmasters; and a resolution of the House
+of Commons pronounced 'the prosecuting and informing
+against Papists' 'an honourable service to the Government.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such were the principal articles of this famous code&mdash;a
+code which Burke truly described as 'well digested and
+well disposed in all its parts; a machine of wise and elaborate
+contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment,
+and degradation of a people, and the debasement
+in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded
+from the perverted ingenuity of man.'&quot;<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31" /><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+<p>The effects of these laws Mr. Lecky has described thus:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The economical and moral effects of the penal laws
+were, however, profoundly disastrous. The productive
+energies of the nation were fatally diminished. Almost all
+Catholics of energy and talent who refused to abandon their
+faith emigrated to foreign lands. The relation of classes
+was permanently vitiated; for almost all the proprietary of
+the country belonged to one religion, while the great majority
+of their tenants were of another. The Catholics, excluded
+from almost every possibility of eminence, deprived of their
+natural leaders, and consigned by the Legislature to utter
+<!-- Page 167 --><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" />ignorance, soon sank into the condition of broken and
+dispirited helots. A total absence of industrial virtues, a
+cowering and abject deference to authority, a recklessness
+about the future, a love of secret illegal combinations,
+became general among them. Above all, they learned
+to regard law as merely the expression of force, and its
+moral weight was utterly destroyed. For the greater part
+of a century, the main object of the Legislature was to
+extirpate a religion by the encouragement of the worst, and
+the punishment of some of the best qualities of our
+nature. Its rewards were reserved for the informer, for the
+hypocrite, for the undutiful son, or for the faithless wife.
+Its penalties were directed against religious constancy and
+the honest discharge of ecclesiastical duty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It would, indeed, be scarcely possible to conceive a more
+infamous system of legal tyranny than that which in the
+middle of the eighteenth century crushed every class and
+almost every interest in Ireland.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32" /><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<p>But laws were not only passed against the native race
+and the national religion. Measures were taken to destroy
+the industries of the country, and to involve natives and
+colonists, Protestants and Catholics, in common ruin.
+Mr. Lecky shall tell the story.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The commercial and industrial condition of the
+country was, if possible, more deplorable than its political
+condition, and was the result of a series of English measures
+which for deliberate and selfish tyranny could hardly be
+surpassed. Until the reign of Charles II. the Irish shared
+the commercial privileges of the English; but as the island
+had not been really conquered till the reign of Elizabeth,
+and as its people were till then scarcely removed from
+barbarism, the progress was necessarily slow. In the early
+Stuart reigns, however, comparative repose and good
+government were followed by a sudden rush of prosperity.
+<!-- Page 168 --><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" />The land was chiefly pasture, for which it was admirably
+adapted; the export of live cattle to England was carried on
+upon a large scale, and it became a chief source of Irish
+wealth. The English landowners, however, took the alarm.
+They complained that Irish rivalry in the cattle market was
+reducing English rents; and accordingly, by an Act which
+was first passed in 1663, and was made perpetual in 1666,
+the importation of cattle into England was forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The effect of a measure of this kind, levelled at the
+principal article of the commerce of the nation, was necessarily
+most disastrous. The profound modification which it
+introduced into the course of Irish industry was sufficiently
+shown by the estimate of Sir W. Petty, who declares that
+before the statute three-fourths of the trade of Ireland was
+with England, but not one-fourth of it since that time. In
+the very year when this Bill was passed another measure
+was taken not less fatal to the interest of the country. In
+the first Navigation Act, Ireland was placed on the same
+terms as England; but in the Act as amended in 1663 she
+was omitted, and was thus deprived of the whole Colonial
+trade. With the exception of a very few specified articles
+no European merchandise could be imported into the
+British Colonies except directly from England, in ships built
+in England, and manned chiefly by English sailors. No
+articles, with a few exceptions, could be brought from the
+Colonies to Europe without being first unladen in England.
+In 1670 this exclusion of Ireland was confirmed, and in
+1696 it was rendered more stringent, for it was enacted that
+no goods of any sort could be imported directly from the
+Colonies to Ireland. It will be remembered that at this
+time the chief British Colonies were those of America, and
+that Ireland, by her geographical position, was naturally of
+all countries most fitted for the American trade.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As far, then, as the Colonial trade was concerned,
+Ireland at this time gained nothing whatever by her con<!-- Page 169 --><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />nection
+with England. To other countries, however, her
+ports were still open, and in time of peace a foreign
+commerce was unrestricted. When forbidden to export
+their cattle to England, the Irish turned their land chiefly
+into sheep-walks, and proceeded energetically to manufacture
+the wool. Some faint traces of this manufacture may be
+detected from an early period, and Lord Strafford, when
+governing Ireland, had mentioned it with a characteristic
+comment. Speaking of the Irish he says, 'There was little
+or no manufactures amongst them, but some small beginnings
+towards a cloth trade, which I had and so should still discourage
+all I could, unless otherwise directed by His
+Majesty and their Lordships. It might be feared that they
+would beat us out of the trade itself by underselling us,
+which they were able to do.' With the exception, however, of
+an abortive effort by this governor, the Irish wool manufacture
+was in no degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned
+with special favour in many Acts of Parliament; and it was
+in a great degree on the faith of this long-continued legislative
+sanction that it was so greatly expanded. The
+poverty of Ireland, the low state of civilization of a large
+proportion of its inhabitants, the effects of the civil wars
+which had so recently convulsed it, and the exclusion of its
+products from the English Colonies, were doubtless great
+obstacles to manufacturing enterprise; but, on the other
+hand, Irish wool was very good, living was cheaper, taxes
+were lighter than in England, a spirit of real industrial
+energy began to pervade the country, and a considerable
+number of English manufacturers came over to colonize it.
+There appeared for a time every probability that the Irish
+would become an industrial nation, and, had manufactures
+arisen, their whole social, political, and economical condition
+would have been changed. But English jealousy again
+interposed. By an Act of crushing and unprecedented
+severity, which was introduced in 1698 and carried in 1699,
+<!-- Page 170 --><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" />the export of the Irish woollen manufactures, not only to
+England, but also to all other countries, was absolutely
+forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The effects of this measure were terrible almost beyond
+conception. The main industry of the country was at a
+blow completely and irretrievably annihilated. A vast
+population was thrown into a condition of utter destitution.
+Several thousands of manufacturers left the country, and
+carried their skill and enterprise to Germany, France, and
+Spain. The western and southern districts of Ireland are
+said to have been nearly depopulated. Emigration to
+America began on a large scale, and the blow was so severe
+that long after, a kind of chronic famine prevailed.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33" /><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lecky relates with pride how the penal code was
+relaxed, and the commercial restrictions were removed,
+while the Irish Parliament, essentially a Protestant and
+landlord body, still existed, and shows how the cause of
+Catholic Emancipation was retarded by the Union.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Relief Bill of '93 naturally suggests a consideration
+of the question so often agitated in Ireland, whether the
+Union was really a benefit to the Roman Catholic cause.
+It has been argued that Catholic Emancipation was an impossibility
+as long as the Irish Parliament lasted; for in a
+country where the great majority were Roman Catholics, it
+would be folly to expect the members of the dominant
+creed to surrender a monopoly on which their ascendency
+depended. The arguments against this view are, I believe,
+overwhelming. The injustice of the disqualification was
+far more striking before the Union than after it. In the
+one case, the Roman Catholics were excluded from the
+Parliament of a nation of which they were the great majority;
+in the other, they were excluded from the Parliament of an
+empire in which they were a small minority. Grattan, Plunket,
+Curran, Burrowes, and Ponsonby were the great supporters of
+<!-- Page 171 --><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" />Catholic Emancipation, and the great opponents of the Union.
+Clare and Duigenan were the two great opponents of
+emancipation, and the great supporters of the Union. At
+a time when scarcely any public opinion existed in Ireland,
+when the Roman Catholics were nearly quiescent, and
+when the leaning of Government was generally liberal, the
+Irish Protestants admitted their fellow-subjects to the
+magistracy, to the jury-box, and to the franchise. By
+this last measure they gave them an amount of political
+power which necessarily implied complete emancipation.
+Even if no leader of genius had arisen in the Roman
+Catholic ranks, and if no spirit of enthusiasm had animated
+their councils, the influence possessed by a body who
+formed three fourths of the population, who were rapidly
+rising in wealth, and who could send their representatives
+to Parliament, would have been sufficient to ensure their
+triumph. If the Irish Legislature had continued, it would
+have been found impossible to resist the demand for reform;
+and every reform, by diminishing the overgrown power of a
+few Protestant landholders, would have increased that of the
+Roman Catholics. The concession accorded in 1793 was,
+in fact, far greater and more important than that accorded
+in 1829, and it placed the Roman Catholics, in a great
+measure, above the mercy of Protestants. But this was not
+all. The sympathies of the Protestants were being rapidly
+enlisted in their behalf. The generation to which Charlemont
+and Flood belonged had passed away, and all the
+leading intellects of the country, almost all the Opposition,
+and several conspicuous members of the Government, were
+warmly in favour of emancipation. The rancour which at
+present exists between the members of the two creeds
+appears then to have been almost unknown, and the real
+obstacle to emancipation was not the feelings of the people,
+but the policy of the Government. The Bar may be considered
+on most subjects a very fair exponent of the educated
+<!-- Page 172 --><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" />opinion of the nation; and Wolf Tone observed, in 1792,
+that it was almost unanimous in favour of the Catholics;
+and it is not without importance, as showing the tendencies
+of the rising generation, that a large body of the
+students of Dublin University in 1795 presented an address
+to Grattan, thanking him for his labours in the cause. The
+Roman Catholics were rapidly gaining the public opinion
+of Ireland, when the Union arrayed against them another
+public opinion which was deeply prejudiced against their
+faith, and almost entirely removed from their influence.
+Compare the twenty years before the Union with the
+twenty years that followed it, and the change is sufficiently
+manifest. There can scarcely be a question that if Lord
+Fitzwilliam had remained in office the Irish Parliament would
+readily have given emancipation. In the United Parliament
+for many years it was obstinately rejected, and if O'Connell
+had never arisen it would probably never have been granted
+unqualified by the veto. In 1828 when the question was
+brought forward in Parliament, sixty-one out of ninety-three
+Irish members, forty-five out of sixty-one Irish county
+members, voted in its favour. Year after year Grattan and
+Plunket brought forward the case of their fellow-countrymen
+with an eloquence and a perseverance worthy of their
+great cause; but year after year they were defeated. It was
+not till the great tribune had arisen, till he had moulded
+his co-religionists into one compact and threatening mass,
+and had brought the country to the verge of revolution,
+that the tardy boon was conceded. Eloquence and argument
+proved alike unavailing when unaccompanied by
+menace, and Catholic Emancipation was confessedly granted
+because to withhold it would be to produce a rebellion.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34" /><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+<p>Many people will think that this is a sufficiently weighty
+condemnation of the Union, but what follows is a still
+graver reflection on that untoward measure.<!-- Page 173 --><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;In truth the harmonious co-operation of Ireland with
+England depends much less upon the framework of the
+institutions of the former country than upon the dispositions
+of its people and upon the classes who guide its
+political life. With a warm and loyal attachment to the
+connection pervading the nation, the largest amount of self-government
+might be safely conceded, and the most defective
+political arrangement might prove innocuous. This is the
+true cement of nations, and no change, however plausible
+in theory, can be really advantageous which contributes to
+diminish it. Theorists may argue that it would be better for
+Ireland to become in every respect a province of England;
+they may contend that a union of Legislatures, accompanied
+by a corresponding fusion of characters and identification
+of hopes, interests, and desires, would strengthen
+the empire; but as a matter of fact this was not what was
+effected in 1800. The measure of Pitt centralized, but it
+did not unite, or rather, by uniting the Legislatures it
+divided the nations. In a country where the sentiment
+of nationality was as intense as in any part of Europe, it
+destroyed the national Legislature contrary to the manifest
+wish of the people, and by means so corrupt, treacherous,
+and shameful that they are never likely to be forgotten.
+In a country where, owing to the religious difference, it was
+peculiarly necessary that a vigorous lay public opinion
+should be fostered to dilute or restrain the sectarian spirit,
+it suppressed the centre and organ of political life, directed
+the energies of the community into the channels of sectarianism,
+drove its humours inwards, and thus began a
+perversion of public opinion which has almost destroyed
+the elements of political progress. In a country where the
+people have always been singularly destitute of self-reliance,
+and at the same time eminently faithful to their leaders, it
+withdrew the guidance of affairs from the hands of the
+resident gentry, and, by breaking their power, prepared the
+<!-- Page 174 --><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" />ascendency of the demagogue or the rebel. In two plain
+ways it was dangerous to the connection: it incalculably
+increased the aggregate disloyalty of the people, and it
+destroyed the political supremacy of the class that is
+most attached to the connection. The Irish Parliament,
+with all its faults, was an eminently loyal body. The Irish
+people through the eighteenth century, in spite of great
+provocations, were on the whole a loyal people till the recall
+of Lord Fitzwilliam, and even then a few very moderate
+measures of reform might have reclaimed them. Burke,
+in his <i>Letters on a Regicide Peace</i>, when reviewing the
+elements of strength on which England could confide in her
+struggle with revolutionary France, placed in the very first
+rank the co-operation of Ireland. At the present day, it
+is to be feared that most impartial men would regard
+Ireland, in the event of a great European war, rather as
+a source of weakness than of strength. More than seventy
+years have passed since the boasted measure of Pitt, and
+it is unfortunately incontestable that the lower orders in
+Ireland are as hostile to the system of government under
+which they live as the Hungarian people have ever been to
+Austrian, or the Roman to Papal rule; that Irish disloyalty is
+multiplying enemies of England wherever the English tongue
+is spoken; and that the national sentiment runs so strongly
+that multitudes of Irish Catholics look back with deep
+affection to the Irish Parliament, although no Catholic could
+sit within its walls, and although it was only during the last
+seven years of its independent existence that Catholics
+could vote for its members. Among the opponents of the
+Union were many of the most loyal, as well as nearly all
+the ablest men in Ireland; and Lord Charlemont, who died
+shortly before the measure was consummated, summed up
+the feelings of many in the emphatic sentence with which
+he protested against it. 'It would more than any other
+measure,' he said, 'contribute to the separation of two
+<!-- Page 175 --><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" />countries the perpetual connection of which is one of the
+warmest wishes of my heart.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In fact, the Union of 1800 was not only a great crime,
+but was also, like most crimes, a great blunder. The manner
+in which it was carried was not only morally scandalous;
+it also entirely vitiated it as a work of statesmanship. No
+great political measure can be rationally judged upon its
+abstract merits, and without considering the character and
+the wishes of the people for whom it is intended. It is now
+idle to discuss what might have been the effect of a Union
+if it had been carried before 1782, when the Parliament
+was still unemancipated; if it had been the result of a
+spontaneous movement of public opinion; if it had been
+accompanied by the emancipation of the Catholics. Carried
+as it was prematurely, in defiance of the national sentiment
+of the people and of the protests of the unbribed talent
+of the country, it has deranged the whole course of political
+development, driven a large proportion of the people into
+sullen disloyalty, and almost destroyed healthy public
+opinion. In comparing the abundance of political talent
+in Ireland during the last century with the striking absence
+of it at present, something no doubt may be attributed to
+the absence of protection for literary property in Ireland
+in the former period, which may have directed an unusual
+portion of the national talent to politics, and something
+to the Colonial and Indian careers which have of late years
+been thrown open to competition; but when all due allowances
+have been made for these, the contrast is sufficiently
+impressive. Few impartial men can doubt that the tone
+of political life and the standard of political talent have been
+lowered, while sectarian animosity has been greatly increased,
+and the extent to which Fenian principles have permeated
+the people is a melancholy comment upon the prophesies
+that the Union would put an end to disloyalty in Ireland.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35" /><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a><!-- Page 176 --><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" /></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lecky's views as to what ought to have been
+done in 1800 deserve to be set forth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;While, however, the Irish policy of Pitt appears to
+be both morally and politically deserving of almost unmitigated
+condemnation, I cannot agree with those who believe
+that the arrangement of 1782 could have been permanent.
+The Irish Parliament would doubtless have been in time reformed,
+but it would have soon found its situation intolerable.
+Imperial policy must necessarily have been settled by
+the Imperial Parliament, in which Ireland had no voice; and,
+unlike Canada or Australia, Ireland is profoundly affected by
+every change of Imperial policy. Connection with England
+was of overwhelming importance to the lesser country, while
+the tie uniting them would have been found degrading by
+one nation and inconvenient to the other. Under such
+circumstances a Union of some kind was inevitable. It
+was simply a question of time, and must have been demanded
+by Irish opinion. At the same time, it would not,
+I think, have been such a Union as that of 1800. The
+conditions of Irish and English politics are so extremely
+different, and the reasons for preserving in Ireland a local
+centre of political life are so powerful, that it is probable
+a Federal Union would have been preferred. Under such
+a system the Irish Parliament would have continued to
+exist, but would have been restricted to purely local subjects,
+while an Imperial Parliament, in which Irish representatives
+sat, would have directed the policy of the
+empire.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36" /><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>MR. GOLDWIN SMITH.</p>
+
+<p>None of the recent opponents of Home Rule have
+written against that policy with more brilliance and epigrammatic
+keenness than Mr. Goldwin Smith. But no one
+<!-- Page 177 --><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" />has stated with more force the facts and considerations
+which, operating on men's mind for years past, have made
+the Liberal party Home Rulers now. His <i>coup d'oeil</i>
+remains the most pointed indictment ever drawn from the
+historical annals of Ireland against the English methods
+of governing that country. Twenty years ago he anticipated
+the advice recently given by Mr. Gladstone. In 1867 he
+wrote:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have myself sought and found in the study of Irish
+history the explanation of the paradox, that a people with so
+many gifts, so amiable, naturally so submissive to rulers, and
+everywhere but in their own country industrious, are in
+their own country bywords of idleness, lawlessness, disaffection,
+and agrarian crime.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37" /><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> He explains the paradox thus:
+&quot;But it is difficult to distinguish the faults of the Irish from
+their misfortunes. It has been well said of their past industrial
+character and history,&mdash;'We were reckless, ignorant,
+improvident, drunken, and idle. We were idle, for we had
+nothing to do; we were reckless, for we had no hope; we
+were ignorant, for learning was denied us; we were improvident,
+for we had no future; we were drunken, for we
+sought to forget our misery. That time has passed away
+for ever.' No part of this defence is probably more true
+than that which connects the drunkenness of the Irish
+people with their misery. Drunkenness is, generally speaking,
+the vice of despair; and it springs from the despair of
+the Irish peasant as rankly as from that of his English fellow.
+The sums of money which have lately been transmitted by
+Irish emigrants to their friends in Ireland seem a conclusive
+answer to much loose denunciation of the national character,
+both in a moral and an industrial point of view.... There
+seems no good reason for believing that the Irish Kelts are
+averse to labour, provided they be placed, as people of all
+races require to be placed, for two or three generations in
+<!-- Page 178 --><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" />circumstances favourable to industry.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38" /><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> He shows that
+the Irish have not been so placed. &quot;Still more does
+justice require that allowance should be made on historical
+grounds for the failings of the Irish people. If they are
+wanting in industry, in regard for the rights of property, in
+reverence for the law, history furnishes a full explanation
+of their defects, without supposing in them any inherent
+depravity, or even any inherent weakness. They have
+never had the advantage of the training through which
+other nations have passed in their gradual rise from barbarism
+to civilization. The progress of the Irish people
+was arrested at almost a primitive stage, and a series of
+calamities, following close upon each other, have prevented
+it from ever fairly resuming its course. The pressure of
+overwhelming misery has now been reduced; government
+has become mild and just; the civilizing agency of education
+has been introduced; the upper classes are rapidly returning
+to their duty, and the natural effect is at once seen
+in the improved character of the people. Statesmen are
+bound to be well acquainted with the historical sources
+of the evil with which they have to deal, especially when
+those evils are of such a nature as, at first aspect, to imply
+depravity in a nation. There are still speakers and writers
+who seem to think that the Irish are incurably vicious,
+because the accumulated effects of so many centuries
+cannot be removed at once by a wave of the legislator's
+wand. Some still believe, or affect to believe, that the
+very air of the island is destructive of the characters and
+understandings of all who breathe it.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39" /><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere he adds, referring to the land system:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How many centuries of a widely different training
+have the English people gone through in order to acquire
+their boasted love of law.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40" /><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 179 --><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" />Of the &quot;training&quot; through which the Irish went, he
+says&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The existing settlement of land in Ireland, whether
+dating from the confiscations of the Stuarts, or from
+those of Cromwell, rests on a proscription three or four
+times as long as that on which the settlement of land
+rests over a considerable part of France. It may, therefore,
+be considered as placed upon discussion in the estimation
+of all sane men; and, this being the case, it is safe to
+observe that no inherent want of respect for property is
+shown by the Irish people if a proprietorship which had its
+origin within historical memory in flagrant wrong is less
+sacred in their eyes than it would be if it had its origin in
+immemorial right.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41" /><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>The character which he gives of Irish landlordism
+deserves to be quoted:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Cromwellian landowners soon lost their religious
+character, while they retained all the hardness of the fanatic
+and the feelings of Puritan conquerors towards a conquered
+Catholic people. 'I have eaten with them,' said one, 'drunk
+with them, fought with them; but I never prayed with them.'
+Their descendants became, probably, the very worst upper
+class with which a country was ever afflicted. The habits of
+the Irish gentry grew beyond measure brutal and reckless, and
+the coarseness of their debaucheries would have disgusted
+the crew of Comus. Their drunkenness, their blasphemy,
+their ferocious duelling, left the squires of England far
+behind. If there was a grotesque side to their vices which
+mingles laughter with our reprobation, this did not render
+their influence less pestilent to the community of which the
+motive of destiny had made them social chiefs. Fortunately,
+their recklessness was sure, in the end, to work, to
+a certain extent, its own cure; and in the background of
+<!-- Page 180 --><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />their swinish and uproarious drinking-bouts, the Encumbered
+Estates Act rises to our view.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42" /><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goldwin Smith deals with agrarian crime thus:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The atrocities perpetrated by the Whiteboys, especially
+in the earlier period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew
+somewhat less inhuman), are such as to make the flesh creep.
+No language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of
+such a state of society. But it would be unjust to confound
+these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose
+that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either
+on the part of those who commit them, or on the part of the
+people who connive at and favour their commission. In
+the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were
+most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small.
+In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 crimes, 627 were Whiteboy,
+or agrarian, and even of the remainder, many, being crimes
+of violence, were probably committed from the same motive.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered
+the Whiteboy code were to the people the organs of a wild
+law of social morality by which, on the whole, the interest
+of the peasant was protected. They were not regular
+tribunals; neither were the secret tribunals of Germany in
+the Middle Ages, the existence of which, and the submission
+of the people to their jurisdiction, implied the
+presence of much violence, but not of much depravity, considering
+the wildness of the times. The Whiteboys 'found
+in their favour already existing a general and settled hatred
+of the law among the great body of the peasantry.'<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43" /><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> We
+have seen how much the law, and the ministers of the law,
+had done to deserve the peasant's love. We have seen,
+too, in what successive guises property had presented itself
+to his mind: first as open rapine; then as robbery carried
+on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code; finally
+<!-- Page 181 --><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" />as legalized and systematic oppression. Was it possible
+that he should have formed so affectionate a reverence
+either for law or property as would be proof against the
+pressure of starvation?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44" /><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> &quot;A people cannot be expected
+to love and reverence oppression because it is consigned to
+the statute-book, and called law.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45" /><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p>
+
+<p>These extracts are taken from <i>Irish History and Irish
+Character</i>, which was published in 1861. But in 1867 Mr.
+Goldwin Smith wrote a series of letters to the <i>Daily News</i>,
+which were republished in 1868 under the title of <i>The Irish
+Question</i>; and these letters form, perhaps, the most statesmanlike
+and far-seeing pronouncement that has ever been
+made on the Irish difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>In the preface Mr. Goldwin Smith begins:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Irish legislation of the last forty years, notwithstanding
+the adoption of some remedial measures, has failed
+through the indifference of Parliament to the sentiments
+of Irishmen; and the harshness of English public opinion
+has embittered the effects on Irish feeling of the indifference
+of Parliament. Occasionally a serious effort has been made
+by an English statesman to induce Parliament to approach
+Irish questions in that spirit of sympathy, and with that
+anxious desire to be just, without which a Parliament in
+London cannot legislate wisely for Ireland. Such efforts
+have hitherto met with no response; is it too much to hope
+that it will be otherwise in the year now opening?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46" /><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>The only comment I shall make on these words is: they
+were penned more than half a century after Mr. Pitt's
+Union, which was to shower down blessings on the Irish
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goldwin Smith's first letter was written on the 23rd of
+November, 1867, the day of the execution of the Fenians
+Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien. He says&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<!-- Page 182 --><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" />There can be no doubt, I apprehend, that the Irish
+difficulty has entered on a new phase, and that Irish disaffection
+has, to repeat an expression which I heard used in Ireland,
+come fairly into a line with the other discontented nationalities
+of Europe. Active Fenianism probably pervades only
+the lowest class; passive sympathy, which the success of the
+movement would at once convert into active co-operation,
+extends, it is to be feared, a good deal higher.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;England has ruin before her, unless she can hit on a
+remedy, and overcome any obstacles of class interest or of
+national pride which would prevent its application, the part
+of Russia in Poland, or of Austria in Italy&mdash;a part cruel,
+hateful, demoralizing, contrary to all our high principles and
+professions, and fraught with dangers to our own freedom.
+Our position will be worse than that of Russia in this
+respect, that, while her Poland is only a province, our
+Fenianism is an element pervading every city of the United
+Kingdom in which Irish abound, and allying itself with
+kindred misery, discontent, and disorder. Wretchedness,
+the result of misgovernment, has caused the Irish people to
+multiply with the recklessness of despair, and now here are
+their avenging hosts in the midst of us, here is the poison of
+their disaffection running through every member of our
+social frame. Not only so, but the same wretchedness has
+sent millions of emigrants to form an Irish nation in the
+United States, where the Irish are a great political power,
+swaying by their votes the councils of the American
+Republic, and in immediate contact with those Transatlantic
+possessions of England, the retention of which
+it is now patriotic to applaud, and will one day be patriotic
+to have dissuaded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot; ... That Ireland is not at this moment, materially
+speaking, in a particularly suffering state, but, on the contrary,
+the farmers are rather prosperous, and wages, even
+when allowance is made for the rise in the price of provi<!-- Page 183 --><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" />sions,
+considerably higher than they were, only adds to the
+significance of this widespread disaffection.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Fenian movement is not religious, nor radically
+economical (though no doubt it has in it a socialistic
+element), but national, and the remedy for it must be one
+which cures national discontent. This is the great truth
+which the English people have to lay to heart.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47" /><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goldwin Smith then dispels the notion that the Irish
+question is a religious one.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When Fenianism first appeared, the Orangemen, in
+accordance with their fixed idea, ascribed it to the priests.
+They were undeceived, I was told, by seeing a priest run
+away from the Fenians in fear of his life.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48" /><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p>
+
+<p>Neither was it a question of the land.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The land question, no doubt, lies nearer to the heart
+of the matter, and it is the great key to Irish history in
+the past; but I do not believe that even this is fundamental.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He then states what is &quot;fundamental.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49" /><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;The real root of the disaffection which exhibits itself at
+present in the guise of Fenianism, and which has been
+suddenly kindled into flame by the arming of the Irish in
+the American civil war, but which existed before in a
+nameless and smouldering state, is, as I believe, the want of
+national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects
+of national reverence and attachment, and consequently of
+anything deserving to be called national life. The English
+Crown and Parliament the Irish have never learnt, nor have
+they had any chance of learning, to love, or to regard as
+national, notwithstanding the share which was given them,
+too late, in the representation. The greatness of England
+is nothing to them. Her history is nothing, or worse. The
+success of Irishmen in London consoles the Irish in
+Ireland no more than the success of Italian adventurers in
+<!-- Page 184 --><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" />foreign countries (which was very remarkable) consoled the
+Italian people. The drawing off of Irish talent, in fact,
+turns to an additional grievance in their minds. Dublin is
+a modern Tara, a metropolis from which the glory has
+departed; and the viceroyalty, though it pleases some of
+the tradesmen, fails altogether to satisfy the people. 'In
+Ireland we can make no appeal to patriotism, we can have
+no patriotic sentiments in our schoolbooks, no patriotic
+emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything
+patriotic is rebellious.' These were the words uttered in
+my hearing, not by a complaining demagogue, but by a
+desponding statesman. They seemed to me pregnant with
+fatal truths.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If the craving for national institutions, and the disaffection
+bred in this void of the Irish people's heart, seem to us
+irrational and even insane, in the absence of any more
+substantial grievance, we ought to ask ourselves what
+would become of our own patriotism if we had no national
+institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence,
+even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in
+intention, by a neighbouring people whom we regarded as
+aliens, and who, in fact, regarded us pretty much in the
+same light. Let us first judge ourselves fairly, and then
+judge the Irish, remembering always that they are more
+imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of
+national feeling and affection more than ourselves.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50" /><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<p>And all this was written sixty-seven years after the
+Union of 1800.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goldwin Smith then deals with the subject of the
+Irish and Scotch unions much in the same way as Mr.
+Lecky.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The incorporation of the Scotch nation with the
+English, being conducted on the right principles by the
+great Whig statesman of Anne, has been perfectly success<!-- Page 185 --><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />ful.
+The attempt to incorporate the Irish nation with the
+English and Scotch, the success of which would have been,
+if possible, a still greater blessing, being conducted by very
+different people and on very different principles, has unhappily
+failed. What might have been the result if even the
+Hanoverian sovereigns had done the personal duty to their
+Irish kingdom which they have unfortunately neglected, it
+is now too late to inquire. The Irish Union has missed its
+port, and, in order to reach it, will have to tack again. We
+may hold down a dependency, of course, by force, in
+Russian and Austrian fashion; but force will never make
+the hearts of two nations one, especially when they are
+divided by the sea. Once get rid of this deadly international
+hatred, and there will be hope of real union in
+the future.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51" /><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goldwin Smith finally proposes a &quot;plan&quot; by which
+the &quot;deadly international hatred&quot; might be got rid of, and
+a &quot;real union&quot; brought about. Here it is.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;1. The residence of the Court at Dublin, not merely
+to gratify the popular love of royalty and its pageantries,
+which no man of sense desires to stimulate, but to assure
+the Irish people, in the only way possible as regards the
+mass of them, that the sovereign of the United Kingdom is
+really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for
+and honoured with the other subjects of the realm. This
+would also tend to make Dublin a real capital, and to
+gather and retain there a portion of the Irish talent which
+now seeks its fortune elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;2. An occasional session (say once in every three years)
+of the Imperial Parliament in Dublin, partly for the same
+purposes as the last proposal, but also because the circumstances
+of Ireland are likely to be, for some time at least,
+really peculiar, and the personal acquaintance of our legislators
+with them is the only sufficient security for good Irish
+<!-- Page 186 --><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" />legislation. There could be no serious difficulty in holding
+a short session in the Irish capital, where there is plenty of
+accommodation for both Houses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;3. A liberal measure of local self-government for
+Ireland. I would not vest the power in any single assembly
+for all Ireland, because Ulster is really a different country
+from the other provinces. I would give each province a
+council of its own, and empower that council to legislate
+(subject, of course, to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament)
+on all matters not essential to the political and
+legal unity of the empire, in which I would include local
+education. The provincial councils should of course be
+elective, and the register of electors might be the same as
+that of electors to the Imperial Parliament. In England
+itself the extension of local institutions, as political training
+schools for the masses, as checks upon the sweeping action
+of the great central assembly, and as the best organs of
+legislation in all matters requiring (as popular education,
+among others, does) adaptation to the circumstances of particular
+districts, would, I think, have formed a part of any
+statesmanlike revision of our political system. Here, also,
+much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing
+the present business of quarter sessions, other than
+the judicial business, together with such other matters as
+the central legislative might think fit to vest in local hands,
+to an assembly elected by the county.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52" /><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+<p>Thus it will be seen that twenty years ago Mr. Goldwin
+Smith anticipated Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of provincial
+councils, and got a good way on the road to an Irish
+Parliament.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>MR. DICEY.</p>
+
+<p>A fairer controversalist, or an abler supporter of the
+&quot;paper Union,&quot; than Mr. Dicey there is not; nevertheless
+<!-- Page 187 --><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" />no man has fired more effective shots into Mr. Pitt's
+unfortunate arrangement of 1800.</p>
+
+<p>How well has the &quot;failure&quot; of that arrangement been
+described in these pithy sentences&mdash;&quot;Eighty-six years have
+elapsed since the conclusion of the Treaty of Union between
+England and Ireland. The two countries do not yet form
+an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more
+wretched (for the whole European world has made progress,
+and Ireland with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness,
+and Irish disaffection to England is, if not deeper, more
+widespread than in 1800. An Act meant by its authors to
+be a source of the prosperity and concord which, though
+slowly, followed upon the Union with Scotland, has not
+made Ireland rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness,
+has not terminated the feud between Protestants and
+Catholics, has not raised the position of Irish tenants, has
+not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and has,
+therefore, not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment
+which can fairly be brought against the Act of
+Union.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53" /><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
+
+<p>What follows reflects honour on Mr. Dicey as an honest
+opponent who does not shrink from facts; but what
+a wholesale condemnation of the policy of the Imperial
+Parliament!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On one point alone (it may be urged) all men, of whatever
+party or of whatever nation, who have seriously studied the
+annals of Ireland are agreed&mdash;the history is a record of incessant
+failure on the part of the Government, and of incessant
+misery on the part of the people. On this matter, if on no
+other, De Beaumont, Froude, and Lecky are at one. As to
+the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may
+and do differ; that England, whether from her own fault
+or the fault of the Irish people, or from perversity of circumstances,
+has failed in Ireland of achieving the elemen<!-- Page 188 --><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" />tary
+results of good government is as certain as any fact of
+history or of experience. Every scheme has been tried in
+turn, and no scheme has succeeded or has even, it may be
+suggested, produced its natural effects. Oppression of the
+Catholics has increased the adherents and strengthened the
+hold of Catholicism. Protestant supremacy, while it lasted,
+did not lead even to Protestant contentment, and the one
+successful act of resistance to the English dominion was
+effected by a Protestant Parliament supported by an army
+of volunteers, led by a body of Protestant officers. The
+independence gained by a Protestant Parliament led, after
+eighteen years, to a rebellion so reckless and savage that it
+caused, if it did not justify, the destruction of the Parliament
+and the carrying of the Union. The Act of Union did not
+lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on
+the face of it (though the appearance, it must be admitted,
+was delusive) to be a copy of the law which bound England
+and Scotland into a common country inspired by common
+patriotism, produced conspiracy and agitation, and at last
+placed England and Ireland further apart, morally, than
+they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of
+Union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not
+combined with Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were
+emancipated, but emancipation, instead of producing
+loyalty, brought forth the cry for repeal. The Repeal movement
+ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the
+attempted rebellion in 1848. Suppressed rebellion begot
+Fenianism, to be followed in its turn by the agitation for
+Home Rule. The movement relies, it is said, and there is
+truth in the assertion, on constitutional methods for obtaining
+redress. But constitutional measures are supplemented by
+boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of dynamite. A
+century of reform has given us Mr. Parnell instead of
+Grattan, and it is more than possible that Mr. Parnell may
+be succeeded by leaders in whose eyes Mr. Davitt's policy
+<!-- Page 189 --><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" />may appear to be tainted with moderation. No doubt, in
+each case the failure of good measures admits, like every
+calamity in public or private life, of explanation, and after
+the event it is easy to see why, for example, the Poor Law,
+when extended to Ireland, did not produce even the good
+effects such as they are which in England are to be set against
+its numerous evils; or why an emigration of unparalleled
+proportions has diminished population without much diminishing
+poverty; why the disestablishment of the Anglican
+Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to
+England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts
+have not contented Irish farmers. It is easy enough, in
+short, and this without having any recourse to theory of
+race, and without attributing to Ireland either more or less
+of original sin than falls to the lot of humanity, to see how
+it is that imperfect statesmanship&mdash;and all statesmanship, it
+should be remembered, is imperfect&mdash;has failed in obtaining
+good results at all commensurate with its generally good
+intentions. Failure, however, is none the less failure because
+its causes admit of analysis. It is no defence to
+bankruptcy that an insolvent can, when brought before the
+Court, lucidly explain the errors which resulted in disastrous
+speculations. The failure of English statesmanship, explain
+it as you will, has produced the one last and greatest evil
+which misgovernment can cause. It has created hostility to
+the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work
+in Ireland because the classes whose opinion in other
+countries supports the actions of the courts, are in Ireland,
+even when not law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54" /><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+<p>No Home Ruler has described the evils of English misrule
+in Ireland with such vigour as this.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bad administration, religious persecution, above all, a
+thoroughly vicious land tenure, accompanied by such sweep<!-- Page 190 --><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" />ing
+confiscations as to make it, at any rate, a plausible assertion
+that all land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history
+been confiscated at least thrice over, are admittedly some of
+the causes, if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one
+immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy of England.
+This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the
+law of the land prevailing among large numbers of Irish
+people. The existence of this disaffection, whatever be the
+inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. A series of
+so-called Coercion Acts, passed both before and since the
+Act of Union, give undeniable evidence, if evidence were
+wanted, of the ceaseless and, as it would appear, almost
+irrepressible resistance in Ireland offered by the people
+to the enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest
+inclination to underrate the lasting and formidable character
+of this opposition between opinion and law, nor can any
+jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious and
+infinitely painful topic, question for a moment that the
+ultimate strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at the
+lowest the acquiescence, of the mass of the population.
+Judges, constables, and troops become almost powerless
+when the conscience of the people permanently opposes
+the execution of the law. Severity produces either no effect
+or bad effects; executed criminals are regarded as heroes
+or martyrs; and jurymen and witnesses meet with the
+execration and often with the fate of criminals. On such
+a point it is best to take the opinion of a foreigner unaffected
+by prejudices or passions from which no Englishman
+or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Quand vous en &ecirc;tes arro&ecirc;s &agrave; ce point, croyez bien que
+dans cette voie de regueurs tous vos efforts pour r&eacute;tabler
+l'ordre et la paix seront inutiles. En vain, pour r&eacute;primer
+des crimes atroces, vous appellerez &agrave; votre aide toutes les
+s&eacute;v&eacute;rit&eacute;s du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez des lois
+cruelles pour arr&ecirc;ter le cours de r&eacute;voltantes cruaut&eacute;s; vaine<!-- Page 191 --><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" />ment
+vous frapperez de mort le moindre d&eacute;lit se rattachant
+&agrave; ces grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre
+impuissance, vous suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaries
+proclamerez des comt&eacute;s entiers en &eacute;tat de suspicion l&eacute;gale,
+voilerez le principe de la libert&eacute; individuelle, cr&eacute;erez des
+cours martiales, des commissions extraordinaires, et pour
+produire de salutaires impressions de terreur, multiplierez &agrave;
+l'exc&egrave;s les ex&eacute;cutions capitales.'&quot;<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55" /><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
+
+<p>The next passage is a trenchant condemnation of the
+&quot;Union.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There exists in Europe no country so completely at
+unity with itself as Great Britain. Fifty years of reform
+have done their work, and have removed the discontents,
+the divisions, the disaffection, and the conspiracies which
+marked the first quarter, or the first half of this century.
+Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the force,
+consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and
+community of interests. The distraction and the uncertainty
+of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency
+with which they are pursued, arise, in part at least, from
+the connection with Ireland. Neither Englishmen nor Irishmen
+are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for communities
+differing in historical associations and in political
+conceptions to keep step together in the path of progress.
+For other evils arising from the connection the blame must
+rest on English Statesmen. All the inherent vices of party
+government, all the weaknesses of the parliamentary system,
+all the evils arising from the perverse notion that reform
+ought always to be preceded by a period of lengthy and
+more than half factitious agitation met by equally factitious
+resistance, have been fostered and increased by the interaction
+of Irish and English politics. No one can believe
+that the inveterate habit of ruling one part of the United
+<!-- Page 192 --><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" />Kingdom on principles which no one would venture to
+apply to the government of any other part of it, can have
+produced anything but the most injurious effect on the
+stability of our Government and the character of our public
+men. The advocates of Home Rule find by far their
+strongest arguments for influencing English opinion, in the
+proofs which they produce that England, no less than
+Ireland, has suffered from a political arrangement under
+which legal union has failed to secure moral union.
+<i>These arguments, whatever their strength, are, however, it
+must be noted, more available to a Nationalist than to an
+advocate of federalism</i>.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56" /><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p>The words which I have italicised are an expression of
+opinion; but nothing can alter the damning statement of
+fact&mdash;&quot;legal union has failed to secure moral union.&quot; Nevertheless,
+Mr. Dicey advocates the maintenance of this legal
+union as it stands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On the whole, then, it appears that, whatever changes
+or calamities the future may have in store, the maintenance
+of the Union is at this day the one sound policy for England
+to pursue. It is sound because it is expedient; it is sound
+because it is just.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57" /><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>I shall not discuss the question of Home Rule with the
+eminent writers whose works I have cited. It is enough
+that they demonstrate the failure of the Union. So convinced
+was Mr. Lecky, in 1871, of its failure, that he
+suggested a readjustment of the relations of the two countries
+on a federal basis;<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58" /><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> and Mr. Goldwin Smith, in 1868, contended
+that the Irish difficulty could only be settled by the
+establishment of Provincial Councils, and an occasional
+<!-- Page 193 --><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />session of the Imperial Parliament in Dublin. Mr. Dicey
+clings to the existing Union while demonstrating its failure,
+because he has persuaded himself that the only alternative
+is separation.</p>
+
+<p>Irishmen may be pardoned for acting on Mr. Dicey's
+facts, and disregarding his prophecies. The mass of Irishmen
+believe, with Grattan, that the ocean protests against
+separation as the sea protests against such a union as was
+attempted in 1800.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59" /><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26" /><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Omissions here and elsewhere are merely for purposes of space.
+In some places the omitted parts would strengthen the Irish case; in
+no place would they weaken it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27" /><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Lecky, <i>Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland</i>, new edit. (1871),
+Introduction, pp. viii., xiv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28" /><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Lecky, <i>Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland</i>, new edit. (1871),
+Introduction, pp. xiv., xv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29" /><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Lecky, <i>History of England in the Eighteenth Century</i>, vol. ii.
+pp. 59, 60.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30" /><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 33, 34.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31" /><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 120-123.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32" /><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 125, 126.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33" /><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 34-37.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34" /><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 134-137.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35" /><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 192-195.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36" /><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i>, pp. 195, 196.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37" /><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Goldwin Smith, <i>Three English Statesmen</i>, p. 274.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38" /><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>Irish History and Irish Character</i>, pp. 13, 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39" /><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Ibid., p. 194.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40" /><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Ibid., p. 142.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41" /><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Irish History and Irish Character</i>, p. 101.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42" /><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> <i>Irish History and Irish Character</i>, pp. 139, 140.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43" /><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Sir George Cornewall Lewis, <i>Irish Disturbances</i>, p. 97.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44" /><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>Irish History and Irish Character</i>, pp. 153-157.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45" /><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Ibid., pp. 70, 71</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46" /><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>The Irish Question</i>, Preface, pp. iii., iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47" /><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <i>The Irish Question</i>, pp. 3-5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48" /><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Ibid., p. 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49" /><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Ibid., p. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50" /><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>The Irish Question</i>, pp. 7-9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51" /><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>Irish Question</i>, p. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52" /><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> <i>The Irish Question</i>, pp. 16-18.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53" /><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Dicey, <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>, p. 128.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54" /><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Dicey, <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>, pp. 72-74.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55" /><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Dicey, <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>, pp. 92-94.&mdash;The
+foreigner is De Beaumont.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56" /><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> Dicey, <i>England's Case against Home Rule</i>, pp. 151, 152.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57" /><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Ibid., p. 288.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58" /><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> I hope I am not doing Mr. Lecky an injustice in this statement.
+I rely on the extract quoted from the <i>Leaders of Public Opinion in
+Ireland,</i> at p. 176 of this volume; but see Introduction, p. xix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59" /><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Irish House of Commons, January 15th, 1800.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IRELANDS_ALTERNATIVES" id="IRELANDS_ALTERNATIVES" /><!-- Page 194 --><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES.</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY LORD THRING.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60" /><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>Ireland is a component member of the most complex
+political body the world has yet known; any inquiry, then,
+into the fitness of any particular form of government for
+that country involves an investigation of the structures of
+various composite nations, or nations made up of numerous
+political communities more or less differing from each other.
+From the examination of the nature of the common tie, and
+the circumstances which caused it to be adopted or imposed
+on the component peoples, we cannot but derive instruction,
+and be furnished with materials which will enable us to take
+a wide view of the question of Home Rule, and assist us in
+judging between the various remedies proposed for the cure
+of Irish disorders.</p>
+
+<p>The nature of the ties which bind, or have bound, the
+principal composite nations of the world together may be
+classified as&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+1. Confederate unions.<br />
+2. Federal unions.<br />
+3. Imperial unions.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>A confederate union may be defined to mean an alliance
+between the governments of independent States, which
+agree to appoint a common superior authority having power
+<!-- Page 195 --><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" />to make peace and war and to demand contributions of men
+and money from the confederate States. Such superior
+authority has no power of enforcing its decrees except
+through the medium of the governments of the constituent
+States; or, in other words, in case of disobedience, by
+armed force.</p>
+
+<p>A federal union differs from a confederate union in the
+material fact that the common superior authority, instead
+of acting on the individual subjects of the constituent States
+through the medium of their respective governments, has a
+power, in respect of all matters within its jurisdiction, of
+enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding directly
+on the individual citizens.</p>
+
+<p>The distinguishing characteristics of an imperial union
+are, that it consists of an aggregate of communities, one of
+which is dominant, and that the component communities
+have been brought into association, not by arrangement
+between themselves, but by colonization, cession, and by
+other means emanating from the resources or power of the
+dominant community.</p>
+
+<p>The above-mentioned distinction between a Government
+having communities only for its subjects, and incapable
+of enforcing its orders by any other means than
+war, and a Government acting directly on individuals, must
+be constantly borne in mind, for in this lies the whole
+difference between a confederate and federal union; that is
+to say, between a confederacy which, in the case of the
+United States, lasted a few short years, and a federal union
+which, with the same people as subjects, has lasted nearly
+a century, and has stood the strain of the most terrible war
+of modern times.</p>
+
+<p>The material features of the Constitution of the United
+States have been explained in a previous article.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61" /><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> All that
+<!-- Page 196 --><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" />is necessary to call to mind here is, that the Government of
+the United States exercises a power of taxation throughout
+the whole Union by means of its own officers, and enforces
+its decrees through the medium of its own Courts. A
+Supreme Court has also been established, which has power
+to adjudicate on the constitutionality of all laws passed by
+the Legislature of the United States, or of any State, and to
+decide on all international questions.</p>
+
+<p>Switzerland was till 1848 an example of a confederate
+union or league of semi-independent States, which, unlike
+other confederacies, had existed with partial interruptions
+for centuries. This unusual vitality is attributed by Mill<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62" /><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a>
+to the circumstance that the confederate government felt
+its weakness so strongly that it hardly ever attempted to
+exercise any real authority. Its present government, finally
+settled in 1874, but based on fundamental laws passed in
+1848, is a federal union formed on the pattern of the
+American Constitution. It consists of a federal assembly
+comprising two Chambers&mdash;the Upper Chamber composed
+of forty-four members chosen by the twenty-two cantons,
+two for each canton; the Lower consisting of 145 members
+chosen by direct election at the rate of one deputy for every
+20,000 persons. The chief executive authority is deputed
+to a federal council consisting of seven members elected for
+three years by the federal assembly, and having at their
+head a president and vice-president, who are the first
+magistrates of the republic. There is also a federal tribunal,
+having similar functions to those of the supreme court
+of the United States of America, consisting of nine members
+elected for six years by the federal assembly.</p>
+
+<p>The Empire of Germany is a federal union, differing
+from the United States and Switzerland in having an hereditary
+emperor as its head. It comprises twenty-six States,
+who have &quot;formed an eternal union for the protection of
+<!-- Page 197 --><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" />the realm, and the care of the welfare of the German
+people.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63" /><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> The King of Prussia, under the title of German
+Emperor, represents the empire in all its relations to foreign
+nations, and has the power of making peace and war, but
+if the war be more than a defensive war he must have
+the assent of the Upper House. The legislative body of
+the empire consists of two Houses&mdash;the Upper, called the
+Bundesrath, representing the several component States in
+different proportions according to their relative importance;
+the lower, the Reichstag, elected by the voters in 397
+electoral districts, which are distributed amongst the constituent
+States in unequal numbers, regard being had to the
+population and circumstances of each State.</p>
+
+<p>The Austro-Hungarian Empire is a federal union, differing
+alike in its origin and construction from the federal
+unions above mentioned. In the beginning Austria and
+Hungary were independent countries&mdash;Austria a despotism,
+Hungary a constitutional monarchy, with ancient laws and
+customs dating back to the foundation of the kingdom in
+895. In the sixteenth century the supreme power in both
+countries&mdash;that is to say, the despotic monarchy in Austria
+and the constitutional monarchy in Hungary&mdash;became
+vested in the same person; as might have been anticipated,
+the union was not a happy one. If we dip into Heeren's
+<i>Political System of Europe</i> at intervals selected almost
+at random, the following notices will be found in relation to
+Austria and Hungary:&mdash;Between 1671 and 1700 &quot;political
+unity in the Austrian monarchy was to have been enforced
+especially in the principal country (Hungary), for this was
+regarded as the sole method of establishing power; the
+consequence was an almost perpetual revolutionary state of
+affairs.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64" /><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> Again, in the next chapter, commenting on the
+period between 1740 and 1786: &quot;Hungary, in fact the
+<!-- Page 198 --><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" />chief, was treated like a conquered province; subjected to
+the most oppressive commercial restraints, it was regarded
+as a colony from which Austria exacted what she could for
+her own advantage. The injurious consequences of this
+internal discord are evident.&quot; Coming to modern times we
+find that oppression followed oppression with sickening
+monotony, and that at last the determination of Austria to
+stamp out the Constitution in Hungary gave rise to the
+insurrection of 1849, which Austria suppressed with the
+assistance of Russia, and as a penalty declared the Hungarian
+Constitution to be forfeited, and thereupon Hungary
+was incorporated with Austria, as Ireland was incorporated
+with Great Britain in 1800. Both events were the consequences
+of unsuccessful rebellions; but the junction which,
+in the case of Hungary, was enforced by the sword, was in
+Ireland more smoothly carried into effect by corruption.
+Hungary, sullen and discontented, waited for Austria's
+calamity as her opportunity, and it came after the battle of
+Sadowa. Austria had just emerged from a fearful conflict,
+and Count Beust<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65" /><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> felt that unless some resolute effort was
+made to meet the views of the constitutional party in Hungary,
+the dismemberment of the empire must be the result.
+Now, what was the course he took? Was it a tightening of
+the bonds between Austria and Hungary? On the contrary,
+to maintain the unity of the empire he dissolved its union
+and restored to Hungary its ancient constitutional privileges.
+Austria and Hungary each had its own Parliament for local
+purposes. To manage the imperial concerns of peace and
+war, and the foreign relations, a controlling body, called the
+Delegations, was established, consisting of 120 members, of
+whom half represent and are chosen by the Legislature of
+Austria, and the other half by that of Hungary; the Upper
+House of each country returning twenty members, and the
+Lower House forty.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66" /><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> Ordinarily the delegates sit and vote
+<!-- Page 199 --><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" />in two Chambers, but if they disagree the two branches
+must meet together and give their final vote without debate,
+which is binding on the whole empire.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67" /><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<p>The question arises, What is the magnetic influence
+which induces communities of men to combine together in
+federal unions? Undoubtedly it is the feeling of nationality;
+and what is nationality? Mr. Mill says,<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68" /><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> &quot;a portion of
+mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they are
+united among themselves by common sympathies which do
+not exist between them and any others; which make them
+co-operate with each other more willingly than other people;
+desire to be under the same government, and desire that it
+should be a government by themselves or a portion of themselves
+exclusively.&quot; He then proceeds to state that the
+feeling of nationality may have been generated by various
+causes. Sometimes it is the identity of race and descent;
+community of language and community of religion greatly
+contribute to it; geographical limits are one of its causes;
+but the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents:
+the possession of a national history and consequent community
+of recollections&mdash;collective pride and humiliation,
+pleasure and regret&mdash;connected with the same incidents in
+the past.</p>
+
+<p>The only point to be noted further in reference to the
+foregoing federal unions, is that the same feeling of nationality
+which, in the United States, Switzerland, and the
+German Empire, produced a closer legal bond of union,
+in the case of Austria-Hungary operated to dissolve the
+amalgamation formed in 1849 of the two States, and to
+produce a federal union of States in place of a single State.</p>
+
+<p>One conclusion seems to follow irresistibly from any
+<!-- Page 200 --><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" />review of the construction of the various States above
+described: that the stability of a nation bears no relation
+whatever to the legal compactness or homogeneity of its
+component parts. Russia and France, the most compact
+political societies in Europe, do not, to say the least, rest on
+a firmer basis than Germany and Switzerland, the inhabitants
+of which are subjected to the obligations of a double
+nationality. Above all, no European nation, except Great
+Britain, can for a moment bear comparison with the United
+States in respect of the devotion of its people to their
+Constitution.</p>
+
+<p>An imperial union, though resembling somewhat in
+outward form a federal union, differs altogether from it both
+in principle and origin. Its essential characteristic is that
+one community is absolutely dominant while all the others
+are subordinate. In the case of a federal union independent
+States have agreed to resign a portion of their powers to a
+central Government for the sake of securing the common
+safety. In an imperial union the dominant or imperial
+State delegates to each constituent member of the union
+such a portion of local government as the dominant State
+considers the subordinate member entitled to, consistently
+with the integrity of the empire. The British Empire
+furnishes the best example of an imperial union now
+existing in the world. Her Majesty, as common head, is
+the one link which binds the empire together and connects
+with each other every constituent member. The Indian
+Empire and certain military dependencies require no
+further notice in these pages; but a summary of our various
+forms of colonial government is required to complete our
+knowledge of the forms of Home Rule possibly applicable
+to Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The colonies, in relation to their forms of government,
+may be classified as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. Crown colonies, in which laws may be made by the<!-- Page 201 --><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" />
+Governor alone, or with the concurrence of a Council
+nominated by the Crown.</p>
+
+<p>2. Colonies possessing representative institutions, but
+not responsible government, in which the Crown has only a
+veto on legislation, but the Home Government retains the
+control of the executive.</p>
+
+<p>3. Colonies possessing representative institutions and
+responsible government, in which the Crown has only a
+veto on legislation, and the Home Government has no
+control over any public officer except the Governor.</p>
+
+<p>The British Colonial Governments thus present an
+absolute gradation of rule; beginning with absolute
+despotism and ending with almost absolute legal independence,
+except in so far as a veto on legislation and the
+presence of a Governor named by the Crown mark the
+dependence of the colony on the mother country.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be remembered, moreover, that the colonies
+which have received this complete local freedom are the
+great colonies of the earth&mdash;nations themselves possessing
+territories as large or larger than any European State&mdash;namely,
+Canada, the Cape, New South Wales, Victoria,
+Queensland, South Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania.
+And this change from dependence to freedom has been
+effected with the good-will both of the mother country and
+the colony, and without it being imputed to the colonists,
+when desiring a larger measure of self-government, that
+they were separatists, anarchists, or revolutionists.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the general principles of colonial government,
+but one colony requires special mention, from the circumstance
+of its Constitution having been put forward as a
+model for Ireland; this is the Dominion of Canada. The
+Government of Canada is, in effect, a subordinate federal
+union; that is to say, it possesses a central Legislature,
+having the largest possible powers of local self-government
+consistent with the supremacy of the empire, with seven
+<!-- Page 202 --><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />inferior provincial Governments, exercising powers greater
+than those of an English county, but not so great as those
+of an American State. The advantage of such a form of
+government is that, without weakening the supremacy of
+the empire or of the central local power, it admits of considerable
+diversities being made in the details of provincial
+government, where local peculiarities and antecedents
+render it undesirable to make a more complete assimilation
+of the Governments of the various provinces.</p>
+
+<p>Materials have now been collected which will enable
+the reader to judge of the expediency or inexpediency of
+the course taken by Mr. Gladstone's Government in dealing
+with Ireland. Three alternatives were open to them&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+1. To let matters alone.<br />
+2. To pass a Coercion Bill.<br />
+3. To change the government of Ireland, and at<br />
+the same time to pass a Land Bill.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The two last measures are combined under the head of
+one alternative, as it will be shown in the sequel that no
+effective Land Bill can be passed without granting Home
+Rule in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the short answer to the first alternative is, that no
+party in the State&mdash;Conservative, Whig, Radical, Unionist,
+Home Ruler, Parnellite&mdash;thought it possible to leave things
+alone. That something must be done was universally
+admitted.</p>
+
+<p>The second alternative has found favour with the
+present Government, and certainly is a better example of
+the triumph of hope over experience, than even the proverbial
+second marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Eighty-six years have elapsed since the Union. During
+the first thirty-two years only eleven years, and during the
+last fifty-four years only two years have been free from
+special repressive legislation; yet the agitation for repeal of
+the Union, and general discontent, are more violent in<!-- Page 203 --><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" />
+1887 than in any one of the eighty-six previous years. In
+the name of common-sense, is there any reason for supposing
+that the Coercion Bill of 1887 will have a better or
+more enduring effect than its numerous predecessors? The
+<i>prim&acirc; facie</i> case is at all events in favour of the contention
+that, when so many trials of a certain remedy have failed, it
+would be better not to try the same remedy again, but to
+have recourse to some other medicine. What, then, was
+the position of Mr. Gladstone's Government at the close of
+the election of 1885? What were the considerations presented
+to them as supreme supervisors and guardians of
+the British Empire? They found that vast colonial empire
+tranquil and loyal beyond previous expectation&mdash;the greater
+colonies satisfied with their existing position; the lesser
+expecting that as they grew up to manhood they would be
+treated as men, and emancipated from childish restraints.
+The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were contented
+with their sturdy dependent independence, loyal to the
+backbone. One member only stood aloof, sulky and dissatisfied,
+and though in law integrally united with the
+dominant community, practically was dissociated from it by
+forming within Parliament (the controlling body of the
+whole) a separate section, of which the whole aim was to
+fetter the action of the entire supreme body in order to
+bring to an external severance the practical disunion which
+existed between that member and Great Britain. This
+member&mdash;Ireland&mdash;as compared with other parts of the
+empire, was small and insignificant; measured against
+Great Britain, its population was five millions to thirty-one
+millions, and its estimated capital was only one twenty-fourth
+part of the capital of the United Kingdom. Measured
+against Australia, its trade with Great Britain was almost
+insignificant. Its importance arose from the force of public
+opinion in Great Britain, which deemed England pledged to
+protect the party in Ireland which desired the Union to be
+<!-- Page 204 --><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" />maintained, and from the power of obstructing English
+legislation through the medium of the Irish contingent,
+willing and ready on every occasion to intervene in English
+debates. The first step to be taken obviously was to find
+out what the great majority of Irish members wanted. The
+answer was, that they would be contented to quit the British
+Parliament on having a Parliament established on College
+Green, with full powers of local government, and that they
+would accept on behalf of their country a certain fixed
+annual sum to be paid to the Imperial Exchequer, on condition
+that such sum should not be increased without the
+consent of the Irish representatives. Here there were two
+great points gained without any sacrifice of principle.
+Ireland could not be said to be taxed without representation
+when her representatives agreed to a certain fixed
+sum to be paid till altered with their consent; while at the
+same time all risk of obstruction to English legislation by
+Irish means was removed by the proposal that the Irish
+representatives should exercise local powers in Dublin
+instead of imperial powers at Westminster.</p>
+
+<p>On the basis of the above arrangement the Bill of Mr.
+Gladstone was founded. Absolute local autonomy was
+conferred on Ireland; the assent of the Irish members to
+quit the Imperial Parliament was accepted; and the Bill
+provided that after a certain day the representative Irish
+peers should cease to sit in the House of Lords, and the
+Irish members vacate their places in the House of Commons.
+Provisions were then made for the absorption in
+the Irish Legislative Body of both the Irish representative
+peers and Irish members.</p>
+
+<p>The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament was
+maintained by an express provision excepting from any
+interference on the part of Irish Legislature all imperial
+powers, and declaring any enactment void which infringed
+that provision; further, an enactment was inserted for the
+<!-- Page 205 --><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" />purpose of securing to the English Legislature in the last
+resource the absolute power to make any law for the government
+of Ireland, and therefore to repeal, or suspend, the
+Irish Constitution.</p>
+
+<p>Technically these reservations of supremacy to the
+English Legislature were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of
+constitutional law that a sovereign Legislature, such as the
+Queen and two Houses of Parliament in England, cannot
+bind their successors, and consequently can repeal or alter
+any law, however fundamental, and annul any restrictions on
+alteration, however strongly expressed. Practically they
+were never likely to be called into operation, as it is the
+custom of Parliament to adhere, under all but the most
+extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances, to any compact
+made by Act of Parliament between itself and any subordinate
+legislative body. The Irish Legislature was subjected
+to the same controlling power which has for centuries been
+applied to prevent any excess of jurisdiction in our Colonial
+Legislatures, by a direction that an appeal as to the constitutionality
+of any laws which they might pass should lie
+to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This
+supremacy of the imperial judicial power over the action of
+the Colonial Legislatures was a system which the founders
+of the American Constitution copied in the establishment of
+their supreme Court, and thereby secured for that legislative
+system a stability which has defied the assaults of faction
+and the strain of civil war.</p>
+
+<p>The Executive Government of Ireland was continued in
+her Majesty, and was to be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant
+on her behalf, by the aid of such officers and such
+Council as her Majesty might from time to time see fit. The
+initiative power of recommending taxation was also vested
+in the Queen, and delegated to the Lord Lieutenant. These
+clauses are co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring
+complete local powers on the Irish Legislature,
+<!-- Page 206 --><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" />while it preserves all imperial powers to the Imperial Legislature.
+The Governor is an imperial officer, and will be
+bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous
+scrutiny, and to veto any Bill which may be injurious to
+those interests. On the other hand, as respects all local
+matters, he will act on and be guided by the advice of the
+Irish Executive Council. The system is self-acting. The
+Governor, for local purposes, must have a Council which is
+in harmony with the Legislative Body. If the Governor
+and a Council, supported by the Legislative Body, do not
+agree, the Governor must give way, unless he can, by dismissing
+his Council, and dissolving the Legislative Body,
+obtain both a Council and a Legislative Body which will
+support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case
+is different; here the last word rests with the mother country,
+and in the last resort a determination of the Executive
+Council, backed by the Legislative Body, to resist imperial
+rights, must be deemed an act of rebellion on the part of the
+Irish people, and be dealt with accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>In acceding to the claims of the National Party for
+Home Rule in Ireland another question had to be considered:
+the demands of the English garrison, as it is called&mdash;or,
+in plain words, of the class of Irish landlords&mdash;for
+protection. They urged that to grant Home Rule in
+Ireland would be to hand them over to their enemies, their
+tenants, and to lead to an immediate, or to all events a
+proximate, confiscation of their properties. Without admitting
+the truth of these apprehensions to the full extent, or
+indeed to any great extent, it was undoubtedly felt by the
+framers of the Home Rule Bill that a moral obligation
+rested on the Imperial Government to remove, if possible,
+&quot;the fearful exasperations attending the agrarian relations
+in Ireland,&quot; rather than leave a question so fraught with
+danger, so involved in difficulty, to be determined by the
+Irish Government on its first entry on official existence.<!-- Page 207 --><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" />
+Hence the Land Bill, the scheme of which was to frame a
+system under which the tenants, by being made owners of
+the soil, should become interested as a class in the maintenance
+of social order, while the landlords should be
+enabled to rid themselves on fair terms of their estates, in
+cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for
+pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves
+from the responsibilities of ownership. Of the land scheme
+brought into Parliament in 1886, it need only here be said that
+it proposed to lend the Irish Government 3 per cent. stock
+at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, the Irish Government undertaking
+to purchase, from any Irish landlord desirous of selling, his
+estate at (as a general rule) twenty years' purchase on the
+net rental. The money thus disbursed by the Irish Government
+was repaid to them by an annuity, payable by the
+tenant for forty-nine years, of 4 per cent. on a capital sum
+equal to twenty times the gross rental; the result being
+that, were the Bill passed into law, the tenant would become
+immediate owner of the land, subject to the payment of an
+annuity considerably less than the previous rent&mdash;that the
+Irish Government would make a considerable profit on the
+transaction, inasmuch as it would receive from the tenant
+interest calculated on the basis of the <i>gross</i> rental, whilst it
+would pay to the English Government interest calculated on
+the basis of the <i>net</i> rental&mdash;and that the English Government
+would sustain no loss if the interest were duly received
+by them.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of such a plan appears almost magical: Ireland
+is transformed at one stroke from a nation of landlords into
+a nation of peasant proprietors&mdash;apparently without loss to
+any one, and with gain to everybody concerned, except the
+British Government, who neither gain nor lose in the matter.
+The practicability, however, of such a scheme depends
+altogether on the security against loss afforded to the British
+tax-payer, for he is industrious and heavily burdened, and
+<!-- Page 208 --><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" />cannot be expected to assent to any plan which will land
+him in any appreciable loss. Here it is that the plan
+of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill differs from all other previous
+plans. Act after Act has been passed enabling the tenant
+to borrow money from the British Government on the
+security of the holding, for the purpose of enabling him to
+purchase the fee-simple. In such transactions the British
+Government becomes the mortgagee, and can only recover
+its money, if default is made in payment, by ejecting the
+tenant and becoming the landlord. In proportion, then,
+as any existing purchase Act succeeds, in the same proportion
+the risk of the British taxpayer increases. He is ever
+placed in the most invidious of all lights; instead of posing
+as the generous benefactor who holds forth his hand to
+rescue the landlord and tenant from an intolerable position,
+he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the
+still more hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant
+of his holding, is seeking to introduce another man into
+property which really belongs to the ejected tenant. Such
+a position may be endurable when the number of purchasing
+tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform
+in Ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable
+difference in the relations of landlord and tenant;
+still more, if it become general. Now, what is the remedy
+of such a state of things? Surely to interpose the Irish
+Government between the Irish debtor and his English
+creditor, and to provide that the Irish revenues in bulk, not
+the individual holdings of each tenant, shall be the security
+for the English creditor. This was the scheme embodied
+in the Land Act of 1886. The punctual payment of all
+money due from the Government of Ireland to the Government
+of Great Britain was to have been secured by the
+continuance in the hands of the British Government of the
+Excise and Customs duties, and by the appointment of an
+Imperial Receiver-General, assisted by subordinate officers,
+<!-- Page 209 --><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />and protected by an Imperial Court. This officer would
+have received not only all the imperial taxes, but also the
+local taxes; and it would have been his duty to satisfy
+the claims of the British Government before he allowed any
+sum to pass into the Irish Exchequer. In effect, the British
+Government, in relation to the levying of imperial taxes,
+would have stood in the same relation to Ireland as
+Congress does to the United States in respect to the levying
+of federal taxes. The fiscal unity of Great Britain and
+Ireland would have been in this way secured, and the
+British Government protected against any loss of interest
+for the large sums to be expended in carrying into effect in
+Ireland any agrarian reform worthy of the name.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish Bills of 1886, as above represented, had at
+least three recommendations:</p>
+
+<p>1. They created a state of things in Ireland under which
+it was possible to make a complete agrarian reform without
+exposing the English Exchequer to any appreciable risk.</p>
+
+<p>2. They enabled the Irish to govern themselves as
+respects local matters, while preserving intact the supremacy
+of the British Parliament and the integrity of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>3. They enabled the British Parliament to govern the
+British Empire without any obstructive Irish interference.</p>
+
+<p>To the first of these propositions no attempt at an answer
+has been made. The Land Bill was never considered on
+its merits; indeed, was never practically discussed, but was
+at once swept into oblivion by the wave which overwhelmed
+the Home Rule Bill.</p>
+
+<p>The contention against the second proposition was
+concerned in proving that the supremacy of the British
+Parliament was not maintained: the practical answer to this
+objection has been given above. Pushed to its utmost, it
+could only amount to proof that an amendment ought to
+have been introduced in Committee, declaring, in words
+better selected than those introduced for that purpose in the<!-- Page 210 --><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" />
+Bill, that nothing in the Act should affect the supremacy of
+the British Parliament. In short, the whole discussion here
+necessarily resolved itself into a mere verbal squabble as to
+the construction of a clause in a Bill not yet in Committee,
+and had no bottom or substance.</p>
+
+<p>It was also urged that the concession of self-government
+to Ireland was but another mode of handing over the
+Loyalist party&mdash;or, as it is sometimes called, the English
+garrison&mdash;to the tender mercies of the Parnellites. The
+reply to this would seem to be, that as respects property
+the Land Bill effectually prevented any interference of the
+Irish Parliament with the land; nay, more, enabled any
+Irishman desirous of turning his land into money to do
+so on the most advantageous terms that ever had been&mdash;and
+with a falling market it may be confidently prophesied
+ever can be&mdash;offered to the Irish landlord; while as respect
+life and liberty, were it possible that they should be endangered,
+it was the duty of the imperial officer, the Lord Lieutenant,
+to take means for the preservation of peace and
+good order; and behind him, to enforce his behests, stand
+the strong battalions who, to our sorrow be it spoken, have
+so often been called upon to put down disturbance and
+anarchy in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Competing plans have been put forward, with more or
+less detail, for governing Ireland. The suggestion that
+Ireland should be governed as a <i>Crown</i> colony need only
+be mentioned to be rejected. It means in effect, that
+Ireland should sink from the rank of an equal or independent
+member of the British Empire to the grade of the
+most dependent of her colonies, and should be governed
+despotically by English officials, without representation in
+the English Parliament or any machinery of local self-government.
+Another proposal has been to give four provincial
+Governments to Ireland, limiting their powers to
+local rating, education, and legislation in respect of matters
+<!-- Page 211 --><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" />which form the subjects of private Bill legislation at present;
+in fact, to place them somewhat on the footing of the
+provinces of Canada, while reserving to the English Parliament
+the powers vested in the Dominion of Canada. Such a
+scheme would seem adapted to whet the appetite of the Irish
+for nationality, without supplying them with any portion of
+the real article. It would supply no basis on which a system
+of agrarian reform could be founded, as it would be impossible
+to leave the determination of a local question, which is
+a unit in its dangers and its difficulties, to four different
+Legislatures; above all, the hinge on which the question
+turns&mdash;the sufficiency of the security for the British taxpayer&mdash;could
+not be afforded by provincial resources.
+Indeed, no alternative for the Land Bill of 1886 has been
+suggested which does not err in one of the following points:
+either it pledges English credit on insufficient security, or
+it requires the landowners to accept Irish debentures or
+some form of Irish paper money at par; in other words, it
+makes English taxes a fund for relieving Irish landlords, or
+else it compels the Irish landowner, if he sells at all, to
+sell at an inadequate price. Before parting with Canada, it
+may be worth while noticing that another, and more feasible,
+alternative is to imitate more closely the Canadian Constitution,
+and to vest the central or Dominion powers in a
+central Legislature in Dublin, parcelling out the provincial
+powers, as they have been called, amongst several provincial
+Legislatures. This scheme might be made available as
+a means of protecting Ulster from the supposed danger
+of undue interference from the Central Government, and
+for making, possibly, other diversities in the local administration
+of various parts of Ireland in order to meet special
+local exigencies.</p>
+
+<p>A leading writer among the dissentient Liberals has intimated
+that one of two forms of representative colonial
+government might be imposed on Ireland&mdash;either the form
+<!-- Page 212 --><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" />in which the executive is conducted by colonial officials, or
+the form of the great irresponsible colonies. The first of
+these forms is open to the objection, that it perpetuates
+those struggles between English executive measures and
+Irish opinion which has made Ireland for centuries ungovernable,
+and led to the establishment of the union and
+destruction of Irish independence in 1800; the second
+proposal would destroy the fiscal unity of the empire&mdash;leave
+the agrarian feud unextinguished, and aggravate
+the objections which have been urged against the Home
+Rule Bill of 1886. A question still remains, in relation
+to the <i>form</i> of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, which would
+not have deserved attention but for the prominence given
+to it in some of the discussions upon the subject. The
+Bill of 1886 provides &quot;that the Legislature may make laws
+for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland,&quot; but
+subjects their power to numerous exceptions and restrictions.
+The Act establishing the Dominion of Canada
+enumerates various matters in respect of which the Legislature
+of Canada is to have exclusive power, but prefaces
+the enumeration with a clause &quot;that the Dominion Legislature
+may make laws for the peace, order, and good government
+of Canada in relation to all matters not within the
+jurisdiction of the provincial Legislatures, although such
+matters may not be specially mentioned.&quot; In effect, therefore,
+the difference between the Irish Bill and the Canadian
+Act is one of expression and not of substance, and, although
+the Bill is more accurate in its form, it would scarcely
+be worth while to insist on legislating by exception instead
+of by enumeration if, by the substitution of the latter form
+for the former, any material opposition would be conciliated.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, are the conclusions intended to be drawn
+from the foregoing premises?</p>
+
+<p>1. That coercion is played out, and can no longer be
+regarded as a remedy for the evils of Irish misrule.<!-- Page 213 --><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" /></p>
+
+<p>2. That some alternative must be found, and that the
+only alternative within the range of practical politics is some
+form of Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p>3. That there is no reason for thinking that the grant of
+Home Rule to Ireland&mdash;a member only, and not one of the
+most important members, of the British Empire&mdash;will in
+any way dismember, or even in the slightest degree risk the
+dismemberment of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>4. That Home Rule presupposes and admits the supremacy
+of the British Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>5. That theory is in favour of Home Rule, as the
+nationality of Ireland is distinct, and justifies a desire for
+local independence; while the establishment of Home Rule
+is a necessary condition to the effectual removal of agrarian
+disturbances in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>6. That precedent is in favour of granting Home Rule
+to Ireland&mdash;<i>e.g.</i> the success of the new Constitution in
+Austria-Hungary, and the happy effects resulting from the
+establishment of the Dominion of Canada.</p>
+
+<p>7. That the particular form of Home Rule granted is
+comparatively immaterial.</p>
+
+<p>8. That the Home Rule Bill of 1886 may readily be
+amended in such a manner as to satisfy all real and unpartisan
+objectors.</p>
+
+<p>9. That the Land Bill of 1886 is the best that has ever
+been devised, having regard to the advantages offered to
+the new Irish Government, the landlord, and the tenant.<!-- Page 214 --><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60" /><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Reprinted by permission, with certain omissions, from the <i>Contemporary
+Review</i>, August, 1887.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61" /><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> &quot;Home Rule and Imperial Unity:&quot; <i>Contemporary Review</i>, March, 1887.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62" /><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Mill on <i>Representative Government</i>, p. 310.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63" /><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> See <i>Statesman's Year-Book</i>: Switzerland and Germany.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64" /><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Heeren's <i>Political System of Europe</i>, p. 152.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65" /><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> <i>Memoirs of Count Beust</i>, vol. i., Introduction, p. xliii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66" /><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> <i>Statesman's Year-Book.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67" /><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> The Emperor of Austria is the head of the empire, with the title
+of King in Hungary. Austria-Hungary is treated as a federal, not as
+an imperial union, on the ground that Austria was never rightfully a
+dominant community over Hungary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68" /><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> <i>Representative Government</i>, p. 295.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_PAST_AND_FUTURE_OF_THE" id="THE_PAST_AND_FUTURE_OF_THE" />THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE
+IRISH QUESTION<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69" /><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.</p>
+
+
+<p>For half a century or more no question of English domestic
+politics has excited so much interest outside England as
+that question of resettling her relations with Ireland, which
+was fought over in the last Parliament, and still confronts
+the Parliament that has lately been elected. Apart from its
+dramatic interest, apart from its influence on the fortune of
+parties, and its effect on the imperial position of Great
+Britain, it involves so many large principles of statesmanship,
+and raises so many delicate points of constitutional
+law, as to deserve the study of philosophical thinkers no
+less than of practical politicians in every free country.</p>
+
+<p>The circumstances which led to the introduction of the
+Government of Ireland Bill, in April, 1886, are familiar to
+Americans as well as Englishmen. Ever since the crowns
+and parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland were united,
+in A.D. 1800, there has been in Ireland a party which protested
+against that union as fraudulently obtained and inexpedient
+in itself. For many years this party, led by Daniel
+O'Connell, maintained an agitation for Repeal. After his
+<!-- Page 215 --><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />death a more extreme section, which sought the complete
+independence of Ireland, raised the insurrection of 1848,
+and subsequently, under the guidance of other hands,
+formed the Fenian conspiracy, whose projected insurrection
+was nipped in the bud in 1867, though the conspiracy continued
+to menace the Government and the tranquillity of
+the island. In 1872 the Home Rule party was formed,
+demanding, not the Repeal of the Union, but the creation
+of an Irish Legislature, and the agitation, conducted in
+Parliament in a more systematic and persistent way than
+heretofore, took also a legitimate constitutional form. To
+this demand English and Scotch opinion was at first almost
+unanimously opposed. At the General Election of 1880,
+which, however, turned mainly on the foreign policy of
+Lord Beaconsfield's Government, not more than three or
+four members were returned by constituencies in Great
+Britain who professed to consider Home Rule as even an
+open question. All through the Parliament, which sat from
+1880 till 1885, the Nationalist party, led by Mr. Parnell,
+and including at first less than half, ultimately about half,
+of the Irish members, was in constant and generally bitter
+opposition to the Government of Mr. Gladstone. But
+during these five years a steady, although silent and often
+unconscious, process of change was passing in the minds of
+English and Scotch members, especially Liberal members,
+due to their growing sense of the mistakes which Parliament
+committed in handling Irish questions, and of the hopelessness
+of the efforts which the Executive was making to
+pacify the country on the old methods. The adoption of a
+Home Rule policy by one of the great English parties was,
+therefore, not so sudden a change as it seemed. The process
+had been going on for years, though in its earlier stages
+it was so gradual and so unwelcome as to be faintly felt and
+reluctantly admitted by the minds that were undergoing it.
+In the spring of 1886 the question could be no longer
+<!-- Page 216 --><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" />evaded or postponed. It was necessary to choose between
+one of two courses; the refusal of the demand for self-government,
+coupled with the introduction of a severe
+Coercion Bill, or the concession of it by the introduction of
+a Home Rule Bill. There were some few who suggested,
+as a third course, the granting of a limited measure of local
+institutions, such as county boards; but most people felt, as
+did Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, that this plan would have had
+most of the dangers and few of the advantages of either of
+the two others.</p>
+
+<p>How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into
+the House of Commons on April 8th, amid circumstances
+of curiosity and excitement unparalleled since 1832; how,
+after debates of almost unprecedented length, it was defeated
+in June, by a majority of thirty; how the policy it embodied
+was brought before the country at the General
+Election, and failed to win approval&mdash;all this is too well
+known to need recapitulation here. But the causes of the
+disaster have not been well understood, for it is only
+now&mdash;now, when the smoke of the battle has cleared
+away from the field&mdash;that these causes have begun to stand
+revealed in their true proportions.</p>
+
+<p>Besides some circumstances attending the production
+of the Bill, to which I shall refer presently, and which told
+heavily against it, there were three feelings which worked
+upon men's minds, disposing them to reject it.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these was dislike and fear of the Irish
+Nationalist members. In the previous House of Commons
+this party had been uniformly and bitterly hostile to the
+Liberal Government. Measures intended for the good of
+Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been ungraciously
+received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no
+thanks were due&mdash;inadequate concessions, which must be
+made the starting-point for fresh demands. Obstruction
+had been freely practised to defeat not only bills restraining
+<!-- Page 217 --><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" />the liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other
+measures. Some few members of the Irish party had
+systematically sought to delay all English and Scotch
+legislation, and, in fact, to bring the work of Parliament to
+a dead stop. Much violent language had been used, even
+where the provocation was slight. The outbreaks of crime
+which had repeatedly occurred in Ireland had been, not,
+indeed, defended, but so often passed over in silence by
+Nationalist speakers, that English opinion was inclined to
+hold them practically responsible for disorders which, so it
+was thought, they had neither wished nor tried to prevent.
+(I am, of course, expressing no opinion as to the justice of
+this view, nor as to the excuses to be made for the Parliamentary
+tactics of the Irish party, but merely stating how
+their conduct struck many Englishmen.) There could be
+no doubt as to the hostility which they, still less as to that
+which their fellow-countrymen in the United States, had
+expressed toward England, for they had openly wished
+success to Russia while war seemed impending with her,
+and the so-called Mahdi of the Soudan was vociferously
+cheered at many a Nationalist meeting. At the Election of
+1885 they had done their utmost to defeat Liberal candidates
+in every English and Scotch constituency where there
+existed a body of Irish voters, and had thrown some twenty
+seats or more into the hands of the Tories. Now, to many
+Englishmen, the proposal to create an Irish Parliament
+seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand over
+to these Irish members the government of Ireland, with all
+the opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite
+party in Ireland and to worry England herself. It was all
+very well to urge that the tactics which the Nationalists had
+pursued when their object was to extort Home Rule would
+be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule had
+been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament
+would contain different men from those who had been sent
+<!-- Page 218 --><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" />to Westminster as Mr. Parnell's nominees. Neither of these
+arguments could overcome the suspicious antipathy which
+many Englishmen felt, nor dissolve the association in their
+minds between the Nationalist leaders and the forces of disorder.
+The Parnellites (thus they reasoned) are bad men;
+what they seek is therefore likely to be bad, and whether
+bad in itself or not, they will make a bad use of it. In
+such reasonings there was more of sentiment and prejudice
+than of reason, but sentiment and prejudice are proverbially
+harder than arguments to expel from minds where they have
+made a lodgment.</p>
+
+<p>The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial
+grounds for alarm. As everybody knows, she is
+not, either in religion or in blood, or in feelings and ideas,
+a homogeneous country. Three-fourths of the people are
+Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant
+fourth subdivided into bodies not fond of one another, who
+have little community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish
+colony in Ulster, many English families have settled here
+and there through the country. They have been regarded
+as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and many
+of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since
+they came, still look on themselves as rather English than
+Irish. The last fifty years, whose wonderful changes have
+in most parts of the world tended to unite and weld into
+one compact body the inhabitants of each part of the earth's
+surface, connecting them by the ties of commerce, and of a
+far easier and swifter intercourse than was formerly possible,
+have in Ireland worked in the opposite direction. It has
+become more and more the habit of the richer class in
+Ireland to go to England for its enjoyment, and to feel
+itself socially rather English than Irish. Thus the chasm
+between the immigrants and the aborigines has grown
+deeper. The upper class has not that Irish patriotism
+which it showed in the days of the National Irish<!-- Page 219 --><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" />
+Parliament (1782-1800), and while there is thus less of a
+common national feeling to draw rich and poor together,
+the strife of landlords and tenants has continued, irritating
+the minds of both parties, and gathering them into two
+hostile camps. As everybody knows, the Nationalist agitation
+has been intimately associated with the Land agitation&mdash;has,
+in fact, found a strong motive-force in the desire of the
+tenants to have their rents reduced, and themselves secured
+against eviction. Now, many people in England assumed
+that an Irish Parliament would be under the control of the
+tenants and the humbler class generally, and would therefore
+be hostile to the landlords. They went farther, and made
+the much bolder assumption that as such a Parliament
+would be chosen by electors, most of whom were Roman
+Catholics, it would be under the control of the Catholic
+priesthood, and hostile to Protestants. Thus they supposed
+that the grant of self-government to Ireland would mean the
+abandonment of the upper and wealthier class, the landlords
+and the Protestants, to the tender mercies of their enemies.
+Such abandonment, it was proclaimed on a thousand platforms,
+would be disgraceful in itself, dishonouring to England,
+a betrayal of the very men who had stood by her in
+the past, and were prepared to stand by her in the future,
+if only she would stand by them. It was, of course, replied
+by the defenders of the Home Rule Bill, that what the so-called
+English party in Ireland really stood by was their
+own ascendency over the Irish masses&mdash;an oppressive
+ascendency, which had caused most of the disorders of
+the country. As to religion, there were many Protestants
+besides Mr. Parnell himself among the Nationalist leaders.
+There was no ill-feeling (except in Ulster) between Protestants
+and Roman Catholics in Ireland. There was no
+reason to expect that either the Catholic hierarchy or the
+priesthood generally would be supreme in an Irish Parliament,
+and much reason to expect the contrary. As regards<!-- Page 220 --><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" />
+Ulster, where, no doubt, there were special difficulties, due
+to the bitter antagonism of the Orangemen (not of the Protestants
+generally) and Catholics, Mr. Gladstone had undertaken
+to consider any special provisions which could be
+suggested as proper to meet those difficulties. These
+replies, however, made little impression. They were pronounced,
+and pronounced all the more confidently the
+more ignorant of Ireland the speaker was, to be too
+hypothetical. To many Englishmen the case seemed to
+be one of two hostile factions contending in Ireland for
+the last sixty years, and that the gift of self-government
+might enable one of them to tyrannize over the other.
+True, that party was the majority, and, according to the
+principles of democratic government, therefore entitled to
+prevail. But it is one thing to admit a principle and another
+to consent to its application. The minority had the sympathy
+of the upper classes in England, because the minority
+contained the landlords. It had the sympathy of a part of
+the middle class, because it contained the Protestants. And
+of those Englishmen who were impartial as between the Irish
+factions, there were some who held that England must in
+any case remain responsible for the internal peace and the
+just government of Ireland, and could not grant powers
+whose possession might tempt the one party to injustice,
+and the other to resist injustice by violence.</p>
+
+<p>There was another anticipation, another forecast of evils
+to follow, which told most of all upon English opinion.
+This was the notion that Home Rule was only a stage in
+the road to the complete separation of the two islands. The
+argument was conceived as follows: &quot;The motive passions
+of the Irish agitation have all along been hatred toward
+England and a desire to make Ireland a nation, holding her
+independent place among the nations of the world. This
+design was proclaimed by the Young Irelanders of 1848 and
+by the Fenian rebels of 1866; it has been avowed, in inter<!-- Page 221 --><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" />vals
+of candour, by the present Nationalists themselves.
+The grant of an Irish Parliament will stimulate rather than
+appease this thirst for separate national existence. The
+nearer complete independence seems, the more will it be
+desired. Hatred to England will still be an active force,
+because the amount of control which England retains will
+irritate Irish pride, as well as limit Irish action; while all
+the misfortunes which may befall the new Irish Government
+will be blamed, not on its own imprudence, but on the
+English connection. And as the motives for seeking
+separation will remain, so the prospect of obtaining it
+will seem better. Agitation will have a better vantage-ground
+in an Irish Parliament than it formerly had among
+the Irish members of a British Legislature; and if actual
+resistance to the Queen's authority should be attempted, it
+will be attempted under conditions more favourable than
+the present, because the rebels will have in their hands the
+machinery of Irish Government, large financial resources,
+and a <i>prima facie</i> title to represent the will of the Irish
+people. As against a rebellious party in Ireland, England
+has now two advantages&mdash;an advantage of theory, an advantage
+of fact. The advantage of theory is that she does not
+admit Ireland to be a distinct nation, but maintains that in
+the United Kingdom there is but one nation, whereof some
+inhabit Great Britain and some Ireland. The advantage of
+fact is that, through her control of the constabulary, the
+magistrates, the courts of justice, and, in fine, the whole
+administrative system of Ireland, she can easily quell insurrectionary
+movements. By creating an Irish Parliament
+and Government she would strip herself of both these
+advantages.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly say that I do not admit the fairness of this
+statement of the case, because some of the premises are
+untrue, and because it misrepresents the nature of the Irish
+Government which Mr. Gladstone's Bill would have created.<!-- Page 222 --><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" />
+But I am trying to state the case as it was sedulously and
+skilfully presented to Englishmen. And it told all the
+more upon English waverers, because the considerations
+above mentioned seemed, if well founded, to destroy
+and cut away the chief ground on which Home Rule had
+been advocated, viz. that it would relieve England from
+the constant pressure of Irish discontent and agitation, and
+bring about a time of tranquillity, permitting good feeling to
+grow up between the peoples. If Home Rule was, after all,
+to be nothing more than a half-way house to independence,
+an Irish Parliament only a means of extorting a more complete
+emancipation from imperial control, was it not much
+better to keep things as they were, and go on enduring evils,
+the worst of which were known already? Hence the advocates
+of the Bill denied not the weight of the argument, but
+its applicability. Separation, they urged, is impossible, for
+it is contrary to the nature of things, which indicates that
+the two islands must go together. It is not desired by the
+Irish people, for it would injure them far more than it could
+possibly injure England, since Ireland finds in England the
+only market for her produce, the only source whence capital
+flows to her. A small revolutionary party has, no doubt,
+conspired to obtain it. But the only sympathy they received
+was due to the fact that the legitimate demand of Ireland
+for a recognition of her national feeling and for the management
+of her own local affairs was contemptuously ignored by
+England. The concession of that demand will banish the
+notion even from those minds which now entertain it,
+whereas its continued refusal may perpetuate that alienation
+of feeling which is at the bottom of all the mischief, the one
+force that makes for separation.</p>
+
+<p>It is no part of my present purpose to examine these
+arguments and counter arguments, but only to show what
+were the grounds on which a majority of the English voters
+refused to pronounce in favour of the Home Rule Bill. The
+<!-- Page 223 --><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" />reader will have observed that the issues raised were not only
+numerous, but full of difficulty. They were issues of fact,
+involving a knowledge both of the past history of Ireland and
+of her present state. They were also issues of inference, for
+even supposing the broad facts to be ascertained, these facts
+were susceptible of different interpretations, and men might,
+and did, honestly draw opposite conclusions from them. A
+more obscure and complicated problem, or rather group of
+problems, has seldom been presented to a nation for its
+decision. But the nation did not possess the requisite
+knowledge. Closely connected as Ireland seems to be with
+England, long as the Irish question has been a main trouble
+in English politics, the English and Scottish people know
+amazingly little about Ireland. Even in the upper class,
+you meet with comparatively few persons who have set foot
+on Irish soil, and, of course, far fewer who have ever
+examined the condition of the island and the sources of her
+discontent. Irish history, which is, no doubt, dismal reading,
+is a blank page to the English. In January, 1886, one
+found scarce any politicians who had ever heard of the Irish
+Parliament of 1782. And in that year, 1886, an Englishman
+anxious to discover the real state of the country did
+not know where to go for information. What appeared
+in the English newspapers, or, rather, in the one English
+newspaper which keeps a standing &quot;own correspondent&quot;
+in Dublin, was (as it still is) a grossly and almost
+avowedly partisan report, in which opinions are skilfully
+mixed with so-called facts, selected, consciously or unconsciously,
+to support the writer's view. The Nationalist
+press is, of course, not less strongly partisan on its own side,
+so that not merely an average Englishman, but even the
+editor of an English newspaper, who desires to ascertain the
+true state of matters and place it before his English readers,
+has had, until within the last few months, when events
+in Ireland began to be fully reported in Great Britain,
+<!-- Page 224 --><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" />no better means at his disposal for understanding Ireland
+than for understanding Bulgaria. I do not dwell upon this
+ignorance as an argument for Home Rule, though, of course,
+it is often so used. I merely wish to explain the bewilderment
+in which Englishmen found themselves when required
+to settle by their votes a question of immense difficulty.
+Many, on both sides, simply followed their party banners.
+Tories voted for Lord Salisbury; thorough-going admirers
+of Mr. Gladstone voted for Mr. Gladstone. But there was
+on the Liberal side a great mass who were utterly perplexed
+by the position. Contradictory statements of fact, as well
+as contradictory arguments, were flung at their heads in distracting
+profusion. They felt themselves unable to determine
+what was true and who was right. But one thing seemed
+clear to them. The policy of Home Rule was a new policy.
+They had been accustomed to censure and oppose it. Only
+nine months before, the Irish Nationalists had emphasized
+their hostility to the Liberal party by doing their utmost to
+defeat Liberal candidates in English constituencies. Hence,
+when it was proclaimed that Home Rule was the true
+remedy which the Liberal party must accept, they were
+startled and discomposed.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the English are not a nimble-minded people.
+They cannot, to use a familiar metaphor, turn round in
+their own length. Their momentum is such as to carry
+them on for some distance in the direction wherein they
+have been moving, even after the order to stop has been
+given. They need time to appreciate, digest, and comprehend
+a new proposition. Timid they are not, nor, perhaps,
+exceptionally cautious, but they do not like to be hurried, and
+insist on looking at a proposition for a good while before they
+come to a decision regarding it. It is one of the qualities
+which make them a great people. As has been observed,
+this proposition was novel, was most serious, and raised
+questions which they felt that their knowledge was insuf<!-- Page 225 --><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" />ficient
+to determine. Accordingly, a certain section of
+the Liberal party refused to accept it. A great number,
+probably the majority, of these doubtful men abstained
+from voting. Others voted against the Home Rule Liberal
+candidates, not necessarily because they condemned the
+policy, but because, as they were not satisfied that it
+was right, they deemed delay a less evil than the committal
+of the nation to a new departure, which might prove
+irrevocable.</p>
+
+<p>It must not, however, be supposed that it was only hesitation
+which drove many Liberals into the host arrayed against
+the Irish Government Bill. I have already said that among
+the leaders there were some, and those men of great influence,
+who condemned its principles. This was true also of
+a considerable, though a relatively smaller, section of the
+rank and file. And it was only what might have been
+expected. The proposal to undo much of the work done
+in 1800, to alter fundamentally the system which had for
+eighty-six years regulated the relations of the two islands, by
+setting up a Parliament in Ireland, was a proposal which not
+only had not formed a part of the accepted creed of the
+Liberal party, but fell outside party lines altogether. It
+might, no doubt, be argued, as was actually done, and as
+those who understand the history of the Liberal party have
+more and more come to see, that Liberal principles recommended
+it, since they involve faith in the people, and faith
+in the curative tendency of local self-government. But this
+was by no means axiomatic. Taking the whole complicated
+facts of the case, and taking Liberalism as it had been practically
+understood in England, a man might in July, 1886,
+deem himself a good Liberal and yet think that the true
+interests of both peoples would be best served by maintaining
+the existing Parliamentary system. Similarly, there was
+nothing in Toryism or Tory principles to prevent a fair-minded
+and patriotic Tory from approving the Home Rule scheme.<!-- Page 226 --><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" />
+It was a return to the older institutions of the monarchy, and
+not inconsistent with any of the doctrines which the Tory
+party had been accustomed to uphold. The question, in
+short, was one of those which cut across ordinary party lines,
+creating new divisions among politicians; and there might
+have been and ought to have been Liberal Home Rulers
+and Tory Home Rulers, Liberal opponents of Home Rule
+and Tory opponents of Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p>But here comes in a feature, a natural but none the less
+a regrettable feature, of the English party system. As the
+object of the party in opposition is to turn out the party in
+power and seat itself in their place, every Opposition regards
+with the strongest prejudice the measures proposed by a
+ruling Ministry. Cases sometimes occur where these
+measures are so obviously necessary, or so evidently approved
+by the nation, that the Opposition accepts them.
+But in general it scans them with a hostile eye. Human
+nature is human nature; and when the defeat of Government
+can be secured by defeating a Government Bill, the
+temptation to the Opposition to secure it is irresistible.
+Now, the Tory party is far more cohesive than the Liberal
+party, far more obedient to its leaders, far less disposed to
+break into sections, each of which thinks and acts for itself.
+Accordingly, that division of opinion in the Tory party which
+might have been expected, and which would have occurred
+if those who composed the Tory party had been merely so
+many reflecting men, and not members of a closely compacted
+political organization, did not occur. Liberals were
+divided, as such a question would naturally divide them.
+Tories were not divided; they threw their whole strength
+against the Bill. I am far from suggesting that they did so
+against their consciences. Whatever may be said as to two
+or three of the leaders, whose previous language and conduct
+seemed to indicate that they would themselves, had the
+election of 1885 gone differently, have been inclined to a<!-- Page 227 --><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" />
+Home Rule policy, many of the Tory chiefs, as well as the
+great mass of the party, honestly disapproved Mr. Gladstone's
+measure. But their party motives and party affiliations gave
+it no chance of an impartial verdict at their hands. They
+went into the jury-box with an invincible prepossession
+against the scheme of their opponents. When all these
+difficulties are duly considered, and especially when regard
+is had to those which I have last enumerated, the suddenness
+with which the new policy was launched, and the fact
+that as coming from one party it was sure beforehand of the
+hostility of the other, no surprise can be felt at its fate.
+Those who, in England, now look back over the spring and
+summer of 1886 are rather surprised that it should come so
+near succeeding. To have been rejected by a majority of
+only thirty in Parliament, and of little over ten per cent.
+of the total number of electors who voted at the general
+election, is a defeat far less severe than any one who knew
+England would have predicted.</p>
+
+<p>That the decision of the country is regarded by nobody
+as a final decision goes without saying. It was not regarded
+as final, even in the first weeks after it was given. This was
+not because the majority was comparatively small, for a
+smaller majority the other way would have been conclusive.
+It is because the country had not time enough for full consideration
+and deliberate judgment. The Bill was brought
+in on April 14th, the elections began on July 1st; no one
+can say what might have been the result of a long discussion,
+during which the first feelings of alarm (for alarm there was)
+might have worn off. And the decision is without finality,
+also, because the decision of the country was merely against
+the particular plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and not in
+favour of any alternative plan for dealing with Ireland,
+most certainly not for the coercive method which has since
+been adopted. One particular solution of the Irish problem
+was refused. The problem still stands confronting us, and
+<!-- Page 228 --><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" />when other modes of solving it have been in turn rejected,
+the country may come back to this mode.</p>
+
+<p>We may now turn from the past to the future. Yet the
+account which has been given of the feelings and ideas
+arrayed against the Bill does not wholly belong to the past.
+They are the feelings to which the opponents of any plan of
+self-government for Ireland still appeal, and which will have
+to be removed or softened down before it can be accepted
+by the English. In particular, the probability of separation,
+and the supposed dangers to the Protestants and the landlords
+from an Irish Parliament, will continue to form the
+themes of controversy so long as the question remains
+unsettled.</p>
+
+<p>What are the prospects of its settlement? What is the
+position which it now occupies? How has it affected the
+current politics of England?</p>
+
+<p>It broke up the Liberal party in Parliament. The vast
+numerical majority of that party in the country supported,
+and still supports, Mr. Gladstone and the policy of Irish self-government.
+But the dissentient minority includes many
+men of influence, and constitutes in the House of Commons
+a body of about seventy members, who hold the balance
+between parties. For the present they are leagued with the
+Tory Ministry to resist Home Rule, and their support insures
+a parliamentary majority to that Ministry. But it is, of
+course, necessary for them to rally to Lord Salisbury, not
+only on Irish questions, but on all questions; for, under our
+English system, a Ministry defeated on any serious issue is
+bound to resign, or dissolve Parliament. Now, to maintain an
+alliance for a special purpose, between members of opposite
+parties, is a hard matter. Agreement about Ireland does not,
+of itself, help men to agree about foreign policy, or bimetallism,
+or free trade, or changes in land laws, or ecclesiastical affairs.
+When these and other grave questions come up in Parliament,
+the Tory Ministry and their Liberal allies must, on
+<!-- Page 229 --><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" />every occasion, negotiate a species of concordat, whereby
+the liberty of both is fettered. One party may wish to
+resist innovation, the other to yield to it, or even to anticipate
+it. Each is obliged to forego something in order
+to humour the other; neither has the pleasure or the
+credit of taking a bold line on its own responsibility. There
+is, no doubt, less difference between the respective tenets of
+the great English parties than there was twenty years ago,
+when Mr. Disraeli had not yet completed the education of
+one party, and economic laws were still revered by the
+other. But, besides its tenets, each party has its tendencies,
+its sympathies, its moral atmosphere; and these differ so
+widely as to make the co-operation of Tories and Liberals
+constrained and cumbrous. Moreover, there are the men
+to be considered, the leaders on each side, whose jealousies,
+rivalries, suspicions, personal incompatibilities, neither old
+habits of joint action nor corporate party feeling exist to
+soften. On the whole, therefore, it is unlikely that the
+league of these two parties, united for one question only,
+and that a question which will pass into new phases, can be
+durable. Either the league will dissolve, or the smaller
+party will be absorbed into the larger. In England, as in
+America, third parties rarely last. The attraction of the
+larger mass is irresistible, and when the crisis which created
+a split or generated a new group has passed, or the opinion
+the new group advocates has been either generally discredited
+or generally adopted, the small party melts away,
+its older members disappearing from public life, its younger
+ones finding their career in the ranks of one of the two great
+standing armies of politics. If the dissentient, or anti-Home
+Rule, Liberal party lives till the next general election,
+it cannot live longer, for at that election it will be ground
+to powder between the upper and nether millstones of the
+regular Liberals and the regular Tories.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish struggle of 1886 has had another momentous
+<!-- Page 230 --><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" />consequence. It has brought the Nationalist or Parnellite
+party into friendly relations with the mass of English
+Liberals. When the Home Rule party was founded by
+Mr. Butt, some fifteen years ago, it had more in common
+with the Liberal than with the Tory party. But as it
+demanded what both English parties were then resolved to
+refuse, it was forced into antagonism to both; and from
+1877 onward (Mr. Butt being then dead) the antagonism
+became bitter, and, of course, specially bitter as toward the
+statesmen in power, because it was they who continued
+to refuse what the Nationalists sought. Mr. Parnell has
+always stated, with perfect candour, that he and his friends
+must fight for their own hand unhampered by English
+alliances, and getting the most they could for Ireland from
+the weakness of either English party. This position they
+still retain. If the Tory party will give them Home Rule,
+they will help the Tory party. However, as the Tory party
+has gained office by opposing Home Rule, this contingency
+may seem not to lie within the immediate future. On the
+other hand, the Gladstonian Liberals have lost office for
+their advocacy of Home Rule, and now stand pledged to
+maintain the policy they have proclaimed. The Nationalists
+have, therefore, for the first time since the days immediately
+following the Union of A.D. 1800 (a measure which the Whigs
+of those days resisted), a great English party admitting the
+justice of their claim, and inviting them to agitate for it by
+purely constitutional methods. For such an alliance the
+English Liberals are hotly reproached, both by the Tories
+and by the dissentients who follow Lord Harrington and Mr.
+Chamberlain. They are accused of disloyalty to England.
+The past acts and words of the Nationalists are thrown in
+their teeth, and they are told that in supporting the Irish
+claim they condone such acts, they adopt such words.
+They reply by denying the adoption, and by pointing out
+that the Tories themselves were from 1881 till 1886 in
+<!-- Page 231 --><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" />a practical, and often very close, though unavowed, Parliamentary
+alliance with the Nationalists in the House of
+Commons. The student of history will, however, conceive
+that the Liberals have a stronger and higher defence than
+any <i>tu quoque</i>. Issues that involve the welfare of peoples
+are far too serious for us to apply to them the same sentiments
+of personal taste and predilection which we follow
+in inviting a dinner party, or selecting companions for a
+vacation tour. If a man has abused your brother, or got
+drunk in the street, you do not ask him to go with you to the
+Yellowstone Park. But his social offences do not prevent
+you from siding with him in a political convention. So, in
+politics itself, one must distinguish between characters and
+opinions. If a man has shown himself unscrupulous or
+headstrong, you may properly refuse to vote him into
+office, or to sit in the same Cabinet with him, because you
+think these faults of his dangerous to the country. But
+if the cause he pleads be a just one, you have no more
+right to be prejudiced against it by his conduct than a
+judge has to be swayed by dislike to the counsel who
+argues a case. There were moderate men in America,
+who, in the days of the anti-slavery movement, cited against
+it the intemperate language of many abolitionists. There
+were aristocrats in England, who, during the struggle for
+the freedom and unity of Italy, sought to discredit the
+patriotic party by accusing them of tyrannicide. But the
+sound sense of both nations refused to be led away by such
+arguments, because it held those two causes to be in their
+essence righteous. In all revolutionary movements there
+are elements of excess and violence, which sober men may
+regret, but which must not disturb our judgment as to the
+substantial merits of an issue. The revolutionist of one
+generation is, like Garibaldi or Mazzini, the hero of the
+next; and the verdict of posterity applauds those who, even
+in his own day, were able to discern the justice of the
+<!-- Page 232 --><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" />cause under the errors or faults of its champion. Doubly
+is it the duty of a great and far-sighted statesman not to
+be repelled by such errors, when he can, by espousing a
+revolutionary movement, purify it of its revolutionary
+character, and turn it into a legitimate constitutional struggle.
+This is what Mr. Gladstone has done. If his policy be in
+itself dangerous and disloyal to the true interests of the
+people of our islands, let it be condemned. But if it be
+the policy which has the best promise for the peace, the
+prosperity, and the mutual good will of those peoples, he
+and those who follow him would be culpable indeed were
+they to be deterred by the condemnation which they have so
+often expressed, and which they still express, for some of
+the past acts of a particular party, from declaring that the
+aims of that party were substantially right aims, and from
+now pressing upon the country what their conscience
+approves.</p>
+
+<p>However, as the Home Rule Liberals and Nationalists,
+taken together, are in a minority (although a minority which
+obtains recruits at many bye-elections) in the present Parliament,
+it is not from them that fresh proposals are
+expected. They will, of course, continue to speak, write,
+and agitate on behalf of the views they hold. But practical
+attempt to deal with Irish troubles must for the present
+come from the Tory Ministry; for in the English system of
+government those who command a Parliamentary majority
+are responsible for legislation as well as administration, and
+are censured not merely if their legislation is bad, but if it
+is not forthcoming when events call for it.</p>
+
+<p>Why, it may be asked, should Lord Salisbury's Government
+burn its fingers over Ireland, as so many governments
+have burnt their fingers before? Why not let Ireland
+alone, giving to foreign affairs and to English and Scottish
+reforms all the attention which these too much neglected
+matters need?</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 233 --><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" />Well would it be for England, as well as for English
+Ministries, if Ireland could be simply let alone, her maladies
+left to be healed by the soft, slow hand of nature. But
+Irish troubles call aloud to be dealt with, and that promptly.
+They stand in the way of all other reforms, indeed of all
+other business. Letting alone has been tried, and it has
+succeeded no better, even in times less urgent than the
+present, than the usual policy of coercion followed by
+concession, or concession followed by coercion.</p>
+
+<p>There are three aspects of the Irish question, three
+channels by which the troubles of the &quot;distressful island&quot;
+stream down upon us, forcing whoever now rules or may
+come to rule in England to attempt some plan for dealing
+with them. I will take them in succession.</p>
+
+<p>The first is the Parliamentary difficulty. In the British
+House of Commons, with its six hundred and seventy
+members, there are nearly ninety Irish Nationalists. They
+are a well-disciplined body, voting as one man, though
+capable of speaking enough for a thousand. They have no
+interest in English or Scotch or colonial or Indian affairs,
+but only in Irish, and look upon the vote which they have
+the right of giving upon the former solely as a means of
+furthering their own Irish aims. They are, therefore, in the
+British Parliament not merely a foreign body, indifferent to
+the great British and imperial issues confided to it, but
+a hostile body, opposed to its present constitution, seeking
+to discredit it in its authority over Ireland, and to make
+more and more palpable and incurable the incompetence
+for Irish business whereof they accuse it. Several modes
+of doing this are open to them. They may, as some of
+the more actively bitter among them did in the Parliaments
+of 1874 and 1880, obstruct business by long and frequent
+speeches, dilatory motions, and all those devices which in
+America are called filibustering. The House of Commons
+may, no doubt, try to check these tactics by more stringent
+<!-- Page 234 --><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />rules of procedure, but the attempts already made in this
+direction have had but slight success, and every restriction
+of debate, since it trenches on the freedom of English and
+Scotch no less than of Irish members, injures Parliament as
+a whole. They may disgust the British people with the
+House of Commons by keeping it (as they have done in
+former years) so constantly occupied with Irish business as
+to leave it little time for English and Scotch measures.
+They may throw the weight of their collective vote into the
+scale of one or other British party, according to the amount
+of concession it will make to them, or, by always voting
+against the Ministry of the day, they may cause frequent
+and sudden changes of Government. This plan also they
+have followed in time past; for the moment it is not so
+applicable, because the Tories and dissentient Liberals,
+taken together, possess a majority in the House of
+Commons. But at any moment the alliance of those two
+sections may vanish, or another General Election may leave
+Tories and Liberals so nearly balanced that the Irish vote
+could turn the scale. Whoever reflects on the nature of
+Parliamentary Government will perceive that it is based on
+the assumption that the members of the ruling assembly,
+however much they may differ on other subjects, agree in
+desiring the strength, dignity, and welfare of the assembly
+itself, and in caring for the main national interests which it
+controls. He will therefore be prepared to expect countless
+and multiform difficulties in working such a Government,
+where a large section of the assembly seeks not to use,
+but to make useless, its forms and rules&mdash;not to preserve,
+but to lower and destroy, its honour, its credit, its efficiency.
+In vain are Irish members blamed for these tactics, for they
+answer that the interests of their own country require them
+to seek first her welfare, which can in their view be secured
+only by removing her from the direct control of what they
+deem a foreign assembly. Now that the demand for Irish
+<!-- Page 235 --><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" />self-government has obtained the sympathy of the bulk of
+English Liberals, they are unlikely forthwith to resume the
+systematic obstruction of past years. But they will be able,
+without alienating their English friends, to render the
+conduct of Parliamentary business so difficult that every
+English Ministry will be forced either to crush them, if it
+can, or to appease them by a series of concessions.</p>
+
+<p>The second difficulty is that of maintaining social order
+in Ireland. What that difficulty is, and whence it arises,
+every one knows. It is chronic, but every second or third
+winter, when there has been a wet season, or the price of
+live stock declines, it becomes specially acute. The tenants
+refuse to pay rents which they declare to be impossible.
+The landlords, or the harsher among them, try to enforce
+rents by evictions; evictions are resisted by outrages and
+boycotting. Popular sentiment supports those who commit
+outrages, because it considers the tenantry to be engaged in
+a species of war, a righteous war, against the landlord.
+Evidence can seldom be obtained, and juries acquit in the
+teeth of evidence. Thus the enforcement of the law strains
+all the resources of authority, while a habit of lawlessness
+and discontent is transmitted from generation to generation.
+Of the remedies proposed for this chronic evil the most
+obvious is the strengthening of the criminal law. We have
+been trying this for more than one hundred years, since
+Whiteboyism appeared, and trying it in vain. Since the
+Union, Coercion Acts, of more or less severity, have been
+almost always in force in Ireland, passed for two or three
+years, then dropped for a year or two, then renewed in a
+form slightly varying, but always with the same result of
+driving the disease in for a time, but not curing it. Mr.
+Gladstone proposed to buy out the landlords and then
+leave an Irish Parliament to restore social order, with that
+authority which it would derive from having the will of
+the people behind it; because he held that when the
+<!-- Page 236 --><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" />people felt the law to be of their own making, and not
+imposed from without, their sentiment would be enlisted on
+its side, and the necessity for a firm Government recognized.
+This plan, has, however, been rejected, so the choice was left
+of a fresh Coercion Act, or of some scheme, necessarily a
+costly scheme, for getting rid of the source of trouble by
+transferring the land of Ireland to the peasantry. The
+present Government, while guided by Sir M. Hicks-Beach,
+who had some knowledge of Ireland, did its best to persuade
+the landlords to accept reduced rents, while the
+Nationalist leaders, on their side, sought to restrain the
+people from outrages. But the armistice did not last. The
+Ministry yielded to the foolish counsels of its more violent
+supporters, and entrusted Irish affairs to the hands of a
+Chief Secretary without previous knowledge of the island.
+An unusually severe Coercion Act has been brought in and
+passed by the aid of the dissentient Liberals. And we
+now see this Act administered with a mixture of virulence
+and incompetence to which even the dreary annals of Irish
+misgovernment present few parallels. The feeling of the
+English people is rising against the policy carried out in
+their name. So far from being solved, the problem of
+social order becomes every day more acute.</p>
+
+<p>There remains the question of a reform of local government.
+For many years past, every English Ministry has
+undertaken to frame a measure creating a new system of
+popular rural self-government in England. It is the first
+large task of domestic legislation which we ask from Parliament.
+When such a scheme is proposed, can Ireland be
+left out of it? Should she be left out, the argument that
+she is being treated unequally and unfairly, as compared
+with England, would gain immense force; because the
+present local government of Ireland is admittedly less
+popular, less efficient, altogether less defensible, than even
+that of England which we are going to reform. If, there<!-- Page 237 --><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" />fore,
+the theory that the Imperial Parliament is both anxious
+and able to do its duty by Ireland is to be maintained,
+Ireland, too, must have her scheme of local government.
+And a scheme of local government is a large project, the
+discussion of which must pass into a discussion of the
+government of the island as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>Since, then, we may conclude that whatever Ministry is
+in power will be bound to take up the state of Ireland&mdash;since
+Parliament and the nation will be occupied with the
+subject during the coming sessions fully as much as they
+have been during those that have recently passed&mdash;the next
+inquiry is, What will the tendency of opinion and legislation
+be? Will the reasons and forces described above bring us
+to Home Rule? and if so, when, how, and why?</p>
+
+<p>There are grounds for answering these questions in the
+negative. A majority of the House of Commons, including
+the present Ministry and such influential Liberals as Mr.
+Bright, Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain, stand pledged
+to resist it, and seem&mdash;such is the passion which controversy
+engenders&mdash;more disposed to resist it than they
+were in 1885. But this ground is less strong than it may
+appear. We have had too many changes of opinion&mdash;ay,
+and of action too&mdash;upon Irish affairs not to be prepared for
+further changes. A Ministry in power learns much which
+an Opposition fails to learn. Home Rule is an elastic expression,
+and some of those who were loudest in denouncing
+Mr. Gladstone's Bill will find it easy to explain, should they
+bring in a Bill of their own for giving self-government to
+Ireland, that their measure is a different thing, and free
+from the objections brought against his. Nor, if such a
+conversion should come, need it be deemed a dishonest one,
+for events are potent teachers, and governments now seek
+rather to follow than to form opinion. Although a decent
+interval must be allowed, no one will be astonished if the
+Tory leaders should move ere long in the direction indicated.<!-- Page 238 --><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" />
+Toryism itself, as has been remarked already, contains
+nothing opposed to the idea.</p>
+
+<p>Far greater obstacles exist in the aversion which (as
+already observed) so many Englishmen of both parties have
+entertained for any scheme which should seem to leave the
+Protestant minority at the mercy of the peasant and Roman
+Catholic majority, and to carry us some way toward the
+ultimate separation of the islands. These alarms are
+genuine and deep-seated. One who (like the present writer)
+thinks them, if not baseless, yet immensely overstrained, is,
+of course, convinced that they may be allayed. But time
+must first pass, and the plan that is to allay them may
+have to be framed on somewhat different lines from those
+of Mr. Gladstone's measure. It is even possible that a
+conflict more sharp and painful than any of recent years
+may intervene before a settlement is reached.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, great as are the obstacles in the way, bitter
+as are the reproaches with which Mr. Gladstone is pursued
+by the richer classes in England, there is good reason to
+believe that the current is setting toward his policy. In
+proceeding to state the grounds for this view, I must frankly
+own that I am no longer (as in most of the preceding pages)
+merely setting forth facts on which impartial men in England
+would agree. The forecast which I seek to give may be
+tinged by my own belief that the grant of self-government
+is the best, if not the only method, now open to us of
+establishing peace between the islands, relieving the English
+Parliament of work it is ill fitted to discharge, allowing
+Ireland opportunities to learn those lessons in politics which
+her people so much need. The future, even the near future,
+is more than usually dim. Yet, if we examine those three
+branches of the Irish question which have been enumerated
+above, we shall see how naturally, in each of them, the concession
+of self-government seems to open, I will not say the
+most direct, but the least dangerous way, out of our troubles.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 239 --><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" />The Parliamentary difficulty arises from the fact that the
+representatives of Ireland have the feelings of foreigners
+sitting in a foreign assembly, whose honour and usefulness
+they do not desire. While these are their feelings they
+cannot work properly in it, and it cannot work properly
+with them. The inconvenience may be endured, but the
+English will grow tired of it, and be disposed to rid themselves
+of it, if they see their way to do so without greater
+mischief. There are but two ways out of the difficulty.
+One is to get rid of the Irish members altogether; the
+other is to make them, by the concession of their just
+demands, contented and loyal members of a truly united
+Parliament. The experience of the Parliament of 1880,
+which was mainly occupied with Irish business, and began,
+being a strongly Liberal Parliament, with a bias toward the
+Irish popular party, showed how difficult it is for a House
+of Commons which is ignorant of Ireland to legislate
+wisely for it. In the House of Lords there is not a
+single Nationalist; indeed, up till 1886, that exalted
+chamber contained only one peer, Lord Dalhousie (formerly
+member for Liverpool), who had ever said a word in favour
+of Home Rule. The more that England becomes sensible,
+as she must become sensible, of the deficiencies of the
+present machinery for appreciating the needs and giving
+effect to the wishes of Irishmen, the more disposed will she
+be to grant them some machinery of their own.</p>
+
+<p>As regards social order, I have shown that the choice
+which lies before the opponents of Home Rule is either to
+continue the policy of coercing the peasantry by severe
+special legislation, or to remove the source of friction by
+buying out the landlords for the benefit of the tenants.
+The present Ministry have chosen the former alternative,
+but they dangle before the eyes of their supporters some
+prospect that they may ultimately revert to the latter. Now,
+the only way that has yet been pointed out of buying out
+<!-- Page 240 --><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" />the landlords, without imposing tremendous liabilities of
+loss upon the British Treasury, is the creation of a strong
+Home Rule Government in Dublin. Supposing, however,
+that some other plan could be discovered, which would
+avoid the fatal objections to which an extension of the plan
+of the (Salisbury) Land Purchase Act of 1885 is open, such
+a plan would remove one of the chief objections to an Irish
+Parliament, by leaving no estates for such a Parliament to
+confiscate. As for coercion every day, I might say, every
+bye-election shows us how it becomes more and more odious
+to the British democracy. They dislike severity; they dislike
+the inequality involved in passing harsher laws for Ireland
+than those that apply to England and Scotland. They find
+themselves forced to sympathize with acts of violence in
+Ireland which they would condemn in Great Britain,
+because these acts seem the only way of resisting harsh
+and unjust laws. When the recoil comes, it will be more
+violent than in former days. The wish to discover some
+other course will be very strong, and the obvious other
+course will be to leave it to an Irish authority to enforce
+social order in its own way&mdash;probably a more rough-and-ready
+way than that of British officials. The notion which
+has possessed most Englishmen, that Irish self-government
+would be another name for anarchy, is curiously erroneous.
+Conflicts there may be, but a vigorous rule will emerge.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, as to local government. If a popular system is
+established in Ireland&mdash;one similar to that which it is proposed
+to establish in England&mdash;the control of its assemblies
+and officials will, over four-fifths of the island, fall into
+Nationalist hands. Their power will be enormously increased,
+for they will then command the machinery of
+administration, and the power of taxing. What with taxing
+landlords, aiding recalcitrant tenants, stopping the wheels
+of any central authority which may displease or oppose
+them, they will be in so strong a position that the creation
+<!-- Page 241 --><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" />of an Irish Parliament may appear to be a comparatively
+small further step, may even appear (as the wisest Nationalists
+now think it would prove) in the light of a check upon the
+abuse of local powers. These eventualities will unquestionably,
+when English opinion has realized them, make such a
+Parliament as the present pause before it commits rural local
+government to the Irish democracy. But it could not refuse
+to do something; and if it tried to restrain popular representative
+bodies by the veto of a bureaucracy in Dublin,
+there would arise occasions for quarrel and irritation more
+serious than now exist.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70" /><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> Those who once begin to repair an
+old and tottering building are led on, little by little, into
+changes they did not at starting contemplate. So it will be
+if once the task is undertaken of reforming the confessedly
+bad and indefensible system of Irish administration. We
+may stop at some half-way house on the way, but Home Rule
+stands at the end of the road.</p>
+
+<p>Supposing, then, that the Nationalist party, retaining its
+present strength and unity, perseveres in its present
+demands, there is every prospect that these demands will
+be granted. But will it persevere? There are among the
+English Dissentients those who prophesy that it will break
+up, as such parties have broken up before&mdash;will lose hope and
+wither away. Or the support of the Irish peasantry may be
+withdrawn&mdash;a result which some English politicians expect
+from a final settlement of the land question in the interest
+of the tenants. Any of these contingencies is possible, but at
+present most improbable. The moment when long-cherished
+aims begin to seem attainable is not that at which men are
+disposed to abandon them.</p>
+
+<p>There are, however, other reasons which suggest the
+likelihood of a change in English sentiment on the whole
+<!-- Page 242 --><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" />matter. The surprise with which the Bill of last April was
+received has worn off. The alarm is wearing off too.
+Those who set their teeth at what seemed to them a surrender
+to the Parnellites and their Irish-American allies,
+having relieved their temper by an emphatic No, have begun
+to ponder things more calmly. The English people are
+listening to the arguments from Irish history that are now
+addressed to them. They will be moved by the solid
+grounds of policy which that history suggests; will understand
+that what they have deemed insensate hatred is the
+natural result of long misgovernment, and will disappear
+with time and the removal of its causes. Many of the best
+minds of both nations will be at work to discover some
+method of reconciling Irish self-government with imperial
+supremacy and union free from the objections brought
+against the Bills of 1886. It is reasonable to expect that
+they may greatly improve upon these measures, which
+were prepared under pressure from a clamorous Opposition.
+What Mr. Disraeli once called the historical
+conscience of the country will appreciate those great
+underlying principles to which Mr. Gladstone's policy
+appeals. It has been accused of being a policy of despair;
+and may have commended itself to some who supported it
+as being simply a means of ridding England of responsibility.
+But to others it seemed, and more truly, a policy of faith;
+not, indeed, of thoughtless optimism, but of faith according
+to the definition which calls it &quot;the substance of things
+hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.&quot; Faith, by
+which nations as well as men must live, means nothing less
+than a conviction that great principles, permanent truths of
+human nature, lie at the bottom of all sound politics, and
+ought to be boldly and consistently applied, even when
+temporary difficulties surround their application. Such a
+principle is the belief in the power of freedom and self-government
+to cure the faults of a nation, in the tendency of re<!-- Page 243 --><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" />sponsibility
+to teach wisdom, and to make men see that
+justice and order are the surest sources of prosperity. Such a
+principle is the perception that national hatreds do not live
+on of themselves, but will expire when oppression has ceased,
+as a fire burns out without fuel. Such a principle is the
+recognition of the force of national sentiment, and of the duty
+of allowing it all the satisfaction that is compatible with
+the maintenance of imperial unity. Such, again, is the appreciation
+of those natural economic laws which show that
+nations, when disturbing passions have ceased, follow their
+own permanent interests, and that an island which finds its
+chief market in England and draws its capital from England
+will prefer a connection with England to the poverty and
+insignificance of isolation. It is the honour of Mr. Gladstone
+to have built his policy of conciliation upon principles like
+these, as upon a rock; and already the good effects are
+seen in the new friendliness which has arisen between the
+English masses and the people of Ireland, and in the better
+temper with which, despite the acrimony of some prominent
+politicians, the relations of the two peoples are discussed.
+When one looks round the horizon it is still far from clear;
+nor can we say from which quarter fair weather will arrive.
+But the air is fresher, and the clouds are breaking overhead.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>POSTSCRIPT.</p>
+
+<p>What has happened since the above paragraphs were
+written, ten months ago, has confirmed more quickly and
+completely than the writer expected the forecasts they
+contain. Home Rule is no longer a word of terror, even
+to those English and Scotch voters who were opposed to it
+in July, 1886. Most sensible men in the Tory and Dissentient
+Liberal camps have come to see that it is inevitable;
+<!-- Page 244 --><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" />and, while they continue to resist it for the sake of what
+is called consistency, or because they do not yet see in
+what form it is to be granted, they are disposed to regard
+its speedy arrival as the best method of retreat from an
+indefensible position.</p>
+
+<p>The repressive policy which the present Ministry are
+attempting in Ireland&mdash;for in the face of their failures one
+cannot say that they are carrying out any policy&mdash;is rendering
+Coercion Acts more and more detested by the English
+people. The actualities of Ireland, the social condition
+of her peasantry, the unwisdom of the dominant caste,
+the incompetence of the bureaucracy which affects to
+rule her, are being, by the full accounts we now receive,
+brought home to the mind of England and Scotland as they
+never were before, and produce their appropriate effect
+upon the heart and conscience of the people. The recognition
+by the Liberal party of the rights of Ireland, the visits
+of English Liberals to Ireland, the work done by Irishmen
+in English constituencies, are creating a feeling of unity and
+reciprocal interest between the masses of the people on
+both sides of the Channel without example in the seven
+hundred years that have passed since Strongbow's landing.</p>
+
+<p>This was the thing most needed to make Home Rule
+safe and full of promise, because it affords a guarantee that
+in such political contests as may arise in future, the division
+will not be, as heretofore, between the Irish people on the
+one side and the power of Britain on the other, but between
+two parties, each of which will have adherents in both
+islands. We may now at last hope that national hatreds
+will vanish; that England will unlearn her arrogance and
+Ireland her suspicion; that the basis is being laid for a
+harmonious co-operation of both nations in promoting the
+welfare and greatness of a common Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the Irish patriots of 1798 and 1848 desired
+Separation, because they thought that Ireland, attached to<!-- Page 245 --><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" />
+England, could never be more than the obscure satellite of
+a greater State. When Ireland has been heartily welcomed
+by the democracy of Great Britain as an equal partner, the
+ground for any such desire will have disappeared, and Union
+will rest on a foundation firmer than has ever before existed.
+Ireland will feel, when those rights of self-government have
+been secured for which she has pleaded so long, that she
+owes them, not only to her own tenacity and courage, but
+to the magnanimity, the justice, and the freely given
+sympathy of the English and Scottish people.</p>
+
+<p><i>October</i>, 1887.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69" /><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> This article, which originally appeared in the American <i>New
+Princeton Review</i>, has been added to in a few places, in order to
+bring its narrative of facts up to date.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70" /><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> The experience of the last few months, which has shown us rural
+Boards of Guardians and municipal bodies over four-fifths of Ireland
+displaying their zeal in the Nationalist cause, has amply confirmed this
+anticipation, expressed nearly a year ago.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SOME_ARGUMENTS_CONSIDERED71" id="SOME_ARGUMENTS_CONSIDERED71" /><!-- Page 246 --><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" />SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71" /><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY JOHN MORLEY.</p>
+
+
+<p>It is a favourite line of argument to show that we have no
+choice between the maintenance of the Union and the
+concession to Ireland of national independence. The evils
+of Irish independence are universally reckoned by Englishmen
+to be so intolerable that we shall never agree to it.
+The evils of Home Rule are even more intolerable still.
+Therefore, it is said, if we shall never willingly bring the
+latter upon our heads, <i>&agrave; fortiori</i> we ought on no account
+to invite the former. The business in hand, however, is not
+a theorem, but a problem; it is not a thesis to be proved,
+but a malady to be cured; and the world will thank only
+the reasoner who winds up, not with Q.E.D., but with
+Q.E.F. To reason that a patient ought not to take a given
+medicine because it may possibly cause him more pain than
+some other medicine which he has no intention of taking, is
+curiously oblique logic. The question is not oblique; it is
+direct. Will the operation do more harm to his constitution
+than the slow corrosions of a disorder grown inveterate?
+Are the conditions of the connection between
+<!-- Page 247 --><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" />England and Ireland, as laid down in the Act of Union,
+incapable of improvement? Is the present working of these
+conditions more prosperous and hopeful, or happier for
+Irish order and for English institutions, than any practicable
+proposal that it is within the compass of statesmanship to
+devise, and of civic sense to accept and to work? That is
+the question.</p>
+
+<p>Some people contend that the burden of making out
+a case rests on the advocate of change, and not on those
+who support things as they are. But who supports things
+as they are? Things as they are have become insupportable.
+If you make any of the constitutional changes that
+have been proposed, we are told, parliamentary government,
+as Englishmen now know it, is at an end; and our critic
+stands amazed at those &quot;who deem it a slighter danger
+to innovate on the Act of Union than to remodel the
+procedure of the House of Commons.&quot; As if that were the
+alternative. Great changes in the rules may do other good
+things, but no single competent authority believes that in
+this particular they will do the thing that we want. We
+cannot avoid constitutional changes. It is made matter of
+crushing rebuke that the Irish proposals of the late Government
+were an innovation on the old constitution of the
+realm. But everybody knows that, while ancient forms
+have survived, the last hundred years have witnessed a long
+succession of silent but most profound innovations. It was
+shortsighted to assume that the redistribution of political
+power that took place in 1884-5 was the last chapter of the
+history of constitutional change. It ought to have been
+foreseen that new possessors of power, both Irish and
+British, would press for objects the pursuit of which would
+certainly involve further novelties in the methods and
+machinery of government. Every given innovation must
+be rigorously scrutinized, but in the mere change or in the
+fact of innovation there is no valid reproach. When one of
+<!-- Page 248 --><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" />the plans for the better government of Ireland is described
+as depriving parliamentary institutions of their elasticity and
+strength, as weakening the Executive at home, and lessening
+the power of the country to resist foreign attack, no careful
+observer of the events of the last seven years can fail to see
+that all this evil has already got its grip upon us. Mr. Dicey
+himself admits it. &quot;Great Britain,&quot; he says, &quot;if left to
+herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy
+given by unity of sentiment and community of interests.
+The obstruction and the uncertainty of our political aims,
+the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued,
+arise in part at least from the connection with Ireland.&quot;
+So then, after all, it is feebleness and inconsistency, not
+elasticity and strength, that mark our institutions as they
+stand; feebleness and inconsistency, distraction and uncertainty.
+The supporter of things as they are is decidedly
+as much concerned in making out a case as the advocate
+of change.</p>
+
+<p>The strength of the argument from Nationality is great,
+and full of significance; but Nationality is not the whole
+essence of either the argument from History or the argument
+from Self-government. Their force lies in considerations
+of political expediency as tested by practical experience.</p>
+
+<p>The point of the argument from the lessons of History is
+that for some reason or another the international concern,
+whose unlucky affairs we are now trying to unravel, has
+always been carried on at a loss: the point of the argument
+from Self-government is that the loss would have been
+avoided if the Irish shareholders had for a certain number
+of the transactions been more influentially represented on
+the Board. That is quite apart from the sentiment of pure
+nationality. The failure has come about, not simply because
+the laws were not made by Irishmen as such, but because
+they were not made by the men who knew most about
+Ireland. The vice of the connection between the two
+<!-- Page 249 --><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" />countries has been the stupidity of governing a country
+without regard to the interests or customs, the peculiar
+objects and peculiar experiences, of the great majority of
+the people who live in it. It is not enough to say that the
+failures of England in Ireland have to a great extent flowed
+from causes too general to be identified with the intentional
+wrong-doing either of rulers or of subjects. We readily
+admit that, but it is not the point. It is not enough to
+insist that James I., in his plantations and transplantations,
+probably meant well to his Irish subjects. Probably
+he did. That is not the question. If it is &quot;absolutely
+certain that his policy worked gross wrong,&quot; what is the
+explanation and the defence? We are quite content with
+Mr. Dicey's own answer. &quot;Ignorance and want of sympathy
+produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity. An
+intended reform produced injustice, litigation, misery, and
+discontent. The case is noticeable, for it is a type of a
+thousand subsequent English attempts to reform and improve
+Ireland.&quot; This description would apply, with hardly
+a word altered, to the wrong done by the Encumbered
+Estates Act in the reign of Queen Victoria. That memorable
+measure, as Mr. Gladstone said, was due not to the
+action of a party, but to the action of a Parliament. Sir
+Robert Peel was hardly less responsible for it than Lord
+John Russell. &quot;We produced it,&quot; said Mr. Gladstone,
+&quot;with a general, lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good
+intention of taking capital to Ireland. What did we do?
+We sold the improvements of the tenants&quot; (House of
+Commons, April 16). It is the same story, from the first
+chapter to the last, in education, poor law, public works,
+relief Acts, even in coercion Acts&mdash;lazy, uninformed, and
+irreflective good intention. That is the argument from
+history. When we are asked what good law an Irish
+Parliament would make that could not equally well be
+made by the Parliament at Westminster, this is the answer.<!-- Page 250 --><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" />
+It is not the will, it is the intelligence, that is wanting. We
+all know what the past has been. Why should the future
+be different?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is an inherent condition of human affairs,&quot; said Mill
+in a book which, in spite of some chimeras, is a wholesome
+corrective of the teaching of our new jurists, &quot;that no intention,
+however sincere, of protecting the interests of others
+can make it safe or salutary to tie up their own hands.
+Still more obviously true is it, that by their own hands only
+can any positive and durable improvement of their circumstances
+in life be worked out&quot; (<i>Repres. Government</i>, p. 57).
+It is these wise lessons from human experience to which the
+advocate of Home Rule appeals, and not the wild doctrine
+that any body of persons claiming to be united by a sense
+of nationality possesses <i>an inherent and divine right</i> to be
+treated as an independent community. It is quite true that
+circumstances sometimes justify a temporary dictatorship.
+In that there is nothing at variance with Liberalism. But
+the Parliamentary dictatorship in Ireland has lasted a great
+deal too long to be called temporary, and its stupid shambling
+operations are finally and decisively condemned by their
+consequences. That is a straightforward utilitarian argument,
+and has nothing whatever to do with inherent and
+divine rights, or any other form of political moonshine.</p>
+
+<p>There are some who believe that an honest centralized
+administration of impartial officials, and not Local Self-Government,
+would best meet the real wants of the people.
+In other words, everything is to be for the people, nothing
+by the people&mdash;which has not hitherto been a Liberal principle.
+Something, however, may be said for this view,
+provided that the source of the authority of such an
+administration be acceptable. Austrian administration in
+Lombardy was good rather than bad, yet it was hated and
+resisted because it was Austrian and not Italian. No
+rational person can hold for an instant that the source of
+<!-- Page 251 --><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" />a scheme of government is immaterial to its prosperity.
+More than that, when people look for success in the government
+of Ireland to &quot;honest centralized administration,&quot; we
+cannot but wonder what fault they find with the administration
+of Ireland to-day in respect of its honesty or its
+centralization. What administration ever carried either
+honesty or centralization to a higher pitch than the Irish
+administration of Mr. Forster? What could be less successful?
+Those who have been most directly concerned in the
+government of Ireland, whether English or Irish, even while
+alive to the perils of any other principle, habitually talk of
+centralization as the curse of the system. Here, again, why
+should we expect success in the future from a principle that
+has so failed in the past?</p>
+
+<p>Again, how are we to get a strong centralized administration
+in the face of a powerful and hostile parliamentary
+representation? It is very easy to talk of the benefits that
+might have been conferred on Ireland by such humanity
+and justice as was practised by Turgot in his administration
+of the Generality of Limoges. But Turgot was not confronted
+by eighty-six Limousin members of an active
+sovereign body, all interested in making his work difficult,
+and trusted by a large proportion of the people of the
+province with that as their express commission. It is
+possible to have an honest centralized administration of
+great strength and activity in India, but there is no Parliament
+in India. If India, or any province of it, ever gets
+representative government and our parliamentary system,
+from that hour, if there be any considerable section of
+Indian feeling averse from European rule, the present
+administrative system will be paralyzed, as the preliminary
+to being revolutionized. It is conceivable, if any one
+chooses to think so, that a body of impartial officials could
+manage the national business in Ireland much better without
+the guidance of public opinion and common sentiment
+<!-- Page 252 --><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" />than with it. But if you intend to govern the country as
+you think best&mdash;and that is the plain and practical English
+of centralized administration&mdash;why ask the country to send
+a hundred men to the great tribunal of supervision to inform
+you how it would like to be governed? The Executive cannot
+set them aside as if they were a hundred dummies; in
+refusing to be guided, it cannot escape being harassed, by
+them. You may amend procedure, but that is no answer,
+unless you amend the Irish members out of voice and vote.
+They will still count. You cannot gag and muzzle them
+effectually, and if you could, they would still be there, and
+their presence would still make itself incessantly felt. Partly
+from a natural desire to lessen the common difficulties of
+government, and partly from a consciousness, due to the
+prevailing state of the modern political atmosphere, that
+there is something wrong in this total alienation of an
+Executive from the possessors of parliamentary power, the
+officials will incessantly be tempted to make tacks out of
+their own course; and thus they lose the coherency and
+continuity of absolutism without gaining the pliant strength
+of popular government. This is not a presumption of what
+would be likely to happen, but an account of what does
+happen, and what justified Mr. Disraeli in adding a weak
+Executive to the alien Church and the absentee aristocracy,
+as the three great curses of Ireland. Nothing has occurred
+since 1844 to render the Executive stronger, but much to
+the contrary. There is, and there can be, no weaker or less
+effective Government in the world than a highly centralized
+system working alongside of a bitterly inimical popular
+representation. I say nothing of the effect of the fluctuations
+of English parties on Irish administration. I say
+nothing of the tendency in an Irish government, awkwardly
+alternating with that to which I have just adverted, to look
+over the heads of the people of Ireland, and to consider
+mainly what will be thought by the ignorant public in<!-- Page 253 --><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" />
+England. But these sources of incessant perturbation must
+not be left out. The fault of Irish centralization is not
+that it is strong, but that it is weak. Weak it must remain
+until Parliament either approves of the permanent suspension
+of the Irish writs, or else devises constitutional
+means for making Irish administration responsible to Irish
+representatives.</p>
+
+<p>If experience is decisive against the policy of the past,
+experience too, all over the modern world, indicates the
+better direction for the future. I will not use my too scanty
+space in repeating any of the great wise commonplaces in
+praise of self-government. Here they are superfluous.
+In the case of Ireland they have all been abundantly
+admitted in a long series of measures, from Catholic
+Emancipation down to Lord O'Hagan's Jury Law and the
+Franchise and Redistribution Acts of a couple of years ago.
+The principle of self-government has been accepted, ratified,
+and extended in a hundred ways. It is only a question of
+the form that self-government shall take. Against the form
+proposed by the late Ministry a case is built up that rests
+on a series of prophetic assumptions. These assumptions,
+from the nature of the case, can only be met by a counter-statement
+of fair and reasonable probabilities. Let us
+enumerate some of them.</p>
+
+<p>1. It is inferred that, because the Irish leaders have
+used violent language and resorted to objectionable expedients
+against England during the last six years, they
+would continue in the same frame of mind after the reasons
+for it had disappeared. In other words, because they have
+been the enemies of a Government which refused to listen
+to a constitutional demand, therefore they would continue
+to be its enemies after the demand had been listened to.
+On this reasoning, the effect is to last indefinitely and
+perpetually, notwithstanding the cessation of the cause.
+Our position is that all the reasonable probabilities of
+<!-- Page 254 --><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" />human conduct point the other way. The surest way
+of justifying violent language and fostering treasonable
+designs, is to refuse to listen to the constitutional demand.</p>
+
+<p>2. The Irish, we are told, hate the English with an
+irreconcilable hatred, and would unquestionably use any
+Constitution as an instrument for satisfying their master
+passion. Irrational hatred, they say, can be treated by
+rational men with composure. The Czechs of Bohemia are
+said to be irreconcilable, yet the South Germans bear with
+their hatred; and if we cannot cure we might endure the
+antipathy of Ireland. Now, as for the illustration, I may
+remark that the hatred of the Czechs would be much too
+formidable for German composure, if the Czechs did not
+happen to possess a provincial charter and a special
+constitution of their own. If the Irish had the same, their
+national dislike&mdash;so far as it exists&mdash;might be expected to
+become as bearable as the Germans have found the feeling
+of the Czechs. But how deep does Irish dislike go? Is it
+directed against Englishmen, or against an English official
+system? The answers of every impartial observer to the
+whole group of such questions as these favour the conclusion
+that the imputed hatred of England in Ireland has
+been enormously exaggerated and overcoloured by Ascendency
+politicians for good reasons of their own; that with
+the great majority of Irishmen it has no deep roots; that
+it is not one of those passionate international animosities
+that blind men to their own interests, or lead them to
+sacrifice themselves for the sake of injuring their foe; and,
+finally, that it would not survive the amendment of the
+system that has given it birth.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72" /><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a><!-- Page 255 --><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" /></p>
+
+<p>3. It is assumed that there is a universal desire for
+Separation. That there is a strong sentiment of nationality
+we of course admit; it is part of the case, and not the
+worst part. But the sentiment of nationality is a totally
+different thing from a desire for Separation. Scotland
+might teach our pseudo-Unionists so much as that. Nowhere
+in the world is the sentiment of nationality stronger,
+yet there is not a whisper of Separation. That there is
+a section of Irishmen who desire Separation is notorious,
+but everything that has happened since the Government
+of Ireland Bill was introduced, including the remarkable
+declarations of Mr. Parnell in accepting the Bill (June 7),
+and including the proceedings at Chicago, shows that the
+separatist section is a very small one either in Ireland or
+in America, and that it has become sensibly smaller since,
+and in consequence of, the proposed concession of a
+limited statutory constitution. The Irish are quite shrewd
+enough to know that Separation, if it were attainable&mdash;and
+they are well aware that it is not&mdash;would do no good
+to their markets; and to that knowledge, as well as to
+many other internal considerations, we may confidently
+look for the victory of strong centripetal over very weak
+centrifugal tendencies. Even if we suppose these centrifugal
+tendencies to be stronger than I would allow them to be,
+how shall we best resist them&mdash;by strengthening the hands
+and using the services of the party which, though nationalist,
+is also constitutional; or by driving that party also,
+in despair of a constitutional solution, to swell the ranks of
+Extremists and Irreconcilables?</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 256 --><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" />4. Whatever may be the ill-feeling towards England, it
+is at least undeniable that there are bitter internal animosities
+in Ireland, and a political constitution, our opponents
+argue, can neither assuage religious bigotry nor remove
+agrarian discontent.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, no doubt, that the old feud between Protestant
+and Catholic might, perhaps, not instantly die down to the
+last smouldering embers of it all over Ireland. But we
+may remark that there is no perceptible bad blood between
+Protestant and Catholic, outside of one notorious corner.
+Second, the real bitterness of the feud arose from the fact
+that Protestantism was associated with an exclusive and
+hostile ascendency, which would now be brought to an
+end. Whatever feeling about what is called Ulster exists
+in the rest of Ireland, arises not from the fact that there
+are Protestants in Ulster, but that the Protestants are anti-National.
+Third, the Catholics would no longer be one
+compact body for persecuting, obscurantist, or any other
+evil purposes; the abatement of the national struggle would
+allow the Catholics to fall into the two natural divisions of
+Clerical and Liberal. What we may be quite sure of is that
+the feud will never die so long as sectarian pretensions are
+taken as good reasons for continuing bad government.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, again, that a constitution would not necessarily
+remove agrarian discontent. But it is just as true that you
+will never remove agrarian discontent without a constitution.
+Mr. Dicey, on consideration, will easily see why. Here
+we come to an illustration, and a very impressive illustration
+it is, of the impotence of England to do for Ireland the
+good which Ireland might do for herself. Nobody just
+now is likely to forget the barbarous condition of the broad
+fringe of wretchedness on the west coast of Ireland. Of
+this Lord Dufferin truly said in 1880 that no legislation
+could touch it, that no alteration in the land laws could
+effectually ameliorate it, and that it must continue until
+<!-- Page 257 --><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" />the world's end unless something be contrived totally to
+change the conditions of existence in that desolate region.
+Parliament lavishly pours water into the sieve in the shape
+of Relief Acts. Even in my own short tenure of office
+I was responsible for one of these terribly wasteful and
+profoundly unsatisfactory measures. Instead of relief, what
+a statesman must seek is prevention of this great evil and
+strong root of evil; and prevention means a large, though
+it cannot be a very swift, displacement of the population.
+But among the many experts with whom I have discussed
+this dolorous and perplexing subject, I never found one
+of either political party who did not agree that a removal
+of the surplus population was only practicable if carried
+out by an Irish authority, backed by the solid weight of
+Irish opinion. Any exertion of compulsory power by a
+British Minister would raise the whole country-side in
+squalid insurrection, government would become impossible,
+and the work of transplantation would end in ghastly
+failure. It is misleading and untrue, then, to say that there
+is no possible relation between self-government and agrarian
+discontent, misery, and backwardness; and when Mr.
+Dicey and others tell us that the British Parliament is able
+to do all good things for Ireland, I would respectfully ask
+them how a British Parliament is to deal with the Congested
+Districts.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly as much may be said of the prevention of the
+mischievous practice of Subdivision. Some contend that
+the old disposition to subdivide is dying out; others, however,
+assure us that it is making its appearance even among
+the excellent class who purchased their holdings under the
+Church Act. That Act did not prohibit subdivision, but
+it is prohibited in the Act of 1881. Still the prohibition
+can only be made effective, if operations take place on
+anything like a great scale, on condition that representative,
+authorities resident on the spot have the power of enforcing
+<!-- Page 258 --><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" />it, and have an interest in enforcing it. Some of the pseudo-Unionists
+are even against any extension of local self-government,
+and if it be unaccompanied by the creation of
+a central native authority they are right. What such people
+fail to see is that, in resisting political reconstruction, they
+are at the same time resisting the only available remedies
+for some of the worst of agrarian maladies.</p>
+
+<p>The ruinous interplay between agrarian and political
+forces, each using the other for ends of its own, will never
+cease so long as the political demand is in every form
+resisted. That, we are told, is all the fault of the politicians.
+Be it so; then the Government must either
+suppress the politicians outright, or else it must interest
+them in getting the terms of its land settlement accepted
+and respected. Home Rule on our scheme was, among
+other things, part of an arrangement for &quot;settling the
+agrarian feud.&quot; It was a means of interposing between
+the Irish tenant and the British State an authority interested
+enough and strong enough to cause the bargain to be kept.
+It is said that the Irish authority would have had neither
+interest nor strength enough to resist the forces making
+for repudiation. Would those forces be any less irresistible
+if the whole body of the Irish peasantry stood, as Land
+Purchase <i>minus</i> Self-Government makes them to stand,
+directly face to face with the British State? This is a
+question that our opponents cannot evade, any more than
+they can evade that other question, which lies unnoticed
+at the back of all solutions of the problem by way of
+peasant ownership&mdash;Whether it is possible to imagine the
+land of Ireland handed over to Irishmen, and yet the
+government of Ireland kept exclusively and directly by
+Englishmen? Such a divorce is conceivable under a rule
+like that of the British in India: with popular institutions
+it is inconceivable and impossible.</p>
+
+<p>5. It is argued that Home Rule on Mr. Gladstone's
+<!-- Page 259 --><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" />plan would not work, because it follows in some respects
+the colonial system, whereas the conditions at the root of
+the success of the system in the Colonies do not exist in
+Ireland. They are distant, Ireland is near; they are
+prosperous, Ireland is poor; they are proud of the connection
+with England, Ireland resents it. But the question
+is not whether the conditions are identical with those of
+any colony; it is enough if in themselves they seem to
+promise a certain basis for government. It might justly
+be contended that proximity is a more favourable condition
+than distance; without it there could not be that close and
+constant intercommunication which binds the material
+interests of Ireland to those of Great Britain, and so
+provides the surest guarantee for union. If Ireland were
+suddenly to find herself as far off as Canada, then indeed
+one might be very sorry to answer for the Union. Again,
+though Ireland has to bear her share of the prevailing
+depression in the chief branch of her production, it is a
+great mistake to suppose that outside of the margin of
+chronic wretchedness in the west and south-west, the condition
+not only of the manufacturing industries of the north,
+but of the agricultural industry in the richer parts of the
+middle and south, is so desperately unprosperous as to
+endanger a political constitution. Under our stupidily [Transcriber: sic]
+centralized system, Irishmen have no doubt acquired the
+enervating trick of attributing every misfortune, great or
+small, public or private, to the Government. When they
+learn the lessons of responsibility, they will unlearn this
+fatal habit, and not before.</p>
+
+<p>I do not see, therefore, that the differences in condition
+between Ireland and the Colonies make against Home
+Rule. What I do see is ample material out of which would
+arise a strong and predominant party of order. The bulk
+of the nation are sons and daughters of a Church which has
+been hostile to revolution in every country but Ireland, and
+<!-- Page 260 --><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" />which would be hostile to it there from the day that the
+cause of revolution ceased to be the cause of self-government.
+If the peasantry were made to realize that at last
+the land settlement, wisely and equitably made, was what
+it must inexorably remain, and what no politicians could
+help them to alter, they would be as conservative as the
+peasantry under a similar condition in every other spot
+on the surface of the globe. There is no reason to expect
+that the manufacturers, merchants, and shopkeepers of
+Ireland would be less willing or less able to play an active
+and useful part in the affairs of their country than the same
+classes in England or Scotland. It will be said that this
+is mere optimist prophesying. But why is that to be flung
+aside under the odd name of sentimentalism, while pessimist
+prophesying is to be taken for gospel?</p>
+
+<p>The only danger is lest we should allot new responsibilities
+to Irishmen with a too grudging and restrictive
+hand. For true responsibility there must be real power.
+It is easy to say that this power would be misused, and
+that the conditions both of Irish society and of the proposed
+Constitution must prevent it from being used for good.
+It is easy to say that separation would be a better end.
+Life is too short to discuss that. Separation is not the
+alternative either to Home Rule or to the <i>status quo</i>. If
+the people of Ireland are not to be trusted with real power
+over their own affairs, it would be a hundred times more
+just to England, and more merciful to Ireland, to take
+away from her that semblance of free government which
+torments and paralyzes one country, while it robs the other
+of national self-respect and of all the strongest motives and
+best opportunities of self-help. The <i>status quo</i> is drawing
+very near to its inevitable end. The two courses then
+open will be Home Rule on the one hand, and some shy
+bungling underhand imitation of a Crown Colony on the
+other. We shall have either to listen to the Irish repre<!-- Page 261 --><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" />sentatives
+or to suppress them. Unless we have lost all
+nerve and all political faculty we shall, before many months
+are over, face these alternatives. Liberals are for the first;
+Tories at present incline to the second. It requires very
+moderate instinct for the forces at work in modern politics
+to foresee the path along which we shall move, in the interests
+alike of relief to Great Britain and of a sounder national
+life for Ireland. The only real question is not Whether we
+are to grant Home Rule, but How.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71" /><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> The following pages, with one or two slight alterations, are
+extracted, by the kind permission of Mr. James Knowles, from two
+articles which were published in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i> at the beginning
+of the present year, in reply to Professor Dicey's statement of the
+English case against Home Rule.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72" /><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> The late J.E. Cairnes, after describing the clearances after the
+famine, goes on to say, &quot;I own I cannot wonder that a thirst for
+revenge should spring from such calamities; that hatred, even undying
+hatred, for what they could not but regard as the cause and symbol of
+their misfortunes&mdash;English rule in Ireland&mdash;should possess the sufferers....
+The disaffection now so widely diffused throughout Ireland may
+possibly in some degree be fed from historical traditions, and have
+its remote origin in the confiscations of the seventeenth century; but
+all that gives it energy, all that renders it dangerous, may, I believe, be
+traced to exasperation produced by recent transactions, and more
+especially to the bitter memories left by that most flagrant abuse of
+the rights of property and most scandalous disregard of the claims of
+humanity&mdash;the wholesale clearances of the period following the
+famine.&quot;&mdash;<i>Political Essays</i>, p. 198.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LESSONS_OF_IRISH_HISTORY_IN" id="LESSONS_OF_IRISH_HISTORY_IN" /><!-- Page 262 --><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" />LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN
+THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.</h2>
+
+<p class="author">BY W.E. GLADSTONE.</p>
+
+
+<p>Ireland for more than seven hundred years has been part
+of the British territory, and has been with slight exceptions
+held by English arms, or governed in the last resort from
+this side the water. Scotland was a foreign country until
+1603, and possessed absolute independence until 1707.
+Yet, whether it was due to the standing barrier of the sea,
+or whatever may have been the cause, much less was known
+by Englishmen of Ireland than of Scotland. Witness the
+works of Shakespeare, whose mind, unless as to book-knowledge,
+was encyclop&aelig;dic, and yet who, while he seems at
+home in Scotland, may be said to tell us nothing of Ireland,
+unless it is that&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73" /><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>During more recent times, the knowledge of Scotland on
+this side the border, which before was greatly in advance,
+has again increased in afar greater degree than the knowledge
+of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>It is to Mr. Lecky that we owe the first serious effort,
+both in his <i>Leaders of Public Opinion</i> and in his <i>History of
+England in the Eighteenth Century</i>, to produce a better
+<!-- Page 263 --><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" />state of things. He carefully and completely dovetailed the
+affairs of Ireland into English History, and the debt is one
+to be gratefully acknowledged. But such remedies, addressing
+themselves in the first instance to the lettered mind of
+the country, require much time to operate upon the mass,
+and upon the organs of superficial and transitory opinion,
+before the final stage, when they enter into our settled and
+familiar traditions. Meantime, since Ireland threatens to
+absorb into herself our Parliamentary life, there is a greatly
+enhanced necessity for becoming acquainted with the true
+state of the account between the islands that make up the
+United Kingdom, and with the likelihoods of the future in
+Ireland, so far as they are to be gathered from her past
+history.</p>
+
+<p>That history, until the eighteenth century begins, has a
+dismal simplicity about it. Murder, persecution, confiscation
+too truly describe its general strain; and policy is on the
+whole subordinated to violence as the standing instrument
+of government. But after, say, the reign of William III.,
+the element of representation begins to assert itself. Simplicity
+is by degrees exchanged for complexity; the play of
+human motives, singularly diversified, now becomes visible
+in the currents of a real public life. It has for a very long
+time been my habit, when consulted by young political
+students, to recommend them carefully to study the characters
+and events of the American Independence. Quite apart
+from the special and temporary reasons bearing upon the
+case, I would now add a twin recommendation to examine
+and ponder the lessons of Irish history during the eighteenth
+century. The task may not be easy, but the reward will
+be ample.</p>
+
+<p>The mainspring of public life had, from a venerable
+antiquity, lain <i>de jure</i> within Ireland herself. The heaviest
+fetter upon this life was the Law of Poynings; the most
+ingenious device upon record for hamstringing legislative
+<!-- Page 264 --><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" />independence, because it cut off the means of resumption
+inherent in the nature of Parliaments such as were those of
+the three countries. But the Law of Poynings was an Irish
+Law. Its operation effectually aided on the civil side those
+ruder causes, under the action of which Ireland had lain
+for four centuries usually passive, and bleeding at every pore.
+The main factors of her destiny worked, in practice, from
+this side the water. But from the reign of Anne, or perhaps
+from the Revolution onwards,</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Novus s&aelig;corum nascitur ordo.&quot;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Of the three great nostrums so liberally applied by
+England, extirpation and persecution had entirely failed,
+but confiscation had done its work. The great Protestant
+landlordism of Ireland<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74" /><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> had been strongly and effectually
+built up. But, like other human contrivances, while it held
+Ireland fast, it had also undesigned results. The repressed
+principle of national life, the struggles of which had theretofore
+been extinguished in blood, slowly sprang up anew in
+a form which, though extremely narrow, and extravagantly
+imperfect, was armed with constitutional guarantees; and,
+the regimen of violence once displaced, these guarantees
+were sure to operate. What had been transacted in England
+under Plantagenets and Stuarts was, to a large extent,
+transacted anew by the Parliament of Ireland in the
+eighteenth century. That Parliament, indeed, deserves
+almost every imaginable epithet of censure. It was corrupt,
+servile, selfish, cruel. But when we have said all this, and
+said it truly, there is more to tell. It was alive, and it was
+national. Even absenteeism, that obstinately clinging curse,
+though it enfeebled and distracted, could not, and did not,
+annihilate nationality. The Irish Legislation was, moreover,
+compressed and thwarted by a foreign executive; but even
+<!-- Page 265 --><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" />to this tremendous agent the vital principle was too strong
+eventually to succumb.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lecky well observes that the Irish case supplied
+&quot;one of the most striking examples upon record&quot;<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75" /><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> of an
+unconquerable efficacy in even the most defective Parliament.
+I am, however, doubtful whether in this proposition
+we have before us the whole case. This efficacy is not
+invariably found even in tolerably constructed Parliaments.
+Why do we find it in a Parliament of which the constitution
+and the environment were alike intolerable? My answer
+is, because that Parliament found itself faced by a British
+influence which was entirely anti-national, and was thus
+constrained to seek for strength in the principle of nationality.</p>
+
+<p>Selfishness is a rooted principle of action in nations not
+less than in single persons. It seems to draw a certain
+perfume from the virtue of patriotism, which lies upon its
+borders. It stalks abroad with a semblance of decency,
+nay, even of excellence. And under this cover a paramount
+community readily embraces the notion, that a dependent
+community may be made to exist not for its own sake, but
+for the sake of an extraneous society of men. With this
+idea, the European nations, utterly benighted in comparison
+with the ancient Greeks, founded their transmarine dependencies.
+But a vast maritime distance, perhaps aided by
+some filtration of sound ideas, prevented the application of
+this theory in its nakedness and rigour to the American
+Colonies of England. In Ireland we had not even the title
+of founders to allege. Nay, we were, in point of indigenous
+civilization, the junior people. But the maritime severance,
+sufficient to prevent accurate and familiar knowledge, was
+not enough to bar the effective exercise of overmastering
+power. And power was exercised, at first from without, to
+<!-- Page 266 --><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" />support the Pale, to enlarge it, to make it include Ireland.
+When this had been done, power began, in the seventeenth
+century, to be exercised from within Ireland, within the
+precinct of its government and its institutions. These were
+carefully corrupted, from the multiplication of the Boroughs
+by James I. onwards, for the purpose. The struggle became
+civil, instead of martial; and it was mainly waged by agencies
+on the spot, not from beyond the Channel. When the
+rule of England passed over from the old violence into legal
+forms and doctrines, the Irish reaction against it followed
+the example. And the legal idea of Irish nationality took
+its rise in very humble surroundings; if the expression
+may be allowed, it was born in the slums of politics.
+Ireland reached the nadir of political depression when, at
+and after the Boyne, she had been conquered not merely
+by an English force, but by continental mercenaries. The
+ascendant Protestantism of the island had never stood so
+low in the aspect it presented to this country; inasmuch
+as the Irish Parliament, for the first time, I believe, declared
+itself dependent upon England,<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76" /><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> and either did not
+desire, or did not dare, to support its champion Molyneux,
+when his work asserting Irish independence was burned in
+London. It petitioned for representation in the English
+Parliament, not in order to uplift the Irish people, but in
+order to keep them down. In its sympathies and in its
+aims the overwhelming mass of the population had no
+share. It was Swift who, by the <i>Drapier's Letters</i>, for the
+first time called into existence a public opinion flowing
+from and representing Ireland as a whole. He reasserted
+the doctrine of Molyneux, and denounced Wood's halfpence
+not only as a foul robbery, but as a constitutional and as a
+national insult. The patience of the Irish Protestants was
+tried very hard, and they were forced, as Sir Charles Duffy
+states in his vivid book, to purchase the power of oppress<!-- Page 267 --><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" />ing
+their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen at a great
+price.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77" /><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> Their pension list was made to provide the grants
+too degrading to be tolerated in England. The Presbyterians
+had to sit down under the Episcopal monopoly;
+but the enjoyment of that monopoly was not left to the
+Irish Episcopalians. In the time of Henry VIII. it had been
+necessary to import an English Archbishop Browne<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78" /><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> and
+an English Bishop Bale, or there might not have been
+a single Protestant in Ireland. It was well to enrich the
+rolls of the Church of Ireland with the piety and learning
+of Ussher, and to give her in Bedell one name, at least,
+which carries the double crown of the hero and the saint.
+But, after the Restoration, by degrees the practice degenerated,
+and Englishmen were appointed in numbers to the
+Irish Episcopate in order to fortify and develop by numerical
+force what came to be familiarly known as the English
+interest. So that the Primate Boulter, during his government
+of Ireland, complains<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79" /><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> that Englishmen are still less
+than one-half the whole body of Bishops, although the
+most important sees were to a large extent in their hands.
+The same practice was followed in the higher judicial
+offices. Fitzgibbon was the first Irishman who became
+Lord Chancellor.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80" /><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> The Viceroy, commonly absent, was
+represented by Lords Justices, who again were commonly
+English; and Primate Boulter, a most acute and able man,
+jealous of an Irish Speaker in that character, recommends
+that the commander of the forces should take his place.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81" /><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a>
+When, later on, the Viceroy resided, it was a rule that the
+Chief Secretary should be an Englishman. On the occasion
+when Lord Castlereagh was by way of exception admitted
+<!-- Page 268 --><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" />to that office, an apology was found for it in his entire
+devotion to English policy and purposes. &quot;His appointment,&quot;
+says Lord Cornwallis, &quot;gives me great satisfaction,
+as he is so very unlike an Irishman!&quot;<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82" /><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> Resources were
+also found in the military profession, and among the voters
+for the Union we find the names of eight<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83" /><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> English generals.</p>
+
+<p>The arrangements under Poynings's Law, and the commercial
+proscription, drove the iron ever deeper and deeper
+into the souls of Irishmen. It is but small merit in the
+Irish Parliament of George I. and George II., if under
+these circumstances a temper was gradually formed in, and
+transmitted by, them, which might one day achieve the
+honours of patriotism. It was in dread of this most healthful
+process, that the English Government set sedulously to
+work for its repression. The odious policy was maintained
+by a variety of agencies; by the misuse of Irish revenue, a
+large portion of which was unhappily under their control;
+by maintaining the duration of the Irish House of Commons
+for the life of the Sovereign; and, worst of all, by extending
+the range of corruption within the walls, through the
+constant multiplication of paid offices tenable by members
+of Parliament without even the check of re-election on
+acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>Thus by degrees those who sat in the Irish Houses
+came to feel both that they had a country, and that their
+country had claims upon them. The growth of a commercial
+interest in the Roman Catholic body must have
+accelerated the growth of this idea, as that interest naturally
+fell into line with the resistance to the English prescriptive
+laws. But the rate of progress was fearfully slow. It was
+hemmed in on every side by the obstinate unyielding
+pressure of selfish interests: the interest of the Established
+Church against the Presbyterians; the interest of the
+<!-- Page 269 --><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" />Protestant laity, or tithe-payers, against the clergy; the
+bold unscrupulous interest of a landlords' Parliament against
+the occupier of the soil; which, together with the grievance
+of the system of tithe-proctors, established in Ireland
+through the Whiteboys the fatal alliance between resistance
+to wrong and resistance to law, and supplied there the yet
+more disastrous facility of sustaining and enforcing wrong
+under the name of giving support to public tranquillity. Yet,
+forcing on its way amidst all these difficulties by a natural
+law, in a strange haphazard and disjointed method, and
+by a zigzag movement, there came into existence, and by
+degrees into steady operation, a sentiment native to Ireland
+and having Ireland for its vital basis, and yet not deserving
+the name of Irish patriotism, because its care was not for
+a nation, but for a sect. For a sect, in a stricter sense than
+may at first sight be supposed. The battle was not between
+Popery and a generalized Protestantism, though, even if it
+had been so, it would have been between a small minority
+and the vast majority of the Irish people. It was not a
+party of ascendency, but a party of monopoly, that ruled.
+It must always be borne in mind that the Roman Catholic
+aristocracy had been emasculated, and reduced to the
+lowest point of numerical and moral force by the odious
+action of the penal laws, and that the mass of the Roman
+Catholic population, clerical and lay, remained under the
+grinding force of many-sided oppression, and until long
+after the accession of George III. had scarcely a consciousness
+of political existence. As long as the great
+bulk of the nation could be equated to zero, the Episcopal
+monopolists had no motive for cultivating the good-will of
+the Presbyterians, who like the Roman Catholics maintained
+their religion, with the trivial exception of the
+<i>Regium Donum</i>, by their own resources, and who differed
+from them in being not persecuted, but only disabled. And
+this monopoly, which drew from the sacred name of religion
+<!-- Page 270 --><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" />its title to exist, offered through centuries an example of
+religious sterility to which a parallel can hardly be found
+among the communions of the Christian world. The
+sentiment, then, which animated the earlier efforts of the
+Parliament might be <i>Iricism</i>, but did not become patriotism
+until it had outgrown, and had learned to forswear or to
+forget, the conditions of its infancy. Neither did it for a
+long time acquire the courage of its opinions; for, when
+Lucas, in the middle of the century, reasserted the doctrine
+of Molyneux and of Swift, the Grand Jury of Dublin took
+part against him, and burned his book.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84" /><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> And the Parliament,<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85" /><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a>
+prompted by the Government, drove him into exile.
+And yet the smoke showed that there was fire. The infant,
+that confronted the British Government in the Parliament
+House, had something of the young Hercules about him.
+In the first exercises of strength he acquired more strength,
+and in acquiring more strength he burst the bonds that had
+confined him.</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Es machte mir zu eng, ich mussie fort.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86" /><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The reign of George IV. began with resolute efforts of
+the Parliament not to lengthen, as in England under his
+grandfather, but to shorten its own commission, and to
+become septennial. Surely this was a noble effort. It
+meant the greatness of their country, and it meant also
+personal self-sacrifice. The Parliament which then existed,
+elected under a youth of twenty-two, had every likelihood of
+giving to the bulk of its members a seat for life. This they
+asked to change for a <i>maximum</i> term of seven years. This
+from session to session, in spite of rejection after rejection in
+England, they resolutely fought to obtain. It was an English
+amendment which, on a doubtful pretext; changed seven
+years to eight. Without question some acted under the
+pressure of constituents; but only a minority of the members
+<!-- Page 271 --><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" />had constituents, and popular exigencies from such a quarter
+might have been bought off by an occasional vote, and
+could not have induced a war with the Executive and with
+England so steadily continued, unless a higher principle had
+been at work.</p>
+
+<p>The triumph came at last; and from 1768 onwards the
+Commons never wholly relapsed into their former quiescence.
+True, this was for a Protestant House, constituency, and
+nation; but ere long they began to enlarge their definition
+of nationality. Flood and Lucas, the commanders in the
+real battle, did not dream of giving the Roman Catholics
+a political existence, but to their own constituents they
+performed an honourable service and gave a great boon.
+Those, who had insincerely supported the measure, became
+the dupes of their own insincerity. In the very year of this
+victory, a Bill for a slight relaxation of the penal laws was
+passed, but met its death in England.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87" /><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> Other Bills followed,
+and one of them became an Act in 1771. A beginning had
+thus been made on behalf of religious liberty, as a corollary
+to political emancipation. It was like a little ray of light
+piercing its way through the rocks into a cavern and supplying
+the prisoner at once with guidance and with hope.
+Resolute action, in withholding or shortening supply, convinced
+the Executive in Dublin, and the Ministry in London,
+that serious business was intended. And it appeared,
+even in this early stage, how necessary it was for a fruitful
+campaign on their own behalf to enlarge their basis, and
+enlist the sympathies of hitherto excluded fellow-subjects.</p>
+
+<p>It may seem strange that the first beginnings of successful
+endeavour should have been made on behalf not of
+the &quot;common Protestantism,&quot; but of Roman Catholics.
+But, as Mr. Lecky has shown, the Presbyterians had been
+greatly depressed and distracted, while the Roman Catholics
+had now a strong position in the commerce of the country,
+<!-- Page 272 --><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" />and in Dublin knocked, as it were, at the very doors of the
+Parliament. There may also have been an apprehension of
+republican sentiments among the Protestants of the north,
+from which the Roman Catholics were known to be free.
+Not many years, however, passed before the softening and
+harmonizing effects, which naturally flow from a struggle for
+liberty, warmed the sentiment of the House in favour of the
+Presbyterians.</p>
+
+<p>A Bill was passed by the Irish Parliament in 1778,
+which greatly mitigated the stringency of the penal laws.
+Moreover, in its preamble was recited, as a ground for this
+legislation, that for &quot;a long series of years&quot; the Roman
+Catholics had exhibited an &quot;uniform peaceable behaviour.&quot;
+In doing and saying so much, the Irish Parliament virtually
+bound itself to do more.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88" /><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> In this Bill was contained a clause
+which repealed the Sacramental Test, and thereby liberated
+the Presbyterians from disqualification. But the Bill had
+to pass the ordeal of a review in England, and there the
+clause was struck out. The Bill itself, though mutilated,
+was wisely passed by a majority of 127 to 89. Even in
+this form it excited the enthusiastic admiration of Burke.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89" /><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a>
+Nor were the Presbyterians forgotten at the epoch when,
+in 1779-80, England, under the pressure of her growing
+difficulties, made large commercial concessions to Ireland.
+The Dublin Parliament renewed the Bill for the removal of
+the Sacramental Test. And it was carried by the Irish
+Parliament in the very year which witnessed in London the
+disgraceful riots of Lord George Gordon, and forty-eight
+years before the Imperial Parliament conceded, on this side
+the Channel, any similar relief. Other contemporary signs
+bore witness to the growth of toleration; for the Volunteers,
+founded in 1778, and originally a Protestant body,
+after a time received Roman Catholics into their ranks.
+<!-- Page 273 --><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" />These impartial proceedings are all the more honourable
+to Irish sentiment in general, because Lord Charlemont, its
+champion out of doors, and Flood, long the leader of the
+Independent party in the Parliament, were neither of them
+prepared to surrender the system of Protestant ascendency.</p>
+
+<p>In order to measure the space which had at this period
+been covered by the forward movement of liberality and
+patriotism, it is necessary to look back to the early years of
+the Georgian period, when Whiggism had acquired a decisive
+ascendency, and the spirits of the great deep were let
+loose against Popery. But the temper of proscription in the
+two countries exhibited specific differences. Extravagant
+in both, it became in Ireland vulgar and indecent. In
+England, it was Tilburina,<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90" /><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> gone mad in white satin; in
+Ireland it was Tilburina's maid, gone mad in white linen.
+The Lords Justices of Ireland, in 1715, recommended the
+Parliament to put an end to all other distinctions in Ireland
+&quot;but that of Protestant and Papist.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91" /><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> And the years that
+followed seem to mark the lowest point of constitutional
+depression for the Roman Catholic population in particular,
+as well as for Ireland at large. The Commons, in
+1715, prayed for measures to discover any Papist enlisting
+in the King's service, in order that he might be expelled
+&quot;and punished with the utmost severity of the law.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92" /><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a>
+When an oath of abjuration had been imposed which prevented
+nearly all priests from registering, a Bill was passed
+by the Commons in 1719 for branding the letter P on
+the cheek of all priests, who were unregistered, with a red-hot
+iron. The Privy Council &quot;disliked&quot; this punishment,
+and substituted for it the loathsome measure by which safe
+guardians are secured for Eastern harems. The English
+Government could not stomach this beastly proposal; and,
+says Mr. Lecky,<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93" /><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> unanimously restored the punishment of
+<!-- Page 274 --><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" />branding. The Bill was finally lost in Ireland, but only
+owing to a clause concerning leases. It had gone to
+England winged with a prayer from the Commons that it
+might be recommended &quot;in the most effectual manner to
+his Majesty,&quot; and by the assurance of the Viceroy in reply
+that they might depend on his due regard to what was
+desired.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94" /><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> In the same year passed the Act which declared
+the title of the British Parliament to make laws for the
+government of Ireland. On the accession of George II., a
+considerable body of Roman Catholics offered an address
+of congratulation. It was received by the Lords Justices
+with silent contempt, and no one knows whether it ever
+reached its destination. Finally, the acute state-craft of
+Primate Boulter resisted habitually the creation of an &quot;Irish
+interest,&quot; and above all any capacity of the Roman Catholics
+to contribute to its formation; and in the first year of
+George II. a clause was introduced in committee into a
+harmless Bill<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95" /><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> for the regulation of elections, which disfranchised
+at a single stroke all the Roman Catholic voters in
+Ireland who up to that period had always enjoyed the
+franchise.</p>
+
+<p>It is painful to record the fact that the remarkable progress
+gradually achieved was in no way due to British
+influence. For nearly forty years from the arrival of Archbishop
+Boulter in Ireland, the government of Ireland was in
+the hands of the Primates. The harshness of administration
+was gradually tempered, especially in the brief viceroyalty
+of Lord Chesterfield; but the British policy was steadily
+opposed to the enlargement of Parliamentary privilege, or
+the creation of any Irish interest, however narrow its basis,
+while the political extinction of the mass of the people was
+complete. The pecuniary wants, however, of the Government,
+extending beyond the hereditary revenue, required
+a resort to the national purse. The demands which were
+<!-- Page 275 --><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" />accordingly made, and these alone, supplied the Parliament
+with a vantage-ground, and a principle of life. The action
+of this principle brought with it civilizing and humanizing
+influences, which had become clearly visible in the early
+years of George III., and which were cherished by the
+war of American Independence, as by a strong current of
+fresh air in a close and murky dungeon.</p>
+
+<p>The force of principles, and the significance of political
+achievements, is to be estimated in no small degree by
+the slenderness of the means available to those who promote
+them. And the progress brought about in the Irish Parliament
+is among the most remarkable on record, because
+it was effected against the joint resistance of a hostile
+Executive and of an intolerable constitution. Of the three
+hundred members, about two-thirds were nominated by
+individual patrons and by close corporations. What was
+still worse, the action of the Executive was increasingly
+directed, as the pulse of the national life came to beat more
+vigorously, to the systematic corruption of the Parliament
+borough pensions and paid offices. In the latter part of
+the century, more than one-third of the members of Parliament
+were dismissible at pleasure from public emoluments.
+If the base influence of the Executive allied itself with the
+patriotic party, everything might be hoped. For we must
+bear in mind not only the direct influence of this expenditure
+on those who were in possession, but the enormous
+power of expectancy on those who were not. Conversely,
+when the Government were determined to do wrong, there
+were no means commonly available of forcing it to do right,
+in any matter that touched either religious bigotry or selfish
+interest. With so miserable an apparatus, and in the face
+of the ever-wakeful Executive sustained by British power,
+it is rather wonderful how much than how little was effected.
+I am not aware of a single case in which a measure on
+behalf of freedom was proposed by British agency, and
+<!-- Page 276 --><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" />rejected by the Irish Parliament. On the other hand, we
+have a long list of the achievements of that Parliament
+due to a courage and perseverance which faced and overcame
+a persistent English opposition. Among other exploits,
+it established periodical elections, obtained the writ
+of Habeas Corpus, carried the independence of the judges,
+repealed the Test Act, limited the abominable expenditure
+on pensions, subjected the acceptance of office from the
+crown to the condition of re-election, and achieved, doubtless
+with the powerful aid of the volunteers, freedom of
+trade with England, and the repeal of Poynings's Act, and
+of the British Act of 1719.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96" /><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a></p>
+
+<p>All this it did without the manifestation, either within
+the walls or among the Roman Catholic population, of any
+disposition to weaken the ties which bound Ireland to the
+empire. All this it did; and what had the British Parliament
+been about during the same period, with its vastly
+greater means both of self-defence and of action? It had
+been building up the atrocious criminal code, tampering in
+the case of Wilkes with liberty of election, and tampering with
+many other liberties; driving, too, the American Colonies
+into rebellion, while, as to good legislation, the century
+is almost absolutely blank, until between 1782 and 1793
+we have the establishment of Irish freedom, the economical
+reform of Mr. Burke, the financial reforms of Mr. Pitt, the
+new libel law of Mr. Fox, and the legislative constitution
+of Canada, in which both these great statesmen concurred.</p>
+
+<p>But we have not yet reached the climax of Irish advancement.
+When, in 1782 and 1783, the legislative relations
+of the two countries were fundamentally rectified by the
+formal acknowledgment of Irish nationality, the beginning of
+a great work was accomplished; but its final consummation,
+though rendered practicable and even easy, depended wholly
+on the continuing good intention of the British Cabinet.
+<!-- Page 277 --><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" />The Acts of 1782 and 1783 required a supplemental arrangement,
+to obviate those secondary difficulties in the working
+of the two Legislatures, which supplied Mr. Pitt with his
+main parliamentary plea for the Union. What was yet
+more important was the completion of the scheme in
+Ireland itself. And this under three great heads: (1) The
+purification of Parliament by a large measure of reform;
+(2) the abolition of all Roman Catholic disabilities; (3)
+the establishment of a proper relation between the Legislative
+and the Executive powers. It is often urged, with
+cynical disregard to justice and reason, that with the
+Grattan Parliament we had corruption, coercion, discontent,
+and finally rebellion. But the political mischiefs, which
+disfigure the brief life of the Grattan Parliament, and the
+failure to obtain the two first of the three great purposes
+I have named, were all in the main due to the third grand
+flaw in the Irish case after 1782. I mean the false position,
+and usually mischievous character, of the Irish Executive,
+which, with its army of placemen and expectants in Parliament,
+was commonly absolute master of the situation. Well
+does Mr. Swift MacNeill,<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97" /><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> in his very useful work, quote the
+words of Mr. Fox in 1797: &quot;The advantages, which the form
+of a free Government seemed to promise, have been counteracted
+by the influence of the Executive Government, and
+of the British Cabinet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There were five Viceroys between 1782 and 1790.
+Then came a sixth, Lord Westmoreland, the worst of them
+all, whose political judgment was on a par with his knowledge
+of the English language.<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98" /><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> The great settlement of
+1782-3 was in the main worked by men who were radically
+adverse to its spirit and intention. But they were omnipotent
+in their control of the unreformed. Parliament of Ireland,
+more and more drenched, under their unceasing and pesti<!-- Page 278 --><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" />lent
+activity, with fresh doses of corruption. Westmoreland
+and his myrmidons actually persuaded Pitt, in 1792, that
+Irish Protestantism and its Parliament were unconquerably
+adverse to the admission of Roman Catholics to the franchise;
+but when the proposal was made from the Throne in
+1793, notwithstanding the latent hostility of the Castle, the
+Parliament passed the Bill with little delay, and &quot;without
+any serious opposition.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99" /><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> The votes against it were one
+and three on two divisions<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100" /><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> respectively. A minority of
+sixty-nine supported, against the Government, a clause for
+extending the measure to seats in Parliament. That clause,
+lost by a majority of ninety-four, might apparently have been
+carried, but for &quot;Dublin Castle,&quot; by an even larger majority.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not here examine the interesting question, whether
+the mission of Lord Fitzwilliam was wholly due to the
+action of those Whig statesmen who were friendly to the
+war, but disinclined to a junction with Mr. Pitt except
+on condition of a fundamental change in the administration
+of Ireland. Nor shall I dwell upon his sudden, swift, and
+disastrous recall. But I purpose here to invite attention to
+the most remarkable fact in the whole history of the Irish
+Parliament. When the Viceroy's doom was known, when
+the return to the policy and party of ascendency lay darkly
+lowering in the immediate future, this diminutive and
+tainted Irish Parliament, with a chivalry rare even in the
+noblest histories, made what can hardly be called less than
+a bold attempt to arrest the policy of retrogression adopted
+by the Government in London. Lord Fitzwilliam was the
+declared friend of Roman Catholic Emancipation, which
+was certain to be followed by reform; and he had struck
+a death-blow at bigotry and monopoly in the person of
+their heads, Mr. Beresford and Mr. Cooke. The Bill of
+Emancipation was introduced on the 12th of February,<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101" /><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a>
+with only three dissentient voices. On the 14th, when the
+<!-- Page 279 --><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" />London Cabinet had declared dissent from the proceedings
+of their Viceroy without recalling him, Sir L. Parsons at
+once moved an address, imploring him to continue among
+them, and only postponed it at the friendly request of Mr.
+Ponsonby.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102" /><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> On the 2nd of March, when the recall was a
+fact, the House voted that Lord Fitzwilliam merited &quot;the
+thanks of that House, and the confidence of the people.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103" /><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a>
+On the 5th the Duke of Leinster moved, and the House of
+Peers carried, a similar resolution.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104" /><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a></p>
+
+<p>At this epoch I pause. Here there opens a new and
+disastrous drama of disgrace to England and misery to
+Ireland. This is the point at which we may best learn the
+second and the greatest lesson taught by the history of
+Ireland in the eighteenth century. It is this, that, awful
+as is the force of bigotry, hidden under the mask of religion,
+but fighting for plunder and for power with all the advantages
+of possession, of prescription, and of extraneous
+support, there is a David that can kill this Goliath. That
+conquering force lies in the principle of nationality.</p>
+
+<p>It was the growing sense of nationality that prompted
+the Irish Parliament to develop its earlier struggles for
+privilege on the narrow ground into a genuine contest for
+freedom, civil and religious, on a ground as broad as
+Ireland, nay, as humanity at large. If there be such things
+as contradictions in the world of politics, they are to be found
+in nationality on the one side, and bigotry of all kinds on
+the other, but especially religious bigotry, which is of all the
+most baneful. Whatever is given to the first of these two
+is lost to the second. I speak of a reasonable and reasoning,
+not of a blind and headstrong nationality; of a nationality
+which has regard to circumstances and to traditions, and
+which only requires that all relations, of incorporation or
+of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to
+the laws of Nature's own enactment. Such a nationality
+<!-- Page 280 --><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" />was the growth of the last century in Ireland. As each
+Irishman began to feel that he had a country, to which
+he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a
+true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood,
+and into the sense of brotherhood, with those who
+shared the allegiance and the property, the obligation
+and the heritage. And this idea of country, once well conceived,
+presents itself as a very large idea, and as a framework
+for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a
+common life. Hence it was that, on the coming of Lord
+Fitzwilliam, the whole generous emotion of the country leapt
+up with one consent, and went forth to meet him. Hence
+it was that religious bigotry was no longer an appreciable
+factor in the public life of Ireland. Hence it was that
+on his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his
+recall, it became necessary to divide again the host that
+had, welcomed him&mdash;to put one part of it in array as
+Orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed; and
+to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger mass
+by repulsion and proscription, by stripping Roman Catholics
+of arms in the face of licence and of cruelty, and, finally, by
+clothing the extreme of lawlessness with the forms of law.</p>
+
+<p>Within the last twelve months we have seen, in the streets
+of Belfast, the painful proof that the work of Beresford and
+of Castlereagh has been found capable for the moment of
+revival. To aggravate or sustain Irish disunion, religious
+bigotry has been again evoked in Ireland. If the curse be
+an old one, there is also an old cure, recorded in the grand
+pharmacopoeia of history; and if the abstract force of policy
+and prudence are insufficient for the work, we may yet find
+that the evil spirit will be effectually laid by the gentle
+influence of a living and working Irish nationality. <i>Quod
+faxit Deus.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73" /><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> <i>2 Henry VI.</i>, act iii. sc. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74" /><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Lecky's <i>History of England in the Eighteenth Century</i>, chap, vii.
+vol. ii, p. 205.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75" /><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> Lecky's <i>History of England in the Eighteenth Century</i>, vol. ii.
+p. 227.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76" /><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Duffy's <i>Bird's-Eye View</i>, p. 164.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77" /><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Duffy's <i>Bird's-Eye View</i>, p. 166.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78" /><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> See Ball's <i>History of the Church of Ireland</i>, a valuable work,
+deserving of more attention than it seems to have received.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79" /><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> Boulter's <i>Letters</i>, i. 138, <i>et alibi</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80" /><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Lecky's <i>History of England in the Eighteenth Century</i>, ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81" /><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Boulter's <i>Letters</i>, vol. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82" /><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> Cornwallis's <i>Correspondence</i>, ii. 441.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83" /><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> Grattan's <i>Life and Times</i>, v. 173.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84" /><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Lecky, ii. 430.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85" /><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Duffy, p. 177.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86" /><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Schiller's <i>Wallenstein</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87" /><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> Lecky, iv. 489.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88" /><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> Lecky, iv. 477-479; Brown, <i>Laws against Catholics</i>, pp. 329-332.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89" /><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Lecky, pp. 499-501.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90" /><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Sheridan's <i>Critic</i>, act iii. sc. I.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91" /><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> Plowden's <i>History</i> (1809), ii. 70.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92" /><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Brown, <i>Laws against Catholics</i>, p. 289.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93" /><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Lecky, i. 297.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94" /><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Plowden, i. 297.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95" /><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> 1 Geo. II. c. ix. sect 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96" /><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> See Lecky, vi. 521.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97" /><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> <i>The Irish Parliament</i>, p. 64. Cassell: 1885.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98" /><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> See Lecky, vi. 492, 493.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99" /><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Lecky, vi. 567.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100" /><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> Plowden's <i>Historical Review</i>, ii. 335.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101" /><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Ibid., ii. 353.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102" /><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> Plowden's <i>Historical Review</i>, ii. 498.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103" /><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> Ibid., ii. 357.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104" /><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> Ibid., ii. 505.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.</p>
+
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+<pre>
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+Project Gutenberg's Handbook of Home Rule (1887), by W. E. Gladstone et al.
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Handbook of Home Rule (1887)
+
+Author: W. E. Gladstone et al.
+
+Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14518]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HANDBOOK OF HOME RULE (1887) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Aaron Reed and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           HANDBOOK
+                              OF
+                          HOME RULE
+
+                            BEING
+               _ARTICLES ON THE IRISH QUESTION_
+
+                              BY
+             THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
+        THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P., LORD THRING
+               JAMES BRYCE, M.P., CANON MACCOLL
+              E.L. GODKIN, AND R. BARRY O'BRIEN
+
+                      _WITH PREFACE BY_
+              THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G.
+
+                          EDITED BY
+                      JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+                        SECOND EDITION
+
+                            LONDON
+       KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., I, PATERNOSTER SQUARE
+                             1887
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S NOTE.
+
+
+Of the articles contained in this volume, those by Mr. Gladstone, Mr.
+E.L. Godkin on "A Lawyer's Objections to Home Rule," and Mr. Barry
+O'Brien appear for the first time. The others are reprinted from the
+_Contemporary Review_, the _Nineteenth Century_, and the _New Princeton
+Review_, to the proprietors and editors of which periodicals
+respectively the thanks of the several writers and of the editor are
+tendered. In most of these reprints some passages of transitory interest
+have been omitted, and some few additions have been made.
+
+The object of the writers has been to treat the difficult questions
+connected with the Government of Ireland in a dispassionate spirit; and
+the volume is offered to the public in the hope that it may, at a time
+of warm controversy over passing events, help to lead thoughtful men
+back to the consideration of the principles which underlie those
+questions, and which it seeks to elucidate by calm discussion and by
+references to history.
+
+_October_, 1887.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+PREFACE. BY THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER, K.G.
+
+AMERICAN HOME RULE.
+BY E.L. GODKIN
+
+HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS.
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY.
+BY LORD THRING
+
+THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL AND THE IRISH LAND BILL.
+BY LORD THRING
+
+THE "UNIONIST" POSITION.
+BY CANON MACCOLL
+
+A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE.
+BY E.L. GODKIN
+
+THE "UNIONIST" CASE FOR HOME RULE.
+BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN
+
+IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES.
+BY LORD THRING
+
+THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION.
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.
+BY THE RIGHT HON. JOHN MORLEY, M.P.
+
+LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
+BY THE RIGHT HON. W.E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The present seems an excellent moment for bringing forward the arguments
+in favour of a new policy for Ireland, which are to be found in the
+articles contained in this volume.
+
+We are realizing the first results of the verdict given at the election
+of 1886. And this I interpret as saying that the constituencies were not
+then ready to depart from the lines of policy which, up to last year,
+nearly all politicians of both parties in Parliament had laid down for
+their guidance in Irish affairs.
+
+We have had the Session occupied almost wholly with Lord Salisbury's
+proposals for strengthening the power of the central Government to
+maintain law and order in Ireland, and for dealing with the most
+pressing necessities of the Land question in that country.
+
+It is well, before the policy of the Government is practically tested,
+that the views of thoughtful men holding different opinions should be
+clearly set forth, not in the shape of polemical speeches, but in
+measured articles which specially appeal to those who have not hitherto
+joined the fighting ranks of either side, and who are sure to intervene
+with great force at the next election, when the Irish question is again
+submitted to the constituencies.
+
+I feel that I can add little or nothing to the weight of the arguments
+contained in these papers, but I should like to give some reasons why I
+earnestly hope that they will receive careful consideration.
+
+The writers have endeavoured to approach their work with impartiality,
+and to free themselves from those prejudices which make it difficult for
+Englishmen to discuss Irish questions in a fresh and independent train
+of thought, and realize how widely Irish customs, laws, traditions, and
+sentiments differ from our own.
+
+We are apt to think that what has worked well here will work well in
+Ireland; that Irishmen who differ from us are unreasonable; and that
+their proposals for change must be mistaken. We do not make allowance
+for the soreness of feeling prevailing among men who have long objected
+to the system by which Ireland has been governed, and who find that
+their earnest appeals for reform have been, until recent times,
+contemptuously disregarded by English politicians. Time after time
+moderate counsels have been rejected until too late. Acts of an
+exceptional character intended to secure law and order have been very
+numerous, and every one of them has caused fresh irritation; while
+remedial measures have been given in a manner which has not won the
+sympathy of the people, because they have not been the work of the Irish
+themselves, and have not been prepared in their own way.
+
+Parliament seems during the past Session to have fallen into the same
+error. By the power of an English majority, measures have been passed
+which are vehemently opposed by the political leaders and the majority
+of the Irish nation, and which are only agreeable to a small minority in
+Ireland. This action can only succeed if the Irish can be persuaded to
+relinquish the national sentiments of Home Rule; and yet this was never
+stronger or more vigorous than at the present time. It is supported by
+millions of Irish settled in America and in Australia; and here I would
+say that it has often struck me that the strong feeling of
+dissatisfaction, or, I might say, of disaffection, among the Irish is
+fed and nurtured by the marked contrast existing between the social
+condition of large numbers of the Irish in the South and West of Ireland
+and the views and habits of their numerous relatives in the United
+States.
+
+The social condition of many parts of Ireland is as backward, or perhaps
+more backward, than the condition of the rural population of England at
+the end of last or the beginning of this century. The Irish peasantry
+still live in poor hovels, often in the same room with animals; they
+have few modern comforts; and yet they are in close communication with
+those who live at ease in the cities and farms of the United States.
+They are also imbued with all the advanced political notions of the
+American Republic, and are sufficiently educated to read the latest
+political doctrines in the Press which circulates among them. Their
+social condition at home is a hundred years behind their state of
+political and mental culture. They naturally contrast the misery of many
+Irish peasants with the position of their relatives in the New World.
+This cannot but embitter their views against English rulers, and
+strengthen their leaning to national sentiments. Their national
+aspirations have never died out since 1782. They have taken various
+forms; but if the movements arising from them have been put down, fresh
+movements have constantly sprung up. The Press has grown into an immense
+power, and its influences have all been used to strengthen the zeal for
+Irish nationality, while, at the same time, the success of the national
+movements in Italy, Hungary, Greece, and Germany have had the same
+effect. Lastly, the sentiment of Home Rule has gained the sympathy of
+large bodies of electors in the constituencies of Great Britain, and,
+under the circumstances, it is difficult to suppose that, even if the
+country remains quiet, constitutional agitation will vanish or the Irish
+relinquish their most cherished ambition.
+
+We hear, from men who ought to know something of Ireland, that if the
+Land question is once settled, and dual ownership practically abolished,
+the tenants will be satisfied, and the movement for Home Rule will no
+longer find active support in Ireland. Without going into the whole of
+this argument, I should like to say two things: first, that I do not
+know how a large scheme of Land Purchase can be carried through
+Parliament with safety to Imperial interests without establishing, at
+the same time, some strong Irish Government in Dublin to act between the
+Imperial Government and the tenants of Ireland; and, second, that the
+feeling for Home Rule has a vitality of its own which will survive the
+Land question, even if independently settled.
+
+Home Rule is an expression of national feeling which cannot be
+extinguished in Ireland, and the only safe method of dealing with it is
+to turn its force and power to the support of an Irish Government
+established for the management of local Irish affairs. There are those
+who think that this must lead to separation. I cannot believe in this
+fear, for I know of no English statesman who looks upon complete
+separation of Ireland from Great Britain as possible. The geographical
+position of Ireland, the social and commercial connection between the
+two peoples, renders such a thing impossible. The Irish know this, and
+they are not so foolish as to think that they could gain their
+independence by force of arms; but I do not believe that they desire it.
+They are satisfied to obtain the management of their own local affairs
+under the _aegis_ of the flag of England. The papers in this volume show
+how this can be done with due regard to Imperial interests and the
+rights of minorities.
+
+I shall not enlarge on this part of the subject, but I wish to draw
+attention to the working of the Irish Government, and the position which
+it holds in the country, for it is through its administration that the
+policy of the Cabinet will be carried out. At the outset I feel bound to
+deprecate the exaggerated condemnation which the "Castle" receives from
+its opponents. It has its defects. Notwithstanding efforts of various
+ministers to enlarge the circle from which its officials are drawn, it
+is still too narrow for the modern development of Irish society, and it
+has from time to time been recruited from partisans without sufficient
+regard to the efficiency and requirements of the public service. But, on
+the whole, its members, taken as individuals, can well bear comparison
+with those of other branches of the Civil Service. They are diligent;
+they desire to do their duty with impartiality, and to hold an even
+balance between many opposing interests in Ireland. Whatever party is in
+office, they loyally carry out the policy of their chiefs. They are,
+probably, more plastic to the leadership of the heads of departments
+than members of some English offices, and they are more quickly moved by
+the influences around them. Sometimes they may relapse into an attitude
+of indifference and inertness if their chiefs are not active; but, on
+the other hand, they will act with vigour and decision if they are led
+by men who know their own minds and desire to be firm in the government
+of the country.
+
+When speaking of the chiefs of the Irish Civil Service, who change
+according to the political party in office, we must not overlook the
+legal officers, who exercise a most powerful influence on Irish
+administration. They consist of the Lord Chancellor, the Attorney and
+Solicitor General, and, until 1883, there was also an officer called the
+Law Adviser, who was the maid-of-all-work of Castle administration. In
+England, those who hold similar legal offices take no part in the daily
+administration of public affairs. The Lord Chancellor, as a member of
+the Cabinet, takes his share in responsibility for the policy of the
+Government. The law officers are consulted in special cases, and take
+their part from time to time in debates in the House of Commons. In
+Ireland, however, the Chancellor is constantly consulted by the
+Lord-Lieutenant on any difficult matter of administration, and the
+Attorney and Solicitor General are in constant communication with the
+Lord-Lieutenant, if he carries out the daily work of administration, and
+with the Chief and the Under Secretary.
+
+Governments differ as to the use they make of these officials. Some
+Governments have endeavoured to confine their work to cases where a mere
+legal opinion has to be obtained; but, when the country is in a
+disturbed state, even these limited references become very frequent, and
+questions of policy as well as of law are often discussed with the law
+officers. It is needless to say that, with their knowledge of Ireland
+and the traditions of Castle government (it is rare that all the law
+officers are new to office, and, consequently, they carry on the
+traditions from one Government to another), they often exercise a
+paramount influence over the policy of the Irish Government, and
+practically control it.
+
+They are connected with the closest and most influential order in Irish
+society--the legal order, consisting of the judges and Bar of Ireland.
+This adds to the general weight of their advice, but it has a special
+bearing when cases of legal reform or administration are under
+consideration; it then requires unwonted courage and independence for
+the law officers of the Crown to support changes which the lay members
+of the Government deem necessary.
+
+I have known conspicuous instances of the exercise of these high
+qualities by law officers enabling reforms to be carried, but as a rule,
+particularly when the initiative of legal reform is left to them, the
+Irish law officers do not care to move against the feeling of the legal
+world in Dublin. The lawyers, like other bodies, oppose the diminution
+of offices and honours belonging to them, or of the funds which, in the
+way of fees and salaries, are distributed among members of the bar; and
+they become bitterly hostile to any permanent official who is known to
+be a firm legal reformer. It would be impossible for me not to
+acknowledge the great service often done to the Government by the able
+men who have filled the law offices, yet I feel that under certain
+circumstances, when their influence has been allowed too strongly to
+prevail, it has tended to narrow the views of the Irish Government, and
+to keep it within a circle too narrow for the altered circumstances of
+modern life.
+
+The chief peculiarity of the Irish Administration is its extreme
+centralization. In this two departments may be mentioned as typical of
+the whole--the police and administration of local justice.
+
+The police in Dublin and throughout Ireland are under the control of the
+Lord-Lieutenant, and both these forces are admirable of their kind. They
+are almost wholly maintained by Imperial funds. The Dublin force costs
+about L150,000 a year. The Royal Irish Constabulary costs over a million
+in quiet, and a million and a half in disturbed times. Local authorities
+have nothing to do with their action or management. Local justice is
+administered by unpaid magistrates as in England, but they have been
+assisted, and gradually are being supplanted, by magistrates appointed
+by the Lord-Lieutenant and paid by the State.
+
+This state of things arose many years ago from the want of confidence
+between resident landlords and the bulk of the people. When agrarian or
+religious differences disturbed a locality the people distrusted the
+local magistrates, and by degrees the system of stipendiary, or, as they
+are called, resident magistrates, spread over the country. To maintain
+the judicial independence and impartiality of these magistrates is of
+the highest importance. At one time this was in some danger, for the
+resident magistrates not only heard cases at petty sessions, but, as
+executive peace officers, to a very great extent took the control of the
+police in their district, not only at riots, but in following up and
+discovering offenders. Their position as judicial and executive officers
+was thus very unfortunately mixed up. Between 1882 and 1883 the Irish
+Government did their utmost to separate and distinguish between these
+two functions, and it is to be hoped that the same policy has been and
+will be now continued, otherwise grave mischief in the administration of
+justice will arise. The existence of this staff of stipendiary
+magistrates could not fail to weaken the influence of the gentry in
+local affairs, and, at the same time, other causes were at work to
+undermine still further their power. The spread of education, the
+ballot, the extension of the franchise, communication with America, all
+tended to strengthen the political leaning of the tenants towards the
+National party in Ireland, and to widen the political differences
+between the richer and poorer classes in the country. The result of this
+has been, that not only have even the best landlords gradually lost
+their power in Parliamentary elections and on elective boards, but the
+Government, which greatly relied on them for support, has become
+isolated.
+
+The system of centralization is felt all over the country. It was the
+cause of weakness in the disturbed years of 1880 and 1881, and, although
+the Irish Executive strengthened themselves by placing officers over
+several counties, on whom they devolved a great deal of responsibility,
+they did not by these steps meet the real difficulty, which was that
+everything that went wrong, whether as to police or magisterial
+decisions, was attributed to the management of the Castle.
+
+In this country, local authorities and benches of magistrates, quite
+independent of the Home Office, are held responsible for mistakes in
+police action or irregularities in local justice. The consequence is
+that there is a strong buffer to protect the character and power of the
+Home Office.
+
+The absence of such protection in Ireland obviously has a very
+prejudicial effect on the permanent influence and popularity of the
+Irish Government. But as long as our system of government from England
+exists, this centralization cannot be avoided, for it would not be
+possible to transfer the responsibility of the police to local
+representative bodies, as they are too much opposed to the landlords and
+the Government to be trusted when strong party differences arise; nor,
+for the same reason, would it be possible to fall back on local men to
+administer justice. The fact is, that, out of the Protestant part of
+Ulster, the Irish Government receives the cordial support of only the
+landed proprietors, and a part of the upper middle classes in the towns.
+The feeling of the mass of the people has been so long against them that
+no change in the direction of trust in any centralized government of
+anti-national character can be expected.
+
+It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find any Municipal
+Council, Boards of Guardians, or Local Boards, in Leinster, Munster, or
+Connaught, whose members do not consist of a majority of Nationalists.
+At nearly all such assemblies, whenever any important political movement
+takes place in the country, or when the Irish Government take any action
+which is displeasing to the Nationalists, resolutions are discussed and
+carried in a spirit of sharp hostility to the Government.
+
+In Parliamentary elections we also find clear evidence of the strength
+of the Nationalists, and the extreme weakness of their opponents. This
+is a test which those who accept popular representative government
+cannot disregard, particularly at an election when for the first time
+the new constituencies were called upon to exercise the privileges
+entrusted to them by Parliament. Such was the election of 1885, followed
+in 1886 by another General Election. In 1885 contests took place in most
+of the Irish constituencies. They were between Liberals allied with
+Conservatives, and Parnellites. In 1886 the contests were between those
+who called themselves Unionists and Parnellites, and the Irish policy of
+Mr. Gladstone was specially referred to the electors.
+
+In regard to the number of members returned on the two sides, the result
+of each election was almost identical, but in 1886 there were fewer
+contests. We may, then, assume that the relative forces of Parnellites
+and Unionists were accurately represented at the election of 1885. If we
+take the votes at the election of 1885 for candidates standing as
+Nationalists, we shall find, roughly speaking, that they obtained in
+round numbers about 300,000 votes, and candidates who stood either as
+Liberals or Conservatives about 143,000. But the case is really stronger
+than these figures represent it, because in some constituencies the
+contests were between Liberals and Conservatives, and there can be no
+doubt that in those constituencies a number of Nationalist votes were
+given for one or both of such candidates--votes which, therefore, would
+have to be deducted from the 143,000, leaving a still heavier majority
+on the Nationalist side.[1]
+
+If we look at individual constituencies, we find that in South Kerry
+only 133 persons voted for the "Unionist" candidate, while 2742 voted
+for the Nationalist. In six out of seven constituencies in Cork where
+contests took place 27,692 votes were given for the Nationalists, and
+only 1703 for their opponents. In Dublin, in the division which may be
+considered the West End constituency of the Irish metropolis, the most
+successful man of commerce in Ireland, a leader of society, whose
+liberality towards those in his employment is only equalled by his
+munificence in all public works, was defeated by over 1900 votes. He did
+not stand in 1886, but his successor was defeated by a still larger
+majority. These elections show the numbers in Ireland on which the
+Government and those who oppose Mr. Parnell's policy can count for
+support.
+
+It is absurd to say that these results are caused by terrorism exercised
+over the minds of the electors by the agitators in Ireland; the same
+results occurred in every part of three provinces, and in part of
+Ulster, and the universality of the feeling proves the dominant feeling
+of the Irish electors. They show the extreme difficulty, the
+impossibility, of gaining that support and confidence which a Government
+needs in a free country. As it is, the Irish Government stands isolated
+in Ireland, and relies for support solely on England. Is a policy
+opposed to national feeling, which has been often, and by different
+Ministers, tried in Ireland, likely to succeed in the hands of a
+Government such as I have described, and isolated, as I think few will
+deny it to be? It is impossible in the long run to maintain it. The
+roots of strength are wanting.
+
+If we turn from Dublin to London, we do not find greater prospects of
+success. Twice within fourteen months Lord Salisbury has formed a
+Government. In 1885 his Cabinet, on taking office, deliberately decided
+to rule Ireland without exceptional laws; after a few months, they
+announced that they must ask Parliament for fresh powers. They resigned
+before they had defined their measures. But within six months Lord
+Salisbury was once more Prime Minister, and again commenced his
+administration by governing Ireland under the ordinary law. This attempt
+did not continue longer than the first, for when Parliament met in 1887,
+preparations were at once made to carry the Criminal Law Amendment Act,
+which occupied so large a portion of the late Session.
+
+This is not the action of men who have strong faith in their principles.
+Nor can it be shown that the continuous support so necessary for success
+will be given to this policy. No doubt it may be urged that the
+operation of the Act is not limited in duration; but, notwithstanding
+that, few politicians believe that the constituencies of Great Britain
+will long support the application of exceptional criminal laws to any
+part of the United Kingdom.
+
+This would be wholly inconsistent with past experience In relation to
+these measures, which points entirely the other way; and the publication
+in English newspapers and constant discussion on English platforms of
+the painful incidents which seem, unfortunately, inseparable from a
+rigid administration of the law in Ireland, together with the prolonged
+debates, such incidents give rise to, in Parliament, aggravate the
+difficulties of administration, and lead the Irish people to believe
+that exceptional legislation will be as short-lived in the future as it
+has been in the past.
+
+It was this evidence of want of continuity of policy in 1885, and the
+startling disclosure of the weakness of the anti-national party in
+Ireland at the election in the autumn of that year, which finally
+convinced me that the time had come when we could no longer turn to a
+mixed policy of remedial and exceptional criminal legislation as the
+means of winning the constituencies of that country in support of our
+old system of governing Ireland. That system has failed for eighty-six
+years, and obviously cannot succeed when worked with representative
+institutions. As the people of Great Britain will not for a moment
+tolerate the withdrawal of representative government from Ireland, we
+must adopt some new plan. What I have here written deals with but a
+fragment of the arguments for Home Rule, some of which are admirably set
+forth by the able men who have written the articles to which this is the
+preface. I earnestly wish that they may arrest the attention of many
+excellent Irishmen who still cling to the old traditions of English
+rule, and cause them to realize that the only way of relieving their
+country from the intolerable uncertainty which hangs over her
+commercial, social, and political interests and paralyzes all efforts
+for the improvement of her people, will be to form a Constitution
+supported by all classes of the community. I trust that they will join
+in this work before it is too late, for they may yet exercise a powerful
+and salutary influence in the settlement of this great question.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: There was one case--North Louth--in which two Nationalists
+opposed one another, and I have left that case out of the calculation.]
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN HOME RULE
+
+BY E.L. GODKIN
+
+
+American experience has been frequently cited, in the course of the
+controversy now raging in England over the Irish question, both by way
+of warning and of example. For instance, I have found in the _Times_ as
+well as in other journals--the _Spectator_, I think, among the
+number--very contemptuous dismissals of the plan of offering Ireland a
+government like that of an American State, on the ground that the
+Americans are loyal to the central authority, while in Ireland there is
+a strong feeling of hostility to it, which would probably increase under
+Home Rule. The Queen's writ, it has been remarked, cannot be said to run
+in large parts of Ireland, while in every part of the United States the
+Federal writ is implicitly obeyed, and the ministers of Federal
+authority find ready aid and sympathy from the people. If I remember
+rightly, the Duke of Argyll has been very emphatic in pointing out the
+difference between giving local self-government to a community in which
+the tendencies of popular feeling are "centrifugal," and giving it to
+one in which these tendencies are "centripetal." The inference to be
+drawn was, of course, that as long as Ireland disliked the Imperial
+government the concession of Home Rule would be unsafe, and would only
+become safe when the Irish people showed somewhat the same sort of
+affection for the English connection which the people of the State of
+New York now feel for the Constitution of the United States.
+
+Among the multitude of those who have taken part in the controversy on
+one side or the other, no one has, so far as I have observed, pointed
+out that the state of feeling in America toward the central government
+with which the state of feeling in Ireland towards the British
+Government is now compared, did not exist when the American Constitution
+was set up; that the political tendencies in America at that time were
+centrifugal, not centripetal, and that the extraordinary love and
+admiration with which Americans now regard the Federal government are
+the result of eighty years' experience of its working. The first
+Confederation was as much as the people could bear in the way of
+surrendering local powers when the War of Independence came to an end.
+It was its hopeless failure to provide peace and security which led to
+the framing of the present Constitution. But even with this experience
+still fresh, the adoption of the Constitution was no easy matter. I
+shall not burden this article with historical citations showing the very
+great difficulty which the framers of the Constitution had in inducing
+the various States to adopt it, or the magnitude and variety of the
+fears and suspicions with which, many of the most influential men in all
+parts of the country regarded it. Any one who wishes to know how
+numerous and diversified these fears and suspicions were, cannot do
+better than read the series of papers known as "The Federalist," written
+mainly by Hamilton and Madison, to commend the new plan to the various
+States. It was adopted almost as a matter of necessity, that is, as the
+only way out of the Slough of Despond in which the Confederation had
+plunged the union of the States; but the objections to it which were
+felt at the beginning were only removed by actual trial. Hamilton's two
+colleagues, as delegates from New York, Yates and Lansing, withdrew in
+disgust from the Convention, as soon as the Constitution was outlined,
+and did not return. The notion that the Constitution was produced by the
+craving of the American people for something of that sort to love and
+revere, and that it was not bestowed on them until they had given ample
+assurance that they would lavish affection on it, has no foundation
+whatever in fact. The devotion of Americans to the Union is, indeed, as
+clear a case of cause and effect as is to be found in political history.
+They have learned to like the Constitution because the country has
+prospered under it, and because it has given them all the benefits of
+national life without interference with local liberties. If they had not
+set up a central government until the centrifugal sentiment had
+disappeared from the States, and the feeling of loyalty for a central
+authority had fully shown itself, they would assuredly never have set it
+up at all.
+
+Moreover, it has to be borne in mind that the adoption of the
+Constitution did not involve the surrender of any local franchises, by
+which the people of the various States set great store. The States
+preserved fully four-fifths of their autonomy, or in fact nearly all of
+it which closely concerned the daily lives of individuals. Set aside the
+post-office, and a citizen of the State of New York, not engaged in
+foreign trade, might, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, have passed
+a long and busy life without once coming in contact with a United States
+official, and without being made aware in any of his doings, by any
+restriction or regulation, that he was living under any government but
+that of his own State. If he went abroad he had to apply for a United
+States passport. If he quarrelled with a foreigner, or with the citizen
+of another State, he might be sued in the Federal Court. If he imported
+foreign goods he had to pay duties to the collector of a Federal
+Custom-house. If he invented something, or wrote a book, he had to
+apply to the Department of the Interior for a patent or a copyright. But
+how few there were in the first seventy years of American history who
+had any of these experiences! No one supposes, or has ever supposed,
+that had the Federalists demanded any very large sacrifice of local
+franchises, or attempted to set up even a close approach to a
+centralized Government, the adoption of the Constitution would have been
+possible. If, for instance, such a transfer of both administration and
+legislation to the central authority as took place in Ireland after the
+Union had been proposed, it would have been rejected with derision. You
+will get no American to argue with you on this point. If you ask him
+whether he thinks it likely that a highly centralized government could
+have been created in 1879--such a one, for example, as Ireland has been
+under since 1800--or whether if created it would by this time have won
+the affection of the people, or filled them with centripetal tendencies,
+he will answer you with a smile.
+
+The truth is that nowhere, any more than in Ireland, do people love
+their Government from a sense of duty or because they crave an object of
+political affection, or even because it exalts them in the eyes of
+foreigners. They love it because they are happy or prosperous under it;
+because it supplies security in the form best suited to their tastes and
+habits, or in some manner ministers to their self-love. Loyalty to the
+king as the Lord's anointed, without any sense either of favours
+received or expected, has played a great part in European politics, I
+admit; but, for reasons which I will not here take up space in stating,
+a political arrangement, whether it be an elected monarch or a
+constitution, cannot be made, in our day, to reign in men's hearts
+except as the result of benefits so palpable that common people, as well
+as political philosophers, can see them and count them.
+
+Many of the opponents of Home Rule, too, point to the vigour with which
+the United States Government put down the attempt made by the South to
+break up the Union as an example of the American love of "imperial
+unity," and of the spirit in which England should now meet the Irish
+demands for local autonomy. This again is rather surprising, because you
+will find no one in America who will maintain for one moment that troops
+could have been raised in 1860 to undertake the conquest of the South
+for the purpose of setting up a centralized administration, or, in other
+words, for the purpose of wiping out State lines, or diminishing State
+authority. No man or party proposed anything of this kind at the
+outbreak of the war, or would have dared to propose it. The object for
+which the North rose in arms, and which Lincoln had in view when he
+called for troops, was the restoration of the Union just as it was when
+South Carolina seceded, barring the extension of slavery into the
+territories. During the first year of the war, certainly, the revolted
+States might at any time have had peace on the _status quo_ basis, that
+is, without the smallest diminution of their rights and immunities under
+the Constitution. It was only when it became evident that the war would
+have to be fought out to a finish, as the pugilists say--that is, that
+it would have to end in a complete conquest of the Southern
+territory--that the question, what would become of the States as a
+political organization after the struggle was over, began to be debated
+at all. What did become of them? How did Americans deal with Home Rule,
+after it had been used to set on foot against the central authority what
+the newspapers used to delight in calling "the greatest rebellion the
+world ever saw"? The answer to these questions is, it seems to me, a
+contribution of some value to the discussion of the Irish problem in its
+present stage, if American precedents can throw any light whatever on
+it.
+
+There was a Joint Committee of both Houses of Congress appointed in
+1866 to consider the condition of the South with reference to the safety
+or expediency of admitting the States lately in rebellion to their old
+relations to the Union, including representation in Congress. It
+contained, besides such fanatical enemies of the South as Thaddeus
+Stevens, such very conservative men as Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Grimes, Mr.
+Morrill, and Mr. Conkling. Here is the account they gave of the
+condition of Southern feeling one year after Lee's surrender:--
+
+"Examining the evidence taken by your committee still further, in
+connection with facts too notorious to be disputed, it appears that the
+Southern press, with few exceptions, and those mostly of newspapers
+recently established by Northern men, abounds with weekly and daily
+abuse of the institutions and people of the loyal States; defends the
+men who led, and the principles which incited, the rebellion; denounces
+and reviles Southern men who adhered to the Union; and strives
+constantly and unscrupulously, by every means in its power, to keep
+alive the fire of hate and discord between the sections; calling upon
+the President to violate his oath of office, overturn the Government by
+force of arms, and drive the representatives of the people from their
+seats in Congress. The national banner is openly insulted, and the
+national airs scoffed at, not only by an ignorant populace, but at
+public meetings, and once, among other notable instances, at a dinner
+given in honour of a notorious rebel who had violated his oath and
+abandoned his flag. The same individual is elected to an important
+office in the leading city of his State, although an unpardoned rebel,
+and so offensive that the President refuses to allow him to enter upon
+his official duties. In another State the leading general of the rebel
+armies is openly nominated for Governor by the Speaker of the House of
+Delegates, and the nomination is hailed by the people with shouts of
+satisfaction, and openly endorsed by the press....
+
+"The evidence of an intense hostility to the Federal Union, and an
+equally intense love of the late Confederacy, nurtured by the war is
+decisive. While it appears that nearly all are willing to submit, at
+least for the time being, to the Federal authority, it is equally clear
+that the ruling motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will
+be derived from a representation in Congress. Officers of the Union army
+on duty, and Northern men who go south to engage in business, are
+generally detested and proscribed. Southern men who adhered to the Union
+are bitterly hated and relentlessly persecuted. In some localities
+prosecutions have been instituted in State courts against Union officers
+for acts done in the line of official duty, and similar prosecutions are
+threatened elsewhere as soon as the United States troops are removed.
+All such demonstrations show a state of feeling against which it is
+unmistakably necessary to guard.
+
+"The testimony is conclusive that after the collapse of the Confederacy
+the feeling of the people of the rebellious States was that of abject
+submission. Having appealed to the tribunal of arms, they had no hope
+except that by the magnanimity of their conquerors, their lives, and
+possibly their property, might be preserved. Unfortunately the general
+issue of pardons to persons who had been prominent in the rebellion, and
+the feeling of kindliness and conciliation manifested by the Executive,
+and very generally indicated through the Northern press, had the effect
+to render whole communities forgetful of the crime they had committed,
+defiant towards the Federal Government, and regardless of their duties
+as citizens. The conciliatory measures of the Government do not seem to
+have been met even half-way. The bitterness and defiance exhibited
+towards the United States under such circumstances is without a parallel
+in the history of the world. In return for our leniency we receive only
+an insulting denial of our authority. In return for our kind desire for
+the resumption of fraternal relations we receive only an insolent
+assumption of rights and privileges long since forfeited. The crime we
+have punished is paraded as a virtue, and the principles of republican
+government which we have vindicated at so terrible a cost are denounced
+as unjust and oppressive.
+
+"If we add to this evidence the fact that, although peace has been
+declared by the President, he has not, to this day, deemed it safe to
+restore the writ of _habeas corpus_, to relieve the insurrectionary
+States of martial law, nor to withdraw the troops from many localities,
+and that the commanding general deems an increase of the army
+indispensable to the preservation of order and the protection of loyal
+and well-disposed people in the South, the proof of a condition of
+feeling hostile to the Union and dangerous to the Government throughout
+the insurrectionary States would seem to be overwhelming."
+
+This Committee recommended a series of coercive measures, the first of
+which was the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution,
+which disqualified for all office, either under the United States or
+under any State, any person who having in any capacity taken an oath of
+allegiance to the United States afterwards engaged in rebellion or gave
+aid and comfort to the rebels. This denied the _jus honorum_ to all the
+leading men at the South who had survived the war. In addition to it, an
+Act was passed in March, 1867, which put all the rebel States under
+military rule until a constitution should have been framed by a
+Convention elected by all males over twenty-one, except such as would be
+excluded from office by the above-named constitutional amendment if it
+were adopted, which at that time it had not been. Another Act was passed
+three weeks later, prescribing, for voters in the States lately in
+rebellion, what was known as the "ironclad oath," which excluded from
+the franchise not only all who had borne arms against the United States,
+but all who, having ever held any office for which the taking an oath of
+allegiance to the United States was a qualification, had afterwards ever
+given "aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." This practically
+disfranchised all the white men of the South over twenty-five years old.
+
+On this legislation there grew up, as all the world now knows, what was
+called the "carpet-bag" _regime_. Swarms of Northern adventurers went
+down to the Southern States, organized the ignorant negro voters,
+constructed State constitutions to suit themselves, got themselves
+elected to all the chief offices, plundered the State treasuries,
+contracted huge State debts, and stole the proceeds in connivance with
+legislatures composed mainly of negroes, of whom the most intelligent
+and instructed had been barbers and hotel-waiters. In some of the
+States, such as South Carolina and Mississippi, in which the negro
+population were in the majority, the government became a mere
+caricature. I was in Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, in 1872,
+during the session of the legislature, when you could obtain the passage
+of almost any measure you pleased by a small payment--at that time seven
+hundred dollars--to an old negro preacher who controlled the coloured
+majority. Under the pretence of fitting up committee-rooms, the private
+lodging-rooms at the boarding-houses of the negro members, in many
+instances, were extravagantly furnished with Wilton and Brussels
+carpets, mirrors, and sofas. A thousand dollars were expended for two
+hundred elegant imported china spittoons. There were only one hundred
+and twenty-three members in the House of Representatives, but the
+residue were, perhaps, transferred to the private chambers of the
+legislators.
+
+Now, how did the Southern whites deal with this state of things? Well, I
+am sorry to say they manifested their discontent very much in the way
+in which the Irish have for the last hundred years been manifesting
+theirs. If, as the English opponents of Home Rule seem to think,
+readiness to commit outrages, and refusal to sympathize with the victims
+of outrages, indicate political incapacity, the whites of the South
+showed, in the period between 1866 and 1876, that they were utterly
+unfit to be entrusted with the work of self-government. They could not
+rise openly in revolt because the United States troops were everywhere
+at the service of the carpet-baggers, for the suppression of armed
+resistance. They did not send petitions to Congress, or write letters to
+the Northern newspapers, or hold indignation meetings. They simply
+formed a huge secret society on the model of the "Molly Maguires" or
+"Moonlighters," whose special function was to intimidate, flog,
+mutilate, or murder political opponents in the night time. This society
+was called the "Ku-Klux Klan." Let me give some account of its
+operation, and I shall make it as brief as possible. It had become so
+powerful in 1871 that President Grant in that year, in his message to
+Congress, declared that "a condition of things existed in some of the
+States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the
+carrying of the mails and the collecting of the revenue dangerous." A
+Joint Select Committee of Congress was accordingly appointed, early in
+1872, to "inquire into the condition of affairs in the late
+insurrectionary States, so far as regards the execution of the laws and
+the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of the United
+States." Its report now lies before me, and it reads uncommonly like the
+speech of an Irish Secretary in the House of Commons bringing in a
+"Suppression of Crime Bill." The Committee say--
+
+"There is a remarkable concurrence of testimony to the effect that, in
+those of the late rebellious States into whose condition we have
+examined, the courts and juries administer justice between man and man
+in all ordinary cases, civil and criminal; and while there is this
+concurrence on this point, the evidence is equally decisive that redress
+cannot be obtained against those who commit crimes in disguise and at
+night. The reasons assigned are that identification is difficult, almost
+impossible; that, when this is attempted, the combinations and oaths of
+the order come in and release the culprit by perjury, either upon the
+witness-stand or in the jury-box; and that the terror inspired by their
+acts, as well as the public sentiment in their favour in many
+localities, paralyzes the arm of civil power.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The murders and outrages which have been perpetrated in many counties
+of Middle and West Tennessee, during the past few months, have been so
+numerous, and of such an aggravated character, as almost baffles
+investigation. In these counties a reign of terror exists which is so
+absolute in its nature that the best of citizens are unable or unwilling
+to give free expression to their opinions. The terror inspired by the
+secret organization known as the Ku-Klux Klan is so great, that the
+officers of the law are powerless to execute its provisions, to
+discharge their duties, or to bring the guilty perpetrators of these
+outrages to the punishment they deserve. Their stealthy movements are
+generally made under cover of night, and under masks and disguises,
+which render their identification difficult, if not impossible. To add
+to the secrecy which envelops their operations, is the fact that no
+information of their murderous acts can be obtained without the greatest
+difficulty and danger in the localities where they are committed. No one
+dares to inform upon them, or take any measures to bring them to
+punishment, because no one can tell but that he may be the next victim
+of their hostility or animosity. The members of this organization, with
+their friends, aiders, and abettors, take especial pains to conceal all
+their operations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Your committee believe that during the past six months, the murders--to
+say nothing of other outrages--would average one a day, or one for every
+twenty-four hours; that in the great majority of these cases they have
+been perpetrated by the Ku-Klux above referred to, and few, if any, have
+been brought to punishment. A number of the counties of this State
+(Tennessee) are entirely at the mercy of this organization, and roving
+bands of nightly marauders bid defiance to the civil authorities, and
+threaten to drive out every man, white or black, who does not submit to
+their arbitrary dictation. To add to the general lawlessness of these
+communities, bad men of every description take advantage of the
+circumstances surrounding them, and perpetrate acts of violence, from
+personal or pecuniary motives, under the plea of political necessity."
+
+Here is some of the evidence on which the report was based.
+
+A complaint of outrages committed in Georgia was referred by the general
+of the army, in June, 1869, to the general of the Department of the
+South for thorough investigation and report. General Terry, in his
+report, made August 14, 1869, says[2]--
+
+"In many parts of the State there is practically no government. The
+worst of crimes are committed, and no attempt is made to punish those
+who commit them. Murders have been and are frequent; the abuse, in
+various ways, of the blacks is too common to excite notice. There can be
+no doubt of the existence of numerous insurrectionary organizations
+known as 'Ku-Klux Klans,' who, shielded by their disguise, by the
+secrecy of their movements, and by the terror which they inspire,
+perpetrate crime with impunity. There is great reason to believe that in
+some cases local magistrates are in sympathy with the members of these
+organizations. In many places they are overawed by them and dare not
+attempt to punish them. To punish such offenders by civil proceedings
+would be a difficult task, even were magistrates in all cases disposed
+and had they the courage to do their duty, for the same influences which
+govern them equally affect juries and witnesses."
+
+Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Merrill, who assumed command (in Louisiana) on
+the 26th of March, and commenced investigation into the state of
+affairs, says (p. 1465)--
+
+"From the best information I can get, I estimate the number of cases of
+whipping, beating, and personal violence of various grades, in this
+county, since the first of last November, at between three and four
+hundred, excluding numerous minor cases of threats, intimidation, abuse,
+and small personal violence, as knocking down with a pistol or gun, etc.
+The more serious outrages, exclusive of murders and whippings, noted
+hereafter, have been the following:--"
+
+He then proceeds with the details of sixty-eight cases, giving the names
+of the parties injured, white and black, and including the tearing up of
+the railway, on the night before a raid was made by the Ku-Klux on the
+county treasury building. The rails were taken up, to prevent the
+arrival of the United States troops, who, it was known, were to come on
+Sunday morning. The raid was made on that Sunday night while the troops
+were lying at Chester, twenty-two miles distant, unable to reach
+Yorkville, because of the rails being torn up.
+
+Another witness said: "To give the details of the whipping of men to
+compel them to change their mode of voting, the tearing of them away
+from their families at night, accompanied with insults and outrage, and
+followed by their murder, would be but repeating what has been described
+in other States, showing that it is the same organization in all,
+working by the same means for the same end. Five murders are shown to
+have been committed in Monroe County, fifteen in Noxubee, one in
+Lowndes, by the testimony taken in the city of Washington; but the
+extent to which school-houses were burnt, teachers whipped, and outrages
+committed in this State, cannot be fully given until the testimony taken
+by the sub-committee shall have been printed and made ready to report."
+
+There are about eighty, closely printed, large octavo pages of this kind
+of testimony given by sufferers from the outrages.
+
+Something was done to suppress the Ku-Klux by a Federal Act passed in
+1871, which made offences of this kind punishable in the Federal Courts.
+Considerable numbers of them were arrested, tried, and convicted, and
+sent to undergo their punishment in the Northern jails. But there was no
+complete pacification of the South until the carpet-bag governments were
+refused the support of the Federal troops by President Hayes, on his
+accession to power in 1876. Then the carpet-bag _regime_ disappeared
+like a house of cards. The chief carpet-baggers fled, and the government
+passed at once into the hands of the native whites. I do not propose to
+defend or explain the way in which they have since then kept it in their
+hands, by suppressing or controlling the negro vote. This is not
+necessary to my purpose.
+
+What I seek to show is that the Irish are not peculiar in their manner
+of expressing their discontent with a government directed or controlled
+by the public opinion of another indifferent or semi-hostile community
+which it is impossible to resist in open warfare; that Anglo-Saxons
+resort to somewhat the same methods under similar circumstances, and
+that lawlessness and cruelty, considered as expressions of political
+animosity, do not necessarily argue any incapacity for the conduct of an
+orderly and efficient government, although I admit freely that they do
+argue a low state of civilization.
+
+I will add one more illustration which, although more remote than those
+which I have taken from the Southern States during the reconstruction
+period, is not too remote for my purpose, and is in some respects
+stronger than any of them. I do not know a more orderly community in the
+world, or one which, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, when
+manufactures began to multiply, and the Irish immigration began to pour
+in, had a higher average of intelligence than the State of Connecticut.
+Down to 1818 all voters in that State had to be members of the
+Congregational Church. It had no large cities, and this, with the aid of
+its seat of learning, Yale College, preserved in it, I think, in greater
+purity than even Massachusetts, the old Puritan simplicity of manners,
+the Puritan spirit of order and thrift, and the business-like view of
+government which grew out of the practice of town government. A less
+sentimental community, I do not think, exists anywhere, or one in which
+the expression of strong feeling on any subject but religion is less
+cultivated or viewed with less favour. In the matter of managing their
+own political affairs in peace or war, I do not expect the Irish to
+equal the Connecticut people for a hundred years to come, no matter how
+much practice they may have in the interval, and I think that fifty
+years ago it was only picked bodies of Englishmen who could do so. Yet,
+in 1833, in the town of Canterbury, one of the most orderly and
+intelligent in the State, an estimable and much-esteemed lady, Miss
+Prudence Crandall, was carrying on a girls' school, when something
+happened to touch her conscience about the condition of the free negroes
+of the North. She resolved, in a moment of enthusiasm, to undertake the
+education of negro girls only. What follows forms one of the most famous
+episodes in the anti-slavery struggle in America, and is possibly
+familiar to many of the older readers of this article. I shall extract
+the account of it as given briefly in the lately published life of
+William Lloyd Garrison, by his sons. Some of the details are much worse
+than is here described.
+
+"The story of this remarkable case cannot be pursued here except in
+brief.... It will be enough to say that the struggle between the modest
+and heroic young Quaker woman and the town lasted for nearly two years;
+that the school was opened in April; that attempts were immediately made
+under the law to frighten the pupils away and to fine Miss Crandall for
+harbouring them; that in May an Act prohibiting private schools for
+non-resident coloured persons, and providing for the expulsion of the
+latter, was procured from the legislature, amid the greatest rejoicing
+in Canterbury (even to the ringing of church bells); that, under this
+Act, Miss Crandall was in June arrested and temporarily imprisoned in
+the county jail, twice tried (August and October) and convicted; that
+her case was carried up to the Supreme Court of Errors, and her
+persecutors defeated on a technicality (July, 1834), and that pending
+this litigation the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to
+isolate the school from the countenance and even the physical support of
+the townspeople. The shops and the meeting-house were closed against
+teacher and pupils, carriage in the public conveyances was denied them,
+physicians would not wait upon them, Miss Crandall's own family and
+friends were forbidden, under penalty of heavy fines, to visit her, the
+well was filled with manure and water from other sources refused, the
+house itself was smeared with filth, assailed with rotten eggs and
+stones, and finally set on fire" (vol. i. p. 321).
+
+Miss Crandall is still living in the West, in extreme old age, and the
+Connecticut legislature voted her a small pension two years ago, as a
+slight expiation of the ignominy and injustice from which she had
+suffered at the hands of a past generation.
+
+The _Spectator_ frequently refers to the ferocious hatred displayed
+toward the widow of Curtin, the man who was cruelly murdered by
+moonlighters somewhere in Kerry, as an evidence of barbarism which
+almost, if not quite, justifies the denial of self-government to a
+people capable of producing such monsters in one spot and on one
+occasion. Let me match this from Mississippi with a case which I
+produce, not because it was singular, but because it was notorious at
+the North, where it occurred, in 1877. One Chisholm, a native of the
+State, and a man of good standing and character, became a Republican
+after the war, and was somewhat active in organizing the negro voters in
+his district. He was repeatedly warned by some of his neighbours to
+desist and abandon politics, but continued resolutely on his course. A
+mob, composed of many of the leading men in the town, then attacked him
+in his house. He made his escape, with his wife and young daughter and
+son, a lad of fourteen, to the jail. His assailants broke the jail open,
+and killed him and his son, and desperately wounded the daughter. The
+poor lad received such a volley of bullets, that his blood went in one
+rush to the floor, and traced the outlines of his trunk on the ceiling
+of the room below, where it remained months afterwards, an eye-witness
+told me, as an illustration of the callousness of the jailer. The
+leading murderers were tried. They had no defence. The facts were not
+disputed. The judge and the bar did their duty, but the jury acquitted
+the prisoners without leaving their seats. Mrs. Chisholm, the widow,
+found neither sympathy nor friends at the scene of the tragedy. She had
+to leave the State, and found refuge in Washington, where she now holds
+a clerkship in the Treasury department.
+
+Let me cite as another illustration the violent ways in which popular
+discontent may find expression in communities whose political capacity
+and general respect for the law and its officers, as well as for the
+sanctity of contracts, have never been questioned. Large tracts of land
+were formerly held along the Hudson river in the State of New York, by a
+few families, of which the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons were the
+chief, either under grants from the Dutch at the first settlement of the
+colony, or from the English Crown after the conquest. That known as the
+"Manor of Rensselaerwick," held by the Van Rensselaers, comprised a
+tract of country extending twenty-four miles north and south, and
+forty-eight miles east and west, lying on each side of the Hudson river.
+It was held by the tenants for perpetual leases. The rents were, on the
+Van Rensselaer estate, fourteen bushels of wheat for each hundred acres,
+and four fat hens, and one day's service with a carriage and horses, to
+each farm of one hundred and sixty acres. Besides this, there was a fine
+on alienation amounting to about half a year's rent. The Livingston
+estates were let in much the same way.
+
+In 1839, Stephen Van Rensselaer, the proprietor, or "Patroon" as he was
+called, died, with $400,000 due to him as arrears from the tenants, for
+which, being a man of easy temper, he had forborne to press them. But he
+left the amount in trust by his will for the payment of his debts, and
+his heirs proceeded to collect it, and persisted in the attempt during
+the ensuing seven years. What then happened I shall describe in the
+words of Mr. John Bigelow. Mr. Tilden was a member of the State
+Legislature in 1846, and was appointed Chairman of a Committee to
+investigate the rent troubles, and make the report which furnished the
+basis for the legislation by which they were subsequently settled. Mr.
+Bigelow, who has edited Mr. Tilden's _Public Writings and Speeches_,
+prefaces the report with the following explanatory note:--
+
+"Attempts were made to enforce the collection of these rents. The
+tenants resisted. They established armed patrols, and, by the adoption
+of various disguises, were enabled successfully to defy the civil
+authorities. Eventually it became necessary to call out the military,
+but the result was only partially satisfactory. These demonstrations of
+authority provoked the formation of 'anti-rent clubs' throughout the
+manorial district, with a view of acquiring a controlling influence in
+the legislature. Small bands, armed and disguised as Indians, were also
+formed to hold themselves in readiness at all times to resist the
+officers of the law whenever and wherever they attempted to serve legal
+process upon the tenants. The principal roads throughout the infected
+district were guarded by the bands so carefully, and the animosity
+between the tenants and the civil authorities was so intense, that at
+last it became dangerous for any one not an anti-renter to be found in
+these neighbourhoods. It was equally dangerous for the landlords to make
+any appeal to the law or for the collection of rents or for protection
+of their persons. When Governor Wright entered upon his duties in Albany
+in 1845, he found that the anti-rent party had a formidable
+representation in the legislature, and that the questions involved were
+assuming an almost national importance."
+
+The sheriff made gallant attempts to enforce the law, but his deputies
+were killed, and a legal investigation in which two hundred persons were
+examined, failed to reveal the perpetrators of the crime. The militia
+were called out, but they were no more successful than the sheriff. In
+the case of one murder committed in Delaware County in 1845, however,
+two persons were convicted, but their sentence was commuted to
+imprisonment for life. Various others concerned in the disturbances were
+convicted of minor offences, but when Governor Young succeeded Governor
+Seward after an election in which the anti-renters showed considerable
+voting strength, he pardoned them all on the ground that their crimes
+were political. The dispute was finally settled by a compromise--that
+is, the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons both sold their estates,
+giving quit-claim deeds to the tenants for what they chose to pay, and
+the granting of agricultural leases for a longer term than twelve years
+was forbidden by the State Constitution of 1846.
+
+This anti-rent agitation is described by Professor Johnston of
+Princeton, in the _Cyclopaedia of Political Science_, as "a reign of
+terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law
+and the payment of rent throughout the district." Suppose all the land
+of the State had been held under similar tenures; that the controversy
+had lasted one hundred years; that the rents had been high; and that the
+Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons had had the aid of the Federal army
+in enforcing distraints and evictions, and in enabling them to set local
+opinion at defiance, what do you suppose the state of morals and manners
+would have been in New York by this time? What would have been the
+feelings of the people towards the Federal authority had the matter been
+finally adjusted with the strong hand, in accordance, not with the views
+of the people of the State, but of the landholders of South Carolina or
+of the district of Columbia? I am afraid they would have been terribly
+Irish.
+
+
+I know very well the risk I run, in citing all these precedents and
+parallels, of seeming to justify, or at all events to palliate, Irish
+lawlessness. But I am not doing anything of the kind. I am trying to
+illustrate a somewhat trite remark which I recently made: "that
+government is a very practical business, and that those succeed best in
+it who bring least sentiment or enthusiasm to the conduct of their
+affairs." The government of Ireland, like the government of all other
+countries, is a piece of business--a very difficult piece of business, I
+admit--and therefore horror over Irish doings, and the natural and human
+desire to "get even with" murderers and moonlighters, by denying the
+community which produces them something it would like much to possess,
+should have no influence with those who are charged with Irish
+government. It is only in nurseries and kindergartens that we can give
+offenders their exact due and withhold their toffee until they have
+furnished satisfactory proofs of repentance. Rulers of men have to
+occupy themselves mainly with the question of drying up the sources of
+crime, and often, in order to accomplish this, to let much crime and
+disorder go unwhipped of justice.
+
+With the state of mind which cannot bear to see any concessions made to
+the Irish Nationalists because they are such wicked men, in which so
+many excellent Englishmen, whom we used to think genuine political
+philosophers, are now living, we are very familiar in the United States.
+It is a state of mind which prevailed in the Republican party with
+regard to the South, down to the election of 1884, and found constant
+expression on the stump and in the newspapers in what is described, in
+political slang, as "waving the bloody shirt." It showed itself after
+the war in unwillingness to release the South from military rule; then
+in unwillingness to remove the disfranchisement of the whites or to
+withdraw from the carpet-bag State governments the military support
+without which they could not have existed for a day; and, last of all,
+in dread of the advent of a Democratic Federal Administration in which
+Southerners or "ex-rebels" would be likely to hold office. At first the
+whole Republican party was more or less permeated by these ideas; but
+the number of those who held them gradually diminished, until in 1884 it
+was at last possible to elect a Democratic President. Nevertheless a
+great multitude witnessed the entrance into the White House of a
+President who is indebted for his election mainly to the States formerly
+in rebellion, with genuine alarm. They feared from it something
+dreadful, in the shape either of a violation of the rights of the
+freedmen, or of an assault on the credit and stability of the Federal
+Government. Nothing but actual experiment would have disabused them.
+
+I am very familiar with the controversy with them, for I have taken some
+part in it ever since the passage of the reconstruction Acts, and I know
+very well how they felt, and am sometimes greatly impressed by the
+similarity between their arguments and those of the opponents of Irish
+Home Rule. One of their fixed beliefs for many years, though it is now
+extinct, was that Southerners were so bent on rebelling again, and were
+generally so prone to rebellion, that the awful consequences of their
+last attempt in the loss of life and property, had made absolutely no
+impression on them. The Southerner was, in fact, in their eyes, what Mr.
+Gladstone says the Irishman is in the eyes of some Englishmen: "A _lusus
+naturae_; that justice, common sense, moderation, national prosperity had
+no meaning for him; that all he could appreciate was strife and
+perpetual dissension. It was for many years useless to point out to them
+the severity of the lesson taught by the Civil War as to the physical
+superiority of the North, or the necessity of peace and quiet to enable
+the new generation of Southerners to restore their fortunes, or even
+gain a livelihood. Nor was it easy to impress them with the
+inconsistency of arguing that it was slavery which made Southerners what
+they were before they went to war, and maintaining at the same time that
+the disappearance of slavery would produce no change in their manners,
+ideas, or opinions. All this they answered by pointing to speeches
+delivered by some fiery adorer of "the lost cause," to the Ku-Klux
+outrages, to political murders, like that of Chisholm, to the building
+of monuments to the Confederate dead, or to some newspaper expression of
+reverence for Confederate nationality. In fact, for fully ten years
+after the close of the war the collection of Southern "outrages" and
+their display before Northern audiences, was the chief work of
+Republican politicians. In 1876, during the Hayes-Tilden canvass, the
+opening speech which furnished what is called "the key-note of the
+campaign" was made by Mr. Wheeler, the Republican candidate for the
+Vice-Presidency, and his advice to the Vermonters, to whom it was
+delivered, was "to vote as they shot," that is, to go to the polls with
+the same feelings and aims as those with which they enlisted in the war.
+
+I need hardly tell English readers how all this has ended. The
+withdrawal of the Federal troops from the South by President Hayes, and
+the consequent complete restoration of the State governments to the
+discontented whites, have fully justified the expectations of those who
+maintained that it is no less true in politics than in physics, that if
+you remove what you see to be the cause, the effect will surely
+disappear. It is true, at least in the Western world, that if you give
+communities in a reasonable degree the management of their own affairs,
+the love of material comfort and prosperity which is now so strong among
+all civilized, and even partially civilized men, is sure in the long run
+to do the work of creating and maintaining order; or, as Mr. Gladstone
+has expressed it, in setting up a government, "the best and surest
+foundation we can find to build on is the foundation afforded by the
+affections, the convictions, and the will of men."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: Report of Secretary of War, 1869-70, vol. i. p. 89.]
+
+
+
+
+HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS.
+
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+
+In the Home Rule contest of the last eighteen months no argument has
+been more frequently used against the Liberal party than the charge of
+sudden, and therefore, it would seem, dishonest change of view. "You
+were opposed to an Irish Parliament at the election of 1880 and for some
+time afterward; you are not entitled to advocate it in 1886." "You
+passed a Coercion Bill in 1881, your Ministry (though against the
+protests of an active section of its supporters) passed another Coercion
+Bill in 1882; you have no right to resist a third such Bill in 1887,
+and, if you do, your conduct can be due to nothing but party spite and
+revenge at your own exclusion from office." Reproaches of this kind are
+now the stock-in-trade, not merely of the ordinary politician, who, for
+want of a case, abuses the plaintiff's attorney, but of leading men,
+and, still more, of leading newspapers, who might be thought bound to
+produce from recent events and an examination of the condition of
+Ireland some better grounds for the passion they display. It is
+noticeable that such reproaches come more often from the so-called
+Liberal Unionists than from the present Ministry. Perhaps, with their
+belief that all Liberals are unprincipled revolutionaries, the Tories
+deem a sin more or less to be of small account. Perhaps a recollection
+of their own remarkable gyrations, before and after the General
+Election of 1885, may suggest that the less said about the past the
+better for everybody. Be the cause what it may, it is surprising to find
+that a section commanding so much ability as the group of Dissentient
+Liberals does, should rely rather on the charge of inconsistency than on
+the advocacy of any counter-policy of their own. It is not large and
+elevated, but petty, minds that rejoice to say to an opponent (and all
+the more so if he was once a friend), "You must either be wrong now, or
+have been wrong then, because you have changed your opinion. I have not
+changed; I was right then, and I am right now." Such an argument not
+only dispenses with the necessity of sifting the facts, but it fosters
+the satisfaction of the person who employs it. Consistency is the pet
+virtue of the self-righteous, and the man who values himself on his
+consistency can seldom be induced to see that to shut one's eyes to the
+facts which time develops, to refuse to reconsider one's position by the
+light they shed, to cling to an old solution when the problem is
+substantially new, is a proof, not of fortitude and wisdom, but rather
+of folly and conceit.
+
+Such persons may be left to the contemplation of their own virtues. But
+there are many fair-minded men of both political parties, or of neither,
+who, while acquitting those Liberal members who supported Home Rule in
+1886 and opposed Coercion in 1887 of the sordid or spiteful motives with
+which the virulence of journalism credits them, have nevertheless been
+surprised at the apparent swiftness and completeness of the change in
+their opinions. It would be idle to deny that, in startling the minds of
+steady-going people, this change did, for the moment, weaken the
+influence and weight of those who had changed. This must be so. A man
+who says now what he denied six years ago cannot expect to be believed
+on his _ipse dixit_. He must set forth the grounds of his conviction. He
+must explain how his views altered, and why reasons which formerly
+satisfied him satisfy him no longer. It may be that the Liberal party
+have omitted to do this as they ought. Occupied by warm and incessant
+discussions, and conscious, I venture to believe, of their own honesty,
+few of its members have been at the trouble of showing what were the
+causes which modified their views, and what the stages of the process
+which carried them from the position of 1880 to that of 1886.
+
+Of that process I shall attempt in the following pages to give a sketch.
+Such a sketch, though mainly retrospective, is pertinent to the issues
+which now divide the country. It will indicate the origin and the
+strength of the chief reasons by which Liberals are now governed. And,
+if executed with proper fairness and truth, it may, as a study in
+contemporary history, be of some little interest to those who in future
+will attempt to understand our present conflict. The causes which
+underlie changes of opinion are among the most obscure phenomena in
+history, because those who undergo, these changes are often only half
+conscious of them, and do not think of recording that which is
+imperceptible in its growth, and whose importance is not realized till
+it already belongs to the past.
+
+The account which follows is based primarily on my own recollection of
+the phases of opinion and feeling through which I myself, and the
+friends whom I knew most intimately in the House of Commons, passed
+during the Parliament which sat from 1880 till 1885. But I should not
+think of giving it to the public if I did not believe that what happened
+to our minds happened to many others also, and that the record of our
+own slow movement from the position of 1880 to that of 1886 is
+substantially a record of the movement of the Liberal party at large. We
+were fairly typical members of that party, loyal to our leaders, but
+placing the principles for which the Liberal party exists above the
+success of the party itself; with our share of prepossessions and
+prejudices, yet with reasonably open minds, and (as we believed)
+inferior to no other section of the House of Commons in patriotism and
+in attachment to the Constitution. I admit frankly that when we entered
+Parliament we knew less about the Irish question than we ought to have
+known, and that even after knowledge had been forced upon us, we were
+more deferential to our leaders than was good either for us or for them.
+But these are faults always chargeable on the great majority of members.
+It is because those of whom I speak were in these respects fairly
+typical, that it seems worth while to trace the history of their
+opinions. If any one should accuse me of attributing to an earlier year
+sentiments which began to appear in a later one, I can only reply that I
+am aware of this danger, as one which always besets those who recall
+their past states of mind, and that I have done my utmost to avoid it.
+
+The change I have to describe was slow and gradual. It was
+reluctant--that is to say, it seemed rather forced upon us by the
+teaching of events than the work of our own minds. Each session marked a
+further stage in it; and I therefore propose to examine its progress
+session by session.
+
+Session of 1880.--The General Election of 1880 turned mainly on the
+foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government. Few Liberal candidates
+said much about Ireland. Absorbed in the Eastern and Afghan questions,
+they had not watched the progress of events in Ireland with the
+requisite care, nor realized the gravity of the crisis which was
+approaching. They were anxious to do justice to Ireland, in the way of
+amending both the land laws and local government, but saw no reason for
+going further. Nearly all of them refused, even when pressed by Irish
+electors in their constituencies, to promise to vote for that
+"parliamentary inquiry into the demand for Home Rule," which was then
+propounded by those electors as a sort of test question. We (_i.e._ the
+Liberal candidates of 1880) then declared that we thought an Irish
+Parliament would involve serious constitutional difficulties, and that
+we saw no reason why the Imperial Parliament should not do full justice
+to Ireland. Little was said about Coercion. Hopes were expressed that it
+would not be resorted to, but very few (if any) pledged themselves
+against it.
+
+When Mr. Forster was appointed Irish Secretary in Mr. Gladstone's
+Government which the General Election brought into power, we (by which I
+mean throughout the new Liberal members) were delighted. We knew him to
+be conscientious, industrious, kind-hearted. We believed him to be
+penetrating and judicious. We applauded his conduct in not renewing the
+Coercion Act which Lord Beaconsfield's Government had failed to renew
+before dissolving Parliament, and which indeed there was scarcely time
+left after the election to renew, a fact which did not save Mr. Forster
+from severe censure on the part of the Tories.
+
+The chief business of the session was the Compensation for Disturbance
+Bill, which Mr. Forster brought in for the sake of saving from immediate
+eviction tenants whom a succession of bad seasons had rendered utterly
+unable to pay their rents. This Bill was pressed through the House of
+Commons with the utmost difficulty, and at an expenditure of time which
+damaged the other work of the session, though the House continued to sit
+into September. The Executive Government declared it to be necessary, in
+order not only to relieve the misery of the people, but to secure the
+tranquillity of the country. Nevertheless, the whole Tory party, and a
+considerable section of the Liberal party, opposed it in the interests
+of the Irish landlords, and of economic principles in general,
+principles which (as commonly understood in England) it certainly
+trenched on. When it reached the House of Lords it was contemptuously
+rejected, and the unhappy Irish Secretary left to face as he best might
+the cries of a wretched peasantry and the rising tide of outrage. What
+was even more remarkable, was the coolness with which the Liberal party
+took the defeat of a Bill their leaders had pronounced absolutely
+needed. Had it been an English Bill of the same consequence to England
+as it was to Ireland, the country would have been up in arms against the
+House of Lords, demanding the reform or the abolition of a Chamber which
+dared to disregard the will of the people. But nothing of the kind
+happened. It was only an Irish measure. We relieved ourselves by a few
+strong words, and the matter dropped.
+
+It was in this session that the Liberal party first learnt what sort of
+a spirit was burning in the hearts of Irish members. There had been
+obstruction in the last years of the previous Parliament, but, as the
+Tories were in power, they had to bear the brunt of it. Now that a
+Liberal Ministry reigned, it fell on the Liberals. At first it incensed
+us. Full of our own good intentions towards Ireland, we thought it
+contrary to nature that Irish members should worry us, their friends, as
+they had worried Tories, their hereditary enemies. Presently we came to
+understand how matters stood. The Irish members made little difference
+between the two great English parties. Both represented to them a
+hostile domination. Both were ignorant of the condition of their
+country. Both cared so little about Irish questions that nothing less
+than deeds of violence out of doors or obstruction within doors could
+secure their attention. Concessions had to be extorted from both by the
+same devices; Coercion might be feared at the hands of both. Hence the
+Irish party was resolved to treat both parties alike, and play off the
+one against the other in the interests of Ireland alone, using the
+questions which divide Englishmen and Scotchmen merely as levers
+whereby to effect their own purposes, because themselves quite
+indifferent to the substantial merits of those questions. To us new
+members this was an alarming revelation. We found that the House of
+Commons consisted of two distinct and dissimilar bodies: a large British
+body (including some few Tories and Liberals from Ireland), which,
+though it was distracted by party quarrels, really cared for the welfare
+of the country and the dignity of the House, and would set aside its
+quarrels in the presence of a great emergency; and a small Irish body,
+which, though it spoke the English language, was practically foreign,
+felt no interest in, no responsibility for, the business of Britain or
+the Empire, and valued its place in the House only as a means of making
+itself so disagreeable as to obtain its release. When we had grasped
+this fact, we began to reflect on its causes and conjecture its effects.
+We had read of the same things in the newspapers, but what a difference
+there is between reading a drama in your study and seeing it acted on
+the stage! We realized what Irish feeling was when we heard these angry
+cries, and noted how appeals that would have affected English partisans
+fell on deaf ears. I remember how one night in the summer of 1880, when
+the Irish members kept us up very late over some trivial Bill of theirs,
+refusing to adjourn till they had extorted terms, a friend, sitting
+beside me, said, "See how things come round. They keep us out of bed
+till five o'clock in the morning because our ancestors bullied theirs
+for six centuries." And we saw that the natural relations of an
+Executive, even a Liberal Executive, to the Irish members were those of
+strife. Whose fault it was we were unable to decide. Perhaps the
+Government was too stiff; perhaps the members were vexatious. Anyhow,
+this strife was evidently the normal state of things, wholly unlike that
+which existed between Scotch members, to whichever party they belonged,
+and the executive authorities of Scotland.
+
+Thus the session of 1880, though it did not bring us consciously nearer
+to Home Rule, impressed three facts upon us: first, that the House of
+Lords regarded Ireland solely from the point of view of English
+landlords, sympathizing with Irish landlords; secondly, that the House
+of Commons knew so little or cared so little about Ireland that when the
+Executive declared a measure essential to the peace of Ireland, it
+scarcely resented the rejection of that measure by the House of Lords;
+thirdly, that the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons were a
+foreign body, foreign in the sense in which a needle which a man
+swallows is foreign, not helping the organism to discharge its
+functions, but impeding them, and setting up irritation. We did not yet
+draw from these facts all the conclusions we should now draw. But the
+facts were there, and they began to tell upon our minds.
+
+SESSION OF 1881.--The winter of 1880-81 was a terrible one in Ireland.
+The rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill had borne the
+fruit which Mr. Forster had predicted, and which the House of Lords had
+ignored. Outrages were numerous and serious. The cry in England for
+repressive measures had gone on rising from November, when it occasioned
+a demonstration at the Guildhall banquet. Several Liberal members (of
+whom I was one) went to Ireland at Christmas, to see with our own eyes
+how things stood. We were struck by the difficulty of obtaining
+trustworthy information in Dublin, where the richer classes, with whom
+we chiefly came in contact, merely abused the Land League, while the
+Land Leaguers declared that the accounts of outrages were grossly
+exaggerated. The most prominent, Mr. Michael Davitt, assured me, and I
+believe with perfect truth, that he had exerted himself to
+discountenance outrage, and that if, as he expected, he was locked up by
+the Government, outrages would increase. When one reached the disturbed
+districts, where, of course, one talked to members as well of the
+landlord class as of the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged
+from the medley of contradictions was that, though there was much
+agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity, the disorders were
+not so bad as people in England believed, and might have been dealt with
+by a vigorous administration of the existing law. Unfortunately, the
+so-called "better classes," full of bitterness against the Liberal
+Ministry and Mr. Forster (whom they did not praise till it was too
+late), had not assisted the Executive, and had allowed things to reach a
+pass at which it found the work of governing very difficult.
+
+When the Coercion Bill of 1881 was introduced, many English Liberals
+were inclined to resist it. The great majority voted for it, but within
+two years they bitterly repented their votes. Our motives, which I
+mention by way of extenuation, not of defence, were these. The Executive
+Government declared that it could not deal with crime by the ordinary
+law. If its followers refused exceptional powers, they must displace the
+Ministry, and let in the Tories, who would doubtless obtain such powers,
+and probably use them worse. We had still confidence in Mr. Forster's
+judgment, and a deference to Irish Executive Governments generally which
+Parliamentary experience is well fitted to dissipate. The violence with
+which the Nationalist members resisted the introduction of the Bill had
+roused our blood, and the foolish attempts which the Radical and Irish
+electors in some constituencies had made to deter their members from
+supporting it had told the other way, and disposed these members to vote
+for it, in order to show that they were not to be cowed by threats.
+Finally, we were assured that votes given for the Coercion Bill would
+purchase a thorough-going Land Bill, and our anxiety for the latter
+induced us, naturally, but erringly, to acquiesce in the former.
+
+When that Land Bill went into Committee we perceived how much harm the
+Coercion Bill had done in intensifying the bitterness of Irish members.
+Although the Ministry was fighting for their interests against the Tory
+party and the so-called Whiggish section of its own supporters, who were
+seeking to cut down the benefits which the measure offered to Irish
+tenants, the Nationalist members regarded it, and in particular Mr.
+Forster, as their foe. They resented what they deemed the insult put
+upon their country. They saw those who had been fighting, often, no
+doubt, by unlawful methods, for the national cause, thrown into prison
+and kept there without trial. They anticipated (not without reason) the
+same fortune for themselves. Hence the friendliness which the Liberal
+party sought to show them met with no response, and Mr. Forster was
+worried with undiminished vehemence. In the discussions on the Bill we
+found the Ministry generally resisting all amendments which came from
+Irish members. When these amendments seemed to us right, we voted for
+them, but they were almost always defeated by the union of the Tories
+with the steady Ministerialists. Subsequent events have proved that many
+were right, but, whether they were right or wrong, the fact which
+impressed us was that in matters which concerned Ireland only, and lay
+within the exclusive knowledge of Irishmen, Irish members were
+constantly outvoted by English and Scotch members, who knew nothing at
+all of the merits of the case, but simply obeyed the party whip. This
+happened even when the Irish members who sat on the Liberal side (such
+as Mr. Dickson and his Liberal colleagues from Ulster) joined the
+Nationalist section in demanding some extension of the Bill which the
+Ministry refused. And we perceived that nothing incensed the Irish
+members more than the feeling that their arguments were addressed to
+deaf ears; that they were overborne, not by reason, but by sheer weight
+of numbers. Even if they convinced the Ministry, they could seldom hope
+to obtain its assent, because the Ministry had to consider the House of
+Lords, sure to reject amendments which favoured the tenant, while to
+detach a number of Ministerialists sufficient to carry an amendment
+against the Treasury Bench, the Moderate Liberals, and the Tories, was
+evidently hopeless.
+
+At the end of the session the House of Lords came again upon the scene.
+It seriously damaged the Bill by its amendments, and would have
+destroyed it but for the skill with which the head of the Government
+handled these amendments, accepting the least pernicious, so as to
+enable the Upper House without loss of dignity to recede from those
+which were wholly inadmissible. Several times it seemed as if the
+conflict would have to pass from Westminster to the country, and, in
+contemplating the chances of a popular agitation or a dissolution, we
+were regretfully obliged to own that the English people cared too little
+and knew too little about Irish questions to give us much hope of
+defeating the House of Lords and the Tories upon these issues.
+
+An incident which occurred towards the end of the session seems, though
+trifling in itself, so illustrative of the illogical position in which
+we stood towards Ireland, as to deserve mention. Mr. Forster, still
+Chief Secretary, had brought in a Bill for extinguishing the Queen's
+University in Ireland, and creating in place of it a body to be called
+the Royal University, which, however, was not to be a real university at
+all, but only a set of examiners plus some salaried fellowships, to be
+held at various places of instruction. Regarding this as a gross
+educational blunder, which would destroy a useful existing body, and
+create a sham university in its place, and finding several Parliamentary
+friends on whose judgment I could rely to be of the same opinion, I gave
+notice of opposition to the Bill. Mr. Forster came to me, and pressed
+with great warmth that the opposition should be withdrawn. The Bill, he
+said, would satisfy the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and complete the work
+of the Land Bill in pacifying Ireland. The Irish members wanted it: what
+business had an English member to interfere to defeat their wishes, and
+thwart the Executive? The reply was obvious. Not to speak of the
+simplicity of expecting the hierarchy to be satisfied by this small
+concession, what were such arguments but the admission of Home Rule in
+its worst form? "You resist the demand of the Irish members to legislate
+for Ireland; you have just been demanding, and obtaining, the support of
+English members against those amendments of the Land Bill which Irish
+members declare to be necessary. Now you bid us surrender our own
+judgment, ignore our own responsibility, and blindly pass a Bill which
+we, who have studied these university questions as they affect both
+Ireland and England, believe to be thoroughly mischievous to the
+prospects of higher education in Ireland, only because the Irish
+members, as you say, desire it. Do one thing or the other. Either give
+them the power and the responsibility, or leave both with the Imperial
+Parliament. You are now asking us to surrender the power, but to remain
+still subject to the responsibility. We will not bear the latter without
+the former. We shall prefer Home Rule." Needless to add that this
+device--a sample of the petty sops by which successive generations of
+English statesmen, Whigs and Tories alike, have sought to win over a
+priesthood which uses and laughs at them--failed as completely as its
+predecessors to settle the University question or to range the bishops
+on the side of the Government.
+
+The autumn and winter of 1881 revealed the magnitude of the mischief
+done by making a Coercion Bill precede a Relief Bill. The Land Bill was
+the largest concession made to the demands of the people since Catholic
+Emancipation. It was a departure, justified by necessity, but still a
+departure from our established principles of legislation. It ought to
+have brought satisfaction and confidence, if not gratitude, with it;
+ought to have led Ireland to believe in the sincere friendliness of
+England, and produced a new cordiality between the islands. It did
+nothing of the kind. It was held to have been extorted from our fears;
+its grace and sweetness were destroyed by the concomitant severities
+which the Coercion Act had brought into force, as wholesome food becomes
+distasteful when some bitter compound has been sprinkled over it. We
+were deeply mortified at this result of our efforts. What was the malign
+power which made the boons we had conferred shrivel up, "like fairy
+gifts fading away"? We still believed the Coercion Act to have been
+justified, but lamented the fate which baffled the main object of our
+efforts, the winning over Ireland to trust the justice and the capacity
+of the Imperial Parliament. And thus the two facts which stood out from
+the history of this eventful session were, first, that even in
+legislating for the good of Ireland we were legislating against the
+wishes of Ireland, imposing on her enactments which her representatives
+opposed, and which we supported only at the bidding of the Ministry;
+and, secondly, that at the end of a long session, entirely devoted to
+her needs, we found her more hostile and not less disturbed than she had
+been at its beginning. We began to wonder whether we should ever succeed
+better on our present lines. But we still mostly regarded Home Rule as a
+disagreeable solution.
+
+SESSION OF 1882.--Still graver were the lessons of the first four months
+of this year. Mr. Forster went on filling the prisons of Ireland with
+persons whom he arrested under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, and
+never brought to trial. But the country grew no more quiet. At last he
+had nine hundred and forty men under lock and key, many of them not
+"village ruffians," whose power a few weeks' detention was to break, but
+political offenders, and even popular leaders. How long could this go
+on? Where was it to stop? It became plain that the Act was a failure,
+and that the people, trained to combination by a century and a half's
+practice, were too strong for the Executive. Either the scheme and plan
+of the Act had been wrong, or its administration had been incompetent.
+Whichever was the source of the failure (most people will now blame
+both), the fault must be laid at the door of the Irish Executive; not of
+Mr. Forster himself, but of those on whom he relied. It had been a
+Dublin Castle Bill, conceived and carried out by the incompetent
+bureaucracy which has so long pretended to govern Ireland. Such a proof
+of incompetence destroyed whatever confidence in that bureaucracy then
+remained to us, and the disclosures which the Phoenix Park murders and
+the subsequent proceedings against the Invincibles brought out, proved
+beyond question that the Irish Executive had only succeeded in giving a
+more dark and dangerous form, the form of ruthless conspiracy, to the
+agitation it was combating.
+
+When therefore the Prevention of Crime Bill of 1882 was brought in, some
+of us felt unable to support it, and specially bound to resist those of
+its provisions which related to trials without a jury, and to
+boycotting. It was impossible, on the morrow of the Phoenix Park
+murders, to deny that some coercive measure might be needed; but we had
+so far lost faith in repression, and in the officials who were to
+administer it, as to desire to limit it to what was absolutely
+necessary, and we protested against enacting for Ireland a criminal code
+which was not to be applied to Great Britain. Our resistance might have
+been more successful but for the manner in which the Nationalist members
+conducted their opposition. When they began to obstruct--not that under
+the circumstances we felt entitled to censure them for obstructing a
+Bill dealing so harshly with their countrymen--we were obliged to
+desist, and our experience of the stormy scenes of the summer of 1882
+deepened our sense of the passionate bitterness with which they regarded
+English members, scarcely making an exception in favour of those who
+were most disposed to sympathize with them. Many and many a time when we
+listened to their fierce cries, we seemed to hear in them the
+battle-cries of the centuries of strife between Celt and Englishman from
+Athenry to Vinegar Hill; many a time we felt that this rage and mistrust
+were chiefly of England's making; and yet not of England's, but rather
+of the overmastering fate which had prolonged to our own days the
+hatreds and the methods of barbarous times:
+
+            hemeis d' ouk aitioi esmen
+    Alla Zeus kai Moira kai eerophoitis Herinus.
+
+So much of the session as the Crime Bill had spared was consumed by the
+Arrears Bill, over which we had again a "crisis" with the House of
+Lords. This was the third session that had been practically given up to
+Irishmen. The freshness and force of the Parliament of 1880--a
+Parliament full of zeal and ability--had now been almost spent, yet few
+of the plans of domestic legislation spread before the constituencies of
+1880 had been realized. The Government had been anxious to legislate,
+their majority had been ready to support them, but Ireland had blocked
+the way; and now the only expedient for improving the procedure of the
+House was to summon Parliament in an extra autumn session. Here was
+another cause for reflection. England and Scotland were calling for
+measures promised years ago, but no time could be found to discuss them.
+Nothing was done to reorganize local government, to reform the liquor
+laws, to improve secondary education, to deal with the housing of the
+poor, or a dozen other urgent questions, because we were busy with
+Ireland; and yet how little more loyal or contented did Ireland seem to
+be for all we had done. We began to ask whether Home Rule might not be
+as much an English and Scotch question as an Irish question. It was, at
+any rate, clear that to allow Ireland to manage her own affairs would
+open a prospect for England and Scotland to obtain time to attend to
+theirs.[3]
+
+This feeling was strengthened by the result of the attempts made in the
+autumn session of 1882, to improve the procedure of the House of
+Commons. We had cherished the hope that more drastic remedies against
+obstruction and better arrangements for the conduct of business, might
+relieve much of the pressure Irish members had made us suffer. The
+passing of the New Rules shattered this hope, for it was plain they
+would not accomplish what was needed. Some blamed the Government for not
+framing a more stringent code. Some blamed the Tory and the Irish
+Oppositions (now beginning to work in concert) for cutting down the
+proposals of the Government. But most of us saw, and came to see still
+more clearly in the three succeeding sessions, that the evil was too
+deep-rooted to be cured by any changes of procedure, unless they went so
+far as to destroy freedom of debate for English members also. The
+presence in a deliberative assembly of a section numbering (or likely
+soon to number) one-seventh of the whole--a section seeking to lower the
+character of the assembly, and to derange its mechanism, with no further
+interest in the greater part of its business except that of preventing
+it from conducting that business--this was the phenomenon which
+confronted us, and we felt that no rules of debate would overcome the
+dangers it threatened.
+
+It is from this year 1882 that I date the impression which we formed,
+that Home Rule was sure to come. "It may be a bold experiment," we said
+to one another in the lobbies; "there are serious difficulties in the
+way, though the case for it is stronger than we thought two years ago.
+But if the Irishmen persist as they are doing now, they will get it. It
+is only a question of their tenacity."
+
+It was impossible not to be struck during the conflicts of 1881 and 1882
+with the small amount of real bitterness which the conduct of the Irish
+members, irritating as it often was, provoked among the Liberals, who of
+course bore the brunt of the conflict. The Nationalists did their best
+to injure a Government which was at the same time being denounced by the
+Tories as too favourable to Irish claims; they lowered the character of
+Parliament by scenes far more painful than those of the session of 1887,
+on which so much indignation has been lately expended; they said the
+hardest things they could think of against us in the House; they
+attacked us in our constituencies. Their partisans (for I do not charge
+this on the leaders) interrupted and broke up our meetings.
+Nevertheless, all this did not provoke responsive hatred from the
+Liberals. There could not be a greater contrast than that between the
+way in which the great bulk of the Liberal members all through the
+Parliament of 1880 behaved towards their Irish antagonists, and the
+violence with which the Tory members, under much slighter provocation,
+conduct themselves towards those antagonists now. I say this not to the
+credit of our temper, which was no better than that of other men heated
+by the struggles of a crowded assembly. It was due entirely to our
+feeling that there was a great balance of wrong standing to the debit of
+England; that if the Irish were turbulent, it was the ill-treatment of
+former days that had made them so; and that, whatever might be their
+methods, they were fighting for their country. Although, therefore,
+there was little social intercourse between us and them, there was
+always a hope and a wish that the day might come when the Liberal party
+should resume its natural position of joining the representatives of the
+Irish people in obtaining radical reforms in Irish government. And the
+remarkable speech of February 9, 1882, in which Mr. Gladstone declared
+his mind to be open on the subject, and invited the Nationalists to
+propound a practicable scheme of self-government, had encouraged us to
+hope that this day might soon arrive.
+
+SESSION OF 1883.--Three facts stood out in the history of this
+comparatively quiet session, each of which brought us further along the
+road we had entered.
+
+One was the omission of Parliament to complete the work begun by the
+Land Bill of 1881, of improving the condition of the Irish peasantry and
+reorganizing Irish administration. The Nationalist members brought in
+Bills for these purposes, including one for amending the Land Act by
+admitting leaseholders to its benefits and securing tenants against
+having their improvements reckoned against them in the fixing of rents.
+Though we could not approve all the contents of these Bills, we desired
+to see the Government either take them up and amend them, or introduce
+Bills of its own to do what was needed. Some of us spoke strongly in
+this sense, nor will any one now deny that we were right. Sound policy
+called aloud for the completion of the undertaking of 1881. The
+Government however refused, alleging, no doubt with some truth, that
+Ireland could not have all the time of Parliament, but must let England
+and Scotland have their turn. Nor was anything done towards the creation
+of new local institutions in Ireland, or the reform of the Castle
+bureaucracy. We were profoundly disheartened. We saw golden
+opportunities slipping away, and doubted more than ever whether
+Westminster was the place in which to legislate for Irish grievances.
+
+Another momentous fact was the steady increase in the number of
+Nationalist members. Every seat that fell vacant in Ireland was filled
+by them. The moderate Irish party, most of whom had by this time crossed
+the floor of the House, and were sitting among us, had evidently no
+future. They were estimable, and, in some cases, able men, from whom we
+had hoped much, as a link between the Liberal party and the Irish
+people. But they seemed to have lost their hold on the people, nor were
+they able to give us much practical counsel as to Irish problems. It was
+clear that they would vanish at the next General Election, and
+Parliament be left to settle accounts with the extreme men, whose
+spirits rose as those of our friends steadily sank.
+
+Lastly: it was in this session that the alliance of the Nationalists and
+the Tory Opposition became a potent factor in politics. Its first
+conspicuous manifestation was in the defeat of the Government by the
+allied forces on the Affirmation Bill, when the least respectable
+privates in both armies vied with one another in boisterous rejoicings
+over the announcement of numbers in the division. I do not refer to this
+as ground for complaint. It was in the course of our usual political
+warfare that two groups, each hating and fearing the Ministry, should
+unite to displace it. But we now saw what power the Irish section must
+exert when it came to hold the balance of numbers in the House. Till
+this division, the Government had commanded a majority of the whole
+House. This would probably not outlast a dissolution. What then? Could
+the two English parties, differing so profoundly from one another,
+combine against the third party? Evidently not. We must, therefore, look
+forward to unstable Governments, if not to a total dislocation of our
+Parliamentary system.
+
+Session of 1884.--I pass over the minor incidents of this year,
+including the continued neglect of remedial legislation for Ireland to
+dwell on its dominant and most impressive lesson. It was the year of the
+Franchise Bill, which, as regards Ireland, worked an extension, not
+merely of the county but also of the borough franchise, and produced,
+owing to the economic condition of the humbler classes in that country,
+a far more extensive change than in England or Scotland. When the Bill
+was introduced the question at once arose--Should Ireland be included?
+
+There were two ways of treating Ireland between which Parliament had to
+choose.
+
+One was to leave her out of the Bill, on the ground that the masses of
+her population could not be trusted with the franchise, as being
+ignorant, sympathetic to crime, hostile to the English Government. This
+course was the logical concomitant of exceptional coercive legislation,
+such as had been passed in 1881 and 1882. It was quite compatible with
+generous remedial legislation. But it placed Ireland in an unequal and
+lower position, treating her, as the Coercion Acts did, as a dependent
+country, inhabited by a population unfit for the same measure of power
+which the inhabitants of Britain might receive.
+
+The other course was to bestow on Ireland the same extended franchise
+which the English county occupiers were to receive, applying the
+principle of equality, and disregarding the obvious consequences. These
+consequences were both practical and logical. The practical consequence
+was the increase in numbers and weight of the Irish party in Parliament
+hostile to Parliament itself. The logical consequence was the duty of
+complying with the wishes of the enfranchised nation. Whatever reasons
+were good for giving this enlarged suffrage to the Irish masses, were
+good for respecting the will which they might use to express it. If the
+Irish were deemed fit to exercise the same full constitutional rights
+in legislation as the English, must they not be fit for the same rights
+of trial by jury, a free press, and all the privileges of personal
+freedom?
+
+Of these two courses the Cabinet chose the latter, those of its members
+whom we must suppose, from the language they now hold, to have then
+hesitated, either stifling their fears or not apprehending the
+consequences of their boldness. It might have been expected, and indeed
+was generally expected, that the Tory party would refuse to follow. They
+talked largely about the danger of an extended Irish suffrage, and
+pointed out that it would be a weapon in the hands of disloyalty. But
+when the moment for resistance came, they swerved, and never divided in
+either House against the application of the Bill to Ireland. They might
+have failed to defeat the measure; but they would have immensely
+strengthened their position, logically and morally, had they given
+effect by their votes to the sentiments they were known to entertain,
+and which not a few Liberals shared.
+
+The effect of this uncontested grant to Ireland of a suffrage
+practically universal was immense upon our minds, and the longer we
+reflected on it the more significant did it become. It meant to us that
+the old methods were abandoned, and, as we supposed, for ever. We had
+deliberately given the Home Rule party arms against English control far
+more powerful than they previously possessed. We had deliberately
+asserted our faith in the Irish people. Impossible after this to fall
+back on Coercion Bills. Impossible to refuse any request compatible with
+the general safety of the United Kingdom, which Ireland as a nation
+might prefer. Impossible to establish that system of Crown Colony
+Government which we had come to perceive was the only real and solid
+alternative to self-government. To those of us who had been feeling that
+the Irish difficulty was much the greatest of all England's
+difficulties, this stood out beyond the agitation of the autumn and the
+compromise of the winter as the great political event of 1884.[4]
+
+Although this sketch is in the main a record of Parliamentary opinion, I
+ought not to pass over the influence which the study of their
+constituents' ideas exerted upon members for the larger towns. We found
+the vast bulk of our supporters--English supporters, for after 1882 it
+was understood that the Irish voters were our enemies--sympathetic with
+the Irish people. They knew and thought little about Home Rule,
+believing that their member understood that question better than they
+did, and willing, so long as he was sound on English issues, to trust
+him. But they pitied Irish tenants, and condemned Irish landlords.
+Though they acquiesced in a Coercion Bill when proposed by a Liberal
+Cabinet, because they concluded that nothing less than necessity would
+lead such a Cabinet to propose one, they so much disliked any
+exceptional or repressive legislation that it was plain they would not
+long tolerate it. Any popular leader denouncing coercion was certain to
+have the sentiment of the English masses with him, while as to
+suspending Irish representation or carrying out consistently the policy
+of treating Ireland as a subject country, there was no chance in the
+world of their approval. Those of us, therefore, who represented large
+working-class constituencies became convinced that the solution of the
+Irish problem must be sought in conciliation and self-government, if
+only because the other solution, Crown Colony Government, was utterly
+repugnant to the English masses, in whom the Franchise Bill of 1884,
+completing that of 1867, had vested political supremacy.[5]
+
+Session of 1885.--The allied powers of Toryism and Nationalism gained in
+this year the victory they had so long striven for. In February they
+reduced the Ministerial majority to fourteen; in June they overthrew the
+Ministry. No one supposed that on either occasion the merits of the
+issue had anything to do with the Nationalist vote: that vote was given
+simply and solely against the Government, as the Government which had
+passed the Coercion Acts of 1881 and 1882--Acts demanded by the Tory
+party, and which had not conceded an Irish Parliament. At last the Irish
+party had attained its position as the arbiter of power and office. Some
+of us said, as we walked away from the House, under the dawning light of
+that memorable 9th of June, "This means Home Rule." Our forecast was
+soon to be confirmed. Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, formed upon the
+resignation of Mr. Gladstone's, announced that it would not propose to
+renew any part of the Coercion Act of 1882, which was to expire in
+August. Here was a surrender indeed! But the Tory leaders went further.
+They did not excuse themselves on the ground of want of time. They took
+credit for their benevolence towards Ireland; they discovered excellent
+reasons why the Act should be dropped. They even turned upon Lord
+Spencer, whose administration they had hitherto blamed for its leniency,
+and attacked him in Parliament, among the cheers of his Irish enemies.
+From that time till the close of the General Election in December
+everything was done, short of giving public pledges, to keep the Irish
+leaders and the Irish voters in good humour. The Tory party in fact
+posed as the true friends of Ireland, averse from coercion, and with
+minds perfectly open on the subject of self-government.
+
+This change of front, so sudden, so unblushing, completed the process
+which had been going on in our minds. By 1882 we had come to feel that
+Home Rule was inevitable, though probably undesirable. Before long we
+had asked ourselves whether it was really undesirable, whether it might
+not be a good thing both for England, whose Parliament and Cabinet
+system it would relieve from impending dangers, while leaving free scope
+for domestic legislation, and for Ireland, which could hardly manage her
+affairs worse than we were managing them for her, and might manage them
+better. And thus, by the spring of 1885, many of us were prepared for a
+large scheme of local self-government in Ireland, including a central
+legislative body in Dublin.[6]
+
+Now when it was plain that the English party which had hitherto called
+for repression, and had professed itself anxious for a patriotic union
+of all parties to maintain order and a continuity of policy in Ireland,
+was ready to bid for Irish help at the polls by throwing over repression
+and reversing the policy it had advocated, we felt that the sooner
+Ireland was taken out of English party politics the better. What
+prospect was there of improving Ireland by the superior wisdom and
+fairness of the British Parliament, if British leaders were to make
+their Irish policy turn on interested bargains with Nationalist leaders?
+Repression, which we clearly saw to be the only alternative to
+self-government, seemed to be by common consent abandoned. I remember
+how, at a party of members in the beginning of July, some one said,
+"Well, there's an end for ever of coercion at any rate," and every one
+assented as to an obvious truth. Accordingly the result of the new
+departure of the Salisbury Cabinet in 1885 was to convince even doubters
+that Home Rule must come, and to make those already convinced anxious to
+see it come quickly, and to find the best form that could be given it.
+Many of us expected the Tory Government to propose it. Rumour declared
+the new Lord Lieutenant to be in favour of it. His government was
+extremely conciliatory in Ireland, even to the recalcitrant corporation
+of Limerick. Not to mention less serious and less respected Tory
+Ministers, Lord Salisbury talked at Newport about the dualism of the
+Austro-Hungarian Monarchy with the air of a man who desired to have a
+workable scheme, analogous, if not similar, suggested for Ireland and
+Great Britain. The Irish Nationalists appeared to place their hopes in
+this quarter, for they attacked the Liberal party with unexampled
+bitterness, and threw all their voting strength into the Tory scale.
+
+As it has lately been attempted to blacken the character of the Irish
+leaders, it deserves to be remarked that whatever has been charged
+against them was said or done by them before the spring of 1885, and
+was, practically, perfectly well known to the Tory leaders when they
+accepted the alliance of the Irish party in the House of Commons, and
+courted their support in the election of 1885. To those who remember
+what went on in the House in the sessions of 1884 and 1885, the horror
+now professed by the Tory leaders for the conduct and words of the Irish
+party would be matter for laughter if it were not also matter for just
+indignation.
+
+Why, it may be asked, if the persuasion that Home Rule was certain, and
+even desirable, had become general among the Liberals who had sat
+through the Parliament of 1880, was it not more fully expressed at the
+election of 1885? This is a fair question, which I shall try to answer.
+
+In the first place, the electors made few inquiries about Ireland. They
+disliked the subject; they had not realized its supreme importance.
+Those of us who felt anxious to explain our views (as was my own case)
+had to volunteer to do so, for we were not asked about them. The Irish
+party in the constituencies was in violent opposition to Liberal
+candidates; it did not interrogate, but denounced. Further, it was felt
+that the issue was mainly one to be decided in Ireland itself. The
+question of Home Rule was being submitted, not, as heretofore, to a
+limited constituency, but to the whole Irish people. Till their will had
+been constitutionally declared at the polls it was not proper that
+Englishmen or Scotchmen should anticipate its tenour. We should even
+have been accused, had we volunteered our opinions, of seeking to affect
+the result in Ireland, and, not only of playing for the Irish vote in
+Great Britain, as we saw the Tories doing, but of prejudicing the
+chances of those Liberal candidates who, in Irish constituencies, were
+competing with extreme Nationalists. A third reason was that most
+English and Scotch Liberals did not know how far their own dispositions
+towards Home Rule were shared by their leaders. Mr. Gladstone's
+declaration in his Midlothian address was no doubt a decided intimation
+of his views, and was certainly understood by some (as by myself) to
+imply the grant to Ireland of a Parliament; but, strong as its words
+were, its importance does not seem to have been fully appreciated at the
+moment. And the opinions of a statesman whose unequalled Irish
+experience and elevated character gave him a weight only second to that
+of Mr. Gladstone--I mean Lord Spencer--had not been made known. We had
+consequently no certainty that there were leaders prepared to give
+prompt effect to the views we entertained. Lastly, we were not prepared
+with a practical scheme of self-government for Ireland. The Nationalist
+members had propounded none which we could either adopt or criticize.
+Convinced as we were that Home Rule would come and must come, we felt
+the difficulties surrounding every suggestion that had yet been made,
+and had not hammered out any plan which we could lay before the electors
+as approved by Liberal opinion.[7] We were forced to confine ourselves
+to generalities.
+
+Whether it would have been better for us to have done our thinking and
+scheme-making in public, and thereby have sooner forced the details of
+the problem upon the attention of the country, need not now be inquired.
+Any one can now see that something was lost by the omission. But those
+who censure a course that has actually been taken usually fail to
+estimate the evils that would have followed from the taking of the
+opposite course. Such evils might in this instance have been as great as
+those we have encountered.
+
+I have spoken of the importance we attached to the decision of Ireland
+itself, and of the attitude of expectancy which, while that decision was
+uncertain, Englishmen were forced to maintain. We had not long to wait.
+Early in December it was known that five-sixths of the members returned
+from Ireland were Nationalists, and that the majorities which had
+returned them were crushing. If ever a people spoke its will, the Irish
+people spoke theirs at the election of 1885. The last link in the chain
+of conviction, which events had been forging since 1880, was now
+supplied. In passing the Franchise Bill of 1884, we had asked Ireland to
+declare her mind. She had now answered. If the question was not a
+mockery, and representative government a sham, we were bound to accept
+the answer, subject only, but subject always, to the interests of the
+whole United Kingdom. In other words, we were bound to devise such a
+scheme of self-government for Ireland as would give full satisfaction to
+her wishes, while maintaining the ultimate supremacy of the Imperial
+Parliament and the unity of the British Empire.
+
+Very few words are needed to summarize the outline which, omitting many
+details which would have illustrated and confirmed its truth, I have
+attempted to present of the progress of opinion among Liberal members of
+the Parliament of 1880.
+
+1. Our experience of the Coercion Bills of 1881 and 1882 disclosed the
+enormous mischief which such measures do in alienating the minds of
+Irishmen, and the difficulty of enlisting Irish sentiment on behalf of
+the law. The results of the Act of 1881 taught us that the repression of
+open agitation means the growth of far more dangerous conspiracy; those
+of the Act of 1882 proved that even under an administration like Lord
+Spencer's repression works no change for the better in the habits and
+ideas of the people.
+
+2. The conduct of the House of Lords in 1880 and 1881, and the malign
+influence which its existence exerted whenever remedial legislation for
+Ireland came in question, convinced us that full and complete justice
+will never be done to Ireland by the British Parliament while the Upper
+House (as at present constituted) remains a part of that Parliament.
+
+3. The break-down of the procedure of the House of Commons, and the
+failure of the efforts to amend it, proved that Parliament cannot work
+so long as a considerable section of its members seek to impede its
+working. To enable it to do its duty by England and Scotland, it was
+evidently necessary, either to make the Irish members as loyal to
+Parliament as English and Scotch members usually are, or else to exclude
+them.
+
+4. The discussions of Irish Bills in the House of Commons made us
+realize how little English members knew about Ireland; how utterly
+different were their competence for, and their attitude towards, Irish
+questions and English questions. We perceived that we were legislating
+in the dark for a country whose economic and social condition we did not
+understand--a country to which we could not apply our English ideas of
+policy; a country whose very temper and feeling were strange to us. We
+were really fitter to pass laws for Canada or Australia than for this
+isle within sight of our shores.
+
+5. I have said that we were legislating in the dark. But there were two
+quarters from which light was proffered, the Irish members and the Irish
+Executive. We rejected the first, and could hardly help doing so, for to
+accept it would have been to displace our own leaders. We followed the
+light which the Executive gave. But in some cases (as notably in the
+case of the Coercion Bill of 1881) it proved to be a "wandering fire,"
+leading us into dangerous morasses. And we perceived that at all times
+legislation at the bidding of the Executive, against the wishes of Irish
+members, was not self-government or free government. It was despotism.
+The rule of Ireland by the British Parliament was really "the rule of a
+dependency through an official, responsible no doubt, but responsible
+not to the ruled, but to an assembly of which they form less than a
+sixth part."[8] As this assembly closed its ears to the one-sixth, and
+gave effect to the will of the official, this was essentially arbitrary
+government, and wanted those elements of success which free government
+contains.
+
+This experience had, by 1884, convinced us that the present relations of
+the British Parliament to Ireland were bad, and could not last; that the
+discontent of Ireland was justified; that the existing system, in
+alienating the mind of Ireland, tended, not merely to Repeal, but to
+Separation; that the simplest, and probably the only effective, remedy
+for the increasing dangers was the grant of an Irish Legislature. Two
+events clinched these conclusions. One was the Tory surrender of June,
+1885. Self-government, we had come to see, was the only alternative to
+Coercion, and now Coercion was gone. The other was the General Election
+of December, 1885, when newly-enfranchised Ireland, through five-sixths
+of her representatives, demanded a Parliament of her own.
+
+These were not, as is sometimes alleged, conclusions of despair. We were
+mostly persons of a cautious and conservative turn of mind, as men
+imbued with the spirit of the British Constitution ought to be. The
+first thing was to convince us that the existing relations of the
+islands were faulty, and could not be maintained. This was a negative
+result, and while we remained in that stage we were despondent. Many
+Liberal members will remember the gloom that fell on us in 1882 and 1883
+whenever we thought or spoke of Ireland. But presently the clouds
+lifted. We still felt the old objections to any Home Rule scheme, though
+we now saw that they were less formidable than the evils of the present
+system. But we came to feel that the grant of self-government was a
+right thing in itself. It was not merely a means of ridding ourselves of
+our difficulties, not merely a boon yielded because long demanded. It
+was a return to broad and deep principles, a conformity to those
+natural laws which govern human society as well as the inanimate
+world--an effort to enlist the better and higher feelings of mankind in
+the creation of a truer union between the two nations than had ever yet
+existed. When we perceived this, hope returned. It is strong with us
+now, for, though we see troubles, perhaps even dangers, in the immediate
+future, we are confident that the principles on which Liberal policy
+towards Ireland is based will in the long run work out a happy issue for
+her, as they have in and for every other country that has trusted to
+them.
+
+One last word as to Consistency. We learnt in the Parliament of 1880
+many facts about Ireland we had not known before; we felt the force and
+bearing of other facts previously accepted on hearsay, but not realized.
+We saw the Irish problem change from what it had been in 1880 into the
+new phase which stood apparent at the end of 1885, Coercion abandoned by
+its former advocates, Self-government demanded by the nation. Were we to
+disregard all these new facts, ignore all these new conditions, and
+cling to old ideas, some of which we perceived to be mistaken, while
+others, still true in themselves, were out-weighed by arguments of far
+wider import? We did not so estimate our duty. We foresaw the taunts of
+foes and the reproaches of friends. But we resolved to give effect to
+the opinions we slowly, painfully, even reluctantly formed, opinions all
+the stronger because not suddenly adopted, and founded upon evidence
+whose strength no one can appreciate till he has studied the causes of
+Irish discontent in Irish history, and been forced (as we were) to face
+in Parliament the practical difficulties of the government of Ireland by
+the British House of Commons.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 3: I may mention here another fact whose significance
+impressed some among us. Parliament, which usually sinned in not doing
+for Ireland what Ireland asked, occasionally passed bills for Ireland
+which were regarded as setting very bad precedents for England. By some
+bargain between the Irish Office and the Nationalist members, measures
+were put through which may have been right as respects Ireland, but
+which embodied principles mischievous as respects Great Britain. We felt
+that if it was necessary to enact such statutes, it would be better that
+they should proceed from an Irish Legislature rather than from the
+Imperial Parliament, which might be embarrassed by its own acts when
+asked to extend the same principles to England. The Labourers' Act of
+July, 1885, is the most conspicuous example.]
+
+[Footnote 4: At Easter, 1885, I met a number of leading Ulster Liberals
+in Belfast, told them that Home Rule was certainly coming, and urged
+them to prepare some plan under which any special interests they
+conceived the Protestant part of Ulster to have, would be effectually
+safe-guarded. They were startled, and at first discomposed, but
+presently told me I was mistaken; to which I could only reply that time
+would show, and perhaps sooner then even English Liberals expected.]
+
+[Footnote 5: My recollection of a conversation with a distinguished
+public man in July, 1882, enables me to say that this fact had impressed
+itself upon us as early as that year. He doubted the fact, but admitted
+that, if true, it was momentous. The passing of the Franchise Bill made
+it, in our view, more momentous than ever.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Some thought that its functions should be very limited,
+while large powers were granted to county boards or provincial councils.
+But most had, I think, already perceived that the grant of a merely
+local self-government, while retaining an irresponsible central
+bureaucracy, would do more harm than good. It seemed at first sight a
+safer experiment than the creation of a central legislative body. But,
+like many middle courses, it combined the demerits and wanted the merits
+of each of the extreme courses. It would not make the country tranquil,
+as firm and long-continued repression might possibly do. Neither would
+it satisfy the people's demands, and divert them from struggles against
+England to disputes and discussions among themselves, as the gift of
+genuine self-government might do.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Some of us had tried to do so. I prepared such a scheme in
+the autumn of 1885, and submitted it to some specially competent
+friends. Their objections, made from what would now be called the
+Unionist point of view, were weighty. But their effect was to convince
+me that the scheme erred on the side of caution; and I believe the
+experience of other Liberals who worked at the problem to have been the
+same as my own--viz. that a small and timid scheme is more dangerous
+than a large and bold one. Thus the result of our thinking from July,
+1885, till April, 1886, was to make us more and more disposed to reject
+half-and-half solutions. Some of us (of whom I was one) expressed this
+feeling by saying in our election addresses in 1885, "the further we go
+in giving the Irish people the management of their own affairs (subject
+to the maintenance of the unity of the empire) the better."]
+
+[Footnote 8: Quoted from an article contributed by myself to the
+American _Century Magazine_, which I refer to because, written in the
+spring of 1883, it expresses the ideas here stated.]
+
+
+
+
+HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY
+
+BY LORD THRING
+
+
+The principal charge made against the scheme of Home Rule contained in
+the Irish Government Bill, 1886, is that it is incompatible with the
+maintenance of the unity of the Empire and the supremacy of the Imperial
+Parliament. A further allegation states that the Bill is useless, as
+agrarian exasperation lies at the root of Irish discontent and Irish
+disloyalty, and that no place would be found for a Home Rule Bill even
+in Irish aspirations if an effective Land Bill were first passed. An
+endeavour will be made in the following pages to secure a verdict of
+acquittal on both counts--as to the charge relating to Imperial unity
+and the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, by proving that the
+accusation is absolutely unfounded, and based partly on a misconception
+of the nature of Imperial ties, and partly on a misapprehension of the
+effect of the provisions of the Home Rule Bill as bearing on Imperial
+questions; and as to the inutility of the Home Rule Bill in view of the
+necessity of Land Reform, by showing that without a Home Rule Bill no
+Land Bill worth consideration as a means of pacifying Ireland can be
+passed.
+
+The complete partisan spirit in which Home Rule has been treated is the
+more to be deplored as the subject is one which does not lend itself
+readily to the trivialities of party debates. It raises questions of
+principle, not of detail. It ascends at once into the highest region of
+politics. It is conversant with the great questions of constitutional
+and international law, and leads to an inquiry into the very nature of
+governments and the various modes in which communities of men are
+associated together either as simple or composite nations. To describe
+those modes in detail would be to give a history of the various
+despotic, monarchical, oligarchical, and democratic systems of
+government which have oppressed or made happy the children of men. Such
+a description is calculated to perplex and mislead from its very extent;
+not so an inquiry into the powers of government, and a classification of
+those powers. They are limited in extent, and, if we confine ourselves
+to English names and English necessities, we shall readily attain to an
+apprehension of the mode in which empires, nations, and political
+societies are bound together, at least in so far as such knowledge is
+required for the understanding of the nature of Imperial supremacy, and
+the mode in which Home Rule in Ireland is calculated to affect that
+supremacy.
+
+The powers of government are divisible into two great classes--1.
+Imperial powers; 2. State powers, using "State" in the American sense of
+a political community subordinated to some other power, and not in the
+sense of an independent nation. The Imperial powers are in English law
+described as the prerogatives of the Crown, and consist in the main of
+the powers of making peace and war, of maintaining armies and fleets and
+regulating commerce, and making treaties with foreign nations. State
+powers are complete powers of local self-government, described in our
+colonial Constitutions as powers to make laws "for the peace, order, and
+good government of the Colony or State" in which such powers are to be
+exercised.
+
+Intermediate between the Imperial and State powers are a class of
+powers required to prevent disputes and facilitate intercourse between
+the various parts of an empire or other composite system of States--for
+example, the coinage of money, and other regulations relating to the
+currency; the laws relating to copyright, or other exclusive rights to
+the use and profits of any works or inventions; and so forth. These
+powers may be described as quasi-Imperial powers.
+
+Having arrived at a competent knowledge of the materials out of which
+governments are formed, it may be well to proceed to a consideration of
+the manner in which those materials have been worked up in building the
+two great Anglo-Saxon composite nations--namely, the American Union and
+the British Empire--for, if we find that the arrangements proposed by
+the Irish Home Rule Bill are strictly in accordance with the principles
+on which the unity of the American Union was based and on which the
+Imperial power of Great Britain has rested for centuries, the conclusion
+must be that the Irish Home Rule Bill is not antagonistic to the unity
+of the Empire or to the supremacy of the British Parliament.
+
+In discussing these matters it will be convenient to begin with the
+American Union, as it is less extensive in area and more homogeneous in
+its construction than the British Empire. The thirteen revolted American
+colonies, on the conclusion of their war with England, found themselves
+in the position of thirteen independent States having no connection with
+each other. The common tie of supremacy exercised by the mother country
+was broken, and each State was an independent nation, possessed both of
+Imperial and Local rights.
+
+The impossibility of a cluster of thirteen small independent nations
+maintaining their independence against foreign aggression became
+immediately apparent, and, to remedy this evil, the thirteen States
+appointed delegates to form a convention authorized to weld them into
+one body as respected Imperial powers. This was attempted to be done by
+the establishment of a central body called a Congress, consisting of
+delegates from the component States, and invested with all the powers
+designated above as Imperial and quasi-Imperial powers. The expenses
+incurred by the confederacy were to be defrayed out of a common fund, to
+be supplied by requisitions made on the several States. In effect, the
+confederacy of the thirteen States amounted to little more than an
+offensive and defensive alliance between thirteen independent nations,
+as the central power had States for its subjects and not individuals,
+and could only enforce the law against any disobedient State by calling
+on the twelve other States to make war on the refractory member of the
+union. A system dependent for its efficacy on the concurrence of so many
+separate communities contained in itself the seeds of dissolution, and
+it soon became apparent that one of two things must occur--either the
+American States must cease as such to be a nation, or the component
+members of that union must each be prepared to relinquish a further
+portion of the sovereign or quasi-sovereign powers which it possessed.
+Under those circumstances, what was the course taken by the thirteen
+States? They perceived that it was quite possible to maintain complete
+unity and compactness as a nation if, in addition to investing the
+Supreme Government with Imperial and quasi-Imperial powers, they added
+full power to impose federal taxes on the component States and
+established an Executive furnished with ample means to carry all federal
+powers into effect through the medium of federal officers. The
+government so formed consisted of a President and two elected Houses
+called Congress, and, as a balance-wheel of the Constitution, a Supreme
+Court was established, to which was confided the task of deciding in
+case of dispute all questions arising under the Constitution of the
+United States or relating to international law. The Executive of the
+United States, with the President as its source and head, was furnished
+with full authority and power to enforce the federal laws. The army and
+navy were under its command, and it was provided with courts of justice,
+and subordinate officers to enforce the decrees of those courts
+throughout the length and breadth of the Union. Above all, a complete
+system of federal taxation supplied the Central Government with the
+necessary funds to perform effectually all the functions of a supreme
+national government.
+
+The nature of the Constitution of the United States will be best
+understood by considering the position in which its subjects stand to
+the Central Government and their own State Governments. In effect, every
+inhabitant of the United States has a double nationality. He belongs to
+one great nation called the United States, or, as it would be more aptly
+called to show its absolute unity, the American Republic, having
+jurisdiction over the whole surface of ground comprised in the area of
+the United States. He is also a citizen of a smaller local and partially
+self-governing body--more important than a county, but not approaching
+the position of a nation--called a State.
+
+It is no part of the object of this article to enter into the details of
+the American government, its advantages or defects. This much, however,
+is clear--the American Constitution has lasted nearly one hundred years,
+and shows no signs of decay or disruption. It has stood the strain of
+the greatest war of modern times, and has emerged from the conflict
+stronger than before. Even during the war the antagonism of the rebels
+was directed, not against the Union, but against the efforts of the
+Northern States to suppress slavery, or, in other words, to destroy, as
+the Southern States believed (not unjustly as the event showed), their
+property in slaves, and consequently the only means they had of making
+their estates profitable. One conclusion, then, we may draw, that a
+nation in which the Imperial powers and the State powers are vested in
+different authorities is no less compact and powerful, as respects all
+national capacities, than a nation in which both classes of powers are
+wielded by the same functionaries; and one lesson more may be learnt
+from the American War of Secession--namely, that in a nation having such
+a division of powers, any conflict between the two classes results in
+the Supreme or Imperial powers prevailing over the Local governmental
+powers, and not in the latter invading or driving a wedge into the
+Supreme powers. In fact, the tendency in case of a struggle is towards
+an undue centralization of the nation by reason of the encroachment by
+the Supreme authority, rather than towards a weakening of the national
+unity by separatist action on the part of the constituent members of the
+nation.
+
+In comparing the Constitution of the United States with the Constitution
+of the British Empire, we find an apparent resemblance in form as
+respects the Anglo-Saxon colonies, but underlying the surface a total
+difference of principle. The United States is an aggregate of
+homogeneous and contiguous States which, in order to weld themselves
+into a nation, gave up a portion of their rights to a central authority,
+reserving to themselves all powers of government which they did not
+expressly relinquish.
+
+The British Empire is an aggregate of many communities under one common
+head, and is thus described by Mr. Burke in 1774, in language which may
+seem to have been somewhat too enthusiastic at the time when it was
+spoken, but at the present day does not more than do justice to an
+Empire which comprises one-sixth of the habitable globe in extent and
+population:--
+
+"I look, I say, on the Imperial rights of Great Britain, and the
+privileges which the colonies ought to enjoy under those rights, to be
+just the most reconcilable things in the world. The Parliament of Great
+Britain sits at the head of her extensive Empire in two capacities: one
+as the local legislature of this island, providing for all things at
+home immediately and by no other instrument than the executive power;
+the other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what I call her Imperial
+character, in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all
+the several Legislatures, and guides and controls them all without
+annihilating any. As all these provincial Legislatures are only
+co-ordinate with each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her,
+else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual
+justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance."[9]
+
+The means by which the possessions of Great Britain were acquired have
+been as various as the possessions themselves. The European, Asiatic,
+and African possessions became ours by conquest and cession; the
+American by conquest, treaty, and settlement; the Australasian by
+settlement, and by that dubious system of settlement known by the name
+of annexation. Now, what is the link which fastens each of these
+possessions to the mother country? Surely it is the inherent and
+indestructible right of the British Crown to exercise Imperial
+powers--in other words, the supremacy of the Queen and the British
+Parliament? What, again, is the common bond of union between these vast
+colonial possessions, differing in laws, in religion, and in the
+character of the population? The same answer must be given: the joint
+and several tie, so to speak, is the same--namely, the sovereignty of
+Great Britain. It is true that the mode in which the materials composing
+the British Empire have been cemented together is exactly the reverse of
+the manner of the construction of the American Union. In the case of the
+Union, independent States voluntarily relinquished a portion of their
+sovereignty to secure national unity, and entrusted the guardianship of
+that unity to a representative body chosen by themselves. Such a union
+was based on contract, and could only be constructed by communities
+which claimed to be independent. Far different have been the
+circumstances under which England has developed itself into the British
+Empire. England began as a sovereign power, having its sovereignty
+vested at first solely in the Sovereign, but gradually in the Sovereign
+and Parliament. This sovereignty neither the Crown nor the Parliament
+can, jointly or severally, get rid of, for it is of the very essence of
+a sovereign power that it cannot, by Act of Parliament or otherwise,
+bind its successors.[10] This principle of supremacy has never been lost
+sight of by the British Parliament. Their right to alter or suspend a
+colonial Constitution has never been disputed. Contract never enters
+into the question. The dominant authority delegates to its subordinate
+communities as much or as little power as it deems advantageous for each
+body, and, if it sees fit, resumes a portion or the whole of the
+delegated authority. The last point of difference to be noted between
+the American Constitution and the Constitution of the British Empire is
+the fact that as Minerva sprang from the brain of Jupiter fully
+equipped, so the American Constitution came forth from the hands of its
+framers complete and, what is of more importance, practically in
+material matters unchangeable except by the agony of an internecine war
+or some overwhelming passions. The British Empire, on the other hand,
+is, as respects its component members, ever in progress and flux. An
+Anglo-Saxon colony, no less than a human being, has its infancy under
+the maternal care of a governor, its boyhood subject to the government
+of a representative council and an Executive appointed by the Crown, its
+manhood under Home Rule and responsible government, in which the
+Executive are bound to vacate their offices whenever they are out-voted
+in the Legislature. Changes are ever taking place in the growth, so to
+speak, of the several British possessions, but what is the result?
+Nobody ever dreams of these changes injuring the Imperial tie or the
+supremacy of the British Parliament, that alone towers above all,
+unchangeable and unimpaired; and, what is most notable, loyalty and
+devotion to the Crown--that is to say, the Imperial tie--so far from
+being weakened by the transition of a colony from a state of dependence
+in local affairs to the higher degree of a self-governing colony, are,
+on the contrary, strengthened almost in direct proportion as the central
+interference with local affairs is diminished. On this point an
+unimpeachable witness--Mr. Merivale--says: "What, then, are the lessons
+to be learnt from a consideration of the American Constitution and of
+our colonial system? Surely these: that Imperial unity and Imperial
+supremacy are in no degree dependent on the control exercised by the
+central power on its dependent members." Facts, however, are more
+conclusive than any arguments; and we have only to look back to the
+state some forty years ago of Canada, New Zealand, and the various
+colonies of Australia, and compare that state with their condition
+to-day, to come to the conclusion that the fullest power of local
+government is perfectly consistent with the unity of the Empire and the
+supremacy of the British Parliament. Under the old colonial
+Constitutions the Executive of those colonies was under the control of
+the Crown; and Mr. Merivale says "that the political existence consisted
+of a series of quarrels and reconciliations between the two opposing
+authorities--the colonial legislative body and the Executive nominated
+by the Crown." England resolved to give up the control of the Executive,
+and to grant complete responsible government--that is to say, the
+Governor of each colony was instructed that his Executive Council (or
+Ministry, as we should call it) must resign whenever they were out-voted
+by the legislative body. The effect of this change, this relaxing, as
+would be supposed, of the Imperial tie, was magical, and is thus
+described by Mr. Merivale:[11]
+
+"The magnitude of that change--the extraordinary rapidity of its
+beneficial effects--it is scarcely possible to exaggerate. None but
+those who have traced it can realize the sudden spring made by a young
+community under its first release from the old tie of subjection,
+moderate as that tie really was. The cessation, as if by magic, of the
+old irritant sores between colony and mother country is the first
+result. Not only are they at concord, but they seem to leave hardly any
+traces in the public mind behind them. Confidence and affection towards
+the home, still fondly so termed by the colonist as well as the
+emigrant, seem to supersede at once distrust and hostility. Loyalty,
+which was before the badge of a class suspected by the rest of the
+community, became the common watchword of all, and, with some
+extravagance in the sentiment, there arises no small share of its
+nobleness and devotion. Communities, which but a few years ago would
+have wrangled over the smallest item of public expenditure to which they
+were invited by the Executive to contribute, have vied with each other
+in their subscriptions to purposes of British interests in response to
+calls of humanity, or munificence for objects but indistinctly heard of
+at the distance of half the world."
+
+The Dominion of Canada has been so much talked about that it may be well
+to give a summary of its Constitution, though, in so far as regards its
+relations to the mother country, it differs in no material respect from
+any other self-governing colony. The Dominion consists of seven
+provinces, each of which has a Legislature of its own, but is at the
+same time subject to the Legislature of the Dominion, in the same manner
+as each State in the American Union has a Legislature of its own, and is
+at the same time subject to the control of Congress. The distinguishing
+feature between the system of the American States and the associated
+colonies of the Dominion of Canada is this--that all Imperial powers,
+everything that constitutes a people a nation as respects foreigners,
+are reserved to the mother country. The division, then, of the Dominion
+and its provinces consists only in a division of Local powers. It is
+impossible to mark accurately the line between Dominion and Provincial
+powers, but, speaking generally, Dominion powers relate to such
+matters--for example, the regulation of trade and commerce, postal
+service, currency, and so forth--as require to be dealt with on a
+uniform principle throughout the whole area of a country; while the
+Provincial powers relate to provincial and municipal institutions,
+provincial licensing, and other subjects restricted to the limits of the
+province. As a general rule, the Legislature of the Dominion and the
+Legislature of each province have respectively exclusive jurisdiction
+within the limits of the subjects entrusted to them; but, as respects
+agriculture and immigration, the Dominion Parliament have power to
+overrule any Act of the provincial Legislatures, and, as respects
+property and civil rights in Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick,
+the Dominion Parliament may legislate with a view to uniformity, but
+their legislation is not valid unless it is accepted by the Legislature
+of each province to which it applies.
+
+The executive authority in the Dominion Government, as in all the
+self-governing colonies, is carried on by the Governor in the name of
+the Queen, but with the advice of a Council: that is to say, as to all
+Imperial matters, he is under the control of the mother country; as to
+all local matters, he acts on the advice of his local Council. The
+result of the whole is that the citizenship of an inhabitant of the
+Dominion of Canada is a triple tie. Suppose him to reside in the
+province of Quebec. First, he is a citizen of that province, and bound
+to obey all the laws which it is within the competence of the provincial
+Legislature to pass. Next, he is a citizen of the Dominion of Canada,
+and acknowledges its jurisdiction in all matters outside the legitimate
+sphere of the province. Lastly, and above all, he is a subject of her
+Majesty. He is to all intents and purposes, as respects the vast company
+of nations, an Englishman, entitled to all the privileges as he is to
+all the glory of the mother country so far as such privileges can be
+enjoyed and glory participated in without actual residence in England.
+One startling point of likeness in events and unlikeness in consequences
+is to be found in the history of Ireland and Canada. In 1798 Ireland
+rebelled. Protestant and Catholic were arrayed in arms against each
+other. The rebellion was quenched in blood, and measures of repression
+have been in force, with slight intervals of suspension, ever since,
+with this result--that the Ireland of 1886 is scarcely less disloyal and
+discontented than the Ireland of 1798. In 1837 and 1838 Canada rebelled.
+Protestants and Catholics, differing in nationality as well as in
+religion, were arrayed in arms against each other. The rebellion was
+quelled with the least possible violence, a free Constitution was given,
+and the Canada of 1886 is the largest, most loyal, and most contented
+colony in her Majesty's dominions.
+
+Assuming, then, thus much to be proved by the Constitution of the United
+States that national unity of the closest description is consistent with
+complete Home Rule in the component members of the nation, and by the
+history of Canada and the British colonial empire that an Imperial tie
+is sufficient to bind together for centuries dependencies differing in
+situation, in nationality, in religion, in laws, in everything that
+distinguishes peoples one from another, and further and more
+particularly that emancipation of the Anglo-Saxon colonies from control
+in their internal affairs strengthens instead of weakening Imperial
+unity, let us turn to Ireland and inquire whether there is anything in
+the circumstances under which Home Rule was proposed to be granted to
+Ireland, or in the measures intended to establish that Home Rule, fairly
+leading to the inference that disruption of the Empire or an impairment
+of Imperial powers would probably be a consequence of passing the Irish
+Government Bill and the Irish Land Bill. And, first, as to the
+circumstances which would seem to recommend the Irish Home Rule Bill.
+
+Ireland, from the very commencement of her connection with England, has
+chafed under the restraints which that connection imposed. The closer
+the apparent union between the two countries the greater the real
+disunion. The Act of 1800, _in words and in law_, effected not a union
+merely, but a consolidation of the two countries. The effect of those
+words and that law was to give rise to a restless discontent, which has
+constantly found expression in efforts to procure the repeal of the Act
+of Union and the reestablishment of a National Parliament in Dublin. How
+futile have been the efforts of the British Parliament to diminish by
+concession or repress by coercion Irish aspirations or Irish discontent
+it is unnecessary to discuss here. All men admit the facts, however
+different the conclusions which they draw from those facts. What Burke
+said of America on moving in 1775 his resolution on conciliation with
+the colonies was true in 1885 with respect to Ireland:--
+
+"The fact is undoubted, that under former Parliaments the state of
+America [read for America, Ireland] has been kept in continual
+agitation. Everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, if
+it did not produce, was at least followed by an heightening of the
+distemper, until, by a variety of experiments, that important country
+has been brought into her present situation--a situation which I will
+not miscall, which I dare not name, which I scarcely know how to
+comprehend in the terms of any description."[12]
+
+At length, after the election of 1885, Mr. Gladstone and the majority of
+his followers came to the conclusion that an opportunity had presented
+itself for providing Ireland with a Constitution conferring on the
+people of that country the largest measure of self-government consistent
+with the absolute supremacy of the Crown and the Imperial Parliament and
+the entire unity of the Empire. A scheme was proposed which was accepted
+in principle by the representatives of the National party in Ireland as
+a fair and sufficient adjustment of the Imperial claims of Great Britain
+and the Local claims of Ireland. The scheme was shortly this. A
+Legislative Assembly was proposed to be established in Ireland with
+power to make all laws necessary for the good government of Ireland--in
+other words, invested with the same powers of local self-government as a
+colonial Assembly. The Irish Assembly was in one respect unlike a
+colonial Legislature. It consisted of one House only, but this House was
+divided into two orders, each of which, in case of differences on any
+important legislative matter, voted separately. This form was adopted in
+order to minimize the chances of collision between the two orders, by
+making it imperative on each order to hear the arguments of the other
+before proceeding to a division, thus throwing on the dissentient order
+the full responsibility of its dissent, with a complete knowledge of the
+consequences likely to ensue therefrom. The clause conferring on the
+Irish Legislature full powers of local self-government was immediately
+followed by a provision excepting, by enumeration, from any interference
+on the part of the Irish Legislature, all Imperial powers, and declaring
+any enactment void which infringed on that provision. This exception (as
+is well known) is not found in colonial Constitutional Acts. In them the
+restriction of the words of the grant to Local powers only has been
+held sufficient to safeguard the supremacy of the British Parliament and
+the unity of the Empire. The reason for making a difference in the case
+of the Home Rule Bill was political, not legal. Separation was declared
+by the enemies of the Bill to be the real intention of its supporters,
+and destruction of the unity of the Empire to be its certain
+consequence. It seemed well that Ireland, by her representatives, should
+accept as a satisfactory charter of Irish liberty a document which
+contained an express submission to Imperial power and a direct
+acknowledgment of Imperial unity. Similarly with respect to the
+supremacy of the British Parliament. In the colonial Constitutions all
+reference to this supremacy is omitted as being too clear to require
+notice. In the case of the Irish Home Rule Bill instructions were given
+to preserve in express words the supremacy of the British Parliament in
+order to pledge Ireland to an express admission of that supremacy by the
+same vote which accepted Local powers. It is true that the wording by
+the draftsman of the sentence reserving the supremacy of Parliament was
+justly found fault with as inaccurate and doubtful, but that defect
+would have been cured by an amendment in Committee; and, even if there
+had not been any such clause in the Bill, it is clear, from what has
+been said above, that the Imperial Legislature could not, if it would,
+renounce its supremacy or abdicate its sovereign powers. The executive
+government in Ireland was continued in the Queen, to be carried on by
+the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of her Majesty, with the aid of such
+officers and Council as to her Majesty might from time to time seem fit.
+Her Majesty was also a constituent part of the Legislature, with power
+to delegate to the Lord Lieutenant the prerogative of assenting to or
+dissenting from Bills, and of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving
+Parliament. Under these provisions the Lord Lieutenant resembled the
+Governor of a colony with responsible government. He was invested with a
+double authority--first, Imperial; secondly, Local. As an Imperial
+officer, he was bound to veto any Bill injuriously affecting Imperial
+interests or inconsistent with general Imperial policy; as a Local
+officer, it was his duty to act in all local matters according to the
+advice of his Council, whose tenure of office depended on their being in
+harmony with, and supported by, a majority of the Legislative Assembly.
+Questions relating to the constitutionality of any particular law were
+not left altogether to the decision of the Governor. If a Bill
+containing a provision infringing Imperial rights passed the
+Legislature, its validity might be decided in the first instance by the
+ordinary courts of law, but the ultimate appeal lay to the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council, and, with a view to secure absolute
+impartiality in the Committee, it was provided that Ireland should be
+represented on that body by persons who either were or had been Irish
+judges. Not the least important provision of the Bill, as respects the
+maintenance of Imperial interests, was the continuance of Imperial
+taxation. The Customs and Excise duties were directed to be levied, as
+heretofore, in pursuance of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament,
+and were excepted from the control of the Irish Legislature, which had
+full power, with that exception, to impose such taxes in Ireland as they
+might think expedient. The Bill further provided that neither the
+Imperial taxes of Excise nor any Local taxes that might be imposed by
+the Irish Legislature should be paid into the Irish Exchequer. An
+Imperial officer, called the Receiver-General, was appointed, into whose
+hands the produce of every tax, both Imperial and Local, was required to
+be paid, and it was the duty of the Receiver-General to take care that
+all claims of the English Exchequer, including especially the
+contribution payable by Ireland for Imperial purposes, were satisfied
+before a farthing found its way into the Irish Exchequer for Irish
+purposes. The Receiver-General was provided with an Imperial Court to
+enforce his rights of Imperial taxation, and adequate means for
+enforcing all Imperial powers by Imperial civil officers. The Bill did
+not provide for the representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament
+on all Imperial questions, including questions relating to Imperial
+taxation, but it is fully understood that in any Bill which might
+hereafter be brought forward relating to Home Rule those defects would
+be remedied.
+
+An examination, then, of the Home Rule Bill, that "child of revolution
+and parent of separation," appears to lead irresistibly to two
+conclusions. First, that Imperial rights and Imperial powers,
+representation for Imperial purposes, Imperial taxation--in short, every
+link that binds a subordinate member of an Empire to its supreme
+head--have been maintained unimpaired and unchanged. Secondly, that, in
+granting Home Rule to discontented Ireland, that form of responsible
+government has been adopted which, as Mr. Merivale declares--and his
+declaration subsequent events have more than verified--when conferred on
+the discontented colonies, changed restless aspirations for separation
+into quiet loyalty.
+
+That such a Bill as the Home Rule Bill should be treated as an invasion
+of Imperial rights is a proof of one, or perhaps of both, the following
+axioms--that Bills are never read by their accusers, and that party
+spirit will distort the plainest facts. The union of Great Britain and
+Ireland was not, so far as Imperial powers were concerned, disturbed by
+the Bill, and an Irishman remains a citizen of the British Empire under
+the Home Rule Bill, with the same obligations and the same privileges,
+on the same terms as before. All the Bill did was to make his Irish
+citizenship distinct from his Imperial citizenship, in the same manner
+as the citizenship of a native of the State of New York is distinct
+from his citizenship as a member of the United States. Now it has been
+found that the Central power in the United States has been more than a
+match for the State powers, and can it be conceived for a moment that
+the Imperial power of Great Britain should not be a match for the Local
+power of Ireland--a State which has not one-seventh of the population or
+one-twentieth part of the income of the dominant community?
+
+One argument remains to be noticed which the opponents of Home Rule urge
+as absolutely condemnatory of the measure, whereas, if properly weighed,
+it is conclusive in its favour. Home Rule, they say, is a mere question
+of sentiment. "National aspirations" are the twaddle of English
+enthusiasts who know nothing of Ireland. What is really wanted is the
+reform of the Land Law. Settle the agrarian problem, and Home Rule may
+be relegated to the place supposed to be paved with good intentions. The
+Irish will straightway change their character, and become a law-abiding,
+contented, loyal people. Be it so. But suppose it to be proved that the
+establishment of an Irish Government, or, in other words, Home Rule, is
+an essential condition of agrarian reform--that the latter cannot be had
+without the former--surely Home Rule should stand none the worse in the
+estimation of its opponents if it not only secures a safe basis for
+putting an end to agrarian exasperation, but also gratifies the feeling
+of the Irish people as expressed by the majority of its representatives
+in Parliament? Now, what is the nature of the Irish Land Question? This
+we must understand before considering the remedy. In Ireland (meaning by
+Ireland that part of the country which is in the hands of tenants, and
+falls within the compass of a Land Bill) the tenure of land is wholly
+unlike that which is found in the greater part of England. Instead of
+large farms in which the landlord makes all the improvements and the
+tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the land and receives
+the produce, small holdings are found in which the tenant does the
+improvements (if any) and pays a fixed rent-charge to the owner. In
+England the tenant does not perform the obligations or in any way aspire
+to the character of owner. If he thinks he can get a cheaper farm, he
+quits his former one, regarding his interest in the land as a mere
+matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Not so the Irish tenant. He has
+made what he calls improvements, he claims a quasi-ownership in the
+land, and has the characteristic Celtic attachment for the patch of
+ground forming his holding, however squalid it may be, however
+inadequate for his support. In short, in Ireland there is a dual
+ownership--that of the proprietor, who has no interest in the soil so
+long as the tenant pays his rent and fulfils the conditions of his
+tenancy; and that of the tenant, who, subject to the payment of his rent
+and performance of the fixed conditions, acts, thinks, and carries
+himself as the owner of his holding. A system, then, of agrarian reform
+in Ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of
+putting an end to this dual ownership--that is to say, of making the
+tenant the sole proprietor of his holding, and compensating the landlord
+for his interest in the ownership. The problem is further narrowed by
+the circumstance that the tenant cannot be expected to advance any
+capital or pay an increased rent, so that the means of compensating the
+landlord must be found out of the existing rent.
+
+The plan adopted in Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill was to commute the
+rent-charges, offering the landlord, as a general rule, twenty years'
+purchase on the net rental of the estate (that is to say, the rent
+received by him after deducting all outgoings), and paying him the
+purchase-money in L3 per cent. stock taken at par. The stock was to be
+advanced by the English Government to an Irish State department at 3-1/8
+per cent. interest, and the Bill provided that the tenant, instead of
+rent, was to pay an annuity of L4 per cent. on a capital sum equal in
+amount to twenty times the gross rental.
+
+The notable feature which distinguished this plan from all other schemes
+was the security given for the repayment of the purchase-money: hitherto
+the English Government has lent the money directly to the landlord or
+tenant, and has become the mortgagee of the land--in other words, has
+become in effect the landlord of the land sold to the tenant until the
+repayment of the loan has been completed. To carry into effect under
+such a system any extensive scheme of agrarian reform (and if not
+extensive such a reform would be of no value in pacifying Ireland)
+presupposes a readiness on the part of the English Government to become
+virtually the landlord of a large portion of Ireland, with the attendant
+odium of absenteeism and alien domination. Under a land scheme such as
+that of 1886, all these difficulties would be overcome. The Irish, not
+the English, Government would be the virtual landlord. It would be the
+interest of Ireland that the annuities due from the tenants should be
+regularly paid, as, subject to the prior charge of the English
+Exchequer, they would form part of the Irish revenues. The cardinal
+difference, then, between Mr. Gladstone's scheme and any other land
+scheme that has seen the light is this--that in Mr. Gladstone's scheme
+the English loans would have been lent to the Irish Government on the
+security of the whole Irish revenues, whereas in every other scheme they
+have been lent by the English Government to the Irish creditors on the
+security of individual patches of land.
+
+The whole question, then, of the relation between Home Rule and agrarian
+reform may be summed up as follows:--Agrarian reform is necessary for
+the pacification of Ireland; agrarian reform cannot be efficiently
+carried into effect without an Irish Government; an Irish Government can
+only be established by a Home Rule Bill: therefore a Home Rule Bill is
+necessary for the pacification of Ireland. It is idle to say, as has
+been said on numerous platforms, that plans no doubt can be devised for
+agrarian reform without Home Rule. The Irish revenues are the only
+collateral security that can be obtained for loans of English money, and
+Irish revenues are only available for the purpose on the establishment
+of an Irish Government. Baronial guarantees, union guarantees, county
+guarantees, debenture schemes, have all been tried and found wanting,
+and vague assertions as to possibilities are idle unless they are based
+on intelligible working plans.
+
+The foregoing arguments will be equally valid if, instead of making the
+tenants peasant-proprietors, it were thought desirable that the Irish
+State should be the proprietor and the tenants be the holders of the
+land at perpetual rents and subject to fixed conditions. Again, it might
+be possible to pay the landlords by annual sums instead of capital sums.
+Such matters are really questions of detail. The substance is to
+interpose the Irish Government between the tenant and the English
+mortgagee, and to make the loans general charges on the whole of the
+Irish Government revenues as paid into the hands of an Imperial Receiver
+instead of placing them as special charges, each fixed on its own small
+estate or holding. The fact that Mr. Gladstone's land scheme was
+denounced as confiscation of L100,000,000 of the English taxpayers'
+property, while Lord Ashbourne's Act is pronounced by the same party
+wise and prudent, shows the political blindness of party spirit in its
+most absurd form. Lord Ashbourne's Act requires precisely the same
+expenditure to do the same work as Mr. Gladstone's Bill requires, but in
+Mr. Gladstone's scheme the whole Irish revenue was pledged as collateral
+security, and the Irish Government was interposed between the ultimate
+creditor and the Irish tenant, while under Lord Ashbourne's Act the
+English Government figures without disguise as the landlord of each
+tenant, exacting a debt which the tenant is unwilling to pay as being
+due to what he calls an alien Government.
+
+An endeavour has been made in the preceding pages to prove that Home
+Rule in no respect infringes on Imperial rights or Imperial unity, for
+the simple reason that the Imperial power remains exactly in the same
+position as it was before, the Home Rule Bill dealing only with Local
+matters. At all events, Burke thought that the Imperial supremacy alone
+constituted a real union between England and Ireland. He says--
+
+"My poor opinion is, that the closest connection between Great Britain
+and Ireland is essential to the well-being--I had almost said to the
+very being--of the three kingdoms; for that purpose I humbly conceive
+that the whole of the superior, and what I should call Imperial
+politics, ought to have its residence here, and that Ireland, locally,
+civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look up to
+Great Britain in all matters of peace and war. In all these points to be
+joined with her, and, in a word, with her to live and to die."[13]
+
+How strange to Burke would have seemed the doctrine that the restoration
+of a limited power of self-government to Ireland, excluding commerce,
+and excluding all matters not only Imperial, but those in which
+uniformity is required, should be denounced as a disruption of the
+Empire!
+
+It remains to notice one other charge made against the Gladstonian Home
+Rule Bill, namely, that of impairing the supremacy of the British
+Parliament. That allegation has been shown also to be founded on a
+mistake. Next, it is said that the Gladstonian scheme does not provide
+securities against executive and legislative oppression. The answer is
+complete. The executive authority being vested in the Queen, it will be
+the duty of the Governor not to allow executive oppression; still more
+will it be his duty to veto any act of legislative oppression. Further,
+it is stated that difficulties will arise with respect to the power of
+the Privy Council to nullify unconstitutional Acts. But it is hard to
+see why a power which is exercised with success in the United States,
+where all the States are equal, and without dispute in our colonies,
+which are all dependent, should not be carried into effect with equal
+ease in Ireland, which is more closely bound to us and more completely
+under our power than the colonies are, or than the several States are
+under the power of the Central Government.
+
+To conclude: the cause of Irish discontent is the conjoint operation of
+the passion for nationality and the vicious system of land tenure, and
+the scheme of the Irish Home Rule Bill and the Land Bill removes the
+whole fabric on which Irish discontent is raised. The Irish, by the
+great majority of their representatives, have accepted the Home Rule
+Bill as a satisfactory settlement of the nationality question. The
+British Parliament can, through the medium of the Home Rule Bill and the
+establishment of an Irish Legislature, carry through a final settlement
+of agrarian disputes with less injustice to individuals than could a
+Parliament sitting in Dublin, and, be it added, with scarcely any
+appreciable risk to the British taxpayer. Of course it may be said that
+an Irish Parliament will go farther--that Home Rule is a step to
+separation, and a reform of the Land Laws a spoliation of the landlords.
+To those who urge such arguments I would recommend the perusal of the
+speech of Burke on Conciliation with America, and especially the
+following sentences, substituting "Ireland" for "the colonies:"--
+
+"But [the Colonies] Ireland will go further. Alas! alas! when will this
+speculating against fact and reason end? What will quiet these panic
+fears which we entertain of the hostile effect of a conciliatory
+conduct? Is it true that no case can exist in which it is proper for the
+Sovereign to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects? Is
+there anything peculiar in this case to make it a rule for itself? Is
+all authority of course lost when it is not pushed to the extreme? Is it
+a certain maxim that the fewer causes of discontentment are left by
+Government the more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel?"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 9: Burke's Speech on American Taxation, vol. i. p. 174]
+
+[Footnote 10: This is the opinion of both English and American lawyers.
+See Blackstone's Comm., i. 90; Austin on Jurisprudence, i. 226. As to
+American cases, see Corley on Constitutional Limitations, pp. 2-149.]
+
+[Footnote 11: "Lectures on the Colonies," p, 641.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Burke, vol. i. p. 181.]
+
+[Footnote 13: "Letter on Affairs of Ireland," i. 462.]
+
+
+
+
+THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL AND THE IRISH LAND BILL
+
+BY LORD THRING
+
+
+A mere enumeration or analysis of the contents of the Irish Government
+Bill, 1886, and the Land (Ireland) Bill, 1886, would convey scarcely any
+intelligible idea to the mind of an ordinary reader. It is, therefore,
+proposed in the following pages, before entering on the details of each
+Bill, to give a summary of the reasons which led to its introduction,
+and of the principles on which it is founded. To begin with the Irish
+Government Bill--
+
+The object of the Irish Government Bill is to confer on the Irish people
+the largest measure of self-government consistent with the absolute
+supremacy of the Crown and Imperial Parliament and the entire unity of
+the Empire. To carry into effect this object it was essential to create
+a separate though subordinate legislature; thus occasion was given to
+opponents to apply the name of Separatists to the supporters of the
+Bill--a term true in so far only as it denoted the intention to create a
+separate legislature, but false and calumnious when used in the sense in
+which it was intended to be understood--of imputing to the promoters of
+the Bill the intention to disunite or in any way to disintegrate the
+Empire. Indeed, the very object of the measure was, by relaxing a little
+the legal bonds of union, to draw closer the actual ties between England
+and Ireland, in fact, to do as we have done in our Colonies, by
+decentralizing the subordinate functions of government to strengthen the
+central supremacy of natural affection and Imperial unity. The example
+of the effects of giving complete self-government to our Colonies would
+seem not unfavourable to trying the same experiment in Ireland. Some
+forty years ago, Canada, New Zealand, and the various colonies of
+Australia were discontented and uneasy at the control exercised by the
+Government of England over their local affairs. What did England do? She
+gave to each of those communities the fullest power of local government
+consistent with the unity of the Empire. The result was that the real
+union was established in the same degree as the apparent tie of control
+over local affairs was loosened. Are there any reasons to suppose that
+the condition of Ireland is such as to render the example of the
+Colonies applicable? Let us look a little at the past history of that
+country. Up to 1760 Ireland was governed practically as a conquered
+country. The result was that in 1782, in order to save Imperial unity,
+we altogether relaxed the local tie and made Ireland legislatively
+independent. The Empire was thus saved, but difficulties naturally arose
+between two independent legislatures. The true remedy would have been to
+have imposed on Grattan's Parliament the conditions imposed by the Irish
+Government Bill on the statutory Parliament created by that Bill; the
+course actually taken was that, instead of leaving the Irish with their
+local government, and arranging for the due supremacy of England, the
+Irish Legislature was destroyed under the guise of Union, and Irish
+representatives were transferred to an assembly in which they had little
+weight, and in which they found no sympathy. The result was that from
+the date of the Union to the present day Ireland has been constantly
+working for the reinstatement of its National Legislature, and has been
+governed by a continuous system of extraordinary legislature called
+coercion; the fact being that between 1800, the date of the Act of
+Union, and 1832, the date of the great Reform Act, there were only
+eleven years free from coercion, while in the fifty-three years since
+that period there have been only two years entirely free from special
+repressive legislation. So much, therefore, is clear, that Irish
+discontent at not being allowed to manage their own affairs has
+gradually increased instead of diminishing. The conclusion then would
+seem irresistible, that if coercion has failed, the only practical mode
+of governing Ireland satisfactorily is to give the people power to
+manage their local affairs. Coming, then, to the principle of the Bill,
+the first step is to reconcile local government with Imperial supremacy,
+in other words, to divide Imperial from local powers; for if this
+division be accurately made, and the former class of powers be reserved
+to the British Crown and British Parliament, while the latter only are
+intrusted to the Irish Parliament, it becomes a contradiction in terms
+to say that Imperial unity is dissolved by reserving to the Imperial
+authority all its powers, or that Home Rule is a sundering of the
+Imperial tie when that tie is preserved inviolable. Imperial powers,
+then, are the prerogatives of the Crown with respect to peace and war,
+and making treaties with foreign nations; in short, the power of
+regulating the relations of the Empire towards foreign nations. These
+are the _jura summi imperii_, the very insignia of supremacy; the
+attributes of sovereign authority in every form of government, be it
+despotism, limited monarchy, or republic; the only difference is that in
+a system of government under one supreme head, they are vested in that
+head alone, in a federal government, as in America or Switzerland, they
+reside in the composite body forming the federal supreme authority.
+Various subsidiary powers necessarily attend the above supreme powers;
+for example, the power of maintaining armies and navies, of commanding
+the militia, and other incidental powers. Closely connected with the
+power of making peace and war is the power of regulating commerce with
+foreign nations. Next in importance to the reservations necessary to
+constitute the Empire a Unity with regard to foreign nations, are the
+powers required to prevent disputes and to facilitate intercourse
+between the various parts of the Empire. These are the coinage of money
+and other regulations relating to currency, to copyright or other
+exclusive rights to the use or profit of any works or inventions. The
+above subjects must be altogether excluded from the powers of the
+subordinate legislature; it ceases to be subordinate as soon as it is
+invested with these Imperial, or quasi-Imperial, powers.
+
+Assuming, however, the division between Imperial and local powers to be
+accurately determined, how is the subordinate legislative body to be
+kept within its due limits? The answer is very plain,--an Imperial court
+must be established to decide in the last resort whether the subordinate
+legislature has or has not infringed Imperial rights. Such a court has
+been in action in the United States of America ever since their union,
+and no serious conflict has arisen in carrying its decisions into
+effect, and the Privy Council, acting as the Supreme Court in respect to
+Colonial appeals, has been accepted by all the self-governing colonies
+as a just and impartial expositor of the meaning of their several
+constitutions.
+
+Next in importance to the right division of Imperial and local powers is
+a correct understanding of the relation borne by the executive of an
+autonomous country to the mother country. In every part of the British
+Empire which enjoys home rule the legislature consists of the Queen and
+the two local legislative bodies. The administrative power resides in
+the Queen alone. The Queen has the appointment of all the officers of
+the government; money bills can be introduced into the legislature only
+with the consent of the Queen. The initiative power of taxation then is
+vested in the Queen, the executive head, in practice represented by the
+Governor. But such a power of initiation is of course useless unless the
+legislative body is willing to support the executive, and grants it the
+necessary funds for carrying on the government. What, then, is the
+contrivance by which the governmental machine is prevented from being
+stopped by a difference between the executive and legislative
+authorities? It is the same in the mother country, and in every British
+home-rule country, with this difference only--that beyond the limits of
+the mother country the Queen is represented by a governor to whom are
+delegated such a measure of powers as is necessary for the supreme head
+of a local self-governing community. The contrivance is this in the
+mother country:--the Queen acts upon the advice of a cabinet council; in
+home-rule dependencies the Governor acts on the advice of a local
+council. If this cabinet council in the mother country, or local council
+in a dependency, ceases to command a majority in the popular legislative
+body, it resigns, and the Governor is obliged to select a council which,
+by commanding such a majority, can obtain the supplies necessary to
+carry on the government. The consequence then is, that in a home-rule
+community, if a serious difficulty arises between the legislative and
+executive authority, the head of the executive, the governor, refers the
+ultimate decision of the question to the general body of electors by
+dissolving the popular legislative body. It has been urged in the
+discussion on the Irish Government Bill that the powers of the executive
+in relation to the legislative body ought to be expressed in the Bill
+itself; but it is clear to anybody acquainted with the rudiments of
+legislation that the details of such a system (in other words, the mode
+in which a governor ought to act under the endless variety of
+circumstances which may occur in governing a dependency) never have been
+and never can be expressed in an Act of Parliament. But how little
+difficulty this absence of definition has caused may be judged from the
+fact that neither in England nor in any of her home-rule dependencies
+has any vital collision arisen between the executive and legislative
+authorities, and that all the home-rule colonies have managed to
+surmount the obstacles which the opponents of Home Rule argued would be
+fatal to their existence. The main principles have now been stated on
+which the Irish Government Bill is framed, and it remains to give a
+summary of the provisions of the Bill, the objects and bearing of which
+will be readily understood from the foregoing observations. The first
+clause provides that--
+
+"On and after the appointed day there shall be established in Ireland a
+Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and an Irish legislative
+body."
+
+This is the first step in all English constitutional systems, to vest
+the power of legislation in the Queen and the legislative body. Such a
+legislature might have had conferred on it the independent powers vested
+in Grattan's Parliament: but the second clause at once puts an end to
+any doubt as to the subordination of the Irish legislative body; for
+while on the one hand it confers full powers of local self-government,
+by declaring that the Legislature may make any laws for the peace,
+order, and good government of Ireland, it subjects that power to
+numerous exceptions and restrictions. The exceptions are contained in
+the third clause, and the restrictions in the fourth. The exceptions are
+as follows:--
+
+"The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws relating to the
+following matters or any of them:--
+
+"(1.) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession to the
+Crown, or a Regency;
+
+"(2.) The making of peace or war;
+
+"(3.) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval
+forces, or the defence of the realm;
+
+"(4.) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the
+relations between the various parts of Her Majesty's dominions;
+
+"(5.) Dignities or titles of honour;
+
+"(6.) Prize or booty of war;
+
+"(7.) Offences against the law of nations; or offences committed in
+violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between Her
+Majesty and any foreign State; or offences committed on the high seas;
+
+"(8.) Treason, alienage, or naturalization;
+
+"(9.) Trade, navigation, or quarantine;
+
+"(10.) The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this Act
+mentioned with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in
+Ireland;
+
+"(11.) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks;
+
+"(12.) The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal tender; or weights
+and measures; or
+
+"(13.) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use or
+profits of any works or inventions."
+
+Of these exceptions the first four preserve the imperial rights which
+have been insisted on above, and maintain the position of Ireland as an
+integral portion of that Empire of which Great Britain is the head. The
+remaining exceptions are either subsidiary to the first four, or relate,
+as is the case with exceptions 10 to 13, to matters on which it is
+desirable that uniformity should exist throughout the whole Empire. The
+restrictions in clause 4 are:--
+
+"The Irish Legislature shall not make any law--
+
+"(1.) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or
+prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
+
+"(2.) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account
+of religious belief; or
+
+"(3.) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain
+any place of denominational education or any denominational institution
+or charity; or
+
+"(4.) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school
+receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at
+that school; or
+
+"(5.) Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty in Council
+first obtained on an address presented by the legislative body of
+Ireland, or the consent of the corporation interested, the rights,
+property, or privileges of any existing corporation incorporated by
+royal charter or local and general Act of Parliament; or
+
+"(6.) Imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties of excise, as
+defined by this Act, or either of such duties, or affecting any Act
+relating to such duties or either of them; or
+
+"(7.) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared to be
+alterable by the Irish Legislature."
+
+These restrictions differ from the exceptions, inasmuch as they do not
+prevent the Legislature of Ireland from dealing with the subjects to
+which they refer, but merely impose on it an obligation not to handle
+the specified matters in a manner detrimental to the interests of
+certain classes of Her Majesty's subjects. For example, restrictions 1
+to 4 are practically concerned in securing religious freedom;
+restriction 5 protects existing charters; restriction 6 is necessary, as
+will be seen hereinafter, to carrying into effect the financial scheme
+of the bill; restriction 7 is a consequence of the very framework of the
+Bill: it provides for the stability of the Irish constitution, by
+declaring that the Irish Legislature is not competent to alter the
+constitutional act to which it owes its existence, except on those
+points on which it is expressly permitted to make alterations.
+
+Clause 5 is an exposition, so to speak, of the consequence which would
+seem to flow from the fact of the Queen being a constitutional part of
+the Legislature. It states that the royal prerogatives with respect to
+the summoning, prorogation, and dissolution of the Irish legislative
+body are to be the same as the royal prerogatives in relation to the
+Imperial Parliament. The next clause (6) is comparatively immaterial;
+it merely provides that the duration of the Irish legislative body is to
+be quinquennial. As it deals with a matter of detail, it perhaps would
+have more aptly found a place in a subsequent part of the Bill. Clause 7
+passes from the legislative to the executive authority; it declares:--
+
+(1.) The executive government of Ireland shall continue vested in Her
+Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of Her
+Majesty with the aid of such officers and such council as to Her Majesty
+may from time to time seem fit.
+
+(2.) Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by
+Her Majesty, the Lord Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of
+Her Majesty to bills passed by the Irish legislative body, and shall
+exercise the prerogatives of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning,
+proroguing, and dissolving of the Irish legislative body, and any
+prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her
+Majesty.
+
+Bearing in mind what has been said in the preliminary observations in
+respect of the relation between the executive and the legislative
+authority, it will be at once understood how much this clause implies,
+according to constitutional maxims, of the dependence on the one hand of
+the Irish executive in respect of imperial matters, and of its
+independence in respect of local matters. The clause is practically
+co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local
+powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers
+to the Imperial Legislature. The governor is an imperial officer, and
+will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny,
+and to veto any bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the
+other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided
+by the advice of the Irish executive council. The system is, as has been
+shown above, self-acting. The governor, for local purposes, must have a
+council which is in harmony with the legislative body. If a council,
+supported by the legislative body and the governor do not agree, the
+governor must give way unless he can, by dismissing his council and
+dissolving the legislative body, obtain both a council and a legislative
+body which will support his views. As respects imperial questions, the
+case is different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and
+in the last resort a determination of the executive council, backed by
+the legislative body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act
+of rebellion on the part of the Irish people, and be dealt with
+accordingly.
+
+The above clauses contain the pith and marrow of the whole scheme. The
+exact constitution of the legislative body, and the orders into which it
+should be divided, the exclusion or non-exclusion of the Irish members
+from the Imperial Parliament, indeed, the whole of the provisions found
+in the remainder of this Bill, are matters which might be altered
+without destroying, or even violently disarranging, the Home-rule scheme
+as above described.
+
+Clauses 9, 10, and 11 provide for the constitution of the legislative
+body; it differs materially from the colonial legislative bodies, and
+from the Legislature of the United States. For the purpose of
+deliberation it consists of one House only; for the purpose of voting on
+all questions (except interlocutory applications and questions of
+order), it is divided into two classes, called in the Bill "Orders,"
+each of which votes separately, with the result that a question on which
+the two orders disagree is deemed to be decided in the negative. The
+object of this arrangement is to diminish the chances of collision
+between the two branches of the Legislature, which have given rise to so
+much difficulty both in England and the colonies. Each order will have
+ample opportunity of learning the strength and hearing the arguments of
+the other order. They will therefore, each of them, proceed to a
+division with a full sense of the responsibility attaching to their
+action. A further safeguard is provided against a final conflict between
+the first and second orders. If the first order negative a proposition,
+that negative is in force only for a period of three years, unless a
+dissolution takes place sooner, in which case it is terminated at once;
+the lost bill or clause may then be submitted to the whole House, and if
+decided in the affirmative, and assented to by the Queen, becomes law.
+The first order of the Irish legislative body comprises 103 members. It
+is intended to consist ultimately wholly of elective members; but for
+the next immediate period of thirty years the rights of the Irish
+representative peers are, as will be seen, scrupulously reserved. The
+plan is this: of the 103 members composing the first order, seventy-five
+are elective, and twenty-eight peerage members. The qualification of the
+elective members is an annual income of L200, or the possession of a
+capital sum of L4000 free from all charges. The elections are to be
+conducted in the electoral districts set out in the schedule to the
+Bill. The electors must possess land or tenements within the district of
+the annual value of L25. The twenty-eight peerage members consist of the
+existing twenty-eight representative peers, and any vacancies in their
+body during the next thirty years are to be filled up in the manner at
+present in use respecting the election of Irish representative peers.
+The Irish representative peers cease to sit in the English Parliament;
+but a member of that body is not required to sit in the Irish Parliament
+without his assent, and the place of any existing peer refusing to sit
+in the Irish Parliament will be filled up as in the case of an ordinary
+vacancy. The elective members of the first order sit for ten years;
+every five years one half their number will retire. The members of the
+first order do not vacate their seats on a dissolution of the
+legislative body. At the expiration of thirty years, that is to say,
+upon the exhaustion of all the existing Irish representative peers, the
+whole of the upper order will consist of elective members. The second
+order consists of 204 members, that is to say, of the 103 existing Irish
+members (who are transferred to the Irish Parliament), and of 101
+additional members to be elected by the county districts and the
+represented towns, in the same manner as that in which the present 101
+members for counties and towns are elected--each constituency returning
+two instead of one member. If an existing member does not assent to his
+transfer, his seat is vacated.
+
+A power is given to the Legislature of Ireland to enable the Royal
+University of Ireland to return two members.
+
+The provisions with respect to this second order fall within the class
+of enactments which are alterable by the Irish Legislature. After the
+first dissolution of parliament the Irish Legislature may deal with the
+second order in any manner they think fit, with the important
+restrictions:--(1) That in the distribution of members they must have
+due regard to population; (2) that they must not increase or diminish
+the number of members.
+
+The transfer to the Irish legislative body of the Irish representative
+peers, and of the Irish members, involves their exclusion under ordinary
+circumstances from the Imperial Parliament, with this great exception,
+that whenever an alteration is proposed to be made in the fundamental
+provisions of the Irish Government Bill, a mode of procedure is devised
+for recalling both orders of the Irish legislative body to the Imperial
+Parliament for the purpose of obtaining their consent to such alteration
+(clause 39).
+
+Further, it is right to state here that Mr. Gladstone in his speech on
+the second reading of the Bill proposed to provide, "that when any
+proposal for taxation was made affecting the condition of Ireland, Irish
+members should have an opportunity of appearing in the House to take a
+share in the transaction of that business."
+
+Questions arising as to whether the Irish Parliament has or not
+exceeded its constitutional powers may be determined by the ordinary
+courts of law in the first instance; the ultimate appeal lies to the
+Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. An additional safeguard is
+provided by declaring that before a provision in a Bill becomes law, the
+Lord Lieutenant may take the opinion of the Judicial Committee of the
+Privy Council as to its legality, and further, that without subjecting
+private litigants to the expense of trying the constitutionality of an
+Act, the Lord Lieutenant may, of his own motion, move the judicial
+committee to determine the question. With a view to secure absolute
+impartiality in the committee, Ireland will be represented on that body
+by persons who are or have been Irish judges (clause 25).
+
+The question of finance forms a separate portion of the Bill, the
+provisions of which are contained in clauses twelve to twenty, while the
+machinery for carrying those enactments into effect will be found in
+Part III. of the Land Bill. The first point to be determined was the
+amount to be contributed by Ireland to imperial expenses. Under the Act
+of Union it was intended that Ireland should pay 2/17ths, or in the
+proportion of 1 to 7-1/2 of the total expenditure of the United Kingdom.
+This amount being found exorbitant, it was gradually reduced, until at
+the present moment it amounts to something under the proportion of 1 to
+11-1/2. The bill fixes the proportion at 1/15th, or 1 to 14, this sum
+being arrived at by a comparison between the amount of the income-tax,
+death-duties, and valuation of property in Great Britain, and the amount
+of the same particulars in Ireland. The amount to be contributed by
+Ireland to the imperial expenditure being thus ascertained, the more
+difficult part of the problem remained to provide the fund out of which
+the contribution should be payable, and the mode in which its payment
+should be secured. The plan which commended itself to the framers of the
+Bill, as combining the advantage of insuring the fiscal unity of Great
+Britain and Ireland, with absolute security to the British exchequer,
+was to continue the customs and excise duties under imperial control,
+and to pay them into the hands of an imperial officer. This plan is
+carried into effect by the conjoint operation of the clauses of the
+Irish Government Bill and the Irish Land Bill above referred to. The
+customs and excise duties are directed to be levied as heretofore in
+pursuance of the enactments of the Imperial Parliament, and are excepted
+from the control of the Irish Legislature, which may, with that
+exception, impose any taxes in Ireland it may think expedient. The
+imperial officer who is appointed under the Land Bill bears the title of
+Receiver-General, and into his hands not only the imperial taxes (the
+customs and excise duties), but also all local taxes imposed by the
+Irish Parliament are in the first instance paid. (See Clauses 25-27 of
+the Land Bill.) The Receiver-General having thus in his hands all
+imperial and local funds levied in Ireland, his duty is to satisfy all
+imperial claims before paying over any moneys to the Irish Exchequer.
+Further, an Imperial Court of Exchequer is established in Ireland to
+watch over the interests of the Receiver-General, and all revenue cases
+are to be tried, and all defaults punished in that court. Any neglect of
+the local authorities to carry into effect the decrees of the Imperial
+Court will amount to treason, and it will be the duty of the Imperial
+Government to deal with it accordingly.
+
+Supposing the Bill to have passed, the account of the Exchequer in
+Ireland would have stood thus:--
+
+                         RECEIPTS.
+
+1. _Imperial Taxes_:
+   (1) Customs . . . . . . . . . . L1,880,000
+   (2) Excise  . . . . . . . . . .  4,300,000
+                                    --------- L6,180,000
+
+2. _Local Taxes_:
+   (1) Stamps . . . . . . . . . . .   L600,000
+   (2) Income-Tax at 6_d_. in L . .    550,000
+                                     --------- L1,150,000
+
+3. _Non-Tax Revenue_:
+   (Post Office, Telegraph, etc.) . . . . .    L1,020,000
+                                               ----------
+                                               L8,350,000
+
+                       EXPENDITURE.
+
+1. _Contribution to Imperial Exchequer_ on basis of
+     1/15th of Imperial Expenditure, viz.:
+   (1) Debt Charge . . . . . . . .  L1,466,000
+   (2) Army and Navy . . . . . . .   1,666,000
+   (3) Civil Charges . . . . . . .     110,000
+                                     --------- L3,242,000
+2. _Sinking Fund_ on 1/15th of
+      Capital of Debt . . . . . . . . . . . . .   360,000
+3. _Charge for Constabulary_[14]  . . . . . . . 1,000,000
+4. _Local Civil Charges_
+      other than Constabulary . . . . . . . . . 2,510,000
+5. _Collection of Revenue_:
+      (1) Imperial Taxes . . . . . .   L170,000
+      (2) Local Taxes  . . . . . . . .   60,000
+      (3) Non-Tax Revenue  . . . . . .  604,000
+                                        -------   834,000
+6. _Balance_ or Surplus . . . . . . . . . . . .   404,000
+                                                 --------
+                                               L8,350,000
+
+The Imperial contribution payable by Ireland to Great Britain cannot be
+increased for thirty years, though it may be diminished if the charges
+for the army and navy and Imperial civil expenditure for any year be
+less than fifteen times the contribution paid by Ireland, in which case
+1/15th of the diminution will be deducted from the annual Imperial
+contribution. Apart from the Imperial charges there are other charges
+strictly Irish, for the security of the payment of which the Bill
+provides. This it does by imposing an obligation on the Irish
+legislative body to enact sufficient taxes to meet such charges, and by
+directing them to be paid by the Imperial Receiver-General, who is
+required to keep an imperial and an Irish account, carrying the customs
+and excise duties, in the first instance, to the imperial account, and
+the local taxes to the Irish account, transferring to the Irish account
+the surplus remaining after paying the imperial charges on the imperial
+account. On this Irish account are charged debts due from the Government
+of Ireland, pensions, and other sums due to the civil servants, and the
+salaries of the judges of the supreme courts in Ireland.
+
+Some provisions of importance remain to be noticed. Judges of the
+superior and county courts in Ireland are to be removable from office
+only on address to the Crown, presented by both orders of the
+Legislative body voting separately. Existing Civil servants are retained
+in their offices at their existing salaries; if the Irish Government
+desire their retirement, they will be entitled to pensions; on the other
+hand, if at the end of two years the officers themselves wish to retire,
+they can do so, and will be entitled to the same pensions as if their
+office had been abolished. The pensions are payable by the
+Receiver-General out of the Irish account above mentioned.
+
+The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament over all parts of the Empire is
+an inherent quality of which Parliament cannot divest itself, inasmuch
+as it cannot bind its successors or prevent them from repealing any
+prior Act. In order, however, to prevent any misapprehension on this
+point clause 37 was inserted, the efficacy of which, owing in great
+measure to a misprint, has been doubted. It is enough to state here that
+it was intended by express legislation to reserve all powers to the
+Imperial Parliament, and had the Bill gone into Committee the question
+would have been placed beyond the reach of cavil by a slight alteration
+in the wording of the clause. This summary may be concluded by the
+statement that the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords over
+actions and suits arising in Ireland (except in respect of
+constitutional questions reserved for the determination of the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council as explained above), and with respect to
+claims for Irish Peerages, is preserved intact.
+
+The object of the Land Bill was a political one: to promote the
+contentment of the people, and the cause of good government in Ireland,
+by settling once and for ever the vexed question relating to land. To do
+this effectually it was necessary to devise a system under which the
+tenants, as a class, should become interested in the maintenance of
+social order, and be furnished with substantial inducements to rally
+round the institutions of their country. On the other hand, it was just
+and right that the landlords should participate in the benefits of any
+measure proposed for remedying the evils attendant upon the tenure of
+land in Ireland; and should be enabled to rid themselves, on fair terms,
+of their estates in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes,
+or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves
+from the responsibilities of ownership. Further, it was felt by the
+framers of the Bill that a moral obligation rested on the Imperial
+Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending
+the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a question so
+fraught with danger, and so involved in difficulty, to be determined by
+the Irish Government on its first entry on official existence. Such were
+the governing motives for bringing in the Land Bill.
+
+To understand an Irish Land Bill it is necessary to dismiss at once all
+ideas of the ordinary relations between landlord and tenant in England,
+and to grasp a true conception of the condition of an Irish tenanted
+estate. In England the relation between the landlord and tenant of a
+farm resembles, with a difference in the subject-matter, the relation
+between the landlord and tenant of a furnished house. In the case of the
+house, the landlord keeps it in a state fit for habitation, and the
+tenant pays rent for the privilege of living in another man's house. In
+the case of the farm, the landlord provides the farm with house,
+farm-buildings, gates, and other permanent improvements required to fit
+it for cultivation by the tenant, and the tenant pays rent for the
+privilege of cultivating the farm, receiving the proceeds of that
+cultivation. The characters of owner and tenant, however long the
+connection between them may subsist, are quite distinct. The tenant does
+no acts of ownership, and never regards the land as belonging to
+himself, quitting it without hesitation if he can make more money by
+taking another farm. In Ireland the whole situation is different:
+instead of a farm of some one hundred or two hundred acres, the tenant
+has a holding varying, say, from five to fifty acres, for which he pays
+an annual rent-charge to the landlord. He, or his ancestors have, in the
+opinion of the tenant, acquired a quasi-ownership in the land by making
+all the improvements, and he is only removable on non-payment of the
+fixed rent, or non-fulfilment of certain specified conditions. In short,
+in Ireland the ownership is dual: the landlord is merely the lord of a
+quasi-copyhold manor, consisting of numerous small tenements held by
+quasi-copyholders who, so long as they pay what may be called the
+manorial rents, and fulfil the manorial conditions, regard themselves as
+independent owners of their holdings. An Irish Land Bill, then, dealing
+with tenanted estates, is, in fact, merely a Bill for converting the
+small holders of tenements held at a fixed rent into fee-simple owners
+by redemption of the rent due to the landlord and a transfer of the land
+to the holders. Every scheme, therefore, for settling the Land question
+in Ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of paying
+off the rent-charges due to the landlord. The tenant cannot, of course,
+raise the capital sufficient for paying off the redemption money; some
+State authority must, therefore, intervene and advance the whole or the
+greater part of that money, and recoup itself for the advance by the
+creation in its own favour of an annual charge on the holding sufficient
+to repay in a certain number of years both the principal and interest
+due in respect of the advance.
+
+The first problem, then, in an Irish Land Bill, is to settle the
+conditions of this annuity in such a manner as to satisfy the landlord
+and tenant; the first, as to the price of his estate; the second, as to
+the amount of the annuity to be paid by him, at the same time to provide
+the State authority with adequate security for the repayment of the
+advance, or, in other words, for the punctual payments of the annuity
+which is to discharge the advance. Next in importance to the financial
+question of the adjustment of the annuity comes the administrative
+difficulty of investigating the title, and thus securing to the tenant
+the possession of the fee simple, and to the State authority the
+position of a mortgagee. Under ordinary circumstances the investigation
+of the title to an estate involves the examination of every document
+relating thereto for a period of forty years, and the distribution of
+the purchase-money amongst the head renters, mortgagees, and other
+encumbrancers, who, in addition to the landlord, are found to be
+interested in the ownership of almost every Irish estate. Such a
+process is costly, even in the case of large estates, and involves an
+expense almost, and, indeed, speaking generally, absolutely prohibitory
+in the case of small properties. Some mode, then, must be devised for
+reducing this expense within manageable limits, or any scheme for
+dealing with Irish land, however well devised from a financial point of
+view, will sink under the burden imposed by the expense attending the
+transfer of the land to the new proprietors. Having thus stated the two
+principal difficulties attending the Land question in Ireland, it may be
+well before entering on the details of the Sale and Purchase of Land
+(Ireland) Bill, to mention the efforts which have been made during the
+last fifteen years to surmount those difficulties. The Acts having this
+object in view are the Land Acts of 1870, 1872, and 1881, brought in by
+Mr. Gladstone, and the Land Purchase Act of 1885, brought in by the
+Conservative Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Lord Ashbourne). The Act of
+1870, as amended by the Act of 1872, provided that the State authority
+might advance two-thirds of the purchase-money. An attempt was made to
+get over the difficulties of title by providing that the Landed Estates
+Court or Board of Works shall undertake the investigation of the title
+and the transfer and distribution of the purchase-money at a fixed
+price. The Act of 1881 increased the advance to three-quarters, leaving
+the same machinery to deal with the title. Both under the Acts of 1870
+and 1881 the advance was secured by an annuity of 5 per cent., payable
+for the period of thirty-five years, and based on the loan of the money
+by the English Exchequer at 3-1/2 per cent. interest. These Acts
+produced very little effect. The expense of dealing with the titles in
+the Landed Estates Court proved overwhelming, and neither the Board of
+Works, under the Act of 1872, nor the Land Commission, under the Act of
+1881, found themselves equal to the task of completing inexpensively the
+transfer of the land; further, the tenants had no means of providing
+even the quarter of the purchase-money required by the Act of 1881. In
+1885 Lord Ashbourne determined to remove all obstacles at the expense of
+the English Exchequer. By the Land Act of that year he authorized the
+whole of the purchase-money to be advanced by the State, with a
+guarantee by the landlord, to be carried into effect by his allowing
+one-fifth of the purchase-money to remain in the hands of the agents of
+the State Authority until one-fifth of the purchase-money had been
+repaid by the annual payments of the tenants. The principal was to be
+recouped by an annuity of 4 per cent., extending over a period of
+forty-nine years, instead of an annuity of 5 per cent. extending over a
+period of thirty-five years. The English Exchequer was to advance the
+money on the basis of interest at 3-1/8 per cent., instead of at 3-1/2
+per cent. Though sufficient time has not yet elapsed to show whether the
+great bribe offered by the Act of 1885, at the expense of the British
+taxpayer, will succeed in overcoming the apathy of the tenants, it
+cannot escape notice that if the Act of 1885 succeeds better than the
+previous Acts, it will owe that success solely to the greater amount of
+risk which it imposes on the English Exchequer, and not to any
+improvement in the scheme in respect of securing greater certainty of
+sale to the Irish landlord, or of diminishing the danger of loss to the
+English taxpayer.
+
+Such being the state of legislation, and such the circumstances of the
+land question in Ireland in the year 1886, the Irish Government Bill
+afforded Mr. Gladstone the means and the opportunity of bringing in a
+Land Bill which would secure to the Irish landlord the certainty of
+selling his land at a fair price, without imposing any practical
+liability on the English Exchequer, and would, at the same time,
+diminish the annual sums payable by the tenant; while it also conferred
+a benefit on the Irish Exchequer. These advantages were, as will be
+seen, gained, firstly, by the pledge of English credit on good security,
+instead of advancing money on a mere mortgage on Irish holdings, made
+directly to the English Government; and, secondly, by the interposition
+of the Irish Government, as the immediate creditor of the Irish tenant.
+The scheme of the Land Purchase Bill is as follows:--The landlord of an
+agricultural estate occupied by tenants may apply to a department of the
+new Irish Government to purchase his estate. The tenants need not be
+consulted, as the purchase, if completed, will necessarily better their
+condition, and thus at the very outset the difficulty of procuring the
+assent of the tenants, which has hitherto proved so formidable an
+obstacle to all Irish land schemes, disappears. The landlord may require
+the department to which he applies (called in the Bill the State
+Authority) to pay him the statutory price of his estate, not in cash,
+but in consols valued at par. This price, except in certain unusual
+cases of great goodness or of great badness of the land, is twenty
+years' purchase of the _net_ rental. The _net_ rental is the _gross_
+rental after deducting from that rent tithe rent-charge, the average
+percentage for expenses in respect of bad debts, any rates paid by the
+landlord, and any like outgoings. The _gross_ rental of an estate is the
+gross rent of all the holdings on the estate, payable in the year ending
+in November, 1885. Where a judicial rent has been fixed, it is the
+judicial rent; where no judicial rent has been fixed, it is the rent to
+be determined in the manner provided by the Bill.
+
+To state this shortly, the Bill provides that an Irish landlord may
+require the State Authority to pay him for his estate, in consols valued
+at par, a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount of the annual sum
+which he has actually put into his pocket out of the proceeds of the
+estate. The determination of the statutory price is, so far as the
+landlord is concerned, the cardinal point of the Bill, and in order
+that no injustice may be done the landlord, an Imperial
+Commission--called the Land Commission--is appointed by the Bill, whose
+duty it is to fix the statutory price, and, where there is no judicial
+rent, to determine the amount of rent which, in the character of gross
+rental, is to form the basis of the statutory price. The Commission also
+pay the purchase-money to the landlord, or distribute it amongst the
+parties entitled, and generally the Commission act as intermediaries
+between the landlord and the Irish State Authority, which has no power
+of varying the terms to which the landlord is entitled under the Bill,
+or of judging of the conditions which affect the statutory price. If the
+landlord thinks the price fixed by the Land Commission, as the statutory
+price inequitable, he may reject their offer and keep his estate.
+
+Supposing, however, the landlord to be satisfied with the statutory
+price offered by the Land Commission, the sale is concluded, and the
+Land Commission make an order carrying the required sum of consols
+(which is for convenience hereinafter called the purchase-money,
+although it consists of stock and not of cash) to the account of the
+estate in their books after deducting 1 per cent. for the cost of
+investigation of title and distribution of the purchase-money, and upon
+the purchase-money being thus credited to the estate, the landlord
+ceases to have any interest in the estate, and the tenants, by virtue of
+the order of the Land Commission, become owners in fee simple of their
+holdings, subject to the payment to the Irish State Authority of an
+annuity. The amount of the annuity is stated in the Bill. It is a sum
+equal to L4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount
+of the gross rental of the holding. The illustration given by Mr.
+Gladstone in his speech will at once explain these apparently intricate
+matters of finance. A landlord is entitled to the Hendon estate,
+producing L1200 a year gross rental; to find the net rental, the Land
+Commission deduct from this gross rental outgoings estimated at about 20
+per cent., or L240 a year. This makes the net rental L960 a year, and
+the price payable to the landlord is L19,200 (twenty years' purchase of
+L960, or L960 multiplied by 20), which, as above stated, will be paid in
+consols. The tenants will pay, as the maximum amount for their holdings,
+L4 per cent. for forty-nine years on the capitalized value of twenty
+years' purchase of the gross rent. This will amount to L960 instead of
+L1,200, which they have hitherto paid; a saving of L240 a year will thus
+be effected, from which, however, must be deducted the half rates to
+which they will become liable, formerly paid by the landlord. This L4
+per cent. charge payable by the tenants will continue for forty-nine
+years, but at the end of that time each tenant will become a free owner
+of his estate without any annual payment. Next, as to the position of
+the State Authority. The State Authority receives L960 from the tenants;
+it pays out of that sum L4 per cent., not upon the gross rental, but
+upon the net rental capitalized, that is to say, L768 to the Imperial
+Exchequer. The State Authority, therefore, receives,L960, and assuming
+that the charge of collecting the rental is 2 per cent., that is to say,
+L19 4_s._, the State Authority will, out of L960, have to disburse only
+L787 4_s._, leaving it a gainer of L172 16_s._, or nearly 18 per cent.
+The result then between the several parties is, the landlord receives
+L19,200; the tenantry pay L240 a year less than they have hitherto paid,
+and at the end of forty-nine years are exempt altogether from payment;
+the gain of Irish State Authority is L172 16_s._ a year. Another mode of
+putting the case shortly is as follows: The English Exchequer lends the
+money to the Irish State Authority at 3-1/8 per cent. and an annuity of
+4 per cent. paid during forty-nine years will, as has been stated above,
+repay both principal and interest for every L100 lent at 3-1/8 per
+cent. On the sale of an estate under the Bill, the landlord receives
+twenty years' purchase; the tenant pays L4 per cent. on twenty years'
+purchase of the gross rental; the Irish State Authority receives L4 per
+cent. on the gross rental; the English Exchequer receives 4 per cent. on
+the net rental only. The repayment of the interest due by the Irish
+Authority to the English Exchequer is in no wise dependent on the
+punctual payment of their annuities by the Irish tenants, nor does the
+English Government in any way figure as the landlord or creditor of the
+Irish tenants. The annuities payable by the tenants are due to the Irish
+Government, and collected by them, while the interest due to the English
+Government is a charge on the whole of the Irish Government funds; and
+further, these funds themselves are paid into the hands of the Imperial
+officer, whose duty it is to liquidate the debt due to his master, the
+Imperial Exchequer, before a sixpence can be touched by the Irish
+Government. It is not, then, any exaggeration to say that the Land
+Purchase Bill of 1886 provides for the settlement of the Irish Land
+question without any appreciable risk to the English Exchequer, and with
+the advantage of securing a fair price for the landlord, a diminution of
+annual payments to the tenant with the ultimate acquisition of the fee
+simple, also a gain of no inconsiderable sum to the Irish Exchequer. In
+order to obviate the difficulties attending the investigation of title
+and transfer of the property, the Bill provides, as stated above, that
+on the completion of the agreement for the sale between the landlord and
+the Commission, the holding shall vest at once in the tenants: it then
+proceeds to declare that the claims of all persons interested in the
+land shall attach to the purchase-money in the same manner as though it
+were land. The duty of ascertaining these claims and distributing the
+purchase-money is vested in the Land Commission, who undertake the task
+in exchange for the 1 per cent. which they have, as above stated,
+deducted from the purchase-money as the cost of conducting the complete
+transfer of the estate from the landlord to the tenants. The difficulty
+of the process of dealing with the purchase-money depends, of course, on
+the intricacy of the title. If the vendor is the sole unencumbered
+owner, he is put in immediate possession of the stock constituting the
+price of the estate. If there are encumbrances, as is usually the case,
+they are paid off by the Land Commission. Capital sums are paid in full;
+jointures and other life charges are valued according to the usual
+tables. Drainage and other temporary charges are estimated at their
+present value, permanent rent-charges are valued by agreement, or in
+case of disagreement, by the Land Commission; a certain minimum number
+of years' purchase being assigned by the Bill to any permanent
+rent-charge which amounts only to one-fifth part of the rental of the
+estate on which it is charged, this provision being made to prevent
+injustice being done to the holders of rent-charges which are amply
+secured.
+
+It remains to notice certain other points of some importance. The
+landlord entitled to require the State to purchase his property is the
+immediate landlord, that is to say, the person entitled to the receipt
+of the rent of the estate; no encumbrancer can avail himself of the
+privilege, the reason being that the Bill is intended to assist solvent
+landlords, and not to create a new Encumbered Estates Court. The
+landlord may sell this privilege, and possibly by means of this power of
+sale may be able to put pressure on his encumbrancers to reduce their
+claims in order to obtain immediate payment. The Land Commission, in
+their character of quasi-arbitrators between the landlord and the Irish
+State Authority, have ample powers given to enable them to do justice.
+If the statutory price, as settled according to the Act, is too low,
+they may raise it to twenty-two years' purchase instead of twenty years'
+purchase. If it is too high, they may refuse to buy unless the landlord
+will reduce it to a proper price. In the congested districts scheduled
+in the Bill the land, on a sale, passes to the Irish State Authority, as
+landlords, and not to the tenants; the reason being that it is
+considered that the tenants would be worsened, rather than bettered, by
+having their small plots vested in them in fee simple. For the same
+cause it is provided that in any part of Ireland tenants of holdings
+under L4 a year may object to become the owners of their holdings, which
+will thereupon vest, on a sale, in the Irish State Authority. Lastly,
+the opportunity is taken of establishing a registry of title in respect
+of all property dealt with under the Bill. The result of such a registry
+would be that any property entered therein would ever thereafter be
+capable of being transferred with the same facility, and at as little
+expense, as stock in the public funds.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 14: Any charge in excess of one million was to be borne by
+Imperial Exchequer.]
+
+
+
+
+THE "UNIONIST" POSITION.
+
+BY CANON MACCOLL
+
+
+Is it not time that the opponents of Home Rule for Ireland should define
+their position? They defeated Mr. Gladstone's scheme last year in
+Parliament and in the constituencies; and they defeated it by the
+promise of a counter policy which was to consist, in brief, of placing
+Ireland on the same footing as Great Britain in respect to Local
+Government; or, if there was to be any difference, it was to be in the
+direction of a larger and more generous measure for Ireland than for the
+rest of the United Kingdom. This certainly was the policy propounded by
+the distinguished leader of the Liberal Unionists in his speech at
+Belfast, in November, 1885, and repeated in his electoral speeches last
+year. In the Belfast speech Lord Hartington said: "My opinion is that it
+is desirable for Irishmen that institutions of local self-government
+such as are possessed by England and Scotland, and such as we hope to
+give in the next session in greater extent to England and Scotland,
+should also be extended to Ireland." But this extension of local
+self-government to Ireland would require, in Lord Hartington's opinion,
+a fundamental change in the fabric of Irish Government. "I would not
+shrink," he says, "from a great and bold reconstruction of the Irish
+Government," a reconstruction leading up gradually to some real and
+substantial form of Home Rule. His Lordship's words are: "I submit with
+some confidence to you these principles, which I have endeavoured to lay
+down, and upon which, I think, the extension of Local Government in
+Ireland must proceed. First, you must have some adequate guarantees both
+for the maintenance of the essential unity of the Empire and for the
+protection of the minority in Ireland. And, secondly, you must also
+admit this principle: the work of complete self-government of Ireland,
+the grant of full control over the management of its own affairs, is not
+a grant that can be made by any Parliament of this country in a day. It
+must be the work of continuous and careful effort." Elsewhere in the
+same speech Lord Hartington says: "Certainly I am of opinion that
+nothing can be done in the direction of giving Ireland anything like
+complete control over her own affairs either in a day, or a session, or
+probably in a Parliament." "Complete control over her own affairs," "the
+work of complete self-government of Ireland, the grant of full control
+over the management of its own affairs:" this is the policy which Lord
+Hartington proclaimed in Ulster, the promise which he, the proximate
+Liberal leader, held out to Ireland on the eve of the General Election
+of 1885. It was a policy to be begun "in the next session," though not
+likely to be completed "in a day, or a session, or probably in a
+Parliament."
+
+Next to Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington the most important member of
+the Liberal party at that time was undoubtedly Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr.
+Chamberlain's Irish policy was proclaimed in the _Radical Programme,
+which was published before the General Election as the Radical leader's
+manifesto to the constituencies. This scheme, which Mr. Chamberlain had
+submitted as a responsible minister to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone in
+June, 1885, culminated in a National Council which was to control a
+series of local bodies and govern the whole of Ireland. "His National
+Council was to consist of two orders; one-third of its members were to
+be elected by the owners of property, and two-thirds by ratepayers. The
+National Council also was to be a single one, and Ulster was not to have
+a separate Council. As the Council was to be charged with the
+supervision and legislation about education, which is the burning
+question between Catholics and Protestants, it is clear that Mr.
+Chamberlain at that time contemplated no special protection for
+Ulster."[15] Moreover, in a letter dated April 23rd, 1886, and published
+in the _Daily News_ of May 17th, 1886, Mr. Chamberlain declared that he
+"had not changed his opinion in the least" since his first public
+declaration on Irish policy in 1874. "I then said that I was in favour
+of the principles of Home Rule, as defined by Mr. Butt, but that I would
+do nothing which would weaken in any way Imperial unity, and that I did
+not agree with all the details of his plan.... Mr. Butt's proposals were
+in the nature of a federal scheme, and differ entirely from Mr.
+Gladstone's, which are on the lines of Colonial independence. Mr. Butt
+did not propose to give up Irish representation at Westminster." It is
+true that Mr. Butt did not propose to give up Irish representation at
+Westminster; but it is also true that he proposed to give it up in the
+sense in which Mr. Chamberlain wishes to retain it. Mr. Butt's words, in
+the debate to which Mr. Chamberlain refers, are, "that the House should
+meet _without Irish members_ for the discussion of English and Scotch
+business; and when there was any question affecting the Empire at large,
+Irish members might be summoned to attend. He saw no difficulty in the
+matter."[16]
+
+There is no need to quote Mr. Gladstone's declarations on the Irish
+question at the General Election of 1885, and previously. He has been
+accused of springing a surprise on the country when he proposed Home
+Rule in the beginning of 1886. That is not, at all events, the opinion
+of Lord Hartington. In a speech delivered at the Eighty Club in March,
+1886, his Lordship, with his usual manly candour, declared as follows:
+"I am not going to say one word of complaint or charge against Mr.
+Gladstone for the attitude which he has taken on this question. I think
+no one who has read or heard, during a long series of years, the
+declarations of Mr. Gladstone on the question of self-government for
+Ireland, can be surprised at the tone of his present declarations....
+When I look back to those declarations that Mr. Gladstone made in
+Parliament, which have not been unfrequent; when I look back to the
+increased definiteness given to those declarations in his address to the
+electors of Midlothian, and in his Midlothian speeches; I say, when I
+consider all these things, I feel that I have not, and that no one has,
+any right to complain of the tone of the declarations which Mr.
+Gladstone has recently made upon this subject."
+
+So much as to the state of Liberal opinion on the Irish question at the
+General Election of 1885. The leaders of all sections of the party put
+the Irish question in the foreground of their programme for the session
+of 1886. We all remember Sir Charles Dilke's public announcement that he
+and Mr. Chamberlain were going to visit Ireland in the autumn of 1885,
+to study the Irish question on the spot, with a view to maturing a plan
+for the first session of the new Parliament.
+
+What about the Conservative party? Lord Salisbury's Newport speech was
+avowedly the programme of his Cabinet. It was the Conservative answer to
+Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian manifesto. He dealt with the Irish question
+in guarded language; but it was language which plainly showed that he
+recognized, not less clearly than the Liberal leaders, the crucial
+change which the assimilation of the Irish franchise to that of Great
+Britain had wrought in Irish policy. His keen eye saw at once the
+important bearing which that enfranchisement had on the traditional
+policy of coercion: "You had passed an Act of Parliament, giving in
+unexampled abundance, and with unexampled freedom, supreme power to the
+great mass of the Irish people--supreme power as regards their own
+locality.... To my mind the renewal of exceptional legislation against a
+population whom you had treated legislatively to this marked confidence
+was so gross in its inconsistency that you could not possibly hope,
+during the few remaining months that were at your disposal before the
+present Parliament expired, to renew any legislation which expressed on
+one side a distrust of what on the other side your former legislation
+had so strongly emphasized. The only result of your doing it would have
+been, not that you would have passed the Act, but that you would have
+promoted by the very inconsistency of the position that you were
+occupying--by the untenable character of the arguments that you were
+advancing--you would have produced so intense an exasperation amongst
+the Irish people, that you would have caused ten times more evil, ten
+times more resistance to law than your Crimes Act, even if it had been
+renewed, would possibly have been able to check." Lord Salisbury went on
+to say that "the effect of the Crimes Act had been very much
+exaggerated," and that "boycotting is of that character which
+legislation has very great difficulty in reaching." "Boycotting does not
+operate through outrage. Boycotting is the act of a large majority of a
+community resolving to do a number of things which are themselves legal,
+and which are only illegal by the intention with which they are done."
+
+Next to Lord Salisbury the most prominent member of the Conservative
+party at that date was Lord Randolph Churchill. On the 3rd of January,
+1885, when it was rumoured that Mr. Gladstone's Government, then in
+office, intended to renew a few of the clauses of the Crimes Act, Lord
+Randolph Churchill made a speech at Bow against any such policy. The
+following quotation will suffice as a specimen of his opinion: "It comes
+to this, that the policy of the Government in Ireland is to declare on
+the one hand, by the passing of the Reform Bill, that the Irish people
+are perfectly capable of exercising for the advantage of the Empire the
+highest rights and privileges of citizenship; and by the proposal to
+renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously declare, on the other hand,
+that the Irish people are perfectly incapable of performing for the
+advantage of society the lowest and most ordinary duties of
+citizenship.... All I can say is that, if such an incoherent, such a
+ridiculous, such a dangerously ridiculous combination of acts can be
+called a policy, then, thank God, the Conservative party have no
+policy."
+
+Within a few months of the delivery of that speech a Conservative
+Government was in office, with Lord Randolph Churchill as its leader in
+the House of Commons; and one of the first acts of the new leader was to
+separate himself ostentatiously from the Irish policy of Lord Spencer
+and from the policy of coercion in general. Lord Randolph Churchill, as
+the organ of the Government in the House of Commons, repudiated in
+scornful language any atom of sympathy with the policy pursued by Lord
+Spencer in Ireland; and Lord Carnarvon, the new Viceroy, declared that
+"the era of coercion" was past, and that the Conservative Government
+intended to govern Ireland by the ordinary law. Lord Carnarvon, in
+addition, and very much to his credit, sought and obtained an interview
+with Mr. Parnell, and discussed with him, in sympathetic language, the
+question of Home Rule. In his own explanation of this interview Lord
+Carnarvon admitted that he desired to see established in Ireland some
+form of self-government which would satisfy "the national sentiment."
+
+It is idle, therefore, to assert that the question of Home Rule for
+Ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the country as a surprise
+by Mr. Gladstone in the beginning of 1886. The question was brought
+prominently before the public in the General Election of 1885 as one
+that must be faced in the new Parliament. All parties were committed to
+that policy, and the only difference was as to the character and limits
+of the measure of self-government to be granted to Ireland; whether it
+was to be large enough to satisfy "the national sentiment," as Lord
+Carnarvon, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Gladstone, and others desired; or
+whether it was to consist only of a system of county boards under the
+control of a reformed Dublin Castle. There was a general agreement that
+the grant to Ireland of electoral equality with England necessitated
+equality of political treatment, and that, above all things, there was
+to be no renewal of the stale policy of Coercion until the Irish people
+had got an opportunity of proving or disproving their fitness for
+self-government, unless, indeed, there should happen to be a
+recrudescence of crime which would render exceptional legislation
+necessary. The election of 1886 turned almost entirely on the question
+of Irish government, and it is not too much to say that Conservatives
+and Liberal Unionists vied with Home Rulers in repudiating a return to
+the policy of coercion until the effect of some kind of self-government
+had been tried. Of course, there were the usual platitudes about the
+necessity of maintaining law and order; but there was a _consensus_ of
+profession that coercion should not be resorted to unless there was a
+fresh outbreak of crime and disorder in Ireland.
+
+Such were the professions of the opponents of Home Rule in 1885 and in
+1886. They have now been in office for eighteen months, and what do we
+behold? They have passed a perpetual Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the
+question of any kind of self-government has been relegated to an
+uncertain future. In his recent speech at Birmingham (Sept. 29), Mr.
+Chamberlain has declared that the question is not ripe for solution, and
+that the question of disestablishment, in Wales, Scotland, and England
+successively, as well as the questions of Local Option, local government
+for Great Britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take
+precedence of it. That means the postponement of the reform of Irish
+Government to the Greek Kalends. What justification can be made for this
+change of front? No valid justification has been offered. So far from
+there having been any increase of crime in the interval, there has been
+a very marked decrease. When the Coercion Bill received the royal assent
+last August, Ireland was more free from crime than it had been for many
+years past. Nothing had happened to account for the return to the policy
+of coercion in violation of the promise to try the experiment of
+conciliation. The National League was in full vigour in 1885-1886, when
+the policy of coercion was abandoned; boycotting was just as prevalent,
+and outrages were much more numerous.
+
+Under these circumstances it is the opponents of Home Rule, not its
+advocates, who owe an explanation to the public. They defeated Mr.
+Gladstone's Bill, but promised a Bill of their own. Where is their Bill?
+We hear nothing of it. They have made a complete change of front. They
+now tell us that the grievance of Ireland is entirely economic, and that
+the true solution of the Irish question is the abolition of dual
+ownership in land combined with a firm administration of the existing
+law. England and Scotland are to have a large measure of local
+government next year; but Ireland is to wait till a more convenient
+season. A more complete reversal of the policy proclaimed last summer by
+the so-called Unionists cannot be imagined.
+
+Still, however, the "Unionists" hope to be able some day to offer some
+form of self-government to Ireland. For party purposes they are wise in
+postponing that day to the latest possible period, for its advent will
+probably dissolve the union of the "Unionists." Lord Salisbury, Lord
+Hartington, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Chamberlain cannot agree upon any scheme
+which all can accept without a public recantation of previous
+professions. Mr. Bright is opposed to Home Rule "in any shape or form."
+Mr. Chamberlain, on the other hand, is in favour of a great National
+Council, on Mr. Butt's lines or on the lines of the Canadian plan;
+either of which would give the National Council control over education
+and the maintenance of law and order. Latterly, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain
+has advocated a separate treatment for Ulster. But the first act of an
+Ulster Provincial Assembly would probably be to declare the union of
+that Province with the rest of Ireland. Ulster, be it remembered,
+returns a majority of Nationalists to the Imperial Parliament. To
+exclude Ulster from any share in the settlement offered to the other
+three Provinces would therefore be impracticable; and Mr. Bright has
+lately expressed his opinion emphatically in that sense. In any case,
+Lord Hartington could be no party to any scheme so advanced as Mr.
+Chamberlain's. For although he declared, in his Belfast speech, that
+"complete self-government" was the goal of his policy for Ireland, he
+was careful to explain that "the extension of Irish management over
+Irish affairs must be a growth from small beginnings." But this "growth
+from small beginnings" would be, in Lord Salisbury's opinion, a very
+dangerous and mischievous policy. The establishment of self-government
+in Ireland, as distinct from what is commonly known as Home Rule, he
+pronounced in his Newport speech to be "a very difficult question;" and
+in the following passage he placed his finger upon the kernel of the
+difficulty:--"A local authority is more exposed to the temptation, and
+has more of the facility for enabling a majority to be unjust to the
+minority, than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and
+extends its jurisdiction over a wide area. That is one of the weaknesses
+of local authorities. In a large central authority the wisdom of several
+parts of the country will correct the folly or the mistakes of one. In a
+local authority that correction to a much greater extent is wanting; and
+it would be impossible to leave that out of sight in the extension of
+any such local authority to Ireland."
+
+This seems to me a much wiser and more statesmanlike view than a system
+of elective boards scattered broadcast over Ireland. A multitude of
+local boards all over Ireland, without a recognized central authority to
+control them, would inevitably become facile instruments in the hands of
+the emissaries of disorder and sedition. And, even apart from any such
+sinister influences, they would be almost certain to yield to the
+temptation of being oppressive, extravagant, and corrupt, if there were
+no executive power to command their confidence and enforce obedience.
+Without the previous creation of some authority of that kind it would be
+sheer madness to offer Ireland the fatal boon of local self-government.
+It would enormously increase without conciliating the power of the
+Nationalists, and would make the administration of Ireland by
+constitutional means simply impossible. The policy of the Liberal
+Unionists is thus much too large or much too small. It is too small to
+conciliate, and therefore too large to be given with safety. All these
+proposed concessions are liable to one insuperable objection; they would
+each and all enable the Irish to extort Home Rule, but under
+circumstances which would rob it of its grace and repel gratitude. Mill
+has some admirable observations bearing on this subject, and I venture
+to quote the following passage: "The greatest imperfection of popular
+local institutions, and the chief cause of the failure which so often
+attends them, is the low calibre of the men by whom they are almost
+always carried on. That these should be of a very miscellaneous
+character is, indeed, part of the usefulness of the institution; it is
+that circumstance chiefly which renders it a school of political
+capacity and general intelligence. But a school supposes teachers as
+well as scholars; the utility of the instruction greatly depends on its
+bringing inferior minds into contact with superior, a contact which in
+the ordinary course of life is altogether exceptional, and the want of
+which contributes more than anything else to keep the generality of
+mankind on one level of contented ignorance.... It is quite hopeless to
+induce persons of a high class, either socially or intellectually, to
+take a share of local administration in a corner by piecemeal as members
+of a Paving Board or a Drainage Commission."[17]
+
+Mr. Mill goes on to argue that it is essential to the safe working of
+any scheme of local self-government that it should be under the control
+of a central authority in harmony with public opinion.
+
+When the "Unionists" begin, if they ever do begin, seriously to
+deliberate on the question of self-government for Ireland, they will
+find that they have only two practicable alternatives--the maintenance
+of the present system, or some scheme of Home Rule on the lines of Mr.
+Gladstone's much misunderstood Bill. And the ablest men among the
+"Unionists" are beginning to perceive this. The _Spectator_ has in a
+recent article implored Mr. Chamberlain to desist from any further
+proposal in favour of self-government for Ireland, because the
+inevitable result would be to split up the Unionist party; and Mr.
+Chamberlain, as we have seen, has accepted the advice. Another very able
+and very logical opponent of Home Rule has candidly avowed that the
+only alternative to Home Rule is the perpetuation of "things as they
+are." Ireland, he thinks, "possesses none of the conditions necessary
+for local self-government." His own view, therefore, is "that in
+Ireland, as in France, an honest, centralized administration of
+impartial officials, and not local self-government, would best meet the
+real wants of the people."
+
+"The name of 'Self-government' has a natural fascination for Englishmen;
+but a policy which cannot satisfy the wishes of Home Rulers, which
+may--it is likely enough--be of no benefit to the Irish people, which
+will certainly weaken the Government in its contest with lawlessness and
+oppression, is not a policy which obviously commends itself to English
+good sense."[18]
+
+Well may this distinguished "Supporter of things as they are" declare:
+"The maintenance of the Union [on such terms] must necessarily turn out
+as severe a task as ever taxed a nation's energies; for to maintain the
+Union with any good effect, means that, while refusing to accede to the
+wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every
+fair demand from Ireland; must strenuously, and without fear or favour,
+assert the equal rights of landlords and tenants, of Protestants and
+Catholics; and must, at the same time, put down every outrage and reform
+every abuse."
+
+What hope is there of this? Our only guide to the probabilities of the
+future is our experience of the past And what has that been in Ireland?
+In every year since the Legislative Union there have been multitudes of
+men in England as upright, as enlightened, as well-intentioned towards
+Ireland, as Professor Dicey, and with better opportunities of
+translating their thoughts into acts. Yet what has been the result? _Si
+monumenlum requiris circumspice_. Behold Ireland at this moment, and
+examine every year of its history since the Union. Do the annals of any
+constitutional Government in the world present so portentous a monument
+of Parliamentary failure, so vivid an example of a moral and material
+ruin "paved with good intentions"? Therein lies the pathos of it. Not
+from malice, not from cruelty, not from wanton injustice, not even from
+callous indifference to suffering and wrong, does our misgovernment of
+Ireland come. If the evil had its root in deliberate wrong-doing on the
+part of England it would probably have been cured long ago. But each
+generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has
+protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and
+then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to
+some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish
+problem. The generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of
+British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had
+become of the prosperity and contentment which the promoters of the
+Union had promised to Ireland. The next generation made vicarious
+penance, and preferred the enactment of Catholic emancipation to the
+alternative of civil war; and then wondered in its turn that Ireland
+still remained unpacified. Then came a terrible famine, followed by
+evictions on a scale so vast and cruel that the late Sir Robert Peel
+declared that no parallel could be found for such a tale of inhumanity
+in "the records of any country, civilized or barbarous." Another
+generation, pluming itself on its enlightened views and kind intentions,
+passed the Encumbered Estates Act, which delivered the Irish tenants
+over to the tender mercies of speculators and money-lenders; and then
+Parliament for a time closed its eyes and ears, and relied upon force
+alone to keep Ireland quiet. It rejected every suggestion of reform in
+the Land laws; and a great Minister, himself an Irish landlord,
+dismissed the whole subject in the flippant epigram that "tenant-right
+was landlord-wrong." Since then the Irish Church has been
+disestablished, and two Land Acts have been passed; yet we seem to be as
+far as ever from the pacification of Ireland. Surely it is time to
+inquire whether the evil is not inherent in our system of governing
+Ireland, and whether there is any other cure than that which De Beaumont
+suggested, namely, the destruction of the system. It is probable that
+there is not in all London a more humane or a more kind-hearted man than
+Lord Salisbury. Yet Lord Salisbury's Government will do some harsh and
+inequitable things in Ireland this winter, just as Liberal Governments
+have done during their term of office. The fault is not in the men, but
+in the system which they have to administer. I see no reason to doubt
+that Sir M. Hicks-Beach did the best he could under the circumstances;
+but, unfortunately, bad is the best. In a conversation which I had with
+Dr. Doellinger while he was in full communion with his Church, I ventured
+to ask him whether he thought that a new Pope, of Liberal ideas, force
+of character, and commanding ability, would make any great difference in
+the Papal system. "No," he replied, "the Curial system is the growth of
+centuries, and there can be no change of any consequence while it lasts.
+Many a Pope has begun with brave projects of reform; but the struggle
+has been brief, and the end has been invariably the same: the Pope has
+been forced to succumb. His _entourage_ has been too much for him. He
+has found himself enclosed in a system which was too strong for him,
+wheel within wheel; and while the system lasts the most enlightened
+ideas and the best intentions are in the long run unavailing." This
+criticism applies, _mutatis mutandis_, to what may be called the Curial
+system of Dublin Castle. It is a species of political Ultramontanism,
+exercising supreme power behind the screen of an official infallibility
+on which there is practically no check, since Parliament has never
+hitherto refused to grant it any power which it demanded for enforcing
+its decrees.
+
+There is, moreover, another consideration which must convince any
+dispassionate mind which ponders it, that the British Parliament is
+incompetent to manage Irish affairs, and must become increasingly
+incompetent year by year. In ordinary circumstances Parliament sits
+about twenty-seven weeks out of the fifty-two. Five out of the
+twenty-seven may safely be subtracted for holidays, debates on the
+Address, and other debates apart from ordinary business. That leaves
+twenty-two weeks, and out of these two nights a week are at the disposal
+of the Government and three at the disposal of private members; leaving
+in all forty-four days for the Government and sixty-six for private
+members. Into those forty-four nights Government must compress all its
+yearly programme of legislation for the whole of the British Empire,
+from the settlement of some petty dispute about land in the Hebrides, to
+some question of high policy in Egypt, India, or other portions of the
+Queen's world-wide empire; and all this amidst endless distractions,
+enforced attendance through dreary debates and vapid talk, and a running
+fire of cross-examination from any volunteer questioner out of the six
+hundred odd members who sit outside the Government circle. The
+consequence is, that Parliament is getting less able every year to
+overtake the mass of business which comes before it. Each year
+contributes its quota of inevitable arrears to the accumulated mass of
+previous Sessions, and the process will go on multiplying in increasing
+ratio as the complex and multiform needs of modern life increase. The
+large addition recently made to the electorate of the United Kingdom is
+already forcing a crop of fresh subjects on the attention of Parliament,
+as well as presenting old ones from new points of view. Plans of
+devolution and Grand Committees will fail to cope with this evil. To
+overcome it we need some organic change in our present Parliamentary
+system, some form of decentralization, which shall leave the Imperial
+Parliament supreme over all subordinate bodies, yet relegate to the
+historic and geographical divisions of the United Kingdom the management
+severally of their own local affairs.
+
+I should have better hope from governing Ireland (if it were possible)
+as we govern India, than from the present Unionist method of leaving
+"things as they are." A Viceroy surrounded by a Council of trained
+officials, and in semi-independence of Parliament, would have settled
+the Irish question, land and all, long ago. But imagine India governed
+on the model of Ireland: the Viceroy and the most important member of
+his Government changing with every change of Administration at
+Westminster;[19] his Council and the official class in general
+consisting almost exclusively of native Mussulmans, deeply prejudiced by
+religious and traditional enmity against the great mass of the
+population; himself generally subordinate to his Chief Secretary, and
+exposed to the daily criticism of an ignorant Parliament and to the
+determined hostility of eighty-six Hindoos, holding seats in Parliament
+as the representatives of the vast majority of the people of India, and
+resenting bitterly the domination of the hereditary oppressors of their
+race. How long could the Government of India be carried on under such
+conditions?
+
+Viewing it all round, then, it must be admitted that the problem of
+governing Ireland while leaving things as they are is a sufficiently
+formidable one. Read the remarkable admissions which the facts have
+forced from intelligent opponents of Home Rule like Mr. Dicey, and add
+to them all the other evils which are rooted in our existing system of
+Irish government, and then consider what hope there is, under "things as
+they are," of "sedulously doing justice to every demand from Ireland,"
+"strenuously, and without fear or favour, asserting the equal rights of
+landlords and tenants, Protestants and Catholics," "putting down every
+outrage, and reforming every abuse;" and all the "while refusing to
+accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen" for a fundamental change
+in a political arrangement that has for centuries produced all the
+mischief which the so-called Unionist party are forced to admit, and
+much more besides, while it has at the same time frustrated every
+serious endeavour to bring about the better state of things which they
+expect from--what? From "things as they are!" As well expect grapes from
+thorns, or figs from thistles. While the tree remains the same, no
+amount of weeding, or pruning, or manuring, or change of culture, will
+make it bring forth different fruit. Mr. Dicey, among others, has
+demolished what Lord Beaconsfield used to call the "bit-by-bit"
+reformers of Irish Government--those who would administer homoeopathic
+doses of local self-government, but always under protest that the supply
+was to stop short of what would satisfy the hunger of the patient. But a
+continuance of "things as they are," gilded with a thin tissue of
+benevolent hopes and aspirations, is scarcely a more promising remedy
+for the ills of Ireland. Is it not time to try some new treatment--one
+which has been tried in similar cases, and always with success? One only
+policy has never been tried in Ireland--honest Home Rule.
+
+Certainly, if Home Rule is to be refused till all the prophets of evil
+are refuted, Ireland must go without Home Rule for ever. "If the sky
+fall, we shall catch larks." But he would be a foolish bird-catcher who
+waited for that contingency. And not less foolish is the statesman who
+sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has been
+mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild prediction falsified
+by the event; for that would ensure his never moving at all. _Sedet
+aeternumque sedebit_. A proper enough attitude, perhaps, on the part of
+an eristic philosopher speculating on politics in the silent shade of
+academic groves, but hardly suitable for a practical politician who has
+to take action on one of the most burning questions of our time. Human
+affairs are not governed by mathematical reasoning. You cannot
+demonstrate the precise results of any legislative measure beforehand as
+you can demonstrate the course of a planet in the solar system.
+"Probability," as Bishop Butler says, "is the guide of life;" and an
+older philosopher than Butler has warned us that to demand demonstrative
+proof in the sphere of contingent matter is the same kind of absurdity
+as to demand probable reasoning in mathematics. You cannot confute a
+prophet before the event; you can only disbelieve him. The advocates of
+Home Rule believe that their policy would in general have an exactly
+contrary effect to that predicted by their opponents. In truth, every
+act of legislation is, before experience, amenable to such destructive
+criticism as these critics urge against Home Rule. I have not a doubt
+that they could have made out an unanswerable "case" against the Great
+Charter at Runnymede; and they would find it easy to prove on _a priori_
+grounds that the British Constitution is one of the most absurd,
+mischievous, and unworkable instruments that ever issued from human
+brains or from the evolution of events. By their method of reasoning the
+Great Charter and other fundamental portions of the Constitution ought
+to have brought the Government of the British Empire to a deadlock long
+ago. Every suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, every Act of Attainder,
+every statute for summary trial and conviction before justices of the
+peace, is a violation of the fundamental article of the Constitution,
+which requires that no man shall be imprisoned or otherwise punished
+except after lawful trial by his peers.[20] Consider also the magazines
+of explosive materials which lie hidden in the constitutional
+prerogatives of the Crown, if they could only be ignited by the match of
+an ingenious theorist. The Crown, as Lord Sherbrooke once somewhat
+irreverently expressed it, "can turn every cobbler in the land into a
+peer," and could thus put an end, as the Duke of Wellington declared, to
+"the Constitution of this country."[21] "The Crown is not bound by Act
+of Parliament unless named therein by special and particular words."[22]
+The Crown can make peace or war without consulting Parliament, can by
+secret treaty saddle the nation with the most perilous obligations, and
+give away all such portions of the empire as do not rest on Statute. The
+prerogative of mercy, too, would enable an eccentric Sovereign, aided by
+an obsequious Minister, to open the jails and let all the convicted
+criminals in the land loose upon society.[22] But criticism which proves
+too much in effect proves nothing.
+
+In short, every stage in the progress of constitutional reform has, in
+matter of fact, been marked by similar predictions falsified by results,
+and the prophets who condemn Home Rule have no better credentials;
+indeed, much worse, for they proclaim the miserable failure of "things
+as they are," whereas their predecessors were in their day satisfied
+with things as they were.[23]
+
+It is, high time, therefore, to call upon the opponents of Home Rule to
+tell us plainly where they stand. They claim a mandate from the country
+for their policy. They neither asked nor received a mandate to support
+the system of Government which prevailed in Ireland at the last
+election, and still less the policy of coercion which they have
+substituted for that system. Do they mean to go back or forward? They
+cannot stand still. They have already discovered that one act of
+repression leads to another, and they will find ere long that they have
+no alternative except Home Rule or the suppression of Parliamentary
+Government in Ireland. Men may talk lightly of the ease with which
+eighty-six Irish members may be kept in order in Parliament. They forget
+that the Irish people are behind the Irish members. How is Ireland to be
+governed on Parliamentary principles if the voice of her representatives
+is to be forcibly silenced or disregarded? Could even Yorkshire or
+Lancashire be governed permanently in that way? Let it be observed that
+we have now reached this pass, namely, that the opponents of Home Rule
+are opposed to the Irish members, not on any particular form of
+self-government for Ireland, but on any form; in other words, they
+resist the all but unanimous demand of Ireland for what "Unionists" of
+all parties declared a year ago to be a reasonable demand. No candidate
+at the last election ventured to ask the suffrages of any constituency
+as "a supporter of things as they are." Yet that is practically the
+attitude now assumed by the Ministerial party, both Conservatives and
+Liberal Unionists. It is an attitude of which the country is getting
+weary, as the bye-elections have shown. But the "Unionists," it must be
+admitted, are in a sore dilemma. Their strength, such as it is, lies in
+doing nothing for the reform of Irish Government. Their bond of union
+consists of nothing else but opposition to Mr. Gladstone's policy. They
+dare not attempt to formulate any policy of their own, knowing well that
+they would go to pieces in the process. Their hope and speculation is
+that something may happen to remove Mr. Gladstone from the political
+arena before the next dissolution. But, after all, Mr. Gladstone did not
+create the Irish difficulty. It preceded him and will survive him,
+unless it is settled to the satisfaction of the Irish people before his
+departure. And the difficulty of the final settlement will increase with
+every year of delay. Nor will the difficulty be confined to Ireland. The
+Irish question is already reacting upon kindred, though not identical,
+problems in England and Scotland, and the longer it is kept open, so
+much the worse will it be for what are generally regarded as
+Conservative interests. It is not the Moderate Liberals or Conservatives
+who are gaining ground by the prolongation of the controversy, and the
+disappearance of Mr. Gladstone from the scene would have the effect of
+removing from the forces of extreme Radicalism a conservative influence,
+which his political opponents will discover when it is too late to
+restore it. Their regret will then be as unavailing as the lament of
+William of Deloraine over his fallen foe--
+
+    "I'd give the lands of Deloraine
+    Dark Musgrave were alive again."
+
+The Irish landlords have already begun to realize the mistake they made
+when they rejected Mr. Gladstone's policy of Home Rule and Land
+Purchase. It is the old story of the Sibyl's books. No British
+Government will ever again offer such terms to the Irish landlords as
+they refused to accept from Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand, Home Rule
+is inevitable. Can any reflective person really suppose that the
+democracy of Great Britain will consent to refuse to share with the
+Irish people the boon of self-government which will be offered to
+themselves next year? Any attempt to exclude the Irish from the benefits
+of such a scheme, after all the promises of the last general election,
+would almost certainly wreck the government; for constituencies have
+ways and means of impressing their wills on their representatives in
+Parliament even without a dissolution. If, on the other hand, Ireland
+should be included in a general scheme of local Government, the question
+of who shall control the police will arise. In Great Britain the police,
+of course, will be under local control. To refuse this to Ireland would
+be to offer a boon with a stigma attached to it. The Irish members
+agreed to let the control of the constabulary remain, under Mr.
+Gladstone's scheme, for some years in the hands of the British
+Government; but they would not agree to this while Dublin Castle ruled
+the country. Moreover, the formidable difficulty suggested by Lord
+Salisbury and Mr. John Stuart Mill (see pp. 115, 116) would appear the
+moment men began seriously to consider the question of local government
+for Ireland. The government of Dublin Castle would have to go, but
+something would have to be put in its place; and when that point has
+been reached it will probably be seen that nothing much better or safer
+can be found than some plan on the main lines of Mr. Gladstone's Bill.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 15: Speech at Manchester, May 7, 1886, by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre,
+who was a member of the Cabinet to which Mr. Chamberlain's scheme was
+submitted.]
+
+[Footnote 16: _Hansard_, vol. 220, pp. 708, 715.]
+
+[Footnote 17: _Considerations on Representative Government_, p. 281.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Dicey's _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 25-31, and
+Letter in _Spectator_ of September 17th, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 19: From the beginning of 1880 till now there have been six
+Viceroys and ten Chief Secretaries in Dublin--namely, Duke of
+Marlborough, Earls Cowper and Spencer, Earls of Carnarvon and Aberdeen,
+and the Marquis of Londonderry; Mr. Lowther, Mr. Forster, Lord F.
+Cavendish, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Campbell Bannerman, Sir W. Hart Dyke, Mr.
+W.H. Smith, Mr. J. Morley, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, and Mr. A. Balfour. A
+fine example, truly, of stable government and continuous policy!]
+
+[Footnote 20: Creasy's _Imperial and Colonial Constitutions of the
+Britannic Empire,_ p. 155.]
+
+[Footnote 21: May's _Const. Hist._, i. 313.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Blackstone's _Commentaries_, by Stephen, ii. 491, 492,
+497, 507.]
+
+[Footnote 23: We need not go far afield for illustrations. A few samples
+will suffice. "It was natural," says Mill (_Rep. Gov._, p. 311), "to
+feel strong doubts before trial had been made how such a provision [as
+the Supreme Court of the United States] would work; whether the tribunal
+would have the courage to exercise its constitutional power; if it did,
+whether it would exercise it wisely, and whether the Government would
+consent peaceably to its decision. The discussions on the American
+Constitution, before its final adoption, give evidence that these
+natural apprehensions were strongly felt; but they are now entirely
+quieted, since, during the two generations and more which have
+subsequently elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify them, though there
+have at times been disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became
+the badges of parties respecting the limits of the authority of the
+Federal and State Governments." The Austrian opponents of Home Rule in
+Hungary predicted that it would lead straight to separation. The
+opponents of the Canadian Constitution prophesied that Canada would in a
+few years be annexed to the United States; and Home Rule in Australia
+was believed by able statesmen to involve independence at an early date.
+Mr. Dicey himself tells us "that the wisest thinkers of the eighteenth
+century (including Burke) held that the independence of the American
+Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain. There were
+apparently solid reasons for this belief: experience has proved it to be
+without foundation." The various changes in our own Constitution, and
+even in our Criminal Code, were believed by "men of light and leading"
+at the time to portend national ruin. All the judges in the land, all
+the bankers, and the professions generally, petitioned against
+alteration in the law which sent children of ten to the gallows for the
+theft of a pocket-handkerchief. The great Lord Ellenborough declared in
+the House of Lords that "the learned judges were unanimously agreed"
+that any mitigation in that law would imperil "the public security." "My
+Lords," he exclaimed, "if we suffer this Bill to pass we shall not know
+where we stand; we shall not know whether we are on our heads or on our
+feet." Mr. Perceval, when leader of the House of Commons in 1807,
+declared that "he could not conceive a time or change of circumstances
+which would render further concessions to the Catholics consistent with
+the safety of the State." (_Croker Papers_, i. 12.) Croker was a very
+astute man; but here is his forecast of the Reform Act of 1832: "No
+kings, no lords, no inequalities in the social system; all will be
+levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers and small farmers: this,
+perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly by confiscations and
+persecutions." "There can be no longer any doubt that the Reform Bill is
+a stepping-stone in England to a Republic, and in Ireland to
+separation." Croker met the Queen in 1832, considered her very
+good-looking, but thought it not unlikely that "she may live to be plain
+Miss Guelph." Even Sir Robert Peel wrote: "If I am to be believed, I
+foresee revolution as the consequence of this Bill;" and he "felt that
+it had ceased to be an object of ambition to any man of equable and
+consistent mind to enter into the service of the Crown." And as late as
+1839, so robust a character as Sir James Graham thought the world was
+coming to an end because the young Queen gave her confidence to a Whig
+Minister. "I begin to share all your apprehensions and forebodings," he
+writes to Croker, "with regard to the probable issue of the present
+struggle. The Crown in alliance with Democracy baffles every calculation
+on the balance of power in our mixed form of Government. Aristocracy and
+Church cannot contend against Queen and people mixed; they must yield in
+the first instance, when the Crown, unprotected, will meet its fate, and
+the accustomed round of anarchy and despotism will run its course." And
+he prays that he may "lie cold before that dreadful day." (_Ibid._, ii.
+113, 140, 176, 181, 356.) Free Trade created a similar panic. "Good
+God!" Croker exclaimed, "what a chaos of anarchy and misery do I foresee
+in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing
+an _average_ duty of 8_s._ into a _fixed_ duty of 8_s._, the fact being
+that the fixed duty means _no duty at all_; and _no duty at all_ will be
+the overthrow of the existing social and political system of our
+country!" (_Ibid._, iii. 13.) And what have become of Mr. Lowe's gloomy
+vaticinations as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate
+Reform Bill of 1866, followed as it was by a much more democratic
+measure?]
+
+
+
+
+A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE.
+
+BY E.L. GODKIN.
+
+
+Mr. Dicey in his _Case against Home Rule_ does me the honour to refer to
+an article which I wrote a year ago on "American Home Rule,"[24]
+expressing in one place "disagreement in the general conclusion to which
+the article is intended to lead," and in another "inability to follow
+the inference" which he supposes me to draw "against all attempts to
+enforce an unpopular law." Now the object of that article, I may be
+permitted to explain, was twofold. I desired, in the first place, to
+combat the notion which, it seemed to me, if I might judge from a great
+many of the speeches and articles on the Irish question, was widely
+diffused even among thoughtful Englishmen that the manner in which the
+Irish have expressed their discontent--that is, through outrage and
+disorder--was indicative of incapacity for self-government, and even
+imposed upon the Englishmen the duty, in the interest of morality (I
+think it was the _Spectator_ who took this view), and as a disciplinary
+measure, of refusing to such a people the privilege of managing their
+own affairs. I tried to show by several noted examples occurring in this
+country that prolonged displays of lawlessness, and violence, and even
+cruelty, such as the anti-rent movement in the State of New York, the
+Ku-Klux outrages in the South, and the persecution of Miss Prudence
+Crandall in Connecticut, were not inconsistent with the possession of
+marked political capacity. I suggested that it was hardly adult politics
+to take such things into consideration in passing on the expediency of
+conceding local self-government to a subject community. There was to me
+something almost childish in the arguments drawn from Irish lawlessness
+in the discussion of Home Rule, and in the moral importance attached by
+some Englishmen to the refusal to such wicked men as the Irish of the
+things they most desire. It is only in kindergartens, I said, that
+rulers are able to do equal and exact justice, and see that the naughty
+are brought to grief and the good made comfortable. Statesmen occupy
+themselves with the more serious business of curing discontent. They
+concern themselves but little, if at all, with the question whether it
+might not be manifested by less objectionable methods.
+
+The Irish methods of manifesting it, I endeavoured to show, were not
+exceptional, and did not prove either inability to make laws or
+unwillingness to obey them. I illustrated this by examples drawn from
+the United States. I might, had I had more time and space, have made
+these examples still more numerous and striking. I might have given very
+good reasons for believing that, were Ireland a state in the American
+Union, there probably would not have been any rent paid in the island
+within the last fifty years, and that the armed resistance of the
+tenants would have had the open or secret sympathy of the great bulk of
+the American people. In truth, the importance of Irish crime as a
+political symptom is grossly exaggerated by English writers. I venture
+to assert that more murders unconnected with robbery are committed in
+the State of Kentucky in one year than in Ireland in ten, and the
+condition of some other Southern and Western States is nearly as bad.
+All good Americans lament this and are ashamed of it, but it never
+enters into the heads of even the most lugubrious American moralists
+that Kentucky or any other State should be disfranchised and remanded to
+the condition of a Territory, because the offences against the person
+committed in it are so numerous, and the punishment of them, owing to
+popular sympathy or apathy, so difficult.
+
+There are a great many Englishmen who think that when they show that
+Grattan's Parliament was a venal and somewhat disorderly body, which
+occasionally indulged in mixed metaphor, they have proved the
+impossibility of giving Ireland a Parliament now. But then, as they are
+obliged to admit, Walpole's Parliament was very corrupt, and no one
+would say that for that reason it would have been wise to suspend
+constitutional government in England in the eighteenth century. It is
+only through the pernicious habit of thinking of Irishmen as exceptions
+to all political rules that Grattan's Parliament is considered likely,
+had it lasted, to have come down to our time unreformed and unimproved.
+
+Those have misunderstood me who suppose that I draw from the success of
+the anti-rent movement in this State between 1839 and 1846 an inference
+against "all attempts to enforce an unpopular law." Such was not by any
+means my object. What I sought to show by the history of this movement
+was that there was nothing peculiar or inexplicable in the hostility to
+rent-paying in Ireland. The rights of the New York landlords were as
+good in law and morals as the rights of the Irish landlords, and their
+mode of asserting them far superior. Moreover, those who resisted them
+were not men of a different race, religion, or nationality, and had, as
+Mr. Dicey says, "none of the excuses that can be urged in extenuation of
+half-starved tenants." Their mode of setting the law at defiance was
+exactly similar to that adopted by the Irish, and it was persisted in
+for a period of ten years, or until they had secured a substantial
+victory. The history of the anti-rent agitation in New York also
+illustrates strikingly, as it seems to me, the perspicacity of a remark
+made, in substance, long ago by Mr. Disraeli, which, in my eyes at
+least, threw a great deal of light on the Irish problem, namely, that
+Ireland was suffering from suppressed revolution. As Mr. Dicey says,
+"The crises called revolutions are the ultimate and desperate cures for
+the fundamental disorganization of society. The issue of a revolutionary
+struggle shows what is the true sovereign power in the revolutionized
+state. So strong is the interest of mankind, at least in any European
+country, in favour of some sort of settled rule, that civil disturbance
+will, if left to itself, in general end in the supremacy of some power
+which by securing the safety at last gains the attachment of the people.
+The Reign of Terror begets the Empire; even wars of religion at last
+produce peace, albeit peace may be nothing better than the iron
+uniformity of despotism. Could Ireland have been left for any lengthened
+period to herself, some form of rule adapted to the needs of the country
+would in all probability have been established. Whether Protestants or
+Catholics would have been the predominant element in the State; whether
+the landlords would have held their own, or whether the English system
+of tenure would long ago have made way for one more in conformity with
+native traditions; whether hostile classes and races would at last have
+established some _modus vivendi_ favourable to individual freedom, or
+whether despotism under some of its various forms would have been
+sanctioned by the acquiescence of its subjects, are matters of uncertain
+speculation. A conclusion which, though speculative, is far less
+uncertain, is that Ireland, if left absolutely to herself, would have
+arrived, like every other country, at some lasting settlement of her
+difficulties" (p. 87). That is to say, that in Ireland as in New York
+the attempt to enforce unpopular land laws would have been abandoned,
+had local self-government existed. For "revolution" is, after all, only
+a fine name for the failure or refusal of the rulers of a country to
+persist in executing laws which the bulk of the population find
+obnoxious. When the popular hostility to the law is strong enough to
+make its execution impossible, as it was in New York in the rent affair,
+it is accepted as the respectable solution of a very troublesome
+problem. When, as in Ireland, it is strong enough to produce turbulence
+and disorder, but not strong enough to tire out and overcome the
+authorities, it simply ruins the political manners of the people. If the
+Irish landlords had had from the beginning to face the tenants
+single-handed and either hold them down by superior physical force, or
+come to terms with them as the New York landlords had to do, conditions
+of peace and good will would have assuredly been discovered long ago.
+The land question, in other words, would have been adjusted in
+accordance with "Irish ideas," that is, in some way satisfactory to the
+tenants. The very memory of the conflict would probably by this time
+have died out, and the two classes would be living in harmony on the
+common soil. If in New York, on the other hand, the Van Rensselaers and
+Livingstons had been able to secure the aid of martial law and of the
+Federal troops in asserting their claims, and in preventing local
+opinion having any influence whatever on the settlement of the dispute,
+there can be no doubt that a large portion of this State would to-day be
+as poor and as savage, and apparently as little fitted for the serious
+business of government, as the greater part of Ireland is.
+
+There is, in truth, no reason to doubt that the idea of property in
+land, thoroughly accepted though it be in the United States, is
+nevertheless held under the same limitations as in the rest of the
+world. No matter what the law may say in any country, in no country is
+the right of the landed proprietor in his acres as absolute as his right
+in his movables. A man may own as much land as he can purchase, and may
+assert his ownership in its most absolute form against one, two, or
+three occupants, but the minute he began to assert it against a large
+number of occupants, that is, to act as if his rights were such that he
+had only to buy a whole state or a whole island in order to be able to
+evict the entire population, he would find in America, as he finds in
+Ireland, that he cannot have the same title to land as to personal
+property. He would, for instance, if he tried to oust the people of a
+whole district or of a village from their homes on any plea of
+possession, or of a contract, find that he was going too far, and that
+no matter what the judges might say, or the sheriff might try to do for
+him, his legal position was worth very little to him. Consequently a
+large landlord in America, if he were lucky enough to get tenants at
+all, would be very chary indeed about quarrelling with more than one of
+them at a time. The tenants would no more submit to wholesale ejectment
+than the farmers in Missouri would submit some years ago to a tax levy
+on their property to pay county bonds given in aid of a railroad. The
+goods of some of them were seized, but a large body of them attended the
+sale armed with rifles, having previously issued a notice that the place
+would be very "unhealthy" for outside bidders.
+
+The bearing of this condition of American opinion on the Irish question
+will be plainer if I remind English readers that the Irish in the United
+States numbered in 1880 nearly 2,000,000, and that the number of persons
+of Irish parentage is probably between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000. In short
+there are, as well as one can judge, more Irish nationalists in the
+United States than in Ireland. The Irish-Americans are to-day the only
+large and prosperous Irish community in the world. The children of the
+Irish born in the United States or brought there in their infancy are
+just as Irish in their politics as those who have grown up at home.
+Patrick Ford, for instance, the editor of the _Irish World_, who is such
+a shape of dread to some Englishmen, came to America in childhood, and
+has no personal knowledge nor recollection of Irish wrongs. Of the part
+this large Irish community plays in stimulating agitation--both agrarian
+and political--at home I need not speak; Englishmen are very familiar
+with it, and are very indignant over it. The Irish-Americans not only
+send over a great deal of American money to their friends at home, but
+they send over American ideas, and foremost among them American
+hostility to large landowners, and American belief in Home Rule. Now, to
+me, one of the most curious things in the English state of mind about
+the Irish problem is the apparent expectation that this Irish-American
+interference is transient, and will probably soon die out. It is quite
+true, as Englishmen are constantly told, that "the best Americans," that
+is, the literary people and the commercial magnates, whom travelling
+Englishmen see on the Atlantic coast, dislike the Irish anti-English
+agitation. But it is also true that the disapproval of the "best
+Americans" is not of the smallest practical consequence, particularly as
+it is largely due to complete indifference to, and ignorance of, the
+whole subject. There are probably not a dozen of them who would venture
+to express their disapproval publicly. The mass of the population,
+particularly in the West, sympathize, though half laughingly, with the
+efforts of the transplanted Irish to "twist the British lion's tail,"
+and all the politicians either sympathize with them, or pretend to do
+so. I am not now expressing any opinion as to whether this state of
+things is good or bad. What I wish to point out is that this
+Irish-American influence on Irish affairs is very powerful, and may, for
+all practical purposes, be considered permanent, and must be taken into
+account as a constant element in the Irish problem. I will indeed
+venture on the assertion that it is the appearance of the
+Irish-Americans on the scene which has given the Irish question its
+present seriousness. The attempts of the Irish at physical resistance to
+English authority have been steadily diminishing in gravity during the
+present century--witness the descent from the rebellion of 1798 to Smith
+O'Brien's rebellion and the Fenian rising of 1867. On the other hand the
+power of the Irish to act as a disturbing agency in English politics has
+greatly increased, and the reason is that the stream of Irish discontent
+is fed by thousands of rills from the United States. Every emigrant's
+letter, every Irish-American newspaper, every returned emigrant with
+money in his pocket and a good coat on his back, helps to swell it, and
+there is not the slightest sign, that I can see, of its drying up.
+
+Where Mr. Dicey is most formidable to the Home Rulers, as it seems to
+me, is in his chapter on "Home Rule as Federalism," which is the form in
+which the Irish ask for it. He attacks this in two ways. One is by
+maintaining that the necessary conditions for a federal union between
+Great Britain and Ireland do not exist. This disposes at one blow of all
+the experience derived from the working of the foreign federations, on
+which the advocates of Home Rule have relied a good deal. The other is
+what I may call predictions that the federation even if set up would not
+work. Either the state of facts on which all other federations have been
+built does not exist in Ireland, or if it now exists, will not, owing to
+the peculiarities of Irish character, continue to exist. In other words,
+the federation will either fail at the outset, or fail in the long run.
+No one can admire more than I do the force and ingenuity and wealth of
+illustration with which Mr. Dicey supports this thesis. But
+unfortunately the arguments by which he assails Irish federalism might
+be, or might have been, used against all federations whatever. They
+might have been used, as I shall try to show, against the most
+successful of them all, the Government of the United States. I was
+reminded, while reading Mr. Dicey's account of the impossibility of an
+Anglo-Irish federation, of Mr. Madison's rehearsal in the _Federalist_
+(No. 38) of the objections made to the Federal Constitution after the
+Convention had submitted it to the States. These objections covered
+every feature in it but one; and that, the mode of electing the
+President, curiously enough, is the only one which can be said to have
+utterly failed. A more impressive example of the danger of _a priori_
+attacks on any political arrangement, history does not contain. Mr.
+Madison says: "This one tells me that the proposed Constitution ought to
+be rejected, because it is not a confederation of the states, but a
+government over individuals. Another admits that it ought to be a
+government over individuals to a certain extent, but by no means to the
+extent proposed. A third does not object to the government over
+individuals, or to the extent proposed, but to the want of a bill of
+rights. A fourth concurs in the absolute necessity of a bill of rights,
+but contends that it ought to be declaratory not of the personal rights
+of individuals, but of the rights reserved to the states in their
+political capacity. A fifth is of opinion that a bill of rights of any
+sort would be superfluous and misplaced, and that the plan would be
+unexceptionable but for the fatal power of regulating the times and
+places of election. An objector in a large state exclaims loudly against
+the unreasonable equality of representation in the Senate. An objector
+in a small state is equally loud against the dangerous inequality in the
+House of Representatives. From one quarter we are alarmed with the
+amazing expense, from the number of persons who are to administer the
+new government. From another quarter, and sometimes from the same
+quarter, on another occasion the cry is that the Congress will be but
+the shadow of a representation, and that the government would be far
+less objectionable if the number and the expense were doubled. A patriot
+in a state that does not import or export discerns insuperable
+objections against the power of direct taxation. The patriotic adversary
+in a state of great exports and imports is not less dissatisfied that
+the whole burden of taxes may be thrown on consumption. This politician
+discovers in the constitution a direct and irresistible tendency to
+monarchy. That is equally sure it will end in aristocracy. Another is
+puzzled to say which of these shapes it will ultimately assume, but sees
+clearly it must be one or other of them. Whilst a fourth is not wanting,
+who with no less confidence affirms that the Constitution is so far from
+having a bias towards either of these dangers, that the weight on that
+side will not be sufficient to keep it upright and firm against the
+opposite propensities. With another class of adversaries to the
+Constitution, the language is, that the legislative, executive, and
+judiciary departments are intermixed in such a manner as to contradict
+all the ideas of regular government and all the requisite precautions in
+favour of liberty. Whilst this objection circulates in vague and general
+expressions, there are not a few who lend their sanction to it. Let each
+one come forward with his particular explanation, and scarcely any two
+are exactly agreed on the subject. In the eyes of one the junction of
+the Senate with the President in the responsible function of appointing
+to offices, instead of vesting this power in the executive alone, is the
+vicious part of the organization. To another the exclusion of the House
+of Representatives, whose numbers alone could be a due security against
+corruption and partiality in the exercise of such a power, is equally
+obnoxious. With a third the admission of the President into any share of
+a power which must ever be a dangerous engine in the hands of the
+executive magistrate is an unpardonable violation of the maxims of
+republican jealousy. No part of the arrangement, according to some, is
+more inadmissible than the trial of impeachments by the Senate, which is
+alternately a member both of the legislative and executive departments,
+when this power so evidently belonged to the judiciary department. We
+concur fully, reply others, in the objection to this part of the plan,
+but we can never agree that a reference of impeachments to the judiciary
+authority would be an amendment of the error; our principal dislike to
+the organization arises from the extensive powers already lodged in that
+department. Even among the zealous patrons of a council of state, the
+most irreconcilable variance is discovered concerning the mode in which
+it ought to be constituted."
+
+Mr. Madison's challenge to the opponents of the American Constitution to
+agree on some plan of their own, and his humorous suggestion that if the
+American people had to wait for some such agreement to be reached they
+would go for a long time without a government, are curiously applicable
+to the opponents of Irish Home Rule. They are very fertile in reasons
+for thinking that neither the Gladstone plan nor any other plan can
+succeed, but no two of them, so far as I know, have yet hit upon any
+other mode of pacifying Ireland, except the use of force for a certain
+period to maintain order, and oddly enough, even when they agree on this
+remedy, they are apt to disagree about the length of time during which
+it should be tried.
+
+Mr. Dicey, in conceding the success of the American Constitution, seems
+to me unmindful, if I may use the expression, of the judgments he would
+probably have passed on it had it been submitted to him at the outset
+were he in the frame of mind to which a prolonged study of the Irish
+problem has now brought him. The Supreme Court, for instance, which he
+now recognizes as an essential feature of the Federal Constitution, and
+the absence of which in the Gladstonian arrangement he treats as a fatal
+defect, would have undoubtedly appeared to him a preposterous
+contrivance. It would have seemed to him impossible that a legislature
+like Congress, with the traditions of parliamentary omnipotence still
+strong in the minds of the members, would ever submit to have its acts
+nullified by a board composed of half a dozen elderly lawyers. Nor would
+he have treated as any more reasonable the expectation that the State
+tribunals, which had existed in each colony from its foundation, and had
+earned the respect and confidence of the people, would quietly submit to
+have their jurisdiction curtailed, their decisions overruled, causes
+torn from their calendar, and prisoners taken out of their custody by
+new courts of semi-foreign origin, which the State neither paid nor
+controlled. He would, too, very probably have been most incredulous
+about the prospect of the growth of loyalty on the part of New-Yorkers
+and Massachusetts men to a new-fangled government, which was to make
+itself only slightly felt in their daily lives, and was to sit a
+fortnight away in an improvised village in the midst of a Virginian
+forest.
+
+He would, too, have ridiculed the notion that State legislatures would
+refrain, in obedience to the Constitution, from passing any law which
+local sentiment strongly favoured or local convenience plainly demanded,
+such as a law impairing the obligation of obnoxious contracts, or
+levying duties on imports or exports. The possibility that the State
+militia could ever be got to obey federal officers, or form an efficient
+part of a federal army, he would have scouted. On the feebleness of the
+front which federation would present to a foreign enemy he would have
+dwelt with emphasis, and would have pointed with confidence to the
+probability that in the event of a war some of the states would make
+terms with him or secretly favour his designs. National allegiance and
+local allegiance would divide and perplex the feelings of loyal
+citizens. Unless the national sentiment predominated--and it could not
+predominate without having had time to grow--the federation would go to
+pieces at any of those crises when the interests or wishes of any of the
+states conflicted with the interests or wishes of the Union. That the
+national sentiment could grow at all rapidly, considering the maturity
+of the communities which composed the Union and the differences of
+origin, creed, and manners which separated them, no calm observer of
+human nature would believe for one moment.
+
+The American Constitution is flecked throughout with those flaws which a
+lawyer delights to discover and point out, and which the framers of a
+federal contract can only excuse by maintaining that they are
+inevitable. It is true that Mr. Dicey does not even now acknowledge the
+success of the American Constitution to be complete. He points out that
+if the "example either of America or of Switzerland is to teach us
+anything worth knowing, the history of these countries must be read as a
+whole. It will then be seen that the two most successful confederacies
+in the world have been kept together only by the decisive triumph
+through force of arms of the central power over real or alleged State
+rights" (p. 192).
+
+It is odd that such objectors do not see that the decisive triumph of
+the central power in the late civil war in America was, in reality, a
+striking proof of the success of the federation. The armies which
+General Grant commanded, and the enormous resources in money and
+devotion from which he was able to draw, were the product of the Federal
+Union and of nothing else. One of the greatest arguments its founders
+used in its favour was that if once established it would supply
+overwhelming force for the suppression of any attempt to break it up.
+They did not aim at setting up a government which neither foreign malice
+nor domestic treason, would ever assail, for they knew that this was
+something beyond the reach of human endeavour. They tried to set up one
+which, if attacked either from within or from without, would make a
+successful resistance, and we now know that they accomplished their
+object. Somewhat the same answer may be made to the objection, which is
+supposed to have fatal applicability to the case of Ireland, that among
+the "special faults of federalism" is that it does not provide
+"sufficient protection of the legal rights of unpopular minorities," and
+that "the moral of it all is that the [American] Federal Government is
+not able to protect the rights of individuals against strong local
+sentiment" (p. 194 of Mr. Dicey's book). He says, moreover, if I
+understand the argument rightly, that it was bound to protect free
+speech in the States because "there is not and never was a word in the
+Articles of the Constitution forbidding American citizens to criticize
+the institutions of the State." It would seem from this as if Mr. Dicey
+were under the impression that in America the citizen of a State has a
+right to do in his State whatever he is not forbidden to do by the
+Federal Constitution, and in doing it has a right to federal protection.
+But the Federal Government can only do what the Constitution expressly
+authorizes it to do, and the Constitution does not authorize it to
+protect a citizen in criticizing the institutions of his own State. This
+arrangement, too, is just as good federalism as the committal of free
+speech to federal guardianship would have been. The goodness or badness
+of the federal system is in no way involved in the matter.
+
+The question to what extent a minority shall rely on the federation for
+protection, and to what extent on its own State, is a matter settled by
+the contract which has created the federation. The settlement of this
+is, in fact, the great object of a Constitution. Until it is settled
+somehow, either by writing or by understanding, there is, and can be, no
+federation. If I, as a citizen of the State of New York, could call on
+the United States Government to protect me under all circumstances and
+against all wrongs, it would show that I was not living under a
+federation at all, but under a centralized republic. The reason why I
+have to rely on the United States for protection against some things and
+not against others is that it was so stipulated when the State of New
+York entered the Union. There is nothing in the nature of the federal
+system to prevent the United States Government from protecting my
+freedom of speech. Nor is there anything in the federal system which
+forbids its protecting me against the establishment of a State Church,
+which, as a matter of fact, it does not do. Nor is there anything in the
+federal system compelling the Government to protect me against the
+establishment of an order of nobility, which, as a matter of fact, it
+does do. The reason why it does not do one of these things and does the
+other is simply and solely that it was so stipulated, after much
+discussion, in the contract. Most thinking men are to-day of opinion
+that the United States ought to have exclusive jurisdiction of marriage,
+so that the law of marriage might be uniform in all parts of the Union.
+The reason why they do not possess such jurisdiction is not that
+Congress is not fully competent to pass such a law or the federal courts
+to execute it, but that no such jurisdiction is conferred by the
+Constitution. In fact it seems to me just as reasonable to cite the ease
+of divorce in various States of the Union as a defect in the federal
+system, as to cite the oppression of local minorities in matters not
+placed under federal authority by the organic law.
+
+If one may judge from a great deal of writing on American matters which
+one sees in English journals and the demands for federal interference in
+America in State affairs which they constantly make, the greatest
+difficulty Irish Home Rule has to contend with is the difficulty which
+men bred in a united monarchy and under an omnipotent Parliament
+experience in grasping what I may call the federal idea. The influence
+of association on their minds is so strong that they can hardly conceive
+of a central power, worthy of the name of a government, standing by and
+witnessing disorders or failures of justice in any place within its
+borders, without stepping in to set matters right, no matter what the
+Constitution may say. They remind me often of an old verger in
+Westminster Abbey during the American civil war who told me that "he
+always knew a government without a head couldn't last." Permanence and
+peace were in his mind inseparably linked with kingship. That even Mr.
+Dicey has not been able to escape this influence appears frequently in
+his discussions of federalism. He, of course, thoroughly understands the
+federal system as a jurist, but when he comes to discuss it as a
+politician he has evidently some difficulty in seeing how a government
+with a power to enforce _any_ commands can be restrained by contract
+from enforcing _all_ commands which may seem to be expedient or
+salutary. Consequently the cool way in which the Federal Government here
+looks on at local disorders seems to him a sign, not of the fidelity of
+the President and Congress to the federal pact, but of some inherent
+weakness in the federal system.
+
+The true way to judge the federal system, however, either in the United
+States or elsewhere, is by observing the manner in which it has
+performed the duties assigned to it by the Constitution. If the
+Government at Washington performs these faithfully, its failure to
+prevent lawlessness in New York or the oppression of minorities in
+Connecticut is of no more consequence than its failure to put down
+brigandage in Macedonia. Possibly it would have been better to saddle it
+with greater responsibility for local peace; but the fact is that the
+framers of the Constitution decided not to do so. They did not mean to
+set up a government which would see that every man living under it got
+his due. They could not have got the States to accept such a
+government. They meant to set up a government which should represent
+the nation worthily in all its relations with foreigners, which should
+carry on war effectively, protect life and property on the high seas,
+furnish a proper currency, put down all resistance to its lawful
+authority, and secure each State against domestic violence on the demand
+of its Legislature.
+
+There is no common form for federal contracts, and no rules describing
+what such a contract must contain in order that the Government may be
+federal and not unitarian. There is no hard and fast line which must,
+under the federal system, divide the jurisdiction of the central
+Government from the jurisdiction of each State Government. The way in
+which the power is divided between the two must necessarily depend on
+the traditions, manners, aims, and needs of the people of the various
+localities. The federal system is not a system manufactured on a
+regulation model, which can be sent over the world like iron huts or
+steam launches, in detached pieces, to be put together when the scene of
+operation is reached. Therefore I am unable to see the force of the
+argument that, as the conditions under which all existing federations
+were established differ in some respects from those under which the
+proposed federal union between England and Ireland would have to be
+established, therefore the success of these confederations, such as it
+is, gives them no value as precedents. A system which might have worked
+very well for the New England States would not have worked well for a
+combination which included also the middle and southern States. And the
+framers of the American Constitution were not so simple-minded as to
+inquire, either before beginning their labours or before ending them--as
+Mr. Dicey would apparently have the English and Irish do--whether this
+or that style of constitution was "the correct thing" in federalism.
+Assuming that the people desired to form a nation as regarded the world
+outside, they addressed themselves to the task of discovering how much
+power the various States were willing to surrender for this purpose.
+That was ascertained, as far as it could be ascertained, by assembling
+their delegates in convention, and discussing the wishes and fears and
+suggestions of the different localities in a friendly and conciliatory
+spirit. They had no precedents to guide them. There had not existed a
+federal government, either in ancient or modern times, whose working
+afforded an example by which the imagination or the understanding of the
+American people was likely to be affected in the smallest degree. They,
+therefore, had to strike out an entirely new path for themselves, and
+they ended by producing an absolutely new kind of federation, which was
+half Unitarian, that is, in some respects a union of states, and in
+others a centralized government; and it was provided for a Territory one
+end of which was more than a month's distance from the other.
+
+It is not in its details, therefore, but in the manner of its
+construction, that the American Constitution furnishes anything in the
+way of guidance or suggestion to those who are now engaged in trying to
+find a _modus vivendi_ between England and Ireland. The same thing may
+be said of the Swiss Constitution and of the Austro-Hungarian
+Constitution. Both of them contain many anomalies--that is, things that
+are not set down in the books as among the essentials of federalism. But
+both are adapted to the special wants of the people who live under them,
+and were framed in reference to those wants.
+
+The Austro-Hungarian Delegations are another exception to the rule.
+These Delegations undoubtedly control the ministry of the Empire, or at
+all events do in practice displace it by their votes. It is made
+formally responsible to them by the Constitution. All that Mr. Dicey can
+say to this is that "the real responsibility of the Ministry to the
+Delegations admits of a good deal of doubt," and that, at all events,
+it is not like the responsibility of Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury to
+the British Parliament. This may be true, but the more mysterious or
+peculiar it is the better it illustrates the danger of speaking of any
+particular piece of machinery or of any particular division of power as
+an essential feature of a federal constitution.
+
+We are told by the critics of the Gladstonian scheme that federalism is
+not "a plan for disuniting the parts of a united state." But whether it
+is or not once more depends on circumstances. Federalism, like the
+British or French Constitution, is an arrangement intended to satisfy
+the people who set it up by gratifying some desire or removing some
+cause of discontent. If that discontent be due to unity, federalism
+disunites; if it be due to disunion, federalism unites. In the case of
+the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for instance, it clearly is a "plan for
+disuniting the parts of a united state." Austria and Hungary were united
+in the sense in which the opponents of Home Rule use the word for many
+years before 1867, but the union did not work, that is, did not produce
+moral as well as legal unity. A constitution was therefore invented
+which disunites the two countries for the purposes of domestic
+legislation, but leaves them united for the purposes of foreign
+relations. This may be a queer arrangement. Although it has worked well
+enough thus far, it may not continue to work well, but it does work well
+now. It has succeeded in converting Hungary from a discontented and
+rebellious province and a source of great weakness to Austria into a
+loyal and satisfied portion of the Empire. In other words, it has
+accomplished its purpose. It was not intended to furnish a symmetrical
+piece of federalism. It was intended to conciliate the Hungarian people.
+When therefore the professional federal architects make their tour of
+inspection and point out to the Home Ruler what flagrant departures from
+the correct federal model the Austro-Hungarian Constitution contains,
+how improbable it is that so enormous a structure can endure, and how,
+after all, the Hungarians have not got rid of the Emperor, who commands
+the army and represents the brute force of the old _regime_, I do not
+think he need feel greatly concerned. This may be all true, and yet the
+Austro-Hungarian federalism is a valuable thing. It has proved that the
+federal remedy is good for more than one disease, that it can cure both
+too much unity and too little. The truth is that there are only two
+essentials of a federal government. One is an agreement between the
+various communities who are to live under it as to the manner in which
+the power is to be divided between the general and local governments;
+the other is an honest desire on the part of all concerned to make it
+succeed. As a general rule, whatever the parties agree on and desire to
+make work is likely to work, just as a Unitarian government is sure to
+succeed if the people who live under it determine that it shall succeed.
+If a federal plan be settled in the only right way, by amicable and
+mutually respectful discussion between representative men, all the more
+serious obstacles are certain to be revealed and removed. Those which
+are not brought to light by such discussions are pretty sure to be
+comparatively trifling, and to disappear before the general success of
+arrangement. But by a "mutually respectful discussion" I mean discussion
+in which good faith and intelligence of all concerned are acknowledged
+on both sides.
+
+In what I have said by way of criticism of a book which may be taken as
+a particularly full exposition of the legal criticism that may be
+levelled at Mr. Gladstone's scheme, I have not touched on the arguments
+against Home Rule which Mr. Dicey draws from the amount of disturbance
+it would cause in English political habits and arrangements. I freely
+admit the weight of these arguments. The task of any English statesman
+who gives Home Rule to Ireland in the only way in which it can be
+given--with the assent of the British people--will be a very arduous
+one. But this portion of Mr. Dicey's book, producing, as it does, the
+distinctively English objections to Home rule, is to me much the most
+instructive, because it shows the difficulty there would be in creating
+the state of mind in England about any federal relation to Ireland which
+would be necessary to make it succeed. I do not think it an exaggeration
+to say that two-thirds of the English objections to Home Rule as
+federalism are unconscious expressions of distrust of Irish sincerity or
+intelligence thrown into the form of prophecy, and prophets, as we all
+know, cannot be refuted. For instance, "the changes necessitated by
+federalism would all tend to weaken the power of Great Britain" (Dicey,
+p. 173). The question of the command of the army could not be arranged;
+the Irish army could not be depended on by the Crown (p. 174); the
+central Government would be feeble against foreign aggression, and the
+Irish Parliament would give aid to a foreign enemy (pp. 176-7).
+Federalism would aggravate or increase instead of diminishing the actual
+Irish disloyalty to the Crown (pp. 179-80); the Irish expectations of
+material prosperity from Home Rule are baseless or grossly exaggerated
+(p. 182); the probability is, it would produce increased poverty and
+hardship; there would be frequent quarrels between the two countries
+over questions of nullification, secession, and federal taxation (p.
+184); neither side would acquiesce in the decision either of the Privy
+Council or of any other tribunal on these questions; Home Rulers would
+be the first to resist these decisions (p. 185). Irish federation "would
+soon generate a demand that the whole British Empire should be turned
+into a Confederacy" (p. 188). Finally, as "the one prediction which may
+be made with absolute confidence," "federalism would not generate the
+goodwill between England and Ireland which, could it be produced, would
+be an adequate compensation even for the evils and inconveniences of a
+federal system" (p. 191).
+
+Now I do not myself believe these things, but what else can any advocate
+of Home Rule say in answer to them? They are in their very nature the
+utterances of a prophet--an able, acute, and fair-minded prophet, I
+grant, but still a prophet--and before a prophet the wisest man has to
+be silent, or content himself by answering in prophecy also. What makes
+the sceptical frame of mind in which Mr. Dicey approaches the Home Rule
+question so important is not simply that it probably represents that of
+a very large body of educated Englishmen, but that it is one in which a
+federal system cannot be produced. Faith, hope, and charity are
+political as well as social virtues. The minute you leave the region of
+pure despotism and try any form of government in which the citizen has
+in the smallest degree to co-operate in the execution of the laws, you
+have need of these virtues at every step. As soon as you give up the
+attempt to rule men by drumhead justice, you have to begin to trust in
+some degree to their intelligence, to their love of order, to their
+self-respect, and to their desire for material prosperity, and the
+nearer you get to what is called free government the larger this trust
+has to be. It has to be very large indeed in order to carry on such a
+government as that of Great Britain or of the United States; it has to
+be larger still in order to set up and administer a federal government.
+In such a government the worst that can happen is very patent. The
+opportunities which the best-drawn federal constitution offers for
+outbreaks of what Americans call "pure cussedness"--that is, for the
+indulgence of anarchical tendencies and impulses--is greater than in any
+other. Therefore, to set it up, or even to discuss it with any profit,
+your faith in the particular variety of human nature, which is to live
+under it, has to be great. No communities can live under it together
+and make it work which do not respect each other. I say respect, I do
+not say love, each other. The machine can be made to go a good while
+without love, and if it goes well it will bring love before long; but
+mutual respect is necessary from the first day. This is why Mr. Dicey's
+book is discouraging. The arguments which he addressed to Englishmen
+would not, I think, be formidable but for the mood in which he finds
+Englishmen, and that this mood makes against Home Rule there can be
+little doubt.
+
+I am often asked by Americans why the English do not call an Anglo-Irish
+convention in the American fashion, and discuss the Irish question with
+the Irish, find out exactly what they will take to be quiet, and settle
+with them in a rational way. I generally answer that, in the first
+place, a convention is a constitution-making agency with which the
+English public is totally unfamiliar, and that, in the second place,
+Englishmen's temper is too imperial, or rather imperious, to make the
+idea of discussion on equal terms with the Irish at all acceptable. They
+are, in fact, so far from any such arrangement that--preposterous and
+even funny as it seems to the American mind--to say that an English
+statesman is carrying on any sort of communication with the
+representatives of the Irish people is to bring against him, in English
+eyes, a very damaging accusation. When a man like Mr. Matthew Arnold
+writes to the _Times_ to contend that Englishmen should find out what
+the Irish want solely for the purpose of not letting them have it, and a
+journal like the _Spectator_ maintains that the sole excuse for
+extending the suffrage in Ireland, as it has lately been extended in
+England, was that the Irish as a minority would not be able to make any
+effective use of it; and when another political philosopher writes a
+long and very solemn letter in which, while conceding that in governing
+Ireland a sympathetic regard for Irish feelings and interests should be
+displayed, he mentions, as one of the leading facts of the situation,
+that in "the Irish character there is a grievous lack of independence,
+of self-respect, of courage, and above all of truthfulness"--when men of
+this kind talk in this way, it is easy to see that the mental and moral
+conditions necessary to the successful formation of a federal union are
+still far off. No federal government, and no government requiring
+loyalty and fidelity for its successful working, was ever set up by, or
+even discussed between, two parties, one of which thought the other so
+unreasonable that it should be carefully denied everything it asked for
+and as unfit for any sort of political co-operation as mendacity,
+cowardice, and slavishness could make it.
+
+Finally let me say that there is nothing in Mr. Dicey's book which has
+surprised me more, considering with what singular intellectual integrity
+he attacks every point, than his failure to make any mention or to take
+any account of the large part which time and experience must necessarily
+play in bringing to perfection any political arrangement which is made
+to order, if I may use the expression, no matter how carefully it may be
+drafted. Hume says on this point with great wisdom, "To balance the
+large state or society, whether monarchical or republican, on general
+laws, is a work of so great difficulty, that no human genius, however
+comprehensive, is able by the mere dint of reason or reflection to
+effect it. The judgments of many must unite in the work, experience must
+guide their labour, time must bring it to perfection, and the feeling of
+inconveniences must correct the mistakes which they inevitably fall into
+in their first trial and experiments."[25]
+
+This has proved true of the American and Swiss federations; it will
+probably prove true of the Austro-Hungarian federation and of any that
+may be set up by Great Britian [Transcriber: sic.] and her colonies. It
+will prove still more true of any attempt that may be made at
+federation between Great Britain and Ireland. No corrections which could
+be made in the Gladstonian or any other constitution would make it work
+exactly on the lines laid down by its framers. Even if it were revised
+in accordance with Mr. Dicey's criticism, it would probably be found, as
+in the case of the American Constitution, that few of the dangers which
+were most feared for it had beset it, and that some of the
+inconveniences which were most distinctly foreseen as likely to arise
+from it were among the things which had materially contributed to its
+success. History is full of the gentle ridicule which the course of
+events throws on statesmen and philosophers.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 24: Printed in the earlier part of this volume.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Essay on the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences.]
+
+
+
+
+THE "UNIONIST" CASE FOR HOME RULE.
+
+BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN.
+
+
+I am often asked, What are the best books to read on the Irish question?
+and I never fail to mention Mr. Lecky's _Leaders of Public Opinion in
+Ireland_ and the _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_; Mr.
+Goldwin Smith's _Irish History and Irish Character, Three English
+Statesmen, The Irish Question_, and Professor Dicey's admirable work,
+_England's Case against Home Rule_.
+
+Indeed, the case for Home Rule, as stated in these books, is
+unanswerable; and it redounds to the credit of Mr. Lecky, Mr. Goldwin
+Smith, and Mr. Dicey that their narrative of facts should in no wise be
+prejudiced by their political opinions.
+
+That their facts are upon one side and their opinions on the other is a
+minor matter. Their facts, I venture to assert, have made more Home
+Rulers than their opinions can unmake.
+
+To put this assertion to the test I propose to quote some extracts from
+the works above mentioned. These extracts shall be full and fair.
+Nothing shall be left out that can in the slightest degree qualify any
+statement of fact in the context. Arguments will be omitted, for I wish
+to place facts mainly before my readers. From these facts they can draw
+their own conclusions. Neither shall I take up space with comments of my
+own. I shall call my witnesses and let them speak for themselves.
+
+I.--MR. LECKY.
+
+In the introduction to the new edition of the _Leaders of Public Opinion
+in Ireland_, published in 1871--seventy-one years after Mr. Pitt's
+Union, which was to make England and Ireland one nation--we find the
+following "contrast" between "national life" in the two countries:--
+
+"There is, perhaps, no Government in the world which succeeds more
+admirably in the functions of eliciting, sustaining, and directing
+public opinion than that of England. It does not, it is true, escape its
+full share of hostile criticism, and, indeed, rather signally
+illustrates the saying of Bacon, that 'the best Governments are always
+subject to be like the finest crystals, in which every icicle and grain
+is seen which in a fouler stone is never perceived;' but whatever
+charges may be brought against the balance of its powers, or against its
+legislative efficiency, few men will question its eminent success as an
+organ of public opinion. In England an even disproportionate amount of
+the national talent takes the direction of politics. The pulse of an
+energetic national life is felt in every quarter of the land. The
+debates of Parliament are followed with a warm, constant, and
+intelligent interest by all sections of the community. It draws all
+classes within the circle of political interests, and is the centre of a
+strong and steady patriotism, equally removed from the apathy of many
+Continental nations in time of calm, and from their feverish and
+spasmodic energy in time of excitement. Its decisions, if not instantly
+accepted, never fail to have a profound and calming influence on the
+public mind. It is the safety-valve of the nation. The discontents, the
+suspicions, the peccant humours that agitate the people, find there
+their vent, their resolution, and their end.
+
+"It is impossible, I think, not to be struck by the contrast which, in
+this respect, Ireland presents to England. If the one country furnishes
+us with an admirable example of the action of a healthy public opinion,
+the other supplies us with the most unequivocal signs of its disease.
+The Imperial Parliament exercises for Ireland legislative functions, but
+it is almost powerless upon opinion--it allays no discontent, and
+attracts no affection. Political talent, which for many years was at
+least as abundant among Irishmen as in any equally numerous section of
+the people, has been steadily declining, and marked decadence in this
+respect among the representatives of the nation reflects but too truly
+the absence of public spirit in their constituents.
+
+"The upper classes have lost their sympathy with and their moral
+ascendency over their tenants, and are thrown for the most part into a
+policy of mere obstruction. The genuine national enthusiasm never flows
+in the channel of imperial politics. With great multitudes sectarian
+considerations have entirely superseded national ones, and their
+representatives are accustomed systematically to subordinate all party
+and all political questions to ecclesiastical interests; and while
+calling themselves Liberals, they make it the main object of their home
+politics to separate the different classes of their fellow-countrymen
+during the period of their education, and the main object of their
+foreign policy to support the temporal power of the Pope. With another
+and a still larger class the prevailing feeling seems to be an
+indifference to all Parliamentary proceedings; an utter scepticism about
+constitutional means of realizing their ends; a blind, persistent hatred
+of England. Every cause is taken up with an enthusiasm exactly
+proportioned to the degree in which it is supposed to be injurious to
+English interests. An amount of energy and enthusiasm which if rightly
+directed would suffice for the political regeneration of Ireland is
+wasted in the most insane projects of disloyalty; while the diversion of
+so much public feeling from Parliamentary politics leaves the
+Parliamentary arena more and more open to corruption, to place-hunting,
+and to imposture.
+
+"This picture is in itself a very melancholy one, but there are other
+circumstances which greatly heighten the effect. In a very ignorant or a
+very wretched population it is natural that there should be much vague,
+unreasoning discontent; but the Irish people are at present neither
+wretched nor ignorant. Their economical condition before the famine was,
+indeed, such that it might well have made reasonable men despair. With
+the land divided into almost microscopic farms, with a population
+multiplying rapidly to the extreme limits of subsistence, accustomed to
+the very lowest standard of comfort, and marrying earlier than in any
+other northern country in Europe, it was idle to look for habits of
+independence or self-reliance, or for the culture which follows in the
+train of leisure and comfort. But all this has been changed. A fearful
+famine and the long-continued strain of emigration have reduced the
+nation from eight millions to less than five, and have effected, at the
+price of almost intolerable suffering, a complete economical revolution.
+The population is now in no degree in excess of the means of
+subsistence. The rise of wages and prices has diffused comfort through
+all classes. ... Probably no country in Europe has advanced so rapidly
+as Ireland within the last ten years, and the tone of cheerfulness, the
+improvement of the houses, the dress, and the general condition of the
+people must have struck every observer.[26] ... If industrial
+improvement, if the rapid increase of material comforts among the poor,
+could allay political discontent, Ireland should never have been so
+loyal as at present.
+
+"Nor can it be said that ignorance is at the root of the discontent. The
+Irish people have always, even in the darkest period of the penal laws,
+been greedy for knowledge, and few races show more quickness in
+acquiring it. The admirable system of national education established in
+the present century is beginning to bear abundant fruit, and, among the
+younger generation at least, the level of knowledge is quite as high as
+in England. Indeed, one of the most alarming features of Irish
+disloyalty is its close and evident connection with education. It is
+sustained by a cheap literature, written often with no mean literary
+skill, which penetrates into every village, gives the people their first
+political impressions, forms and directs their enthusiasm, and seems
+likely in the long leisure of the pastoral life to exercise an
+increasing power. Close observers of the Irish character will hardly
+have failed to notice the great change which since the famine has passed
+over the amusements of the people. The old love of boisterous
+out-of-door sports has almost disappeared, and those who would have once
+sought their pleasures in the market or the fair now gather in groups in
+the public-house, where one of their number reads out a Fenian
+newspaper. Whatever else this change may portend, it is certainly of no
+good omen for the future loyalty of the people.
+
+"It was long customary in England to underrate this disaffection by
+ascribing it to very transitory causes. The quarter of a century that
+followed the Union was marked by almost perpetual disturbance; but this
+it was said was merely the natural ground swell of agitation which
+followed a great reform. It was then the popular theory that it was the
+work of O'Connell, who was described during many years as the one
+obstacle to the peace of Ireland, and whose death was made the subject
+of no little congratulation, as though Irish discontent had perished
+with its organ. It was as if, the AEolian harp being shattered, men wrote
+an epitaph upon the wind. Experience has abundantly proved the folly of
+such theories. Measured by mere chronology, a little more than seventy
+years have passed since the Union, but famine and emigration have
+compressed into these years the work of centuries. The character,
+feelings, and conditions of the people have been profoundly altered. A
+long course of remedial legislation has been carried, and during many
+years the national party has been without a leader and without a
+stimulus. Yet, so far from subsiding, disloyalty in Ireland is probably
+as extensive, and is certainly as malignant, as at the death of
+O'Connell, only in many respects the public opinion of the country has
+palpably deteriorated. O'Connell taught an attachment to the connection,
+a loyalty to the crown, a respect for the rights of property, a
+consistency of Liberalism, which we look for in vain among his
+successors; and that faith in moral force and constitutional agitation
+which he made it one of his greatest objects to instil into the people
+has almost vanished with the failure of his agitation."[27]
+
+Few Irish Nationalists have drawn a weightier indictment against the
+Union than this. After a trial of seventy years, Mr. Lecky sums up the
+case against the Union in these pregnant sentences:--
+
+"The Imperial Parliament allays no discontent, and attracts no
+affection;" "The genuine national enthusiasm never flows in the channel
+of imperial politics;" the people have "an utter scepticism about
+constitutional means of realizing their ends," and are imbued with "a
+blind, persistent hatred of England." Worse still, neither the material
+progress of the country, nor the education of the people, has
+reconciled them to the Imperial Parliament. Indeed, their disloyalty has
+increased with their prosperity and enlightenment. This is the story
+which Mr. Lecky has to tell. But why are the Irish disloyal? Mr. Lecky
+shall answer the question.
+
+"The causes of this deep-seated disaffection I have endeavoured in some
+degree to investigate in the following essays. To the merely dramatic
+historian the history of Ireland will probably appear less attractive
+than that of most other countries, for it is somewhat deficient in great
+characters and in splendid episodes; but to a philosophic student of
+history it presents an interest of the very highest order. In no other
+history can we trace more clearly the chain of causes and effects, the
+influence of past legislation, not only upon the material condition, but
+also upon the character of a nation. In no other history especially can
+we investigate more fully the evil consequences which must ensue from
+disregarding that sentiment of nationality which, whether it be wise or
+foolish, whether it be desirable or the reverse, is at least one of the
+strongest and most enduring of human passions. This, as I conceive, lies
+at the root of Irish discontent. It is a question of nationality as
+truly as in Hungary or in Poland. Special grievances or anomalies may
+aggravate, but do not cause it, and they become formidable only in as
+far as they are connected with it. What discontent was felt against the
+Protestant Established Church was felt chiefly because it was regarded
+as an English garrison sustaining an anti-national system; and the
+agrarian difficulty never assumed its full intensity till by the repeal
+agitation the landlords had been politically alienated from the
+people."[28]
+
+Let those who imagine that the Irish question can be completely settled
+by the redress of material grievances take those words to heart.
+
+
+But, it is said, Scotch national sentiment is as strong as Irish, why
+should not a legislative union be as acceptable to Ireland as to
+Scotland? Mr. Lecky shall answer this question too.
+
+"It is hardly possible to advert to the Scotch Union, without pausing
+for a moment to examine why its influence on the loyalty of the people
+should have ultimately been so much happier than that of the legislative
+union which, nearly a century later, was enacted between England and
+Ireland. A very slight attention to the circumstances of the case will
+explain the mystery, and will at the same time show the extreme
+shallowness of those theorists who can only account for it by reference
+to original peculiarities of national character. The sacrifice of a
+nationality is a measure which naturally produces such intense and such
+enduring discontent that it never should be exacted unless it can be
+accompanied by some political or material advantages to the lesser
+country that are so great and at the same time so evident as to prove a
+corrective. Such a corrective in the case of Scotland, was furnished by
+the commercial clauses. The Scotch Parliament was very arbitrary and
+corrupt, and by no means a faithful representation of the people. The
+majority of the nation were certainly opposed to the Union, and,
+directly or indirectly, it is probable that much corruption was employed
+to effect it; but still the fact remains that by it one of the most
+ardent wishes of all Scottish patriots was attained, that there had been
+for many years a powerful and intelligent minority who were prepared to
+purchase commercial freedom even at the expense of the fusion of
+legislatures, and that in consequence of the establishment of free trade
+the next generation of Scotchmen witnessed an increase of material
+well-being that was utterly unprecedented in the history of their
+country. Nothing equivalent took place in Ireland. The gradual abolition
+of duties between England and Ireland was, no doubt, an advantage to the
+lesser country, but the whole trade to America and the other English
+colonies had been thrown open to Irishmen between 1775 and 1779. Irish
+commerce had taken this direction; the years between 1779 and the
+rebellion of 1798 were probably the most prosperous in Irish history,
+and the generation that followed the Union was one of the most
+miserable. The sacrifice of nationality was extorted by the most
+enormous corruption in the history of representative institutions. It
+was demanded by no considerable section of the Irish people. It was
+accompanied by no signal political or material benefit that could
+mitigate or counteract its unpopularity, and it was effected without a
+dissolution, in opposition to the votes of the immense majority of the
+representatives of the counties and considerable towns, and to
+innumerable addresses from every part of the country. Can any impartial
+man be surprised that such a measure, carried in such a manner, should
+have proved unsuccessful?"[29]
+
+
+In the _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_ Mr. Lecky traces the
+current of events which have led to the present situation. He shows how
+the Treaty of Limerick was shamelessly violated, and how the native
+population was oppressed and degraded.
+
+"The position of Ireland was at this time [1727] one of the most
+deplorable that can be conceived.... The Roman Catholics had been
+completely prostrated by the battle of the Boyne and by the surrender of
+Limerick. They had stipulated indeed for religious liberty, but the
+Treaty of Limerick was soon shamelessly violated, and it found no
+avengers. Sarsfield and his brave companions had abandoned a country
+where defeat left no opening for their talents, and had joined the Irish
+Brigade which had been formed in the service of France.... But while the
+Irish Roman Catholics abroad found free scope for their ambition in the
+service of France, those who remained at home had sunk into a condition
+of utter degradation. All Catholic energy and talent had emigrated to
+foreign lands, and penal laws of atrocious severity crushed the
+Catholics who remained."[30]
+
+Mr. Lecky's account of these "penal laws" is upon the whole, I think,
+the best that has been written.
+
+"The last great Protestant ruler of England was William III., who is
+identified in Ireland with the humiliation of the Boyne, with the
+destruction of Irish trade, and with the broken Treaty of Limerick. The
+ceaseless exertions of the extreme Protestant party have made him more
+odious in the eyes of the people than he deserves to be; for he was
+personally far more tolerant than the great majority of his
+contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted under his
+successors. It required, indeed, four or five reigns to elaborate a
+system so ingeniously contrived to demoralize, to degrade, and to
+impoverish the people of Ireland. By this code the Roman Catholics were
+absolutely excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from the
+corporations, from the bench, and from the bar. They could not vote at
+Parliamentary elections or at vestries; they could not act as
+constables, or sheriffs, or jurymen, or serve in the army or navy, or
+become solicitors, or even hold the positions of gamekeeper or watchman.
+Schools were established to bring up their children as Protestants; and
+if they refused to avail themselves of these, they were deliberately
+assigned to hopeless ignorance, being excluded from the university, and
+debarred, under crushing penalties, from acting as schoolmasters, as
+ushers, or as private tutors, or from sending their children abroad to
+obtain the instruction they were refused at home. They could not marry
+Protestants, and if such a marriage were celebrated it was annulled by
+law, and the priest who officiated might be hung. They could not buy
+land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from Protestants, or hold
+life-annuities, or leases for more than thirty-one years, or any lease
+on such terms that the profits of the land exceeded one-third of the
+rent. If any Catholic leaseholder by his industry so increased his
+profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did not immediately make
+a corresponding increase in his payments, any Protestant who gave the
+information could enter into possession of his farm. If any Catholic had
+secretly purchased either his old forfeited estate, or any other land,
+any Protestant who informed against him might become the proprietor. The
+few Catholic landowners who remained were deprived of the right which
+all other classes possessed of bequeathing their lands as they pleased.
+If their sons continued Catholics, it was divided equally between them.
+If, however, the eldest son consented to apostatize, the estate was
+settled upon him, the father from that hour became only a life-tenant,
+and lost all power of selling, mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of it.
+If the wife of a Catholic abandoned the religion of her husband, she was
+immediately free from his control, and the Chancellor was empowered to
+assign to her a certain proportion of her husband's property. If any
+child, however young, professed itself a Protestant, it was at once
+taken from the father's care, and the Chancellor could oblige the father
+to declare upon oath the value of his property, both real and personal,
+and could assign for the present maintenance and future portion of the
+converted child such proportion of that property as the court might
+decree. No Catholic could be guardian either to his own children or to
+those of another person; and therefore a Catholic who died while his
+children were minors had the bitterness of reflecting upon his death-bed
+that they must pass into the care of Protestants. An annuity of from
+twenty to forty pounds was provided as a bribe for every priest who
+would become a Protestant. To convert a Protestant to Catholicism was a
+capital offence. In every walk of life the Catholic was pursued by
+persecution or restriction. Except in the linen trade, he could not have
+more than two apprentices. He could not possess a horse of the value of
+more than five pounds, and any Protestant, on giving him five pounds,
+could take his horse. He was compelled to pay double to the militia. He
+was forbidden, except under particular conditions, to live in Galway or
+Limerick. In case of war with a Catholic power, the Catholics were
+obliged to reimburse the damage done by the enemy's privateers. The
+Legislature, it is true, did not venture absolutely to suppress their
+worship, but it existed only by a doubtful connivance--stigmatized as if
+it were a species of licensed prostitution, and subject to conditions
+which, if they had been enforced, would have rendered its continuance
+impossible. An old law which prohibited it, and another which enjoined
+attendance at the Anglican worship, remained unrepealed, and might at
+any time be revived; and the former was, in fact, enforced during the
+Scotch rebellion of 1715. The parish priests, who alone were allowed to
+officiate, were compelled to be registered, and were forbidden to keep
+curates or to officiate anywhere except in their own parishes. The
+chapels might not have bells or steeples. No crosses might be publicly
+erected. Pilgrimages to the holy wells were forbidden. Not only all
+monks and friars, but also all Catholic archbishops, bishops, deacons,
+and other dignitaries, were ordered by a certain day to leave the
+country; and if after that date they were found in Ireland they were
+liable to be first imprisoned and then banished; and if after that
+banishment they returned to discharge their duty in their dioceses, they
+were liable to the punishment of death. To facilitate the discovery of
+offences against the code, two justices of the peace might at any time
+compel any Catholic of eighteen years of age to declare when and where
+he last heard Mass, what persons were present, and who officiated; and
+if he refused to give evidence they might imprison him for twelve
+months, or until he paid a fine of twenty pounds. Any one who harboured
+ecclesiastics from beyond the seas was subject to fines which for the
+third offence amounted to confiscation of all his goods. A graduated
+scale of rewards was offered for the discovery of Catholic bishops,
+priests, and schoolmasters; and a resolution of the House of Commons
+pronounced 'the prosecuting and informing against Papists' 'an
+honourable service to the Government.'
+
+"Such were the principal articles of this famous code--a code which
+Burke truly described as 'well digested and well disposed in all its
+parts; a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted
+for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the
+debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the
+perverted ingenuity of man.'"[31]
+
+The effects of these laws Mr. Lecky has described thus:
+
+"The economical and moral effects of the penal laws were, however,
+profoundly disastrous. The productive energies of the nation were
+fatally diminished. Almost all Catholics of energy and talent who
+refused to abandon their faith emigrated to foreign lands. The relation
+of classes was permanently vitiated; for almost all the proprietary of
+the country belonged to one religion, while the great majority of their
+tenants were of another. The Catholics, excluded from almost every
+possibility of eminence, deprived of their natural leaders, and
+consigned by the Legislature to utter ignorance, soon sank into the
+condition of broken and dispirited helots. A total absence of industrial
+virtues, a cowering and abject deference to authority, a recklessness
+about the future, a love of secret illegal combinations, became general
+among them. Above all, they learned to regard law as merely the
+expression of force, and its moral weight was utterly destroyed. For the
+greater part of a century, the main object of the Legislature was to
+extirpate a religion by the encouragement of the worst, and the
+punishment of some of the best qualities of our nature. Its rewards were
+reserved for the informer, for the hypocrite, for the undutiful son, or
+for the faithless wife. Its penalties were directed against religious
+constancy and the honest discharge of ecclesiastical duty.
+
+"It would, indeed, be scarcely possible to conceive a more infamous
+system of legal tyranny than that which in the middle of the eighteenth
+century crushed every class and almost every interest in Ireland."[32]
+
+But laws were not only passed against the native race and the national
+religion. Measures were taken to destroy the industries of the country,
+and to involve natives and colonists, Protestants and Catholics, in
+common ruin. Mr. Lecky shall tell the story.
+
+"The commercial and industrial condition of the country was, if
+possible, more deplorable than its political condition, and was the
+result of a series of English measures which for deliberate and selfish
+tyranny could hardly be surpassed. Until the reign of Charles II. the
+Irish shared the commercial privileges of the English; but as the island
+had not been really conquered till the reign of Elizabeth, and as its
+people were till then scarcely removed from barbarism, the progress was
+necessarily slow. In the early Stuart reigns, however, comparative
+repose and good government were followed by a sudden rush of prosperity.
+The land was chiefly pasture, for which it was admirably adapted; the
+export of live cattle to England was carried on upon a large scale, and
+it became a chief source of Irish wealth. The English landowners,
+however, took the alarm. They complained that Irish rivalry in the
+cattle market was reducing English rents; and accordingly, by an Act
+which was first passed in 1663, and was made perpetual in 1666, the
+importation of cattle into England was forbidden.
+
+"The effect of a measure of this kind, levelled at the principal article
+of the commerce of the nation, was necessarily most disastrous. The
+profound modification which it introduced into the course of Irish
+industry was sufficiently shown by the estimate of Sir W. Petty, who
+declares that before the statute three-fourths of the trade of Ireland
+was with England, but not one-fourth of it since that time. In the very
+year when this Bill was passed another measure was taken not less fatal
+to the interest of the country. In the first Navigation Act, Ireland was
+placed on the same terms as England; but in the Act as amended in 1663
+she was omitted, and was thus deprived of the whole Colonial trade. With
+the exception of a very few specified articles no European merchandise
+could be imported into the British Colonies except directly from
+England, in ships built in England, and manned chiefly by English
+sailors. No articles, with a few exceptions, could be brought from the
+Colonies to Europe without being first unladen in England. In 1670 this
+exclusion of Ireland was confirmed, and in 1696 it was rendered more
+stringent, for it was enacted that no goods of any sort could be
+imported directly from the Colonies to Ireland. It will be remembered
+that at this time the chief British Colonies were those of America, and
+that Ireland, by her geographical position, was naturally of all
+countries most fitted for the American trade.
+
+"As far, then, as the Colonial trade was concerned, Ireland at this time
+gained nothing whatever by her connection with England. To other
+countries, however, her ports were still open, and in time of peace a
+foreign commerce was unrestricted. When forbidden to export their cattle
+to England, the Irish turned their land chiefly into sheep-walks, and
+proceeded energetically to manufacture the wool. Some faint traces of
+this manufacture may be detected from an early period, and Lord
+Strafford, when governing Ireland, had mentioned it with a
+characteristic comment. Speaking of the Irish he says, 'There was little
+or no manufactures amongst them, but some small beginnings towards a
+cloth trade, which I had and so should still discourage all I could,
+unless otherwise directed by His Majesty and their Lordships. It might
+be feared that they would beat us out of the trade itself by
+underselling us, which they were able to do.' With the exception,
+however, of an abortive effort by this governor, the Irish wool
+manufacture was in no degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned with
+special favour in many Acts of Parliament; and it was in a great degree
+on the faith of this long-continued legislative sanction that it was so
+greatly expanded. The poverty of Ireland, the low state of civilization
+of a large proportion of its inhabitants, the effects of the civil wars
+which had so recently convulsed it, and the exclusion of its products
+from the English Colonies, were doubtless great obstacles to
+manufacturing enterprise; but, on the other hand, Irish wool was very
+good, living was cheaper, taxes were lighter than in England, a spirit
+of real industrial energy began to pervade the country, and a
+considerable number of English manufacturers came over to colonize it.
+There appeared for a time every probability that the Irish would become
+an industrial nation, and, had manufactures arisen, their whole social,
+political, and economical condition would have been changed. But English
+jealousy again interposed. By an Act of crushing and unprecedented
+severity, which was introduced in 1698 and carried in 1699, the export
+of the Irish woollen manufactures, not only to England, but also to all
+other countries, was absolutely forbidden.
+
+"The effects of this measure were terrible almost beyond conception. The
+main industry of the country was at a blow completely and irretrievably
+annihilated. A vast population was thrown into a condition of utter
+destitution. Several thousands of manufacturers left the country, and
+carried their skill and enterprise to Germany, France, and Spain. The
+western and southern districts of Ireland are said to have been nearly
+depopulated. Emigration to America began on a large scale, and the blow
+was so severe that long after, a kind of chronic famine prevailed."[33]
+
+Mr. Lecky relates with pride how the penal code was relaxed, and the
+commercial restrictions were removed, while the Irish Parliament,
+essentially a Protestant and landlord body, still existed, and shows how
+the cause of Catholic Emancipation was retarded by the Union.
+
+"The Relief Bill of '93 naturally suggests a consideration of the
+question so often agitated in Ireland, whether the Union was really a
+benefit to the Roman Catholic cause. It has been argued that Catholic
+Emancipation was an impossibility as long as the Irish Parliament
+lasted; for in a country where the great majority were Roman Catholics,
+it would be folly to expect the members of the dominant creed to
+surrender a monopoly on which their ascendency depended. The arguments
+against this view are, I believe, overwhelming. The injustice of the
+disqualification was far more striking before the Union than after it.
+In the one case, the Roman Catholics were excluded from the Parliament
+of a nation of which they were the great majority; in the other, they
+were excluded from the Parliament of an empire in which they were a
+small minority. Grattan, Plunket, Curran, Burrowes, and Ponsonby were
+the great supporters of Catholic Emancipation, and the great opponents
+of the Union. Clare and Duigenan were the two great opponents of
+emancipation, and the great supporters of the Union. At a time when
+scarcely any public opinion existed in Ireland, when the Roman Catholics
+were nearly quiescent, and when the leaning of Government was generally
+liberal, the Irish Protestants admitted their fellow-subjects to the
+magistracy, to the jury-box, and to the franchise. By this last measure
+they gave them an amount of political power which necessarily implied
+complete emancipation. Even if no leader of genius had arisen in the
+Roman Catholic ranks, and if no spirit of enthusiasm had animated their
+councils, the influence possessed by a body who formed three fourths of
+the population, who were rapidly rising in wealth, and who could send
+their representatives to Parliament, would have been sufficient to
+ensure their triumph. If the Irish Legislature had continued, it would
+have been found impossible to resist the demand for reform; and every
+reform, by diminishing the overgrown power of a few Protestant
+landholders, would have increased that of the Roman Catholics. The
+concession accorded in 1793 was, in fact, far greater and more important
+than that accorded in 1829, and it placed the Roman Catholics, in a
+great measure, above the mercy of Protestants. But this was not all. The
+sympathies of the Protestants were being rapidly enlisted in their
+behalf. The generation to which Charlemont and Flood belonged had passed
+away, and all the leading intellects of the country, almost all the
+Opposition, and several conspicuous members of the Government, were
+warmly in favour of emancipation. The rancour which at present exists
+between the members of the two creeds appears then to have been almost
+unknown, and the real obstacle to emancipation was not the feelings of
+the people, but the policy of the Government. The Bar may be considered
+on most subjects a very fair exponent of the educated opinion of the
+nation; and Wolf Tone observed, in 1792, that it was almost unanimous in
+favour of the Catholics; and it is not without importance, as showing
+the tendencies of the rising generation, that a large body of the
+students of Dublin University in 1795 presented an address to Grattan,
+thanking him for his labours in the cause. The Roman Catholics were
+rapidly gaining the public opinion of Ireland, when the Union arrayed
+against them another public opinion which was deeply prejudiced against
+their faith, and almost entirely removed from their influence. Compare
+the twenty years before the Union with the twenty years that followed
+it, and the change is sufficiently manifest. There can scarcely be a
+question that if Lord Fitzwilliam had remained in office the Irish
+Parliament would readily have given emancipation. In the United
+Parliament for many years it was obstinately rejected, and if O'Connell
+had never arisen it would probably never have been granted unqualified
+by the veto. In 1828 when the question was brought forward in
+Parliament, sixty-one out of ninety-three Irish members, forty-five out
+of sixty-one Irish county members, voted in its favour. Year after year
+Grattan and Plunket brought forward the case of their fellow-countrymen
+with an eloquence and a perseverance worthy of their great cause; but
+year after year they were defeated. It was not till the great tribune
+had arisen, till he had moulded his co-religionists into one compact and
+threatening mass, and had brought the country to the verge of
+revolution, that the tardy boon was conceded. Eloquence and argument
+proved alike unavailing when unaccompanied by menace, and Catholic
+Emancipation was confessedly granted because to withhold it would be to
+produce a rebellion."[34]
+
+Many people will think that this is a sufficiently weighty condemnation
+of the Union, but what follows is a still graver reflection on that
+untoward measure.
+
+"In truth the harmonious co-operation of Ireland with England depends
+much less upon the framework of the institutions of the former country
+than upon the dispositions of its people and upon the classes who guide
+its political life. With a warm and loyal attachment to the connection
+pervading the nation, the largest amount of self-government might be
+safely conceded, and the most defective political arrangement might
+prove innocuous. This is the true cement of nations, and no change,
+however plausible in theory, can be really advantageous which
+contributes to diminish it. Theorists may argue that it would be better
+for Ireland to become in every respect a province of England; they may
+contend that a union of Legislatures, accompanied by a corresponding
+fusion of characters and identification of hopes, interests, and
+desires, would strengthen the empire; but as a matter of fact this was
+not what was effected in 1800. The measure of Pitt centralized, but it
+did not unite, or rather, by uniting the Legislatures it divided the
+nations. In a country where the sentiment of nationality was as intense
+as in any part of Europe, it destroyed the national Legislature contrary
+to the manifest wish of the people, and by means so corrupt,
+treacherous, and shameful that they are never likely to be forgotten. In
+a country where, owing to the religious difference, it was peculiarly
+necessary that a vigorous lay public opinion should be fostered to
+dilute or restrain the sectarian spirit, it suppressed the centre and
+organ of political life, directed the energies of the community into the
+channels of sectarianism, drove its humours inwards, and thus began a
+perversion of public opinion which has almost destroyed the elements of
+political progress. In a country where the people have always been
+singularly destitute of self-reliance, and at the same time eminently
+faithful to their leaders, it withdrew the guidance of affairs from the
+hands of the resident gentry, and, by breaking their power, prepared the
+ascendency of the demagogue or the rebel. In two plain ways it was
+dangerous to the connection: it incalculably increased the aggregate
+disloyalty of the people, and it destroyed the political supremacy of
+the class that is most attached to the connection. The Irish Parliament,
+with all its faults, was an eminently loyal body. The Irish people
+through the eighteenth century, in spite of great provocations, were on
+the whole a loyal people till the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and even
+then a few very moderate measures of reform might have reclaimed them.
+Burke, in his _Letters on a Regicide Peace_, when reviewing the elements
+of strength on which England could confide in her struggle with
+revolutionary France, placed in the very first rank the co-operation of
+Ireland. At the present day, it is to be feared that most impartial men
+would regard Ireland, in the event of a great European war, rather as a
+source of weakness than of strength. More than seventy years have passed
+since the boasted measure of Pitt, and it is unfortunately incontestable
+that the lower orders in Ireland are as hostile to the system of
+government under which they live as the Hungarian people have ever been
+to Austrian, or the Roman to Papal rule; that Irish disloyalty is
+multiplying enemies of England wherever the English tongue is spoken;
+and that the national sentiment runs so strongly that multitudes of
+Irish Catholics look back with deep affection to the Irish Parliament,
+although no Catholic could sit within its walls, and although it was
+only during the last seven years of its independent existence that
+Catholics could vote for its members. Among the opponents of the Union
+were many of the most loyal, as well as nearly all the ablest men in
+Ireland; and Lord Charlemont, who died shortly before the measure was
+consummated, summed up the feelings of many in the emphatic sentence
+with which he protested against it. 'It would more than any other
+measure,' he said, 'contribute to the separation of two countries the
+perpetual connection of which is one of the warmest wishes of my heart.'
+
+"In fact, the Union of 1800 was not only a great crime, but was also,
+like most crimes, a great blunder. The manner in which it was carried
+was not only morally scandalous; it also entirely vitiated it as a work
+of statesmanship. No great political measure can be rationally judged
+upon its abstract merits, and without considering the character and the
+wishes of the people for whom it is intended. It is now idle to discuss
+what might have been the effect of a Union if it had been carried before
+1782, when the Parliament was still unemancipated; if it had been the
+result of a spontaneous movement of public opinion; if it had been
+accompanied by the emancipation of the Catholics. Carried as it was
+prematurely, in defiance of the national sentiment of the people and of
+the protests of the unbribed talent of the country, it has deranged the
+whole course of political development, driven a large proportion of the
+people into sullen disloyalty, and almost destroyed healthy public
+opinion. In comparing the abundance of political talent in Ireland
+during the last century with the striking absence of it at present,
+something no doubt may be attributed to the absence of protection for
+literary property in Ireland in the former period, which may have
+directed an unusual portion of the national talent to politics, and
+something to the Colonial and Indian careers which have of late years
+been thrown open to competition; but when all due allowances have been
+made for these, the contrast is sufficiently impressive. Few impartial
+men can doubt that the tone of political life and the standard of
+political talent have been lowered, while sectarian animosity has been
+greatly increased, and the extent to which Fenian principles have
+permeated the people is a melancholy comment upon the prophesies that
+the Union would put an end to disloyalty in Ireland."[35]
+
+Mr. Lecky's views as to what ought to have been done in 1800 deserve to
+be set forth.
+
+"While, however, the Irish policy of Pitt appears to be both morally and
+politically deserving of almost unmitigated condemnation, I cannot agree
+with those who believe that the arrangement of 1782 could have been
+permanent. The Irish Parliament would doubtless have been in time
+reformed, but it would have soon found its situation intolerable.
+Imperial policy must necessarily have been settled by the Imperial
+Parliament, in which Ireland had no voice; and, unlike Canada or
+Australia, Ireland is profoundly affected by every change of Imperial
+policy. Connection with England was of overwhelming importance to the
+lesser country, while the tie uniting them would have been found
+degrading by one nation and inconvenient to the other. Under such
+circumstances a Union of some kind was inevitable. It was simply a
+question of time, and must have been demanded by Irish opinion. At the
+same time, it would not, I think, have been such a Union as that of
+1800. The conditions of Irish and English politics are so extremely
+different, and the reasons for preserving in Ireland a local centre of
+political life are so powerful, that it is probable a Federal Union
+would have been preferred. Under such a system the Irish Parliament
+would have continued to exist, but would have been restricted to purely
+local subjects, while an Imperial Parliament, in which Irish
+representatives sat, would have directed the policy of the empire."[36]
+
+
+MR. GOLDWIN SMITH.
+
+None of the recent opponents of Home Rule have written against that
+policy with more brilliance and epigrammatic keenness than Mr. Goldwin
+Smith. But no one has stated with more force the facts and
+considerations which, operating on men's mind for years past, have made
+the Liberal party Home Rulers now. His _coup d'oeil_ remains the most
+pointed indictment ever drawn from the historical annals of Ireland
+against the English methods of governing that country. Twenty years ago
+he anticipated the advice recently given by Mr. Gladstone. In 1867 he
+wrote:--
+
+"I have myself sought and found in the study of Irish history the
+explanation of the paradox, that a people with so many gifts, so
+amiable, naturally so submissive to rulers, and everywhere but in their
+own country industrious, are in their own country bywords of idleness,
+lawlessness, disaffection, and agrarian crime."[37] He explains the
+paradox thus: "But it is difficult to distinguish the faults of the
+Irish from their misfortunes. It has been well said of their past
+industrial character and history,--'We were reckless, ignorant,
+improvident, drunken, and idle. We were idle, for we had nothing to do;
+we were reckless, for we had no hope; we were ignorant, for learning was
+denied us; we were improvident, for we had no future; we were drunken,
+for we sought to forget our misery. That time has passed away for ever.'
+No part of this defence is probably more true than that which connects
+the drunkenness of the Irish people with their misery. Drunkenness is,
+generally speaking, the vice of despair; and it springs from the despair
+of the Irish peasant as rankly as from that of his English fellow. The
+sums of money which have lately been transmitted by Irish emigrants to
+their friends in Ireland seem a conclusive answer to much loose
+denunciation of the national character, both in a moral and an
+industrial point of view.... There seems no good reason for believing
+that the Irish Kelts are averse to labour, provided they be placed, as
+people of all races require to be placed, for two or three generations
+in circumstances favourable to industry."[38] He shows that the Irish
+have not been so placed. "Still more does justice require that allowance
+should be made on historical grounds for the failings of the Irish
+people. If they are wanting in industry, in regard for the rights of
+property, in reverence for the law, history furnishes a full explanation
+of their defects, without supposing in them any inherent depravity, or
+even any inherent weakness. They have never had the advantage of the
+training through which other nations have passed in their gradual rise
+from barbarism to civilization. The progress of the Irish people was
+arrested at almost a primitive stage, and a series of calamities,
+following close upon each other, have prevented it from ever fairly
+resuming its course. The pressure of overwhelming misery has now been
+reduced; government has become mild and just; the civilizing agency of
+education has been introduced; the upper classes are rapidly returning
+to their duty, and the natural effect is at once seen in the improved
+character of the people. Statesmen are bound to be well acquainted with
+the historical sources of the evil with which they have to deal,
+especially when those evils are of such a nature as, at first aspect, to
+imply depravity in a nation. There are still speakers and writers who
+seem to think that the Irish are incurably vicious, because the
+accumulated effects of so many centuries cannot be removed at once by a
+wave of the legislator's wand. Some still believe, or affect to believe,
+that the very air of the island is destructive of the characters and
+understandings of all who breathe it."[39]
+
+Elsewhere he adds, referring to the land system:
+
+"How many centuries of a widely different training have the English
+people gone through in order to acquire their boasted love of law."[40]
+
+Of the "training" through which the Irish went, he says--
+
+"The existing settlement of land in Ireland, whether dating from the
+confiscations of the Stuarts, or from those of Cromwell, rests on a
+proscription three or four times as long as that on which the settlement
+of land rests over a considerable part of France. It may, therefore, be
+considered as placed upon discussion in the estimation of all sane men;
+and, this being the case, it is safe to observe that no inherent want of
+respect for property is shown by the Irish people if a proprietorship
+which had its origin within historical memory in flagrant wrong is less
+sacred in their eyes than it would be if it had its origin in immemorial
+right."[41]
+
+The character which he gives of Irish landlordism deserves to be quoted:
+
+"The Cromwellian landowners soon lost their religious character, while
+they retained all the hardness of the fanatic and the feelings of
+Puritan conquerors towards a conquered Catholic people. 'I have eaten
+with them,' said one, 'drunk with them, fought with them; but I never
+prayed with them.' Their descendants became, probably, the very worst
+upper class with which a country was ever afflicted. The habits of the
+Irish gentry grew beyond measure brutal and reckless, and the coarseness
+of their debaucheries would have disgusted the crew of Comus. Their
+drunkenness, their blasphemy, their ferocious duelling, left the squires
+of England far behind. If there was a grotesque side to their vices
+which mingles laughter with our reprobation, this did not render their
+influence less pestilent to the community of which the motive of destiny
+had made them social chiefs. Fortunately, their recklessness was sure,
+in the end, to work, to a certain extent, its own cure; and in the
+background of their swinish and uproarious drinking-bouts, the
+Encumbered Estates Act rises to our view."[42]
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith deals with agrarian crime thus:
+
+"The atrocities perpetrated by the Whiteboys, especially in the earlier
+period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew somewhat less inhuman),
+are such as to make the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in
+speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be
+unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or
+to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the
+part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive
+at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian
+conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was
+very small. In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 crimes, 627 were Whiteboy,
+or agrarian, and even of the remainder, many, being crimes of violence,
+were probably committed from the same motive.
+
+"In plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered the Whiteboy
+code were to the people the organs of a wild law of social morality by
+which, on the whole, the interest of the peasant was protected. They
+were not regular tribunals; neither were the secret tribunals of Germany
+in the Middle Ages, the existence of which, and the submission of the
+people to their jurisdiction, implied the presence of much violence, but
+not of much depravity, considering the wildness of the times. The
+Whiteboys 'found in their favour already existing a general and settled
+hatred of the law among the great body of the peasantry.'[43] We have
+seen how much the law, and the ministers of the law, had done to deserve
+the peasant's love. We have seen, too, in what successive guises
+property had presented itself to his mind: first as open rapine; then as
+robbery carried on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code;
+finally as legalized and systematic oppression. Was it possible that he
+should have formed so affectionate a reverence either for law or
+property as would be proof against the pressure of starvation?"[44] "A
+people cannot be expected to love and reverence oppression because it is
+consigned to the statute-book, and called law."[45]
+
+These extracts are taken from _Irish History and Irish Character_, which
+was published in 1861. But in 1867 Mr. Goldwin Smith wrote a series of
+letters to the _Daily News_, which were republished in 1868 under the
+title of _The Irish Question_; and these letters form, perhaps, the most
+statesmanlike and far-seeing pronouncement that has ever been made on
+the Irish difficulty.
+
+In the preface Mr. Goldwin Smith begins:
+
+"The Irish legislation of the last forty years, notwithstanding the
+adoption of some remedial measures, has failed through the indifference
+of Parliament to the sentiments of Irishmen; and the harshness of
+English public opinion has embittered the effects on Irish feeling of
+the indifference of Parliament. Occasionally a serious effort has been
+made by an English statesman to induce Parliament to approach Irish
+questions in that spirit of sympathy, and with that anxious desire to be
+just, without which a Parliament in London cannot legislate wisely for
+Ireland. Such efforts have hitherto met with no response; is it too much
+to hope that it will be otherwise in the year now opening?"[46]
+
+The only comment I shall make on these words is: they were penned more
+than half a century after Mr. Pitt's Union, which was to shower down
+blessings on the Irish people.
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith's first letter was written on the 23rd of November,
+1867, the day of the execution of the Fenians Allen, Larkin, and
+O'Brien. He says--
+
+"There can be no doubt, I apprehend, that the Irish difficulty has
+entered on a new phase, and that Irish disaffection has, to repeat an
+expression which I heard used in Ireland, come fairly into a line with
+the other discontented nationalities of Europe. Active Fenianism
+probably pervades only the lowest class; passive sympathy, which the
+success of the movement would at once convert into active co-operation,
+extends, it is to be feared, a good deal higher.
+
+"England has ruin before her, unless she can hit on a remedy, and
+overcome any obstacles of class interest or of national pride which
+would prevent its application, the part of Russia in Poland, or of
+Austria in Italy--a part cruel, hateful, demoralizing, contrary to all
+our high principles and professions, and fraught with dangers to our own
+freedom. Our position will be worse than that of Russia in this respect,
+that, while her Poland is only a province, our Fenianism is an element
+pervading every city of the United Kingdom in which Irish abound, and
+allying itself with kindred misery, discontent, and disorder.
+Wretchedness, the result of misgovernment, has caused the Irish people
+to multiply with the recklessness of despair, and now here are their
+avenging hosts in the midst of us, here is the poison of their
+disaffection running through every member of our social frame. Not only
+so, but the same wretchedness has sent millions of emigrants to form an
+Irish nation in the United States, where the Irish are a great political
+power, swaying by their votes the councils of the American Republic, and
+in immediate contact with those Transatlantic possessions of England,
+the retention of which it is now patriotic to applaud, and will one day
+be patriotic to have dissuaded.
+
+" ... That Ireland is not at this moment, materially speaking, in a
+particularly suffering state, but, on the contrary, the farmers are
+rather prosperous, and wages, even when allowance is made for the rise
+in the price of provisions, considerably higher than they were, only
+adds to the significance of this widespread disaffection.
+
+"The Fenian movement is not religious, nor radically economical (though
+no doubt it has in it a socialistic element), but national, and the
+remedy for it must be one which cures national discontent. This is the
+great truth which the English people have to lay to heart."[47]
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith then dispels the notion that the Irish question is a
+religious one.
+
+"When Fenianism first appeared, the Orangemen, in accordance with their
+fixed idea, ascribed it to the priests. They were undeceived, I was
+told, by seeing a priest run away from the Fenians in fear of his
+life."[48]
+
+Neither was it a question of the land.
+
+"The land question, no doubt, lies nearer to the heart of the matter,
+and it is the great key to Irish history in the past; but I do not
+believe that even this is fundamental."
+
+He then states what is "fundamental."[49]
+
+"The real root of the disaffection which exhibits itself at present in
+the guise of Fenianism, and which has been suddenly kindled into flame
+by the arming of the Irish in the American civil war, but which existed
+before in a nameless and smouldering state, is, as I believe, the want
+of national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects of
+national reverence and attachment, and consequently of anything
+deserving to be called national life. The English Crown and Parliament
+the Irish have never learnt, nor have they had any chance of learning,
+to love, or to regard as national, notwithstanding the share which was
+given them, too late, in the representation. The greatness of England is
+nothing to them. Her history is nothing, or worse. The success of
+Irishmen in London consoles the Irish in Ireland no more than the
+success of Italian adventurers in foreign countries (which was very
+remarkable) consoled the Italian people. The drawing off of Irish
+talent, in fact, turns to an additional grievance in their minds. Dublin
+is a modern Tara, a metropolis from which the glory has departed; and
+the viceroyalty, though it pleases some of the tradesmen, fails
+altogether to satisfy the people. 'In Ireland we can make no appeal to
+patriotism, we can have no patriotic sentiments in our schoolbooks, no
+patriotic emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything
+patriotic is rebellious.' These were the words uttered in my hearing,
+not by a complaining demagogue, but by a desponding statesman. They
+seemed to me pregnant with fatal truths.
+
+"If the craving for national institutions, and the disaffection bred in
+this void of the Irish people's heart, seem to us irrational and even
+insane, in the absence of any more substantial grievance, we ought to
+ask ourselves what would become of our own patriotism if we had no
+national institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence,
+even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in intention, by
+a neighbouring people whom we regarded as aliens, and who, in fact,
+regarded us pretty much in the same light. Let us first judge ourselves
+fairly, and then judge the Irish, remembering always that they are more
+imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of national feeling
+and affection more than ourselves."[50]
+
+And all this was written sixty-seven years after the Union of 1800.
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith then deals with the subject of the Irish and Scotch
+unions much in the same way as Mr. Lecky.
+
+"The incorporation of the Scotch nation with the English, being
+conducted on the right principles by the great Whig statesman of Anne,
+has been perfectly successful. The attempt to incorporate the Irish
+nation with the English and Scotch, the success of which would have
+been, if possible, a still greater blessing, being conducted by very
+different people and on very different principles, has unhappily failed.
+What might have been the result if even the Hanoverian sovereigns had
+done the personal duty to their Irish kingdom which they have
+unfortunately neglected, it is now too late to inquire. The Irish Union
+has missed its port, and, in order to reach it, will have to tack again.
+We may hold down a dependency, of course, by force, in Russian and
+Austrian fashion; but force will never make the hearts of two nations
+one, especially when they are divided by the sea. Once get rid of this
+deadly international hatred, and there will be hope of real union in the
+future."[51]
+
+Mr. Goldwin Smith finally proposes a "plan" by which the "deadly
+international hatred" might be got rid of, and a "real union" brought
+about. Here it is.
+
+"1. The residence of the Court at Dublin, not merely to gratify the
+popular love of royalty and its pageantries, which no man of sense
+desires to stimulate, but to assure the Irish people, in the only way
+possible as regards the mass of them, that the sovereign of the United
+Kingdom is really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for
+and honoured with the other subjects of the realm. This would also tend
+to make Dublin a real capital, and to gather and retain there a portion
+of the Irish talent which now seeks its fortune elsewhere.
+
+"2. An occasional session (say once in every three years) of the
+Imperial Parliament in Dublin, partly for the same purposes as the last
+proposal, but also because the circumstances of Ireland are likely to
+be, for some time at least, really peculiar, and the personal
+acquaintance of our legislators with them is the only sufficient
+security for good Irish legislation. There could be no serious
+difficulty in holding a short session in the Irish capital, where there
+is plenty of accommodation for both Houses.
+
+"3. A liberal measure of local self-government for Ireland. I would not
+vest the power in any single assembly for all Ireland, because Ulster is
+really a different country from the other provinces. I would give each
+province a council of its own, and empower that council to legislate
+(subject, of course, to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament) on all
+matters not essential to the political and legal unity of the empire, in
+which I would include local education. The provincial councils should of
+course be elective, and the register of electors might be the same as
+that of electors to the Imperial Parliament. In England itself the
+extension of local institutions, as political training schools for the
+masses, as checks upon the sweeping action of the great central
+assembly, and as the best organs of legislation in all matters requiring
+(as popular education, among others, does) adaptation to the
+circumstances of particular districts, would, I think, have formed a
+part of any statesmanlike revision of our political system. Here, also,
+much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing the
+present business of quarter sessions, other than the judicial business,
+together with such other matters as the central legislative might think
+fit to vest in local hands, to an assembly elected by the county."[52]
+
+Thus it will be seen that twenty years ago Mr. Goldwin Smith anticipated
+Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of provincial councils, and got a good way on
+the road to an Irish Parliament.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MR. DICEY.
+
+A fairer controversalist, or an abler supporter of the "paper Union,"
+than Mr. Dicey there is not; nevertheless no man has fired more
+effective shots into Mr. Pitt's unfortunate arrangement of 1800.
+
+How well has the "failure" of that arrangement been described in these
+pithy sentences--"Eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of
+the Treaty of Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do
+not yet form an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more
+wretched (for the whole European world has made progress, and Ireland
+with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness, and Irish disaffection to
+England is, if not deeper, more widespread than in 1800. An Act meant by
+its authors to be a source of the prosperity and concord which, though
+slowly, followed upon the Union with Scotland, has not made Ireland
+rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the
+feud between Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of
+Irish tenants, has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and
+has, therefore, not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment
+which can fairly be brought against the Act of Union."[53]
+
+What follows reflects honour on Mr. Dicey as an honest opponent who does
+not shrink from facts; but what a wholesale condemnation of the policy
+of the Imperial Parliament!
+
+"On one point alone (it may be urged) all men, of whatever party or of
+whatever nation, who have seriously studied the annals of Ireland are
+agreed--the history is a record of incessant failure on the part of the
+Government, and of incessant misery on the part of the people. On this
+matter, if on no other, De Beaumont, Froude, and Lecky are at one. As to
+the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may and do
+differ; that England, whether from her own fault or the fault of the
+Irish people, or from perversity of circumstances, has failed in Ireland
+of achieving the elementary results of good government is as certain as
+any fact of history or of experience. Every scheme has been tried in
+turn, and no scheme has succeeded or has even, it may be suggested,
+produced its natural effects. Oppression of the Catholics has increased
+the adherents and strengthened the hold of Catholicism. Protestant
+supremacy, while it lasted, did not lead even to Protestant contentment,
+and the one successful act of resistance to the English dominion was
+effected by a Protestant Parliament supported by an army of volunteers,
+led by a body of Protestant officers. The independence gained by a
+Protestant Parliament led, after eighteen years, to a rebellion so
+reckless and savage that it caused, if it did not justify, the
+destruction of the Parliament and the carrying of the Union. The Act of
+Union did not lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on
+the face of it (though the appearance, it must be admitted, was
+delusive) to be a copy of the law which bound England and Scotland into
+a common country inspired by common patriotism, produced conspiracy and
+agitation, and at last placed England and Ireland further apart,
+morally, than they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of
+Union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not combined with
+Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were emancipated, but emancipation,
+instead of producing loyalty, brought forth the cry for repeal. The
+Repeal movement ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the
+attempted rebellion in 1848. Suppressed rebellion begot Fenianism, to be
+followed in its turn by the agitation for Home Rule. The movement
+relies, it is said, and there is truth in the assertion, on
+constitutional methods for obtaining redress. But constitutional
+measures are supplemented by boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of
+dynamite. A century of reform has given us Mr. Parnell instead of
+Grattan, and it is more than possible that Mr. Parnell may be succeeded
+by leaders in whose eyes Mr. Davitt's policy may appear to be tainted
+with moderation. No doubt, in each case the failure of good measures
+admits, like every calamity in public or private life, of explanation,
+and after the event it is easy to see why, for example, the Poor Law,
+when extended to Ireland, did not produce even the good effects such as
+they are which in England are to be set against its numerous evils; or
+why an emigration of unparalleled proportions has diminished population
+without much diminishing poverty; why the disestablishment of the
+Anglican Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to
+England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts have not
+contented Irish farmers. It is easy enough, in short, and this without
+having any recourse to theory of race, and without attributing to
+Ireland either more or less of original sin than falls to the lot of
+humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship--and all
+statesmanship, it should be remembered, is imperfect--has failed in
+obtaining good results at all commensurate with its generally good
+intentions. Failure, however, is none the less failure because its
+causes admit of analysis. It is no defence to bankruptcy that an
+insolvent can, when brought before the Court, lucidly explain the errors
+which resulted in disastrous speculations. The failure of English
+statesmanship, explain it as you will, has produced the one last and
+greatest evil which misgovernment can cause. It has created hostility to
+the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work in Ireland
+because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the
+actions of the courts, are in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in
+full sympathy with law-breakers."[54]
+
+No Home Ruler has described the evils of English misrule in Ireland with
+such vigour as this.
+
+"Bad administration, religious persecution, above all, a thoroughly
+vicious land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping confiscations as to
+make it, at any rate, a plausible assertion that all land in Ireland has
+during the course of Irish history been confiscated at least thrice
+over, are admittedly some of the causes, if they do not constitute the
+whole cause, of the one immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy
+of England. This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the
+law of the land prevailing among large numbers of Irish people. The
+existence of this disaffection, whatever be the inference to be drawn
+from it, is undeniable. A series of so-called Coercion Acts, passed both
+before and since the Act of Union, give undeniable evidence, if evidence
+were wanted, of the ceaseless and, as it would appear, almost
+irrepressible resistance in Ireland offered by the people to the
+enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest inclination to underrate
+the lasting and formidable character of this opposition between opinion
+and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious
+and infinitely painful topic, question for a moment that the ultimate
+strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at the lowest the acquiescence,
+of the mass of the population. Judges, constables, and troops become
+almost powerless when the conscience of the people permanently opposes
+the execution of the law. Severity produces either no effect or bad
+effects; executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs; and
+jurymen and witnesses meet with the execration and often with the fate
+of criminals. On such a point it is best to take the opinion of a
+foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions from which no Englishman
+or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free.
+
+"'Quand vous en etes arroes a ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie
+de regueurs tous vos efforts pour retabler l'ordre et la paix seront
+inutiles. En vain, pour reprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez a
+votre aide toutes les severites du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez
+des lois cruelles pour arreter le cours de revoltantes cruautes;
+vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre delit se rattachant a ces
+grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre impuissance, vous
+suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaries proclamerez des comtes entiers
+en etat de suspicion legale, voilerez le principe de la liberte
+individuelle, creerez des cours martiales, des commissions
+extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur,
+multiplierez a l'exces les executions capitales.'"[55]
+
+The next passage is a trenchant condemnation of the "Union."
+
+"There exists in Europe no country so completely at unity with itself as
+Great Britain. Fifty years of reform have done their work, and have
+removed the discontents, the divisions, the disaffection, and the
+conspiracies which marked the first quarter, or the first half of this
+century. Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the
+force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community
+of interests. The distraction and the uncertainty of our political aims,
+the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise, in
+part at least, from the connection with Ireland. Neither Englishmen nor
+Irishmen are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for communities
+differing in historical associations and in political conceptions to
+keep step together in the path of progress. For other evils arising from
+the connection the blame must rest on English Statesmen. All the
+inherent vices of party government, all the weaknesses of the
+parliamentary system, all the evils arising from the perverse notion
+that reform ought always to be preceded by a period of lengthy and more
+than half factitious agitation met by equally factitious resistance,
+have been fostered and increased by the interaction of Irish and English
+politics. No one can believe that the inveterate habit of ruling one
+part of the United Kingdom on principles which no one would venture to
+apply to the government of any other part of it, can have produced
+anything but the most injurious effect on the stability of our
+Government and the character of our public men. The advocates of Home
+Rule find by far their strongest arguments for influencing English
+opinion, in the proofs which they produce that England, no less than
+Ireland, has suffered from a political arrangement under which legal
+union has failed to secure moral union. _These arguments, whatever their
+strength, are, however, it must be noted, more available to a
+Nationalist than to an advocate of federalism_."[56]
+
+The words which I have italicised are an expression of opinion; but
+nothing can alter the damning statement of fact--"legal union has failed
+to secure moral union." Nevertheless, Mr. Dicey advocates the
+maintenance of this legal union as it stands.
+
+"On the whole, then, it appears that, whatever changes or calamities the
+future may have in store, the maintenance of the Union is at this day
+the one sound policy for England to pursue. It is sound because it is
+expedient; it is sound because it is just."[57]
+
+
+I shall not discuss the question of Home Rule with the eminent writers
+whose works I have cited. It is enough that they demonstrate the failure
+of the Union. So convinced was Mr. Lecky, in 1871, of its failure, that
+he suggested a readjustment of the relations of the two countries on a
+federal basis;[58] and Mr. Goldwin Smith, in 1868, contended that the
+Irish difficulty could only be settled by the establishment of
+Provincial Councils, and an occasional session of the Imperial
+Parliament in Dublin. Mr. Dicey clings to the existing Union while
+demonstrating its failure, because he has persuaded himself that the
+only alternative is separation.
+
+Irishmen may be pardoned for acting on Mr. Dicey's facts, and
+disregarding his prophecies. The mass of Irishmen believe, with Grattan,
+that the ocean protests against separation as the sea protests against
+such a union as was attempted in 1800.[59]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 26: Omissions here and elsewhere are merely for purposes of
+space. In some places the omitted parts would strengthen the Irish case;
+in no place would they weaken it.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Lecky, _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, new edit.
+(1871), Introduction, pp. viii., xiv.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Lecky, _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, new edit.
+(1871), Introduction, pp. xiv., xv.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Lecky, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+vol. ii. pp. 59, 60.]
+
+[Footnote 30: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 33, 34.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 120-123.]
+
+[Footnote 32: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 125, 126.]
+
+[Footnote 33: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 34-37.]
+
+[Footnote 34: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 134-137.]
+
+[Footnote 35: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 192-195.]
+
+[Footnote 36: _Leaders of Public Opinion_, pp. 195, 196.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Goldwin Smith, _Three English Statesmen_, p. 274.]
+
+[Footnote 38: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 13, 14.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Ibid., p. 194.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Ibid., p. 142.]
+
+[Footnote 41: _Irish History and Irish Character_, p. 101.]
+
+[Footnote 42: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 139, 140.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Sir George Cornewall Lewis, _Irish Disturbances_, p. 97.]
+
+[Footnote 44: _Irish History and Irish Character_, pp. 153-157.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Ibid., pp. 70, 71]
+
+[Footnote 46: _The Irish Question_, Preface, pp. iii., iv.]
+
+[Footnote 47: _The Irish Question_, pp. 3-5.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Ibid., p. 6.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Ibid., p. 7.]
+
+[Footnote 50: _The Irish Question_, pp. 7-9.]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Irish Question_, p. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 52: _The Irish Question_, pp. 16-18.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, p. 128.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 72-74.]
+
+[Footnote 55: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 92-94.--The
+foreigner is De Beaumont.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Dicey, _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 151, 152.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Ibid., p. 288.]
+
+[Footnote 58: I hope I am not doing Mr. Lecky an injustice in this
+statement. I rely on the extract quoted from the _Leaders of Public
+Opinion in Ireland,_ at p. 176 of this volume; but see Introduction, p.
+xix.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Irish House of Commons, January 15th, 1800.]
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND'S ALTERNATIVES.
+
+BY LORD THRING.[60]
+
+
+Ireland is a component member of the most complex political body the
+world has yet known; any inquiry, then, into the fitness of any
+particular form of government for that country involves an investigation
+of the structures of various composite nations, or nations made up of
+numerous political communities more or less differing from each other.
+From the examination of the nature of the common tie, and the
+circumstances which caused it to be adopted or imposed on the component
+peoples, we cannot but derive instruction, and be furnished with
+materials which will enable us to take a wide view of the question of
+Home Rule, and assist us in judging between the various remedies
+proposed for the cure of Irish disorders.
+
+The nature of the ties which bind, or have bound, the principal
+composite nations of the world together may be classified as--
+
+    1. Confederate unions.
+    2. Federal unions.
+    3. Imperial unions.
+
+A confederate union may be defined to mean an alliance between the
+governments of independent States, which agree to appoint a common
+superior authority having power to make peace and war and to demand
+contributions of men and money from the confederate States. Such
+superior authority has no power of enforcing its decrees except through
+the medium of the governments of the constituent States; or, in other
+words, in case of disobedience, by armed force.
+
+A federal union differs from a confederate union in the material fact
+that the common superior authority, instead of acting on the individual
+subjects of the constituent States through the medium of their
+respective governments, has a power, in respect of all matters within
+its jurisdiction, of enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding
+directly on the individual citizens.
+
+The distinguishing characteristics of an imperial union are, that it
+consists of an aggregate of communities, one of which is dominant, and
+that the component communities have been brought into association, not
+by arrangement between themselves, but by colonization, cession, and by
+other means emanating from the resources or power of the dominant
+community.
+
+The above-mentioned distinction between a Government having communities
+only for its subjects, and incapable of enforcing its orders by any
+other means than war, and a Government acting directly on individuals,
+must be constantly borne in mind, for in this lies the whole difference
+between a confederate and federal union; that is to say, between a
+confederacy which, in the case of the United States, lasted a few short
+years, and a federal union which, with the same people as subjects, has
+lasted nearly a century, and has stood the strain of the most terrible
+war of modern times.
+
+The material features of the Constitution of the United States have been
+explained in a previous article.[61] All that is necessary to call to
+mind here is, that the Government of the United States exercises a power
+of taxation throughout the whole Union by means of its own officers, and
+enforces its decrees through the medium of its own Courts. A Supreme
+Court has also been established, which has power to adjudicate on the
+constitutionality of all laws passed by the Legislature of the United
+States, or of any State, and to decide on all international questions.
+
+Switzerland was till 1848 an example of a confederate union or league of
+semi-independent States, which, unlike other confederacies, had existed
+with partial interruptions for centuries. This unusual vitality is
+attributed by Mill[62] to the circumstance that the confederate
+government felt its weakness so strongly that it hardly ever attempted
+to exercise any real authority. Its present government, finally settled
+in 1874, but based on fundamental laws passed in 1848, is a federal
+union formed on the pattern of the American Constitution. It consists of
+a federal assembly comprising two Chambers--the Upper Chamber composed
+of forty-four members chosen by the twenty-two cantons, two for each
+canton; the Lower consisting of 145 members chosen by direct election at
+the rate of one deputy for every 20,000 persons. The chief executive
+authority is deputed to a federal council consisting of seven members
+elected for three years by the federal assembly, and having at their
+head a president and vice-president, who are the first magistrates of
+the republic. There is also a federal tribunal, having similar functions
+to those of the supreme court of the United States of America,
+consisting of nine members elected for six years by the federal
+assembly.
+
+The Empire of Germany is a federal union, differing from the United
+States and Switzerland in having an hereditary emperor as its head. It
+comprises twenty-six States, who have "formed an eternal union for the
+protection of the realm, and the care of the welfare of the German
+people."[63] The King of Prussia, under the title of German Emperor,
+represents the empire in all its relations to foreign nations, and has
+the power of making peace and war, but if the war be more than a
+defensive war he must have the assent of the Upper House. The
+legislative body of the empire consists of two Houses--the Upper, called
+the Bundesrath, representing the several component States in different
+proportions according to their relative importance; the lower, the
+Reichstag, elected by the voters in 397 electoral districts, which are
+distributed amongst the constituent States in unequal numbers, regard
+being had to the population and circumstances of each State.
+
+The Austro-Hungarian Empire is a federal union, differing alike in its
+origin and construction from the federal unions above mentioned. In the
+beginning Austria and Hungary were independent countries--Austria a
+despotism, Hungary a constitutional monarchy, with ancient laws and
+customs dating back to the foundation of the kingdom in 895. In the
+sixteenth century the supreme power in both countries--that is to say,
+the despotic monarchy in Austria and the constitutional monarchy in
+Hungary--became vested in the same person; as might have been
+anticipated, the union was not a happy one. If we dip into Heeren's
+_Political System of Europe_ at intervals selected almost at random, the
+following notices will be found in relation to Austria and
+Hungary:--Between 1671 and 1700 "political unity in the Austrian
+monarchy was to have been enforced especially in the principal country
+(Hungary), for this was regarded as the sole method of establishing
+power; the consequence was an almost perpetual revolutionary state of
+affairs."[64] Again, in the next chapter, commenting on the period
+between 1740 and 1786: "Hungary, in fact the chief, was treated like a
+conquered province; subjected to the most oppressive commercial
+restraints, it was regarded as a colony from which Austria exacted what
+she could for her own advantage. The injurious consequences of this
+internal discord are evident." Coming to modern times we find that
+oppression followed oppression with sickening monotony, and that at last
+the determination of Austria to stamp out the Constitution in Hungary
+gave rise to the insurrection of 1849, which Austria suppressed with the
+assistance of Russia, and as a penalty declared the Hungarian
+Constitution to be forfeited, and thereupon Hungary was incorporated
+with Austria, as Ireland was incorporated with Great Britain in 1800.
+Both events were the consequences of unsuccessful rebellions; but the
+junction which, in the case of Hungary, was enforced by the sword, was
+in Ireland more smoothly carried into effect by corruption. Hungary,
+sullen and discontented, waited for Austria's calamity as her
+opportunity, and it came after the battle of Sadowa. Austria had just
+emerged from a fearful conflict, and Count Beust[65] felt that unless
+some resolute effort was made to meet the views of the constitutional
+party in Hungary, the dismemberment of the empire must be the result.
+Now, what was the course he took? Was it a tightening of the bonds
+between Austria and Hungary? On the contrary, to maintain the unity of
+the empire he dissolved its union and restored to Hungary its ancient
+constitutional privileges. Austria and Hungary each had its own
+Parliament for local purposes. To manage the imperial concerns of peace
+and war, and the foreign relations, a controlling body, called the
+Delegations, was established, consisting of 120 members, of whom half
+represent and are chosen by the Legislature of Austria, and the other
+half by that of Hungary; the Upper House of each country returning
+twenty members, and the Lower House forty.[66] Ordinarily the delegates
+sit and vote in two Chambers, but if they disagree the two branches
+must meet together and give their final vote without debate, which is
+binding on the whole empire.[67]
+
+The question arises, What is the magnetic influence which induces
+communities of men to combine together in federal unions? Undoubtedly it
+is the feeling of nationality; and what is nationality? Mr. Mill
+says,[68] "a portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality
+if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not
+exist between them and any others; which make them co-operate with each
+other more willingly than other people; desire to be under the same
+government, and desire that it should be a government by themselves or a
+portion of themselves exclusively." He then proceeds to state that the
+feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes.
+Sometimes it is the identity of race and descent; community of language
+and community of religion greatly contribute to it; geographical limits
+are one of its causes; but the strongest of all is identity of political
+antecedents: the possession of a national history and consequent
+community of recollections--collective pride and humiliation, pleasure
+and regret--connected with the same incidents in the past.
+
+The only point to be noted further in reference to the foregoing federal
+unions, is that the same feeling of nationality which, in the United
+States, Switzerland, and the German Empire, produced a closer legal bond
+of union, in the case of Austria-Hungary operated to dissolve the
+amalgamation formed in 1849 of the two States, and to produce a federal
+union of States in place of a single State.
+
+One conclusion seems to follow irresistibly from any review of the
+construction of the various States above described: that the stability
+of a nation bears no relation whatever to the legal compactness or
+homogeneity of its component parts. Russia and France, the most compact
+political societies in Europe, do not, to say the least, rest on a
+firmer basis than Germany and Switzerland, the inhabitants of which are
+subjected to the obligations of a double nationality. Above all, no
+European nation, except Great Britain, can for a moment bear comparison
+with the United States in respect of the devotion of its people to their
+Constitution.
+
+An imperial union, though resembling somewhat in outward form a federal
+union, differs altogether from it both in principle and origin. Its
+essential characteristic is that one community is absolutely dominant
+while all the others are subordinate. In the case of a federal union
+independent States have agreed to resign a portion of their powers to a
+central Government for the sake of securing the common safety. In an
+imperial union the dominant or imperial State delegates to each
+constituent member of the union such a portion of local government as
+the dominant State considers the subordinate member entitled to,
+consistently with the integrity of the empire. The British Empire
+furnishes the best example of an imperial union now existing in the
+world. Her Majesty, as common head, is the one link which binds the
+empire together and connects with each other every constituent member.
+The Indian Empire and certain military dependencies require no further
+notice in these pages; but a summary of our various forms of colonial
+government is required to complete our knowledge of the forms of Home
+Rule possibly applicable to Ireland.
+
+The colonies, in relation to their forms of government, may be
+classified as follows:--
+
+I. Crown colonies, in which laws may be made by the Governor alone, or
+with the concurrence of a Council nominated by the Crown.
+
+2. Colonies possessing representative institutions, but not responsible
+government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, but the
+Home Government retains the control of the executive.
+
+3. Colonies possessing representative institutions and responsible
+government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, and the
+Home Government has no control over any public officer except the
+Governor.
+
+The British Colonial Governments thus present an absolute gradation of
+rule; beginning with absolute despotism and ending with almost absolute
+legal independence, except in so far as a veto on legislation and the
+presence of a Governor named by the Crown mark the dependence of the
+colony on the mother country.
+
+It is to be remembered, moreover, that the colonies which have received
+this complete local freedom are the great colonies of the earth--nations
+themselves possessing territories as large or larger than any European
+State--namely, Canada, the Cape, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland,
+South Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania. And this change from dependence
+to freedom has been effected with the good-will both of the mother
+country and the colony, and without it being imputed to the colonists,
+when desiring a larger measure of self-government, that they were
+separatists, anarchists, or revolutionists.
+
+Such are the general principles of colonial government, but one colony
+requires special mention, from the circumstance of its Constitution
+having been put forward as a model for Ireland; this is the Dominion of
+Canada. The Government of Canada is, in effect, a subordinate federal
+union; that is to say, it possesses a central Legislature, having the
+largest possible powers of local self-government consistent with the
+supremacy of the empire, with seven inferior provincial Governments,
+exercising powers greater than those of an English county, but not so
+great as those of an American State. The advantage of such a form of
+government is that, without weakening the supremacy of the empire or of
+the central local power, it admits of considerable diversities being
+made in the details of provincial government, where local peculiarities
+and antecedents render it undesirable to make a more complete
+assimilation of the Governments of the various provinces.
+
+Materials have now been collected which will enable the reader to judge
+of the expediency or inexpediency of the course taken by Mr. Gladstone's
+Government in dealing with Ireland. Three alternatives were open to
+them--
+
+    1. To let matters alone.
+    2. To pass a Coercion Bill.
+    3. To change the government of Ireland, and at
+    the same time to pass a Land Bill.
+
+The two last measures are combined under the head of one alternative, as
+it will be shown in the sequel that no effective Land Bill can be passed
+without granting Home Rule in Ireland.
+
+Now, the short answer to the first alternative is, that no party in the
+State--Conservative, Whig, Radical, Unionist, Home Ruler,
+Parnellite--thought it possible to leave things alone. That something
+must be done was universally admitted.
+
+The second alternative has found favour with the present Government, and
+certainly is a better example of the triumph of hope over experience,
+than even the proverbial second marriage.
+
+Eighty-six years have elapsed since the Union. During the first
+thirty-two years only eleven years, and during the last fifty-four years
+only two years have been free from special repressive legislation; yet
+the agitation for repeal of the Union, and general discontent, are more
+violent in 1887 than in any one of the eighty-six previous years. In
+the name of common-sense, is there any reason for supposing that the
+Coercion Bill of 1887 will have a better or more enduring effect than
+its numerous predecessors? The _prima facie_ case is at all events in
+favour of the contention that, when so many trials of a certain remedy
+have failed, it would be better not to try the same remedy again, but to
+have recourse to some other medicine. What, then, was the position of
+Mr. Gladstone's Government at the close of the election of 1885? What
+were the considerations presented to them as supreme supervisors and
+guardians of the British Empire? They found that vast colonial empire
+tranquil and loyal beyond previous expectation--the greater colonies
+satisfied with their existing position; the lesser expecting that as
+they grew up to manhood they would be treated as men, and emancipated
+from childish restraints. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were
+contented with their sturdy dependent independence, loyal to the
+backbone. One member only stood aloof, sulky and dissatisfied, and
+though in law integrally united with the dominant community, practically
+was dissociated from it by forming within Parliament (the controlling
+body of the whole) a separate section, of which the whole aim was to
+fetter the action of the entire supreme body in order to bring to an
+external severance the practical disunion which existed between that
+member and Great Britain. This member--Ireland--as compared with other
+parts of the empire, was small and insignificant; measured against Great
+Britain, its population was five millions to thirty-one millions, and
+its estimated capital was only one twenty-fourth part of the capital of
+the United Kingdom. Measured against Australia, its trade with Great
+Britain was almost insignificant. Its importance arose from the force of
+public opinion in Great Britain, which deemed England pledged to protect
+the party in Ireland which desired the Union to be maintained, and from
+the power of obstructing English legislation through the medium of the
+Irish contingent, willing and ready on every occasion to intervene in
+English debates. The first step to be taken obviously was to find out
+what the great majority of Irish members wanted. The answer was, that
+they would be contented to quit the British Parliament on having a
+Parliament established on College Green, with full powers of local
+government, and that they would accept on behalf of their country a
+certain fixed annual sum to be paid to the Imperial Exchequer, on
+condition that such sum should not be increased without the consent of
+the Irish representatives. Here there were two great points gained
+without any sacrifice of principle. Ireland could not be said to be
+taxed without representation when her representatives agreed to a
+certain fixed sum to be paid till altered with their consent; while at
+the same time all risk of obstruction to English legislation by Irish
+means was removed by the proposal that the Irish representatives should
+exercise local powers in Dublin instead of imperial powers at
+Westminster.
+
+On the basis of the above arrangement the Bill of Mr. Gladstone was
+founded. Absolute local autonomy was conferred on Ireland; the assent of
+the Irish members to quit the Imperial Parliament was accepted; and the
+Bill provided that after a certain day the representative Irish peers
+should cease to sit in the House of Lords, and the Irish members vacate
+their places in the House of Commons. Provisions were then made for the
+absorption in the Irish Legislative Body of both the Irish
+representative peers and Irish members.
+
+The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament was maintained by an
+express provision excepting from any interference on the part of Irish
+Legislature all imperial powers, and declaring any enactment void which
+infringed that provision; further, an enactment was inserted for the
+purpose of securing to the English Legislature in the last resource the
+absolute power to make any law for the government of Ireland, and
+therefore to repeal, or suspend, the Irish Constitution.
+
+Technically these reservations of supremacy to the English Legislature
+were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of constitutional law that a
+sovereign Legislature, such as the Queen and two Houses of Parliament in
+England, cannot bind their successors, and consequently can repeal or
+alter any law, however fundamental, and annul any restrictions on
+alteration, however strongly expressed. Practically they were never
+likely to be called into operation, as it is the custom of Parliament to
+adhere, under all but the most extraordinary and unforeseen
+circumstances, to any compact made by Act of Parliament between itself
+and any subordinate legislative body. The Irish Legislature was
+subjected to the same controlling power which has for centuries been
+applied to prevent any excess of jurisdiction in our Colonial
+Legislatures, by a direction that an appeal as to the constitutionality
+of any laws which they might pass should lie to the Judicial Committee
+of the Privy Council. This supremacy of the imperial judicial power over
+the action of the Colonial Legislatures was a system which the founders
+of the American Constitution copied in the establishment of their
+supreme Court, and thereby secured for that legislative system a
+stability which has defied the assaults of faction and the strain of
+civil war.
+
+The Executive Government of Ireland was continued in her Majesty, and
+was to be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on her behalf, by the aid of
+such officers and such Council as her Majesty might from time to time
+see fit. The initiative power of recommending taxation was also vested
+in the Queen, and delegated to the Lord Lieutenant. These clauses are
+co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local
+powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers
+to the Imperial Legislature. The Governor is an imperial officer, and
+will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny,
+and to veto any Bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the
+other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided
+by the advice of the Irish Executive Council. The system is self-acting.
+The Governor, for local purposes, must have a Council which is in
+harmony with the Legislative Body. If the Governor and a Council,
+supported by the Legislative Body, do not agree, the Governor must give
+way, unless he can, by dismissing his Council, and dissolving the
+Legislative Body, obtain both a Council and a Legislative Body which
+will support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case is
+different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and in the
+last resort a determination of the Executive Council, backed by the
+Legislative Body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act of
+rebellion on the part of the Irish people, and be dealt with
+accordingly.
+
+In acceding to the claims of the National Party for Home Rule in Ireland
+another question had to be considered: the demands of the English
+garrison, as it is called--or, in plain words, of the class of Irish
+landlords--for protection. They urged that to grant Home Rule in Ireland
+would be to hand them over to their enemies, their tenants, and to lead
+to an immediate, or to all events a proximate, confiscation of their
+properties. Without admitting the truth of these apprehensions to the
+full extent, or indeed to any great extent, it was undoubtedly felt by
+the framers of the Home Rule Bill that a moral obligation rested on the
+Imperial Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations
+attending the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a
+question so fraught with danger, so involved in difficulty, to be
+determined by the Irish Government on its first entry on official
+existence. Hence the Land Bill, the scheme of which was to frame a
+system under which the tenants, by being made owners of the soil, should
+become interested as a class in the maintenance of social order, while
+the landlords should be enabled to rid themselves on fair terms of their
+estates, in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for
+pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the
+responsibilities of ownership. Of the land scheme brought into
+Parliament in 1886, it need only here be said that it proposed to lend
+the Irish Government 3 per cent. stock at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, the
+Irish Government undertaking to purchase, from any Irish landlord
+desirous of selling, his estate at (as a general rule) twenty years'
+purchase on the net rental. The money thus disbursed by the Irish
+Government was repaid to them by an annuity, payable by the tenant for
+forty-nine years, of 4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times
+the gross rental; the result being that, were the Bill passed into law,
+the tenant would become immediate owner of the land, subject to the
+payment of an annuity considerably less than the previous rent--that the
+Irish Government would make a considerable profit on the transaction,
+inasmuch as it would receive from the tenant interest calculated on the
+basis of the _gross_ rental, whilst it would pay to the English
+Government interest calculated on the basis of the _net_ rental--and
+that the English Government would sustain no loss if the interest were
+duly received by them.
+
+The effect of such a plan appears almost magical: Ireland is transformed
+at one stroke from a nation of landlords into a nation of peasant
+proprietors--apparently without loss to any one, and with gain to
+everybody concerned, except the British Government, who neither gain nor
+lose in the matter. The practicability, however, of such a scheme
+depends altogether on the security against loss afforded to the British
+tax-payer, for he is industrious and heavily burdened, and cannot be
+expected to assent to any plan which will land him in any appreciable
+loss. Here it is that the plan of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill differs from
+all other previous plans. Act after Act has been passed enabling the
+tenant to borrow money from the British Government on the security of
+the holding, for the purpose of enabling him to purchase the fee-simple.
+In such transactions the British Government becomes the mortgagee, and
+can only recover its money, if default is made in payment, by ejecting
+the tenant and becoming the landlord. In proportion, then, as any
+existing purchase Act succeeds, in the same proportion the risk of the
+British taxpayer increases. He is ever placed in the most invidious of
+all lights; instead of posing as the generous benefactor who holds forth
+his hand to rescue the landlord and tenant from an intolerable position,
+he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the still more
+hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant of his holding, is
+seeking to introduce another man into property which really belongs to
+the ejected tenant. Such a position may be endurable when the number of
+purchasing tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform
+in Ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable
+difference in the relations of landlord and tenant; still more, if it
+become general. Now, what is the remedy of such a state of things?
+Surely to interpose the Irish Government between the Irish debtor and
+his English creditor, and to provide that the Irish revenues in bulk,
+not the individual holdings of each tenant, shall be the security for
+the English creditor. This was the scheme embodied in the Land Act of
+1886. The punctual payment of all money due from the Government of
+Ireland to the Government of Great Britain was to have been secured by
+the continuance in the hands of the British Government of the Excise and
+Customs duties, and by the appointment of an Imperial Receiver-General,
+assisted by subordinate officers, and protected by an Imperial Court.
+This officer would have received not only all the imperial taxes, but
+also the local taxes; and it would have been his duty to satisfy the
+claims of the British Government before he allowed any sum to pass into
+the Irish Exchequer. In effect, the British Government, in relation to
+the levying of imperial taxes, would have stood in the same relation to
+Ireland as Congress does to the United States in respect to the levying
+of federal taxes. The fiscal unity of Great Britain and Ireland would
+have been in this way secured, and the British Government protected
+against any loss of interest for the large sums to be expended in
+carrying into effect in Ireland any agrarian reform worthy of the name.
+
+The Irish Bills of 1886, as above represented, had at least three
+recommendations:
+
+1. They created a state of things in Ireland under which it was possible
+to make a complete agrarian reform without exposing the English
+Exchequer to any appreciable risk.
+
+2. They enabled the Irish to govern themselves as respects local
+matters, while preserving intact the supremacy of the British Parliament
+and the integrity of the Empire.
+
+3. They enabled the British Parliament to govern the British Empire
+without any obstructive Irish interference.
+
+To the first of these propositions no attempt at an answer has been
+made. The Land Bill was never considered on its merits; indeed, was
+never practically discussed, but was at once swept into oblivion by the
+wave which overwhelmed the Home Rule Bill.
+
+The contention against the second proposition was concerned in proving
+that the supremacy of the British Parliament was not maintained: the
+practical answer to this objection has been given above. Pushed to its
+utmost, it could only amount to proof that an amendment ought to have
+been introduced in Committee, declaring, in words better selected than
+those introduced for that purpose in the Bill, that nothing in the Act
+should affect the supremacy of the British Parliament. In short, the
+whole discussion here necessarily resolved itself into a mere verbal
+squabble as to the construction of a clause in a Bill not yet in
+Committee, and had no bottom or substance.
+
+It was also urged that the concession of self-government to Ireland was
+but another mode of handing over the Loyalist party--or, as it is
+sometimes called, the English garrison--to the tender mercies of the
+Parnellites. The reply to this would seem to be, that as respects
+property the Land Bill effectually prevented any interference of the
+Irish Parliament with the land; nay, more, enabled any Irishman desirous
+of turning his land into money to do so on the most advantageous terms
+that ever had been--and with a falling market it may be confidently
+prophesied ever can be--offered to the Irish landlord; while as respect
+life and liberty, were it possible that they should be endangered, it
+was the duty of the imperial officer, the Lord Lieutenant, to take means
+for the preservation of peace and good order; and behind him, to enforce
+his behests, stand the strong battalions who, to our sorrow be it
+spoken, have so often been called upon to put down disturbance and
+anarchy in Ireland.
+
+Competing plans have been put forward, with more or less detail, for
+governing Ireland. The suggestion that Ireland should be governed as a
+_Crown_ colony need only be mentioned to be rejected. It means in
+effect, that Ireland should sink from the rank of an equal or
+independent member of the British Empire to the grade of the most
+dependent of her colonies, and should be governed despotically by
+English officials, without representation in the English Parliament or
+any machinery of local self-government. Another proposal has been to
+give four provincial Governments to Ireland, limiting their powers to
+local rating, education, and legislation in respect of matters which
+form the subjects of private Bill legislation at present; in fact, to
+place them somewhat on the footing of the provinces of Canada, while
+reserving to the English Parliament the powers vested in the Dominion of
+Canada. Such a scheme would seem adapted to whet the appetite of the
+Irish for nationality, without supplying them with any portion of the
+real article. It would supply no basis on which a system of agrarian
+reform could be founded, as it would be impossible to leave the
+determination of a local question, which is a unit in its dangers and
+its difficulties, to four different Legislatures; above all, the hinge
+on which the question turns--the sufficiency of the security for the
+British taxpayer--could not be afforded by provincial resources. Indeed,
+no alternative for the Land Bill of 1886 has been suggested which does
+not err in one of the following points: either it pledges English credit
+on insufficient security, or it requires the landowners to accept Irish
+debentures or some form of Irish paper money at par; in other words, it
+makes English taxes a fund for relieving Irish landlords, or else it
+compels the Irish landowner, if he sells at all, to sell at an
+inadequate price. Before parting with Canada, it may be worth while
+noticing that another, and more feasible, alternative is to imitate more
+closely the Canadian Constitution, and to vest the central or Dominion
+powers in a central Legislature in Dublin, parcelling out the provincial
+powers, as they have been called, amongst several provincial
+Legislatures. This scheme might be made available as a means of
+protecting Ulster from the supposed danger of undue interference from
+the Central Government, and for making, possibly, other diversities in
+the local administration of various parts of Ireland in order to meet
+special local exigencies.
+
+A leading writer among the dissentient Liberals has intimated that one
+of two forms of representative colonial government might be imposed on
+Ireland--either the form in which the executive is conducted by
+colonial officials, or the form of the great irresponsible colonies. The
+first of these forms is open to the objection, that it perpetuates those
+struggles between English executive measures and Irish opinion which has
+made Ireland for centuries ungovernable, and led to the establishment of
+the union and destruction of Irish independence in 1800; the second
+proposal would destroy the fiscal unity of the empire--leave the
+agrarian feud unextinguished, and aggravate the objections which have
+been urged against the Home Rule Bill of 1886. A question still remains,
+in relation to the _form_ of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, which would not
+have deserved attention but for the prominence given to it in some of
+the discussions upon the subject. The Bill of 1886 provides "that the
+Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good government of
+Ireland," but subjects their power to numerous exceptions and
+restrictions. The Act establishing the Dominion of Canada enumerates
+various matters in respect of which the Legislature of Canada is to have
+exclusive power, but prefaces the enumeration with a clause "that the
+Dominion Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good
+government of Canada in relation to all matters not within the
+jurisdiction of the provincial Legislatures, although such matters may
+not be specially mentioned." In effect, therefore, the difference
+between the Irish Bill and the Canadian Act is one of expression and not
+of substance, and, although the Bill is more accurate in its form, it
+would scarcely be worth while to insist on legislating by exception
+instead of by enumeration if, by the substitution of the latter form for
+the former, any material opposition would be conciliated.
+
+What, then, are the conclusions intended to be drawn from the foregoing
+premises?
+
+1. That coercion is played out, and can no longer be regarded as a
+remedy for the evils of Irish misrule.
+
+2. That some alternative must be found, and that the only alternative
+within the range of practical politics is some form of Home Rule.
+
+3. That there is no reason for thinking that the grant of Home Rule to
+Ireland--a member only, and not one of the most important members, of
+the British Empire--will in any way dismember, or even in the slightest
+degree risk the dismemberment of the Empire.
+
+4. That Home Rule presupposes and admits the supremacy of the British
+Parliament.
+
+5. That theory is in favour of Home Rule, as the nationality of Ireland
+is distinct, and justifies a desire for local independence; while the
+establishment of Home Rule is a necessary condition to the effectual
+removal of agrarian disturbances in Ireland.
+
+6. That precedent is in favour of granting Home Rule to Ireland--_e.g._
+the success of the new Constitution in Austria-Hungary, and the happy
+effects resulting from the establishment of the Dominion of Canada.
+
+7. That the particular form of Home Rule granted is comparatively
+immaterial.
+
+8. That the Home Rule Bill of 1886 may readily be amended in such a
+manner as to satisfy all real and unpartisan objectors.
+
+9. That the Land Bill of 1886 is the best that has ever been devised,
+having regard to the advantages offered to the new Irish Government, the
+landlord, and the tenant.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 60: Reprinted by permission, with certain omissions, from the
+_Contemporary Review_, August, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 61: "Home Rule and Imperial Unity:" _Contemporary Review_,
+March, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Mill on _Representative Government_, p. 310.]
+
+[Footnote 63: See _Statesman's Year-Book_: Switzerland and Germany.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Heeren's _Political System of Europe_, p. 152.]
+
+[Footnote 65: _Memoirs of Count Beust_, vol. i., Introduction, p.
+xliii.]
+
+[Footnote 66: _Statesman's Year-Book._]
+
+[Footnote 67: The Emperor of Austria is the head of the empire, with the
+title of King in Hungary. Austria-Hungary is treated as a federal, not
+as an imperial union, on the ground that Austria was never rightfully a
+dominant community over Hungary.]
+
+[Footnote 68: _Representative Government_, p. 295.]
+
+
+
+
+THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION[69]
+
+BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
+
+
+For half a century or more no question of English domestic politics has
+excited so much interest outside England as that question of resettling
+her relations with Ireland, which was fought over in the last
+Parliament, and still confronts the Parliament that has lately been
+elected. Apart from its dramatic interest, apart from its influence on
+the fortune of parties, and its effect on the imperial position of Great
+Britain, it involves so many large principles of statesmanship, and
+raises so many delicate points of constitutional law, as to deserve the
+study of philosophical thinkers no less than of practical politicians in
+every free country.
+
+The circumstances which led to the introduction of the Government of
+Ireland Bill, in April, 1886, are familiar to Americans as well as
+Englishmen. Ever since the crowns and parliaments of Great Britain and
+Ireland were united, in A.D. 1800, there has been in Ireland a party
+which protested against that union as fraudulently obtained and
+inexpedient in itself. For many years this party, led by Daniel
+O'Connell, maintained an agitation for Repeal. After his death a more
+extreme section, which sought the complete independence of Ireland,
+raised the insurrection of 1848, and subsequently, under the guidance of
+other hands, formed the Fenian conspiracy, whose projected insurrection
+was nipped in the bud in 1867, though the conspiracy continued to menace
+the Government and the tranquillity of the island. In 1872 the Home Rule
+party was formed, demanding, not the Repeal of the Union, but the
+creation of an Irish Legislature, and the agitation, conducted in
+Parliament in a more systematic and persistent way than heretofore, took
+also a legitimate constitutional form. To this demand English and Scotch
+opinion was at first almost unanimously opposed. At the General Election
+of 1880, which, however, turned mainly on the foreign policy of Lord
+Beaconsfield's Government, not more than three or four members were
+returned by constituencies in Great Britain who professed to consider
+Home Rule as even an open question. All through the Parliament, which
+sat from 1880 till 1885, the Nationalist party, led by Mr. Parnell, and
+including at first less than half, ultimately about half, of the Irish
+members, was in constant and generally bitter opposition to the
+Government of Mr. Gladstone. But during these five years a steady,
+although silent and often unconscious, process of change was passing in
+the minds of English and Scotch members, especially Liberal members, due
+to their growing sense of the mistakes which Parliament committed in
+handling Irish questions, and of the hopelessness of the efforts which
+the Executive was making to pacify the country on the old methods. The
+adoption of a Home Rule policy by one of the great English parties was,
+therefore, not so sudden a change as it seemed. The process had been
+going on for years, though in its earlier stages it was so gradual and
+so unwelcome as to be faintly felt and reluctantly admitted by the minds
+that were undergoing it. In the spring of 1886 the question could be no
+longer evaded or postponed. It was necessary to choose between one of
+two courses; the refusal of the demand for self-government, coupled with
+the introduction of a severe Coercion Bill, or the concession of it by
+the introduction of a Home Rule Bill. There were some few who suggested,
+as a third course, the granting of a limited measure of local
+institutions, such as county boards; but most people felt, as did Mr.
+Gladstone's Ministry, that this plan would have had most of the dangers
+and few of the advantages of either of the two others.
+
+How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into the House of Commons
+on April 8th, amid circumstances of curiosity and excitement
+unparalleled since 1832; how, after debates of almost unprecedented
+length, it was defeated in June, by a majority of thirty; how the policy
+it embodied was brought before the country at the General Election, and
+failed to win approval--all this is too well known to need
+recapitulation here. But the causes of the disaster have not been well
+understood, for it is only now--now, when the smoke of the battle has
+cleared away from the field--that these causes have begun to stand
+revealed in their true proportions.
+
+Besides some circumstances attending the production of the Bill, to
+which I shall refer presently, and which told heavily against it, there
+were three feelings which worked upon men's minds, disposing them to
+reject it.
+
+The first of these was dislike and fear of the Irish Nationalist
+members. In the previous House of Commons this party had been uniformly
+and bitterly hostile to the Liberal Government. Measures intended for
+the good of Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been ungraciously
+received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no thanks were
+due--inadequate concessions, which must be made the starting-point for
+fresh demands. Obstruction had been freely practised to defeat not only
+bills restraining the liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other
+measures. Some few members of the Irish party had systematically sought
+to delay all English and Scotch legislation, and, in fact, to bring the
+work of Parliament to a dead stop. Much violent language had been used,
+even where the provocation was slight. The outbreaks of crime which had
+repeatedly occurred in Ireland had been, not, indeed, defended, but so
+often passed over in silence by Nationalist speakers, that English
+opinion was inclined to hold them practically responsible for disorders
+which, so it was thought, they had neither wished nor tried to prevent.
+(I am, of course, expressing no opinion as to the justice of this view,
+nor as to the excuses to be made for the Parliamentary tactics of the
+Irish party, but merely stating how their conduct struck many
+Englishmen.) There could be no doubt as to the hostility which they,
+still less as to that which their fellow-countrymen in the United
+States, had expressed toward England, for they had openly wished success
+to Russia while war seemed impending with her, and the so-called Mahdi
+of the Soudan was vociferously cheered at many a Nationalist meeting. At
+the Election of 1885 they had done their utmost to defeat Liberal
+candidates in every English and Scotch constituency where there existed
+a body of Irish voters, and had thrown some twenty seats or more into
+the hands of the Tories. Now, to many Englishmen, the proposal to create
+an Irish Parliament seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand
+over to these Irish members the government of Ireland, with all the
+opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland
+and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the
+tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to
+extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule
+had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would contain
+different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr.
+Parnell's nominees. Neither of these arguments could overcome the
+suspicious antipathy which many Englishmen felt, nor dissolve the
+association in their minds between the Nationalist leaders and the
+forces of disorder. The Parnellites (thus they reasoned) are bad men;
+what they seek is therefore likely to be bad, and whether bad in itself
+or not, they will make a bad use of it. In such reasonings there was
+more of sentiment and prejudice than of reason, but sentiment and
+prejudice are proverbially harder than arguments to expel from minds
+where they have made a lodgment.
+
+The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial grounds for
+alarm. As everybody knows, she is not, either in religion or in blood,
+or in feelings and ideas, a homogeneous country. Three-fourths of the
+people are Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant
+fourth subdivided into bodies not fond of one another, who have little
+community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish colony in Ulster, many
+English families have settled here and there through the country. They
+have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and
+many of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since they
+came, still look on themselves as rather English than Irish. The last
+fifty years, whose wonderful changes have in most parts of the world
+tended to unite and weld into one compact body the inhabitants of each
+part of the earth's surface, connecting them by the ties of commerce,
+and of a far easier and swifter intercourse than was formerly possible,
+have in Ireland worked in the opposite direction. It has become more and
+more the habit of the richer class in Ireland to go to England for its
+enjoyment, and to feel itself socially rather English than Irish. Thus
+the chasm between the immigrants and the aborigines has grown deeper.
+The upper class has not that Irish patriotism which it showed in the
+days of the National Irish Parliament (1782-1800), and while there is
+thus less of a common national feeling to draw rich and poor together,
+the strife of landlords and tenants has continued, irritating the minds
+of both parties, and gathering them into two hostile camps. As everybody
+knows, the Nationalist agitation has been intimately associated with the
+Land agitation--has, in fact, found a strong motive-force in the desire
+of the tenants to have their rents reduced, and themselves secured
+against eviction. Now, many people in England assumed that an Irish
+Parliament would be under the control of the tenants and the humbler
+class generally, and would therefore be hostile to the landlords. They
+went farther, and made the much bolder assumption that as such a
+Parliament would be chosen by electors, most of whom were Roman
+Catholics, it would be under the control of the Catholic priesthood, and
+hostile to Protestants. Thus they supposed that the grant of
+self-government to Ireland would mean the abandonment of the upper and
+wealthier class, the landlords and the Protestants, to the tender
+mercies of their enemies. Such abandonment, it was proclaimed on a
+thousand platforms, would be disgraceful in itself, dishonouring to
+England, a betrayal of the very men who had stood by her in the past,
+and were prepared to stand by her in the future, if only she would stand
+by them. It was, of course, replied by the defenders of the Home Rule
+Bill, that what the so-called English party in Ireland really stood by
+was their own ascendency over the Irish masses--an oppressive
+ascendency, which had caused most of the disorders of the country. As to
+religion, there were many Protestants besides Mr. Parnell himself among
+the Nationalist leaders. There was no ill-feeling (except in Ulster)
+between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ireland. There was no reason
+to expect that either the Catholic hierarchy or the priesthood generally
+would be supreme in an Irish Parliament, and much reason to expect the
+contrary. As regards Ulster, where, no doubt, there were special
+difficulties, due to the bitter antagonism of the Orangemen (not of the
+Protestants generally) and Catholics, Mr. Gladstone had undertaken to
+consider any special provisions which could be suggested as proper to
+meet those difficulties. These replies, however, made little impression.
+They were pronounced, and pronounced all the more confidently the more
+ignorant of Ireland the speaker was, to be too hypothetical. To many
+Englishmen the case seemed to be one of two hostile factions contending
+in Ireland for the last sixty years, and that the gift of
+self-government might enable one of them to tyrannize over the other.
+True, that party was the majority, and, according to the principles of
+democratic government, therefore entitled to prevail. But it is one
+thing to admit a principle and another to consent to its application.
+The minority had the sympathy of the upper classes in England, because
+the minority contained the landlords. It had the sympathy of a part of
+the middle class, because it contained the Protestants. And of those
+Englishmen who were impartial as between the Irish factions, there were
+some who held that England must in any case remain responsible for the
+internal peace and the just government of Ireland, and could not grant
+powers whose possession might tempt the one party to injustice, and the
+other to resist injustice by violence.
+
+There was another anticipation, another forecast of evils to follow,
+which told most of all upon English opinion. This was the notion that
+Home Rule was only a stage in the road to the complete separation of the
+two islands. The argument was conceived as follows: "The motive passions
+of the Irish agitation have all along been hatred toward England and a
+desire to make Ireland a nation, holding her independent place among the
+nations of the world. This design was proclaimed by the Young Irelanders
+of 1848 and by the Fenian rebels of 1866; it has been avowed, in
+intervals of candour, by the present Nationalists themselves. The grant
+of an Irish Parliament will stimulate rather than appease this thirst
+for separate national existence. The nearer complete independence seems,
+the more will it be desired. Hatred to England will still be an active
+force, because the amount of control which England retains will irritate
+Irish pride, as well as limit Irish action; while all the misfortunes
+which may befall the new Irish Government will be blamed, not on its own
+imprudence, but on the English connection. And as the motives for
+seeking separation will remain, so the prospect of obtaining it will
+seem better. Agitation will have a better vantage-ground in an Irish
+Parliament than it formerly had among the Irish members of a British
+Legislature; and if actual resistance to the Queen's authority should be
+attempted, it will be attempted under conditions more favourable than
+the present, because the rebels will have in their hands the machinery
+of Irish Government, large financial resources, and a _prima facie_
+title to represent the will of the Irish people. As against a rebellious
+party in Ireland, England has now two advantages--an advantage of
+theory, an advantage of fact. The advantage of theory is that she does
+not admit Ireland to be a distinct nation, but maintains that in the
+United Kingdom there is but one nation, whereof some inhabit Great
+Britain and some Ireland. The advantage of fact is that, through her
+control of the constabulary, the magistrates, the courts of justice,
+and, in fine, the whole administrative system of Ireland, she can easily
+quell insurrectionary movements. By creating an Irish Parliament and
+Government she would strip herself of both these advantages."
+
+I need hardly say that I do not admit the fairness of this statement of
+the case, because some of the premises are untrue, and because it
+misrepresents the nature of the Irish Government which Mr. Gladstone's
+Bill would have created. But I am trying to state the case as it was
+sedulously and skilfully presented to Englishmen. And it told all the
+more upon English waverers, because the considerations above mentioned
+seemed, if well founded, to destroy and cut away the chief ground on
+which Home Rule had been advocated, viz. that it would relieve England
+from the constant pressure of Irish discontent and agitation, and bring
+about a time of tranquillity, permitting good feeling to grow up between
+the peoples. If Home Rule was, after all, to be nothing more than a
+half-way house to independence, an Irish Parliament only a means of
+extorting a more complete emancipation from imperial control, was it not
+much better to keep things as they were, and go on enduring evils, the
+worst of which were known already? Hence the advocates of the Bill
+denied not the weight of the argument, but its applicability.
+Separation, they urged, is impossible, for it is contrary to the nature
+of things, which indicates that the two islands must go together. It is
+not desired by the Irish people, for it would injure them far more than
+it could possibly injure England, since Ireland finds in England the
+only market for her produce, the only source whence capital flows to
+her. A small revolutionary party has, no doubt, conspired to obtain it.
+But the only sympathy they received was due to the fact that the
+legitimate demand of Ireland for a recognition of her national feeling
+and for the management of her own local affairs was contemptuously
+ignored by England. The concession of that demand will banish the notion
+even from those minds which now entertain it, whereas its continued
+refusal may perpetuate that alienation of feeling which is at the bottom
+of all the mischief, the one force that makes for separation.
+
+It is no part of my present purpose to examine these arguments and
+counter arguments, but only to show what were the grounds on which a
+majority of the English voters refused to pronounce in favour of the
+Home Rule Bill. The reader will have observed that the issues raised
+were not only numerous, but full of difficulty. They were issues of
+fact, involving a knowledge both of the past history of Ireland and of
+her present state. They were also issues of inference, for even
+supposing the broad facts to be ascertained, these facts were
+susceptible of different interpretations, and men might, and did,
+honestly draw opposite conclusions from them. A more obscure and
+complicated problem, or rather group of problems, has seldom been
+presented to a nation for its decision. But the nation did not possess
+the requisite knowledge. Closely connected as Ireland seems to be with
+England, long as the Irish question has been a main trouble in English
+politics, the English and Scottish people know amazingly little about
+Ireland. Even in the upper class, you meet with comparatively few
+persons who have set foot on Irish soil, and, of course, far fewer who
+have ever examined the condition of the island and the sources of her
+discontent. Irish history, which is, no doubt, dismal reading, is a
+blank page to the English. In January, 1886, one found scarce any
+politicians who had ever heard of the Irish Parliament of 1782. And in
+that year, 1886, an Englishman anxious to discover the real state of the
+country did not know where to go for information. What appeared in the
+English newspapers, or, rather, in the one English newspaper which keeps
+a standing "own correspondent" in Dublin, was (as it still is) a grossly
+and almost avowedly partisan report, in which opinions are skilfully
+mixed with so-called facts, selected, consciously or unconsciously, to
+support the writer's view. The Nationalist press is, of course, not less
+strongly partisan on its own side, so that not merely an average
+Englishman, but even the editor of an English newspaper, who desires to
+ascertain the true state of matters and place it before his English
+readers, has had, until within the last few months, when events in
+Ireland began to be fully reported in Great Britain, no better means at
+his disposal for understanding Ireland than for understanding Bulgaria.
+I do not dwell upon this ignorance as an argument for Home Rule, though,
+of course, it is often so used. I merely wish to explain the
+bewilderment in which Englishmen found themselves when required to
+settle by their votes a question of immense difficulty. Many, on both
+sides, simply followed their party banners. Tories voted for Lord
+Salisbury; thorough-going admirers of Mr. Gladstone voted for Mr.
+Gladstone. But there was on the Liberal side a great mass who were
+utterly perplexed by the position. Contradictory statements of fact, as
+well as contradictory arguments, were flung at their heads in
+distracting profusion. They felt themselves unable to determine what was
+true and who was right. But one thing seemed clear to them. The policy
+of Home Rule was a new policy. They had been accustomed to censure and
+oppose it. Only nine months before, the Irish Nationalists had
+emphasized their hostility to the Liberal party by doing their utmost to
+defeat Liberal candidates in English constituencies. Hence, when it was
+proclaimed that Home Rule was the true remedy which the Liberal party
+must accept, they were startled and discomposed.
+
+Now, the English are not a nimble-minded people. They cannot, to use a
+familiar metaphor, turn round in their own length. Their momentum is
+such as to carry them on for some distance in the direction wherein they
+have been moving, even after the order to stop has been given. They need
+time to appreciate, digest, and comprehend a new proposition. Timid they
+are not, nor, perhaps, exceptionally cautious, but they do not like to
+be hurried, and insist on looking at a proposition for a good while
+before they come to a decision regarding it. It is one of the qualities
+which make them a great people. As has been observed, this proposition
+was novel, was most serious, and raised questions which they felt that
+their knowledge was insufficient to determine. Accordingly, a certain
+section of the Liberal party refused to accept it. A great number,
+probably the majority, of these doubtful men abstained from voting.
+Others voted against the Home Rule Liberal candidates, not necessarily
+because they condemned the policy, but because, as they were not
+satisfied that it was right, they deemed delay a less evil than the
+committal of the nation to a new departure, which might prove
+irrevocable.
+
+It must not, however, be supposed that it was only hesitation which
+drove many Liberals into the host arrayed against the Irish Government
+Bill. I have already said that among the leaders there were some, and
+those men of great influence, who condemned its principles. This was
+true also of a considerable, though a relatively smaller, section of the
+rank and file. And it was only what might have been expected. The
+proposal to undo much of the work done in 1800, to alter fundamentally
+the system which had for eighty-six years regulated the relations of the
+two islands, by setting up a Parliament in Ireland, was a proposal which
+not only had not formed a part of the accepted creed of the Liberal
+party, but fell outside party lines altogether. It might, no doubt, be
+argued, as was actually done, and as those who understand the history of
+the Liberal party have more and more come to see, that Liberal
+principles recommended it, since they involve faith in the people, and
+faith in the curative tendency of local self-government. But this was by
+no means axiomatic. Taking the whole complicated facts of the case, and
+taking Liberalism as it had been practically understood in England, a
+man might in July, 1886, deem himself a good Liberal and yet think that
+the true interests of both peoples would be best served by maintaining
+the existing Parliamentary system. Similarly, there was nothing in
+Toryism or Tory principles to prevent a fair-minded and patriotic Tory
+from approving the Home Rule scheme. It was a return to the older
+institutions of the monarchy, and not inconsistent with any of the
+doctrines which the Tory party had been accustomed to uphold. The
+question, in short, was one of those which cut across ordinary party
+lines, creating new divisions among politicians; and there might have
+been and ought to have been Liberal Home Rulers and Tory Home Rulers,
+Liberal opponents of Home Rule and Tory opponents of Home Rule.
+
+But here comes in a feature, a natural but none the less a regrettable
+feature, of the English party system. As the object of the party in
+opposition is to turn out the party in power and seat itself in their
+place, every Opposition regards with the strongest prejudice the
+measures proposed by a ruling Ministry. Cases sometimes occur where
+these measures are so obviously necessary, or so evidently approved by
+the nation, that the Opposition accepts them. But in general it scans
+them with a hostile eye. Human nature is human nature; and when the
+defeat of Government can be secured by defeating a Government Bill, the
+temptation to the Opposition to secure it is irresistible. Now, the Tory
+party is far more cohesive than the Liberal party, far more obedient to
+its leaders, far less disposed to break into sections, each of which
+thinks and acts for itself. Accordingly, that division of opinion in the
+Tory party which might have been expected, and which would have occurred
+if those who composed the Tory party had been merely so many reflecting
+men, and not members of a closely compacted political organization, did
+not occur. Liberals were divided, as such a question would naturally
+divide them. Tories were not divided; they threw their whole strength
+against the Bill. I am far from suggesting that they did so against
+their consciences. Whatever may be said as to two or three of the
+leaders, whose previous language and conduct seemed to indicate that
+they would themselves, had the election of 1885 gone differently, have
+been inclined to a Home Rule policy, many of the Tory chiefs, as well
+as the great mass of the party, honestly disapproved Mr. Gladstone's
+measure. But their party motives and party affiliations gave it no
+chance of an impartial verdict at their hands. They went into the
+jury-box with an invincible prepossession against the scheme of their
+opponents. When all these difficulties are duly considered, and
+especially when regard is had to those which I have last enumerated, the
+suddenness with which the new policy was launched, and the fact that as
+coming from one party it was sure beforehand of the hostility of the
+other, no surprise can be felt at its fate. Those who, in England, now
+look back over the spring and summer of 1886 are rather surprised that
+it should come so near succeeding. To have been rejected by a majority
+of only thirty in Parliament, and of little over ten per cent. of the
+total number of electors who voted at the general election, is a defeat
+far less severe than any one who knew England would have predicted.
+
+That the decision of the country is regarded by nobody as a final
+decision goes without saying. It was not regarded as final, even in the
+first weeks after it was given. This was not because the majority was
+comparatively small, for a smaller majority the other way would have
+been conclusive. It is because the country had not time enough for full
+consideration and deliberate judgment. The Bill was brought in on April
+14th, the elections began on July 1st; no one can say what might have
+been the result of a long discussion, during which the first feelings of
+alarm (for alarm there was) might have worn off. And the decision is
+without finality, also, because the decision of the country was merely
+against the particular plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and not in favour
+of any alternative plan for dealing with Ireland, most certainly not for
+the coercive method which has since been adopted. One particular
+solution of the Irish problem was refused. The problem still stands
+confronting us, and when other modes of solving it have been in turn
+rejected, the country may come back to this mode.
+
+We may now turn from the past to the future. Yet the account which has
+been given of the feelings and ideas arrayed against the Bill does not
+wholly belong to the past. They are the feelings to which the opponents
+of any plan of self-government for Ireland still appeal, and which will
+have to be removed or softened down before it can be accepted by the
+English. In particular, the probability of separation, and the supposed
+dangers to the Protestants and the landlords from an Irish Parliament,
+will continue to form the themes of controversy so long as the question
+remains unsettled.
+
+What are the prospects of its settlement? What is the position which it
+now occupies? How has it affected the current politics of England?
+
+It broke up the Liberal party in Parliament. The vast numerical majority
+of that party in the country supported, and still supports, Mr.
+Gladstone and the policy of Irish self-government. But the dissentient
+minority includes many men of influence, and constitutes in the House of
+Commons a body of about seventy members, who hold the balance between
+parties. For the present they are leagued with the Tory Ministry to
+resist Home Rule, and their support insures a parliamentary majority to
+that Ministry. But it is, of course, necessary for them to rally to Lord
+Salisbury, not only on Irish questions, but on all questions; for, under
+our English system, a Ministry defeated on any serious issue is bound to
+resign, or dissolve Parliament. Now, to maintain an alliance for a
+special purpose, between members of opposite parties, is a hard matter.
+Agreement about Ireland does not, of itself, help men to agree about
+foreign policy, or bimetallism, or free trade, or changes in land laws,
+or ecclesiastical affairs. When these and other grave questions come up
+in Parliament, the Tory Ministry and their Liberal allies must, on
+every occasion, negotiate a species of concordat, whereby the liberty
+of both is fettered. One party may wish to resist innovation, the other
+to yield to it, or even to anticipate it. Each is obliged to forego
+something in order to humour the other; neither has the pleasure or the
+credit of taking a bold line on its own responsibility. There is, no
+doubt, less difference between the respective tenets of the great
+English parties than there was twenty years ago, when Mr. Disraeli had
+not yet completed the education of one party, and economic laws were
+still revered by the other. But, besides its tenets, each party has its
+tendencies, its sympathies, its moral atmosphere; and these differ so
+widely as to make the co-operation of Tories and Liberals constrained
+and cumbrous. Moreover, there are the men to be considered, the leaders
+on each side, whose jealousies, rivalries, suspicions, personal
+incompatibilities, neither old habits of joint action nor corporate
+party feeling exist to soften. On the whole, therefore, it is unlikely
+that the league of these two parties, united for one question only, and
+that a question which will pass into new phases, can be durable. Either
+the league will dissolve, or the smaller party will be absorbed into the
+larger. In England, as in America, third parties rarely last. The
+attraction of the larger mass is irresistible, and when the crisis which
+created a split or generated a new group has passed, or the opinion the
+new group advocates has been either generally discredited or generally
+adopted, the small party melts away, its older members disappearing from
+public life, its younger ones finding their career in the ranks of one
+of the two great standing armies of politics. If the dissentient, or
+anti-Home Rule, Liberal party lives till the next general election, it
+cannot live longer, for at that election it will be ground to powder
+between the upper and nether millstones of the regular Liberals and the
+regular Tories.
+
+The Irish struggle of 1886 has had another momentous consequence. It
+has brought the Nationalist or Parnellite party into friendly relations
+with the mass of English Liberals. When the Home Rule party was founded
+by Mr. Butt, some fifteen years ago, it had more in common with the
+Liberal than with the Tory party. But as it demanded what both English
+parties were then resolved to refuse, it was forced into antagonism to
+both; and from 1877 onward (Mr. Butt being then dead) the antagonism
+became bitter, and, of course, specially bitter as toward the statesmen
+in power, because it was they who continued to refuse what the
+Nationalists sought. Mr. Parnell has always stated, with perfect
+candour, that he and his friends must fight for their own hand
+unhampered by English alliances, and getting the most they could for
+Ireland from the weakness of either English party. This position they
+still retain. If the Tory party will give them Home Rule, they will help
+the Tory party. However, as the Tory party has gained office by opposing
+Home Rule, this contingency may seem not to lie within the immediate
+future. On the other hand, the Gladstonian Liberals have lost office for
+their advocacy of Home Rule, and now stand pledged to maintain the
+policy they have proclaimed. The Nationalists have, therefore, for the
+first time since the days immediately following the Union of A.D. 1800
+(a measure which the Whigs of those days resisted), a great English
+party admitting the justice of their claim, and inviting them to agitate
+for it by purely constitutional methods. For such an alliance the
+English Liberals are hotly reproached, both by the Tories and by the
+dissentients who follow Lord Harrington and Mr. Chamberlain. They are
+accused of disloyalty to England. The past acts and words of the
+Nationalists are thrown in their teeth, and they are told that in
+supporting the Irish claim they condone such acts, they adopt such
+words. They reply by denying the adoption, and by pointing out that the
+Tories themselves were from 1881 till 1886 in a practical, and often
+very close, though unavowed, Parliamentary alliance with the
+Nationalists in the House of Commons. The student of history will,
+however, conceive that the Liberals have a stronger and higher defence
+than any _tu quoque_. Issues that involve the welfare of peoples are far
+too serious for us to apply to them the same sentiments of personal
+taste and predilection which we follow in inviting a dinner party, or
+selecting companions for a vacation tour. If a man has abused your
+brother, or got drunk in the street, you do not ask him to go with you
+to the Yellowstone Park. But his social offences do not prevent you from
+siding with him in a political convention. So, in politics itself, one
+must distinguish between characters and opinions. If a man has shown
+himself unscrupulous or headstrong, you may properly refuse to vote him
+into office, or to sit in the same Cabinet with him, because you think
+these faults of his dangerous to the country. But if the cause he pleads
+be a just one, you have no more right to be prejudiced against it by his
+conduct than a judge has to be swayed by dislike to the counsel who
+argues a case. There were moderate men in America, who, in the days of
+the anti-slavery movement, cited against it the intemperate language of
+many abolitionists. There were aristocrats in England, who, during the
+struggle for the freedom and unity of Italy, sought to discredit the
+patriotic party by accusing them of tyrannicide. But the sound sense of
+both nations refused to be led away by such arguments, because it held
+those two causes to be in their essence righteous. In all revolutionary
+movements there are elements of excess and violence, which sober men may
+regret, but which must not disturb our judgment as to the substantial
+merits of an issue. The revolutionist of one generation is, like
+Garibaldi or Mazzini, the hero of the next; and the verdict of posterity
+applauds those who, even in his own day, were able to discern the
+justice of the cause under the errors or faults of its champion. Doubly
+is it the duty of a great and far-sighted statesman not to be repelled
+by such errors, when he can, by espousing a revolutionary movement,
+purify it of its revolutionary character, and turn it into a legitimate
+constitutional struggle. This is what Mr. Gladstone has done. If his
+policy be in itself dangerous and disloyal to the true interests of the
+people of our islands, let it be condemned. But if it be the policy
+which has the best promise for the peace, the prosperity, and the mutual
+good will of those peoples, he and those who follow him would be
+culpable indeed were they to be deterred by the condemnation which they
+have so often expressed, and which they still express, for some of the
+past acts of a particular party, from declaring that the aims of that
+party were substantially right aims, and from now pressing upon the
+country what their conscience approves.
+
+However, as the Home Rule Liberals and Nationalists, taken together, are
+in a minority (although a minority which obtains recruits at many
+bye-elections) in the present Parliament, it is not from them that fresh
+proposals are expected. They will, of course, continue to speak, write,
+and agitate on behalf of the views they hold. But practical attempt to
+deal with Irish troubles must for the present come from the Tory
+Ministry; for in the English system of government those who command a
+Parliamentary majority are responsible for legislation as well as
+administration, and are censured not merely if their legislation is bad,
+but if it is not forthcoming when events call for it.
+
+Why, it may be asked, should Lord Salisbury's Government burn its
+fingers over Ireland, as so many governments have burnt their fingers
+before? Why not let Ireland alone, giving to foreign affairs and to
+English and Scottish reforms all the attention which these too much
+neglected matters need?
+
+Well would it be for England, as well as for English Ministries, if
+Ireland could be simply let alone, her maladies left to be healed by the
+soft, slow hand of nature. But Irish troubles call aloud to be dealt
+with, and that promptly. They stand in the way of all other reforms,
+indeed of all other business. Letting alone has been tried, and it has
+succeeded no better, even in times less urgent than the present, than
+the usual policy of coercion followed by concession, or concession
+followed by coercion.
+
+There are three aspects of the Irish question, three channels by which
+the troubles of the "distressful island" stream down upon us, forcing
+whoever now rules or may come to rule in England to attempt some plan
+for dealing with them. I will take them in succession.
+
+The first is the Parliamentary difficulty. In the British House of
+Commons, with its six hundred and seventy members, there are nearly
+ninety Irish Nationalists. They are a well-disciplined body, voting as
+one man, though capable of speaking enough for a thousand. They have no
+interest in English or Scotch or colonial or Indian affairs, but only in
+Irish, and look upon the vote which they have the right of giving upon
+the former solely as a means of furthering their own Irish aims. They
+are, therefore, in the British Parliament not merely a foreign body,
+indifferent to the great British and imperial issues confided to it, but
+a hostile body, opposed to its present constitution, seeking to
+discredit it in its authority over Ireland, and to make more and more
+palpable and incurable the incompetence for Irish business whereof they
+accuse it. Several modes of doing this are open to them. They may, as
+some of the more actively bitter among them did in the Parliaments of
+1874 and 1880, obstruct business by long and frequent speeches, dilatory
+motions, and all those devices which in America are called
+filibustering. The House of Commons may, no doubt, try to check these
+tactics by more stringent rules of procedure, but the attempts already
+made in this direction have had but slight success, and every
+restriction of debate, since it trenches on the freedom of English and
+Scotch no less than of Irish members, injures Parliament as a whole.
+They may disgust the British people with the House of Commons by keeping
+it (as they have done in former years) so constantly occupied with Irish
+business as to leave it little time for English and Scotch measures.
+They may throw the weight of their collective vote into the scale of one
+or other British party, according to the amount of concession it will
+make to them, or, by always voting against the Ministry of the day, they
+may cause frequent and sudden changes of Government. This plan also they
+have followed in time past; for the moment it is not so applicable,
+because the Tories and dissentient Liberals, taken together, possess a
+majority in the House of Commons. But at any moment the alliance of
+those two sections may vanish, or another General Election may leave
+Tories and Liberals so nearly balanced that the Irish vote could turn
+the scale. Whoever reflects on the nature of Parliamentary Government
+will perceive that it is based on the assumption that the members of the
+ruling assembly, however much they may differ on other subjects, agree
+in desiring the strength, dignity, and welfare of the assembly itself,
+and in caring for the main national interests which it controls. He will
+therefore be prepared to expect countless and multiform difficulties in
+working such a Government, where a large section of the assembly seeks
+not to use, but to make useless, its forms and rules--not to preserve,
+but to lower and destroy, its honour, its credit, its efficiency. In
+vain are Irish members blamed for these tactics, for they answer that
+the interests of their own country require them to seek first her
+welfare, which can in their view be secured only by removing her from
+the direct control of what they deem a foreign assembly. Now that the
+demand for Irish self-government has obtained the sympathy of the bulk
+of English Liberals, they are unlikely forthwith to resume the
+systematic obstruction of past years. But they will be able, without
+alienating their English friends, to render the conduct of Parliamentary
+business so difficult that every English Ministry will be forced either
+to crush them, if it can, or to appease them by a series of concessions.
+
+The second difficulty is that of maintaining social order in Ireland.
+What that difficulty is, and whence it arises, every one knows. It is
+chronic, but every second or third winter, when there has been a wet
+season, or the price of live stock declines, it becomes specially acute.
+The tenants refuse to pay rents which they declare to be impossible. The
+landlords, or the harsher among them, try to enforce rents by evictions;
+evictions are resisted by outrages and boycotting. Popular sentiment
+supports those who commit outrages, because it considers the tenantry to
+be engaged in a species of war, a righteous war, against the landlord.
+Evidence can seldom be obtained, and juries acquit in the teeth of
+evidence. Thus the enforcement of the law strains all the resources of
+authority, while a habit of lawlessness and discontent is transmitted
+from generation to generation. Of the remedies proposed for this chronic
+evil the most obvious is the strengthening of the criminal law. We have
+been trying this for more than one hundred years, since Whiteboyism
+appeared, and trying it in vain. Since the Union, Coercion Acts, of more
+or less severity, have been almost always in force in Ireland, passed
+for two or three years, then dropped for a year or two, then renewed in
+a form slightly varying, but always with the same result of driving the
+disease in for a time, but not curing it. Mr. Gladstone proposed to buy
+out the landlords and then leave an Irish Parliament to restore social
+order, with that authority which it would derive from having the will of
+the people behind it; because he held that when the people felt the law
+to be of their own making, and not imposed from without, their sentiment
+would be enlisted on its side, and the necessity for a firm Government
+recognized. This plan, has, however, been rejected, so the choice was
+left of a fresh Coercion Act, or of some scheme, necessarily a costly
+scheme, for getting rid of the source of trouble by transferring the
+land of Ireland to the peasantry. The present Government, while guided
+by Sir M. Hicks-Beach, who had some knowledge of Ireland, did its best
+to persuade the landlords to accept reduced rents, while the Nationalist
+leaders, on their side, sought to restrain the people from outrages. But
+the armistice did not last. The Ministry yielded to the foolish counsels
+of its more violent supporters, and entrusted Irish affairs to the hands
+of a Chief Secretary without previous knowledge of the island. An
+unusually severe Coercion Act has been brought in and passed by the aid
+of the dissentient Liberals. And we now see this Act administered with a
+mixture of virulence and incompetence to which even the dreary annals of
+Irish misgovernment present few parallels. The feeling of the English
+people is rising against the policy carried out in their name. So far
+from being solved, the problem of social order becomes every day more
+acute.
+
+There remains the question of a reform of local government. For many
+years past, every English Ministry has undertaken to frame a measure
+creating a new system of popular rural self-government in England. It is
+the first large task of domestic legislation which we ask from
+Parliament. When such a scheme is proposed, can Ireland be left out of
+it? Should she be left out, the argument that she is being treated
+unequally and unfairly, as compared with England, would gain immense
+force; because the present local government of Ireland is admittedly
+less popular, less efficient, altogether less defensible, than even that
+of England which we are going to reform. If, therefore, the theory that
+the Imperial Parliament is both anxious and able to do its duty by
+Ireland is to be maintained, Ireland, too, must have her scheme of local
+government. And a scheme of local government is a large project, the
+discussion of which must pass into a discussion of the government of the
+island as a whole.
+
+Since, then, we may conclude that whatever Ministry is in power will be
+bound to take up the state of Ireland--since Parliament and the nation
+will be occupied with the subject during the coming sessions fully as
+much as they have been during those that have recently passed--the next
+inquiry is, What will the tendency of opinion and legislation be? Will
+the reasons and forces described above bring us to Home Rule? and if so,
+when, how, and why?
+
+There are grounds for answering these questions in the negative. A
+majority of the House of Commons, including the present Ministry and
+such influential Liberals as Mr. Bright, Lord Hartington, Mr.
+Chamberlain, stand pledged to resist it, and seem--such is the passion
+which controversy engenders--more disposed to resist it than they were
+in 1885. But this ground is less strong than it may appear. We have had
+too many changes of opinion--ay, and of action too--upon Irish affairs
+not to be prepared for further changes. A Ministry in power learns much
+which an Opposition fails to learn. Home Rule is an elastic expression,
+and some of those who were loudest in denouncing Mr. Gladstone's Bill
+will find it easy to explain, should they bring in a Bill of their own
+for giving self-government to Ireland, that their measure is a different
+thing, and free from the objections brought against his. Nor, if such a
+conversion should come, need it be deemed a dishonest one, for events
+are potent teachers, and governments now seek rather to follow than to
+form opinion. Although a decent interval must be allowed, no one will be
+astonished if the Tory leaders should move ere long in the direction
+indicated. Toryism itself, as has been remarked already, contains
+nothing opposed to the idea.
+
+Far greater obstacles exist in the aversion which (as already observed)
+so many Englishmen of both parties have entertained for any scheme which
+should seem to leave the Protestant minority at the mercy of the peasant
+and Roman Catholic majority, and to carry us some way toward the
+ultimate separation of the islands. These alarms are genuine and
+deep-seated. One who (like the present writer) thinks them, if not
+baseless, yet immensely overstrained, is, of course, convinced that they
+may be allayed. But time must first pass, and the plan that is to allay
+them may have to be framed on somewhat different lines from those of Mr.
+Gladstone's measure. It is even possible that a conflict more sharp and
+painful than any of recent years may intervene before a settlement is
+reached.
+
+Nevertheless, great as are the obstacles in the way, bitter as are the
+reproaches with which Mr. Gladstone is pursued by the richer classes in
+England, there is good reason to believe that the current is setting
+toward his policy. In proceeding to state the grounds for this view, I
+must frankly own that I am no longer (as in most of the preceding pages)
+merely setting forth facts on which impartial men in England would
+agree. The forecast which I seek to give may be tinged by my own belief
+that the grant of self-government is the best, if not the only method,
+now open to us of establishing peace between the islands, relieving the
+English Parliament of work it is ill fitted to discharge, allowing
+Ireland opportunities to learn those lessons in politics which her
+people so much need. The future, even the near future, is more than
+usually dim. Yet, if we examine those three branches of the Irish
+question which have been enumerated above, we shall see how naturally,
+in each of them, the concession of self-government seems to open, I will
+not say the most direct, but the least dangerous way, out of our
+troubles.
+
+The Parliamentary difficulty arises from the fact that the
+representatives of Ireland have the feelings of foreigners sitting in a
+foreign assembly, whose honour and usefulness they do not desire. While
+these are their feelings they cannot work properly in it, and it cannot
+work properly with them. The inconvenience may be endured, but the
+English will grow tired of it, and be disposed to rid themselves of it,
+if they see their way to do so without greater mischief. There are but
+two ways out of the difficulty. One is to get rid of the Irish members
+altogether; the other is to make them, by the concession of their just
+demands, contented and loyal members of a truly united Parliament. The
+experience of the Parliament of 1880, which was mainly occupied with
+Irish business, and began, being a strongly Liberal Parliament, with a
+bias toward the Irish popular party, showed how difficult it is for a
+House of Commons which is ignorant of Ireland to legislate wisely for
+it. In the House of Lords there is not a single Nationalist; indeed, up
+till 1886, that exalted chamber contained only one peer, Lord Dalhousie
+(formerly member for Liverpool), who had ever said a word in favour of
+Home Rule. The more that England becomes sensible, as she must become
+sensible, of the deficiencies of the present machinery for appreciating
+the needs and giving effect to the wishes of Irishmen, the more disposed
+will she be to grant them some machinery of their own.
+
+As regards social order, I have shown that the choice which lies before
+the opponents of Home Rule is either to continue the policy of coercing
+the peasantry by severe special legislation, or to remove the source of
+friction by buying out the landlords for the benefit of the tenants. The
+present Ministry have chosen the former alternative, but they dangle
+before the eyes of their supporters some prospect that they may
+ultimately revert to the latter. Now, the only way that has yet been
+pointed out of buying out the landlords, without imposing tremendous
+liabilities of loss upon the British Treasury, is the creation of a
+strong Home Rule Government in Dublin. Supposing, however, that some
+other plan could be discovered, which would avoid the fatal objections
+to which an extension of the plan of the (Salisbury) Land Purchase Act
+of 1885 is open, such a plan would remove one of the chief objections to
+an Irish Parliament, by leaving no estates for such a Parliament to
+confiscate. As for coercion every day, I might say, every bye-election
+shows us how it becomes more and more odious to the British democracy.
+They dislike severity; they dislike the inequality involved in passing
+harsher laws for Ireland than those that apply to England and Scotland.
+They find themselves forced to sympathize with acts of violence in
+Ireland which they would condemn in Great Britain, because these acts
+seem the only way of resisting harsh and unjust laws. When the recoil
+comes, it will be more violent than in former days. The wish to discover
+some other course will be very strong, and the obvious other course will
+be to leave it to an Irish authority to enforce social order in its own
+way--probably a more rough-and-ready way than that of British officials.
+The notion which has possessed most Englishmen, that Irish
+self-government would be another name for anarchy, is curiously
+erroneous. Conflicts there may be, but a vigorous rule will emerge.
+
+Lastly, as to local government. If a popular system is established in
+Ireland--one similar to that which it is proposed to establish in
+England--the control of its assemblies and officials will, over
+four-fifths of the island, fall into Nationalist hands. Their power will
+be enormously increased, for they will then command the machinery of
+administration, and the power of taxing. What with taxing landlords,
+aiding recalcitrant tenants, stopping the wheels of any central
+authority which may displease or oppose them, they will be in so strong
+a position that the creation of an Irish Parliament may appear to be a
+comparatively small further step, may even appear (as the wisest
+Nationalists now think it would prove) in the light of a check upon the
+abuse of local powers. These eventualities will unquestionably, when
+English opinion has realized them, make such a Parliament as the present
+pause before it commits rural local government to the Irish democracy.
+But it could not refuse to do something; and if it tried to restrain
+popular representative bodies by the veto of a bureaucracy in Dublin,
+there would arise occasions for quarrel and irritation more serious than
+now exist.[70] Those who once begin to repair an old and tottering
+building are led on, little by little, into changes they did not at
+starting contemplate. So it will be if once the task is undertaken of
+reforming the confessedly bad and indefensible system of Irish
+administration. We may stop at some half-way house on the way, but Home
+Rule stands at the end of the road.
+
+Supposing, then, that the Nationalist party, retaining its present
+strength and unity, perseveres in its present demands, there is every
+prospect that these demands will be granted. But will it persevere?
+There are among the English Dissentients those who prophesy that it will
+break up, as such parties have broken up before--will lose hope and
+wither away. Or the support of the Irish peasantry may be withdrawn--a
+result which some English politicians expect from a final settlement of
+the land question in the interest of the tenants. Any of these
+contingencies is possible, but at present most improbable. The moment
+when long-cherished aims begin to seem attainable is not that at which
+men are disposed to abandon them.
+
+There are, however, other reasons which suggest the likelihood of a
+change in English sentiment on the whole matter. The surprise with
+which the Bill of last April was received has worn off. The alarm is
+wearing off too. Those who set their teeth at what seemed to them a
+surrender to the Parnellites and their Irish-American allies, having
+relieved their temper by an emphatic No, have begun to ponder things
+more calmly. The English people are listening to the arguments from
+Irish history that are now addressed to them. They will be moved by the
+solid grounds of policy which that history suggests; will understand
+that what they have deemed insensate hatred is the natural result of
+long misgovernment, and will disappear with time and the removal of its
+causes. Many of the best minds of both nations will be at work to
+discover some method of reconciling Irish self-government with imperial
+supremacy and union free from the objections brought against the Bills
+of 1886. It is reasonable to expect that they may greatly improve upon
+these measures, which were prepared under pressure from a clamorous
+Opposition. What Mr. Disraeli once called the historical conscience of
+the country will appreciate those great underlying principles to which
+Mr. Gladstone's policy appeals. It has been accused of being a policy of
+despair; and may have commended itself to some who supported it as being
+simply a means of ridding England of responsibility. But to others it
+seemed, and more truly, a policy of faith; not, indeed, of thoughtless
+optimism, but of faith according to the definition which calls it "the
+substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith,
+by which nations as well as men must live, means nothing less than a
+conviction that great principles, permanent truths of human nature, lie
+at the bottom of all sound politics, and ought to be boldly and
+consistently applied, even when temporary difficulties surround their
+application. Such a principle is the belief in the power of freedom and
+self-government to cure the faults of a nation, in the tendency of
+responsibility to teach wisdom, and to make men see that justice and
+order are the surest sources of prosperity. Such a principle is the
+perception that national hatreds do not live on of themselves, but will
+expire when oppression has ceased, as a fire burns out without fuel.
+Such a principle is the recognition of the force of national sentiment,
+and of the duty of allowing it all the satisfaction that is compatible
+with the maintenance of imperial unity. Such, again, is the appreciation
+of those natural economic laws which show that nations, when disturbing
+passions have ceased, follow their own permanent interests, and that an
+island which finds its chief market in England and draws its capital
+from England will prefer a connection with England to the poverty and
+insignificance of isolation. It is the honour of Mr. Gladstone to have
+built his policy of conciliation upon principles like these, as upon a
+rock; and already the good effects are seen in the new friendliness
+which has arisen between the English masses and the people of Ireland,
+and in the better temper with which, despite the acrimony of some
+prominent politicians, the relations of the two peoples are discussed.
+When one looks round the horizon it is still far from clear; nor can we
+say from which quarter fair weather will arrive. But the air is fresher,
+and the clouds are breaking overhead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+What has happened since the above paragraphs were written, ten months
+ago, has confirmed more quickly and completely than the writer expected
+the forecasts they contain. Home Rule is no longer a word of terror,
+even to those English and Scotch voters who were opposed to it in July,
+1886. Most sensible men in the Tory and Dissentient Liberal camps have
+come to see that it is inevitable; and, while they continue to resist
+it for the sake of what is called consistency, or because they do not
+yet see in what form it is to be granted, they are disposed to regard
+its speedy arrival as the best method of retreat from an indefensible
+position.
+
+The repressive policy which the present Ministry are attempting in
+Ireland--for in the face of their failures one cannot say that they are
+carrying out any policy--is rendering Coercion Acts more and more
+detested by the English people. The actualities of Ireland, the social
+condition of her peasantry, the unwisdom of the dominant caste, the
+incompetence of the bureaucracy which affects to rule her, are being, by
+the full accounts we now receive, brought home to the mind of England
+and Scotland as they never were before, and produce their appropriate
+effect upon the heart and conscience of the people. The recognition by
+the Liberal party of the rights of Ireland, the visits of English
+Liberals to Ireland, the work done by Irishmen in English
+constituencies, are creating a feeling of unity and reciprocal interest
+between the masses of the people on both sides of the Channel without
+example in the seven hundred years that have passed since Strongbow's
+landing.
+
+This was the thing most needed to make Home Rule safe and full of
+promise, because it affords a guarantee that in such political contests
+as may arise in future, the division will not be, as heretofore, between
+the Irish people on the one side and the power of Britain on the other,
+but between two parties, each of which will have adherents in both
+islands. We may now at last hope that national hatreds will vanish; that
+England will unlearn her arrogance and Ireland her suspicion; that the
+basis is being laid for a harmonious co-operation of both nations in
+promoting the welfare and greatness of a common Empire.
+
+Many of the Irish patriots of 1798 and 1848 desired Separation, because
+they thought that Ireland, attached to England, could never be more
+than the obscure satellite of a greater State. When Ireland has been
+heartily welcomed by the democracy of Great Britain as an equal partner,
+the ground for any such desire will have disappeared, and Union will
+rest on a foundation firmer than has ever before existed. Ireland will
+feel, when those rights of self-government have been secured for which
+she has pleaded so long, that she owes them, not only to her own
+tenacity and courage, but to the magnanimity, the justice, and the
+freely given sympathy of the English and Scottish people.
+
+_October_, 1887.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 69: This article, which originally appeared in the American
+_New Princeton Review_, has been added to in a few places, in order to
+bring its narrative of facts up to date.]
+
+[Footnote 70: The experience of the last few months, which has shown us
+rural Boards of Guardians and municipal bodies over four-fifths of
+Ireland displaying their zeal in the Nationalist cause, has amply
+confirmed this anticipation, expressed nearly a year ago.]
+
+
+
+
+SOME ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.[71]
+
+BY JOHN MORLEY.
+
+
+It is a favourite line of argument to show that we have no choice
+between the maintenance of the Union and the concession to Ireland of
+national independence. The evils of Irish independence are universally
+reckoned by Englishmen to be so intolerable that we shall never agree to
+it. The evils of Home Rule are even more intolerable still. Therefore,
+it is said, if we shall never willingly bring the latter upon our heads,
+_a fortiori_ we ought on no account to invite the former. The business
+in hand, however, is not a theorem, but a problem; it is not a thesis to
+be proved, but a malady to be cured; and the world will thank only the
+reasoner who winds up, not with Q.E.D., but with Q.E.F. To reason that a
+patient ought not to take a given medicine because it may possibly cause
+him more pain than some other medicine which he has no intention of
+taking, is curiously oblique logic. The question is not oblique; it is
+direct. Will the operation do more harm to his constitution than the
+slow corrosions of a disorder grown inveterate? Are the conditions of
+the connection between England and Ireland, as laid down in the Act of
+Union, incapable of improvement? Is the present working of these
+conditions more prosperous and hopeful, or happier for Irish order and
+for English institutions, than any practicable proposal that it is
+within the compass of statesmanship to devise, and of civic sense to
+accept and to work? That is the question.
+
+Some people contend that the burden of making out a case rests on the
+advocate of change, and not on those who support things as they are. But
+who supports things as they are? Things as they are have become
+insupportable. If you make any of the constitutional changes that have
+been proposed, we are told, parliamentary government, as Englishmen now
+know it, is at an end; and our critic stands amazed at those "who deem
+it a slighter danger to innovate on the Act of Union than to remodel the
+procedure of the House of Commons." As if that were the alternative.
+Great changes in the rules may do other good things, but no single
+competent authority believes that in this particular they will do the
+thing that we want. We cannot avoid constitutional changes. It is made
+matter of crushing rebuke that the Irish proposals of the late
+Government were an innovation on the old constitution of the realm. But
+everybody knows that, while ancient forms have survived, the last
+hundred years have witnessed a long succession of silent but most
+profound innovations. It was shortsighted to assume that the
+redistribution of political power that took place in 1884-5 was the last
+chapter of the history of constitutional change. It ought to have been
+foreseen that new possessors of power, both Irish and British, would
+press for objects the pursuit of which would certainly involve further
+novelties in the methods and machinery of government. Every given
+innovation must be rigorously scrutinized, but in the mere change or in
+the fact of innovation there is no valid reproach. When one of the
+plans for the better government of Ireland is described as depriving
+parliamentary institutions of their elasticity and strength, as
+weakening the Executive at home, and lessening the power of the country
+to resist foreign attack, no careful observer of the events of the last
+seven years can fail to see that all this evil has already got its grip
+upon us. Mr. Dicey himself admits it. "Great Britain," he says, "if left
+to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given
+by unity of sentiment and community of interests. The obstruction and
+the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency
+with which they are pursued, arise in part at least from the connection
+with Ireland." So then, after all, it is feebleness and inconsistency,
+not elasticity and strength, that mark our institutions as they stand;
+feebleness and inconsistency, distraction and uncertainty. The supporter
+of things as they are is decidedly as much concerned in making out a
+case as the advocate of change.
+
+The strength of the argument from Nationality is great, and full of
+significance; but Nationality is not the whole essence of either the
+argument from History or the argument from Self-government. Their force
+lies in considerations of political expediency as tested by practical
+experience.
+
+The point of the argument from the lessons of History is that for some
+reason or another the international concern, whose unlucky affairs we
+are now trying to unravel, has always been carried on at a loss: the
+point of the argument from Self-government is that the loss would have
+been avoided if the Irish shareholders had for a certain number of the
+transactions been more influentially represented on the Board. That is
+quite apart from the sentiment of pure nationality. The failure has come
+about, not simply because the laws were not made by Irishmen as such,
+but because they were not made by the men who knew most about Ireland.
+The vice of the connection between the two countries has been the
+stupidity of governing a country without regard to the interests or
+customs, the peculiar objects and peculiar experiences, of the great
+majority of the people who live in it. It is not enough to say that the
+failures of England in Ireland have to a great extent flowed from causes
+too general to be identified with the intentional wrong-doing either of
+rulers or of subjects. We readily admit that, but it is not the point.
+It is not enough to insist that James I., in his plantations and
+transplantations, probably meant well to his Irish subjects. Probably he
+did. That is not the question. If it is "absolutely certain that his
+policy worked gross wrong," what is the explanation and the defence? We
+are quite content with Mr. Dicey's own answer. "Ignorance and want of
+sympathy produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity. An intended
+reform produced injustice, litigation, misery, and discontent. The case
+is noticeable, for it is a type of a thousand subsequent English
+attempts to reform and improve Ireland." This description would apply,
+with hardly a word altered, to the wrong done by the Encumbered Estates
+Act in the reign of Queen Victoria. That memorable measure, as Mr.
+Gladstone said, was due not to the action of a party, but to the action
+of a Parliament. Sir Robert Peel was hardly less responsible for it than
+Lord John Russell. "We produced it," said Mr. Gladstone, "with a
+general, lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good intention of taking
+capital to Ireland. What did we do? We sold the improvements of the
+tenants" (House of Commons, April 16). It is the same story, from the
+first chapter to the last, in education, poor law, public works, relief
+Acts, even in coercion Acts--lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good
+intention. That is the argument from history. When we are asked what
+good law an Irish Parliament would make that could not equally well be
+made by the Parliament at Westminster, this is the answer. It is not
+the will, it is the intelligence, that is wanting. We all know what the
+past has been. Why should the future be different?
+
+"It is an inherent condition of human affairs," said Mill in a book
+which, in spite of some chimeras, is a wholesome corrective of the
+teaching of our new jurists, "that no intention, however sincere, of
+protecting the interests of others can make it safe or salutary to tie
+up their own hands. Still more obviously true is it, that by their own
+hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their
+circumstances in life be worked out" (_Repres. Government_, p. 57). It
+is these wise lessons from human experience to which the advocate of
+Home Rule appeals, and not the wild doctrine that any body of persons
+claiming to be united by a sense of nationality possesses _an inherent
+and divine right_ to be treated as an independent community. It is quite
+true that circumstances sometimes justify a temporary dictatorship. In
+that there is nothing at variance with Liberalism. But the Parliamentary
+dictatorship in Ireland has lasted a great deal too long to be called
+temporary, and its stupid shambling operations are finally and
+decisively condemned by their consequences. That is a straightforward
+utilitarian argument, and has nothing whatever to do with inherent and
+divine rights, or any other form of political moonshine.
+
+There are some who believe that an honest centralized administration of
+impartial officials, and not Local Self-Government, would best meet the
+real wants of the people. In other words, everything is to be for the
+people, nothing by the people--which has not hitherto been a Liberal
+principle. Something, however, may be said for this view, provided that
+the source of the authority of such an administration be acceptable.
+Austrian administration in Lombardy was good rather than bad, yet it was
+hated and resisted because it was Austrian and not Italian. No rational
+person can hold for an instant that the source of a scheme of
+government is immaterial to its prosperity. More than that, when people
+look for success in the government of Ireland to "honest centralized
+administration," we cannot but wonder what fault they find with the
+administration of Ireland to-day in respect of its honesty or its
+centralization. What administration ever carried either honesty or
+centralization to a higher pitch than the Irish administration of Mr.
+Forster? What could be less successful? Those who have been most
+directly concerned in the government of Ireland, whether English or
+Irish, even while alive to the perils of any other principle, habitually
+talk of centralization as the curse of the system. Here, again, why
+should we expect success in the future from a principle that has so
+failed in the past?
+
+Again, how are we to get a strong centralized administration in the face
+of a powerful and hostile parliamentary representation? It is very easy
+to talk of the benefits that might have been conferred on Ireland by
+such humanity and justice as was practised by Turgot in his
+administration of the Generality of Limoges. But Turgot was not
+confronted by eighty-six Limousin members of an active sovereign body,
+all interested in making his work difficult, and trusted by a large
+proportion of the people of the province with that as their express
+commission. It is possible to have an honest centralized administration
+of great strength and activity in India, but there is no Parliament in
+India. If India, or any province of it, ever gets representative
+government and our parliamentary system, from that hour, if there be any
+considerable section of Indian feeling averse from European rule, the
+present administrative system will be paralyzed, as the preliminary to
+being revolutionized. It is conceivable, if any one chooses to think so,
+that a body of impartial officials could manage the national business in
+Ireland much better without the guidance of public opinion and common
+sentiment than with it. But if you intend to govern the country as you
+think best--and that is the plain and practical English of centralized
+administration--why ask the country to send a hundred men to the great
+tribunal of supervision to inform you how it would like to be governed?
+The Executive cannot set them aside as if they were a hundred dummies;
+in refusing to be guided, it cannot escape being harassed, by them. You
+may amend procedure, but that is no answer, unless you amend the Irish
+members out of voice and vote. They will still count. You cannot gag and
+muzzle them effectually, and if you could, they would still be there,
+and their presence would still make itself incessantly felt. Partly from
+a natural desire to lessen the common difficulties of government, and
+partly from a consciousness, due to the prevailing state of the modern
+political atmosphere, that there is something wrong in this total
+alienation of an Executive from the possessors of parliamentary power,
+the officials will incessantly be tempted to make tacks out of their own
+course; and thus they lose the coherency and continuity of absolutism
+without gaining the pliant strength of popular government. This is not a
+presumption of what would be likely to happen, but an account of what
+does happen, and what justified Mr. Disraeli in adding a weak Executive
+to the alien Church and the absentee aristocracy, as the three great
+curses of Ireland. Nothing has occurred since 1844 to render the
+Executive stronger, but much to the contrary. There is, and there can
+be, no weaker or less effective Government in the world than a highly
+centralized system working alongside of a bitterly inimical popular
+representation. I say nothing of the effect of the fluctuations of
+English parties on Irish administration. I say nothing of the tendency
+in an Irish government, awkwardly alternating with that to which I have
+just adverted, to look over the heads of the people of Ireland, and to
+consider mainly what will be thought by the ignorant public in England.
+But these sources of incessant perturbation must not be left out. The
+fault of Irish centralization is not that it is strong, but that it is
+weak. Weak it must remain until Parliament either approves of the
+permanent suspension of the Irish writs, or else devises constitutional
+means for making Irish administration responsible to Irish
+representatives.
+
+If experience is decisive against the policy of the past, experience
+too, all over the modern world, indicates the better direction for the
+future. I will not use my too scanty space in repeating any of the great
+wise commonplaces in praise of self-government. Here they are
+superfluous. In the case of Ireland they have all been abundantly
+admitted in a long series of measures, from Catholic Emancipation down
+to Lord O'Hagan's Jury Law and the Franchise and Redistribution Acts of
+a couple of years ago. The principle of self-government has been
+accepted, ratified, and extended in a hundred ways. It is only a
+question of the form that self-government shall take. Against the form
+proposed by the late Ministry a case is built up that rests on a series
+of prophetic assumptions. These assumptions, from the nature of the
+case, can only be met by a counter-statement of fair and reasonable
+probabilities. Let us enumerate some of them.
+
+1. It is inferred that, because the Irish leaders have used violent
+language and resorted to objectionable expedients against England during
+the last six years, they would continue in the same frame of mind after
+the reasons for it had disappeared. In other words, because they have
+been the enemies of a Government which refused to listen to a
+constitutional demand, therefore they would continue to be its enemies
+after the demand had been listened to. On this reasoning, the effect is
+to last indefinitely and perpetually, notwithstanding the cessation of
+the cause. Our position is that all the reasonable probabilities of
+human conduct point the other way. The surest way of justifying violent
+language and fostering treasonable designs, is to refuse to listen to
+the constitutional demand.
+
+2. The Irish, we are told, hate the English with an irreconcilable
+hatred, and would unquestionably use any Constitution as an instrument
+for satisfying their master passion. Irrational hatred, they say, can be
+treated by rational men with composure. The Czechs of Bohemia are said
+to be irreconcilable, yet the South Germans bear with their hatred; and
+if we cannot cure we might endure the antipathy of Ireland. Now, as for
+the illustration, I may remark that the hatred of the Czechs would be
+much too formidable for German composure, if the Czechs did not happen
+to possess a provincial charter and a special constitution of their own.
+If the Irish had the same, their national dislike--so far as it
+exists--might be expected to become as bearable as the Germans have
+found the feeling of the Czechs. But how deep does Irish dislike go? Is
+it directed against Englishmen, or against an English official system?
+The answers of every impartial observer to the whole group of such
+questions as these favour the conclusion that the imputed hatred of
+England in Ireland has been enormously exaggerated and overcoloured by
+Ascendency politicians for good reasons of their own; that with the
+great majority of Irishmen it has no deep roots; that it is not one of
+those passionate international animosities that blind men to their own
+interests, or lead them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of injuring
+their foe; and, finally, that it would not survive the amendment of the
+system that has given it birth.[72]
+
+3. It is assumed that there is a universal desire for Separation. That
+there is a strong sentiment of nationality we of course admit; it is
+part of the case, and not the worst part. But the sentiment of
+nationality is a totally different thing from a desire for Separation.
+Scotland might teach our pseudo-Unionists so much as that. Nowhere in
+the world is the sentiment of nationality stronger, yet there is not a
+whisper of Separation. That there is a section of Irishmen who desire
+Separation is notorious, but everything that has happened since the
+Government of Ireland Bill was introduced, including the remarkable
+declarations of Mr. Parnell in accepting the Bill (June 7), and
+including the proceedings at Chicago, shows that the separatist section
+is a very small one either in Ireland or in America, and that it has
+become sensibly smaller since, and in consequence of, the proposed
+concession of a limited statutory constitution. The Irish are quite
+shrewd enough to know that Separation, if it were attainable--and they
+are well aware that it is not--would do no good to their markets; and to
+that knowledge, as well as to many other internal considerations, we may
+confidently look for the victory of strong centripetal over very weak
+centrifugal tendencies. Even if we suppose these centrifugal tendencies
+to be stronger than I would allow them to be, how shall we best resist
+them--by strengthening the hands and using the services of the party
+which, though nationalist, is also constitutional; or by driving that
+party also, in despair of a constitutional solution, to swell the ranks
+of Extremists and Irreconcilables?
+
+4. Whatever may be the ill-feeling towards England, it is at least
+undeniable that there are bitter internal animosities in Ireland, and a
+political constitution, our opponents argue, can neither assuage
+religious bigotry nor remove agrarian discontent.
+
+It is true, no doubt, that the old feud between Protestant and Catholic
+might, perhaps, not instantly die down to the last smouldering embers of
+it all over Ireland. But we may remark that there is no perceptible bad
+blood between Protestant and Catholic, outside of one notorious corner.
+Second, the real bitterness of the feud arose from the fact that
+Protestantism was associated with an exclusive and hostile ascendency,
+which would now be brought to an end. Whatever feeling about what is
+called Ulster exists in the rest of Ireland, arises not from the fact
+that there are Protestants in Ulster, but that the Protestants are
+anti-National. Third, the Catholics would no longer be one compact body
+for persecuting, obscurantist, or any other evil purposes; the abatement
+of the national struggle would allow the Catholics to fall into the two
+natural divisions of Clerical and Liberal. What we may be quite sure of
+is that the feud will never die so long as sectarian pretensions are
+taken as good reasons for continuing bad government.
+
+It is true, again, that a constitution would not necessarily remove
+agrarian discontent. But it is just as true that you will never remove
+agrarian discontent without a constitution. Mr. Dicey, on consideration,
+will easily see why. Here we come to an illustration, and a very
+impressive illustration it is, of the impotence of England to do for
+Ireland the good which Ireland might do for herself. Nobody just now is
+likely to forget the barbarous condition of the broad fringe of
+wretchedness on the west coast of Ireland. Of this Lord Dufferin truly
+said in 1880 that no legislation could touch it, that no alteration in
+the land laws could effectually ameliorate it, and that it must continue
+until the world's end unless something be contrived totally to change
+the conditions of existence in that desolate region. Parliament lavishly
+pours water into the sieve in the shape of Relief Acts. Even in my own
+short tenure of office I was responsible for one of these terribly
+wasteful and profoundly unsatisfactory measures. Instead of relief, what
+a statesman must seek is prevention of this great evil and strong root
+of evil; and prevention means a large, though it cannot be a very swift,
+displacement of the population. But among the many experts with whom I
+have discussed this dolorous and perplexing subject, I never found one
+of either political party who did not agree that a removal of the
+surplus population was only practicable if carried out by an Irish
+authority, backed by the solid weight of Irish opinion. Any exertion of
+compulsory power by a British Minister would raise the whole
+country-side in squalid insurrection, government would become
+impossible, and the work of transplantation would end in ghastly
+failure. It is misleading and untrue, then, to say that there is no
+possible relation between self-government and agrarian discontent,
+misery, and backwardness; and when Mr. Dicey and others tell us that the
+British Parliament is able to do all good things for Ireland, I would
+respectfully ask them how a British Parliament is to deal with the
+Congested Districts.
+
+Nearly as much may be said of the prevention of the mischievous practice
+of Subdivision. Some contend that the old disposition to subdivide is
+dying out; others, however, assure us that it is making its appearance
+even among the excellent class who purchased their holdings under the
+Church Act. That Act did not prohibit subdivision, but it is prohibited
+in the Act of 1881. Still the prohibition can only be made effective, if
+operations take place on anything like a great scale, on condition that
+representative, authorities resident on the spot have the power of
+enforcing it, and have an interest in enforcing it. Some of the
+pseudo-Unionists are even against any extension of local
+self-government, and if it be unaccompanied by the creation of a central
+native authority they are right. What such people fail to see is that,
+in resisting political reconstruction, they are at the same time
+resisting the only available remedies for some of the worst of agrarian
+maladies.
+
+The ruinous interplay between agrarian and political forces, each using
+the other for ends of its own, will never cease so long as the political
+demand is in every form resisted. That, we are told, is all the fault of
+the politicians. Be it so; then the Government must either suppress the
+politicians outright, or else it must interest them in getting the terms
+of its land settlement accepted and respected. Home Rule on our scheme
+was, among other things, part of an arrangement for "settling the
+agrarian feud." It was a means of interposing between the Irish tenant
+and the British State an authority interested enough and strong enough
+to cause the bargain to be kept. It is said that the Irish authority
+would have had neither interest nor strength enough to resist the forces
+making for repudiation. Would those forces be any less irresistible if
+the whole body of the Irish peasantry stood, as Land Purchase _minus_
+Self-Government makes them to stand, directly face to face with the
+British State? This is a question that our opponents cannot evade, any
+more than they can evade that other question, which lies unnoticed at
+the back of all solutions of the problem by way of peasant
+ownership--Whether it is possible to imagine the land of Ireland handed
+over to Irishmen, and yet the government of Ireland kept exclusively and
+directly by Englishmen? Such a divorce is conceivable under a rule like
+that of the British in India: with popular institutions it is
+inconceivable and impossible.
+
+5. It is argued that Home Rule on Mr. Gladstone's plan would not work,
+because it follows in some respects the colonial system, whereas the
+conditions at the root of the success of the system in the Colonies do
+not exist in Ireland. They are distant, Ireland is near; they are
+prosperous, Ireland is poor; they are proud of the connection with
+England, Ireland resents it. But the question is not whether the
+conditions are identical with those of any colony; it is enough if in
+themselves they seem to promise a certain basis for government. It might
+justly be contended that proximity is a more favourable condition than
+distance; without it there could not be that close and constant
+intercommunication which binds the material interests of Ireland to
+those of Great Britain, and so provides the surest guarantee for union.
+If Ireland were suddenly to find herself as far off as Canada, then
+indeed one might be very sorry to answer for the Union. Again, though
+Ireland has to bear her share of the prevailing depression in the chief
+branch of her production, it is a great mistake to suppose that outside
+of the margin of chronic wretchedness in the west and south-west, the
+condition not only of the manufacturing industries of the north, but of
+the agricultural industry in the richer parts of the middle and south,
+is so desperately unprosperous as to endanger a political constitution.
+Under our stupidily [Transcriber: sic] centralized system, Irishmen have
+no doubt acquired the enervating trick of attributing every misfortune,
+great or small, public or private, to the Government. When they learn
+the lessons of responsibility, they will unlearn this fatal habit, and
+not before.
+
+I do not see, therefore, that the differences in condition between
+Ireland and the Colonies make against Home Rule. What I do see is ample
+material out of which would arise a strong and predominant party of
+order. The bulk of the nation are sons and daughters of a Church which
+has been hostile to revolution in every country but Ireland, and which
+would be hostile to it there from the day that the cause of revolution
+ceased to be the cause of self-government. If the peasantry were made to
+realize that at last the land settlement, wisely and equitably made, was
+what it must inexorably remain, and what no politicians could help them
+to alter, they would be as conservative as the peasantry under a similar
+condition in every other spot on the surface of the globe. There is no
+reason to expect that the manufacturers, merchants, and shopkeepers of
+Ireland would be less willing or less able to play an active and useful
+part in the affairs of their country than the same classes in England or
+Scotland. It will be said that this is mere optimist prophesying. But
+why is that to be flung aside under the odd name of sentimentalism,
+while pessimist prophesying is to be taken for gospel?
+
+The only danger is lest we should allot new responsibilities to Irishmen
+with a too grudging and restrictive hand. For true responsibility there
+must be real power. It is easy to say that this power would be misused,
+and that the conditions both of Irish society and of the proposed
+Constitution must prevent it from being used for good. It is easy to say
+that separation would be a better end. Life is too short to discuss
+that. Separation is not the alternative either to Home Rule or to the
+_status quo_. If the people of Ireland are not to be trusted with real
+power over their own affairs, it would be a hundred times more just to
+England, and more merciful to Ireland, to take away from her that
+semblance of free government which torments and paralyzes one country,
+while it robs the other of national self-respect and of all the
+strongest motives and best opportunities of self-help. The _status quo_
+is drawing very near to its inevitable end. The two courses then open
+will be Home Rule on the one hand, and some shy bungling underhand
+imitation of a Crown Colony on the other. We shall have either to listen
+to the Irish representatives or to suppress them. Unless we have lost
+all nerve and all political faculty we shall, before many months are
+over, face these alternatives. Liberals are for the first; Tories at
+present incline to the second. It requires very moderate instinct for
+the forces at work in modern politics to foresee the path along which we
+shall move, in the interests alike of relief to Great Britain and of a
+sounder national life for Ireland. The only real question is not Whether
+we are to grant Home Rule, but How.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 71: The following pages, with one or two slight alterations,
+are extracted, by the kind permission of Mr. James Knowles, from two
+articles which were published in the _Nineteenth Century_ at the
+beginning of the present year, in reply to Professor Dicey's statement
+of the English case against Home Rule.]
+
+[Footnote 72: The late J.E. Cairnes, after describing the clearances
+after the famine, goes on to say, "I own I cannot wonder that a thirst
+for revenge should spring from such calamities; that hatred, even
+undying hatred, for what they could not but regard as the cause and
+symbol of their misfortunes--English rule in Ireland--should possess the
+sufferers.... The disaffection now so widely diffused throughout Ireland
+may possibly in some degree be fed from historical traditions, and have
+its remote origin in the confiscations of the seventeenth century; but
+all that gives it energy, all that renders it dangerous, may, I believe,
+be traced to exasperation produced by recent transactions, and more
+especially to the bitter memories left by that most flagrant abuse of
+the rights of property and most scandalous disregard of the claims of
+humanity--the wholesale clearances of the period following the
+famine."--_Political Essays_, p. 198.]
+
+
+
+
+LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+BY W.E. GLADSTONE.
+
+
+Ireland for more than seven hundred years has been part of the British
+territory, and has been with slight exceptions held by English arms, or
+governed in the last resort from this side the water. Scotland was a
+foreign country until 1603, and possessed absolute independence until
+1707. Yet, whether it was due to the standing barrier of the sea, or
+whatever may have been the cause, much less was known by Englishmen of
+Ireland than of Scotland. Witness the works of Shakespeare, whose mind,
+unless as to book-knowledge, was encyclopaedic, and yet who, while he
+seems at home in Scotland, may be said to tell us nothing of Ireland,
+unless it is that--
+
+    "The uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms."[73]
+
+During more recent times, the knowledge of Scotland on this side the
+border, which before was greatly in advance, has again increased in afar
+greater degree than the knowledge of Ireland.
+
+It is to Mr. Lecky that we owe the first serious effort, both in his
+_Leaders of Public Opinion_ and in his _History of England in the
+Eighteenth Century_, to produce a better state of things. He carefully
+and completely dovetailed the affairs of Ireland into English History,
+and the debt is one to be gratefully acknowledged. But such remedies,
+addressing themselves in the first instance to the lettered mind of the
+country, require much time to operate upon the mass, and upon the organs
+of superficial and transitory opinion, before the final stage, when they
+enter into our settled and familiar traditions. Meantime, since Ireland
+threatens to absorb into herself our Parliamentary life, there is a
+greatly enhanced necessity for becoming acquainted with the true state
+of the account between the islands that make up the United Kingdom, and
+with the likelihoods of the future in Ireland, so far as they are to be
+gathered from her past history.
+
+That history, until the eighteenth century begins, has a dismal
+simplicity about it. Murder, persecution, confiscation too truly
+describe its general strain; and policy is on the whole subordinated to
+violence as the standing instrument of government. But after, say, the
+reign of William III., the element of representation begins to assert
+itself. Simplicity is by degrees exchanged for complexity; the play of
+human motives, singularly diversified, now becomes visible in the
+currents of a real public life. It has for a very long time been my
+habit, when consulted by young political students, to recommend them
+carefully to study the characters and events of the American
+Independence. Quite apart from the special and temporary reasons bearing
+upon the case, I would now add a twin recommendation to examine and
+ponder the lessons of Irish history during the eighteenth century. The
+task may not be easy, but the reward will be ample.
+
+The mainspring of public life had, from a venerable antiquity, lain _de
+jure_ within Ireland herself. The heaviest fetter upon this life was the
+Law of Poynings; the most ingenious device upon record for hamstringing
+legislative independence, because it cut off the means of resumption
+inherent in the nature of Parliaments such as were those of the three
+countries. But the Law of Poynings was an Irish Law. Its operation
+effectually aided on the civil side those ruder causes, under the action
+of which Ireland had lain for four centuries usually passive, and
+bleeding at every pore. The main factors of her destiny worked, in
+practice, from this side the water. But from the reign of Anne, or
+perhaps from the Revolution onwards,
+
+    "Novus saecorum nascitur ordo."
+
+Of the three great nostrums so liberally applied by England, extirpation
+and persecution had entirely failed, but confiscation had done its work.
+The great Protestant landlordism of Ireland[74] had been strongly and
+effectually built up. But, like other human contrivances, while it held
+Ireland fast, it had also undesigned results. The repressed principle of
+national life, the struggles of which had theretofore been extinguished
+in blood, slowly sprang up anew in a form which, though extremely
+narrow, and extravagantly imperfect, was armed with constitutional
+guarantees; and, the regimen of violence once displaced, these
+guarantees were sure to operate. What had been transacted in England
+under Plantagenets and Stuarts was, to a large extent, transacted anew
+by the Parliament of Ireland in the eighteenth century. That Parliament,
+indeed, deserves almost every imaginable epithet of censure. It was
+corrupt, servile, selfish, cruel. But when we have said all this, and
+said it truly, there is more to tell. It was alive, and it was national.
+Even absenteeism, that obstinately clinging curse, though it enfeebled
+and distracted, could not, and did not, annihilate nationality. The
+Irish Legislation was, moreover, compressed and thwarted by a foreign
+executive; but even to this tremendous agent the vital principle was
+too strong eventually to succumb.
+
+Mr. Lecky well observes that the Irish case supplied "one of the most
+striking examples upon record"[75] of an unconquerable efficacy in even
+the most defective Parliament. I am, however, doubtful whether in this
+proposition we have before us the whole case. This efficacy is not
+invariably found even in tolerably constructed Parliaments. Why do we
+find it in a Parliament of which the constitution and the environment
+were alike intolerable? My answer is, because that Parliament found
+itself faced by a British influence which was entirely anti-national,
+and was thus constrained to seek for strength in the principle of
+nationality.
+
+Selfishness is a rooted principle of action in nations not less than in
+single persons. It seems to draw a certain perfume from the virtue of
+patriotism, which lies upon its borders. It stalks abroad with a
+semblance of decency, nay, even of excellence. And under this cover a
+paramount community readily embraces the notion, that a dependent
+community may be made to exist not for its own sake, but for the sake of
+an extraneous society of men. With this idea, the European nations,
+utterly benighted in comparison with the ancient Greeks, founded their
+transmarine dependencies. But a vast maritime distance, perhaps aided by
+some filtration of sound ideas, prevented the application of this theory
+in its nakedness and rigour to the American Colonies of England. In
+Ireland we had not even the title of founders to allege. Nay, we were,
+in point of indigenous civilization, the junior people. But the maritime
+severance, sufficient to prevent accurate and familiar knowledge, was
+not enough to bar the effective exercise of overmastering power. And
+power was exercised, at first from without, to support the Pale, to
+enlarge it, to make it include Ireland. When this had been done, power
+began, in the seventeenth century, to be exercised from within Ireland,
+within the precinct of its government and its institutions. These were
+carefully corrupted, from the multiplication of the Boroughs by James I.
+onwards, for the purpose. The struggle became civil, instead of martial;
+and it was mainly waged by agencies on the spot, not from beyond the
+Channel. When the rule of England passed over from the old violence into
+legal forms and doctrines, the Irish reaction against it followed the
+example. And the legal idea of Irish nationality took its rise in very
+humble surroundings; if the expression may be allowed, it was born in
+the slums of politics. Ireland reached the nadir of political depression
+when, at and after the Boyne, she had been conquered not merely by an
+English force, but by continental mercenaries. The ascendant
+Protestantism of the island had never stood so low in the aspect it
+presented to this country; inasmuch as the Irish Parliament, for the
+first time, I believe, declared itself dependent upon England,[76] and
+either did not desire, or did not dare, to support its champion
+Molyneux, when his work asserting Irish independence was burned in
+London. It petitioned for representation in the English Parliament, not
+in order to uplift the Irish people, but in order to keep them down. In
+its sympathies and in its aims the overwhelming mass of the population
+had no share. It was Swift who, by the _Drapier's Letters_, for the
+first time called into existence a public opinion flowing from and
+representing Ireland as a whole. He reasserted the doctrine of Molyneux,
+and denounced Wood's halfpence not only as a foul robbery, but as a
+constitutional and as a national insult. The patience of the Irish
+Protestants was tried very hard, and they were forced, as Sir Charles
+Duffy states in his vivid book, to purchase the power of oppressing
+their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen at a great price.[77] Their
+pension list was made to provide the grants too degrading to be
+tolerated in England. The Presbyterians had to sit down under the
+Episcopal monopoly; but the enjoyment of that monopoly was not left to
+the Irish Episcopalians. In the time of Henry VIII. it had been
+necessary to import an English Archbishop Browne[78] and an English
+Bishop Bale, or there might not have been a single Protestant in
+Ireland. It was well to enrich the rolls of the Church of Ireland with
+the piety and learning of Ussher, and to give her in Bedell one name, at
+least, which carries the double crown of the hero and the saint. But,
+after the Restoration, by degrees the practice degenerated, and
+Englishmen were appointed in numbers to the Irish Episcopate in order to
+fortify and develop by numerical force what came to be familiarly known
+as the English interest. So that the Primate Boulter, during his
+government of Ireland, complains[79] that Englishmen are still less than
+one-half the whole body of Bishops, although the most important sees
+were to a large extent in their hands. The same practice was followed in
+the higher judicial offices. Fitzgibbon was the first Irishman who
+became Lord Chancellor.[80] The Viceroy, commonly absent, was
+represented by Lords Justices, who again were commonly English; and
+Primate Boulter, a most acute and able man, jealous of an Irish Speaker
+in that character, recommends that the commander of the forces should
+take his place.[81] When, later on, the Viceroy resided, it was a rule
+that the Chief Secretary should be an Englishman. On the occasion when
+Lord Castlereagh was by way of exception admitted to that office, an
+apology was found for it in his entire devotion to English policy and
+purposes. "His appointment," says Lord Cornwallis, "gives me great
+satisfaction, as he is so very unlike an Irishman!"[82] Resources were
+also found in the military profession, and among the voters for the
+Union we find the names of eight[83] English generals.
+
+The arrangements under Poynings's Law, and the commercial proscription,
+drove the iron ever deeper and deeper into the souls of Irishmen. It is
+but small merit in the Irish Parliament of George I. and George II., if
+under these circumstances a temper was gradually formed in, and
+transmitted by, them, which might one day achieve the honours of
+patriotism. It was in dread of this most healthful process, that the
+English Government set sedulously to work for its repression. The odious
+policy was maintained by a variety of agencies; by the misuse of Irish
+revenue, a large portion of which was unhappily under their control; by
+maintaining the duration of the Irish House of Commons for the life of
+the Sovereign; and, worst of all, by extending the range of corruption
+within the walls, through the constant multiplication of paid offices
+tenable by members of Parliament without even the check of re-election
+on acceptance.
+
+Thus by degrees those who sat in the Irish Houses came to feel both that
+they had a country, and that their country had claims upon them. The
+growth of a commercial interest in the Roman Catholic body must have
+accelerated the growth of this idea, as that interest naturally fell
+into line with the resistance to the English prescriptive laws. But the
+rate of progress was fearfully slow. It was hemmed in on every side by
+the obstinate unyielding pressure of selfish interests: the interest of
+the Established Church against the Presbyterians; the interest of the
+Protestant laity, or tithe-payers, against the clergy; the bold
+unscrupulous interest of a landlords' Parliament against the occupier of
+the soil; which, together with the grievance of the system of
+tithe-proctors, established in Ireland through the Whiteboys the fatal
+alliance between resistance to wrong and resistance to law, and supplied
+there the yet more disastrous facility of sustaining and enforcing wrong
+under the name of giving support to public tranquillity. Yet, forcing on
+its way amidst all these difficulties by a natural law, in a strange
+haphazard and disjointed method, and by a zigzag movement, there came
+into existence, and by degrees into steady operation, a sentiment native
+to Ireland and having Ireland for its vital basis, and yet not deserving
+the name of Irish patriotism, because its care was not for a nation, but
+for a sect. For a sect, in a stricter sense than may at first sight be
+supposed. The battle was not between Popery and a generalized
+Protestantism, though, even if it had been so, it would have been
+between a small minority and the vast majority of the Irish people. It
+was not a party of ascendency, but a party of monopoly, that ruled. It
+must always be borne in mind that the Roman Catholic aristocracy had
+been emasculated, and reduced to the lowest point of numerical and moral
+force by the odious action of the penal laws, and that the mass of the
+Roman Catholic population, clerical and lay, remained under the grinding
+force of many-sided oppression, and until long after the accession of
+George III. had scarcely a consciousness of political existence. As long
+as the great bulk of the nation could be equated to zero, the Episcopal
+monopolists had no motive for cultivating the good-will of the
+Presbyterians, who like the Roman Catholics maintained their religion,
+with the trivial exception of the _Regium Donum_, by their own
+resources, and who differed from them in being not persecuted, but only
+disabled. And this monopoly, which drew from the sacred name of religion
+its title to exist, offered through centuries an example of religious
+sterility to which a parallel can hardly be found among the communions
+of the Christian world. The sentiment, then, which animated the earlier
+efforts of the Parliament might be _Iricism_, but did not become
+patriotism until it had outgrown, and had learned to forswear or to
+forget, the conditions of its infancy. Neither did it for a long time
+acquire the courage of its opinions; for, when Lucas, in the middle of
+the century, reasserted the doctrine of Molyneux and of Swift, the Grand
+Jury of Dublin took part against him, and burned his book.[84] And the
+Parliament,[85] prompted by the Government, drove him into exile. And
+yet the smoke showed that there was fire. The infant, that confronted
+the British Government in the Parliament House, had something of the
+young Hercules about him. In the first exercises of strength he acquired
+more strength, and in acquiring more strength he burst the bonds that
+had confined him.
+
+    "Es machte mir zu eng, ich mussie fort."[86]
+
+The reign of George IV. began with resolute efforts of the Parliament
+not to lengthen, as in England under his grandfather, but to shorten its
+own commission, and to become septennial. Surely this was a noble
+effort. It meant the greatness of their country, and it meant also
+personal self-sacrifice. The Parliament which then existed, elected
+under a youth of twenty-two, had every likelihood of giving to the bulk
+of its members a seat for life. This they asked to change for a
+_maximum_ term of seven years. This from session to session, in spite of
+rejection after rejection in England, they resolutely fought to obtain.
+It was an English amendment which, on a doubtful pretext; changed seven
+years to eight. Without question some acted under the pressure of
+constituents; but only a minority of the members had constituents, and
+popular exigencies from such a quarter might have been bought off by an
+occasional vote, and could not have induced a war with the Executive and
+with England so steadily continued, unless a higher principle had been
+at work.
+
+The triumph came at last; and from 1768 onwards the Commons never wholly
+relapsed into their former quiescence. True, this was for a Protestant
+House, constituency, and nation; but ere long they began to enlarge
+their definition of nationality. Flood and Lucas, the commanders in the
+real battle, did not dream of giving the Roman Catholics a political
+existence, but to their own constituents they performed an honourable
+service and gave a great boon. Those, who had insincerely supported the
+measure, became the dupes of their own insincerity. In the very year of
+this victory, a Bill for a slight relaxation of the penal laws was
+passed, but met its death in England.[87] Other Bills followed, and one
+of them became an Act in 1771. A beginning had thus been made on behalf
+of religious liberty, as a corollary to political emancipation. It was
+like a little ray of light piercing its way through the rocks into a
+cavern and supplying the prisoner at once with guidance and with hope.
+Resolute action, in withholding or shortening supply, convinced the
+Executive in Dublin, and the Ministry in London, that serious business
+was intended. And it appeared, even in this early stage, how necessary
+it was for a fruitful campaign on their own behalf to enlarge their
+basis, and enlist the sympathies of hitherto excluded fellow-subjects.
+
+It may seem strange that the first beginnings of successful endeavour
+should have been made on behalf not of the "common Protestantism," but
+of Roman Catholics. But, as Mr. Lecky has shown, the Presbyterians had
+been greatly depressed and distracted, while the Roman Catholics had now
+a strong position in the commerce of the country, and in Dublin
+knocked, as it were, at the very doors of the Parliament. There may also
+have been an apprehension of republican sentiments among the Protestants
+of the north, from which the Roman Catholics were known to be free. Not
+many years, however, passed before the softening and harmonizing
+effects, which naturally flow from a struggle for liberty, warmed the
+sentiment of the House in favour of the Presbyterians.
+
+A Bill was passed by the Irish Parliament in 1778, which greatly
+mitigated the stringency of the penal laws. Moreover, in its preamble
+was recited, as a ground for this legislation, that for "a long series
+of years" the Roman Catholics had exhibited an "uniform peaceable
+behaviour." In doing and saying so much, the Irish Parliament virtually
+bound itself to do more.[88] In this Bill was contained a clause which
+repealed the Sacramental Test, and thereby liberated the Presbyterians
+from disqualification. But the Bill had to pass the ordeal of a review
+in England, and there the clause was struck out. The Bill itself, though
+mutilated, was wisely passed by a majority of 127 to 89. Even in this
+form it excited the enthusiastic admiration of Burke.[89] Nor were the
+Presbyterians forgotten at the epoch when, in 1779-80, England, under
+the pressure of her growing difficulties, made large commercial
+concessions to Ireland. The Dublin Parliament renewed the Bill for the
+removal of the Sacramental Test. And it was carried by the Irish
+Parliament in the very year which witnessed in London the disgraceful
+riots of Lord George Gordon, and forty-eight years before the Imperial
+Parliament conceded, on this side the Channel, any similar relief. Other
+contemporary signs bore witness to the growth of toleration; for the
+Volunteers, founded in 1778, and originally a Protestant body, after a
+time received Roman Catholics into their ranks. These impartial
+proceedings are all the more honourable to Irish sentiment in general,
+because Lord Charlemont, its champion out of doors, and Flood, long the
+leader of the Independent party in the Parliament, were neither of them
+prepared to surrender the system of Protestant ascendency.
+
+In order to measure the space which had at this period been covered by
+the forward movement of liberality and patriotism, it is necessary to
+look back to the early years of the Georgian period, when Whiggism had
+acquired a decisive ascendency, and the spirits of the great deep were
+let loose against Popery. But the temper of proscription in the two
+countries exhibited specific differences. Extravagant in both, it became
+in Ireland vulgar and indecent. In England, it was Tilburina,[90] gone
+mad in white satin; in Ireland it was Tilburina's maid, gone mad in
+white linen. The Lords Justices of Ireland, in 1715, recommended the
+Parliament to put an end to all other distinctions in Ireland "but that
+of Protestant and Papist."[91] And the years that followed seem to mark
+the lowest point of constitutional depression for the Roman Catholic
+population in particular, as well as for Ireland at large. The Commons,
+in 1715, prayed for measures to discover any Papist enlisting in the
+King's service, in order that he might be expelled "and punished with
+the utmost severity of the law."[92] When an oath of abjuration had been
+imposed which prevented nearly all priests from registering, a Bill was
+passed by the Commons in 1719 for branding the letter P on the cheek of
+all priests, who were unregistered, with a red-hot iron. The Privy
+Council "disliked" this punishment, and substituted for it the loathsome
+measure by which safe guardians are secured for Eastern harems. The
+English Government could not stomach this beastly proposal; and, says
+Mr. Lecky,[93] unanimously restored the punishment of branding. The
+Bill was finally lost in Ireland, but only owing to a clause concerning
+leases. It had gone to England winged with a prayer from the Commons
+that it might be recommended "in the most effectual manner to his
+Majesty," and by the assurance of the Viceroy in reply that they might
+depend on his due regard to what was desired.[94] In the same year
+passed the Act which declared the title of the British Parliament to
+make laws for the government of Ireland. On the accession of George II.,
+a considerable body of Roman Catholics offered an address of
+congratulation. It was received by the Lords Justices with silent
+contempt, and no one knows whether it ever reached its destination.
+Finally, the acute state-craft of Primate Boulter resisted habitually
+the creation of an "Irish interest," and above all any capacity of the
+Roman Catholics to contribute to its formation; and in the first year of
+George II. a clause was introduced in committee into a harmless Bill[95]
+for the regulation of elections, which disfranchised at a single stroke
+all the Roman Catholic voters in Ireland who up to that period had
+always enjoyed the franchise.
+
+It is painful to record the fact that the remarkable progress gradually
+achieved was in no way due to British influence. For nearly forty years
+from the arrival of Archbishop Boulter in Ireland, the government of
+Ireland was in the hands of the Primates. The harshness of
+administration was gradually tempered, especially in the brief
+viceroyalty of Lord Chesterfield; but the British policy was steadily
+opposed to the enlargement of Parliamentary privilege, or the creation
+of any Irish interest, however narrow its basis, while the political
+extinction of the mass of the people was complete. The pecuniary wants,
+however, of the Government, extending beyond the hereditary revenue,
+required a resort to the national purse. The demands which were
+accordingly made, and these alone, supplied the Parliament with a
+vantage-ground, and a principle of life. The action of this principle
+brought with it civilizing and humanizing influences, which had become
+clearly visible in the early years of George III., and which were
+cherished by the war of American Independence, as by a strong current of
+fresh air in a close and murky dungeon.
+
+The force of principles, and the significance of political achievements,
+is to be estimated in no small degree by the slenderness of the means
+available to those who promote them. And the progress brought about in
+the Irish Parliament is among the most remarkable on record, because it
+was effected against the joint resistance of a hostile Executive and of
+an intolerable constitution. Of the three hundred members, about
+two-thirds were nominated by individual patrons and by close
+corporations. What was still worse, the action of the Executive was
+increasingly directed, as the pulse of the national life came to beat
+more vigorously, to the systematic corruption of the Parliament borough
+pensions and paid offices. In the latter part of the century, more than
+one-third of the members of Parliament were dismissible at pleasure from
+public emoluments. If the base influence of the Executive allied itself
+with the patriotic party, everything might be hoped. For we must bear in
+mind not only the direct influence of this expenditure on those who were
+in possession, but the enormous power of expectancy on those who were
+not. Conversely, when the Government were determined to do wrong, there
+were no means commonly available of forcing it to do right, in any
+matter that touched either religious bigotry or selfish interest. With
+so miserable an apparatus, and in the face of the ever-wakeful Executive
+sustained by British power, it is rather wonderful how much than how
+little was effected. I am not aware of a single case in which a measure
+on behalf of freedom was proposed by British agency, and rejected by
+the Irish Parliament. On the other hand, we have a long list of the
+achievements of that Parliament due to a courage and perseverance which
+faced and overcame a persistent English opposition. Among other
+exploits, it established periodical elections, obtained the writ of
+Habeas Corpus, carried the independence of the judges, repealed the Test
+Act, limited the abominable expenditure on pensions, subjected the
+acceptance of office from the crown to the condition of re-election, and
+achieved, doubtless with the powerful aid of the volunteers, freedom of
+trade with England, and the repeal of Poynings's Act, and of the British
+Act of 1719.[96]
+
+All this it did without the manifestation, either within the walls or
+among the Roman Catholic population, of any disposition to weaken the
+ties which bound Ireland to the empire. All this it did; and what had
+the British Parliament been about during the same period, with its
+vastly greater means both of self-defence and of action? It had been
+building up the atrocious criminal code, tampering in the case of Wilkes
+with liberty of election, and tampering with many other liberties;
+driving, too, the American Colonies into rebellion, while, as to good
+legislation, the century is almost absolutely blank, until between 1782
+and 1793 we have the establishment of Irish freedom, the economical
+reform of Mr. Burke, the financial reforms of Mr. Pitt, the new libel
+law of Mr. Fox, and the legislative constitution of Canada, in which
+both these great statesmen concurred.
+
+But we have not yet reached the climax of Irish advancement. When, in
+1782 and 1783, the legislative relations of the two countries were
+fundamentally rectified by the formal acknowledgment of Irish
+nationality, the beginning of a great work was accomplished; but its
+final consummation, though rendered practicable and even easy, depended
+wholly on the continuing good intention of the British Cabinet. The
+Acts of 1782 and 1783 required a supplemental arrangement, to obviate
+those secondary difficulties in the working of the two Legislatures,
+which supplied Mr. Pitt with his main parliamentary plea for the Union.
+What was yet more important was the completion of the scheme in Ireland
+itself. And this under three great heads: (1) The purification of
+Parliament by a large measure of reform; (2) the abolition of all Roman
+Catholic disabilities; (3) the establishment of a proper relation
+between the Legislative and the Executive powers. It is often urged,
+with cynical disregard to justice and reason, that with the Grattan
+Parliament we had corruption, coercion, discontent, and finally
+rebellion. But the political mischiefs, which disfigure the brief life
+of the Grattan Parliament, and the failure to obtain the two first of
+the three great purposes I have named, were all in the main due to the
+third grand flaw in the Irish case after 1782. I mean the false
+position, and usually mischievous character, of the Irish Executive,
+which, with its army of placemen and expectants in Parliament, was
+commonly absolute master of the situation. Well does Mr. Swift
+MacNeill,[97] in his very useful work, quote the words of Mr. Fox in
+1797: "The advantages, which the form of a free Government seemed to
+promise, have been counteracted by the influence of the Executive
+Government, and of the British Cabinet."
+
+There were five Viceroys between 1782 and 1790. Then came a sixth, Lord
+Westmoreland, the worst of them all, whose political judgment was on a
+par with his knowledge of the English language.[98] The great settlement
+of 1782-3 was in the main worked by men who were radically adverse to
+its spirit and intention. But they were omnipotent in their control of
+the unreformed. Parliament of Ireland, more and more drenched, under
+their unceasing and pestilent activity, with fresh doses of corruption.
+Westmoreland and his myrmidons actually persuaded Pitt, in 1792, that
+Irish Protestantism and its Parliament were unconquerably adverse to the
+admission of Roman Catholics to the franchise; but when the proposal was
+made from the Throne in 1793, notwithstanding the latent hostility of
+the Castle, the Parliament passed the Bill with little delay, and
+"without any serious opposition."[99] The votes against it were one and
+three on two divisions[100] respectively. A minority of sixty-nine
+supported, against the Government, a clause for extending the measure to
+seats in Parliament. That clause, lost by a majority of ninety-four,
+might apparently have been carried, but for "Dublin Castle," by an even
+larger majority.
+
+I shall not here examine the interesting question, whether the mission
+of Lord Fitzwilliam was wholly due to the action of those Whig statesmen
+who were friendly to the war, but disinclined to a junction with Mr.
+Pitt except on condition of a fundamental change in the administration
+of Ireland. Nor shall I dwell upon his sudden, swift, and disastrous
+recall. But I purpose here to invite attention to the most remarkable
+fact in the whole history of the Irish Parliament. When the Viceroy's
+doom was known, when the return to the policy and party of ascendency
+lay darkly lowering in the immediate future, this diminutive and tainted
+Irish Parliament, with a chivalry rare even in the noblest histories,
+made what can hardly be called less than a bold attempt to arrest the
+policy of retrogression adopted by the Government in London. Lord
+Fitzwilliam was the declared friend of Roman Catholic Emancipation,
+which was certain to be followed by reform; and he had struck a
+death-blow at bigotry and monopoly in the person of their heads, Mr.
+Beresford and Mr. Cooke. The Bill of Emancipation was introduced on the
+12th of February,[101] with only three dissentient voices. On the 14th,
+when the London Cabinet had declared dissent from the proceedings of
+their Viceroy without recalling him, Sir L. Parsons at once moved an
+address, imploring him to continue among them, and only postponed it at
+the friendly request of Mr. Ponsonby.[102] On the 2nd of March, when the
+recall was a fact, the House voted that Lord Fitzwilliam merited "the
+thanks of that House, and the confidence of the people."[103] On the 5th
+the Duke of Leinster moved, and the House of Peers carried, a similar
+resolution.[104]
+
+At this epoch I pause. Here there opens a new and disastrous drama of
+disgrace to England and misery to Ireland. This is the point at which we
+may best learn the second and the greatest lesson taught by the history
+of Ireland in the eighteenth century. It is this, that, awful as is the
+force of bigotry, hidden under the mask of religion, but fighting for
+plunder and for power with all the advantages of possession, of
+prescription, and of extraneous support, there is a David that can kill
+this Goliath. That conquering force lies in the principle of
+nationality.
+
+It was the growing sense of nationality that prompted the Irish
+Parliament to develop its earlier struggles for privilege on the narrow
+ground into a genuine contest for freedom, civil and religious, on a
+ground as broad as Ireland, nay, as humanity at large. If there be such
+things as contradictions in the world of politics, they are to be found
+in nationality on the one side, and bigotry of all kinds on the other,
+but especially religious bigotry, which is of all the most baneful.
+Whatever is given to the first of these two is lost to the second. I
+speak of a reasonable and reasoning, not of a blind and headstrong
+nationality; of a nationality which has regard to circumstances and to
+traditions, and which only requires that all relations, of incorporation
+or of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to the laws of
+Nature's own enactment. Such a nationality was the growth of the last
+century in Ireland. As each Irishman began to feel that he had a
+country, to which he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a
+true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood, and into
+the sense of brotherhood, with those who shared the allegiance and the
+property, the obligation and the heritage. And this idea of country,
+once well conceived, presents itself as a very large idea, and as a
+framework for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a common
+life. Hence it was that, on the coming of Lord Fitzwilliam, the whole
+generous emotion of the country leapt up with one consent, and went
+forth to meet him. Hence it was that religious bigotry was no longer an
+appreciable factor in the public life of Ireland. Hence it was that on
+his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his recall, it became
+necessary to divide again the host that had, welcomed him--to put one
+part of it in array as Orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed;
+and to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger mass by
+repulsion and proscription, by stripping Roman Catholics of arms in the
+face of licence and of cruelty, and, finally, by clothing the extreme of
+lawlessness with the forms of law.
+
+Within the last twelve months we have seen, in the streets of Belfast,
+the painful proof that the work of Beresford and of Castlereagh has been
+found capable for the moment of revival. To aggravate or sustain Irish
+disunion, religious bigotry has been again evoked in Ireland. If the
+curse be an old one, there is also an old cure, recorded in the grand
+pharmacopoeia of history; and if the abstract force of policy and
+prudence are insufficient for the work, we may yet find that the evil
+spirit will be effectually laid by the gentle influence of a living and
+working Irish nationality. _Quod faxit Deus._
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 73: _2 Henry VI._, act iii. sc. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+chap, vii. vol. ii, p. 205.]
+
+[Footnote 75: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+vol. ii. p. 227.]
+
+[Footnote 76: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 164.]
+
+[Footnote 77: Duffy's _Bird's-Eye View_, p. 166.]
+
+[Footnote 78: See Ball's _History of the Church of Ireland_, a valuable
+work, deserving of more attention than it seems to have received.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Boulter's _Letters_, i. 138, _et alibi_.]
+
+[Footnote 80: Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_,
+ii.]
+
+[Footnote 81: Boulter's _Letters_, vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 82: Cornwallis's _Correspondence_, ii. 441.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Grattan's _Life and Times_, v. 173.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Lecky, ii. 430.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Duffy, p. 177.]
+
+[Footnote 86: Schiller's _Wallenstein_.]
+
+[Footnote 87: Lecky, iv. 489.]
+
+[Footnote 88: Lecky, iv. 477-479; Brown, _Laws against Catholics_, pp.
+329-332.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Lecky, pp. 499-501.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Sheridan's _Critic_, act iii. sc. I.]
+
+[Footnote 91: Plowden's _History_ (1809), ii. 70.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Brown, _Laws against Catholics_, p. 289.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Lecky, i. 297.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Plowden, i. 297.]
+
+[Footnote 95: 1 Geo. II. c. ix. sect 7.]
+
+[Footnote 96: See Lecky, vi. 521.]
+
+[Footnote 97: _The Irish Parliament_, p. 64. Cassell: 1885.]
+
+[Footnote 98: See Lecky, vi. 492, 493.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Lecky, vi. 567.]
+
+[Footnote 100: Plowden's _Historical Review_, ii. 335.]
+
+[Footnote 101: Ibid., ii. 353.]
+
+[Footnote 102: Plowden's _Historical Review_, ii. 498.]
+
+[Footnote 103: Ibid., ii. 357.]
+
+[Footnote 104: Ibid., ii. 505.]
+
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
+
+
+
+
+
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