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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15086-8.txt b/15086-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5eb75f7 --- /dev/null +++ b/15086-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15119 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Framework of Home Rule, by Erskine Childers + +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: The Framework of Home Rule + +Author: Erskine Childers + +Release Date: February 17, 2005 [EBook #15086] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + +THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE + +BY + +ERSKINE CHILDERS + +AUTHOR OF + +"THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS," "WAR AND THE ARME BLANCHE," "GERMAN INFLUENCE +ON BRITISH CAVALRY"; EDITOR OF VOL. V. OF THE _TIMES_ "HISTORY OF THE +WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA," ETC. + +LONDON + +EDWARD ARNOLD + +1911 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER PAGES + + INTRODUCTION vii-xvi + +I. THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA 1-20 + +II. REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND 21-41 + +III. GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT 42-59 + +IV. THE UNION 60-71 + +V. CANADA AND IRELAND 72-104 + +VI. AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND 105-119 + +VII. SOUTH AFRICA AND IRELAND 120-143 + +VIII. THE ANALOGY 144-149 + +IX. IRELAND TO-DAY 150-187 + +X. THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE 188-229 + + I. The Elements of the Problem 188-197 + + II. Federal or Colonial Home Rule 198-203 + + III. The Exclusion or Retention of Irish Members + at Westminster 203-213 + + IV. Irish Powers and their Bearing on Exclusion 213-229 + +XI. UNION FINANCE 230-257 + + I. Before the Union 230-231 + + II. From the Union to the Financial Relations + Commission of 1894-1896 232-239 + + III. The Financial Relations Commission of 1894-1896 239-257 + +XII. THE PRESENT FINANCIAL SITUATION 258-279 + + I. Anglo-Irish Finance To-day 258-264 + + II. Irish Expenditure 264-274 + + III. Irish Revenue 274-279 + +XIII. FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE 280-306 + + I. The Essence of Home Rule 280-281 + + II. The Deficit 281-286 + + III. Further Contribution to Imperial Services 286 + + IV. Ireland's Share of the National Debt 286 + + V. Ireland's Share of Imperial Miscellaneous Revenue 287 + + VI. Irish Control of Customs and Excise 287-294 + + VII. Federal Finance 294-300 + + VIII. Alternative Schemes of Home Rule Finance 300-306 + +XIV. LAND PURCHASE FINANCE 307-321 + + I. Land Purchase Loans 307-319 + + II. Minor Loans to Ireland 319-321 + +XV. THE IRISH CONSTITUTION 322-338 + + CONCLUSION 339-341 + + APPENDIX 342-347 + + INDEX 348-354 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +My purpose in this volume is to advocate a definite scheme of +self-government for Ireland. That task necessarily involves an +historical as well as a constructive argument. It would be truer, +perhaps, to say that the greater part of the constructive case for Home +Rule must necessarily be historical. To postulate a vague acceptance of +the principle of Home Rule, and to proceed at once to the details of the +Irish Constitution, would be a waste of time and labour. It is +impossible even to attempt to plan the framework of a Home Rule Bill +without a tolerably close knowledge not only of Anglo-Irish relations, +but of the Imperial history of which they form a part. The Act will +succeed exactly in so far as it gives effect to the lessons of +experience. It will fail at every point where those lessons are +neglected. Constitutions which do not faithfully reflect the experience +of the sovereign power which accords them, and of the peoples which have +to live under them, are at the best perilous experiments liable to +defeat the end of their framers. + +I shall enter into history only so far as it is relevant to the +constitutional problem, using the comparative method, and confining +myself almost exclusively to the British Empire past and present. For +the purposes of the Irish controversy it is unnecessary to travel +farther. In one degree or another every one of the vexed questions which +make up the Irish problem has arisen again and again within the circle +of the English-speaking races. As a nation we have a body of experience +applicable to the case of Ireland incomparably greater than that +possessed by any other race in the world. If, from timidity, prejudice, +or sheer neglect, we fail to use it, we shall earn the heavy censure +reserved for those who sin against the light. + +For the comparative sketch I shall attempt, materials in the shape of +facts established beyond all controversy are abundant. Colonial history, +thanks to colonial freedom, is almost wholly free from the distorting +influence of political passion. South African history alone will need +revision in the light of recent events. When, under the alchemy of free +national institutions, Ireland has undergone the same transformation as +South Africa, her unhappy history will be chronicled afresh with a +juster sense of perspective and a juster apportionment of responsibility +for the calamities which have befallen her. And yet, if we consider the +field for partisan bias which Irish history presents, the amount of +ground common to writers of all shades of political opinion is now +astonishingly large. The result, I think, is due mainly to the good +influence of that eminent historian and Unionist politician, the late +Professor Lecky. Indeed, an advocate of Home Rule, nervously suspicious +of tainted material, could afford to rely solely on his "History of +Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," "Leaders of Public Opinion in +Ireland," and "Clerical Influences,"[1] which are Nationalist textbooks, +and, for quite recent events, on "A Consideration of Ireland in the +Nineteenth Century," by Mr. G. Locker-Lampson, the present Unionist +Member for Salisbury. A strange circumstance; but Ireland, like all +countries where political development has been forcibly arrested from +without, is a land of unending paradox. It is only one of innumerable +anomalies that Irish Nationalists should use Unionist histories as +propaganda for Nationalism; that the majority of Irish Unionists should +insist on ignoring all historical traditions save those which in any +normal country would long ago have been consigned by general consent to +oblivion and the institutions they embody overthrown; and that Unionist +writers such as those I have mentioned should be able to reconcile their +history and their politics only by a pessimism with regard to the +tendencies of human nature in general, or of Irish nature in particular, +with which their own historical teaching, founded on a true perception +of cause and effect, appears to be in direct contradiction. + +The truth is that the question is one of the construction, not of the +verification, of facts; of prophecy for the future, rather than of bare +affirmation or negation. No one can presume to determine such a question +without a knowledge of how human beings have been accustomed to act +under similar circumstances. Illumination of that sort Irish history and +the contemporary Irish problem incontestably need. The modern case for +the Union rests mainly on the abnormality of Ireland, and that is +precisely why it is such a formidable case to meet. For Ireland in many +ways is painfully abnormal. The most cursory study of her institutions +and social, economic, and political life demonstrate that fact. The +Unionist, fixing his eyes on some of the secondary peculiarities, and +ignoring their fundamental cause, demonstrates it with ease, and by a +habit of mind which yields only with infinite slowness to the growth of +political enlightenment, passes instinctively to the deduction that +Irish abnormalities render Ireland unfit for self-government. In other +words, he prescribes for the disease a persistent application of the +very treatment which has engendered it. Whatever the result, there is a +plausible answer. If Ireland is disorderly and retrograde, how can she +deserve freedom? If she is peaceful, and shows symptoms of economic +recuperation, clearly she does not need or even want it. In other words, +if all that is healthy in the patient battles desperately and not in +vain, first against irritant poison, and then against soporific drugs, +this healthy struggle for self-preservation is attributed not to native +vitality, but to the bracing regimen of coercive government. + +This train of argument, so far from being confined to Ireland, is as old +as the human race itself. Of all human passions, that for political +domination is the last to yield to reason. Men are naturally inclined to +attribute admitted social evils to every cause--religion, climate, race, +congenital defects of character, the inscrutable decrees of Divine +Providence--rather than to the form of political institutions; in other +words, to the organic structure of the community, and to rest the +security of an Empire on any other foundation than that of the liberty +of its component parts. If, in one case, their own experience proves +them wrong, they will go to the strangest lengths of perversity in +misreading their own experience, and they will seek every imaginable +pretext for distinguishing the case from its predecessor. Underlying all +is a nervous terror of the abuse of freedom founded on the assumption +that men will continue to act when free exactly as they acted under the +demoralizing influence of coercion. The British Empire has grown, and +continues to grow, in spite of this deeply rooted political doctrine. +Ireland is peculiar only in that her proximity to the seat of power has +exposed her for centuries to an application of the doctrine in its most +extreme form and without any hope of escape through the merciful +accidents to which more fortunate communities owe their emancipation. +Canada owes her position in the Empire, and the Empire itself exists in +its present form to-day, owing to the accident that the transcendantly +important principle of responsible government advocated by Lord Durham +as a remedy for the anarchy and stagnation in which he found both the +British and the French Provinces of Canada in 1838, did not require +Imperial legislation, and was established without the Parliamentary or +electoral sanction of Great Britain. Lord Durham was derided as a +visionary, and abused as unpatriotic for the assertion of this simple +principle. Far in advance of his time as he was, he himself shrank from +the full application of his own lofty ideal, and consequently made one +great, though under the circumstances not a capital, mistake in his +diagnosis, and it was to that mistake only that Parliament gave +legislative effect in 1840. By one of the most melancholy ironies in all +history Ireland was the source of his error, so that the Union of the +Canadas, dissolved as a failure by the Canadians themselves in 1867, was +actually based on the success of the Anglo-Irish Union in repressing a +dangerous nationality. Did the proof of the error in Canada induce +Englishmen to question the soundness of the precedent on which the error +was based? On the contrary, the lesson passed unnoticed, and the Irish +precedent has survived to darken thought, to retard democratic progress, +and to pervert domestic and Imperial policy to this very day. It even +had the truly extraordinary retrospective effect of obliterating from +the minds of many eminent statesmen the significance of the Canadian +parallel; for it is only six years ago that a Secretary of State for the +Colonies penned a despatch recommending for the Transvaal a form of +government similar to that which actually produced the Canadian +disorders of 1837, and supporting it by an argument whose effect was not +merely to resuscitate what time had proved to be false in Durham's +doctrine, but to discard what time had proved to be true. As for +Ireland herself, I know no more curious illustration of the strong +tendency, even on the part of the most fair-minded men, to place that +country outside the pale of social or political science, and of the +extreme reluctance to judge its inhabitants by the elementary standards +of human conduct, than the book to which I referred above--Mr. +Locker-Lampson's "A Consideration of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century." +For what he admits to be the ruinous results of British Government in +the past, the author in the last few pages of a lengthy volume has no +better cure to suggest than a continuance of British government, and he +defends this course by a terse enumeration of the very phenomena which +in Durham's opinion rendered the grant of Home Rule to Canada +imperative, concluding with a paragraph which, with the substitution of +"Canada" for "Ireland," constitutes an admirably condensed epitome of +the arguments used both by politicians at home, and the minorities in +Canada, in favour of Durham's error and against the truth he +established. + +Mr. Lecky represents a somewhat different school of thought, and reached +his Unionism by reasoning more profound and consistent, but, on the +other hand, wholly destructive of the Imperial theory as held by the +modern school of Imperialists. His fear and distrust of democracy in all +its forms and in all lands[2] was such that he naturally dreaded Irish +Nationalism, which is a form of democratic revolt suppressed so long and +by such harsh methods as to exhibit features easily open to criticism. +But the gist of his argument would have applied just as well to the +political evolution of the self-governing Colonies. Indeed, if he had +lived to see the last Imperial Conference, the pessimism of so clear a +thinker would assuredly have given way before the astounding contrast +between those countries in which his political philosophy had been +abjured, and the only white country in the Empire where by sheer force +it had been maintained intact. + +If my only object in writing were to contribute something toward the +dissipation of the fears and doubts which render it so hard to carry any +measure, however small, of Home Rule for Ireland, I should hope for +little success. Practical men, with a practical decision to make, rarely +look outside the immediate facts before them. Extremists, in a case like +that of Ireland, are reluctant to take account of what Lord Morley +calls "the fundamental probabilities of civil society." Sir Edward +Carson would be more than human if he were to be influenced by a +demonstration that the case he makes against Home Rule is the same as +that made by the minority leaders, not only in the French, but in the +British Province of Canada. Most of the minority to which he appeals +would now regard as an ill-timed paradox the view that the very vigour +of their opposition to Home Rule is a better omen for the success of +Home Rule than that kind of sapless Nationalism, astonishingly rare in +Ireland under the circumstances, which is inclined to yield to the +insidious temptation of setting the "eleemosynary benefits"--to use Mr. +Walter Long's phrase[3]--derived from the British connection above the +need for self-help and self-reliance. The real paradox is that any +Irishmen, Unionist or Nationalist, should tolerate advisers who, however +sincere and patriotic, avowedly regard Ireland as the parasite of Great +Britain; who appeal to the lower nature of her people; to the fears of +one section and the cupidity of both; advising Unionists to rely on +British power and all Irishmen on British alms. A day will come when the +humiliation will be seen in its true light. Even now, I do venture to +appeal to that small but powerful group of moderate Irish Unionists who, +so far from fearing revenge or soliciting charity, spend their whole +lives in the noble aim of uniting Irishmen of all creeds on a basis of +common endeavour for their own economic and spiritual salvation; who +find their work checked in a thousand ways by the perpetual maintenance +of a seemingly barren and sentimental agitation; who distrust both the +parties to this agitation; but who are reluctant to accept the view +that, without the satisfaction of the national claim, and without the +national responsibility thereby conferred, their own aims can never be +fully attained. I should be happy indeed if I could do even a little +towards persuading some of these men that they mistake cause and effect; +misinterpret what they resent; misjudge where they distrust, and in +standing aloof from the battle for legislative autonomy, unconsciously +concede a point--disinterested, constructive optimists as they are--to +the interested and destructive pessimism which, from Clare's savage +insults to Mr. Walter Long's contemptuous patronage, has always lain at +the root of British policy towards Ireland. + +In the meantime, for those who like or dislike it, Home Rule is +imminent. We are face to face no longer with a highly speculative, but +with a vividly practical problem, raising legislative and administrative +questions of enormous practical importance, and next year we shall be +dealing with this problem in an atmosphere of genuine reality totally +unlike that of 1886, when Home Rule was a startling novelty to the +British electorate, or of 1893, when the shadow of impending defeat +clouded debate and weakened counsel. It would be pleasant to think that +the time which has elapsed, besides greatly mitigating anti-Irish +prejudice, had been used for scientific study and dispassionate +discussion of the problem of Home Rule. Unfortunately, after eighteen +years the problem remains almost exactly where it was. There are no +detailed proposals of an authoritative character in existence. No +concrete scheme was submitted to the country in the recent elections. +None is before the country now. The reason, of course, is that the Irish +question is still an acute party question, not merely in Ireland, but in +Great Britain. Party passion invariably discourages patient constructive +thought, and all legislation associated with it suffers in consequence. +Tactical considerations, sometimes altogether irrelevant to the special +issue, have to be considered. In the case of Home Rule, when the balance +of parties is positively determined by the Irish vote, the difficulty +reaches its climax. It is idle to blame individuals. We should blame the +Union. So long as one island democracy claims to determine the destinies +of another island democracy, of whose special needs and circumstances it +is admittedly ignorant, so long will both islands suffer. + +This ignorance is not disputed. No Irish Unionist claims that Great +Britain should govern Ireland on the ground that the British electorate, +or even British statesmen, understand Irish questions. On the contrary, +in Ireland, at any rate, their ignorance is a matter for satirical +comment with all parties. What he complains of is, that the British +electorate is beginning to carry its ignorance to the point of believing +that the Irish electorate is competent to decide Irish questions, and +in educating the British electorate he has hitherto devoted himself +exclusively to the eradication of this error. The financial results of +the Union are such that he is now being cajoled into adding, "It is your +money, not your wisdom, that we want." Once more, an odd state of +affairs, and some day we shall all marvel in retrospect that the Union +was so long sustained by a separatist argument, reinforced in latter +days by such an inconsistent and unconscionable claim. + +In the meantime, if only the present situation can be turned to +advantage, this crowning paradox is the most hopeful element in the +whole of a tangled question. It is not only that the British elector is +likely to revolt at once against the slur upon his intelligence and the +drain upon his purse, but that Irish Unionism, once convinced of the +tenacity and sincerity of that revolt, is likely to undergo a dramatic +and beneficent transformation. If they are to have Home Rule, Irish +Unionists--even those who now most heartily detest it--will want the +best possible scheme of Home Rule, and the best possible scheme is not +likely to be the half measure which, from no fault of the statesman +responsible for it, tactical difficulties may make inevitable. If the +vital energy now poured into sheer uncompromising opposition to the +principles of Home Rule could be transmuted into intellectual and moral +effort after the best form of Home Rule, I believe that the result would +be a drastic scheme. + +Compromise enters more or less into the settlement of all burning +political questions. That is inevitable under the party system; but of +all questions under the sun, Home Rule questions are the least +susceptible of compromise so engendered. The subject, in reality, is not +suitable for settlement at Westminster. This is a matter of experience, +not of assertion. Within the present bounds of the Empire no lasting +Constitution has ever been framed for a subordinate State to the +moulding of which Parliament, in the character of a party assembly, +contributed an active share. Constitutions which promote prosperity and +loyalty have actually or virtually been framed by those who were to live +under them. If circumstances make it impossible to adopt this course for +Ireland, let us nevertheless remember that all the friction and enmity +between the Mother Country and subordinate States have arisen, not from +the absence, but from the inadequacy of self-governing powers. Checks +and restrictions, so far from benefiting Great Britain or the Colonies, +have damaged both in different degrees, the Colonies suffering most +because these checks and restrictions produce in the country submitted +to them peculiar mischiefs which exist neither under a despotic régime +nor an unnatural Legislative Union, fruitful of evil as both those +systems are. The damage is not evanescent, but is apt to bite deep into +national character and to survive the abolition of the institutions +which caused it. The Anglo-Irish Union was created and has ever since +been justified by a systematic defamation of Irish character. If it is +at length resolved to bury the slander and trust Ireland, in the name of +justice and reason let the trust be complete and the institutions given +her such as to permit full play to her best instincts and tendencies, +not such as to deflect them into wrong paths. Let us be scrupulously +careful to avoid mistakes which might lead to a fresh campaign of +defamation like that waged against Canada, as well as Ireland, between +1830 and 1840. + +The position, I take it, is that most Irish Unionists still count, +rightly or wrongly, on defeating Home Rule, not only in the first +Parliamentary battle, but by exciting public opinion during the long +period of subsequent delay which the Parliament Bill permits. Not until +Home Rule is a moral certainty, and perhaps not even then, do the +extremists intend to consider the Irish Constitution in a practical +spirit. Surely this is a perilous policy. Surely it must be so regarded +by the moderate men--and there are many--who, if Home Rule comes, intend +to throw their abilities into making it a success, and who will be +indispensable to Ireland at a moment of supreme national importance. +Irretrievable mistakes may be made by too long a gamble with the chances +of political warfare. Whatever the scheme produced, the extremists will +have to oppose it tooth and nail. If the measure is big, sound, and +generous, it will be necessary to attack its best features with the +greatest vigour; to rely on beating up vague, anti-separatist sentiment +in Great Britain; to represent Irish Protestants as a timid race forced +to shelter behind British bayonets; in short, to use all the arguments +which, if Irish Unionists were compelled to frame a Constitution +themselves, they would scorn to employ, and which, if grafted on the Act +in the form of amendments, they themselves in after-years might +bitterly regret. Conversely, if the measure is a limited one, it will be +necessary to commend its worst features; to extol its eleemosynary side +and all the infractions of liberty which in actual practice they would +find intolerably irksome. Whatever happens, things will be said which +are not meant, and passions aroused which will be difficult to allay on +the eve of a crisis when Ireland will need the harmonious co-operation +of all her ablest sons. + +If, behind the calculation of a victory within the next two years, there +lies the presentiment of an eventual defeat, let not the thought be +encouraged that a better form of Home Rule is likely to come from a Tory +than from a Liberal Government. Many Irish Unionists regard the prospect +of continued submission to a Liberal, or what they consider a +semi-Socialist, Government as the one consideration which would +reconcile them to Home Rule. No one can complain of that. But they make +a fatal mistake in denying Liberals credit for understanding questions +of Home Rule better than Tories. That, again, is a matter of proved +experience. Compare the abortive Transvaal Constitution of 1905 with the +reality of 1906, and measure the probable consequences of the former by +the actual results of the latter. Let them remember, too, that every +year which passes aggravates the financial difficulties which imperil +the future of Ireland. + +The best hope of securing a final settlement of the Irish question in +the immediate future lies in promoting open discussion on the details of +the Home Rule scheme, and of drawing into that discussion all Irishmen +and Englishmen who realize the profound importance of the issue. This +book is offered as a small contribution to the controversy. + +For help in writing it I am deeply indebted to many friends on both +sides of the Irish Channel, in Ireland to officials and private persons, +who have generously placed their experience at my disposal; while in +England I owe particular thanks to the Committee of which I had the +honour to be a member, which sat during the summer of this year under +the chairmanship of Mr. Basil Williams, and which published the series +of essays called "Home Rule Problems." + +E.C. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] The two latter works were written by Mr. Lecky in his Nationalist +youth the first and greater work after he had become a Unionist. They +form a connected whole, however, and are not inconsistent with one +another. + +[2] See "Democracy and Liberty." + +[3] "Did the people of Ireland understand that the destruction of the +Union, so lightly advocated by Lord Haldane, must result in the +cessation of those largely eleemosynary benefits to which the progress +of Ireland is due, her 'dissatisfaction' would be unmistakably directed +towards her false advisers?"--Letter to the _Belfast Telegraph_, October +7, 1911, criticizing Lord Haldane's preface to "Home Rule Problems." + + + + +ERRATA + + +Since this book went to press the Treasury has issued a revised version +of Return No. 220, 1911 [Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland, and +Ireland)], cancelling the Return issued in July, and correcting an error +made in it. It now appears that the "true" Excise revenue attributable +to Ireland from _spirits_ in 1910-11 (with deductions made by the +Treasury from the sum actually collected in Ireland) should be +£3,575,000, instead of £3,734,000, and that the total "true" Irish +revenue in that year was, therefore, £11,506,500, instead of +£11,665,500. In other words, Irish revenue for 1910-11 was +over-estimated in the Return now cancelled by £159,000. + +The error does not affect the Author's argument as expounded in Chapters +XII. and XIII.; but it necessitates the correction of a number of +figures given by him, especially in Chapter XII., the principal change +being that the deficit in Irish revenue, as calculated on the mean of +the two years 1909-10 and 1910-11, should actually be £1,392,000, +instead of £1,312,500. + +The full list of corrections is as follows: + +Page 259, line 9, _for_ "£1,312,500," _read_ "£1,392,000." + +Page 260, table, third column, line 6, _for_ "£10,032,000," _read_ +"£9,952 500"; last line, _for_ "£1,312,500," _read_ "£1,392,000." + +Page 261, table, last column, last line but one, _for_ "£321,000," +_read_ "£162,000"; last line (total), _for_ "£329,780,970," _read_ +"£329,621,970." + +Page 262, line 7, _for_ "£10,032,000," _read_ "£9,952,500"; line 10, +_for_ "£1,312,500," _read_ "£1,392,000." + +Page 275. table, last column, line 2, _for_ "£3,734,000," _read_ +"£3,575,000"; line 7, _for_ "£10,371,000," _read_ "£10,212,000"; line +14, _for_ "£11,665,500," _read_, "£11,506,500"; in text, last line but +one of page, _for_ "£10,032,000," _read_ "£9,952,500." + +Page 276, line 5, _for_ "£500,000," _read_, "£340,000"; table, last +column, line 2, _for_ "£3,316,000," _read_ "£3,236,500"; line 3, _for_ +"£6,182,000," _read_ "£6,102,500"; line 9, _for_ "£8,737,500," _read_ +"£8,658,000"; last line, _for_ "£10,032,000," _read_ "£9,952,500." + +Page 277, line 2, _for_ "£1,672,500," _read_ "£1,752,000"; line 7, _for_ +"£1,312,500," _read_ "£1,392,000"; line 8, _for_ "£10,032,000," _read_ +"£9,952,500"; line 12, _for_ "£1,672,500," _read_ "£1,752,000"; +footnote, line 1, _for_ "£1,793,000," _read_ "£1,952,000." + +Page 279, line 8, _for_ "70.75," _read_ "70.48." + +Page 282, sixth line from bottom, _for_ "£1,312,500," _read_ +"£1,392,000." + + * * * * * + +Page 246, line 8 and footnote, and page 295, lines 21-31: A temporary +measure has been passed (Surplus Revenue Act, 1910), under which the +Surplus Commonwealth Revenue is returned to the States on a basis of £1 +5s. per head of the population of each State. + + * * * * * + +Page 288, line 2, _omit_ "like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands." +These islands have distinct local tariffs, but they cannot be said to be +wholly under local control. + + + + +THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA + + + +I. + + +Ireland was the oldest and the nearest of the Colonies. We are apt to +forget that she was ever colonized, and that for a long period, although +styled a Kingdom, she was kept in a position of commercial and political +dependence inferior to that of any Colony. Constitutional theory still +blinds a number of people to the fact that in actual practice Ireland is +still governed in many respects as a Colony, but on principles which in +all other white communities of the British Empire are extinct. Like all +Colonies, she has a Governor or Lord-Lieutenant of her own, an Executive +of her own, and a complete system of separate Government Departments, +but her people, unlike the inhabitants of a self-governing Colony, +exercise no control over the administration. She possesses no +Legislature of her own, although in theory she is supposed to possess +sufficient legislative control over Irish affairs through representation +in the Imperial Parliament. In practice, however, this control has +always been, and still remains, illusory, just as it would certainly +have proved illusory if conferred upon any Colony. It can be exercised +only by cumbrous, circuitous, and often profoundly unhealthy methods; +and over a wide range of matters it cannot by any method whatsoever be +exercised at all. + +To look behind mere technicalities to the spirit of government, Ireland +resembles one of that class of Crown Colonies of which Jamaica and Malta +are examples, where the inhabitants exercise no control over +administration, and only partial control over legislation.[4] + +Why is this? + +Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, always frank and fearless in his political +judgments, gave the best answer in 1893, when opposing the first reading +of the second of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills. "Does anybody doubt," +he said, "that if Ireland were a thousand miles away from England she +would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" Now this +was not a barren geographical truism, which might by way of hypothesis +be applied in identical terms to any fraction of the United +Kingdom--say, for example, to that part of England lying south of the +Thames. Mr. Chamberlain never made any attempt to deny--no one with the +smallest knowledge of history could have denied--that Ireland, though +only sixty miles away from England, was less like England than any of +the self-governing Colonies then attached to the Crown, possessing +distinct national characteristics which entitled her, in theory at any +rate, to demand, not merely colonial, but national autonomy. On the +contrary, Mr. Chamberlain went out of his way to argue, with all the +force and fire of an accomplished debater, that the Bill was a highly +dangerous measure precisely because, while granting Ireland a measure of +autonomy, it denied her some of the elementary powers, not only of +colonial, but of national States; for instance, the full control over +taxation, which all self-governing Colonies possessed, and the control +over foreign policy, which is a national attribute. The complementary +step in his argument was that, although nominally withheld by statute, +these fuller powers would be forcibly usurped by the future Irish +Government through the leverage offered by a subordinate Legislature and +Executive, and that, once grasped, they would be used to the injury of +Great Britain and the minority in Ireland. Ireland ("a fearful danger") +might arm, ally herself with France, and, while submitting the +Protestant minority to cruel persecution, would retain enough national +unity to smite Britain hip and thigh, and so avenge the wrong of ages. + +Even to the most ardent Unionist the case thus presented must, in the +year 1911, present a doubtful aspect. The British _entente_ with France, +and the absence of the smallest ascertainable sympathy between Ireland +and Germany, he will dismiss, perhaps, as points of minor importance, +but he will detect at once in the argument an antagonism, natural enough +in 1893, between national and colonial attributes, and he will remember, +with inner misgivings, that his own party has taken an especially active +part during the last ten years in furthering the claim of the +self-governing Colonies to the status of nationhood as an essential step +in the furtherance of Imperial unity. The word "nation," therefore, as +applied to Ireland, has lost some of its virtue as a deterrent to Home +Rule. Even the word "Colony" is becoming harmless; for every year that +has passed since 1893 has made it more abundantly clear that colonial +freedom means colonial friendship; and, after all, friendship is more +important than legal ties. In one remarkable case, that of the conquered +Dutch Republic in South Africa, a flood of searching light has been +thrown on the significance of those phrases "nation" and "Colony." +There, as in Ireland, and originally in Canada, "national" included +racial characteristics, and colonial autonomy signified national +autonomy in a more accurate sense than in Australia or Newfoundland. But +we know now that it does not signify either a racial tyranny within +those nations, or a racial antipathy to the Mother Country; but, on the +contrary, a reconciliation of races within and friendship without. + +Would Mr. Chamberlain recast his argument now? Unhappily, we shall not +know. But it does seem to me that recent history and his own temperament +would force him to do so. As in his abandonment of Free Trade, it was a +strong and sincere Imperialist instinct that eventually transformed him +from the advocate of provincial Home Rule into the relentless enemy of +Home Rule in any shape. Take the Imperial argument, shaken to its +foundations by subsequent events, from the case he stated in 1893, and +what remains? Two pleas only--first, the abnormality of Irishmen; +second, Ireland's proximity to England. The first expresses the old +traditional view that Ireland is outside the pale of all human analogy; +the exception to all rules; her innate depravity and perversity such +that she would abuse power where others respect it, derive enmity where +others derive friendship, and willingly ruin herself by internal +dissension and extravagant ambitions in order, if possible, at the same +time to ruin England. Unconnected, however loosely, with the high +Imperial argument, I do not believe that this plea could have been used +with sincerity by Mr. Chamberlain even in 1893. He was a democrat, +devoted to the cause of enfranchising and trusting the people; and this +plea was, after all, only the same anti-democratic argument applied to +Ireland, and tipped with racial venom, which had been used for +generations by most Tories and many Whigs against any extension of +popular power. Lord Randolph Churchill, the Tory democrat, in his +dispassionate moments, always scouted it, resting his case against Home +Rule on different grounds. It was strange enough to see the argument +used by the Radical author of all the classic denunciations of class +ascendancy and the classic eulogies of the sense, forbearance and +generosity of free electorates. It was all the stranger in that Mr. +Chamberlain himself a few years before had committed himself to a scheme +of restricted self-government for Ireland, and in the debates on Mr. +Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill of 1886, when the condition of Ireland +was far worse than in 1893, had declared himself ready to give that +country a Constitution similar to that enjoyed by Quebec or Ontario +within the Dominion of Canada. But politics are politics. Under the +inexorable laws of the party game, politicians are advocates and swell +their indictments with every count which will bear the light. The system +works well enough in every case but one--the indictment of a +fellow-nation for incapacity to rule itself. There, both in Ireland and +everywhere else, as I shall show, it works incalculable mischief. Once +committed irrevocably to the opposition of Mr. Gladstone's Bills, Mr. +Chamberlain, standing on Imperial ground, which seemed to him and his +followers firm enough then, used his unrivalled debating powers to +traduce and exasperate the Irish people and their leaders by every +device in his power. + +One other point survives in its integrity from the case made by Mr. +Chamberlain in 1893, and that is the argument about distance. Clearly +this is a quite distinct contention from the last; for distance from any +given point does not by itself radically alter human nature. Australians +are not twice as good or twice as bad as South Africans because they +are twice as far from the Mother Country. "Does anybody doubt"--let me +repeat his words--"that if Ireland were a thousand miles from England +she would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" The +whole tragedy of Ireland lies in that "if"; but the condition is, +without doubt, still unsatisfied. Ireland is still only sixty miles away +from the English shores, and the argument from proximity, for what it is +worth, is still plausible. To a vast number of minds it still seems +conclusive. Put the South African parallel to the average moderate +Unionist, half disposed to admit the force of this analogy, he would +nevertheless answer: "Ah, but Ireland is so near." Well, let us join +issue on the two grounds I have indicated--the ground of Irish +abnormality, and the ground of Ireland's proximity. It will be found, I +think, that neither contention is tenable by itself; that a supporter of +one unconsciously or consciously reinforces it by reference to the +other, and that to refute one is to refute both. It will be found, too, +that, apart from mechanical and unessential difficulties, the whole case +against Home Rule is included and summed up in these two contentions, +and that the mechanical problem itself will be greatly eased and +illuminated by their refutation. + + +II. + +Those sixty miles of salt water which we know as the Irish Channel--if +only every Englishman could realize their tremendous significance in +Anglo-Irish history--what an ineffectual barrier "in the long result of +time" to colonization and conquest; what an impassable barrier--through +the ignorance and perversity of British statesmanship--to sympathy and +racial fusion! + +For eight hundred years after the Christian era her distance from Europe +gave Ireland immunity from external shocks, and freedom to work out her +own destiny. She never, for good or ill, underwent Roman occupation or +Teutonic invasion. She was secure enough to construct and maintain +unimpaired a civilization of her own, warlike, prosperous, and +marvellously rich, for that age, in scholarship and culture. She +produced heroic warriors, peaceful merchants, and gentle scholars and +divines; poets, musicians, craftsmen, architects, theologians. She had a +passion for diffusing knowledge, and for more than a thousand years sent +her missionaries of piety, learning, art, and commerce, far and wide +over Europe. For two hundred years she resisted her first foreign +invaders, the Danes, with desperate tenacity, and seems to have absorbed +into her own civilization and polity those who ultimately retained a +footing on her eastern shores. + +With the coming of the Anglo-Normans at the end of the twelfth century +the dark shadow begins to fall, and for the first time the Irish Channel +assumes its tragic significance. England, compounded of Britons, +Teutons, Danes, Scandinavians, Normans, with the indelible impress of +Rome upon the whole, had emerged, under Nature's mysterious alchemy, a +strong State. Ireland had preserved her Gaelic purity, her tribal +organization, her national culture, but at the cost of falling behind in +the march of political and military organization. Sixty miles divided +her from the nearest part of the outlying dominions of feudal England, +150 miles from the dynamic centre of English power. The degree of +distance seems to have been calculated with fatal exactitude, in +correspondence with the degrees of national vitality in the two +countries respectively, to produce for ages to come the worst possible +effects on both. The process was slow. Ireland was near enough to +attract the Anglo-Norman adventurers and colonists, but strong enough +and fair enough for three hundred years to transform them into patriots +"more Irish than the Irish"; always, however, too near and too weak, +even with their aid, to expel the direct representatives of English rule +from the foothold they had obtained on her shores, while at the same +time too far and too formidable to enable that rule to expand into the +complete conquest and subjugation of the realm. + +"The English rule," says Mr. Lecky, "as a living reality, was confined +and concentrated within the limits of the Pale. The hostile power +planted in the heart of the nation destroyed all possibility of central +government, while it was itself incapable of fulfilling that function. +Like a spear-point embedded in a living body, it inflamed all around it +and deranged every vital function. It prevented the gradual reduction +of the island by some native Clovis, which would necessarily have taken +place if the Anglo-Normans had not arrived, and instead of that peaceful +and almost silent amalgamation of races, customs, laws, and languages, +which took place in England, and which is the source of many of the best +elements in English life and character, the two nations remained in +Ireland for centuries in hostility." + +From this period dates that intense national antipathy felt by the +English for the Irish race which has darkened all subsequent history. It +was not originally a temperamental antipathy, or it would be impossible +to explain the powerful attraction of Irish character, manners, and laws +for the great bulk of the Anglo-Norman colonists. Nor within Ireland, +even after the Reformation, was it a religious antipathy between a +Protestant race and a race exclusively and immovably Catholic. It was in +origin a political antipathy between a small official minority, backed +by the support of a powerful Mother Country struggling for ascendancy +over a large native and naturalized majority, divided itself by tribal +feuds, but on the whole united in loathing and combating that +ascendancy. Universal experience, as I shall afterwards show, proves +that an enmity so engendered takes a more monstrous and degrading shape +than any other. Religion becomes its pretext. Ignorance makes it easy, +and interest makes it necessary, to represent the native race as savages +outside the pale of law and morals, against whom any violence and +treachery is justifiable. The legend grows and becomes a permanent +political axiom, distorting and abasing the character of those who act +on it and those who, suffering from it, and retaliating against its +consequences, construct their counter-legend of the inherent wickedness +of the dominant race. If left to themselves, white races, of diverse +nationalities, thrown together in one country, eventually coalesce, or +at least learn to live together peaceably. But if an external power too +remote to feel genuine responsibility for the welfare of the +inhabitants, while near enough to exert its military power on them, +takes sides in favour of the minority, and employs them as its permanent +and privileged garrison, the results are fatal to the peace and +prosperity of the country it seeks to dominate, and exceedingly +harmful, though in a degree less easy to gauge, to itself. So it was +with Ireland; and yet it cannot fail to strike any student of history +what an extraordinary resilience she showed again and again under any +transient phase of wise and tolerant government. + +Such a phase occurred in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII., +when, after the defeat of the Geraldines, for the first time some +semblance of royal authority was established over the whole realm; and +when an effort was also made, not through theft or violence, but by +conciliatory statecraft, to replace the native Brehon system of law and +land tenure by English institutions, and to anglicize the Irish chiefs. +The process stopped abruptly and for ever with the accession of Mary, to +be replaced by the forcible confiscation of Irish land, and the +"planting" of English and Scotch settlers. + +Ireland, for four hundred years the only British Colony, is now drawn +into the mighty stream of British colonial expansion. Adventurous and +ambitious Englishmen began to regard her fertile acres as Raleigh +regarded America, and, in point of time, the systematic and State-aided +colonization of Ireland is approximately contemporaneous with that of +America. It is true that until the first years of the sixteenth century +no permanent British settlement had been made in America, while in +Ireland the plantation of King's and Queen's Counties was begun as early +as 1556, and under Elizabeth further vast confiscations were carried out +in Munster within the same century. But from the reign of James I. +onward, the two processes advance _pari passu_. Virginia, first founded +by Raleigh in 1585, is firmly settled in 1607, just before the +confiscation of Ulster and its plantation by 30,000 Scots; and in 1620, +just after that huge measure of expropriation, the Pilgrim Fathers +landed in New Plymouth. Puritan Massachusetts--with its offshoots, +Connecticut, New Haven and Rhode Island--as well as Catholic Maryland, +were formally established between 1629 and 1638, and Maine in 1639, at a +period when the politically inspired proscription of the Catholic +religion, succeeding the robbery of the soil, was goading the unhappy +Irish to the rebellion of 1641. While that rebellion, with its fierce +excesses and pitiless reprisals, was convulsing Ireland, the united +Colonies of New England banded themselves together for mutual defence. + +A few years later Cromwell, aiming, through massacre and rapine, at the +extermination of the Irish race, with the savage watchword "To Hell or +Connaught," planted Ulster, Munster, and Leinster with men of the same +stock, stamp, and ideas as the colonists of New England, and in the +first years of the Restoration Charles II. confirmed these +confiscations, at the same time that he granted Carolina to Lord +Clarendon, New Netherlands to the Duke of York, and New Jersey to Lord +Berkeley, and issued fresh Charters for Connecticut and Maryland. +Finally, Quaker Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1682, and in 1691 William +III., after the hopeless Jacobite insurrections in favour of the last of +the Stuarts, wrung the last million acres of good Irish land from the +old Catholic proprietors, planted them with Protestant Englishmen, and +completed the colonization of Ireland. Forty years passed (1733) before +Georgia, the last of the "Old Thirteen Colonies," was planted, as Ulster +had been planted, mainly by Scotch Presbyterians. + +During the greater part of this period we must remember that conquered +Ireland herself was contributing to the colonization of America. Every +successive act of spoliation drove Catholic Irishmen across the Atlantic +as well as into Europe, and gave every Colony an infusion of Irish +blood. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century this class of +emigration was for the most part involuntary. Cromwell, for example, +shipped off thousands of families indiscriminately to the West Indies +and America for sale, as "servants" to the colonists. The only organized +and voluntary expedition in which Irish Catholics took part was that to +Maryland under Lord Baltimore. The distinction in course of time became +immaterial. In the free American air English, Scotch, and Irish became +one people, with a common political and social tradition. + +It is interesting, and for a proper understanding of the Irish question, +indispensable, briefly to contrast the characteristics and progress of +the American and Irish settlements, and in doing so to observe the +profound effects of geographical position and political institutions on +human character. I shall afterwards ask the reader to include in the +comparison the later British Colonies formed in Canada and South Africa +by conquest, and in Australia by peaceful settlement. + +Let us note, first, that both in America and Ireland the Colonies were +bi-racial, with this all-important distinction, that in America the +native race was coloured, savage, heathen, nomadic, incapable of fusion +with the whites, and, in relation to the almost illimitable territory +colonized, not numerous; while in Ireland the native race was white, +civilized, Christian, numerous, and confined within the limits of a +small island to which it was passionately attached by treasured national +traditions, and whose soil it cultivated under an ancient and revered +system of tribal tenure. The parallel, then, in this respect, is slight, +and becomes insignificant, except in regard to the similarity of the +mental attitude of the colonists towards Indians and Irish respectively. +In natural humanity the colonists of Ireland and the colonists of +America differed in no appreciable degree. They were the same men, with +the same inherent virtues and defects, acting according to the pressure +of environment. Danger, in proportionate degree, made both classes +brutal and perfidious; but in America, though there were moments of +sharp crisis, as in 1675 on the borders of Massachusetts, the degree was +comparatively small, and through the defeat and extrusion of the Indians +diminished steadily. In Ireland, because complete expulsion and +extermination were impossible, the degree was originally great, and, +long after it had actually disappeared, haunted the imagination and +distorted the policy of the invading nation. + +In America there was no land question. Freeholds were plentiful for the +meanest settlers and the title was sound and indisputable. In the +"proprietary" Colonies, it is true, vast tracts of country were +originally vested by royal grants in a single nobleman or a group of +capitalists, just as vast estates were granted in Ireland to peers, +London companies, and syndicates of "undertakers"; but by the nature of +things, the extent of territory, its distance, and the absence of a +white subject race, no agrarian harm resulted in America, and a healthy +system of tenure, almost exclusively freehold, was naturally evolved. + +In Ireland the land question was the whole question from the first. If +the natives had been exterminated, or their remnants wholly confined, +as Cromwell planned, to the barren lands of Connaught, all might have +been well for the conquerors. Or if Ireland had been, in Mr. +Chamberlain's phrase, a thousand miles away, all might have come right +under the compulsion of circumstances and the healing influence of time. +That the Celtic race still possessed its strong powers of assimilation +was shown by the almost complete denationalization and absorption of a +large number of Cromwell's soldier-colonists in the south and south-east +under what Mr. Lecky calls the "invincible Catholicism" of the Irish +women. But the Irish were not only numerous, but fatally near the seat +of Empire. The natives--Irish or Anglo-Irish--were still more than twice +as numerous as the colonists; they were scattered over the whole +country, barren or fertile, and that country was within a day's sail of +England. The titles of the colonists to the land rested on sheer +violence, sometimes aggravated by the grossest meanness and treachery, +and these titles were not recognized by the plundered race. Even with +their gradual recognition it would have been difficult to introduce the +English system of tenure, which was radically different and repellent to +the Irish mind. The bare idea of one man absolutely owning land and +transmitting it entire to his heirs was incomprehensible to them. + +The solution for all these difficulties was unfortunately only too easy +and obvious. England was near, strong, and thoroughly imbued with the +policy of governing Ireland on the principle of antagonizing the races +within her. It was possible, therefore, by English help, under laws made +in England, to constitute the Irish outlaws from the land, labourers on +it, no doubt, that was an economic necessity, precarious occupiers of +plots just sufficient to support life; but, in the eyes of the law, +serfs. The planters of the southern American Colonies imported African +negroes for the same purpose, with irretrievably mischievous results to +their own descendants. Nor is it an exaggeration to compare the use made +of the Irish for a certain period to the use made of these negroes, for +great numbers of the Irish were actually exported as slaves to +Barbadoes, Jamaica, and even to Carolina. + +The outlawed multitude in Ireland were deprived, not only of all rights +to the land, but, as a corollary, of all social privileges whatsoever. +"The law," said an Irish Lord Chancellor, "does not suppose any such +person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." The instrument of ostracism +was the famous Penal Code, begun in William's reign in direct and +immediate defiance of a solemn pledge given in the Treaty of Limerick, +guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Catholics, and perfected in +the reign of Anne. This Code, ostensibly framed to extirpate +Catholicism, was primarily designed to confirm and perpetuate the +gigantic dislocation of property caused by the transference of Irish and +Anglo-Irish land into English and Scotch ownership. Since the rightful +owners were Catholic, and the wrongful owners Protestants, the laws +against the Catholic religion--a religion feared everywhere by +Englishmen at this period--were the simplest means of legalizing and +buttressing the new régime. I shall not linger over the details of the +Code. Burke's description of it remains classic and unquestioned: "A +complete system full of coherence and consistency, well digested and +composed 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." + +The aim was to reduce the Catholics to poverty, ignorance, and +impotence, and the aim was successful. Of the laws against priests, +worship, education, and of the bars to commerce and the professions, I +need not speak. In the matter of property, the fundamental enactments +concerned the land, namely, that no Catholic could own land, or lease it +for more than thirty years, and even then on conditions which made +profitable tenure practically impossible. This law created and sustained +the serfdom I have described, and is the direct cause of the modern land +problem. It remained unaltered in the smallest respect for seventy +years, that is, until 1761, when a Catholic was permitted to lease for +sixty-one years as much as fifty acres of bog not less than four feet +deep. Long before this the distribution of landed property and the +system of land tenure had become stereotyped. + +This system of tenure was one of the worst that ever existed on the face +of the globe. It has been matched in portions of India, but nowhere +else in this Empire save in little Prince Edward Island, where we shall +meet with it again. In Ireland, where it assumed its worst form, violent +conquest by a neighbouring power not only made it politic to outlaw the +old owners, but precluded the introduction of the traditional English +tenures, even into the relations between the British superior landlord +and the British occupying colonist. The bulk of the confiscated Irish +land, as I have mentioned, had been granted in fee to English noblemen, +gentlemen, or speculators, who planted it with middle or lower-class +tenants. A number of Cromwell's private soldiers settled in Leinster and +Munster, and, holding small farms in fee, formed an exception to this +rule. But the greater part of Ireland, in ownership, as distinguished +from occupation, consisted of big estates, and a large number of the +English owners, being only a day's sail from England, became, by natural +instinct, habitual absentees. Others lived in Dublin and neglected their +estates. Absenteeism, non-existent in America, assumed in Ireland the +proportions of an enormous economic evil. In England the landlord was, +and remains, a capitalist, providing a house and a fully equipped farm +to the tenant. In Ireland he was a rent receiver pure and simple, +unconnected with the occupier by any healthy bond, moral or economic. +The rent-receiving absentee involved a resident middleman, who +contracted to pay a stipulated rent to the absentee, and had to extract +that rent, plus a profit for himself, out of the occupiers, whether +Catholic serfs, Protestant tenants, or both, and usually did so by +subdivision of holdings and disproportionate elevation of rents. Over +three of the four Provinces of Ireland--for a small part of Ulster was +differently situated--the middleman himself frequently became an +absentee and farmed his agency to another middleman, who by further +subdivisions and extortions made an additional private profit, and who, +in his turn, would create a subsidiary agency, until the land in many +cases was "subset six deep."[5] The ultimate occupier and sole creator +of agricultural wealth lived perpetually on the verge of starvation, +beggared not only by extortionate rents, partly worked out in virtually +forced labour, but by extortionate tithes paid to the alien Anglican +Church, in addition to the scanty dues willingly contributed to the +hunted priests of his own prescribed religion. His resident upper +class--though we must allow for many honourable exceptions--was the +Squirearchy, satirized by Arthur Young as petty despots with the vices +of despots; idle, tyrannical, profligate, boorish, fit founders of the +worst social system the modern civilized world has ever known. The +slave-owning planters of Carolina were by no means devoid of similar +faults, which are the invariable products of arbitrary control over +human beings, but there the physiological gulf between the dominant and +subject race was too broad and deep to permit of substantial +deterioration in the former. In Ireland the ethnological difference was +small; the artificial cleavage and deterioration great in inverse +proportion. + +For the greater part of a century, in every part of Ireland, tenancies +of land, whether held by Catholic or Protestant, by lease or at will, +were alike in certain fundamental characteristics. The tenant had +neither security of tenure nor right to the value of the improvements +which were invariably made by his own capital and labour. Even a +leaseholder, when his lease expired, had no prescriptive claim to +renewal, but must take his chance at a rent-auction with strangers, the +farm going to the highest bidder. If he lost, he was homeless and +penniless, while the fruits of his labour and capital passed into other +hands. The miserable Catholic cottier was, of course, in a similar case, +though relatively his hardship was less, since his condition, being the +lowest possible in all circumstances, could scarcely be worse. +Obviously, in a case where the landlord was neither the capitalist nor +the protector and friend of the tenant, the possession of those +elementary rights, security of tenure and compensation for improvements, +was the condition precedent to the growth of a sound agrarian system. +Their denial was incompatible with social order. Yet they were denied, +and for one hundred and eighty years an intermittent struggle to obtain +them by violence and criminal conspiracy degraded and retarded Ireland. + +But a marked distinction grew up between a small portion of Ireland and +the rest. James I.'s plantation of Ulster had been far more drastic and +thorough than any operation of the kind before or since. Later +immigrants had flowed in, and at the beginning of the eighteenth +century in the north-eastern portion--the predominantly Protestant +Ulster of to-day--Scotch Protestant tenants, mainly Presbyterian, were +thickly settled, and formed an industrious community of strong and +tenacious temper. In the original leases granted by the concessionaires +in the seventeenth century, fixity of tenure was implied, and a nominal +rent levied, somewhat after the American model; but under the example of +other Provinces, and the economic pressure exerted by the growth in the +Catholic population, these privileges seem to have been almost wholly +obliterated. The absentee landlords, reckless of social welfare, exacted +the rack or competitive rent. As in the south and west, tithes to the +Established Church and oppressive and corrupt local taxation for roads +and other purposes, aggravated the discontent. For agrarian reasons +only--and there were others which I shall mention--many thousands of +Protestants left Ireland for ever. It required a long period of outrage +and conspiracy, attaining in 1770 the proportions of a small civil war, +and at the end of the century, by the anti-Catholic passions it +inspired, wrecking new hopes of racial unity, to establish what came to +be known as the Ulster Custom of Tenant Right. If Protestant freemen had +to resort to these demoralizing methods to obtain, and then only after +irreparable damage to Ireland, the first condition of social stability, +a tolerable land system, the effect of the agrarian system on Catholic +Ireland, prostrate under the Penal Code, may be easily imagined. + +In addition to excessive subdivision of holdings and excessive tithes, +rents, and local burdens, another agrarian evil, unknown in the vast and +thinly populated tracts of America intensified the misery of the Irish +peasantry of the eighteenth century. This was the conversion of the best +land from tillage into pasture, with the resulting clearances and +migrations, and the ultimate congestion on the worst land. Lecky quotes +a contemporary pamphlet, which speaks of the "best arable land in the +kingdom in immense tracts wantonly enjoyed by the cattle of a few +individuals, and at the same time the junctions of our highways and +streets crowded with shoals of mendicant fellow-creatures." This change +from arable to pasture has been a common and often in the long run a +healthy, economic tendency in many countries, England and Scotland +included, though temporarily a fruitful source of misery. Under normal +conditions the immediate evils right themselves in course of time. +Nothing was normal in Ireland, and any breath of economic change in the +outside world reacted cruelly on the wretched subject class, which +produced, though it did not enjoy, the greater part of the wealth of the +kingdom. Under an accumulation of hardships famine was periodic, and +from 1760, when the first Whiteboys appeared, disorder in one degree or +another was chronic. The motive, it is universally agreed now, was +material, not religious. The Whiteboys of the south and west were the +counterparts of the Protestant Steelboys and Oakboys of the north, and +even in the south and west there were Protestant as well as Catholic +Whiteboys. Lord Charlemont, the Protestant Irish statesman, denying this +now well-ascertained fact, was nevertheless explicit enough about the +cause of the disorders. "The real causes," he said, "were ... exorbitant +rents, low wages, want of employment, farms of enormous extent let by +their rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing land-jobbers, +by whom small portions of them were again let and relet to intermediate +oppressors, and by them subdivided for five times their value among the +wretched starvers upon potatoes and water; taxes yearly increasing, and +still more tithes, which the Catholic, without any possible benefit, +unwillingly pays in addition to his priest's money ... misery, +oppression, and famine."[6] + +Agrarian crime, operating through an endless succession of secret +societies, Whiteboys and Rightboys in the eighteenth century; Terry +Alts, Rockites, Caravats, Ribbonmen, Moonlighters, in the nineteenth, +was rampant for nearly two centuries, long surviving the repeal of the +Penal Code; and its last echoes may be heard at this moment. In the +absence of all wholesome law, violence and terror were the only means of +self-defence. The remedy applied was retaliatory violence under forms of +law. Nothing whatsoever was done to remove the essential vices of +agrarian tenure during the eighteenth century; nothing tentative even +during the nineteenth century until the year 1870; nothing effective and +permanent until 1881, when, as far as humanly possible, it was sought +to give direct statutory expression to the Ulster Custom, with the +addition of the principle of a fair judicial rent. Englishmen should +realize this when they discuss Irish character. It is a very old story, +but nine out of ten Englishmen, when talking vaguely of Irish +discontent, disloyalty, and turbulence, forget, or have never learnt, +this and other fundamental facts. As for the Irish landlords, we must +remember that the founders of that class differed in no respect from +other English landlords, or from the aristocratic American +concessionaires, just as their compatriot tenants and lessees were +identical in stock with the American colonists. Their descendants and +successors have been the victims of circumstance. Each generation has +inherited the vested interests of the last, and it is not in human +nature to look far behind vested interests into the wrongful acts which +created them and the bad laws that perpetuate them. Doubly victimized +have been those resident landlords who at all periods, from the earliest +era of colonization, in spite of temptation and bad examples around +them, have acted towards their tenantry as humane and patriotic +citizens. A bad agrarian system infects the whole body politic. Good +landlords and contented tenants inevitably suffered with the rest. + +In commerce and industry, as in land, the Irish Colony stood at a heavy +disadvantage by comparison with America. From the Restoration onward, +English statesmen took the same view of both dependencies, namely, that +their commercial interests should be wholly subordinate to those of the +Mother Country, and the same Department, the Board of Trade and +Plantations, made the fiscal regulations for Ireland and America. The +old idea that for trade purposes Ireland counted as an integral part of +the United Kingdom did not last longer than 1663. But it was not wholly +abrogated by the great Navigation Act of that year, which, though it +placed harsh restrictions on the Irish cattle trade with England, did +not expressly exclude Irish ships from the monopoly of the colonial +trade conferred upon English vessels, so that for seven years longer a +tolerably prosperous business was carried on direct between Ireland and +the American Colonies.[7] An Act of 1670, prohibiting, with a few +negligible exceptions, all direct imports from the Colonies into +Ireland, gave a heavy check to this business, arrested the growth of +Irish shipping, and, in conjunction with subsequent measures of +navigational, fiscal, and industrial repression, converted Ireland for a +century into a kind of trade helot. She was treated either as a foreign +country, as a Colony, or as something inferior to either, according to +the dictation of English interests, while possessing neither the +commercial independence of a foreign country nor the natural and +indefeasible immunity which distance, climate, variety of soil, and +unlimited room for expansion continued to confer, in spite of all +coercive restraints, upon the American Colonies. Though the British +trade monopoly was certainly a contributory cause in promoting the +American revolution, it was never, any more than the British claim to +tax, a severe practical grievance. The prohibition of the export of +manufactures, and the compulsory reciprocal exchange of colonial natural +products for British manufactured goods and the chartered merchandise of +the Orient, were not very onerous restrictions for young communities +settled in virgin soil; nor, with a few exceptions like raw wool, whose +export was forbidden, were the American natural products of a kind which +could compete with those of the Mother Country. The real damage +inflicted upon the Colonies by the mercantile system--one which its +modern defenders are apt to forget--was moral. To practise and condone +smuggling was habitual in America, and some of the English Governors set +the worst example of all by making a profit out of connivance at the +illicit traffic. "Graft" was their creation. The moral mischief done was +permanent, and it resembled in a lesser degree the mischief done in +Ireland both by bad agrarian and bad commercial laws. Ireland, owing to +her proximity, was in the unhappy position of being a competitor in the +great staples of trade, both raw and manufactured, and she was near +enough and weak enough to render it easy to stamp out this competition +so far as it was thought to be inimical to English interests. The cattle +and provision trade with England had been damaged as far back as 1663, +and was killed in 1666, though the export of provisions to foreign +countries survived, and became almost the sole source of Irish trade +during the eighteenth century. The policy with raw wool was to admit +just as much as would satisfy the English weavers without arousing the +determined opposition of the competitive English graziers. The Irish +manufactured wool trade, a flourishing business, for which Irishmen +showed exceptionally high aptitude, and which in the normal course of +things would probably have become her staple industry, was destroyed +altogether, avowedly in the interests of the English staple industry, by +prohibitory export duties imposed in 1698. Subsidiary +industries--cotton, glass, brewing, sugar-refining, sail-cloth, hempen +rope, and salt--were successively strangled. One manufacture alone, that +of linen, centred in the Protestant North, was spared, and for a short +period was even encouraged, not because it was a Protestant industry, +but because at first it aroused no trade jealousy in England, and was in +some respects serviceable to her. In 1708, when it was proposed to +extend the industry to Leinster, considerations of foreign trade +provoked an outburst of hostility, and harassing restrictions were +imposed on this industry also. On the whole, however, it suffered less +than the rest, and lived to become one of the two important +manufacturing industries of present-day Ireland. + +English policy was as fatuous as it was cruel. Numbers of the Irish +manufacturers and artisans, both Catholic and Protestant, emigrated to +Europe, and devoted their skill and energy to strengthening industries +which competed with those of England. Within Ireland, since industry and +commerce formed the one outlet left by the Penal Code for Catholic +brains and capital--though even here the Code imposed harassing +disabilities--the commercial restrictions completed the ruin of the +proscribed sect. But at this period the main source of weakness to +Ireland, of strength to America, and of danger to the Empire as a whole, +was the Protestant emigration. Lecky estimates that 12,000 Protestant +families in Dublin and 30,000 in the rest of the country were ruined by +the suppression of the wool trade. The great majority of these +Protestants were Presbyterians belonging to North-East Ulster, and +descendants of the men who had defended that Province with such +desperate gallantry against the Irish insurgents under the deposed James +II. Political power in Ireland was wielded in the interests of a small +territorial and Episcopalian aristocracy, largely absentee. The +Dissenters belonged to the middle and lower classes, and were for the +most part tenants or artisans. Creed and caste antipathies were combined +against them. Their value as citizens was ignored. Though their right to +worship was legally recognized by an Act of 1719, they remained from +1704 to 1778 subject to the Test, were incapacitated for all public +employment, and were forbidden to open schools. Under an accumulation of +agrarian, economic, and religious disabilities, they naturally left +Ireland to find freedom in America. And it is beyond question that they +turned the scale against the British arms in the great War of +Independence. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[4] Class C. in Sir William Anson's classification, "Law and Custom of +the Constitution," p. 253. + +[5] J. Fisher, "End of the Irish Parliament" cited. + +[6] MS. Autobiography cited by Lecky, vol. ii., p. 35. + +[7] The best modern account of the commercial relations of Great Britain +Mid Ireland is Miss Murray's "Commercial Relations between England and +Ireland." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND + + +In the Old World and in the New, therefore, two societies, composed of +human beings similar in all essential respects, were growing up under +the protection of the British Crown; the one servile, the other free; +the one stagnant where it was not retrograde, the other prosperous, +progressive, and, by the magnetism of its own freedom, progress, and +prosperity, steadily draining its Irish fellow of talent, energy, and +industrial skill. + +What was the ultimate cause of this glaring divergency? Religion, as a +spiritual force, was not the root cause. The American Colonies, with +three exceptions--the earliest Virginia, the latest Georgia, and the +Catholic community of Maryland--were formed by Dissenters,[8] exiles +themselves from persecution, but not necessarily forbearing to others, +and, in the case of the New England Puritans, bitterly intolerant. It is +interesting to observe that the Quakers and the Catholics, men standing +at the opposite poles of theology, set the highest example of tolerance. +Quaker Pennsylvania enforced absolute liberty of conscience, and Quakers +in all the Provinces worked for religious harmony and freedom. Catholic +Maryland, as long as its government remained in Catholic hands, and +under the guidance of the wise and liberal Proprietary, Lord Baltimore, +pursued the same policy, and attracted members of sects persecuted in +New England.[9] The parallel with Ireland is significant. At the end of +the seventeenth century, when a quarrel was raging between the Crown and +Massachusetts over the persecution of Quakers in that Colony, and for a +further period in the eighteenth century, Quaker missionaries and +settlers were conducting a campaign of revivalism in Ireland with no +molestation from the Catholics, though with intermittent obstruction +from magistrates and Protestant clergy. Wesleyans received the same +sympathetic treatment.[10] The tolerance shown by Irish Catholics, in +spite of terrible provocation, is acknowledged by all reputable +historians. Nor was Protestant intolerance, whether Anglican or +Nonconformist, of a deeper dogmatic shade than anywhere else in the +King's dominions. But in Ireland it was political, economic, and social, +while in America it was purely theological, and, moreover, purely +American. The Episcopalian ascendancy in Ireland represented foreign +interests, and therefore struck against Dissent as well as against +Popery, and estranged both. The root of the American trouble, leading to +the separation of the Colonies, was political and wholly unconnected +with religion. The root of the Irish trouble, adventitiously connected +with religion, lay, and lies still, in the Irish political system. Other +evils were transient and curable; this was permanent. The Penal Code was +eventually relaxed; the disabilities of the Dissenters were eventually +removed; the commercial servitude was abolished, but the political +system _in essentials_ has never been changed. Let us see what it was +and how it worked at the period we are considering, again by comparison +with America. + +Though the word "plantation" was applied alike to the colonization of +Ireland and America, Ireland was never called a Colony, but a Kingdom. +The distinction was not scientific, and operated, like all other +distinctions, to the injury of Ireland. Neither country was represented +in the British Parliament. In both countries the representatives of the +Crown were appointed by England, and controlled, in America almost +completely, in Ireland absolutely, the Executive and Judges. In Ireland +the Viceroy was always an Englishman; in America, the Governors of a few +of the non-proprietary Colonies were colonials, but most Governors were +English, and some of the proprietary class were absentees.[11] In the +case both of Ireland and America the English Government claimed a +superior right of control over legislation and taxation, and in both +cases it was found necessary to remove all doubts as to this right by +passing Declaratory Acts, for Ireland in 1719, for America in 1766. The +great difference lay in the Legislature, and was the result of different +degrees of remoteness from the seat of power. America was profoundly +democratic from the beginning, outpacing the Mother Country by fully two +centuries. There was no aristocracy, and in most Colonies little +distinction between upper and middle classes. The popular Assemblies, +elected on the broadest possible franchise, were truly representative. +Some of the Legislative Councils, or Upper Chambers, were elective also. +Most of them, although nominated, and therefore inclined to be hostile +to the popular body, were nevertheless of identical social composition; +so that there was often an official, but never a caste, ascendancy. From +very early times there was occasional friction between the Home +Government, represented by the Governors, and the colonial democracies, +over such matters as taxation, official salaries, quartering of troops, +and navigation laws. Writs of _quo warranto_ were issued against +Connecticut, Carolina, New York, and Maryland, in the latter part of the +seventeenth century, and the Charter of Massachusetts, after long +wrangles with the Crown, was forfeited in 1684, and not restored until +1692, after a period of despotic government under Sir Edmund Andros. But +for a century or more the system worked well enough upon the whole. +Under the powerful lever of the representative Assembly, neutralized by +the ever-present need for military protection from the Mother Country, +and with the wholesome check to undue coercion set by the broad +Atlantic, civic freedom grew and flourished to a degree unknown in any +other part of the civilized world. + +In Ireland civic freedom was unknown. There was no popular Assembly. A +wealthy aristocracy of English extraction and of Anglican faith, partly +resident, partly absentee, and wholly subservient to the English +Government, constituted the Upper House of that strange institution +known as Parliament, and to a great extent nominated and controlled the +Lower House through means frankly corrupt. Representation was almost +nominal; close pocket-boroughs predominated, and seats were bought and +sold in the open market. In the year 1790 more than a third of the +Members of the House of Commons were placemen, 216 Members out of 300 +were elected by boroughs and manors, and, of these, 176 were elected by +individual patrons. Fifty-three of these patrons, nominating 123 +Members, sat as Peers in the Upper House. Cash, places, and peerages, +were the usual considerations paid for maintaining a Government +majority. The Catholics, from three-quarters to five-sixths of the +population, had neither votes nor members; the Dissenters scarcely any +members and an almost powerless vote. The Irish Legislature, by an Act +as old as 1495, the famous Poynings' Law, could neither initiate nor +pass a measure without the consent of the English Privy Council, and the +Declaratory Act of 1719 confirmed the power of making English Acts +applicable to Ireland. Government in England itself was, no doubt, +unrepresentative and corrupt at that period, and the people paid the +penalty in full; but it was a national government, under the aegis of +the national faith, and resting, however remotely, on the ultimate +sanction of the people, just as American opinion, more democratically +ascertained, continued to control the major part of American affairs. In +Ireland the Government was systematically anti-Irish. There was no +career for Irishmen in Ireland. Both Catholics and Dissenters were +excluded from all civil and military offices; the highest posts were +generally given to Englishmen born and bred, and the country, +Episcopalian only to a fractional extent, was ruled by a narrow +Episcopalian oligarchy of wealthy landowners and prelates, who bartered +Irish freedom for the place and power of their own families and +dependents. The conditions of this sordid exchange were the ground of +the first important Anglo-Irish political struggle in the eighteenth +century, when the English Viceroy, Townshend, succeeded in 1770-71, at +the cost of half a million, in transferring the bribing power, and +therefore the controlling power, from the "Undertakers," as they were +known, direct to the Crown. + +There seems to have been no continuous English policy beyond that of +making Ireland completely subservient to English interests and purposes, +and often to purposes of the most humiliating and degrading kind. The +Irish Pension List has earned immortal infamy. Jobs too scandalous to +pass muster in England were systematically foisted upon the Irish +establishment. Royal mistresses, a host of needy Germans, a Danish Queen +banished for adultery, lived in England or abroad upon incomes drawn +from the impoverished Irish Exchequer. Nor was it only a question of +pensions. Quantities of valuable sinecure offices were habitually given +to Englishmen who never came near the shores of Ireland. In short, the +English policy towards Ireland was similar to Spain's policy towards her +South American Colonies, minus the grosser forms of physical cruelty and +oppression. Yet Ireland, like the American Colonies until the verge of +the revolutionary struggle, was consistently loyal to the Crown both in +peace and war. The loyalty of Catholic Ireland, poverty-stricken, +inarticulate, almost leaderless, and shamefully misgoverned, does not, +from the human standpoint, appear worthy of admiration, but it was a +fact. The few Catholic noblemen outdid the Protestants in expressions of +devotion; the Whiteboy risings were as little disloyal as religious. Not +a hand stirred for James or his heirs when Jacobite plots and risings +were causing grave public danger in England and Scotland. Catholic Lord +Trimleston offered exclusively Catholic regiments with Catholic officers +to George III. for foreign service in 1762, though they were vetoed by +what his Viceroy Halifax called the "ill-bred bigotry" of the Irish +Parliament. Nor was it till thirty years after that date that Protestant +discontent, under intolerable provocation, assumed an anti-dynastic and +Republican form. To compare the Imperial spirit displayed by America and +Ireland in their views and action is difficult, partly because the +various American Colonies differed widely, partly because there existed +in Ireland no organ of government which could express popular feeling. +Neither country, of course, paid any cash contribution to Imperial +expenses, though both could fairly claim that the English monopoly of +trade imposed an indirect tribute of indefinite size, while Ireland, in +pensions, rents to absentees, and sinecure appointments, was drained of +many millions more. American patronage was an element of substantial +value to England, but it was not on the Irish scale. America on the +whole, perhaps, showed less patriotic feeling than Ireland. With full +allowance for the lack of sympathy and understanding shown by the +British regulars to the American volunteers in their co-operation in the +French wars, it can scarcely be denied that the colonists, together with +much heroism and public spirit, showed occasional slackness and +parsimony in resisting the penetration of a foreign Power which +threatened to hem in their settlements from the St. Lawrence to the +mouth of the Mississippi. Ireland during the Seven Years' War, and until +the Peace of Paris in 1763, maintained a war establishment of 24,000 +troops. She maintained a peace establishment of 12,000 troops, and from +1767 onwards of 15,000 troops. There never seems to have been a whisper +of protest from the Catholic population against these measures, nor, +except in the matter of the American War, to which we shall come +presently, from the Protestants. It may be added that, after 1767, +Catholics in considerable numbers were surreptitiously enlisted in the +ranks, in spite of the Penal Code, and from then until the present day +have fought for the Flag as staunchly as any other class of the King's +subjects. + +It never occurred to responsible English statesmen that here was ground, +firm as a rock in America, and firm enough in Ireland, on which, if only +they obeyed the instincts and maxims upon which England herself had +risen to greatness, they might build a mighty and durable Imperial +structure. That loyalty, to be genuine and lasting, must spring from +liberty was a truth they did not appreciate, and to this truth, +strangely enough, in spite of the lessons of nearly a century and a +half, a numerous school of English statesmen is still blind. It was no +doubt a fatality that the smouldering discontent both of America and +Ireland burst into flame in the reign of a monarch who endeavoured, even +within the limits of Britain, to regain the arbitrary power which had +cost their throne to the Stuarts; it was an additional fatality that the +standard of public morals among the class through which he ruled during +the period of crisis had fallen to lower depths than ever before or +since. Even incorruptible men were either weak and selfish or subject to +some cardinal defect of temper or intellect which, at times of crisis, +neutralized their genius. Chatham and Burke were the noblest figures of +the time, yet Chatham, in his highest mood a nobler and truer champion +of American liberty than Burke, was Minister--nominally, at any +rate--when the Revenue Duties imposed upon the American Colonies in 1867 +destroyed in a moment the reconciliation brought about by the repeal of +the Stamp Act. Burke was surely false to his political philosophy in +founding his American argument on expedience rather than on principle. +Chatham was a thorough democrat, trusting the people, poor or rich, rude +or cultured, common or noble, American or British. Burke, at a time when +the reflection of the genuine opinion of the nation in a pure and free +Parliament might have saved us, as his splendid orations could not save +us, from a disastrous war, scouted Parliamentary reform, and took his +unconscious share in playing the game of the most narrow coercionist +Tories like Charles Townshend and George III. + +Of the interminable chain of fatalities which sicken the mind in +following every phase of Ireland's history, Burke's rigid temperamental +conservatism always seems to me the most fatal and the most melancholy. +It is not that he, the greatest intellect Ireland has ever produced, +made his career in England. By the time one reaches the period in which +he lived one gets used to the expatriation of Irish brains and vigour, +not only to England and America, but to Spain, France, Russia, and +Germany. It is that his intellect was so constituted as in the long run +to be useless, and on some occasions absolutely harmful, to Ireland, +sincerely as he loved her, and often as he supported measures for her +temporary benefit, and rejoiced in their temporary success. An incident +occurred in 1773 which tested his worth to Ireland, and incidentally +threw into strong light English views of Ireland and America at the +period immediately preceding the revolutionary epoch. The Irish +Government, not with any high social aim, but in desperation at the +growing Treasury deficit, proposed a tax upon the rents of absentee +landlords, and the fate of the measure, like all Irish measures, had to +be decided in the first instance in England. North's Tory Ministry +actually consented to it. Chatham, far from the active world, and too +broken in health to influence policy either way, wrote a powerful plea +for it; but a strong group of Whig magnates, themselves wealthy absentee +proprietors of Irish land, signed a vehement remonstrance which carried +the day against it, and the author of this remonstrance, of all men in +the world, was the Irishman Burke, who, owning not an acre of Irish land +himself, devoted all his transcendent talents, all the subtlety and +variety of his reasoning, to clothing the selfish greed of others with +the garb of an enlightened patriotism. + +He was wrong fundamentally about Ireland, and only superficially right +about America. In the terms of this celebrated remonstrance, as +illuminated by his own private correspondence, his consistency is +revealed. By the very nature of things, he maintained, the central +Parliament of a great heterogeneous Empire must exercise a supreme +superintending power and regulate the polity and economy of the several +parts as they relate to one another, a principle which, of course, would +have justified the taxation of America, and which, save on the ground of +expediency alone, he would certainly have applied to America. The +proximity of Ireland helped his logic, and surely logic was never +distorted to stranger ends. The "ordinary residence" of the threatened +Irish landowners was in England, "to which country they were attached, +not only by the ties of birth and early habit, but also by those of +indisputable public duties," as though these facts did not constitute in +themselves a damning satire on the system of Irish Government. They were +to be "fined" for living in England, as though that fine were not the +most just and politic which could be conceived, if it went even an inch +towards establishing the principle that Ireland's affairs were the +business of responsible resident Irishmen, or towards the further +principle, enshrined in Drummond's celebrated phrase of seventy years +later in regard to the agrarian system which these Whig noblemen shared +in founding, that "property has its duties as well as its rights." +Finally, argued Burke, heaping irony upon irony, the tax would lead +directly to the "separation" of the two Kingdoms both in interest and +affection. The Colonies would follow the Irish example, and thus a +principle of disunion and separation would pervade the whole Empire; the +bonds of common interest, knowledge, and sympathy which now knit it +together would everywhere be loosened, and a narrow, insulated, local +feeling and policy would be proportionately increased.[12] Such was +Burke's Imperialism, as evoked by an Irish measure which struck at the +root of a frightful social evil and of a vicious political system. But +the idea expressed by Burke--the spirit of his whole argument--went far +beyond this particular absentee tax or any similar tax proposed, as +happened in one instance, by a Colony. It was the superbly grandiose +expression, and all the more insidiously seductive in that it was so +grandiose, of a principle which all thinking men now know, or ought to +know, is the negation of Empire, which lost us America, which came +within an ace of losing us Canada, which might well have lost us South +Africa, and which has in very fact lost us, though not yet irrevocably, +the "affection," to use Burke's word, of Ireland. We may call local +patriotism "narrow and insulated," if we please, but we recognize now, +in every case save that of Ireland, that it is the only foundation for, +and the only stimulant to, Imperial patriotism. + +Chatham, an Englishman of the English, was nevertheless a better +Irishman than Burke, and therefore a better Imperialist. "The tax," he +wrote, "was founded on strong Irish policy. England, it is evident, +profits by draining Ireland of the vast incomes spent here from that +country. But I could not, as a Peer of England, advise the King, on +principles of indirect, accidental English policy, to reject a tax on +absentees sent over here as the genuine desire of the Commons of Ireland +acting in their proper and peculiar sphere, and exercising their +inherent exclusive right by raising supplies in the manner they judge +best." Chatham, in short, applied precisely the same argument to Ireland +as, in his memorable speeches of the next year (1774), he applied to +America, and in both cases he was right. The only mistake he made was in +his estimate of that travesty of a representative assembly, the Irish +House of Commons, which, at the secret instigation of the Viceroy, +though without actual coercion, eventually threw out a tax so +distasteful to its English patrons. But the argument for financial +independence remained unassailable, and eventually the Irish Parliament +itself summoned up the courage to adopt and act upon it. + +It may seem almost impossible that in a body so corrupt and exclusive a +national sentiment should have arisen. But every elective assembly, +however badly constituted, contains the seeds of its own regeneration, +and, under even moderately favourable circumstances, moves irresistibly +towards freedom. The pity was that circumstances, save for one brief and +invigorating interlude, were persistently unfavourable to Ireland. The +task was enormous, demanding infinitely more self-sacrifice than even +the ablest and most prescient of her Parliamentarians realized. Until it +was too late, in fact, they never awoke to the true nature of the task, +dazzled by illusory victories. Rotten to the core as the Irish +Parliament was, they sought, strengthened by popular influences, to make +it the instrument for freeing Ireland from a paralyzing servitude; and +up to a point they succeeded, but they did not see that the only +security for real and permanent success was to reform the Parliament +itself. There the inveterate spirit of creed and class ascendancy, +resting in the last resort on English military power, survived long +enough to nullify their efforts. + +The American Revolution and the Irish revolutionary renaissance--the one +achieved by a long and bitter war, the other without +bloodshed--originated and culminated together, were derived from the +same sources, and ran their course in close connection. In Ireland the +movement was exclusively Protestant, in America unsectarian; but in both +cases finance was the lever of emancipation. America, resenting the +commercial restrictions imposed by the Mother Country, but not, until +passion had obscured all landmarks, contesting their abstract justice, +and suffering no great material harm from their incidence, fought for +the principle of self-taxation--a principle which did, of course, +logically include, as the Americans instinctively felt, that of +commercial freedom. Ireland, harassed by commercial restrictions far +more onerous, naturally regarded their abolition as vital, and the +control of internal taxation as subsidiary. Apart from concrete +grievances, both countries had to fear an unlimited extension of British +claims founded on the all-embracing Declaratory Acts of 1719 and 1766. + +Unfortunately for herself, Ireland for seventy years or more had been +steadily supplying America with the human elements of resistance in +their most energetic and independent form, and robbing herself +proportionately Approximately, how many Protestants belonging mainly to +Ulster, whether through eviction from the land, industrial unemployment, +or disgust at social and political ostracism, left Ireland for America +in the course of the eighteenth century, it is impossible to say; but +the number, both relatively to population and relatively to the total +emigration, Catholic and Protestant, to all parts of the world, was +undoubtedly very large. Mr. Egerton, in his "Origin and Growth of the +English Colonies," reckons that in 1775 a sixth part of the thirteen +insurrectionary Colonies was composed of Scots-Irish exiles from Ulster, +and that half the Protestant population of that Province emigrated to +those Colonies between 1730 and 1770. As the crisis approached, +emigration became an exodus. Thirty thousand of the farming class are +said to have been driven west by the wholesale evictions of the early +seventies, and ten thousand weavers followed them during the disastrous +depression in the linen trade caused by interruption of commerce with +America. The majority went to the northern Colonies, especially +Pennsylvania, took from the first a vehement stand against the Royal +claims, and supplied some of Washington's best soldiers. A minority went +to the backwoods of Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina, and were little +heard of until as late in the war as 1780, when Tarleton began his +anti-guerilla campaign in the South. Then they woke up, and became, like +their compatriots of the North, formidable and implacable foes. + +Ireland and America, therefore, embarked on their struggle with the +English Parliament in close sympathy. The treatise of Molyneux on Irish +liberty was read with wide approval in America. Franklin visited and +encouraged the Irish patriots, and the Americans in 1775 issued a +special address to them, asserting an identity of interest. Chatham, on +the eve of war, dwelt strongly in the House of Lords upon the same +identity of interest, and in doing so expressly coupled together Irish +Catholics and Protestants. + +Although united by interest and sentiment, Ireland and America entered +on the struggle under widely varying conditions. The American Colonies +were thirteen separate units, with only a rude organization for common +action, and in each of these units there existed a cleavage of opinion, +based neither on class nor creed, between rebels and loyalists. In spite +of this weakness, the revolt was thoroughly national in the sense that +it was organized and maintained through the State Assemblies, resting on +a broad popular franchise. In Ireland, unbought and unofficial opinion +was united against England. On the other hand, there was no national +Legislature; only an enslaved and unrepresentative Legislature, tempered +by a band of exceptionally brilliant and upright men, and continually +thrust forward in spite of itself into bold and independent action by +unconstitutional pressure from the unrepresented elements outside. +Success so won, as we shall see, was delusive. + +We may note two important additional circumstances: first, the dense +mist of ignorance in which, and largely in consequence of which, England +began her quarrel both with America and Ireland. The average Englishman +was probably even more ignorant of Ireland, which was sixty miles away, +than of America, which was three thousand miles away. I am not at all +sure that that fact is not true still. At any rate, it was true then. +Yet knowledge of Ireland was more necessary, because her condition was +bad in ways unknown in America. In all the essentials of material +well-being, America was supremely fortunate, while Ireland was in the +depths of misery. It is not that this misery went undescribed or +unlamented, or that it was not realized by a small number of Englishmen. +Some of the most famous writings of the time, from the mordant satire of +Swift to the learned and elaborate diagnosis of Arthur Young, laid bare +the hideous ravages wrought by misrule in Ireland; but they had little +or no effect upon English statesmen, and were unread by the only classes +from which, if they had had knowledge, proper practical sympathy might +have come. Until Townshend's Viceroyalty (1767-1772) most of the Irish +Viceroys were absentees for the greater part of their term of office, +leaving the conduct of Irish affairs to English Bishops and Judges, the +wisest and most humane of whom could make little or no impression on +English official indifference. American Governors were at any rate +resident, or mainly resident, and a few were good and popular +administrators, though the information which most of them supplied to +the Home Government showed a blindness to what was going on under their +very eyes which would be incomprehensible if we did not know by +experience that it is the invariable result of irresponsible rule over +white men, whether at home or abroad. If, without the presence of race +distinctions, it needed Parliamentary reform in England itself to force +the ruling class to study with real sympathy the needs, character, and +desires of their own people, naturally the same ruling class, sending +out its own members or dependents to America, obtained the most +grotesquely distorted notions of what Americans were and what they +wanted or resented. "Their office," wrote Franklin of the Governors,[13] +"makes them indolent, their indolence makes them odious, and, being +conscious that they are hated, they become malicious. Their malice urges +them to continual abuse of the inhabitants in their letters to +Administration, representing them as disaffected and rebellious, and (to +encourage the use of severity) as weak, divided, timid, and cowardly. +Government believes all, thinks it necessary to support and countenance +its officers," etc. The same spirit pervades the official correspondence +of even the best Irish Viceroys of the eighteenth century, and +ultimately had a far more disastrous effect in that there were at all +times in Ireland ancient elements of social dissension which needed only +skilful fomentation by her English rulers to ruin all hopes of +reconciliation and unity. That phase was to come after the first Irish +victories. For the present the system--for it can scarcely be called a +policy--was to irritate all Irishmen and all Americans alike, +irrespective of creed, class, or sentiment, and thus to create on each +side of the Atlantic that dangerous phenomenon, an united people. + +The other noticeable point, admirably described by Mr. Holland in his +"Imperium et Libertas," is the confusion of political ideas in regard to +the status of white dependencies--a confusion greatly augmented by +loose and misleading analogies with India and the tropical Colonies. +Even a genius like Burke, as I have already pointed out, was misled. +Chatham came nearest to the truth, but, naturally, the actual outbreak +of war with America checked his political thinking, and threw him back +on the bare doctrine of supremacy, right or wrong. It was not fully +understood that there must be a radical difference between the +government of places settled and populated by white colonists and of +places merely exploited by white traders. All the prerogatives of the +Crown and Parliament were theoretically valid over both classes of +dependency, and to abandon any of them seemed to most men of that day to +be inconsistent with Imperial supremacy. Honest and fair-minded +politicians and thinkers tried in vain to reconcile local freedom with +Imperial unity. We have the key now, though we have made no use of it in +Ireland; but most of our forefathers not only had no glimmering of the +truth when the fratricidal war began, but learnt nothing from the war +itself, and remained unenlightened for sixty years more. If the +renunciation in 1778 of the right to tax the Colonies, and the +negotiations founded thereon, had led to a peace, it is quite certain +that friction would have subsequently arisen on other points. The idea +of what we now know as "responsible government" was unknown. Short of +coercive war, there seemed to be only two altogether logical +alternatives--complete separation and legislative Union. America +obtained the one, Ireland was eventually to undergo the other; but it is +interesting to remember that suggestions, rejected by Franklin as +useless, were made for the representation of the American Colonies in +the English Parliament, just as suggestions for a legislative Union +between Ireland and England appeared intermittently all through the +eighteenth century, long before such a Union was a question of practical +politics. + +I need only briefly summarize the incidents which ended in the year 1782 +with the final loss of the American Colonies, and the simultaneous +achievement by Ireland of an apparent legislative independence. To take +America first, the Stamp Act was passed in 1765, and, thanks to the +tumult it created, repealed by the Whigs in 1766, though the Declaratory +Act which accompanied the repeal neutralized its good results. The new +Revenue Duties on glass, paper, painters' colours, and tea were imposed +in 1767, reviving the old irritation, and all but that on tea were +removed, after a period of growing friction, in 1770. Another +comparative lull was succeeded by fresh disorder when in 1773 the East +India Company was permitted to send tea direct to America, and Boston +celebrated its historic "tea-party." The coercion of Massachusetts +followed, with Gage as despotic Military Governor, and, as a result, all +the Colonies were galvanized into unity. In September, 1774, the +Continental Congress met, framed a Declaration of Rights, and obtained a +general agreement to cease from all commerce with Britain until +grievances were redressed. Fresh coercion having been applied, war broke +out in 1775. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, +by John Hancock, President of Congress and the descendant of an Ulster +exile, and was first read aloud in Philadelphia by Captain John Nixon, +the son of an evicted Wexford farmer. Another Irishman, General +Montgomery, led the invasion of Canada.[14] The war, with manifold +vicissitudes, dragged on for eight years; but the surrender of +Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, virtually ended the physical +struggle, while the resolution of the House of Commons on February 27, +1782, against the further prosecution of hostilities, ended the contest +of principle. + +The turning-point had been the intervention of the French in 1778, and +the same event was to turn the scale in Ireland. There, for many years +past, the public finances had been sinking into a more and more +scandalous condition. Taxation was by no means heavy, but pensions and +sinecures multiplied, and the debt swelled. Inevitably there grew up +within Parliament a small independent opposition which would not be +bribed into conniving at the ruin of Ireland, while even bought placemen +were stung into throwing their votes into the Irish rather than the +English scale. Frequent efforts were made to use the insufficiency of +the hereditary revenue as a lever for gaining control of finance and for +obtaining domestic reform. An Octennial Act, passed in 1768, went a +little way towards transforming Parliament from a permanent privileged +Committee, under the control of the Executive, into the semblance at +least of a free Assembly, and the first dissolution under this Act, in +1776, produced the famous Parliament which, though elected on the same +narrow and corrupt basis as before, in the space of six years first +admitted the principle of toleration for all creeds, and wrested from +English hands commercial and legislative autonomy. It came too late to +avert--if, indeed, it could ever have averted--the implication of +Ireland in the American War, its predecessor of 1775 having, in defiance +of Irish opinion, subscribed an Address to the Crown, expressing +"abhorrence" of the American revolt and "inviolable attachment to the +just rights" of the King's Government, and having obediently voted four +thousand Irish troops for the war. + +Nor, for all the impassioned eloquence of Grattan and Hussey Burgh, did +the real driving-power of the new Parliament come from within its own +ranks, but from the unrepresented multitude outside. A clause removing +the test from Dissenters was struck out of the Catholic Relief Act of +1778, mainly owing to dictation from England, but partly from resentment +against Presbyterian sympathy with the American cause. It was only in +1780, when the Presbyterians were enrolled in that formidable +revolutionary organization known as the Volunteers, that a test which +had excluded them from all share in the government of their adopted +country for seventy-four years was repealed. As for the Catholics, the +small measure of legal relief granted to them excited no opposition +anywhere. Parts of the Penal Code, especially the laws against worship +and the clergy, had become inoperative with time and the sheer +impossibility of enforcement. The religion, naturally, had thriven under +persecution, so that in spite of the Code's manifold temptations to +recant, only four thousand converts had been registered in the last +fifty years. The laws designed to safeguard the wholesale confiscations +of the previous century had long ago achieved their purpose, and men +were beginning to perceive the fatal economic effects of keeping the +great mass of the people poor and ignorant. The real spirit of +toleration shown in the enactments of 1778, the most important of which +enabled Catholics to obtain land on a lease of 999 years, was small +enough if we consider the quiescence of the Catholics for generations +past, the absence of all tendency in them towards counter-persecution, +or even towards intolerance of Protestantism in any of its forms, +Quaker, Huguenot, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Methodist, in spite of +their own overwhelming numbers and of the burning grievance of the +tithes. Politically they were a source of great strength to the +Government. When the Presbyterians condemned the American War, the +Catholic leaders memorialized the Government in favour of it as warmly +as the tame majority in Parliament. + +Conservatives by religion, their devotion to authority annulled all +instincts of revenge for the hideous wrongs of the past. The Government, +now on the verge of a war with the two great Catholic Powers of Europe, +began to realize this, and to feel the wisdom of some degree of +conciliation. After all, only four years before they had not merely +tolerated, but established, the Catholic Church in the conquered +province of Quebec, with the result that the French Canadians remained +loyal during the American War. But neither the Government nor the finest +independent men in Parliament--not even Grattan--entertained the +remotest idea of admitting Irish Catholics to any really effective share +in the Government which their loyalty made stable. That noble but +hopeless conception originated later, as the dynamic impulse for +commercial freedom and legislative independence was originating now, +outside the walls of Parliament. + +The rupture with France in 1778 denuded Ireland of troops, and called +into being the Protestant Volunteers; a disciplined, armed body, headed +by leaders as weighty and respectable as Lord Charlemont. This body, +formed originally for home defence, by a natural and legitimate +transition assumed a political aspect, and demanded from a dismayed and +terrorized Government commercial freedom for Ireland. For once in her +life Ireland was too strong to be coerced. Punishment like that applied +to Massachusetts was physically impossible. The bitter protests of +English merchants passed unheeded, and the fiscal claims of the +Volunteers, with their cannon labelled "Free Trade or this," were +granted in full early in 1780. The moral was to persist. From 40,000 the +numbers of the Volunteers rose in the two succeeding years to 80,000, +and they stood firm for further concessions. The national movement grew +like a river in spate; it swept forward the lethargic Catholics and +engulfed Parliament. In a tempest of enthusiasm Grattan's Declaration of +Independence was carried unanimously in the Irish House of Commons on +April 16, 1782, and a month later received legal confirmation in England +at the hands of the same Whig Government and Parliament which broke off +hostilities with America, and in the same session. + +America took her own road and worked out her own magnificent destiny. +Most of us now honour Washington and the citizen troops he led. We say +they fought, as Hampden and their English forefathers fought, for a +sublime ideal, freedom, and that they were chips of the old block. But +let not distance delude us into supposing that they were without the +full measure of human weakness, or that they did not suffer +considerable, perhaps permanent, harm from the ten years of smothered +revolt and lawless agitation, followed by the seven years of open war +which preceded their victory. Washington's genius carried them safely +through the ordeal of the war, and the still more exacting ordeal of +political reconstruction after the war, but it is well known how nearly +he and his staunchest supporters failed. The Revolution, like all +revolutions, brought out all the bad as well as all the good in human +nature. Bad laws always deteriorate a people; they breed a contempt for +law which coercion only aggravates, and which survives the establishment +of good laws. As I have already indicated, the dislike and the +systematic evasion by smuggling of the trade laws during the long period +when the revolt was incubating harmed American character, and probably +sowed the seed of future corruption and dissension. However true that +may be, it is certainly true that the American rebels showed no more +heroism or self-sacrifice than the average Englishman or Irishman in any +other part of the world might have been expected to show under similar +conditions. Historians and politicians, to whom legal authority always +seems sacrosanct and agitation against it a popular vice, who mistake +cause and effect so far as to derive freedom from character, instead of +character from freedom, can make, and have made, the conventional case +against Home Rule for the Americans as plausibly as the same case has, +at various times, been made against Home Rule for Canada, South Africa, +and Ireland. Since all white men are fundamentally alike in their +faults as well as in their virtues, there is always abundant material +for an indictment on the ground of bad character. The Americans of the +revolutionary war, together with much fortitude, integrity, and public +spirit, showed without doubt a good deal of levity, self-seeking, +vindictiveness, and incompetence; and whoever chooses to amass, magnify, +and isolate evidences of their guilt can demonstrate their unfitness for +self-government just as well as he can demonstrate the same proposition +in the case of Ireland. Mr. J.W. Fortescue, the learned and entertaining +historian of the British Army, has done the former task as well as it +can be done. He denounces the whole Colony of Massachusetts--men of his +own national stock--as the pestilent offspring of an "irreconcilable +faction," which had originally left England deeply imbued with the +doctrines of Republicanism. Having gained, and by lying and subterfuge +retained, some measure of independence, they sank from depth to depth of +meanness and turpitude. They struggled for no high principle, and +refused to be taxed from England, simply because they were too +contemptibly stingy and unpatriotic to pay a shilling a head towards the +maintenance of the Imperial Army. It is always the "mob," the +"ruffians," the "rabble," of Boston who carry out the reprisals against +the royal coercion, and, like the Irish peasants of the nineteenth +century, they are always the half-blind, half-criminal tools of +unscrupulous "agitators." It has been, and remains, an obsession with +the partisans of law over liberty all the world over that the fettered +community, wherever it may be and however composed, does not really want +liberty, but that the majority of its sober citizens are dragged into an +artificial agitation by mercenary scribes and sham patriots--a view +which is always somewhat difficult to reconcile, as students of American +and Irish history are aware, not only with the facts of prolonged and +tenacious resistance, but with the other view, equally necessary to the +argument for law, that the whole community is sinfully unfit for +liberty; and Mr. Fortescue falls into the usual maze of +self-contradiction and obscurity when he tries to give an intelligible +account of a war which lasted seven long and weary years, and yet was +"factitious," initiated by an hysterical rabble, stimulated and +sustained by the basest and pettiest motives, and which, he contends, +was "the work of a small but energetic and well-organized minority +towards which the mass of the people, when not directly hostile, was +mainly indifferent." Happily, Mr. Fortescue's candour as an historian of +facts gives us the clue to this strange tangle. We find no evidence that +the sober loyalist majority who sustain one side of his argument, and +whom we should expect to find crushing the revolt with ease in +co-operation with the British regular troops, were, in fact, a majority, +nor that they were either better or worse men, or more or less ardent +patriots, than the mutinous minority, or the British regular soldiers +themselves. Their loyalty, like the disloyalty of the other side, is +sometimes interested and evanescent, more often sincere and tenacious; +they are given to desertion, like Washington's troops, like Lee's and +Grant's troops nearly a century later, like the Boer troops and like all +Volunteer levies, which have somehow to combine war with the duty of +keeping their homes and business afloat. We find, too, that a +counter-current of desertion flows from the British, and still more from +the German, regulars, also a natural enough phenomenon in what was +virtually a civil war for liberty; so that "General Greene was often +heard to say that at the close of the war he fought the enemy with +British soldiers, and that the British fought him with those of +America." And then Mr. Fortescue, ignoring the British side of the case, +exultingly quotes against the Americans "the cynical Benedict Arnold, +who knew his countrymen," and who said: "Money will go farther than arms +in America." Yet Arnold, whose opinion of his countrymen Mr. Fortescue +accepts as correct and conclusive, was himself, not a plain deserter, +but a perjured military traitor of the most despicable kind. We may +conclude, perhaps, after taking a broad view of the whole Revolution, +that Washington not only knew his countrymen, who were Mr. Fortescue's +countrymen, better than Arnold, but was a better representative of their +dominant characteristics.[15] + +Mr. Fortescue is peculiar in the violence of his prepossession, and we +know the source of that prepossession, a passionate love of the British +Army, which does him great honour, while it distorts his political +vision. I should not refer at such length to his view of the American +War were it not that, whenever a concrete case of Home Rule comes up for +discussion, his philosophy is apt to become the typical and predominant +philosophy. Historical sense seems to vanish, and the same savage racial +bias supervenes, whether the unruly people concerned are absolutely +consanguineous, closely related, or of foreign nationality. Instead of a +general acceptance of the ascertained truth that men thrive and coalesce +under self-government and sink into deterioration and division under +coercion, we get the same pharisaical assumption of superiority in the +dominant people, the same attribution of sordid and ugly motives to the +leaders of an unruly people, the same vague idealization of the loyalist +minority, the same fixed hallucination that the majority does not want +what by all the constitutional means in its power it says it wants, and +the correspondingly fatal tendency to gauge the intensity of a +conviction solely by the amount of physical violence it evokes, while +making that very violence an argument for the depravity of those who use +it, and a pretext for denying them self-government. + +All this is terribly true in the case of Ireland, and when I next revert +to the American continent, the reader will observe that the same ideas +were entertained towards Canada, the only white Colony left to the +British Empire after the loss of the thirteen States. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[8] The origin of North Carolina is, perhaps, debatable. Nearly all +historians have represented it as settled by Dissenting refugees; but +Mr. S.B. Weeks, a Carolina historian, has written an essay to prove that +this was not the case ("Religious Development in the Province of North +Carolina," Baltimore, 1892). The Charter contained a clause for liberty +of conscience on the instructive ground that, "by reason of the remote +distance of those places, toleration would be no breach of the unity and +conformity established in this realm." + +[9] "Church and State in Maryland," George Petrie. Lord Baltimore, the +Catholic founder and Proprietary, enforced complete tolerance from the +first (1634), and secured the passage of an Act in 1649 giving legal +force to the policy, with heavy penalties against interference with any +sect. In 1654 Puritans gained control of the Assembly, and passed an Act +against Popery. A counter-revolution repealed this Act, but finally in +1689 the Church of England was established by law. + +[10] Lecky, "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," vol. i., pp. +408-410. + +[11] Until 1692 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, elected +their own Governors. Massachusetts continued to have Colonial Governors, +and sometimes New Jersey and New Hampshire. Proprietary Governments were +gradually abolished and converted into "Royal" Governments like the +rest. At the period of the Declaration of Independence two only were +left--Pennsylvania and Maryland (see "Origin and Growth of the English +Colonies," H.E. Egerton). + +[12] Lecky, "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," vol. ii., +pp. 124-126. + +[13] Trevelyan, "The American Revolution," vol. i., p. 16. + +[14] See "The Irish Race in America," by Captain Ed. O'Meagher Condore. + +[15] "History of the British Army," vol. iii. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT + + +We left Ireland in 1782 apparently in possession of a triumph as great +as that of America, though won without bloodshed and without the least +tincture of sedition; for the Volunteers of 1782 were as loyal to the +Crown as the most ardent American royalists. In the light of political +ideas developed at a much later period, we know that the American +Colonies might have remained within the Empire, even if their utmost +claims had been granted. Had the idea of responsible government been +understood, it would have been realized that their exclusive control of +taxation and legislation was not inconsistent with Imperial Union, but +essential to it. Grattan and his Irish friends, ignorant of the true +solution, honestly thought, in the intoxication of the moment, that they +had solved the problem so disastrously bungled for America. The facts of +ethnology and geography seemed to have been recognized. Ireland and +England, united by a Crown which both reverenced, stood together, like +Britain and the Dominions of to-day, as sister nations, with the old +irritating servitude swept away, and the bonds of natural affection and +natural interest substituted. That the close proximity of the two +nations, however marked the contrast between their natural +characteristics, made these bonds far more necessary and valuable than +in the case of America, stood to reason, and, again, the fact was +recognized in Anglo-Irish relations. America had fought rather than +submit to a forced contribution to Imperial funds. Nobody in Ireland, in +or out of Parliament, had ever objected in principle to an indirect +voluntary contribution in troops, and now that the American War was +ended, non-Parliamentary objections to one particular application of the +principle had no further substance. Nor, as was shortly to be shown in +the reception given in Ireland to Pitt's abortive Commercial +Propositions of 1785, was there any objection to a direct contribution +in money on a fixed annual scale in return for a mutual free trade.[16] +The sun had surely risen over a free yet loyal Ireland. + +Never was there a more complete delusion. It would have been far better +for Ireland if she had never had a Parliament at all, but had had to +seek her own salvation in the healthy rough-and-tumble of domestic +revolution. The mere name of "Parliament" seems perpetually to have +hypnotized even its best members, and the illusion was at its highest +now. Nothing essential had been changed. Commercial freedom was the most +real gain, because it involved the definite repeal of certain trade-laws +and the permission to Ireland to make what she liked and send it where +she liked; but it was a small gain without some means of finding out +what Ireland really liked, and translating that will, without external +pressure, into law. The Parliament was neither an organ of public +opinion nor a free agent. It was even more corrupt and less +representative than before. It was as completely under the control of +the English Government as before. The modern conception of a Colonial +Ministry serving under a constitutional Governor selected by the Crown, +but acting with the advice of his Ministry, was unknown. The English +Government, through its Lord-Lieutenant, still appointed English +Ministers in Ireland, and in the hands of these Ministers lay not only +that large portion of the national income known as the hereditary +revenue, but the whole machinery of patronage and corruption. Even the +legislative independence was unreal; for majorities still had to be +bought, Irish Bills had still to receive the Royal Assent, that is, +English ministerial assent; so that powerful English pressure could be, +and was, brought to bear upon their policy and construction. And the +worst of it was that English pressure here and elsewhere meant then what +it meant in the next century, and what it too often means now, English +party pressure exercised spasmodically and ignorantly, in order to serve +sectional English ends. In short, Ireland, so far from being a nation, +was still virtually a Colony, subjected to the worst conceivable form of +colonial Government, groaning under economic evils unknown in the least +fortunate of the Colonies, and without the numerous mitigating +circumstances and the hope of ultimate cure due to remoteness from the +seat of Empire. On the contrary, nearness to England, and, above all, +nearness to France, where the misrule and miseries of ages were about to +culminate in a fearful upheaval of social order, complicated immensely +the problem of regeneration in Ireland. + +What was the remedy? Parliamentary reform. The Volunteers saw this +instantly. Parliament itself scouted the idea of reform, because it +threatened the Protestant ascendancy. Any weakening of the Protestant +ascendancy was unthinkable to Irish statesmen, even to Grattan, who in +1778 had coined the grandiose phrase that "the Irish Protestant could +never be free until the Irish Catholic had ceased to be a slave," and +who afterwards explained what he meant by saying that the liberty of the +Catholic was to be only such as was "entirely consistent with the +Protestant ascendancy," and that "the Protestant interest was his first +object." Ascendancy, then, in the mind of the ruling class in Ireland +was fundamental. What was its corollary? Dependence on England. +Ascendancies, whether based on creed or property, or, as in Ireland, on +both, cannot last in any white community without external support, and +the external support for ascendancy in Ireland was English force without +and English bribes within. There was the chain of causation, the vicious +circle rather; and yet Grattan, who never touched a bribe, thought he +had freed his beloved Ireland from the English influences which were +throttling her. He could not see that the more he wrestled for the +independence of a sham Parliament, while resisting its transformation +into a real Parliament, the more he strengthened those influences, +because he inevitably widened the gulf between Parliament and the Irish +people. The glamour his brilliant gifts had thrown over the Irish +Parliament only served to divert his own mind and the minds of other +talented and high-minded men from the seat of disease in Ireland. Time +and talent were wasted from the first over points of pride, trivialities +which seemed portentous to over-sensitive minds; metaphysical puzzles as +to the exact nature of the relations now existing between Ireland and +England; whether the repeal of the Poynings' Act and the Declaratory Act +were sufficient guarantees of freedom; whether Ireland herself should +nominate a Regent or accept the nomination from England. Meanwhile, the +sands were running out, and Ireland was a slave to a minute but powerful +minority of her sons and, only through them, to England. + +Yet the heart of Ireland was sound. All the materials for regeneration +were there. The Catholics, whom by an old inherited instinct Grattan +professed to dread, were the most Conservative part of the population, +so Conservative as to be unaware of the source of their miseries, +without the smallest leaning towards a counter-ascendancy, and without a +notion of sedition or rebellion. Paradox as it seems, if they leaned in +any political direction, it was dimly towards the constituted authority +of the day, the Irish Parliament. But the truth is that they were +without political consciousness, behind the times, unappreciative of the +new forces operating round them. In sore need of courageous and +enlightened guidance from men of their own faith, they were almost +leaderless. The leeway to be made up after the destructive action of the +penal laws was so enormous that Catholic philanthropists had no time or +will for high politics, and devoted their whole energy to the further +relaxation of those laws, to the education of their backward +co-religionists, and to the mitigation of poverty. For relief they +instinctively looked towards the only legal source of relief, though the +source of secular oppression, Parliament. But this was habit. The +Catholics at this time were like clay in the hands of the potter, open +to any curative and ennobling impulse. That impulse came, as was right +and natural, from the Protestant side. The only healthy political +organization in Ireland in 1782 was that of the Volunteers of the North, +with their headquarters at Belfast. They represented all that was best +in the Protestant population. They had won the practical victory, such +as it was, Parliament, with all its flaming rhetoric, only the titular +victory. They grasped the essential truth that Parliament was rotten, +and that Ireland's future depended on its reform. Numbering some 80,000 +or 100,000, they at once began to press for reform, and, since they had +no constitutional resources, to overawe Parliament. Parliament at once +stood on its dignity and on its civil rights against the "Pretorian +bands." "And now," said Grattan in his magnificent way, "having given a +Parliament to the people, the Volunteers will, I doubt not, leave the +people to Parliament, and thus close specifically and majestically a +great work." + +But the work was not begun. Parliament was the enemy of the people, and +the Volunteers knew it. Now, what was the "people" in the minds of the +Volunteers? Undoubtedly they did not, after a century of racial +ascendancy, perform the miracle of accepting at once in its entirety the +principle of absolute political equality for all Irishmen, Catholic and +Protestant alike. Such mental revulsions rarely occur among men, and +when they do occur are apt to produce reactionary cataclysms. But they +did from the first give a real meaning to Grattan's vague rhetoric about +Catholic slaves; from the first they made overtures towards the +Catholics, and ventilated proposals for the Catholic franchise as a part +of their scheme of reform ten years before that enfranchisement, without +Parliamentary reform and therefore valueless, became a practical issue. +For the present these proposals were outvoted, and the effective demand +of the Volunteers, as framed in the great Convention held at Dublin in +November, 1783, was for a purification and reconstruction of Parliament +on a democratic Protestant basis. The Catholic franchise had been +strongly supported, but by the influence of Charlemont and Flood +rejected. It is, of course, easy to maintain in theory that a democratic +Protestant ascendancy so designed was as incompatible with Irish freedom +as an aristocratic and corrupt ascendancy; but nobody with faith in +human nature or any knowledge of history, will care to affirm that the +process of reform would have ended with the enactment of the Volunteer +Bill. No present-day Protestant Ulsterman should entertain such a +dishonouring doubt. Mercifully, men are so made that, if left to +themselves, they go forward, not backward. A pure Assembly, formed on +the Volunteer plan, stimulated by the enlightened conscience which such +an Assembly invariably develops, by the discovery of the fundamental +identity of interests between the great bulk of Catholics and +Protestants, and by the manly instinct of self-preservation against +undue English encroachment, would have moved rapidly towards tolerance +and equality. + +But the Assembly which might have saved Ireland never came into being. +The Volunteers were in weak and incompetent hands. The metamorphosis +they had undergone from a body formed for home defence into a militant +political organization found them at the critical moment unprovided with +the right stamp of leader. Flood, who helped to draft their Bill, was a +brilliant but unscrupulous and discredited Parliamentarian, and a +fanatical advocate of an unimpaired Protestant ascendancy. Lord +Charlemont, one of the most influential founders of the movement, and a +man of the highest integrity, was lukewarm for reform, an aristocrat and +an ascendancy man to the finger-tips, dreading the mysterious forces he +had helped to call into being, and desirous to keep them, as he said, +"respectable." Was it respectable for armed men to dictate to a +Parliament, however just their cause? As often happens in the ferment of +popular movements, the one leader who spoke undiluted truth and sense +spoke it in florid and unmeasured language and was himself of a figure +and behaviour little likely to inspire permanent confidence. This was +the famous Bishop of Derry, called by Charlemont a blasphemous Deist, by +Wesley an exemplary Divine, by Fox a dishonest madman, and by Jeremy +Bentham "a most excellent companion, pleasant, intelligent, well-bred, +and liberal-minded to the last degree." He was certainly vain and +ostentatious, certainly a democratic free-thinker, but a full knowledge +of his character is not of much concern to us. The point is that he was +right about Ireland's needs, though the wrong man at the moment to drive +home her claims. Many finer agitators than he have failed in causes just +as good. Many without half his merits have succeeded. We shall find his +Canadian counterparts later in the figures of Mackenzie and Papineau. + +The crisis came on November 29, 1783, when the Reform Bill reached +Parliament, and was introduced by Flood, wearing the Volunteer dress. It +was rejected on the first vote. No doubt the circumstances were +humiliating, and if there had been any serious inclination in Parliament +towards self-reform and the relinquishment of an odious and mischievous +monopoly, we should freely forgive rejection. But there was little or +none, as after-events proved, and the real humiliation lay, not in the +dictation of the Irish Volunteers, but in the fact that the Volunteers +themselves were overawed by a strong body of British regular troops, +mustered for the occasion under General Burgoyne. The vicious circle was +complete. Forced to choose between reform and dependence on England, +Parliament chose the latter. And only a year and a half before Grattan +had dazzled his hears with the words: "Ireland is now a nation ... _esto +perpetua_." + +There are very few critical dates in Irish history, and of those few the +night of November 29, 1783, was the most critical of all. It marked the +climax of a brief and bright renaissance from the long stagnation of the +eighteenth, and heralded a decline into the long agony of the nineteenth +century, a decline concealed by the fictitious lustre which still hangs +over the first decade of Grattan's unreformed Parliament, but none the +less already present. The Volunteers, their grand opportunity lost, +slowly broke up. Should they have used force, even under the threat of +Burgoyne's guns? It would have been infinitely better both for England +and Ireland if they had. Nothing but force could avail. Never would +force have been better justified, for the very soul of a people "rang +zwischen Tod und Leben." + +It is hard, nevertheless, to blame the Volunteers for not appreciating +the full magnitude of the crisis and acting accordingly. They were ahead +of their time as it was in the political instinct which taught them the +vital importance of a reformed Parliament. They were far ahead of +England, where the younger Pitt had failed to carry Reform a few months +before, and was to fail again two years later when he urged reform for +Ireland. They were even ahead of their time in religious +tolerance--witness the Gordon riots in London two years before. Their +Parliament wore the crown and spoke the regal language of a patriot +Assembly. For five years they themselves had glorified justifiably in +the perfect discipline and sobriety with which they had used their +irregular power. Their most trusted leaders suggested that they would +yet achieve their ends without violence, while the large majority of the +Volunteers themselves were still as loyal to the Crown as the +Catholics, and were inclined, therefore, to shrink from action which, +although in itself not in the remotest degree connected with dynastic +questions, involved a theoretical conflict with the Crown, and perhaps +an actual collision with Royal troops. One of the last acts of the +Volunteer Convention, before its dissolution, was to pass an address to +the King expressing fervent zeal for the Crown, reminding him of their +quiet and dignified behaviour in the past, and praying that "their +humble wish to have certain manifest perversions of the Parliamentary +representation of this kingdom remedied by the Legislature in some +reasonable degree, might not be imputed to any spirit of innovation in +them, but to a sober and laudable desire to uphold the Constitution, to +confirm the satisfaction of their fellow-subjects, and to perpetuate the +cordial union of the two kingdoms." This document might have been copied +_mutatis mutandis_ from the American petitions prior to the war, and was +to be reproduced almost word for word in Canadian petitions dealing with +less serious grievances whose neglect at the hands of the Government did +actually lead to armed rebellion. It must be taken, as Mr. Lecky truly +says, as the "defence of the Convention before the bar of history." +Drawn up by the most moderate and least prescient leaders, it was a +vindication of the past, not a pledge for the future; for "from that +time," as Mr. Lecky writes, "the conviction sank deep into the minds of +many that reform in Ireland could only be effected by revolution, and +the rebellion of 1798 might be already foreseen." + +The story of that transition, with all its disastrous consequences in +the denationalization of Ireland, in the arrest of healing forces, in +the reawakening of slumbering bigotries and hatreds, in the artificial +transformation of Catholics into anti-English rebels, and Protestants +into anti-Irish Loyalists, in the long agony of the land war, the tithe +war, the Church war, and the loathsome savageries of the rebellion +itself, is one of the most repulsive in history. It is repulsive because +you can watch, as it were, upon a dissecting-table the moral fibre of a +people, from no inherent germ of decay, against reason, against nature, +visibly wasting under a corrosive acid. Typical figures stand out: the +strong figure of Fitzgibbon, voicing ascendancy in its crudest and +ugliest form; at the other extreme the ardent but inadequate figure of +Wolfe Tone, affirming in words which expressed the literal truth of the +case that "to subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break +the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our +political evils, and to assert the independence of my country--these +were my objects." Midway stands Grattan, the defeated and disillusioned +"Girondin," as Mr. Fisher aptly calls him,[17] blind until it was too +late to the errors which plunged his country into anarchy, and retiring +in despair when he saw that anarchy coming. And on the other side of the +water, Pitt, dispassionately prescribing for Ireland in 1784, while +there was yet time, the radical remedy, Reform, patiently turning, when +that was refused, to palliatives like mutual free trade in 1785 and the +Catholic franchise in 1793; and meanwhile, with an undercurrent of cool +scepticism, preparing the ground for the only alternative to Reform, +short of a revolutionary separation of the two countries, legislative +Union, and remorselessly pushing that Union through by the only +available means, bribery. + +In this wretched story we seek in vain for individual scapegoats. +Tracing events to their source, we strike against two obstructions, +proximity and ignorance, and we may as well make them our scapegoats. If +proximity had implied knowledge and forbearance, all would have been +well, but it implied just the reverse, and prohibited the kind of +solution which, after very much the same sort of crisis, and in the +teeth of ignorance and error, was afterwards reached in the case of +Canada and South Africa. + +The immediate cause is clear. The failure of Reform is the key to the +Rebellion and the Union. In a patriotic anxiety to idealize Grattan's +Parliament, with a view to justifying later claims for autonomy, +Irishmen have generally shut their eyes to this cardinal fact, and have +preferred to dwell with exaggerated emphasis on the little good that +Parliament did rather than on the enormous evils which it not only left +untouched, but scarcely observed. We must remember that it was not only +a Protestant body, but a close body of landlords, with an infusion of +lawyers and others devoted to the interest of landlords. In that +capacity it was incapable of diagnosing, much less of remedying, the +gravest material ills of Ireland. In the very narrow domain where the +landlord interest was not concerned, as in industrial and commercial +matters, Parliament seems to have acted on the whole with wisdom. It +endeavoured to encourage industries, while refusing to squander its +newly won commercial powers in waging tariff wars with Great Britain, +where prohibitive duties against Irish goods still continued to be +imposed. But Ireland was no longer an industrial country. All the +encouragement in the world could not replace lost aptitudes or bring +back the exiled craftsmen who, during a century past, had left Ireland +to enrich European countries with their skill. The favoured linen +industry alone survived to reach its present flourishing condition. The +revival in other manufactures, even in that of wool, which was +remarkably rapid and strong, seems to have been artificial and +transient. No wonder; for, while Ireland had been stagnant for a +century, her great competitor, England, had been steadily building up +that capacity for organized industry which, under the inventive genius +of Arkwright, Hargreaves, and Watt, and the economic genius of Adam +Smith, made the last twenty years of the eighteenth century such a +marvellous period of industrial expansion, and eventually converted +England from an agricultural into a manufacturing nation. Ireland was +hopelessly late in the race. On the other hand, the fertile land of +Ireland remained as the indestructible source of wealth and the prime +means of subsistence for the great bulk of the four and a half million +souls who inhabited the country. Parliament seems to have been almost +indifferent to the miseries of the agricultural population, wholly +indifferent, certainly, to their source, the vicious agrarian system +which it was the interest of its own members to sustain. Foster's famous +Corn Law without doubt increased tillage, and, in conjunction with the +inflated prices for produce caused by the French War, gave a powerful +though a somewhat unhealthy impulse to the trade in corn. But it +enriched only the landlords, and left untouched the real abuses, +absenteeism, middlemanism, insecurity of tenure, rack-rents, and tithes. +The Whiteboy risings of the sixties and seventies recurred, and were met +with Coercion Acts as stupid and cruel as those of the nineteenth +century. The tithe grievance, which festered and grew into civil war in +the nineteenth century, was never touched. While tenants in North-East +Ulster were painfully and forcibly establishing their custom of tenant +right in the teeth of the law, the inhuman system of cottier tenancy, +which was to last until 1881, became more and more firmly rooted in +other parts of Ireland. + +None but a democratic Assembly could possibly have grappled with these +evils; nor is there any reason to suppose that in the existing condition +of Ireland a Protestant democratic Assembly, even if temporarily it +retained its sectarian character, would have grappled with them less +boldly and drastically than an Assembly composed of Catholics and +Protestants. The material interests of nineteen-twentieths of the people +were the same, while the education and intelligence belonged mainly to +the Protestants. Ulster tenants had as much need of good land laws as +other tenants. Tithes were as much disliked in the north as in the +south. The Established Church was the Church of a very small minority, +and its clergy, numbers of whom were absentees, were as unpopular as the +absentee landlords and the absentee office-holders and pensioners. + +But with no redress, and, what is more important, no prospect of redress +for the primary ills of Ireland, the centrifugal forces of religion and +race had full scope for their baneful influence. And it was at the very +moment when tolerance was steadily gaining ground among all classes that +these spectres of ancient wrong were summoned up to destroy the good +work. + +How did this come about? Let us remember once more that everything +hinged on Reform. Reform gained a little, but suffered far more, by its +association with the question of Catholic franchise, which was useless +without Reform, while it was the corollary of Reform. Nothing is more +remarkable than the growth of academic tolerance during this period, +doubtful and suspect as the motives sometimes were. It is true that the +great Relief Act of 1793, giving Catholics the vote and removing a +quantity of other disqualifications, would scarcely have been sanctioned +by the Parliamentary managers without the stern dictation of Pitt, whose +mind was strongly influenced by the violent anti-Catholic turn just +taken by the French Revolution; but, once sanctioned, it passed +rapidly, and was received with universal satisfaction in the country at +large. Without "Emancipation," that is, the permission to elect +Catholics to sit in Parliament and hold office, the franchise was +illusory and even harmful. In the counties the forty-shilling "freehold" +vote ("freehold" was an ironical misnomer) encouraged Protestant +landlords for another generation, before and after the Union, still +further to subdivide already excessively small holdings, while the +benefits to be derived from the admission to power of propertied +Catholics, with all their intensely Conservative instincts, were thrown +away. Emancipation apart, the franchise without Reform was a complete +farce, for the boroughs, which controlled the Parliamentary balance, +were the personal property of Protestant landlords, and the 110 +Parliamentary placemen were indirectly their tools. As usual, the men of +light and leading contributed unconsciously to the strength of a system +which, in their hearts, as honest men, they condemned. Each of them had +some fatal defect of understanding. Grattan became a strong Emancipator, +but remained an academic and ineffectual reformer striving in vain to +reconcile Reform with a passionate abhorrence of democracy and a +determination to keep power in the hands of landed property. In England, +which was Protestant in the Established sense, he would have done no +more harm than Burke, who for the same reason fought Reform as strongly +as Pitt and his father Chatham had advocated it. But in Ireland, which +was Catholic and Nonconformist, landed property signified Episcopalian +landed property, that is, the narrowest form of ascendancy. Charlemont +was an even stranger paradox. He was an academic Reformer before +Grattan, but not an Emancipator, arriving at the same sterility as +Grattan through a religious bias which Grattan ceased to feel, a bias +inspired, not by a fanatical fear of democracy in itself, but by a fear +of Catholic revenge for past wrongs. These men and their like, admirable +and lovable as in many respects they were, were useless to Ireland in +those terrible times. Whether Emancipation, unaccompanied by Reform, had +any real chance of passing Parliament in 1795, when the Whig Viceroy +Fitzwilliam, the one Viceroy in the eighteenth century who ever +conceived the idea of governing Ireland according to Irish ideas, came +over from England with the avowed intention of proposing it, is a matter +of conjecture. Fitzwilliam was snuffed out by Pitt, and recalled under +circumstances which still remain a matter of controversy. All we can say +with certainty is that the opinion of Ireland at large was absolutely +ignored, and that English party intrigues and English claims on Irish +patronage had much to do with the result. On the whole, however, I agree +with Mr. Fisher that too much importance has been given to this episode, +especially by Mr. Lecky, who devotes nearly a volume to it. + +The anti-national Irish Parliament was past praying for. Long before +1795 the Irish aristocracy had lost whatever power for good it ever +possessed, and most of the resolute reformers of Wolfe Tone's +middle-class Protestant school had turned, under the enthralling +fascination of the French Revolution, into revolutionaries. Reform had +been refused in 1782; again, and without coercion from the Volunteers, +in 1783. It was refused again in 1784, against the advice of Pitt and at +the instigation of Pitt's own Viceroy, Rutland, whom Pitt had +urged--what a grim irony it seems!--to give "unanswerable proofs that +the cases of Ireland and England are different," and who answered with +truth that the ascendancy of a minority could only be maintained "by +force or corruption." Every succeeding year showed the same results. +Wolfe Tone was more than justified, he was compelled, to convert his +Society of United Irishmen, founded in 1791, into a revolutionary +organization and to seek by forcible means to overthrow the Executive +which controlled Parliament and, through it, Ireland. Since the symbol +of the Irish Executive was the British Crown, he, of course, abjured the +Crown, though he had no more quarrel with the Crown as such than had the +American or Canadian patriots. He simply loved his country, and from the +first saw with clear eyes the only way to save her. Tolerance to him was +not an isolated virtue, but an integral part of democracy. He took +little interest in the Parliamentary side of Catholic relief, realizing +its hollow unreality, and, in the case of the Bill of 1793, actually +ridiculing the absurd spectacle of the Catholic cottiers being herded to +the poll by their Protestant landlords. Nor was he even an extreme +Democrat, for he advocated a ten-pound, instead of a forty shilling +franchise. His original pamphlet of 1791 contains nothing but the most +sober political common sense. + +His aim was to unite Irishmen of all creeds to overthrow a Government +which did not emanate from or represent them, and which was ruinous to +them. It is not surprising that he failed. Ireland was very near +England. French intervention had been decisive in distant America, and +the French Revolution in its turn had been hastened by the American +example. But the intervention in Ireland of Republican France, for +purely selfish and strategic reasons, without effective command of the +sea, and with the stain of the Terror upon her, was of little material +value and a grave moral handicap to the Irish Revolutionists. It is the +manner of Tone's failure and the consequences of his failure that have +such a tragic interest. A united Ireland could have dispensed with the +aid of France. What prevented unity? Tone laboured to bring both creeds +together, and to a certain degree was successful. Until the very last it +was the Catholics, not the Protestants, who shrank most from revolution. +Yet, in the Rebellion of 1798, the North never moved, while Catholic +Wexford and Wicklow rose. + +The root cause is to be found in those agrarian abuses whose long +neglect by the Irish Parliament constituted the strongest justification +for Reform. The Orange Society, founded under that name in 1795, +originated in the "Peep o' Day Boys," a local association formed in +Armagh in 1784 for the purpose of bullying Catholics. There is no doubt +that the underlying incentive was economic. Even when the Penal Code had +lost in efficacy, its results survived in the low standard of living of +the persecuted Catholics. As I pointed out in a former chapter, the +reckless cupidity of the landlords in terminating leases and fixing new +rents by auction, with the alternative of eviction, threw those +Protestant tenants who did not emigrate into direct competition with +Catholic peasants of a lower economic stamp, who because they lived on +little could afford to offer fancy rents. Hence much bitter friction, +leading to sordid village rows and eventually to the organized +ruffianism of the Peep o' Day Boys. The Catholic Franchise Act of 1793, +unaccompanied by Emancipation, actually intensified the trouble by +removing the landlord's motive to prefer a Protestant tenant on account +of his vote. Under ill-treatment, the Catholics naturally retaliated +with a society known as the "Defenders," and in some districts were +themselves the aggressors. Defenderism, in its purely agrarian aspect, +spread to other parts of Ireland, where Protestants were few, and became +merged in Whiteboyism. This had always been an agrarian movement, +directed against abuses which the law refused to touch, and without +religious animus, although the overwhelming numbers of the Catholics in +the regions where it flourished would have placed the Protestants at +their mercy. In Ulster both the contending organizations necessarily +acquired a religious form and necessarily retained it. But at bottom bad +laws, not bigotry, were the cause. There was nothing incurable, or even +unique, about the disorders. Analogous phenomena have appeared +elsewhere, for example, in Australia, between the original squatters on +large ranches and new and more energetic colonists in search of land for +closer settlement. Under a rational system of tenure and distribution +there was plenty of good land in Ireland for an even larger population. +Tone, who was a middle-class lawyer, seems never to have appreciated +what was going on. So far from healing the schism, he appears to have +widened it by throwing the United Irish Committee of Ulster into the +scale of the Catholics against the Orangemen. But, in truth, he was +helpless. Good administration only could unite these distracted +elements, and without the Reform for which he battled, good +administration was impossible. The dissension, widening and acquiring an +increasingly religious and racial character, paralyzed Ulster, which +originally was the seat of the Revolution. The forces normally at work +to favour law and order--loyalty to the Crown, dislike of the French +Revolution, and resentment at Franco-Irish conspiracies--gathered +proportionately greater strength. + +The Southern Rebellion of 1798--a mad, pitiful thing at the best, the +work of half-starved peasants into whose stunted minds the splendid +ideal of Tone had scarcely begun to penetrate--was a totally different +sort of rebellion from any he had contemplated. It was neither national +nor Republican. The French invasions had met with little support; the +first with positive reprobation. Nor was it in origin sectarian, +although, once aflame, it inevitably took a sectarian turn. Several of +the prominent leaders were Protestants. Priests naturally joined in it +because they were the only friends the people had had in the dark ages +of oppression. In so far as it can be regarded as spontaneous, it was of +Whiteboy origin, anti-tithe and anti-rack-rent. But it was not even +spontaneous; that is another dreadful and indisputable fact which +emerges. The barbarous measures taken to repress and disarm, prior to +the outbreak, together with the skilfully propagated reports of a coming +massacre by Orangemen, would have goaded any peasantry in the world to +revolt, and the only astonishing thing is that the revolt was so local +and sporadic. General Sir Ralph Abercromby retired, sickened with the +horrors he was forbidden to avert. "Within these twelve months," he +wrote of the conduct of the soldiery at the time of his resignation, +"every crime, every cruelty that could be committed by Cossacks or +Calmucks has been transacted here.... The struggle has been, in the +first place, whether I was to have the command of the Army really or +nominally, and then whether the character and discipline of it were to +be degraded and ruined in the mode of using it, either from the facility +of one man or from the violence and oppression of a set of men who have +for more than twelve months employed it in measures which they durst not +avow or sanction." + +Abercromby's resignation, in Mr. Lecky's opinion, "took away the last +faint chance of averting a rebellion." Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare, was now +supreme in the Government, and henceforth represents incarnate the +forces which provoked the Rebellion and founded upon it the Union. He +had bided his time for a decade, watching the trend of events, +foreseeing their outcome, and smiling sardonically at the ineffectual +writhings of the men of compromise. He stands out like a block of black +granite over against the slender figure of Wolfe Tone, who was his +anti-type in ideas and aims, his inferior in intellect, his superior in +morals, but no more than his rival in sincerity, clarity, and +consistency of ideas. Clare was a product of the Penal Code, the son of +a Catholic Irishman who, to obtain a legal career, had become a +Protestant. He himself was not a bigot, but a very able cynic, with a +definite theory of government. Tolerance, Emancipation, Reform, were so +much noxious, sentimental rubbish to him, and he had never scrupled to +say so. Ireland was a Colony, English colonists were robbers in Ireland, +and robbers must be tyrants, or the robbed will come by their own again; +that was his whole philosophy,[18] his frigid and final estimate of the +tendencies of human nature, and his considered cure for them. Racial +fusion was a crazy conception not worth argument. Wrong on one side, +revenge on the other; policy, coercion. As he put it in his famous +speech on the Union, the settlers to the third and fourth generation +"were at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island." "Laws must be +framed to meet the vicious propensities of human nature," and laws of +this sort for the case of Ireland should, he held with unanswerable +logic, properly be made in England, not by the travesty of a Parliament +in Ireland, which, in so far as it was in any degree Irish, had shown +faint but ominous tendencies towards tolerance and the reunion of +Irishmen. He never took the trouble to demonstrate the truth of his +theory of revenge by a reasoned analysis of Irish symptoms. He took it +for granted as part of a universal axiomatic truth, and, like all +philosophers of his school, pointed to the results of misgovernment and +coercion as proofs of the innate depravity of the governed and of their +need for more coercion. Anticipating a certain limited class of Irishmen +of to-day, often brilliant lawyers like himself, he used to bewail +English ignorance of Ireland, meaning ignorance of the incurable +criminality of his own kith and kin. He was just as immovably cynical +about the vast majority of his own co-religionists as about the +conquered race. If, as was obvious, so far from fearing the revenge of +the Catholics, their unimpeded instinct was to take sides with them to +secure good government, they were not only traitors, but imbeciles who +could not see the doom awaiting them. Yet Fitzgibbon's admirers must +admit that his consistency was not complete. He was perfectly cognizant +of the real causes of Irish discontent. He was aware of the grievances +of Ulster, and his description of the conditions of the Munster +peasantry in the Whiteboy debates of 1787 is classical. If pressed, he +would have answered, we may suppose, that it was impolitic to cure +evils which were at once the consequence of ascendancy and the +condition of its maintenance. That other strange lapse in 1798, when he +described the unparalleled prosperity of Ireland since 1782 under a +Constitution which, in the Union debates of 1800, he afterwards covered +with deserved ridicule as having led to anarchy, destitution, and +bankruptcy, must be attributed to the exigencies of debate; for he was +an advocate as well as a statesman, and occasionally gave way to the +temptation of making showy but unsubstantial points. + +These slips were rare, and do not detract from the massive coherence of +his doctrine. He remains the frankest, the most vivid, and the most +powerful exponent of a theory of government which has waged eternal +conflict with its polar rival, the Liberal theory, in the evolution of +the Empire. The theory, of course, extends much farther than the +bi-racial Irish case, to which Fitzgibbon applied it. It was used, as we +shall see, to meet the bi-racial circumstances of Canada and South +Africa, and it was also used in a modified form to meet the uni-racial +circumstances of Australia and of Great Britain itself. Anyone who reads +the debates on the Reform Bill of 1831 will notice that the opposition +rested at bottom on a profoundly pessimistic distrust of the people, and +on the alleged necessity of an oligarchy vested with the power and duty +of "framing laws to meet the vicious propensities of human nature." In a +word, the theory is in essence not so much anti-racial as +anti-democratic, while finding its easiest application where those +distinctions of race and creed exist which it is its effect, though not +its purpose, to intensify and envenom. Fitzgibbon is a repulsive figure. +Yet it would be unjust to single him out for criticism. Like him, the +philosophers Hume and Paley believed in oligarchy, and accepted force or +corruption as its two alternative props. Burke thought the same, though +the Pitts thought otherwise. Fitzgibbon's brutal pessimism was only the +political philosophy of Paley, Hume, and Burke pushed relentlessly in an +exceptional case to its extreme logical conclusion. But we can justly +criticize statesmen of the present day who, after a century's experience +of the refutation of the doctrine in every part of the world, still +adhere to it. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[16] Pitt's original scheme was accepted in Ireland, but defeated in +England, owing to the angry opposition of British commercial interests. +The scheme, as amended to conciliate these interests, was deservedly +rejected in Ireland. + +[17] J. Fisher, "The End of the Irish Parliament." The author is much +indebted to this brilliant study, which appeared only this year (1911). + +[18] See Fitzgibbon's Speeches in the Irish House of Lords, on the +Catholic Franchise Bill, March 13, 1793, and on the Union, February 10, +1800. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE UNION + + +The worst feature of Fitzgibbonism is that it has the power artificially +to produce in the human beings subject to it some of the very phenomena +which originally existed only in the perverted imagination of its +professors. Some only of the phenomena; not all; for human nature +triumphs even over Fitzgibbonism. There has never been a moment since +the Union when a representative Irish Parliament, if statesmen had been +wise and generous enough, to set such a body up, would have acted on the +principle of revenge or persecution. Nor, in spite of all evidences to +the contrary, has there ever been a moment when Protestant Ulstermen, +heirs of the noble Volunteer spirit, once represented in such a +Parliament, would have acted on the assumption that they had to meet a +policy of revenge. Nevertheless, Fitzgibbonism did succeed, as it was to +succeed in Canada, in making pessimism at least plausible and in +achieving an immense amount of direct ascertainable mischief. + +The rift between the creeds and races, just beginning to heal three +generations after the era of confiscation, but reopened under the +operations of economic forces connected with race and religion, yet +perfectly capable of adjustment by a wise and instructed Government, +yawned wide from 1798 onwards, when Government had become a soulless +policeman, and scenes of frenzy and slaughter had occurred which could +not be forgotten. Swept asunder by a power outside their control, +Protestants and Catholics stood henceforth in opposite political camps, +and it became a fixed article of British policy to govern Ireland by +playing upon this antagonism. The flame of the Volunteer spirit never +perished, but it dwindled to a spark under the irresistible weight of a +manufactured reaction. Dissenters and Anglicans united, not to lead the +way in securing better conditions for their Catholic fellow-countrymen, +not for the interests of Ireland as a whole, but under the ignoble +colours of religious fanaticism. Hence that strangely artificial +alliance between the landlords of the South and West and the democratic +tenantry, artisans, and merchants of the North; an alliance formed to +meet an imaginary danger, and kept in being with the most mischievous +results to the social and economic development of Ireland. Since the +Protestant minority had made up its mind to depend once more on the +English power it had defied in 1782, the old machine of Ascendancy, +which had showed certain manifest signs of decrepitude under Grattan's +Parliament, was reconstructed on a firmer, less corrupt, and more +lasting basis. + +The Legislative Union is not a landmark or a turning-point in Irish +history. It reproduced "under less assailable forms" the Government +which existed prior to 1782. The real crisis, as I have said, came at +the end of 1783, when the Volunteers tried, by reforming Parliament, to +give Irish Government an Irish character. It is essential to +remember--now as much as ever before--that Ireland has never had a +national Parliament. She has never been given a chance of +self-expression and self-development. It is useless, though Home Rulers +frequently give way to the temptation, to advocate Home Rule by arguing +from Grattan's Parliament. O'Connell, in the Repeal debate of 1834, +devoted hours to praising that Parliament, and had his own argument +turned against him with crushing force by the Secretary to the Treasury, +who easily proved that it was the most corrupt and absurd body that ever +existed. The same game of cross-purposes went on in the Home Rule +debates of 1886 and 1893, and reappeared but this year in a debate of +the House of Lords (July 4, 1911), when the Roman Catholic Home Ruler, +Lord MacDonnell, eulogized Grattan's Parliament in answer to Lord +Londonderry, the Protestant Unionist landlord, who painted it in its +true colours. Yet Lord Londonderry springs from the class and school of +Charlemont, who, by refusing to act as an Irishman, hastened the ruin of +the Parliament which Lord Londonderry satirizes, and Lord MacDonnell +from the race which was betrayed by that Parliament. The anomaly need +not surprise us. It is not stranger than the fact that the Union would +never have been carried without Catholic support in Ireland. + +The point we have to grasp is that Ireland was a victim to the crudity +and falsity of the political ideas current at the time of the Union, +persistent all over the Empire for long afterwards, and not extinct yet. +Between Separation, personified by Tone, and Union, personified by +Fitzgibbon, and carried by those milder statesmen, Castlereagh and Pitt, +there seemed to be no alternative. Actually there was and is an +alternative: a responsible Irish Parliament and Government united to +England by sympathy and interest. + +The Parliamentary history of the Union does not much concern us. +Bribery, whether by titles, offices, or cash, had always been the normal +means of securing a Government majority in the Irish House of Commons. +Corruption was the only means of carrying the vote for the Union, and +the time and labour needed for securing that vote are a measure of the +rewards gained by those who formed the majority. Disgusting business as +it was, we have to admit that a Parliament which refused to reform +itself at the bidding of all that was best and healthiest in Ireland +did, on its own account, deserve extinction. The sad thing is that the +true Ireland was sacrificed. + +Pitt and Castlereagh, though they plunged their hands deep in the mire +to obtain the Union, quite honestly believed in the policy of the Union. +They were wrong. They merely reestablished the old ascendancy in a form, +morally perhaps more defensible, but just as damaging to the interests +of Ireland. In addition to absentee landlords, an alien and a largely +absentee Church, there was now an absentee Parliament, remote from all +possibility of pressure from Irish public opinion, utterly ignorant of +Ireland, containing within it, for twenty-nine years, at any rate, +representatives of only one creed, and that the creed of the small +minority. Pitt had virtually pledged himself to make Catholic +Emancipation an immediate consequence of the Union, and his Viceroy, +Cornwallis, had thereby obtained the invaluable support of the Catholic +hierarchy and of many of the Catholic gentry. The King, half mad at the +time, refused to sanction the redemption of the pledge, and Pitt, to his +deep dishonour, accepted the insult and dropped the scheme. +Fitzgibbonism in its extreme form had triumphed. It was a repetition of +the perfidy over the Treaty of Limerick a century before. Indeed, at +every turn of Irish history, until quite recent times, there seems to +have been perpetrated some superfluity of folly or turpitude which shut +the last outlet for natural improvement. It cannot be held, however, +that the refusal of Emancipation for another generation seriously +damaged the prospects of the Union as a system of government. After it +was granted, the system worked just as badly as before, and in all +essentials continues to work just as badly now. Inequalities in the +Irish franchise were only an aggravation. In order to cripple Catholic +power, Emancipation itself was accompanied in 1829 by an Act which +disfranchised at a stroke between seven and eight tenths of the Irish +county electorate, nor was it until the latest extension of the United +Kingdom franchise, that is, eighty-five years after the Union, that the +Irish representation was a true numerical reflection of the Irish +democracy. But these were not vital matters. In the Home Rule campaigns +of 1886 and 1893, Irish opinion, constitutionally expressed, was +impotent. The vital matter was that the Union killed all wholesome +political life in Ireland, destroyed the last chance of promoting +harmony among Irishmen, and transferred the settlement of Irish +questions to an ignorant and prejudiced tribunal, incapable of +comprehending these questions, much less of adjudicating upon them with +any semblance of impartiality. + +The Legislative Union was unnatural. The two islands, near as they were +to each other, were on different planes of civilization, wealth, and +economic development, without a common tradition, a common literature, +or a common religion. Each had a temperament and genius of its own, and +each needed a different channel of expression. Laws applicable to one +island were meaningless or noxious in the other; taxation applicable to +a rich industrial island was inappropriate and oppressive for a poor +agricultural island. And upon a system comprising all these +incompatibilities there was grafted the ruinous principle of ascendancy. + +There is nothing inherently strange about the difference between England +and Ireland. Artificial land-frontiers often denote much sharper +cleavages of sentiment, character, physique, language, history. A +sea-frontier sometimes makes a less, sometimes a more, effective line of +delimitation. Denmark and Sweden, France and England, are examples. +Nor, on the other hand, did the profound differences between Ireland and +England preclude the possibility of their incorporation in a political +system under one Crown. We know, by a mass of experience from Federal +and other systems, that elements the most diverse in language, religion, +wealth, and tradition may be welded together for common action, provided +that the union be voluntary and the freedom of the separate parts be +preserved. The first conditions of a true union were lacking in the case +of Ireland. The arrangement was not voluntary. It was accompanied by +gross breach of faith, and it signified enslavement, not liberty. + +A true Union was not even attempted. The Government of Ireland, in +effect, and for the most part in form, was still that of a conquered +Colonial Dependency. It was no more representative in any practical +sense after the Union than before the Union. The popular vote was +submerged in a hostile assembly far away. The Irish peerage was regarded +rightly by the Irish people as the very symbol of their own degradation, +the Union having been purchased with titles, and titles having been for +a century past the price paid for the servility of Anglo-Irish +statesmen. But the peerage, in the persons of the twenty-eight +representatives sent to Westminster, still remained a powerful nucleus +of anti-Irish opinion, infecting the House of Lords with anti-Irish +prejudice, and often opposing a last barrier to reform when the +opposition of the British House of Commons had been painfully overcome. +In truth the cardinal reforms of the nineteenth century were obtained, +not by persuasion, but by unconstitutional violence in Ireland itself. +There was still a separate Executive in Ireland, a separate system of +local administration, and until 1817 a separate financial system, all of +them wholly outside Irish control. The only change of constitutional +importance was that the Viceroy gradually became a figure-head, and his +autocratic powers, similar to those of the Governor of a Crown Colony, +were transferred to the Chief Secretary, who was a member of the British +Ministry. Gradually, as the activity of Government increased, there grew +up that grotesque system of nominated and irresponsible Boards which at +the present day is the laughing-stock of the civilized world. The whole +patronage remained as before, either directly or indirectly, in English +hands. If it was no longer manipulated in ways frankly corrupt, it was +manipulated in a fashion just as deleterious to Ireland. Before, as +after, the Union there was no public career in Ireland for an Irishman +who was in sympathy with the great majority of his countrymen. To win +the prizes of public life, judgeships, official posts, and the rest, it +was not absolutely necessary to be a Protestant, though for a long time +all important offices were held exclusively, and are still held mainly, +by Protestants; but it was absolutely necessary to be a thoroughgoing +supporter of the Ascendancy, and in thoroughgoing hostility to Irish +public opinion as a whole. In other words, the unwritten Penal Code was +preserved after the abolition of the written enactments, and was used +for precisely the same pernicious purpose. It was a subtle and sustained +attempt "to debauch the intellect of Ireland," as Mr. Locker-Lampson +puts it, to denationalize her, and to make her own hands the instrument +of her humiliation. The Bar was the principal sufferer, because now, as +before, it was the principal road to humiliation. Fitzgibbons +multiplied, so that for generations after the Union some of the ablest +Irish lawyers were engaged in the hateful business of holding up their +own people to execration in the eyes of the world, of combating +legislation imperatively needed for Ireland, and of framing and carrying +into execution laws which increased the maladies they were intended to +allay. + +Let nobody think these phenomena are peculiar to Ireland. In many parts +of the world where Ascendancies have existed, or exist, the same methods +are employed, and always with a certain measure of success. Irish moral +fibre was at least as tough as that of any other nationality in +resisting the poison. + +But the results were as calamitous in Ireland as in other countries. No +country can progress under such circumstances. The test of government is +the condition of the people governed. Judged by this criterion, it is no +exaggeration to say that Ireland as a whole went backward for at least +seventy years after the Union. Even Protestant North-East Ulster, with +its saving custom of tenant-right, its linen industry, and all the +special advantages derived from a century of privilege, though it +escaped the worst effects of the depression, suffered by emigration +almost as heavily as the rest of Ireland, and built up its industries +with proportionate difficulty. Over the rest of Ireland the main +features of the story are continuous from a period long antecedent to +the Union. A student of the condition of the Irish peasantry in the +eighteenth and in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth centuries +can ignore changes in the form or personnel of government. He would +scarcely be aware, unless he travelled outside his subject, that +Grattan's Parliament ever existed, or that subsequently a long +succession of Whig and Tory Ministers, differing profoundly in their +political principles, had alternately sent over to Ireland Chief +Secretaries with theoretically despotic powers for good or evil. These +"transient and embarrassed phantoms" came and went, leaving their +reputations behind them, and the country they were responsible for in +much the same condition. + +It is not my purpose to enter in detail into the history of Ireland in +the nineteenth century, but only to note a few salient points which will +help us to a comparison with the progress of other parts of the Empire. +It is necessary to repeat that the basis upon which the whole economic +structure of Ireland rested, the Irish agrarian system, was inconsistent +with social peace and an absolute bar to progress. I described in +Chapter I. how it came into being and the collateral mischiefs attending +it. During the nineteenth century, by accident or design, these +mischiefs were greatly aggravated. Until 1815 high war prices and the +low Catholic franchise stimulated subdivision of holdings, already +excessively small, and the growth of population. With the peace came +evictions, conversions into pasture, and consolidation of farms. The +disfranchisement of the mass of the peasantry which accompanied +Emancipation in 1829 inspired fresh clearances on a large scale and +caused unspeakable misery, with further congestion on the worst +agricultural land. "Cottier" tenancy, at a competitive rent, and +terminable without compensation for the improvements which were made +exclusively by the tenant, was general over the greater part of Ireland. +Generally it was tenancy-at-will, with perpetual liability to eviction. +Leaseholders, however, were under conditions almost as onerous. The +labourer, who was allowed a small plot, which he paid for in labour, +was in the worst plight of all. In addition, burdensome tithes were +collected by an alien Church and rents were largely spent abroad. If +Irish manufactures had not been destroyed, and there had been an outlet +from agriculture into industry, the evil effects of the agrarian system +would have been mitigated. As it was, in one of the richest and most +fertile countries in the world the congestion and poverty were +appalling. Competition for land meant the struggle for bare life. Rent +had no relation to value, but was the price fixed by the frantic bidding +of hungry peasants for the bare right to live. The tenant had no +interest in improving the land, because the penalty for improvement was +a higher rent, fixed after another bout of frantic competition. + +"Almost alone amongst mankind," wrote John Stuart Mill,[19] "the cottier +is in this condition, that he can scarcely be either better or worse off +by any act of his own. If he were industrious or prudent, nobody but his +landlord would gain; if he is lazy or intemperate, it is at his +landlord's expense. A situation more devoid of motives to either labour +or self-command, imagination itself cannot conceive. The inducements of +free human beings are taken away, _and those of a slave not +substituted_. He has nothing to hope, and nothing to fear, except being +dispossessed of his holding, and against this he protects himself by the +_ultima ratio_ of a defensive civil war. Rockism and Whiteboyism were +the determination of a people, who had nothing that could be called +theirs but a daily meal of the lowest description of food, not to submit +to being deprived of that for other people's convenience. + +"Is it not, then, a bitter satire on the mode in which opinions are +formed on the most important problems of human nature and life, to find +public instructors of the greatest pretension imputing the backwardness +of Irish industry, and the want of energy of the Irish people in +improving their condition, to a peculiar indolence and insouciance in +the Celtic race? Of all vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration +of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most +vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character +to inherent natural differences." + +The "civil war" referred to by Mill as the _ultima ratio_ of the +cottier tenant went on intermittently for ninety years of the nineteenth +century, as it had gone on during the eighteenth century, and was met by +coercive laws of the same general stamp. Until Mr. Gladstone took the +question in hand in 1870, no reformer could get a hearing in Parliament. +Bill after Bill, privately introduced, met with contemptuous rejection +in favour of some senseless measure of semi-military coercion. There +can, I believe, be no doubt that responsible Irish opinion, made +effective, would have grappled with the evil firmly and conscientiously. +Until the peasant class was driven to the last pitch of desperation, +their leaders did not conceive, and, indeed, never wholly succeeded in +implanting, the idea of a complete overthrowal of landlordism. The +peasant was not unwilling to pay rent. He had, and still has, a deep, +instinctive respect for a landed aristocracy, and was ready, and is +still ready, to repay good treatment with an intensity of devotion +difficult to parallel in other parts of the United Kingdom. In that +veritably cataclysmic dispersion of the Irish race which ensued upon the +great famine, rent continued to be paid at home out of sums remitted +from relatives in America. No less than nineteen millions of money were +thus remitted, according to the Emigration Commissioners of 1863, +between 1847 and that date. The Roman Catholic Church, as in every part +of the world, was strongly on the side of law and order, and, indeed, on +many occasions stepped in to condemn disorder legitimately provoked by +intolerable suffering. The wealthy and educated landlord class, face to +face in a free Parliament with the tenant class, including, be it +remembered, the Ulster Protestant tenants, with grievances less acute in +degree, but similar in kind, would have consented to meet reform halfway +under the stimulus of patriotism and an enlightened self-interest. +Against the great majority of Irish landlords there was no personal +charge. They came into incomes derived from a certain source under +ancient laws for which they were not responsible. But, acting through +the ascendancy Parliament far away in London, they remained, as an +organized class--for we must always make allowance for an enlightened +and public-spirited minority--blind to their own genuine interests and +to the demands of humane policy. Their responsibility was transferred to +English statesmen, who were not fitted, by temperament or training, to +undertake it, and who always looked at the Irish land question, which +had no counterpart in England, through English spectacles. We cannot +attribute their failure to lack of information. At every stage there was +plenty of unbiassed and instructed testimony, Whig and Tory, Protestant +and Catholic, independent and official, as to the nature and origin of +the trouble. Mill and Bright, in 1862, only emphasized what Arthur Young +had said in 1772, and what Edward Wakefield, Sharman Crawford, Michael +Sadler, Poulett Scrope, and many other writers, thinkers, and +politicians had confirmed in the intervening period, and what every +fair-minded man admits now to be the truth. Commission after Commission +reported the main facts correctly, if the remedies they proposed were +inadequate. The Devon Commission, reporting in 1845, on the eve of the +great famine, condemned the prevalent agrarian tenure, and recommended +the statutory establishment of the Ulster custom of tenant right. A very +mild and cautious Bill was introduced and dropped. + +Next year came the famine, revealing in an instant the rottenness of the +economic foundations upon which the welfare of Ireland depended. The +population had swollen from four millions in 1788 to nearly eight and a +half millions in 1846, an unhealthy expansion, due to the well-known law +of propagation in inverse ratio to the adequacy of subsistence. What +happened was merely the failure of the potato-crop, not a serious matter +in most countries, but in Ireland the cause of starvation to +three-quarters of a million persons, and the starting-point of that vast +exodus which in the last half of the nineteenth century drained Ireland +of nearly four million souls. The famine passed, and with it all +recollection of the report of the Devon Commission. Hitherto most of the +land legislation had been designed to facilitate evictions. Now came the +Encumbered Estates Act of 1849, whose purpose was to facilitate the +buying out of bankrupt Irish landlords, and whose effect was to +perpetuate the old agrarian system under a new set of more mercenary +landlords, pursuing the old policy of rack-rents and evictions. In the +three years 1849-1852, 58,423 families were evicted, or 306,120 souls. +Aroused from the stupor of the famine, the peasants had to retaliate +with the same old defensive policy of outrage. Peaceful agitation was +of no use. The Tenant League of North and South, formed in 1852, claimed +in vain the simplest of the rights granted under pressure of violence in +1870 and 1881. + +Violence, indeed, was the only efficient lever in Ireland for any but +secondary reforms until the last fifteen years of the century, when a +remedial policy was spontaneously adopted, with the general consent of +British statesmen and parties. Fear inspired the Emancipation Act of +1829, which was recommended to Parliament by the Duke of Wellington as a +measure wrong in itself, but necessary to avert an organized rebellion +in Ireland. Tithes, the unjust burden of a century and a half, were only +commuted in 1838, after a Seven Years' War revolting in its incidents. +Mr. Gladstone admitted, and no one who studies the course of events can +deny, that without the Fenianism of the sixties, and the light thrown +thereby on the condition of Ireland, it would have been impossible to +carry the Act--again overdue by a century--for the disestablishment of +the Irish Church in 1869, or the Land Act, timid and ineffectual as it +was, of 1870. Without the organized lawlessness of the Land League it +would have been equally impossible to bring about those more drastic +changes in Irish land tenure which, amidst storms of protest from vested +interests affected, were initiated under the great Land Act of 1881, +and, after another miserable decade of crime and secret conspiracy, +extended by the Acts of 1887, 1891, and 1896. + +Briefly, the effect of these Acts was to establish three principles: a +fair rent, fixed by a judicial tribunal, the Land Commission, and +revisable every fifteen years; fixity of tenure as long as the rent is +paid; and free sale of the tenant-right. + +The remedy eventually brought widespread relief, but, from a social and +economic standpoint, it was not the right remedy. There is no security +for good legislation unless it be framed by those who are to live under +it. Constructive thought in Ireland for the solution of her own +difficulties and the harmonizing of her own discordant elements had been +systematically dammed, or diverted into revolutionary excesses, which, +in the traditional spirit of Fitzgibbonism, were made the pretext for +more stupid torture. Thus, O'Connell, whose attachment to law was so +strong that in 1843, when the Repeal agitation had reached seemingly +irresistible proportions, he deliberately restrained it, was tried for +sedition. So, too, were dissipated the brilliant talents of the Young +Ireland group and the grave statesmanship of Isaac Butt. Fits intervened +of a penitent and bungling philanthropy which has left its traces on +nearly all Irish institutions. For example, it was decided in 1830 that +the Irish must be educated, and a system was set up which was +deliberately designed to anglicize Ireland and extirpate Roman +Catholicism. Four years later, in defiance of Irish opinion, a Poor Law +pedantically copied from the English model was applied to Ireland. The +railway system also was grossly mismanaged. And so with the land. When +reform eventually came, the evil had gone too far, and it was beyond the +art of the ablest and noblest Englishmen, inheriting English conceptions +of the rights of landed property, to devise any means of placing the +relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland, inhuman and absurd as +they were, on a sound and durable basis. The dual ownership set up by +the Land Acts was more humane, but in some respects no less absurd and +mischievous. It exasperated the landlord, while, by placing before the +tenant the continual temptation of further reductions in rent, it tended +to check good cultivation. + +Men came to realize at last that the complete expropriation of the +landlords through the State-aided purchase of the land was the only +logical resource, and this process, begun tentatively and on a very +small scale as far back as 1870, under the inspiration of John Bright, +and extended under a series of other Acts, was eventually set in motion +on a vast scale by the Wyndham Act of 1903. + +I leave a final review of Purchase and of other quite recent remedial +legislation, as well as the far more important movements for +regeneration from within, to later chapters. Meanwhile, let us pause for +a moment and pronounce upon the political system which made such havoc +in Ireland. All this havoc, all this incalculable waste of life, energy, +brains, and loyalty, was preventable and unnecessary. Ethics and honour +apart, where was the common sense of the legislative Union? Would it +have been possible to design a system better calculated to embitter, +impoverish, and demoralize a valuable portion of the Empire? + +Let us now turn our eyes across the Atlantic, and observe the effects of +an Imperial policy founded on the same root idea. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[19] "Principles of Political Economy," vol. ii., p. 392. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +CANADA AND IRELAND + + +In comparing the history of Canada with the closely allied history of +Ireland, we must bear in mind that in the last half of the eighteenth +century the present British North America consisted of three distinct +portions: Acadia, or the Maritime Provinces, which we now know as +Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, +colonized originally by a few Frenchmen and later by Scotch and Irish; +Lower Canada, extensively colonized by the French, which we now know as +the Province of Quebec; and Upper Canada, which we now know as Ontario, +colonized last of all by Americans under circumstances to be described. + +In 1763, before the repeal of any part of the Penal Code against Irish +Roman Catholics, the French Catholic Colony of Lower Canada, with a +population of about seventy thousand souls and the two small towns of +Quebec and Montreal, passed definitely into British possession under the +Treaty of Paris, which brought to a conclusion the Seven Years' War. +Fortunately, there was no question, as in Ireland, of expropriating the +owners of the soil in favour of State-aided British planters, and hence +no question of a Penal Code, even on the moderate scale current in Great +Britain at the same period. On the contrary, it became a matter of +urgent practical expediency to conciliate the conquered Province in view +of the growing disaffection of the American Colonies bordering it on the +South. This disaffection, assuming ominous proportions on the enactment +of the Stamp Act in 1765, was itself an indirect result of the conquest +of Canada a few years before; for the claim to tax the Americans for +Imperial purposes arose from the enormous expense of the war of conquest +and of the subsequent charges for defence and upkeep. It was forgotten +that American volunteers had captured Louisburg in 1745, and had borne +a distinguished part in later operations, and that to lay a compulsory +tax upon them would banish glorious memories common to America and +Britain. Henceforward, conquered French Canada was made a political +bulwark against rebellious America. The French colonists, a peaceable, +primitive folk, as attached to their religion as the Irish, and devoted +mainly to agriculture, retained, as long as they desired it, the old +French system of law known as the Custom of Paris and the free exercise +of their religion. Like the Irish, they were strongly monarchical and +strongly conservative in feeling, and as impervious to the Republican +propaganda emanating from their American neighbours as the Catholic +Irish always at heart remained to the revolutionary principles of Wolfe +Tone's school. Unmolested in their habits and possessions, they +philosophically accepted the transference from the Bourbon to the +Hanoverian dynasty, and became an indispensable source of strength to +George III. when that monarch was using his German troops to coerce his +American subjects and his British troops to overawe the Ulster +Volunteers. + +In 1774, immediately before the outbreak of a war against which Ireland +was protesting, and in which, with the soundest justification, the +Irish-Americans, Catholic and Protestant, took such a prominent part +against the British arms, the Quebec Act was passed giving formal +statutory sanction to the Catholic religion, and setting up a nominated +legislative Council, whose members were subject to no religious test. In +Ireland it was not till six years later, and, as we have seen, by means +of precisely the same pressure--British fear of America--that the Irish +Protestant Volunteers obtained the abolition of the test for Dissenters, +while Catholics in Ireland were still little more than outlaws, and had +to wait for nearly sixty years for complete emancipation. The result of +the Quebec Act, together with the sympathetic administration of that +great Irishman, Sir Guy Carleton, was the firm allegiance of the French +Province in spite of an exceedingly formidable invasion, during the +whole of the American War, and even after the intervention of European +France. It is part of the dramatic irony of these occurrences that some +of the invading army was composed of Morgan's Irish-American riflemen, +and that one of the two joint leaders of the invasion was the +Irish-American, General Richard Montgomery, who fell at the unsuccessful +assault of Quebec on December 31, 1775. + +In spite of Burke's noble appeal in the House of Commons, toleration in +the abstract had nothing to do with the treatment of the French +Catholics. British Catholics in the neighbouring Prince Edward Island +were denied all civil rights in 1770, and only gained them in 1830. In +England, the Quebec Act with difficulty survived a storm of indignation, +in which even Chatham joined. The small minority of British settled in +Quebec and Montreal made vehement protests, while the American Congress +itself in 1774 committed the irreparable blunder of making the +establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Canada one of its +formally published grievances against Great Britain. When war broke out, +and the magnitude of the mistake was seen, efforts were made to seduce +the Canadians by hints of a coming British tyranny, but the Canadians +very naturally abode by their first impressions. + +The peace of 1783 and the final recognition of American Independence led +to results of far-reaching importance for the further development of the +British Empire. Out of the loss of the American Colonies came the +foundation of Australia and of British Canada. Before the war it had +been the custom to send convicts from the United Kingdom to penal +settlements in the American Colonies. The United States stopped this +traffic. Pitt's Government decided, after several years of doubt and +delay, to divert the stream of convicts to the newly acquired and still +unpopulated territory of New South Wales, made known by the voyages of +Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks. At the same period a very different +class of men, seeking a new home, were thrown upon the charity of the +British Government. These were the "United Empire Loyalists," as they +styled themselves, some 40,000 Americans, with a sprinkling of Irishmen +among them, such as Luke Carscallion, Peter Daly, Willet Casey, and John +Canniff,[20] who had fought on the Royalist side throughout the war, and +at the end of it found their fortunes ruined and themselves the objects +of keen resentment. Pitt, with a "total lack of Imperial imagination," +as Mr. Holland Rose puts it,[21] does not seem to have considered the +plan of colonizing Australia with a part of these men, 433 of whom were +reported to be living in destitution in London three years after the +war. No more alacrity was shown in relieving the distress of those still +in America. In 1788, however, a million and a quarter pounds were voted +by Parliament for relief, and large grants of land were made in Canada, +whither most of the Loyalists had already begun to emigrate. Some went +to the Maritime Provinces, notably to the region now known as New +Brunswick; a few went to the towns of the Quebec Province, for the +country lands on the lower reaches of the St. Lawrence were already +monopolized by the French "habitants"; the rest, estimated at 10,000, to +the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence and along the shores of the Lakes +Ontario and Erie, in short, to what we now know as the Province of +Ontario, and to what then became known as Upper Canada. + +From this moment the three Canadas gain sharp definition. To the west +Upper Canada, exclusively American or, as we must now say, British in +character; next to the east, and cutting off its neighbour from the sea, +the ancient Province of Lower Canada, predominantly French, with a +minority of British traders in the two towns Quebec and Montreal; last +of all the Maritime Provinces, small communities with an almost +independent history of their own, although, like Upper and Lower Canada, +they eventually presented a problem similar fundamentally to the Irish +problem on the other side of the Atlantic. Prince Edward Island is the +closest parallel, for, besides the Catholic disabilities of 1770, in +1767 the whole of its land had been granted away by ballot in a single +day to a handful of absentee English proprietors, who sublet to +occupiers without security of tenure, with the result that a land +question similar to that of Ireland arose, which inflamed society and +retarded the development of the island for a whole century. Ultimately, +moreover, statesmen were driven to an even more drastic +solution--compulsory and universal State-aided land purchase.[22] Before +the period we have now reached, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, +which was carved out of it, had been given rude systems of +representative Government, and New Brunswick, also at one time a part of +Nova Scotia, received a Constitution in 1784. + +The great question after the American War was how to govern the two +contiguous Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, the one newly settled by +men of British race and Protestant faith, the other also under the +British flag, but overwhelmingly French and Catholic, both, in the +critical half-century to come, to be reinforced by immigrants from the +Old World, and to a large extent from misgoverned Ireland. But let the +reader once and for all grasp this point, that, once out of Ireland, +there ceases, not immediately, but in course of time, to be any racial +or political distinction between the different classes of Irishmen, +whose antagonism at home, artificially provoked and fomented by the bad +form of government under which they lived, so often made Ireland itself +a very hell on earth. I want to dwell on this point in order to avoid +confusion when I speak of the bi-racial conditions of Lower Canada and +Ireland respectively. + +To return to the question of Government. The American Colonies were +lost. Here in Canada was an opportunity for a new Imperial policy, +better calculated to retain the affections of the colonists. Three +distinct problems were involved: + +1. Was French or Lower Canada, with its small minority of British, to be +given representative Government at all? + +2. If so, was it to be left as a separate unit, or was it to be +amalgamated in a Union with its neighbour, Upper Canada? + +3. Whichever course was taken, what was to be the relation between the +Home Government and Canada? + +All these questions arise in the case of Ireland itself, and the +parallel in each case is interesting. In Canada they were determined for +the space of half a century by the Constitutional Act of 1791, passed at +the period when Grattan's unreformed Parliament was hastening to its +fall, and Wolfe Tone was founding his Society of United Irishmen. Let us +take in turn the three questions posed above. + +1. The British minority in Lower Canada, supported by a corresponding +school in England, were strong for an undisguised British ascendancy, +without any recognition of the French. They urged, what was true, that +the French were unaccustomed to representative government, and implied, +what was neither true nor politic, that they could not, and ought not +to, be educated to it. If there was to be an Assembly at all, it should, +they claimed, be wholly British and Protestant, or, in the alternative, +the Protestant minority only should be represented at Westminster. In +other words, they wished either for the pre-Union Irish system or for +the post-Union Irish system, both of them, as time was just beginning to +prove, equally disastrous to the interests of Ireland. We are not +surprised to find these ideas supported by the Irishman Burke, in whom +horror of the French Revolution had destroyed the last particle of +Liberalism. If Pitt lacked "Imperial imagination," he knew more than +most of his contemporaries about the elementary principles of governing +white men. It was only a few years before that he had urged upon his +Irish Viceroy, Rutland, a reform of the Irish Parliament which might +have united the races and averted all the disasters to come, and in this +very year (1791) he was pressing forward the Catholic franchise in +Ireland. The French in Canada must, he said, be represented in a popular +Assembly equally with the British, and on the broadest possible +franchise, and they were. + +2. The next question was that of the union or separation of Upper and +Lower Canada. Here, and from the same underlying motive, the British +minority in Lower Canada were for the Union, partly on commercial +grounds, but mainly as a step in the direction of overcoming French +influence. Upper Canada, wholly British, was, on the whole, neutral. +Pitt, on high principle, again took correct ground. He did not, indeed, +foresee that separation, for geographical reasons, would cause certain +inconveniences; but he did understand--and experience in both Provinces +ultimately proved him right--that it was absolutely hopeless to try and +avert social and racial discord by artificially swamping the French +element. He declared, then, for the separation of the two Canadas into +two distinct Provinces. Note the beginnings of another, though a +distant, analogy with the relations of Ireland and Great Britain, +distant because the French at this time largely outnumbered the British +of both Provinces, and in after-years maintained something very near a +numerical equality. But the same underlying principle was involved. +Pitt, in the Legislative Union of Ireland and Great Britain nine years +later, constructed without geographical necessity, indeed, in defiance +of geography and humanity, the very system which, in a form by +comparison almost innocuous, he had condemned for Canada; but not, we +must in fairness remember, before doing his part at an earlier date to +arrive at a solution which, given a fair chance, would have rendered the +Union of Ireland and England unnecessary. + +3. So far, good. But there still remained a further question far +transcending the other in importance--What was to be the relation +between the Home Government and the new Colonies? Here all British +intellects, that of Fox alone excepted, were as much at a loss as ever. +One simple deduction was made from what had happened in America, namely, +that the new Colonies must not be forced to contribute to Imperial funds +by taxes levied from London. That claim had already been abandoned in +1778 by the Colonial Tax Repeal Act, which nevertheless expressly +reserved the King's right to levy "such duties as it may be expedient to +impose for the regulation of commerce," the sum so raised to be retained +for the use of the Colony. No one made the more comprehensive deduction, +even in the case of wholly British Upper Canada, that Colonial affairs +should be controlled by Colonial opinion, constitutionally ascertained, +and that the British Governor should act primarily through advisers +chosen by the majority of the people under his rule. We must bear in +mind that, had Grattan's Parliament been reformed, and the warring races +in Ireland been brought into harmony, it would still have had to pass +through the crucial phase of establishing its right to choose Ministers +by whose advice the Lord-Lieutenant should be guided, that is, if it +were to become a true Home Rule Parliament of the kind we aim at to-day. + +From the date of the Constitutional Act passed for Canada in 1791, it +took fifty-six troubled years and an armed rebellion in each Province to +establish the principle of what we call "responsible Government" for +Canada, and, through Canada, for the rest of the white Colonies of the +Empire. During these fifty-six years, which correspond in Irish history +to a period dating from the middle of Grattan's Parliament down to the +great Famine, ascendancies, with the symptoms of disease which always +attended ascendancies, grew up in Canada, as they had in Ireland, in +spite of conditions which were far more favourable in Canada to healthy +political growth. Canada started with this great advantage over Ireland, +that instead of a corrupt parody of a Parliament, each of her Provinces, +under the Constitutional Act of 1791, had a real popular Assembly, +elected without regard to race or religion. It was the Upper House or +Legislative Council, as it was called, that interposed the first +obstacle to the free working of popular institutions. In both Provinces +this Council was nominated by the Governor, and could be used, and was +naturally used, to represent minority interests and obstruct the popular +assembly. Fox had correctly prophesied that it would soon come "to +inspire hatred and contempt." But he did not mean that such a chamber +was in itself an insuperable bar to harmony. Nominated or hereditary +second chambers are not necessarily inconsistent with popular +government, provided that the Executive Government itself possesses the +confidence of the representative Assembly. Under that lever, obstruction +eventually gives way. But this idea of a tie of confidence between the +Governors and the governed was exactly what was lacking. + +The Executive Council in each Province was also chosen by the British +Governor or Lieutenant-Governor, generally a military man, from persons +representing either his own purely British policy or the ideas of a +privileged colonial minority, and without regard to the wishes or +opinions of the Colonial Assembly, just as the Executive officers in +Ireland, both before and after the Union, were chosen out of +corresponding elements by the Lord-Lieutenant or Chief Secretary, acting +under the orders of the British Government, and without any regard to +the wishes or opinions of the majority of Irishmen. Behind all, in +remote Downing Street stood the British Government, in the shape of the +Colonial Office for Canada and the Irish Office for Ireland, both +working in dense ignorance of the real needs of the countries for which +they were responsible, and permeated with prejudice and pedantry. To +complete the parallel, there was now a foreign Power in the close +neighbourhood of each dependency, the United States in the case of +Canada, France in the case of Ireland, both of them Republican Powers, +and both able and willing to take advantage of disaffection in the +dependencies in order to further a quarrel with the Mother Country. We +have seen the results in Ireland. Let us now observe the results in +Canada, taking especial care to notice that an ascendancy Government +gives rise to the same type of evil in a uni-racial as in a bi-racial +community. + +Let us glance first at what happened in Upper Canada, which was +uni-racial, that is, composed of settlers from the United Kingdom +(including Ireland) and America. Here the original settlers, the "United +Empire Loyalists" from America, formed from the first, and maintained +for half a century, an ascendancy of wealth and religion over the +incoming settlers, who soon constituted the majority of the population. +As in Ireland, though in a degree small by comparison, there was a land +question and a religious question, closely related to one another. +Happily, it was not a case of robbery, but of simple monopoly. +Excessively large grants of land, nine-tenths of which remained +uncultivated, were obtained by the original settlers, most of whom were +Episcopalian in faith, and, under the Act of 1791, further tracts of +enormous extent, which for the most part lay waste and idle, were set +apart in each township, under the name of "Clergy Reserves" for the +Episcopalian Church. Since the majority of the incoming settlers were +Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, or Roman Catholics, many of them +from the Protestant and Catholic parts of Ireland, some from America, +some even from Germany, these conditions caused intense irritation, +checking both the development of the country and the growth of solid +character among the colonists. Absentee ownership was a grave economic +evil, though happily it was not complicated and embittered by a vicious +system of tenure. Education suffered severely through the diversion of +the income from public lands to private purposes. + +The ascendancy was maintained on lines familiar in Ireland--through the +mutual dependence of the colonial minority and the Home Government +acting through its Governor. A few leading Episcopalian families from +among the United Empire Loyalists, installed at Toronto, with the +support of a succession of High Tory Lieutenant-Governors, monopolized +the Executive Council, the Legislative Council, the Bench, the Bar, and +all offices of profit, denying a Canadian career to the vast majority of +Upper Canadians, just as Irishmen were excluded from an Irish career. +For a long time the Assembly itself, which retained its original +Constitution long after the influx of immigrants had rendered necessary +its enlargement on a new electoral basis, was a subject of monopoly +also. Even when enlarged in 1821 it was helpless against the nominated +Council and Executive, backed by Downing Street. The oligarchy came to +be known by the name of the "family compact," and, as the reader will +observe, it bore a close resemblance in form to the "undertaker" system +in Ireland before the Union, and to the monopoly of patronage obtained +by certain families, notably the Beresfords. + +While the Colony was still small, the system worked tolerably well; but +from the second decade of the nineteenth century onwards, when the +population grew from 150,000 to 250,000 in 1832, and to 500,000 a few +years later, and the Episcopalians sank into a numerical minority as low +as a quarter, troubles of the Irish type became proportionately acute. +The Colony was in reality perfectly content with its position under the +Crown, and in the war with America in 1812 all classes and creeds united +to repel invasion with enthusiasm. One of the prominent leaders was an +Irishman, James Fitzgibbon, and a poor Irish private, James O'Hara, won +fame by refusing to surrender at the capture of Toronto Fort. As usual, +however, a fictitious standard of "loyalty," which, in fact, meant +privilege, was set up, obscuring those questions of good government +which were the only real matters at issue in Canada, as in Ireland. +There were Republican immigrants of many denominations from America, +Radicals of Cobbett's school from England and Scotland, tenants of a +democratic turn from Ulster, and a growing stream of Catholic cottiers +flying from the "clearances" and tithe war in other Irish Provinces. All +these classes of men made excellent settlers, and only wanted fair and +equal treatment to make them perfectly peaceable citizens. To the +official oligarchy, however, even their moderate leaders came to be +viewed as rebels, and were often subjected to imprisonment or to +banishment. + +Among others William Gourlay, a Scotsman, Stephen Willcocks and Francis +Collins, Irishmen, all three perfectly respectable reformers, suffered +in this way. Bidwell, the great Robert Baldwin, and other good men were +rendered powerless for good. As invariably happens in any part of the +world where a course is pursued which estranges moderate men and +embitters extreme men, agitators came to the front lacking that +self-control and sense of responsibility which the sobering education of +office alone can give, and generally ruining themselves while they +benefit humanity at large. Chief of these was W.L. Mackenzie, a +Presbyterian Scot from Dundee. All this man really wanted was what +exists to-day as a matter of course in all self-governing +countries--responsible government. He even conceived that great idea of +the Confederation of British North America, which came to birth in 1867. +Thwarted in his attacks on the oligarchy, he degenerated into violent +courses, and ultimately organized, or rather was provoked into +organizing, the rebellion of 1837. The grievances which led to this +outbreak were genuine and severe, and were all in course of time +admitted and redressed. One, the powerlessness of the Assembly, owing to +the control by the Executive of annual sums sufficient to pay the +official expenses of Government, corresponded to a pre-Union Irish +grievance, and was remedied by an Act of 1831. Most of the other +grievances were incurable by constitutional effort. They may be found +summarized in the "Seventh Report of Grievances," a temperate and +truthful document drawn up by a Committee of the Assembly in 1835. The +huge unsettled Clergy Reserves and Crown Lands were the worst concrete +abuse, and matters had just then been aggravated by the sudden +establishment of scores of sinecure rectories. Jobbery, +maladministration, and the dependence of the judges on the Executive +were other complaints; but the main assault was made quite rightly on +the form of the Colonial Government, which rendered peaceful reform of +any abuse as impossible as in Ireland, and the cardinal claim was that +the Executive should act, not under the dictation of Downing Street, of +an irresponsible Governor, or of a narrow colonial oligarchy, but in +accordance with popular opinion. Mackenzie's rebellion of 1837 was a no +more formidable affair than the similar efforts in Ireland made under +incomparably greater provocation by Emmett in 1803 and Smith O'Brien in +1848, and was as easily suppressed; but, unlike the Irish outbreaks, and +in conjunction with a revolt arising in the same year and from similar +causes in the adjoining Province of Lower Canada, it led to a complete +change of system. + +In Lower Canada the same preposterous system of government was +aggravated by the presence of the two races, French and English. Yet +there was nothing inherently dangerous or unwholesome about this +situation. The French, like the Catholics in Ireland, never showed the +smallest tendency towards religious intolerance, nor were they less +loyal at heart than the Radicals of Upper Canada or the Tories of either +Province. They took the same energetic part in repelling the American +invasion of 1812, and produced at least one remarkable leader in the +person of Colonel Salaberry, who commanded the French-Canadian +Voltigeurs. Like their co-religionists in Ireland, they were +temperamentally averse to Republicanism in any shape, whether on the +American model over the border or on the model of revolutionary France, +where Republicanism since 1793 was anti-Catholic and the result of +miseries and oppressions as bad as those in Ireland; whence, moreover, +many priests and nobles fled from persecution to Lower Canada. As in +eighteenth-century Ireland, we find that the Roman Catholic clergy, the +_seigneurs_ or aristocrats, and the _habitants_ or peasants, were of a +Conservative cast, throwing their weight, often even against their own +interests, into the scale of the established Government, while the +lawyers and journalists alone produced determined agitators. The racial +cleavage, moreover, as in Ireland, was artificially accentuated by the +political system. There was in reality a strong community of interest +between the British lower class and the French lower class against the +tyranny of an official clique, and to the end a substantial number of +Englishmen worked with the French for reform; but with the failure of +their efforts came that inevitable tightening of the bonds of race, even +against interest, which we have seen operating with such lamentable +effect in Ireland. And, as in Ireland, we find the best instincts of +the people withered and perverted into rebellion by "Fitzgibbonism," the +policy of distrust and coercion. + +The British official ascendancy, supreme from the first, became +extraordinarily rigid. The Executive Council and Legislative Council +were almost entirely British, the Assembly overwhelmingly French. There +were no regular heads of departments, so that the Governor had no +skilled advice, much less responsible advice. The Councils blocked all +legislation they disliked, and for more than forty years, by means of +unrestricted control over a large part of the provincial revenues, were +able to defy the Assembly. It will be observed that, although Ireland +never had anything worth calling an Assembly, her structure both before +and after the Union was essentially the same, in that Irish public +opinion, whether voiced by the Volunteers against the unreformed +Parliament or after the Union by the Nationalist party at Westminster, +was powerless. The existence of a popular Assembly in Canada only made +the anomalies more obvious. + +There were, of course, marked divergencies of character and less marked +divergencies of interest between the French majority and the British +minority in Canada. The French, by comparison, were a backward and +conservative race, less well educated and less progressive and energetic +both in agriculture and commerce than the British. On the other hand, +subsequent experience showed that, under free constitutional government, +British intelligence, wealth, and energy would, here as elsewhere, have +preserved their full legitimate influence. Under a system which +throttled French ideas and aspirations, and treated the most harmless +popular movements as treasonable machinations, deadlock and anarchy were +in the long run inevitable. + +The popular demands were much the same as those in Upper Canada: control +of the purse, the independence of the judges, an elective Legislative +Council, and a curtailment of the arbitrary powers and privileges of the +Executive, which led to gross jobbery, favouritism, and extravagance. As +in Upper Canada, the greatest practical grievance, though it assumed a +somewhat different form, was the disposal of the public lands. Here, +too, there were extensive and undeveloped Clergy Reserves for the +Episcopalian Church, as well as free grants on a large scale to +speculators. The estates of the Jesuit Order had been confiscated, so +that disputes about their disposal were tinged with religious +bitterness. But most of the friction over the land question came from +the operations of a chartered land company, which, under the protection +of the Government, and with financial and political support from +England, dealt with the unsettled land in a manner very unfair and often +corrupt, and promoted here, as in Upper Canada and Ireland, absentee +ownership. + +The popular agitation ran the same course as in Upper Canada, reached +its crisis at the same moment, threw into prominence the same types of +men, moderate and extreme, and produced the same waste of good human +material and distortion of human character, both in the ascendant and +the subject classes. As Sir John Cockburn tells us in his "Political +Annals of Canada" (p. 177), some of the most incendiary speakers and +writers (in 1836) were "most able and worthy men, who in the subsequent +days of tranquillity occupied most prominent and distinguished positions +in the public service, revered as loyal, true, and able statesmen by all +classes." The popular movement was by no means wholly French. A Scot, +John Neilson; an Englishman, Wilfred Nelson; and an Irish journalist, +Dr. O'Callaghan, were prominent members of a kind of Radical party; but +the ablest and most influential among the agitators, and in every +respect more admirable than Mackenzie, was the Frenchman, Louis +Papineau, who first became Speaker of the Assembly in 1817, and retained +that high position until the verge of the rebellion of 1837. By no means +devoid of superficial faults, but eloquent, honest, accomplished and +adored by his compatriots, here was a man who, if he had been given +reasonable scope for his talents, and steadied by official +responsibility, would have been a tower of strength to the Colony and +the British connection. He corresponds in position and aims, and to a +certain extent in character and gifts, to his great Irish contemporary, +O'Connell. But O'Connell was too conservative to produce great results. +Papineau, dashing himself in vain for twenty years against the +entrenched camp of the ascendancy, finally degenerated, like Mackenzie, +into a commonplace rebel. + +The phases through which the agitation passed before it reached this +disastrous point need only a brief review. Naturally enough, owing to +the bi-racial conditions, friction had arisen earlier in Lower than in +Upper Canada, yet the first recognition of the flagrant defects of the +Constitution was not made till 1828, when a Committee of the British +House of Commons published a Report which, though its recommendations +were mild and inadequate, was in effect a censure of the whole political +system of the Province and an admission of the justice of the agitation. +There was no result for four years, while matters went from bad to worse +in the Colony. At last, in 1832, under an Act similar to that passed for +Upper Canada, all the provincial revenues were placed under the control +of the Assembly in return for the voting of a fixed Civil List. This +well-meant half-measure made matters worse, because it left the Assembly +just as powerless as before over the details of legislation and +administration, while giving it the power to paralyze the Government by +refusing all, instead of only part, of the supplies. This it proceeded +to do, and in the next five years large deficits were piled up, and the +Colony became insolvent. + +Meanwhile, in February, 1834, a year before the publication of the +"Seventh Report of Grievances" in Upper Canada, and three months before +O'Connell's celebrated motion in the House of Commons for the Repeal of +the Union between England and Ireland, the Assembly of Lower Canada, at +Papineau's instance, passed the equally celebrated "Ninety-two +Resolutions." Bombastic and diffuse, like parts of O'Connell's speech, +this historic document nevertheless was as true in all really essential +respects as Mackenzie's manifesto and as O'Connell's tremendous +indictment of the system of Government in Ireland. All three men, +O'Connell with far the most justification, demanded the same thing, good +government for their respective countries under a responsible Parliament +and Ministry. They all occasionally used wild language, O'Connell the +least wild. O'Connell, who nine years later deliberately quenched a +popular revolt he could have headed, failed in his aim as completely as +Tone, Emmett, and Smith O'Brien, who pressed their efforts to the point +of violence. Mackenzie and Papineau, who took to arms, succeeded in +their aim. + +The crisis in Lower Canada was precipitated, and, indeed, provoked, by a +challenge thrown out in March, 1837, from the British House of Commons, +where, at Lord John Russell's instance, the Ten Resolutions were agreed +to, which amounted in effect to a denial of all the colonial claims and +a declaration of war upon those who made them. Papineau had to eat his +words or make them good, and he chose the latter course. His +insurrection was arranged in concert with that of the Upper Province, +broke out simultaneously in the winter of 1837, and was extinguished +with little difficulty. The men who made it suffered. Canada and the +Empire profited. Both Papineau and Mackenzie, following the precedent of +Wolfe Tone with France, endeavoured with little success to engage +American sympathy and the aid of her army, though Canada had as little +desire for American rule as Ireland had for French rule. + +Let us remark, as an interesting fact for those who imagine that +Irishmen are always instinctively on the side of turbulence and +disorder, that the Irish immigrants who poured into Canada at the +average annual rate of 20,000 in the years--terrible years in +Ireland--preceding the rebellions,[23] acted much as we might expect. In +the Lower Province, following the lead of the French Catholic hierarchy, +they declared in November, 1837, against Papineau's party, and thus +strengthened the hands of the Government when the crisis approached.[24] +In the Upper Province Catholics were strongly on the side of reform, but +took no part in the rebellion. Orangemen in both Provinces, as we might +guess, sided as strongly with the ascendancy parties, but colonial air +seems to have taken some of the theological venom out of Orangeism. If +Charles Buller is to be trusted, some Catholics joined the societies in +Upper Canada, which were more Tory than religious, and the healths of +William of Orange and the Catholic Bishop Macdonnell were drunk in +impartial amity.[25] + +In the meantime, three of the four outlying Provinces of North +America--Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island--where the +same form of Constitution prevailed as in Upper and Lower Canada, had +been passing through a similar phase of misgovernment and agitation +during the previous thirty years. Each suffered under a little +monopolist ascendancy, called by the same name, "the family compact," +and sustained, against the prevailing sentiment and interest, by the +British Governor, and in each had arisen, or was arising, the same loud +demand for responsible government. Samuel Wilmot in New Brunswick, +Joseph Howe in Nova Scotia, were the best-known spokesmen. There was no +violence, but a growing dislocation. In five Provinces of North America, +therefore, the Colonial Government had broken down or was tottering, and +from exactly the same cause as in Ireland, though under provocation +infinitely less grave. For the moment, however, attention was +concentrated upon the Canadas, where, as a result of the rebellion, the +Constitution of Lower Canada was suspended early in 1838. In the summer +of 1838 Lord Durham, the Radical peer, was sent out by Melbourne's +Ministry as Governor-General, with provisionally despotic powers, and +with instructions to advise upon a new form of government. + +Before we come to Durham's proposals, let us pause and examine the state +of home opinion on the Irish and Colonial questions. The people of Great +Britain at large had no opinion at all. They were ignorant both of +Canada and Ireland, and had been engaged, and, indeed, were still +engaged, in a political struggle of their own which absorbed all their +energies. The Chartist movement in 1838 was assuming grave proportions. +The Reform, won in 1832 under the menace of revolution and in the midst +of shocking disorders, was in reality a first step toward the domestic +Home Rule that Ireland and the five Provinces of North America were +clamouring for. Tory statesmen were quite alive to this political fact, +and condemned all the political movements, British, Irish, and Colonial, +indiscriminately and on the same broad anti-democratic grounds. The Duke +of Wellington, who was not a friend of the Reform Act, and had only +adopted Catholic Emancipation in order to avoid civil war in Ireland, +speaking about Canada in the House of Lords on January 18, 1838, coupled +together the United States, British North America, and Ireland as +dismal examples of the folly of concession to popular demands. Pointing +to the results of the Canada Act of 1831, to which I have already +alluded, and which gave the Assemblies control of the provincial +revenue, and with an eye, no doubt, on the tithe war barely at an end in +Ireland, he said: "Let noble lords learn from Canada and our other +dominions in North America what it is to hold forth what are called +popular rights, but which are not popular rights here or elsewhere, and +what occasion is given thereby to perpetuate a system of agitation which +ends in insurrection and rebellion." + +The Whig statesmen who, if we except Peel's short Administration of +1834-35, were in power from 1830 to 1841, though by no means democratic +men, were clear enough about Reform for Great Britain, but nearly as +ignorant and quite as wrong about Ireland and Canada as the Tories. The +only prominent Parliamentarian who, as after events proved, correctly +diagnosed and prescribed for the disease in both countries was +O'Connell. Not fully alive to the Irish analogy, but correct from first +to last about Canada, was a small group of independent Radicals, of whom +Roebuck, Hume, Grote, Molesworth, and Leader were the principal +representatives. After the insurrections in Canada came John Stuart +Mill, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Charles Buller, and with them Lord Durham +himself. + +No one can understand either Irish or Colonial history without reading +the debates of this period in the Lords and Commons on Canada and +Ireland. Alternating with one another with monotonous regularity, they +nevertheless leave an impression of an extraordinary lack of +earnestness, sympathy, and knowledge, and an extraordinary degree of +prejudice and of bigotry in the Parliament to whose care for better or +worse the welfare of nearly ten millions of British citizens outside +Great Britain was entrusted. Save for an occasional full-dress debate at +some peculiarly critical juncture, the debates were ill-attended. The +prevailing sentiment seems to have been that Ireland and Canada, +leavened by a few respectable "loyalists" and officials, on the whole, +were two exceedingly mutinous and embarrassing possessions, which, +nevertheless, it was the duty of every self-respecting Briton to dragoon +into obedience. Both dependencies were assumed to be equally expensive, +though, in fact, Ireland, as we know now, was showing a handsome profit +at the time, whereas Canada was costing a quarter of a million a year. +For the rest, the pride of power tempered a sort of fatalistic apathy. +In the case of Ireland the element of pure selfishness was stronger, +because the immense vested interests, lay and clerical, in Irish land +were strongly represented. The proximity of Ireland, too, rendered +coercion more obvious and easy. Otherwise, her case was the same as that +of Canada. "The Canadas are endeavouring to escape from us, America has +escaped us, but Ireland shall not escape us," said an English member to +O'Connell just before the Repeal debate of 1834. Such was the current +view. + +Yet, as in the case of Ireland and of the lost American Colonies, the +materials for knowledge of Canada were considerable. Petitions poured +in; Committees and Commissions were appointed, and made reports which +were consigned to oblivion. Roebuck, one of the small Radical group, was +himself a Lower Canadian by birth, and acted as agent at Westminster for +the popular party in that Province. He was as impotent as O'Connell, the +spokesman of the Irish popular party. If the Colonial Office was not +quite the "den of peculation and plunder" which Hume called it in +1838,[26] it was an obscure and irresponsible department, where jobbery +was as rife as in Dublin Castle. In the ten years of colonial crisis +(1828-1838), there were eight different Colonial Secretaries and six +Irish Chief Secretaries. + +Over and above all this apathy and arrogance was the perfectly genuine +incapacity to comprehend that idea of responsible government which even +the most hot-headed and erratic of the colonial agitators did +instinctively comprehend. Until Durham had at last opened Lord John +Russell's eyes, the great Whig statesman was as positive and explicit as +the Tories, Wellington and Stanley, in declaring that it was utterly +impossible for the Monarch's Representative overseas to govern otherwise +than by instructions from home and through Ministers appointed by +himself in the name of the King. One constitutional King ruled over +Great Britain, Canada, and Ireland. He could not be advised by two sets +of Ministers. The thing was not only an unthinkably absurd nullification +of the whole Imperial theory, but, in practice, would destroy and +dissolve the Empire. William IV. himself told Lord Melbourne that it was +his "fixed resolution never to permit any despatch to be sent ... that +can for a moment hold out the most distant idea of the King ever +permitting the question even to be entertained by His Majesty's +confidential servants of a most remote bearing relative to any change of +the appointment of the King's Councils in the numerous Colonies." Lord +Stanley said, in 1837, that the "double responsibility" was impossible, +that there must either be separation or no responsible government, and +that it was "no longer a question of expediency but of Empire." Lord +John Russell, polished, sober, scorning to descend to the mere vulgar +abuse of the colonials which disfigured the utterances of many of his +opponents, struggling visibly to reconcile Liberalism with Empire, +nevertheless arrived at the same conclusion. In a debate of March 6, for +example, in the same year, in proposing the defiant Resolutions which +provoked the rebellion in Canada, he argued at length that a responsible +Colonial Ministry was "incompatible with the relations of a Mother +Country and a Colony," and would be "subversive of the power of the +British Crown," and again, on December 22, that it meant "independence." +O'Connell rightly replied to the former speech that Russell and his +followers were supporting "principles that had been the fruitful source +of civil war, dissension, and distractions in Ireland for centuries." +The Radical group pushed home the Irish parallel. Hume quoted, as +applicable to Canada, Fox's saying: "I would have the whole Irish +Government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices, and I firmly +believe ... that the more she is under Irish Government the more she +will be bound to English interests." Molesworth declared, what was +perfectly true at that moment of passion and folly, that his extreme +political opponents wanted to make the reconquest of Ireland a precedent +for the reconquest of Canada. + +It would repay the reader to turn back from this debate to the Irish +Repeal Debate of three years earlier, and listen to Sir Robert Peel +stating as one of the "truths which be too deep for argument," that the +Repeal of the Union "must lead to the dismemberment of this great +Empire, must make Great Britain a fourth-rate Power, and Ireland a +savage wilderness," which, as a matter of fact, it was at the very time +he was speaking, after thirty years of the Legislative Union, and seven +hundred years of irresponsible government. We must listen to him +claiming that the beneficent and impartial British Government was +"saving Ireland from civil war" between its own "warring sects," +whereas, in fact, it was that Government which had brought those warring +sects into being, which had fomented and exploited their dissensions, +which had provoked the rebellion of 1798, and by its shameful neglect +and partiality in the succeeding generation had flung Ireland into a +social condition hardly distinguishable from "civil war." And we must +realize that closely similar arguments, with special stress on the right +of taxation, had been used for the coercion of the American Colonies, +and that exactly the same arguments, founded on the same inversion of +cause and effect, were used to defend the coercion of Canada. There, +also, the Fitzgibbonist doctrine of revenge and oppression by a majority +vested with power was freely used, even by Lord John Russell, in his +speech of March 6, 1837, and of December 22 in the same year, when he +spoke of the "deadly animosity" of the French and "of the wickedness of +abandoning the British to proscription, loss of property, and probably +of lives." He ignored the fact that the same state of anarchy had been +reached in uni-racial Upper Canada as in bi-racial Canada, and that the +"loyalists" in both cases were not only in the same state of unreasoning +alarm for their vested rights, but, in the spirit of the Ulstermen of +that day and ever since, were threatening to "cut the painter," and +declare for annexation to the United States if their ascendancy were not +sustained by the Home Government. Then, as to-day, the ascendant +minority were supported in their threats by a section of British +politicians. Lord Stanley's speech of March 8, 1837, where he boasted +that the "loyal minority of wealth, education, and enterprise" would +protect themselves, and, if necessary, call in the United States, is +being matched in speeches of to-day. In all the debates of the period it +is interesting to see the ignorance which prevailed about the troubles +in Upper Canada. The racial question in Lower Canada, owing to the +analogy with Ireland, was seized on to the exclusion of the underlying +and far more important political question in both Provinces. + +Against the policy of the two great political parties in England the +little group of Radicals struggled manfully, and in the long run not in +vain, although for years they had to submit to insult and contumely in +their patriotic efforts to expose the vices of the colonial +administration and to avert the rebellion they foresaw in the Canadas. +What they feared, with only too good cause, was that the American and +Irish precedents would be followed, and war made for the coercion of the +Canadas, to be followed, if successful, by a still more despotic form of +government, which would in its turn provoke a new revolt. Rather than +that such a catastrophe should take place, they went, rightly, to the +extreme point of saying that an "amicable separation" should be +arranged, maintaining, what is indisputable, that the claims of humanity +should supersede the claims of possession. With Russell himself +declaring till the eleventh hour that responsible government was out of +the question because it meant "separation," they were quite justified in +demanding that separation, if indeed inevitable, should come about by +agreement, not as the possible result of a fratricidal war. For such a +war, though Russell could not see it until Durham made him see it, was +the only alternative to the grant of responsible government. But the +Radicals never used this argument unless circumstances forced them to. +Molesworth, in a debate of March 6, 1838, denounced the prevailing view +of the Colonies, insisted that we should be proud of them and study +their interests, that reform, not separation, should be our aim. The +Radicals were fully aware of the alternatives, and were unwearied in +pointing out the justice and policy, in the Imperial interests, of +acceding to the colonial popular demands. Grote had expressed the truth +in the December debate of 1837, when he implored the House "not to use a +tone of triumph at the superior power of England," but to remember that +the colonists, "though freemen, like ourselves," desired to remain, "if +they could do so with honour, in connection with England as the Mother +Country." He was followed by a gentleman named Inglis, who said that "it +was in Canada as in Ireland," a faction called itself Canada, and that +we must bring "back the colonists," like the Irish, "to subordination." + +Roebuck, who led the Radicals in Canadian matters, had some of the +faults of Papineau and Mackenzie; yet posterity should give him and his +comrades credit for a constructive Imperialism which the great men of +his day lacked. It is now known that he and Sir William Molesworth +powerfully influenced Durham's policy. In a paper he drew up at Durham's +request on the eve of that nobleman's departure for Canada he sketched a +plan, imperfect in some details, but wise in broad conception, for +pacifying the Canadas, and went further in elaborating a scheme, also +defective, for the Confederation of British North America under the +Crown on the lines conceived by the despised demagogue, Mackenzie.[27] +But the two men who, by influencing Durham, probably did most to save +Canada for the Empire and to lay the foundations of the present Imperial +structure, were Charles Buller, the Radical M.P., and Edward Gibbon +Wakefield, both of whom accompanied the new Governor-General to Canada, +and who are generally believed to have inspired, if they did not +actually write, the greater part of the celebrated Report which became +the Magna Charta of the self-governing Colonies of the Empire. + +A word about the events which ended in the publication of this Report. +Durham reached Canada at the end of May, 1838, and in November was +recalled in disgrace for exceeding--strange as it seems!--the almost +absolute powers temporarily entrusted to him. He was an extraordinary +mixture of a despot and a democrat, an extreme Radical in politics, an +autocrat in manners, as vain and tactless as he was generous and +sincere, making bitter enemies and warm friends in turn. He began by +winning and ended by estranging almost every class in both Provinces of +Canada, and returned to England to all appearances a spent and +extinguished meteor. There is some truth, perhaps, in Greville's +observation that, had he been "plain John Lambton," he would never have +been chosen for Canada. It is certain that those who sent him there +little dreamed of the consequences of their action. Lord Melbourne, the +Prime Minister, in a letter to the Queen, charged him with magnifying +the Canadian troubles "in order to give greater _éclat_ to his own +departure."[28] Still, he did his work of investigation faithfully, and +formed his conclusions sanely, and there were plain men of greater +ability at his elbow in the persons of Wakefield and Buller, by whose +advice he was wise enough to be guided. All opinion was against him when +news came of his recall, and even Roebuck was denouncing him in the +_Spectator_ for his autocratic excesses; but a brilliant article by John +Stuart Mill in the _Westminster Review_, pleading for time and +confidence, arrested the tide of obloquy. + +Durham's long Report, and the events which followed it, ought to be +studied carefully by every voter, however lowly, who has a voice in +deciding the fate of Irish Home Rule. After an exhaustive discussion of +the causes of disorder in Canada, Durham made two recommendations, the +first of incalculable importance, and proved by subsequent experience to +be right; the second of minor consequence, and proved by subsequent +experience to be wrong. + +The first was that responsible government should be inaugurated both in +Canada and in the Maritime Provinces of North America, whose +constitutional troubles Durham also discussed. His proposal was that the +Governor should govern in accordance with advice given by Colonial +Ministers in whom the popular Assembly reposed confidence, and who, +through that Assembly, were in touch with popular opinion; for it was to +the strangulation of popular opinion that Durham attributed all the +disorders and disasters of the past. This recommendation was eventually +adopted, not in the Act subsequently passed, but by instructions to the +Governors concerned; instructions which were first interpreted in the +full liberal spirit by Lord Elgin in 1847. The Maritime Provinces at +various dates and under various Governors received full responsible +government by 1854. Responsible government proved the salvation of +Canada and the Empire, as it would have proved, if given the chance, the +salvation of Ireland and a source of immensely enhanced strength to the +Empire. + +The second and less important recommendation, afterwards embodied in the +Act of 1840, was the Union of the two Provinces of Upper and Lower +Canada. Here Lord Durham, misled unhappily by the Irish precedent, fell +into an error. During his visit to Canada he came near to accepting +that higher conception of a Federal Union with local Home Rule for each +Province, outlined by Roebuck and Mackenzie, and eventually consummated +thirty years later. When he came home to London he made a _volte face_, +rejecting the Federal idea and accepting its antitype, that Legislative +and Administrative Union of the two Provinces which had been rejected by +Pitt in 1791. There were, of course, economic arguments for Union apart +from the racial factor; but they do not seem to have been decisive with +Durham. At the last moment he gave way to a dread of predominant French +influence in Lower Canada, similar at bottom to his dread of the +unchecked influence of the British minority. While he feared that the +latter, if let alone, would inaugurate a reign of terror, he added also: +"Never again will the present generation of French-Canadians yield a +loyal submission to a British Government." The argument is inconsistent +with the whole spirit of the Report, which attributes the friction in +both Provinces to bad political institutions. It is probable that Durham +was really more influenced by the quite reasonable recognition that the +French were relatively backward in civilization and ideas. He sought, +therefore, both to disarm them politically and to anglicize them +socially, by amalgamating their political system with that of wholly +British Upper Canada. His calculation was that in a joint assembly the +British would have a small but sufficient majority. The estimated +population of Lower Canada was 550,000, of whom 450,000 were French, and +100,000 British and Irish; that of Upper Canada 400,000, all British and +Irish. That is to say, that in both Provinces together there was a +British and Irish majority of 100,000. The calculation over-estimated +the British element, but in the event this mistake proved to be +immaterial. Though Durham himself appears to have intended +representation to be in strict accordance with population, the Union +Act, passed in 1840, allotted an equal number of representatives in the +Joint Assembly to each of the old Provinces. The assumption here was +that the British Members from Upper Canada would unite with those of old +Lower Canada to vote down the French, just as the Ulster Protestants +voted with English members to vote down the Irish majority. + +In practice the Union, after lasting twenty-six years, eventually broke +down. Durham's fear of French disloyalty proved to be as groundless as +his ideal of complete anglicization was futile. It was neither +necessary, sensible, nor possible to extinguish French sentiment, and +human nature triumphed over this half-hearted effort to apply in +dilution the medicine of Fitzgibbonism to the Colonies. Little harm was +done, because the introduction of responsible government, far +transcending the Union in importance, worked irresistibly for good. +Parties did not run wholly on racial lines, but racialism was encouraged +by the equal representation of the two Provinces in the Assembly, in +spite of the greater growth of population in the Upper Province. The +system was unhealthy, and at last produced a state of deadlock, in which +two exactly equal parties were balanced, and a stable Government +impossible. When that point was reached, men began to observe the strong +and supple Constitution of the adjacent United States, and to recognize +that a politically feeble Canada was courting an absorption from that +quarter which all Canadians disliked. The Legislative Union was +dissolved by the mutual consent of the Provinces with the approval of +the Mother Country, and in 1867, under the British North America Act, +the Federal Union was formed which exists in such strength and stability +to-day. Fear of French disloyalty or tyranny was a night-mare of the +past, even with the British minority in Lower Canada. It was realized +that French national sentiment was perfectly consistent with racial +harmony under the British flag. Upper Canada became Ontario, Lower +Canada Quebec. Each Province reserved a local autonomy for itself, and +each at the same moment voluntarily surrendered certain high powers to a +supreme centralized Government, in which both had confidence. Such a +political system is capable of indefinite expansion. Nova Scotia and New +Brunswick joined the Federation at the outset, Prince Edward Island and +British Columbia a little later, and were followed in turn by the +successively developed Provinces which now form the united and powerful +Dominion of Canada. + +Turn back to Ireland and weigh well the analogy. _Mutatis mutandis_, +almost every paragraph of the Durham Report applied with greater force +to the Ireland of his day. The ascendancy of a caste and creed minority +in Upper Canada; of a race minority in Lower Canada; "the conflict of +races, not of principles"; the consequent obliteration of natural +political divisions, and the substitution of unnatural and vindictive +antagonisms demoralizing both sides to every quarrel; the universal +disgust with and distrust of the British Government, though for reasons +diametrically opposite; the hopelessness of true reforms; the +perpetuation of abuses; the stagnation of trade and agriculture; the +re-emigration to America, and the abuses of a Church Establishment with +endowments from sources by right public--all these phenomena and many +others had their counterpart in Ireland. Some have disappeared. The +Church is disestablished. The land question is on the way to settlement. +The old ascendancy is mitigated. But many of the political, and all the +psychological, features of the situation which Durham described do, +alas! exist to-day in Ireland. Ireland, like the Canada of 1838, is a +land of bewildering paradox. There is a similarly unwholesome arrest of +free political life, the same unnatural division of parties, the same +suppression of moderate opinion, and the same inevitable maintenance of +a Home Rule agitation, harmful in itself, because it retards the country +and accentuates for the time being the very divisions it seeks to cure, +but absolutely necessary for the final salvation of Ireland. Durham, in +the case of Canada, saw the truth, and swept into the limbo of +discredited bogies the old figments of the coercionists. In a singularly +noble and profound passage (p. 229), revealing the ethical basis on +which his philosophy rested, he declared that even if the political +freedom of the Colony were to lead in the distant future to her +separation from the Empire, she nevertheless had an indefeasible moral +right to the blessings of freedom; but he prophesied correctly that the +connection with the Empire "would only become more durable and +advantageous by having more of equality, of freedom, and of local +administration." + +If only Irish and British Unionists would realize that these words came +from a profound knowledge of human nature in the mass, and are +applicable to Irishmen in Ireland just as much as to Irish, British, +French, and Dutch in the Colonies! + +The tenacity of the old superstition is extraordinary, and we can see it +in the case of Canada. It remains a wonder to this day how responsible +government was ever introduced. There can be no question that the Act of +1840 only secured a smooth passage because, in providing for the Union +of the French and British Provinces, it represented a superficial +analogy to that Union of Britain and Ireland which had paralyzed Irish +aspirations. Durham himself had actually quoted both the Irish and +Scotch Unions as successful expedients for "compelling the obedience of +a refractory population," and thus arrived at the outstanding and +solitary defect of his otherwise noble scheme. And O'Connell, in a +debate upon the Report on June 3, 1839, opposed the Canadian Union for +Irish reasons, and in language which after-experience proved to be +perfectly correct. Happily, as we have seen, the defect was small and +curable, because the analogy with Ireland, where there was no +responsible, but, on the contrary, a separate and wholly irresponsible +Executive Government, and whose interests were upheld by only 100 +Members in a House of 670, was exceedingly remote. On responsible +government itself the Canadian Act of 1840 was entirely silent. We may +thank Providence for the fact. Durham's cardinal proposals had received +unbridled vituperation as sentimental rubbish where they were not +treasonable poison, the whole controversy taking precisely the same form +as in 1886 and 1893 over Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills for Ireland. +The _Quarterly Review_ spoke of "this rank and infectious Report," +though it is fair to say that Peel and Wellington did not join in such +wild language. Five months after the issue of Lord Durham's Report, Lord +John Russell, in the debate of June 3, was denying, with the approval of +all but the Radicals, the possibility of responsible government as +emphatically as ever. Durham seems to have partially converted him in +the summer, for in introducing the Act itself in 1840 he cautiously +committed himself to the plan of instructing the Canadian Governor to +include in his Executive Council, or Cabinet, men expressly chosen +because they possessed the confidence of the Assembly. But the Act as it +stood, ignoring this vital change, was impeccably Conservative, and on +that account went through. In some points it seemed, without good +reason, to be even reactionary, and was regarded in that light with +displeasure by the Radicals, with satisfaction by Whigs and Tories. +While confirming the control of revenue by the Assembly, in return for a +fixed civil list, it took away from the Assembly, and vested in the +Executive, the power of recommending money votes, and it also retained +the Legislative Council or Upper Chamber as a nominated, not as an +elective, body. Provided that the Executive had the confidence of the +representative Assembly or Lower House, the first point was perfectly +sound, and the second was not vital; but there was no security for the +condition precedent other than Russell's vague outline of subsequent +policy. While the supreme power of the King, acting with or without the +Governor, was reaffirmed in the most vigorous terms, there was not a +word in the Act about the composition of the Executive Council or its +relation to the Assembly. + +In Canada much the same misconceptions prevailed, and promoted the +acceptance of the Act by the supporters of the old ascendancies. The +question of the Union and the question of responsible government, both +raised by Lord Durham's Report, became inextricably confused, and the +various petitions and resolutions of the time reflect this confusion. +The French opposed the Union and supported responsible government on the +same grounds, and in almost identical terms, as the Irish opposed, and +still oppose, their Union with Great Britain, and ask for responsible +government in Ireland. Moderate Britishers supported both proposals, but +the extremists of the old ascendancy bitterly denounced the whole theory +of responsible government, Union or no Union. Their views are ably and +incisively set forth by a Committee of the old Legislative Council of +Upper Canada, that is, by the members of the "family compact," in a +protest signed and transmitted to London, where it was quoted with +approval by Lord John Russell. It may be found, together with other +petitions of the time, in the "Canadian Constitutional Development" of +Messrs. Grant and Egerton. With a few unessential changes and +modifications, the whole document might be signed to-day by a Committee +of Ulster Unionists, and I heartily wish that every Ulsterman would read +it in a spirit of reason and generosity, and observe how every line of +it was falsified by history, before he declares that the situation of +Ulster is peculiar, and sets his hand or gives his adhesion to a +similar document. The signatories, who, it must be remembered, were a +small ruling minority of the colonists, whose power was artificially +sustained by the British Governor, claim that they alone, in glorifying +and in battling for "colonial dependence," are the true Imperialists. +They hold dear the "unity of the Empire." Responsible government within +their own Colony would lead to the "overthrowal" of that Empire, and the +reduction of Britain to a "second-rate Power." A colonial Cabinet is +absurd; the local and sectional interests are too strong; the British +Government must remain as "umpire" to keep the parties from flying at +one another's throats. The majority, who are themselves a prey to +divisions (and one thinks of Nationalist splits), are seeking only for +illegitimate power; the minority are for "justice and protection, and +impartial government." Yet in the same breath we are told that all is +happy and peaceable as it is. Why subject the Colony to the dissensions +of party? Why foster a spirit of undying enmity among a people disposed +to dwell together in harmony? The signatories argue from the history of +Ireland and Scotland, "which never had responsible government, yet +government became impracticable the moment it approached to equal +rights." Hence a Union, because "government must be conducted with a +view to some supreme ruling power, which is not practicable with several +independent Legislatures." Finally, Loyalists and Imperialists as they +are, they are not going to stand an attempt to "force independence" on +them. They will take the matter into their own hands, and, if necessary, +call in the United States to "replace the British influence needlessly +overthrown." + +I do not quote this sort of thing in order to add any tinge of +bitterness to present controversies. The signatories lived to see their +errors and to be ashamed of what they wrote. They, like the Irish +Unionist leaders of to-day, were able and sincere men, unconscious, we +may assume, that their pessimism about the tendencies of their +fellow-citizens was really due to the defective institutions which they +themselves were upholding, and to the forcible suppression of the finer +attributes of human nature; unconscious, we may also assume, of +identifying loyalty with privilege, and "the supreme ruling power" with +their own ruling power; unconscious that what they called "Imperial +Unity" was in reality on the verge of producing Imperial disruption; and +wholly unconscious, certainly, of the ghastly irony of their analogy +drawn from the brutally misgoverned, job-ridden, tithe-ridden, +rack-rented Ireland of their day, living, for no fault of its own, under +a condition of intermittent martial law, and hurrying at that moment +towards the agony of the famine years. Less severe in degree, analogous +abuses perpetuated in their own interest existed in their own Colony, +and were only abolished under the new régime which they attacked with +such vehemence before it came, and which, because it transformed and +elevated their own character and that of their fellow-citizens, while +drawing them closer to the old country, they afterwards learned to +regard with pride and thankfulness. + +As an effective contrast to the mistaken views of the Upper Canadian +statesmen, the reader cannot do better than study the letters of Joseph +Howe, the brilliant Nova Scotia "agitator," to Lord John Russell, in +answer to that statesman's speech of June 3, 1839, when he argued +against responsible government, and quoted the Upper Canadian manifesto +as his text. These letters make a wonderful piece of sustained and +humorous satire, of which every word was true and every word applicable +to Ireland. Howe's portrait, for example, of the average Colonial +Governor applies line for line to the average Chief Secretary, coming at +an hour's notice to a country he has never seen, and knows nothing of, +vested with absolute powers of patronage, and often pledged to carry out +a policy in direct conflict with the wishes of the vast majority of the +people whose interests he is supposed to guard. + +The Act of 1840 went through, but it had little to do with the +regeneration and reconciliation of Canada. Poulett Thompson, the first +Governor, peremptorily declined to admit the principle of Ministerial +responsibility. Some good reforms were, indeed, made in the early years, +but the Act was on the verge of breaking down when Lord Elgin, Durham's +son-in-law, came to Canada as Governor-General in 1847. After many party +changes and combinations, French influence was temporarily in the +ascendant, and in 1849 a Bill was on the stocks for compensating French +as well as British subjects for losses in the rebellion of 1837. Elgin, +following the advice of his Ministers, of whom Baldwin was one, +Lafontaine another, gave the Royal Assent to the Bill. The British, with +the old cry of "loyalism," and with Orangemen in the van, rioted, mobbed +the Governor, and burnt down the Parliament House at Montreal. Elgin, +expostulating with Lord John Russell, who was as pessimistic as ever, +and threatened with recall, stuck to his guns under fierce obloquy, and +the principle of responsible government was definitely established. It +was applied at about the same period to the other British Provinces of +North America, with the ulterior results I have described, and in a few +years to Australia. + +The great year, then, was 1847, the year of the Irish famine, and the +year before the pitiful rebellion of Smith O'Brien, surrendering in the +historic cabbage-garden. Our thoughts go back sixty-four years to 1783, +when the American War of Independence ended; when, as a result of that +war, British Canada and Australia were founded, and when, at the +crisis--premature, alas!--of Ireland's fortunes, the Volunteers in vain +demanded the Reform which might have saved their country. Look into +historical details, read contemporary debates, and watch the contrast. +Within five years of responsible government Canada solved all the great +questions which had been convulsing society for so long, and turned her +liberated energies towards economic development. In Ireland the abuses +of ages lingered to a point which seems incredible. The Church was not +disestablished, amid outcries of imminent ruin and threats of a +Protestant rebellion, till 1869, when Canada had already become a +Federated Dominion. The Irish land question, dating from the seventeenth +century, was not seriously tackled until 1881, not drastically and on +the right lines till 1903. Education languishes at the present day. +Canada started an excellent system of municipal and local government in +the forties. In Ireland, while the minority, in Greville's words, were +"bellowing spoliation and revolution," an Act was passed in 1840 with +the utmost difficulty, removing an infinitesimal part of the gross +abuses of municipal government under the ascendancy system, and it was +not till 1898 that the people at large are admitted to a full share in +county and town government. Even this step inverted the natural order of +things, for the new authorities are hampered in their work by the +incessant political agitation for the Home Rule which should have +preceded their establishment, as it preceded it in Great Britain and +Canada. Home Rule, the tried specific, was resisted, as those who read +the debates of 1886 and 1893 will recognize, on the same grounds as +Canadian Home Rule, in the same spirit, and often in terms absolutely +identical. + +Was it because Ireland, unlike Canada, was "so near"? Let us reflect. +Did Durham advocate Canadian Home Rule because Canada was "so far"? On +the contrary, it was a superficial inference, drawn not merely from +Ireland, but from Scotland, and since proved to be false both in Canada +and South Africa, that made him shrink from the full application of a +philosophy which was already far in advance of the political thought and +morality of his day. Is it to be conceived that if he had lived to see +the Canadian Federation, the domestic and Imperial results of South +African Home Rule, and the consequences of seventy more years of +coercive government in Ireland, he would still have regarded the United +Kingdom in the light of a successful expedient for "compelling the +obedience of refractory populations"? In truth, Durham, like ninety-nine +out of a hundred Englishmen of his day, knew nothing of Ireland, not +even that her political system differed, as it still differs, _toto +coelo_ from that of Scotland, and came into being under circumstances +which had not the smallest analogy in Scotland. So far as his knowledge +went, he was a student of human nature as affected by political +institutions. Wakefield, who advised him, was a doctrinaire theorist who +put his preconceived principles into highly successful practice both in +Australia and Canada. They said: "Your coercive system degrades and +estranges your own fellow-citizens. Change it, and you will make them +friendly, manly, and prosperous." They were right, and one reflects once +more on the terrible significance of Mr. Chamberlain's admission in +1893, that "if Ireland had been a thousand miles away, she would have +what Canada had had for fifty years." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[20] "The Irishman in Canada" (N.F. Davin), a book to which the author +is indebted for much information of the same character. + +[21] "William Pitt and the National Revival." + +[22] Canadian Archives, 1905; "History of Prince Edward Island," D. +Campbell; "History of Canada," C.D.G. Roberts. In 1875, after a long +period of agitation and discontent, the Land Purchase Act was passed, +and the Dominion Government asked Mr. Hugh Childers to adjudicate on the +land-sale expressly on the ground that he had been associated with the +Irish Land Act of 1870 ("Life of Mr. Childers," by Lieut.-Col. Spencer +Childers, vol. i., p. 232). + +[23] Canadian Archives, 1900. Note B. Emigration (1831-1834). Irish +immigrants in 1829, 9,614; in 1830, 18,300; in 1831, 34,155; in 1832, +28,024; in 1833, 12,013; in 1834, 19,206: about double the immigration +of English and Scottish together in the same period. + +[24] "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 96 _et seq_. + +[25] "Durham Report," p. 130. + +[26] Hansard, January 23. + +[27] "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 17. + +[28] "Letters of Queen Victoria," vol. i., November 22, 1838. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND + + +I have described the Canadian crisis at considerable length because it +was the turning-point in Imperial policy. Yet policy is scarcely the +right word. The Colonists themselves wrenched the right to +self-government from a reluctant Mother Country, and the Mother Country +herself was hardly conscious of the loss of her prerogatives until it +was too late to regret or recall them. The men who on principle believed +in and laboured for Home Rule for Canada were a mere unconsidered +handful in the country, while most of those who voted for the Act of +1840 thought that it killed Home Rule. No general election was held to +obtain the "verdict of the predominant partner" on the real question at +issue, with the cry of "American dollars" (which had, in fact, been +paid); with lurid portraits of Papineau and Mackenzie levying black-mail +on the Prime Minister, and quotations from their old speeches to show +that they were traitors to the Empire; with jeremiads about the terrors +of Rome, the abandonment of the loyal minority, and the dismemberment of +the Empire, to shake the nerves and stimulate the slothful conscience of +an ignorant electorate. Had there been any such opportunity we know it +would have been used, and we can guess what the result would have been; +for nothing is easier, alas! than to spur on a democracy with such cries +as these to the exercise of the one function it should refrain +from--interference with another democracy, be it in Ireland or anywhere +else. As it was, a merciful veil fell over Canada; Lord Elgin's action +in 1849 passed with little notice, and a mood of weary indifference to +colonial affairs, for which, in default of any Imperial idealism, we +cannot be too thankful, took possession of Parliament and the nation. + +It was in this mood that the measures conferring self-government on the +Australasian Colonies, 12,000 miles away from the Mother Country, and +exciting proportionately less concern than Canada, were passed a few +years later. + +From the landing of the first batch of convicts at Botany Bay in 1788, +New South Wales, the Mother Colony, was a penal settlement pure and +simple, under military Government, for some thirty years. The island +Colony, Tasmania, founded under the name of Van Diemen's Land in 1803, +was used for the same purpose. Victoria, originally Port Phillip, just +escaped a like fate in 1803, and remained uncolonized till 1835, when +the free settlers set their faces against the penal system, and in 1845, +acting like the Bostonians of 1774 with the famous cargo of tea, refused +to allow a cargo of convicts to land. South Australia, first settled in +1829, also escaped; so did New Zealand, which was annexed to the Crown +in 1839. Western Australia, dating from 1826, proceeded on the opposite +principle to that of Victoria. Free from convicts until 1849, when +transportation to other Colonies was checked at their own repeated +request, and came to an end in 1852, this Colony, owing to a chronic +shortage of labour, actually petitioned the Home Government to divert +the stream of criminals to its shores, with the result that in ten +years' time nearly half the male adults in the Colony, and more than +half in the towns, were, or had been, convicts. It was not until 1865, +under strong pressure from the other Colonies, that the system was +finally abolished which threw Western Australia forty years behind its +sister Colonies in the attainment of Home Rule. + +The transportation policy has been unmercifully criticized, and with all +the more justice in that Pitt, when the American war closed the +traditional dumping-ground for criminals, had the chance of employing +the exiled loyalists of America, many of whom were starving in London, +as pioneers of the new lands in the Antipodes. "The outcasts of an old +society cannot form the foundations of a new one," said a Parliamentary +Report of July 28, 1785. But they could do so, and did do so. Ruskin's +saying, _à propos_ of Australia, that "under fit conditions the human +race does not degenerate, but wins its way to higher levels," comes +nearer the truth. In an amazingly short time after the transportation +policy was reversed the taint disappeared. We must remember, however, +that, sheer refuse as some of the convicts were, especially in the later +period, a large number of the earlier convicts were the product of that +"stupid severity of our laws" which the Vicar of Wakefield deplored, and +to this category belonged many an unhappy Irish peasant, sound in +character, but driven into Whiteboyism, or into the rebellions of 1798 +and 1803 by some of the worst laws the human brain ever conceived. +Hundreds of these men survived the barbarous and brutalizing ordeal of a +penal imprisonment to become prosperous and industrious citizens. + +It was not until 1825, or thereabouts, that free white settlers, many +Irishmen among them, came in any substantial number to the Mother Colony +of New South Wales, and not until 1832 that these men began to press +claims for the management of their own affairs, under the inspiration of +an Irish surgeon's son, William Wentworth, the Hampden of Australia. The +later Colonies rapidly came into line, Western Australia, for the reason +given above, remaining stationary. The first representative institutions +were granted in 1842 to New South Wales, and in 1850 to Victoria, South +Australia, and Tasmania. At that date, therefore, these settlements +stood in much the same constitutional position as the Canadas had stood +in 1791 (although technically their Constitutions were of a different +kind), but with this important difference, that the Act of 1850, "for +the better Government of Her Majesty's Australian Colonies," gave power +to those Colonies to frame new Constitutions for themselves. This they +soon proceeded to do, each constructing its own, but all keeping in view +the same model, the British Constitution itself, and aiming at the same +ideal, responsible Government by a Colonial Cabinet under a Government +representing the Crown. Since responsible Government in Great Britain +itself was not a matter of legal enactment, but the product of slowly +evolved conventions and precedents, to which political scientists had +not yet given a scientific form, it is no wonder that the colonial +Constitution-makers found great difficulty in expressing exactly what +they wanted in legal terms, and, indeed, none of them came near +succeeding; but time, their own political instinct, a succession of +sensible Governors, and the forbearance of the Home Government solved +the problem, and evolved home-ruled States legally subordinate to the +Crown, but with a Constitution closely resembling our own. The +Constitutions became law by Acts of the Imperial Parliament passed by a +Liberal Ministry in 1855. They are of unusual interest because they +represent the first rude attempt to put into legal language a small part +of the theory of the British Constitution as applied to dependencies of +the Crown. + +In the most vital point of all, the relation of the dependency to the +Home Government (as distinguished from questions of internal political +structure), they are almost as reserved as the Canadian Act of 1840, +which, as we have seen, did not recognize by a word the duty of the +Governor to govern through a Colonial Cabinet. In certain clauses they +hint, by distant implication, at the existence of such a Cabinet, +responsible to the colonial popular Legislature--the Canadian Act did +not assume even that--but they do not anywhere imply that the Governor +is bound normally to place himself in the hands of that Cabinet, while +they expressly and rightly reaffirm the supreme power of the Crown, +whether acting through the Governor or not, over colonial legislation. + +How far this reticence about responsible Government facilitated the +passage of the Australian Acts in the British Parliament, as it +certainly facilitated the Canadian Act of 1840, it is difficult to +decide. It was probably a factor of some importance. At any rate, it is +true to say that Home Rule, as in Canada, was mainly a result of +practice rather than of statutory enactment. The case of New Zealand is +a striking example of this. In 1852 New Zealand obtained from a Tory +Government a Constitutional Act, which resembles the Canadian Act of +1840 in abstaining from any expression, direct or indirect which implies +the existence of a Colonial Cabinet, and it is probable that the framers +of the Act intended no such development, but on the contrary +contemplated a permanent, irremovable Executive. But the Act was no +sooner passed than an agitation began for responsible government, under +the leadership of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, part-author of the Durham +Report, and at that time a member of the New Zealand Assembly. By 1855, +when the Australian Acts were passed, New Zealand, without further +legislation, had obtained what she wanted. + +To complete the story, Queensland, carved out of New South Wales in +1859, entered upon full responsible government at once, and Western +Australia, retarded for so long by the servile system of convict-labour, +gained the same rights in 1890. + +Reading the debates of the middle of the nineteenth century, one is left +with the impression that the Australasian Colonies obtained Home Rule by +virtue of their distance, and because most politicians at home could not +be bothered to fight hard against a principle which at bottom they +disliked as heartily for the Colonies as for Ireland. The views of the +various parties were not much changed since the days of the crisis in +Canada. There were some able Colonial Secretaries who thoroughly +understood and believed in the principle of responsible government. On +the other hand, some Liberals were not yet converted, though Liberal +Governments fathered the Constitutional Acts of 1850 and 1855. +Disraeli's well-known saying in 1852 that "these wretched Colonies will +all be independent, too, in a few years, and are a mill-stone round our +necks," was typical of the Tory attitude.[29] Lord John Russell, in the +same year, 1852, was complaining, as Lord Morley tells us,[30] that we +were "throwing the shields of our authority away," and leaving "the +monarchy exposed in the Colonies to the assaults of democracy." A group +of Radicals, headed by Sir William Molesworth and Hume in Parliament, +and by Wakefield from outside, still pushed the policy of emancipation +energetically and persistently on the principle which they had urged in +the case of Canada, that freedom was better both for the Colonies and +the Mother Country. + +But Molesworth and Wakefield gained one illustrious convert and +coadjutor in the person of Mr. Gladstone, whose speeches on the Colonies +at this period, 1849 to 1855, placed him, in regard to that topic, in +the Radical ranks, and in veiled opposition to the Whig leaders. Lord +Morley quotes a minute from his hand, written in 1852 in answer to the +view of Lord John Russell, referred to above, where he says "that the +nominated Council and independent Executive were not 'shields of +authority,' but sources of weakness, disorder, disunion, and +disloyalty." His Parliamentary and platform speeches, passing with +little notice at the time, nevertheless remain the most eloquent and +exalted expression of wise colonial policy that is to be found in our +language. If it was not till a generation later that he applied the same +arguments to the case of Ireland, the arguments nevertheless did apply +to Ireland almost word for word. Proximity to the Mother Country does +not affect them. Mr. Gladstone attacks the problem on its human side, +showing that coercive government is always and everywhere bad for those +who administer it, and bad for those who live under it, expensive, +inefficient, demoralizing, and that the longer it is maintained the more +difficult it is to remove. He condemns the fallacy of preparing men by +slow degrees for freedom, and the "miserable jargon about fitting them +for the privileges thus conferred, while in point of fact every year and +every month during which they are retained under the administration of a +despotic Government renders them less fit for free institutions." As to +cost, "no consideration of money ought to induce Parliament to sever the +connection between any one of the Colonies and the Mother Country," but +the greater part of the cost, he urged, was due to the despotic system +itself. His words are more applicable to the Ireland of to-day than the +Ireland of the middle of the nineteenth century, for it is one of the +many painful anomalies of Irish history that that country, at the lowest +point of its economic misery, was paying a relatively enormous +contribution to Imperial funds, and, incidentally, to the colonial vote, +while the Colonies were maintained at a loss correspondingly large, and +at times even larger.[31] But cost is, after all, a very small matter. +The first consideration is the character and happiness of human beings, +and here Gladstone's words, like Durham's, have a universal application. +If the reader cannot study them at length in Hansard, he should read +the great speech on the New Zealand Bill in 1852, and Lord Morley's +masterly summary of others. I conclude with a passage quoted by him from +a platform speech at Chester in 1855, the year when the Australian +Constitutions were sanctioned. "Experience has proved that if you want +to strengthen the connection between the Colonies and this country, if +you want to see British law held in respect, and British institutions +adopted and beloved in the Colonies, never associate with them the hated +name of force and coercion exercised by us at a distance over their +rising fortunes. Govern them upon a principle of freedom." At that +moment, after half a century of coercion and neglect under what was +called the "Union," Ireland was bleeding, as it seemed, to death. +Scarcely recovered from the stunning blow of the famine, she was +undergoing in a fresh dose of clearances and evictions the result of +that masterpiece of legislative unwisdom, the Encumbered Estates Act. +Her people were leaving her by hundreds of thousands, cursing the name +of England as bitterly as the evicted Ulster farmers and the ruined +weavers of the eighteenth century had cursed it, and bearing their +wrongs and hatred to the same friendly shore, America. For the main +stream of emigration, which before the Union had set towards the +American States, and from the Union until the famine towards Canada, +reverted after the famine towards the United States, impregnating that +nation with an hostility to Great Britain which in subsequent years +became a grave international danger, and which, though greatly +diminished, still remains an obstacle to the closer union of the +English-speaking races. On the other hand, it is interesting to observe +that among the Irish emigrants to countries within the Empire, and a +very important part of this emigration was to Australasia, the +anti-British sentiment was far less tenacious, though the affection for +their own native country was no less passionate. + +Whatever we may conclude about the motives behind the concession of Home +Rule to Australia and New Zealand, we may regard it as fortunate that +they lay too far away for any close criticism from statesmen at home, +whether before or after the attainment of self-government. Most of these +statesmen would have been scandalized by the manner in which these +vigorous young democracies, destitute of the patrician element, shaped +their own political destiny by the light of nature and in the teeth of +great difficulties. Almost to a man their leaders in this great work +would have been regarded as "turbulent demagogues and dangerous +agitators," and often were so regarded, when the rumour of their +activities penetrated to far-off London. The old catchwords of +revolution, spoliation and treason, consecrated to the case of Ireland, +would have been applied here with equal vehemence, and were in fact +applied by the official classes in the Colonies themselves, round whom +small anti-democratic groups, calling themselves "loyal," crystallized, +as in the Provinces of Upper Canada and in Ireland, and with whom the +ruling classes at home were in instinctive sympathy. There were stormy, +agitated times, there were illegal movements against the reception of +convicts, struggles over land questions, religious questions, financial +questions, the emancipation of ex-convicts, and the many difficult +problems raised by the discovery of gold and the mushroom growth of +digger communities in remote places. There was in the air more genuine +lawlessness--irrespective, I mean, of revolt against bad laws--than ever +existed in Ireland, though there was never at any time any practical +grievance approaching in magnitude to the practical grievances of +Ireland at the same period. But, could the spirit of English +statesmanship towards analogous problems in Ireland have been maintained +in Australasia, systematically translated into law and enforced with the +help of coercion acts by soldiers and police, communities would have +been artificially produced presenting all the lawless and retrograde +features of Ireland. + +The famous affair of the Eureka Stockade in 1854 is an interesting +illustration. A great mass of diggers collected in the newly discovered +Ballarat goldfields had petitioned repeatedly against the Government +regulations about mining licences, for which extortionate fees were +levied. This was before responsible government. The goldfields were not +represented in the Legislature, and there was no constitutional method +of redress. The authorities held obstinately to their obsolete and +irritating regulations, and eventually the miners revolted under the +leadership of an Irishman, Peter Lalor, and with the watchword "Vinegar +Hill." There was a pitched battle with the military forces of the +Crown, ending after much bloodshed in the victory of the soldiers. Lalor +was wounded, and carried into hiding by his friends. Other captured +rioters were tried for "high treason" before juries of townsmen picked +by the Crown on the lines long familiar in Ireland; but even these +juries refused to convict, as they so often refused to convict in cases +of agrarian crime in Ireland. The State trials were then abandoned, a +Royal Commission reported against the licence system, and Parliamentary +representation was given to the goldfields. It came to be universally +acknowledged that the talk of "treason" was nonsense, that the outbreak +had been provoked by laws which could not be constitutionally changed, +and that the moral was to change them, not to expatriate and persecute +those who had suffered under them. Lalor reappeared, entered political +life, became Speaker of the reformed Assembly of 1856, and lived and +died respected by everyone. He now appears as a prominent figure in a +little book entitled "Australian Heroes," and it is admitted that the +whole episode powerfully assisted the movement for responsible +government in the Colony. Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Mitchell, and others +concerned in the Irish rebellion of 1848 were at that moment languishing +in the penal settlement of Tasmania for sedition provoked by laws fifty +times worse; laws, too, that a Royal Commission three years earlier had +shown to be inconsistent with social peace, and which others +subsequently condemned in still stronger terms. From their first +establishment far back in the seventeenth century it took two centuries +to abolish these laws. In the Australian case it took one year. + +As for the Irishmen of all creeds and classes who took such an important +part in the splendid work of building up these new communities, and who +are still estimated to constitute a quarter of the population, one can +only marvel at the intensity of the prejudice which declared these men +"unfit" for self-government at home, and which is not yet dissipated by +the discovery that they were welcomed under the Southern Cross, not only +as good workaday citizens in town, bush, or diggings, but as barristers, +judges, bankers, stock-owners, mine-owners, as honoured leaders in +municipal and political life, as Speakers of the Representative +Assemblies, and as Ministers and Prime Ministers of the Crown.[32] is +true, and the fact cannot surprise us, that the intestinal divisions of +race and creed in Ireland itself, stereotyped there by ages of bad +government, were at first to a certain extent reproduced in Australia, +as in Canada. Aggressive Orangeism was to be found sowing discord where +no cause for discord existed. But the common sense of the community and +the pure air of freedom tended to sterilize, though they have not to +this day wholly killed, these germs of disease. A career was opened to +every deserving Irishman, whether Catholic or Protestant. Hungry, +hopeless, listless cottiers from Munster and Connaught built up +nourishing towns like Geelong and Kilmore. Two Irishmen, Dunne and +Connor, were the first discoverers of the Ballarat goldfields. An +Irishman, Robert O'Hara Burke, led the first transcontinental +expedition, and another Irishman, Ambrose Kyte, financed it; Wentworth +was the father of Australian liberties. An Irish Roman Catholic, Sir +Redmond Barry, founded the Public Library, Museum, and University of +Melbourne. In the political annals of Victoria and New South Wales the +names of Irish Catholics, men to whom no worthy political career was +open in their own country, were prominent. Sir John O'Shanassy, for +example, was three times Prime Minister of Victoria, Sir Brian +O'Loughlen once. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, a member of O'Shanassy's +Cabinets, and at last Prime Minister himself, is the colonial statesman +whose career and personality are the best proof of what Ireland has lost +in high-minded, tolerant, constructive statesmanship, through a system +which silenced or drove from her shores the men who loved her most, who +saw her faults and needs with the clearest eyes, and who sought to unite +her people on a footing of self-reliance and mutual confidence. One of +the ablest of O'Connell's young adjutants, editor and founder of the +_Nation_, part-organizer of the Young Ireland Movement which united men +of opposite creeds in one of the finest national movements ever +organized in any country, Duffy's central aim had been to give Ireland a +native Parliament, where Irishmen could solve their own problems for +themselves. He saw the rebellion of 1848 fail, and Mitchell, Smith +O'Brien, Meagher, McManus, and O'Donoghue transported to Tasmania; he +laboured on himself in Ireland for seven years at land reform and other +objects, and in 1855 gave up the struggle against such hopeless odds, +and reached Melbourne early in 1856 in time to sit in the first +Victorian Parliament returned under the constitutional Act of 1855. From +the beginning to the end of an honourable political career which lasted +thirty years, he made it his dominant purpose to ensure that Australia +should be saved from the evils which cursed Ireland; from government by +a favoured class, from land monopoly, and from religious inequality and +the venomous bigotries it engenders, and he took a large share in +bringing about their exclusion. His Land Act of 1862, for example, where +he had another Roman Catholic Irishman, Judge Casey, as an auxiliary, +put an end in those districts where it was fairly worked to the grave +abuses caused by the speculative acquisition of immense tracts of land +by absentee owners, and promoted the closer settlement of the country by +yeoman farmers. + +In Australia, as in Canada, we see the vital importance of good land +laws, and can measure the misery which resulted in Ireland from an +agrarian system incalculably more absurd and unjust than anything known +in any other part of the Empire. The stagnation of Western Australia was +originally due to the cession of huge unworkable estates to a handful of +men. South Australia was retarded for some little time from the same +cause, and Victoria and New South Wales were all hampered in the same +way. It was not a question, as in Ireland, and to a less degree in +Prince Edward Island, of the legal relations between the landlord and +tenant of lands originally confiscated, but of the grant and sale of +Crown lands. Yet the after-results, especially in the check to tillage +and the creation of vast pasture ranches, were often very similar.[33] + +Duffy was not the only colonial statesman to apply Irish experience to +the problems of newly settled countries. An Englishman who became one of +the greatest of colonial statesmen and administrators, the Radical +Imperialist, Sir George Grey, began life as a Lieutenant on military +service in Ireland in the year 1829, and came away sick with the scenes +he had witnessed at the evictions and forced collections of tithes +where his troops were employed to strengthen the arm of the law. +"Ireland," his biographer, Professor Henderson, tells us,[34] "was to +him a tragedy of unrealized possibilities." The people had "good +capacities for self-government," but Englishmen "showed a vicious +tendency to confuse cause and effect," and attributed to inherent +lawlessness what was a revolt against bad economic conditions. "All that +they or their children could hope for was to obtain, after the keenest +competition, the temporary use of a spot of land on which to exercise +their industry"; "for the tenant's very improvements went to swell the +accumulations of the heirs of an absentee, not of his own." "Haunted by +the Irish problem," Grey made it his effort first in South Australia, +and afterwards in New Zealand, where he was both Governor and Premier at +various times, to secure the utmost possible measure of Home Rule for +the colonists, and, in pursuance of a policy already inaugurated by +Edward Gibbon Wakefield, to establish a land system based, not on +extravagant free grants, or on private tenure, but on sales by the State +to occupiers at fair prices. The aim was to counteract that excessive +accumulation of people in the large cities which, thanks to imperfect +legislation, still exists in most of the Australian States. Subsequent +New Zealand land policy has been generally in the right direction, and +is acknowledged to be highly successful. In the Australian mainland +States the absentee and the squatter caused constant difficulties and +occasional disorder. The Commonwealth at the present day is suffering +for past neglect, and has found itself within the last year compelled to +imitate New Zealand in placing taxes on undeveloped land, with a higher +percentage against absentees. + +Let us add that Grey, like Duffy and most of the strongest advocates of +Home Rule for the Colonies, was a Federalist long before Federation +became practical politics, seeing in that policy the best means of +achieving the threefold aim of giving each Colony in a group ample local +freedom, of binding the whole group together into a compact, coherent +State, and of strengthening the connection between that State and the +Mother Country. As Governor at the Cape from 1854 to 1861 he vainly +urged the Home Government to promote a Federal Union of the various +South African States, Dutch and British, in order, as he said, to create +"an United South Africa under the British flag," a scheme which, it is +generally agreed, could then have been carried out, and which would have +saved South Africa from terrible disasters. And he wished to apply the +same Federal principle to the Australian Colonies, and to the case of +Ireland and Great Britain. + +He realized earlier than most men that the talk of "separation" and +"disloyalty" was, in his own words already quoted, the result of a +"vicious tendency to confuse cause and effect," and that to govern men +by their own consent, to let them work out their own ideals in their own +way, to encourage, not to repress, their sense of nationality, is the +best way to gain their affection, or, if we choose to use that very +misleading word, their loyalty. + +Australia and New Zealand present remarkable examples of this beneficent +process, Australia in particular, because there, for a long time even +after the introduction of responsible government and, indeed, until a +dozen years ago, there was a large party of so-called "disloyalists" who +were never weary of decrying British influences and upholding Australian +nationality. Mr. Jebb, in his "Colonial Nationalism," gives an +interesting account of this movement and of its organ, the widely +circulated _Sydney Bulletin_, with its furiously anti-British views, its +Radicalism, its Republicanism, and what not. He shows amusingly how +entirely harmless the propaganda really was, and what a healthy effect +it actually had in promoting an independence of feeling and national +self-respect among Australians, to such a degree that when the South +African War broke out, there was a universal outburst of patriotism and +a universal desire, which was realized, to share to the full as a nation +in the expense, danger, and hardships of the war. Mr. Jebb adds the +interesting suggestion that the reluctance of New Zealand to enter the +Australian Federation may be partly due to the strong individual +sentiment of nationality evoked within her by the war and the +exceptional exertions she made to aid the Imperial troops. + +His book is a psychological study of men in the mass. What he sets out +to prove, and what he does successfully prove, is that the encouragement +of minor nationalities is not merely consistent with, but essential to, +the unity of the Empire. Yet he never mentions Ireland, not even for the +purpose of proving her an exception to the rule, and I do not think I +ever gauged the full extent of the prejudice against that country until +I realized that in such a book such a topic did not receive even a line +of notice; yet one would naturally suppose that it was as important to +the Empire, morally and strategically, to possess the affection and +respect of four and a half million citizens within 60 miles of the +British coast as of the same number of citizens at the Antipodes. + +Mr. Jebb is a Unionist. How he reaches his conclusion I do not know. It +would seem to be beyond human power to construct a case against Home +Rule for Ireland, with its strongly marked individuality of character +and sentiment, which did not textually stultify his case for the more +distant dependencies. His party generally is in sympathy with the views +expressed in his book, and has done much to further them. How do they +reconcile them with opposition to Home Rule for Ireland? How do they +explain away the support for that policy in the Dominions? It seems to +me that their only resource would be to say: "We are bound to maintain, +and we have the necessary physical force to maintain, the present +political system in Ireland, because to alter it would impair the formal +legislative 'unity' of the United Kingdom; but let us frankly admit that +as long as we take this view there can be no 'Union' in the highest +sense of the word. Ireland must be retarded and estranged. We cannot +raise Territorial Volunteers within her borders; on the contrary, we +must keep and pay for a standing army of police to preserve our +authority there. Her population must diminish, her vital energy ebb away +to other lands; as a market for our goods and as a source of revenue for +Imperial purposes she must remain undeveloped and unprogressive. She +will continue rightly to agitate for Home Rule, and this agitation will +always be baneful both to her and to us. It will distract her energies +from her own economic and social problems. It will embitter and degrade +our politics, and dislocate our Parliamentary institutions. She must +suffer, we must suffer, the Empire must suffer. It is sad, but +inevitable." + +Morality aside, is that common sense? Is it strange that the Colonies +themselves regard such logic, when applied to Ireland, as perverted and +absurd? + +Before leaving Australia we have only to recall the fact that at the +close of the last century, after a generation of controversy and +negotiation, the Canadian example of 1867 was at length imitated, and +the Federal Union formed which amalgamated all the mainland States, +together with Tasmania, in the Commonwealth of Australia, and that the +Union was sanctioned and legalized by the Imperial Act of 1900. New +Zealand preferred to remain a distinct State. The Australians departed +in some important respects from the Canadian model, the main difference +being that a greater measure of independence was retained by the +individual States, and smaller powers delegated to the central +Government. This was a matter of voluntary arrangement as between the +States themselves, the Home Government standing wholly aside on the +sound principle that Australia knew its own interests best, and that +what was best for Australia was best for the Empire. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[29] Letter to Lord Malmesbury, August 13, 1852 ("Memoirs of an +Ex-Minister," by the Earl of Malmesbury, vol. i., p. 344). + +[30] "Life of Gladstone," vol. i., p. 363. + +[31] Annual Treasury Returns ["Imperial Revenue (Collection and +Expenditure)"]. According to these returns, Ireland's Imperial +contribution in 1839, before the famine, was £3,626,322; in 1849, after +the famine, £2,613,778, and in 1859-60 no less than £5,396,000. At the +latter date the Colonies were estimated to cost three and a half +millions a year, of which nine-tenths were contributed by the taxpayers +at home, British and Irish. + +[32] Full information may be found in "The Irish in Australia," by J.F. +Hogan. + +[33] For an excellent historical description of the various Australian +land systems, see the official "Year-Book of the Commonwealth," 1909. + +[34] "Life of Sir George Grey," Professor G.C. Henderson. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +SOUTH AFRICA AND IRELAND + + +In the years 1836-37, when Wentworth was agitating for self-government +in New South Wales, and when Canada was in rebellion for the lack of it, +thousands of waggons, driven by men smarting under the same sort of +grievance, were jolting northward across the South African veld bearing +Dutch families from the British Colony of the Cape of Good Hope to the +new realms we now know as the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal. The +"Great Trek" was a form of protest against bad government to which we +have no parallel in the Empire save in the wholesale emigrations from +Ireland at various periods of her history--after the Treaty of Limerick, +again after the destruction of the wool trade, again in 1770-1777, after +the Ulster evictions, and lastly after the great famine. The trekkers, +like the Irish emigrants, nursed a resentment against the British +Government which was a source of untold expense and suffering in the +future. Indeed, the whole history of South Africa bears a close +resemblance to the history of Ireland. In no other part of the Empire, +save in Ireland, was the policy of the Home Government so persistently +misguided, in spite of constantly recurring opportunities for the repair +of past errors. Fatality seems from first to last to have dogged the +footsteps of those who tried to govern there. Before the British +conquest the Dutch East India Company and the Netherlands Government +were as unsuccessful as their British successors, whose legal claim to +the Cape, established for the second time by conquest in 1806, was +definitely confirmed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The Dutch +colonists were a fine race of men, whose ancestors, like the Puritan +founders of New England, had fled in 1652 from religious persecution, +and who retained the virile qualities of their race. Though in many +respects they resembled the backward and intensely conservative +French-Canadian inhabitants, they differed from them, and resembled +their closer relatives in race, the New Englanders, in an innate passion +for free representative government. They had rebelled repeatedly against +their Dutch oppressors, and had gone through a brief Republican phase. +It is an example, therefore, of the thoughtless inconsequence of our old +colonial policy that we gave the French-Canadians, who were the least +desirous of it, the form, without the spirit, of representative +institutions, while we denied, until it was too late to avert racial +discord, even the form to the Cape Dutch. In truth, the Colony seems to +have been regarded purely in the light of a naval station, while the +British and Irish inflow of settlers, dating from about the year 1820, +contemporaneously with the advent of free settlers in Australia, +suggested the possibility of racial oppression by the Dutch majority. +Yet if there was little real reason to fear oppression by the French in +Canada, there was still less reason to fear such oppression in the Cape, +where Dutch ideals and civilization were far more similar to those of +the British. In America the absorption of the Dutch Colonies in the +seventeenth century had led to the peaceful fusion of both races, nor +was there any reason why, under wise rule, the same fusion should not +have occurred in South Africa. Until 1834 authority was purely military +and despotic. In that year was established a small Legislative Council +of officials and nominated members, with no representative element. In +1837 came the Great Trek. + +No one disputes that the Dutch colonists had grievances, without the +means of redress. As usual, we find a land question in the shape of +enhanced rents charged by Government after the British occupation; the +Dutch language was excluded from official use, and English local +institutions were introduced with unnecessary abruptness; but the +principal grievance concerned the native tribes. Slavery existed in the +Colony, and its borders were continually threatened by these tribes. The +Dutch colonists were often terribly brutal to the natives; nevertheless +there is little doubt that a tactful and sympathetic policy could easily +have secured for them a more humane treatment, and the abolition of +slavery without economic dislocation. But a strong humanitarian +sentiment was sweeping over England at the time, including in its range +the negro slaves of Jamaica and the unconquered Kaffirs of South Africa, +but absolutely ignoring, let us note in passing, the economic serfdom of +the half-starved Irish peasantry at our very doors. Members of this +school took too little account of the tremendous difficulties faced in +South Africa by small handfuls of white colonists in contact with hordes +of savages. The Colonial Government, with a knowledge of the conditions +gained only from well-meaning but somewhat prejudiced missionaries, +endeavoured from 1815 onwards to enforce an impracticable equality +between white and coloured men, and abolished slavery at one sudden +stroke in 1833 without reasonable compensation. A large number of the +Dutch, unable to tolerate this treatment, deserted the British flag. +Those that remained were under suspicion for more than thirty years, so +that political progress was very slow. It was not till 1854 that the +Colony received a Representative Assembly, and not until 1872, eighteen +years later than in Australia, and twenty-five years later than in +Canada, that full responsible government was established. + +Piet Retief, one of the leaders of the voluntary exiles, had published a +proclamation in the following terms before he joined the trek: "We quit +this Colony under the full assurance that the English Government has +nothing more to require of us, and will allow us to govern ourselves +without its interference in the future. We are now leaving the fruitful +land of our birth, in which we have suffered enormous losses and +continual vexation, and are about to enter a strange and dangerous +territory; but we go with a firm reliance on an all-seeing, just, and +merciful God, whom we shall always fear and humbly endeavour to obey." +This was high language, yet after-events proved that a steady, +consistently fair treatment on our part would even then have reconciled +these men to a permanent continuance of British sovereignty. +Unfortunately, our policy oscillated painfully between irritating +interference and excessive timidity. First of all attempts were made to +stop the trek by force, then to compel the trekkers to return by cutting +off their supplies and ammunition, then to throttle their development of +the new lands north of the Orange and Vaal Rivers by calling into being +fictitious native States on a huge scale in the midst of and around +them, then tardily to repair the disastrous effects of this policy; but +not before it had led to open hostilities (1845). Hostilities, however, +had this temporarily good result, in that it brought to the front one of +the ablest and wisest of the Cape Governors, Sir Harry Smith, who +defeated the Boers at Boomplatz in 1848, established what went by the +name of the Orange River Sovereignty, and in a year or two secured such +good and peaceful government within its borders as to attract +considerable numbers of English and Scotch colonists. The malcontents +retired across the Vaal. Then came an abrupt change of policy in the +Home Government, a sudden desire actuated mainly by fear of more native +wars, to cancel all that was possible of our commitments in South +Africa. The Transvaal, by the Sand River Convention, was declared +independent in 1852, the Orange Free State, by the Convention of +Bloemfontein, in 1854. This was to rush from one extreme to the other. +It was as though in 1847 we had erected Quebec into a sovereign State +instead of giving it responsible government under the Crown, or as if in +1843 we had been so deeply convinced by O'Connell's second agitation for +repeal that we had leapt straight from coercive government to the +foundation of an independent Republic in Ireland, instead of giving her +the kind of Home Rule which she was asking for. + +It was not yet too late to mend. In 1854, when the cession of the Free +State had just been carried out, Sir George Grey, whom we have met with +in Australia and New Zealand, came as High Commissioner to the Cape. In +1859 he made the proposal I alluded to in the last chapter for +federating all the South African States, including the two new +Republics. There is little doubt that the scheme was feasible then. The +Orange Free State was willing to join, and, indeed, had initiated +proposals for Federation. Its adhesion would have compelled the +Transvaal, always more hostile to British rule, to come in eventually, +if not at once; for the relations of the two Republics were friendly +enough at the time to permit one man, Pretorius, to be President of both +States. + +The scheme was rejected by Lord Derby's Tory Cabinet, and Grey, a +"dangerous man," as Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, dubbed him, +was recalled. + +Sixteen years later, in 1875, Lord Carnarvon himself, as a member of the +Disraeli Ministry, revived the project. Converted in his views of the +Colonies, like many of his Tory colleagues at this period, he had +carried through Parliament the Federation of Canada in 1867, and hoped +to do the same with South Africa. But it was too late. The Cape +Parliament, now in possession of a responsible Ministry, was hostile, +while twenty years of self-government, for the most part under the great +President Brand, had changed the sentiments of the Free State. +Federation, then, was impossible. On the other hand, the Transvaal was +in a state of political unrest and of danger from native aggression, +which gave a pretext for reversion to the long-abandoned policy of +annexation, and to that extreme Carnarvon promptly went in April, 1877. +He took this dangerous course without ascertaining the considered wishes +of the majority of the Boers, acting through his emissary, Sir T. +Shepstone, on the informal application of a minority of townsmen who +honestly wished to come under British rule. + +Rash as the measure was, lasting good might have come of it had the +essential step been taken of preserving representative government. The +promise was given and broken. For three years the Assembly, or +Volksraad, was not summoned. Once more home statesmanship was blind, and +local administration blunderingly oppressive. Shepstone was the wrong +man for the post of Administrator. Sir Owen Lanyon, his successor, was +an arrogant martinet of the stamp familiar in Canada before 1840, and +painfully familiar in Ireland. The refusal of an Assembly naturally +strengthened the popular demand for a reversal of the annexation, and +this demand, twice pressed in London through a deputation headed by Paul +Kruger, obscured the whole issue, and raised a question of British +national pride, with all its inevitable consequences, where none need +have been raised. There was a moment of hope when Sir Bartle Frere, who +stands, perhaps, next to Sir George Grey on the roll of eminent High +Commissioners, endeavoured to pacify the Boer malcontents, and drafted +the scheme of a liberal Constitution for the Transvaal. But one of the +last acts of the Tory Government, at the end of 1879, was to recall +Frere for an alleged transgression of his powers in regard to the Zulu +War, and to pigeon-hole his scheme. Mr. Gladstone, who in opposition +had denounced the annexation with good enough justification, though in +terms which under the circumstances were immoderate, found himself +compelled to confirm it when he took office in April, 1880. But he, too, +allowed the liberal Constitution to sleep in its pigeon-hole. He was +assured by the officials on the spot that there was no danger, that the +majority were loyal, and only a minority of turbulent demagogues +disloyal; and in December, 1880, the rebellion duly broke out, and the +Transvaal Republic was proclaimed. What followed we know, war, Laing's +Nek, Majuba, and one more violent oscillation of policy in the +concession of a virtual independence to the Transvaal. + +Whatever we may think of the policy of this concession, and Lord Morley +has made the best case that can be made for Mr. Gladstone's action, it +is certain that it was only a link in a long chain of blunders for which +both great political parties had been equally responsible, and of which +the end had not yet come. The nation at large, scarcely alive until now +to the existence of the Colonies, was stung into Imperial consciousness +by a national humiliation, for so it was not unnaturally regarded, +coming from an obscure pastoral community confusedly identified as +something between a Colony, a foreign power, and a troublesome native +tribe. The history of the previous seventy years in South Africa was +either unknown or forgotten, and Mr. Gladstone, who in past years had +preached to indifferent hearers the soundest and sanest doctrine of +enlightened Imperialism, suddenly appeared, and for ever after remained +in the eyes of a great body of his countrymen, as a betrayer of the +nation's honour. Resentment was all the greater in that it was +universally believed that Laing's Nek and Majuba were unlucky little +accidents, and that another month or two of hostilities would have +humbled the Boers to the dust. + +This illusion, which is not yet eradicated, and which has coloured all +subsequent discussion of the subject, lasted unmodified until the first +months of the war in 1899, when events took place exactly similar to +Laing's Nek and Majuba, and were followed by a campaign lasting nearly +three years, requiring nearly 500,000 men for its completion, and the +co-operation of the whole Empire. It is impossible to estimate the +course events would have taken in 1881 had the war been prolonged. If +the Free State had joined the Transvaal, it may be reasonably +conjectured that we should have been weaker, relatively, than in 1899. +Though the Boers were less numerous, less well organized, and less +united as a nation in 1881, they were even better shots and stalkers +than in 1899, because they had had more recent practice against game and +natives; nor was there a large British population in the Transvaal to +counteract their efforts and supply magnificent corps like the Imperial +Light Horse for service in arms against them. Our army, just as brave, +was in every other respect, especially in the matter of mounted men and +marksmanship, less fitted for such a peculiar campaign, and could have +counted with far less certainty upon that assistance from mounted +colonial troops without which the war of 1899-1902 could never have been +finished at all. Our command of the sea was less secure; the Egyptian +War of 1882 was brewing, and Ireland, where the Great Land Act of 1881 +was not yet law, was seething with crime and disorder little +distinguishable from war itself, and demanding large bodies of troops. + +If the further course of a war in 1881 is a matter of speculation, what +we all know for certain is, first, that the conditions which led to war +were produced by seventy years of vacillating policy, and, second, that +war itself would have been a useless waste of life and treasure, unless +success in it had been followed, as in 1906, by the grant of that +responsible Government which all along had been the key to the whole +difficulty, the condition precedent to a Federal Union of the South +African States, and to their closer incorporation in the Empire. + +Few persons realized this at the time. The whole situation changed +disastrously for the worse. Arrogance and mutual contempt embittered the +relations of the races. Then came a crucial test for the Boer capacity +for enlightened and generous statesmanship. Gold was discovered in the +Transvaal, and a large British population flocked in. The same problem, +with local modifications, faced the Boers as had been faced in Upper and +Lower Canada, and for centuries past in Ireland. Were they to trust or +suspect, to admit or to exclude from full political rights, the +new-comers? Was it to be the policy of the Duke of Wellington or of the +Earl of Durham, of Fitzgibbon or the Volunteers? They chose the wrong +course, and set up an oligarchical ascendancy like the "family compact" +of Upper Canada and Nova Scotia. Can we be surprised that they, a rude, +backward race, failed under the test where we ourselves, with far less +justification, had failed so often? Their experience of our methods had +been bad from first to last. Their latest taste of our rule had been the +coercive system of Lanyon, and they feared, with only too good reason, +as events after the second war proved, that any concession would lead to +a counter-ascendancy of British interests in a country which was legally +their own, not a portion of the British dominions. We had suffered +nothing, and had no reason to fear anything, from the Irish and +French-Canadian Catholics, nor from the Nonconformist Radicals of Upper +Canada. It would have been well if a small fraction of the abuse +lavished on the tyrannical Boer oligarchy six thousand miles away had +been diverted into criticism of the government of a country within sixty +miles of our shores, where a large majority of the inhabitants had been +for generations asking for the same thing as the Uitlander minority in +the Transvaal--Home Rule--and were stimulated to make that demand by +grievances of a kind unknown in the Transvaal. + +But the British blood was up; the Boer blood was up. Such an atmosphere +is not favourable to far-seeing statesmanship, and it would have taken +statesmanship on both sides little short of superhuman to avert another +war. The silly raid of 1895 and its condonation by public opinion in +England hastened the explosion. Can anyone wonder that public opinion in +Ireland was instinctively against that war? Only a pedant will seize on +the supposed paradox that a war for equal rights for white men should +have met with reprobation from an Ireland clamouring for Home Rule. +Irish experience amply justified Irishmen in suspecting precisely what +the Boers suspected, a counter-ascendancy in the gold interest, and in +seeing in a war for the conquest of a small independent country by a +mighty foreign power an analogy to the original conquest of Ireland by +the same power. It is hard to speak with restraint of the educated +men--men with books and time to read them, with brains and the wealth +and leisure to develop them--who to this very day abuse their talents in +encouraging among the ignorant multitude the belief that the Irish +leaders of that day were, to use the old hackneyed phrase, "traitors to +the Empire." If we look at the whole of these events in just +perspective, if we search coolly and patiently for abiding principles +beneath the sordid din and confusion of racial strife, we shall agree +that in some respects Irishmen were better friends to the Empire than +the politicians who denounced them, and sounder judges of its needs. Yet +there can be no doubt that the Transvaal complications, followed +unhappily by the Gordon episode in the Soudan, reacted fatally on +Ireland, and that the Irish problem in its turn reacted with bad effect +on the Transvaal. When the statesman who refused to avenge Majuba in +1881 proposed his Irish Home Rule Bills in 1886 and 1893, it was easy +for prejudiced minds to associate the two policies as harmonious parts +of one great scheme of national dismemberment and betrayal. Boers, +Irish, and Soudanese savages, all were confusedly lumped together as +dangerous people whom it was England's duty to conquer and coerce. + +The South African War of 1899-1902 came and passed. People will discuss +to the end of time whether or not it could have been avoided. Parties +will differ to the end of time about its moral justification. For my own +part, I think it is pleasanter to dwell on the splendid qualities it +evoked in both races, and above all on the mutual respect which replaced +the mutual contempt of earlier days. I myself am disposed to think that +at the pass matters had reached in 1896 nothing but open war could have +set the relations of the two races on a healthy footing. + +But bold and generous statesmanship was needed if the fruits of this +mutual respect were to be reaped. The defeated Republics were now +British Colonies, their inhabitants British subjects. After many +vicissitudes we were back once more in the old political situation of +1836 before the Great Trek, and the policy which was right then was +right now. Bitter awakening as it was to our proud people after a war +involving such colossal sacrifices, it was still just as true as of old +that in Ireland, Canada, Australia, South Africa, or anywhere else, it +is utterly impossible for one white democracy to rule another properly +on the principle of ascendancy. It was physically possible, thanks to +Ireland's proximity, to deny that country Home Rule, but it would not +have been even physically possible in the Transvaal and Orange River +Colony. Yet the idea was conceived and the policy strongly backed which +could only have had the disastrous effect of bringing into being two +Irelands in the midst of our South African dominions. It is not yet +generally recognized that we owe the defeat of this policy in the first +instance to Lord Kitchener. From the moment he took the supreme military +command in South Africa at the end of 1900, while prosecuting the war +with iron severity and sleepless energy, he insisted on and worked for a +settlement by consent, with a formal promise of future self-government +to the Boers. In this he was in sharp opposition to Lord Milner, who +desired to extort an unconditional surrender. Of these two strong, able, +high-minded men, the soldier, curiously enough, was the better +statesman. In temperament he recalls the General Abercromby of 1797 on +the eve of the Irish rebellion, still more perhaps General Carleton, who +administered French Canada in the critical period after its conquest and +during the American War. Lord Milner, in political theory, not in +personality, corresponds to Fitzgibbon. His view was that British +prestige and authority could only be maintained in the future by thus +humbling the national pride of our adversaries, who, moreover, by the +formal annexations of 1900, carried into effect when the war was still +young, were by a legal fiction rebels, not belligerents. Lord Kitchener, +besides seeing, as the responsible soldier in the field, the sheer +physical impossibility of lowering the Boer national pride by any +military operations he had the power to undertake, from the beginning of +the guerilla war onwards, was a truer judge of human nature and a better +Imperialist at heart in realizing that the self-respect of the Boers was +a precious asset, not a dangerous menace to the Empire, and that the +whole fate of South Africa depended on a racial reconciliation on the +basis of equal political rights, which would be for ever precluded by +compelling the Boers to pass under the Caudine Forks. + +Fortunately Lord Kitchener was supported by the Home Government, and the +Peace of Vereeniging took the form of a surrender on terms, or, +virtually, of a treaty, formally guaranteeing, among other things, the +concession "when circumstances should permit" of "representative +institutions leading up to self-government." The next ordeal of British +statesmanship came when the time arrived in 1905 to redeem this promise. +There were two distinctly defined alternatives: one, to profit by +experience and to give responsible government at once; the other, for +the time being, to copy one of the constitutional models which had long +been obsolete curiosities in the history of all the white Colonies, +which had never failed to produce mischievous results, whether in a +bi-racial or a uni-racial community, and which were in reality suited +only to groups of officials and traders living in the midst of +uneducated coloured races in tropical lands. The Government, and we +cannot doubt that their traditional policy toward Ireland warped their +views, declared for the latter alternative, and issued under Letters +Patent a Constitution which happily never came into force. Like the Act +of Union with Ireland, it gave the shadow of freedom without the +substance. It set up a single Legislative Chamber, four-fifths elective, +but containing, as _ex-officio_ members, the whole of the Executive +Council as nominated by the Crown. Executive power, therefore, together +with the last word in all legislation, was to remain wholly in the hands +of the Crown, acting through a Ministry not responsible to the people's +representatives. It would have been difficult to design a plan more +certain to promote friction, racialism, and an eventual deadlock, +necessitating either a humiliating surrender by the Government under +pressure of the refusal of supplies, or a reversion to despotic +government which would have produced another war. With wide differences +of detail and with the added risk of financial deadlock, it was sought +to establish the kind of political situation prevalent in Ireland after +the Act of Union. The executive power in that country, and, with the +exception of the Department of Agriculture, the policy and personnel of +the host of nominated Boards through which its affairs are administered, +still stand wholly outside popular control, while legislation in +accordance with Irish views is only possible when, in the fluctuation of +the British party balance, a British Ministry happens to be in sympathy +with these views, and only too often not even then. + +Statesmen who looked with complacency on the history of a century in +Ireland under such a system naturally took a similar view of the +Transvaal, deriving it from the same low estimate of human tendencies. +The literature, despatches, and speeches of the period carry us straight +back to the Canadian controversies of 1837-1840, and beyond them to the +Union controversy of 1800. In one respect the parallel with the Irish +Union is closer, because, while British opinion in Lower Canada was +predominantly against responsible government, there was in Ireland a +strong current of unbribed Protestant opinion against the Union. +Similarly, in the Transvaal, there was a strong feeling among a section +of the British population, coinciding with the general wishes of the +Dutch population, in favour of full responsible government. In other +words, the mere prospect of self-government lessened racial cleavage, +brought men of the two races together, and began the evolution of a new +party cleavage on the normal lines natural to modern communities. The +whole question was keenly canvassed at public meetings and in the Press +from November, 1904, to February 5, 1905, and in Johannesburg a British +party of considerable strength took the lead in demanding the fuller +political rights, and formed the Responsible Government Association. The +controversy was embodied in a Blue-Book laid before Parliament,[35] and +at every stage of its progress the facts were cabled home by Lord Milner +to the Government, who thus had the whole situation before them when +they came to their decision. + +It would be worth the reader's while to study with some care the terms +of the despatch announcing that decision.[36] He will feel himself in +contact with fundamental principles, undisturbed by individual bias; for +no one could suspect Mr. Lyttelton, the genial and popular Secretary of +State who penned the despatch, of any violent prejudices. Yet the spirit +of the whole despatch, though gentle and persuasive in its terms, is the +spirit of Fitzgibbon's brutally outspoken argument for the extinction of +the Irish Parliament, and the complete exclusion of Irish Roman +Catholics from influence over their country's affairs. The despatch +begins, it is true, by explaining that the proposed Constitution is only +intended to be temporary; that it had been the invariable custom to +grant freedom to the Colonies by degrees, and that the custom must be +followed; but the reasons adduced for following it, if we consider that +they were adduced in the year 1905, instead of a century and a half +back, constitute one of the strangest of all the strange inversions of +historical cause and effect which a Home Rule controversy has ever +suggested to the human brain. Instead of inferring from our bitter +experiences in Upper and Lower Canada, which are mentioned in the +despatch, and in Ireland, which is not, that race distinctions increase +instead of lessening the necessity for responsible government, Mr. +Lyttelton complacently quotes bi-racial Lower Canada as a precedent for +his Transvaal Constitution. Quite frankly, though in curiously +misleading terms,[37] he records the fact that a similar Constitution +there led to deadlock and rebellion. Without intention to deceive, he +ignores the fact that wholly British Upper Canada reached the same pass +for the same reasons; and he appears to look forward with equanimity to +the passage of the unfortunate Transvaal through an identically painful +phase of history toward the same sanguinary climax. The radical error +in the official version of events in Canada appears in the comparison +between the rebellions of 1837 and the South African War of 1899-1902. +To contrast the "brief armed rising" in Canada with the three years' war +in South Africa, and to argue that a degree of freedom could safely be +given after the former, which would involve great danger after the +latter, was to show ignorance of the chain of historical events and +blindness to their true moral. The underlying idea is the one applied to +the old American Colonies and for centuries to Ireland, namely, that the +more mutinous a dependency is, the less reason for giving it Home Rule, +with the paradoxical corollary applied even to this day in Ireland, that +if it is not disorderly it does not need Home Rule. So from age to age +statesmen run their heads against facts, perpetuate the errors of their +forefathers, and do their unconscious best to intensify the evils they +deplore. It was erroneous to regard either the Canadian Rebellions or +the Boer War as events which rendered responsible government more or +less dangerous. Each of these events was itself the climax of a long +period of irresponsible misgovernment dating from about the same period, +the second decade of the nineteenth century, and demanding the same +remedy. In the Boer case, continuity was twice broken by grants of +independence, and the climax proportionally delayed, but the origin of +the trouble was the same. If the Boers had not trekked _en masse_ from +Cape Colony in order to escape from misgovernment, both movements--in +the Cape and Canada--might have come to a head in exactly the same year, +1837. + +In sober, weighty, tactful phrases, carefully chosen to avoid giving +needless offence to the Dutch, the despatch laboriously overthrows the +Liberal theory of government, and works out the negation of all Imperial +experience. It deplores the "bitter memories" of war, which free +institutions, by tending to "emphasize and stereotype the racial line," +will make more, not less bitter, and which can be effaced only by the +"healing effect of time." We think of the Durham Report, of Ireland, and +marvel. We recollect the bulky Blue-Book at Mr. Lyttelton's elbow as he +wrote, full of speeches and articles by Englishmen, showing quite +correctly, as has since been proved, that the "racial line" in +Johannesburg was growing fainter daily with the mere prospect of +responsible government. These men were not afraid of the Dutch, and said +so. The answer was that they ought to be, or, in the persuasive language +of diplomacy, as follows: + +"His Majesty's Government trust that those of British origin in the +Transvaal who, with honest conviction, have advocated the immediate +concession of full responsible government, will recognize the soundness +and cogency of the reasons, both in their own interests and in those of +the Empire, for proceeding more cautiously and slowly, and that under a +political system which admittedly has its difficulties they will, +notwithstanding a temporary disappointment, do their best to promote the +welfare of the country and the smooth working of its institutions." + +Then came a chivalrous compliment to the Dutch for their "gallant +struggle" in the war, coupled with a reminder that they are not to be +trusted with political power, a reminder so courteously worded that it, +too, becomes a compliment: + +"The inhabitants of Dutch origin have recently witnessed, after their +gallant struggle against superior power, the fall of the Republic +founded by the valour and sufferings of their ancestors, and cannot be +expected, until time has done more to heal the wound, to entertain the +most cordial feelings towards the Government of the Transvaal. But from +them also, as from a people of practical genius, who have learned by +long experience to make the best of circumstances, His Majesty's +Government expect co-operation in the task of making their race, no +longer in isolated independence, a strong pillar in the fabric of a +world-wide Empire. That this should be the result, and that a complete +reconciliation between men of two great and kindred races should, under +the leading of Divine Providence, speedily come to pass, is the ardent +desire of His Majesty the King and of His Majesty's Government." + +The tone recalls the tone of Pitt and Castlereagh in proposing the +Union. But Fitzgibbon went more directly to the point in saying outright +that, Ireland having been conquered and confiscated, the colonists "were +at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island," and that laws must +be framed by an external power to "meet the vicious propensities of +human nature." Let us recognize unreservedly that the words of the +Transvaal despatch were the outcome of deep and sincere conviction. That +is the worst of it. From age to age Ireland has to suffer for the depth +and sincerity of these convictions. There, too, the cleavage of race and +religion, never complete, always defying the official efforts to +"stereotype and emphasize it," to quote the despatch of 1905, grows +fainter with time, and will grow fainter as long as the national +movement lives to draw men together in the common interest of Ireland. +The Volunteers, Wolfe Tone, Emmet, many of the Young Irelanders, Isaac +Butt, Parnell, were Protestants. And there is a strong band of +Protestant Home Rulers to-day in Ulster and out of it, landlords, +tenants, capitalists, labourers, Members of Parliament, and clergymen, +who declare that they are not afraid of Catholic oppression, and who are +told by Unionists that they ought to be. And in Ireland, too, the Roman +Catholic majority are told, rarely, it is true, in the courteous phrases +of Mr. Lyttelton's despatch, that they "cannot be expected to entertain +the most cordial feelings towards the Government." In Ireland, also, is +a "political system which admittedly has its difficulties," ironical +euphemism for a system whose analogue in the Transvaal could have been +used by the subject race, had they so willed, to bring civil government +to a standstill, without the means of furnishing anything better, and +which under the Act of Union can be, and has been, used to dislocate the +Parliamentary life of the United Kingdom. The Boers were asked "as a +people of practical genius" to assist the "smooth working" of an +unworkable Constitution, so as to promote the "reconciliation of two +great and kindred races." The Irish are pursued with invective for +legitimately using the constitutional power given them in order, while +freeing Parliament from an intolerable incubus, to gain the right to +elicit character and responsibility in themselves by shouldering their +own burdens and saving their own souls. + +If the official view of the Transvaal was mistaken, the summit of error +was reached in the view taken of the Orange River Colony. In that +Colony, which was almost wholly pastoral and Dutch, and which until the +war had enjoyed free institutions uninterruptedly for half a century, +and had made remarkably good vise of them, representative government, +even of the illusory kind designed for the Transvaal, was to be +indefinitely postponed, postponed at any rate until the results of the +"experiment" in the Transvaal had been observed. + +The Government "recognize that there are industrial and economic +conditions peculiar to the Transvaal, which make it very desirable in +that Colony to have at the earliest possible date some better means of +ascertaining the views of the different sections of the population than +the present system affords. The question as regards the Orange River +Colony being a less urgent one, it appears to them that there will be +advantage in allowing a short period to intervene before elective +representative institutions are granted to the last-named Colony, +because this will permit His Majesty's Government to observe the +experiment, and, if need be, to profit by the experience so gained." + +What is the train of reasoning in this strange specimen of political +argument? It was important to "ascertain the views" of the bi-racial +Transvaal, but needless to ascertain the views of the practically +homogeneous Orange River Colony. The "question" there is a "less urgent +one." What question? Why less urgent? Is it that the British minority, +being so very small, is more liable to oppression by the Dutch? That is +a tenable point, though by parity of reasoning it would seem to make the +question more, not less, urgent, and the importance of "ascertaining the +views" of the different sections of the population, greater, not less. +Or is it the diametrically opposite train of thought, namely, that an +assumed improbability of disorder owing to the homogeneity of the +population is a reason, not for giving Home Rule, but for withholding +it? These contradictions and confusions are painfully familiar in +anti-Home Rule dialectics all over the world. A quiet Ireland does not +want Home Rule; a turbulent Ireland is not fit for it. If the Unionist +element in Ireland is strong, that is clearly an argument for +withholding Home Rule in deference to the wishes of a strong minority. +If the minority, on the other hand, is proved to be small, all the +greater reason for withholding it, because oppression by the majority +will be easier. So the sterile argument swings back and forth, and men +still talk of "experiments" and "profiting by experience," while the +demonstration of their errors is written in the blood and tears of +centuries, and while masses of facts accumulate, demonstrating the great +truth that free democratic government, whatever its disadvantages and +dangers--and it has both--is the best resource for uniting, +strengthening, and enriching a community of white men. + +The Transvaal Constitution of 1905 was cancelled on the incoming of the +Liberal Ministry at the end of that year, and in the following year full +responsible government was granted both to the Transvaal and Orange +River Colony, with the results that we know. Instantaneously there +permeated the bi-racial urban society in the Transvaal a new sense of +brotherhood. Men of different race, as far apart in spirit as the +members of the Kildare Street Club, the Orange Societies, and the +Ancient Order of Hibernians, met and made friends because it was not +only natural but necessary to make friends, since on all alike lay the +burden of doing their best for their country on a basis of equal +citizenship. Nobody out there called the new system an "experiment." The +wrench once over, the thing once done, there was general unanimity that +whatever the difficulties--and there were great difficulties--it was the +right thing to be done under the circumstances, and if this unanimity +was combined, rightly or wrongly, with a good deal of resentment against +the Liberal attitude at home towards Chinese labour, nobody is any the +worse for that. The day will come when even that burning question will +be seen in its true perspective as an infinitesimally small point beside +the great principle of responsible government, which includes the +decision of labour questions, together with all other branches of +domestic policy. + +Conservative opinion at home has been slower to change than British +opinion in the Transvaal. But, again, this was natural. Parties had long +been divided on the South African question. The abrupt reversal of +policy was felt as a humiliation, and the ingrained mental habits +engendered by the traditional policy towards Ireland yielded slowly, +grudgingly, and fearfully to the proof of error in South Africa. It is +not for the sake of opening an old wound, but solely because it is +absolutely necessary for the completion of my argument, that I have to +recall the angry and violent speeches which followed the announcement of +the new policy; the dogmatic prognostications of Imperial disruption, of +financial collapse, and of a cruel Boer tyranny in the emancipated +Colonies; the charges of wanton betrayal of loyalists, of disgraceful +surrender to "the enemy." Some of the leading actors in these scenes, +notably Mr. Balfour and Mr. Lyttelton, have since acknowledged that they +were wrong, while apparently feeling it their duty as honourable and +loyal men to give a somewhat misleading turn to an old controversy in +their praise of Lord Milner's services to South Africa. That Lord +Milner, in his administration during and after the war, did, indeed, do +a vast amount of sound and lasting work for South Africa is perfectly +true, and he deserves all honour for it. Probably no public servant of +the Empire ever laboured in its service with more unstinted devotion and +a higher sense of duty. But good administration is not an adequate +substitute for knowledge of men, and that knowledge Lord Milner lacked. +He did no service to the British colonists of South Africa in telling +them that they had been shamefully betrayed by the Home Government in +1906. It would have been wiser to advise them to rely on themselves and +on the justice and wisdom of their Dutch fellow-citizens. His violent +speeches in 1906-1908 about the calamitous results of permitting Dutch +influences free play in South Africa--speeches breathing the essential +spirit of Fitzgibbonism--would have wrought incalculable mischief had +they coincided with effective British policy; while his view, as +expressed in the House of Lords,[38] that a preparatory régime of +benevolent despotism, showing "the obvious solicitude of the Government +for the welfare of the people," and taking shape "in a hundred and one +works of material advancement," would "win us friends and diminish our +enemies," evinces an ignorance of the ordinary motives influencing the +conduct of white men, which would be incredible if we had not Irish +experience before us. "Twenty years of resolute government," said Lord +Salisbury. "Home Rule will be killed by kindness," said many of his +successors. In later chapters I shall have to show what well-meant +kindness and resolute government have done for Ireland. If even at this +late hour Lord Milner would frankly acknowledge his error, I believe he +would enormously enhance his reputation in the eyes of the whole Empire. + +As practical men, let us remember that the Constitutions of 1906 would +not have become law if, instead of being issued under Letters Patent, +they had had to pass through Parliament in the form of a Bill. The whole +Conservative party, following Lord Milner, was vehemently against the +Letters Patent. Those who witnessed the debate upon them in the House of +Commons will not forget the scene. I recall this fact without any desire +to entangle myself in the current controversy about the Upper House, but +with the strictly practical object of showing that because a Home Rule +Bill is defeated in Parliament, as the Irish Bills of 1886 and 1893 were +defeated, it does not necessarily follow that its policy is wrong. Nor +does it follow that its policy is wrong if that defeat in Parliament is +confirmed by a General Election. Home Rule for Canada never had to pass, +and would not have passed even the Parliamentary test. Skilful and +determined organization could have wrecked even the Australian +Constitutions. No one, certainly, could have guaranteed a favourable +result of a General Election taken expressly upon the Transvaal and +Orange River Constitutions of 1906, with the whole machinery of one of +the great parties thrown into the scale against them. We know the case +made against Ireland on such occasions, and the case against the +conquered Republics was made in Parliament with ten times greater force. +If anyone doubts this, let him compare the speeches on Ireland in 1886 +and 1893 with the speeches on South Africa in 1905-06. With the +alteration of a name or two, with the substitution, for example, of +Johannesburg for Ulster, the speeches against South African and Irish +Home Rule might be almost interchangeable. For electioneering purposes, +evidences, in word and act, of Boer treason, rapacity, and +vindictiveness, could have been made by skilful orators to seem damning +and unanswerable. All the arts for inflaming popular passion under the +pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that +patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises. The material would have +been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient +numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped +by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the +speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the +Peace Conference, would have been ready for the hoardings and the +fly-sheets, and they would have had an appreciable effect. + +Am I weakening the case for democracy itself in pressing this view? +Surely not. One democracy is incapable of understanding the domestic +needs and problems of another. Whenever, therefore, a democracy finds +itself responsible for the adjudication of a claim for Home Rule from +white men, it should limit itself to ascertaining whether the claim is +genuine and sincere. If it is, the claim should be granted, and a +Constitution constructed in friendly concert with the men who are to +live under it. That way lies safety and honour, and, happily, the +democracy is being educated to that truth. If this be a counsel of +perfection; if the difficult and delicate task of settling the details +of Irish Home Rule is to be hampered and complicated by the +resuscitation of those time-honoured discussions over abstract +principles which ought long ago to have been buried and forgotten, let +every patriotic and enlightened man at any rate do his best to sweeten +and mollify the controversy, to extirpate its grosser manifestations, +and to substitute reason for passion. + +The grant of responsible government to the Transvaal and Orange River +Colony reacted with amazing rapidity on South African politics as a +whole. It took the Canadian Provinces twenty-seven years (if we reckon +from 1840), and the Australian States forty-five years (if we reckon +from 1855), to reach a Federal Union. Hardly a minute was wasted in +South Africa. Under very able guidance, the scheme was canvassed almost +from the first, and in two years trusted leaders of both races, +representing Natal, Cape Colony, and two newly emancipated +Colonies--men, some of whom had been shooting at one another only five +years before--were sitting at a table together hammering out the details +of a South African Union. Here, indeed, was shown the "practical genius" +which the Government of 1905 had piously invoked for their abortive +Constitution. In the spirit of forbearance, of sympathy, of wise +compromise, which governed the proceedings of this famous Conference, +was to be found the measure of the longing of all parties to extinguish +racialism and make South Africa truly a nation. The Imperial Act +legalizing the arrangements ultimately arrived at by the agreement of +the colonists was passed in 1909. The political system constructed +cannot be called Federal. The framers rejected the Australian model, and +went much beyond the Canadian model in centralizing authority and +diminishing local autonomy; nor can there be any doubt that the +strongest motive behind that policy was that of securing the harmony of +the two white races. + +All this was the result of trusting the Dutch in 1906. "We cannot expect +you to trust us, and we shall not trust you," said the despatch of 1905. +We know what the consequences of that policy would have been. It is not +a question of imagination or hypothesis. It is a question of the +operation of certain unchanging laws in the conduct of all white men. +Good or bad, our government would have been detested. We should have +manufactured sedition, lawlessness, and discord. Then the tendency would +have been strong to follow the old Irish precedent, and make the evil +symptoms we had ourselves educed the pretext for tightening the screw of +anti-popular government. It would have been said that we must sustain +our prestige to the end and at all costs, a phrase which often cloaks +the obstinacy of moral cowardice. Or, too late to escape the contempt of +the Boers, we might have abruptly surrendered to clamour. It would have +taken a long time to reach union then. Contempt is a bad foundation. + +It brings one near despair to see the Union of South Africa used by men +who should know better as an argument against Irish Home Rule. The chain +of causation is so clear, one would think, as to be incapable of +misconstruction. But there seems to be no limit in certain minds to the +prejudice against the principle of Home Rule. If it is seen to work +well, the phenomenon is hurriedly swept into oblivion, and its results +attributed with feverish ingenuity to any cause but the true one. The +very speed with which the antidote pervades the body politic and expels +the old poison helps these untiring propagators of error to suppress the +history of recuperation, and to ascribe the cure of the patient to a +treatment which, if applied long enough, would have killed him. The +Conservative party appear to have now reached this amazing conclusion: +that they and Lord Milner were the authors of the South African Union, +and that that Union is a weapon sent them by Providence for combating +the Irish claims. This is what Ireland has to pay for being the sport of +British parties. Individual statesmen may point at past mistakes; but a +party, as a party, can never admit error: it is against the rules. To +make things easier, there is that question-begging phrase, the "Union." +If South Africa, like Australia, had been federalized, this windfall +would have been lost, because the word "Federal" might have suggested +some form of Federal Home Rule for Ireland. Labels mean an enormous +amount in politics. + +There is not the slightest doubt that Mr. Walter Long, and even Lord +Selborne, who, as High Commissioner, actually witnessed the whole +evolution from responsible government in the two conquered States to the +Union of South Africa, are perfectly sincere in their opposition to +Irish Home Rule. But, I would respectfully suggest, it is their duty to +use their knowledge and convictions in the right and fair way. Let them +say, if they will, ignoring the intermediate and indispensable phase of +Home Rule in South Africa: "Here are two Unions; never mind how they +arose. Both are good: all Unions are good. The modern tendency to unify +is sound; do not let us react to devolution." Let them, in other words, +confine their argument to the domain of political science. What, I +submit, they should refrain from, is the imputation of sordid motives to +Nationalist leaders, the prognostications of religious and racial +tyranny in Ireland, and all those inflammatory arguments against the +principle of Home Rule which have been used all the world over, from +time immemorial, for the maintenance of Unions based on legal, not on +moral, ties, which were used against responsible government for the +Transvaal, and which, I venture to affirm, degrade our public life. + +I am assuming for the moment that most Conservatives will elect to use +the South African parallel in the way that Mr. Long and Lord Selborne +have used it, that is, while tacitly approving in retrospect of the Home +Rule of 1906, to argue from Union to Union. But it is of no use to blink +the fact that there are pessimists who will put forward an antithetical +case, boldly declaring that we were wrong ever to trust the Boers, that +racialism is as bad as ever, that General Botha's loyalty is cant, the +Cullinan diamond an insult, and that South Africa will go from bad to +worse under a Dutch tyranny. Party propaganda is quite elastic enough to +permit the two opposite views to be used to convince the same electorate +at the same election. Pessimists are always active in these affairs, and +they can always produce something in the nature of a plausible case, +because it stands to reason that the evils of generations cannot be +swept away in a moment, either in South Africa or Ireland. Miracles do +not happen, and the pessimists, who are the curse of Ireland to-day, +will be able to demonstrate with ease that the free Ireland of to-morrow +will not enter instantaneously upon a millennium. It is useless to +attempt to convert these extremists. For a century back, Hansard and the +columns of daily papers have been full of their unfulfilled jeremiads +about Canada, about Australia, and about the very smallest and most +tardy attempts to give a little responsibility to the majority of +citizens in Ireland. The vocabulary of impending ruin has been exhausted +long ago; there is nothing new to be said. But those who care to study +in a cool temper the course of recent South African politics in the +columns of the _Times_, or, better still, in those of that excellent +magazine for the discussion of Imperial affairs, the _Round Table_, will +conclude that extraordinary progress has been made towards racial +reunion, and that in this respect no serious peril threatens South +Africa. The settlement, by friendly compromise at the end of the last +session, of the very thorny question of language in the education of +children, is a good example of what good-will can accomplish under free +institutions. By a laboured construction of fragments of speeches culled +from the utterances of exceptionally vehement partisans, it would be +still possible to make up a theory of the "disloyalty" of the South +African Dutch. It would have been equally possible for a painstaking +British student of the _Sydney Bulletin_ within recent memory to start a +panic over the imminent "loss" of Australia. Some people think that +Canada is as good as "lost" now. Yet the Empire has never been so strong +or so united as to-day. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[35] Cd. 2479, 1905. + +[36] Cd. 2400, 1905. + +[37] "It is true that in the case of Canada full responsible government +was conceded, a few years after a troublous period culminating in a +brief armed rising, to a population composed of races then not very +friendly to each other, though now long since happily reconciled. But +the Canadas had by that time enjoyed representative institutions for +over fifty years, the French-Canadians had since the year 1763 been +continuously British subjects, and the disorders which preceded Lord +Durham's Mission and the subsequent grant of self-government could not +compare in any way with a war like that of 1899-1902. It is also the +fact that in the United Colony of Upper and Lower Canada, during the +period of 1840-1867, parties were formed mainly upon the lines of races, +and that, as the representatives of the races were in number nearly +balanced, stability of Government was not attained, a difficulty which +was not overcome until the Federation of 1867, accompanied by the +relegation of provincial affairs to provincial Legislatures, placed the +whole political Constitution of Canada upon a wider basis." + +Few would gather from the first sentence that the races were "not very +friendly to each other" precisely because they lived under a coercive +political system; and that, in the long-run, they were "happily +reconciled" because they received responsible government. Nor could it +be deduced from the obscure reference lower down to the union of the two +Provinces that the Union was the one blot upon Durham's scheme, the one +point in which, fearing the predominance of a French majority in Lower +Canada, he shrank from his own principles and recommended an unworkable +Union which tended to encourage the formation "of parties on the lines +of races." From the further allusion to the Federal Union of 1867, no +one would imagine that that great scheme was founded on a cessation of +racial antipathy inside the Quebec Province, and on a voluntary +recognition among all races and parties that it was best for that +Province to have a local autonomy of its own, parallel with that of the +Ontario Province and under the supreme central authority of the +Dominion. + +[38] February 26, March 27, 1906. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE ANALOGY + + +Let the reader endeavour to see the closely related stories of Ireland +and of these more distant communities as a whole, undistracted by the +varying degrees of their proximity to the Mother Country, making his +study one of men and laws, and remembering that Ireland was the first +and nearest of the British Colonies. Does not she become a convex +mirror, in which, swollen to unnatural proportions, the mistakes of two +centuries are reflected? Principles of government universal in their +nature, transcending geography, and painfully evolved in more distant +parts of the Empire, we have thrown to the winds in Ireland. Economic +evils, resembling, in however distant a degree, those of Ireland, have +irritated and retarded every community in which they have been allowed +to take root. A sound agrarian system has been the primary need of every +country. To take the closest parallel, if absentee proprietorship and +insecurity of tenure kept little Prince Edward Island, peacefully and +legally settled, backward and disturbed for a century, it is not +surprising that Ireland, submitted to confiscation, the Penal Code, and +commercial rum, did not flourish under a land system beside which that +of Prince Edward Island was a paradise. Tardy redress of the worst Irish +abuses is no defence of the system which created them and sustained them +with such ruinous results. No white community of pride and spirit would +willingly tolerate the grotesque form of Crown Colony administration, +founded on force, and now tempered by a kind of paternal State +Socialism, under which Ireland lives to-day. Unionism for Ireland is +anti-Imperialist. Its upholders strenuously opposed colonial autonomy, +and but yesterday were passionately opposing South African autonomy. +To-day colonial autonomy is an axiom. But Ireland is a measure of the +depth of these convictions. There would be no Empire to idealize if +their Irish principles had been applied just a little longer to any of +the oversea States which constitute the self-governing Colonies of +to-day. As it is, these principles have wrought great and perhaps +lasting mischief which, in the righteous glow of self-congratulation +upon what we are accustomed to call our constructive political genius, +we are too apt to overlook. It was bad for America to pass through that +phase of agitation and discord which preceded the revolutionary war. It +was demoralizing for the Canadas to be driven into rebellion by the +vices of ascendancy government. Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Australian +autonomy, was right in satirizing the "miserable jargon" about fitting +men for political privileges, and in demonstrating the harm done by +withholding those privileges. And the Irish race all over the world, +fine race as it is, would be finer still if Ireland had been free. + +The political habits formed in dealing with Ireland have disastrously +influenced Imperial policy in the past. Cannot we, by a supreme national +effort, reverse the mental process, and, if we have always failed in the +past to learn from Irish lessons how not to treat the Colonies, at any +rate learn, even at the eleventh hour, from our colonial lessons how to +treat Ireland? Must we for ever sound the old alarms about "disloyalty" +and "dismemberment" and "abandonment of the loyal minority to the tender +mercies of their foes"; phrases as old as the Stamp Act of 1765? Must we +carry the "gentle art of making enemies," practised to the last point of +danger in the Colonies, to the preposterous pitch of estranging men at +our very doors, while pluming ourselves on the friendship of peoples +12,000 miles away? These are anxious times. We have a mighty rival in +Europe, and we need the co-operation of all our hands and brains. On a +basis of mere profit and loss, is it sensible to maintain a system in +Ireland which weakens both Ireland and the whole United Kingdom, clogs +the delicate machinery of Parliamentary government, and, worked out in +hard figures of pounds, shillings, and pence, has ceased even to show a +pecuniary advantage? + +Have Unionists really no better prescription for the constitutional +difficulties caused by the Union than to reduce the representation of +Ireland in Parliament so as to give Ireland still less control than at +present over her own affairs? Is that seriously their last word in +statesmanship, to exasperate Nationalist Ireland without even providing +in any appreciable degree a mechanical remedy for disordered political +functions? The idea has only to be stated to be dismissed. It is not +even practical politics. Some things are sheer impossibilities; and to +leave the Union system as it is, while reducing representation, is one +of them. + +We revert, then, to a contemplation of the well-tried expedient, "Trust, +and you will be trusted." But then we have to meet pessimists of two +descriptions, the honest and the merely cynical. The honest pessimist +(often, unhappily, an educated Irishman) says: "The Irish in Ireland are +an incurably criminal race. They differ from Irishmen elsewhere and from +Anglo-Saxons everywhere. Air and soil are unaccountable. The Union +policy has been, and remains, a painful but a quite inevitable +necessity. It is sound, now and for all time." The cynical pessimist, on +the other hand, admits the errors of past policy, but says frankly that +it is too late to change. "We have gone too far, raised passions we +cannot allay." I shall not try further to confute the honest pessimist. +The preceding chapters have been written in vain if they do not shatter +the theory of original sin. And to the cynical pessimist, who is a +reincarnation of our old friend Fitzgibbon (for that clear-headed +statesman frankly imputed original sin to the conquerors of Ireland, as +well as to the conquered), I would only say: "Use your common sense." +These panics over the vagaries and excesses of an Irish Parliament, +always groundless, are beginning to look highly ridiculous. In 1893, +when the last Home Rule Bill was being discussed, a Franco-Irish +alliance was the fear. Now it is the other way, and the _Spectator_ has +been writing solemn articles to warn its readers that Mr. Dillon, in a +speech on foreign policy, has shown ominous signs of hostility to +France. In the election of January, 1910, an ex-Cabinet Minister +informed the public that Home Rule meant the presence of a German fleet +in Belfast Lough--at whose invitation he did not explain, though he +probably did not intend to insult Ulster. This wild talk has not even +the merit of a strategical foundation. It belongs to another age. +Ireland has neither a fleet nor the will or money to build one. Our +fleet, in which large numbers of Irishmen serve, guarantees the security +of New Zealand, and if it cannot maintain the command of home waters, +including St. George's Channel, our situation is desperate, whether +Ireland is friendly or hostile. We guarantee the independent existence +of the kingdom of Belgium, which is as near as Ireland, with military +liabilities vastly more serious than any which Ireland could conceivably +entail; but we do not claim, as a consequence, to control the Executive +of Belgium and remove her Parliament to Westminster, in order to be +quite sure that the Belgians are not intriguing against us with Germany. +Germany, our alarmists fear, is to invade Ireland, and Ireland is to +greet the invaders with open arms. The same prophecy was being made not +more than three years ago of the South African Dutch. After asking for a +century and a half to manage her own affairs, the Irish are not likely +to ask to be ruled by Germans. The German strategists are men of common +sense. If they were fortunate enough to gain the command of the sea, +they could make no worse mistake than to dissipate their energies on +Ireland. + +Perhaps it is a waste of time to attempt to destroy these foolish myths. +Let those that are sceptical about the effect of Home Rule in producing +friendlier feelings between Ireland and Great Britain consider in a +reasonable spirit the commonplace question of mutual interests. What is +the really practical significance of Ireland's proximity to England? +This, that their material interests are indissociably intertwined. If it +is "safe," as the phrase goes, to entrust Australia with Home Rule, +surely it is safer still to entrust Ireland with it. Has Ireland +anything to gain by separation? Clearly nothing. Has she anything to +lose? Much. Most of her trade is with Great Britain. British credit is +of enormous value to her. The Imperial forces are of less proportionate +value to her because her external trade is small; but she willingly +supplies a large and important part of their personnel; she shares in +their glorious traditions; and if it is a case of protection for her +trade, she will get no protection elsewhere. + +How idle are these calculations of profit and loss! The truth is that +Ireland has taken her full share in winning and populating the Empire. +The result is hers as much as Britain's. Mr. Redmond spoke for his +countrymen last May[39] in saying: "We, as Irishmen, are not prepared to +surrender our share in the heritage [that is, the British Empire] which +our fathers created." That is sound sentiment and sound sense. It is the +view taken by the Colonies, where Irishmen are known, respected, and +understood, and where the support for Home Rule, based on personal +experience of its blessings, has been, and remains, consistent and +strong. Indeed, we miss the significance of that support if we do not +realize that Irish Home Rule is an indispensable preliminary to the +closer union of the various parts of the Empire. Let us add the wider +generalization that it is an indispensable preliminary to the closer +union of all the English-speaking races. It may be fairly computed that +a fifth of the present white population of the United States is of Irish +blood.[40] American opinion, as a whole, so far as it is directed +towards Ireland and away from a host of absorbing domestic problems, is +favourable to Home Rule. Irish-American opinion has never swerved, +although it has become more sober, as the material condition of Ireland +has improved, and the interests of Irish-Americans themselves have +become more closely identified with those of their adopted country. +Fenianism is altogether extinct. The extreme claim for the total +separation of Ireland from Great Britain is now no more than a +sentimental survival among a handful of the older men, of the fierce +hatreds provoked by the miseries and horrors of an era which has passed +away.[41] Even Mr. Patrick Ford and the _Irish World_ have moderated +their tone, and where that tone is still inflammatory it is not +representative of Irish-American opinion. I have studied with a good +deal of care the columns of that journal for some months back, smiling +over the imaginary terrors of the nervous people on this side of the +Atlantic who are taught by their party Press to believe that Mr. Patrick +Ford is going to dynamite them in their beds. Any liberal-minded student +of history and human nature would pronounce the whole propaganda +perfectly harmless. But the sane instinct that Ireland should have a +local autonomy of her own, an instinct common to the whole brotherhood +of nations which have sprung from these shores, lasts undiminished and +takes shape, quite rightly and naturally, as it takes shape in the +Colonies, in financial support of the Nationalist party in Ireland. +Anti-British sentiment in the United States, once a grave international +danger, is that no longer; but it does still represent an obstacle to +the complete realization of an ideal which all patriotic men should aim +at: the formation of indestructible bonds of friendship between Great +Britain and the United States. Nor must it be forgotten that the calm +and reasonable character of Irish-American opinion is due in a large +degree to confidence in the ultimate success of the constitutional +movement here for Home Rule. Every successive defeat of that policy +tends to embitter feeling in America. + +Oh, for an hour of intelligent politics! The old choice is before us--to +make the best or the worst of the state of opinion in America; to +disinter from ancient files of the _Irish World_ sentences calculated to +inflame an ignorant British audience; or to say in sensible and manly +terms: "The situation is more favourable than it has been for a century +past for the settlement of just Irish claims." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[39] At Woodford, May 27, 1911. + +[40] This is a very general statement. No figures exist for an accurate +computation. The Census of 1910 gives the total population of the United +States, white and coloured, as 91,272,266, of whom nearly 9,000,000 are +negroes. The figures about countries of origin are not yet available. +The statistical abstract of the United States (1908) gives the total +number of immigrants from Ireland from 1821 to 1908 as 4,168,747 (the +large majority of whom must have been of marriageable age), but does not +estimate the subsequent increase by marriage, and takes no account of +the immigration prior to 1821, which was very large, especially in the +period preceding the Revolutionary War of 1775-1782. At the Census of +1900 Irishmen actually _born in Ireland_ and then resident in the United +States are stated to have been 1,618,567, as compared with 93,682 from +Wales, 233,977 from Scotland, and 842,078 from England. + +[41] I am especially indebted for information to Mr. Hugh Sutherland, of +the _North American_ (Philadelphia), to Mr. Rodman Wanamaker, of the +same city, to Mr. Frank Sanborn, of Concord, and to Mr. John +O'Callaghan, of Boston. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +IRELAND TO-DAY + + +Why does present-day Ireland need Home Rule? I put the question in that +way because I am not going to question the fact that she wants Home +Rule. She has always said she wanted it: she says so still, and that is +enough. There is a powerful minority in Ireland against Home Rule. There +always have been minorities more or less powerful against Home Rule in +all ages and places. That does not alter the national character of the +claim. If once we go behind the voice of a people, constitutionally +expressed, we court endless risks. National leaders have always been +called "agitators," which, of course, they are, and non-representative +agitators, which they are not. To deny the genuineness of a claim which +is feared is an invariable feature of oppositions to measures of Home +Rule. The denial is generally irreconcilable with the case made for the +dangers of Home Rule, and that contradiction in its most glaring shape +characterizes the present opposition to the Irish claims. But Unionists +should elect to stand on one ground or the other, and for my part I +shall assume that the large majority of Irishmen, as shown by successive +electoral votes, want Home Rule. Precisely what form of Home Rule they +want is another and by no means so clear a matter, on which I shall +presently have a word to say. But they want, in the general sense, to +manage their own local affairs. Her best friends would despair of +Ireland if that was not her desire. + +What, in the Colonies, Ireland, and everywhere else, is the deep +spiritual impulse behind the desire for Home Rule? A craving for +self-expression, self-reliance. Home Rule is synonymous with the growth +of independent character. That is why Ireland instinctively and +passionately wants it, that is why she needs it, and that is why Great +Britain, for her own sake, and Ireland's, should give it. If that is not +the reason, it is idle to talk about Home Rule; but it is the reason. + +Character is the very foundation of national prosperity and happiness, +and we are blind to the facts of history if we cannot discern the +profound effect of political institutions upon human character. +Self-government in the community corresponds to free will in the +individual. I am far from saying that self-government is everything. But +I do say that it is the master-key. It is fundamental. Give +responsibility and you will create responsibility. Through political +responsibility only can a society brace itself to organized effort, find +out its own opinions on its own needs, test its own capabilities, and +elicit the will, the brains, and the hands to solve its own problems. + +These are such commonplaces in every other part of the Empire, which has +an individual life of its own, that men smile if you suggest the +contrary. But ordinary reasoning is rarely applied to Ireland. There +"good government" has been held to be "a substitute for self-government" +and a régime of benevolent paternalism to be a full and sufficient +compensation for cruel coercion and crueller neglect. In this paternal +régime it is impossible to include those great measures of land reform +passed in 1870, 1881, and 1887, which revolutionized the agrarian +system, and converted the cottier tenant into a judicial tenant.[42] +Although these measures, which fall into an altogether different +category from the subsequent policy of State-aided Land Purchase,[43] +were inspired by an earnest desire to mitigate frightful social evils, +they cannot be regarded as voluntary. They were extorted, shocking as +the reflection is, by crime and violence, by the spectacle of a whole +social order visibly collapsing, and by the desperate efforts of a +handful of Irishmen, determined at any cost, by whatever means, to save +the bodies and souls of their countrymen. The methods of these men were +destructive. They were constructive only in this, the highest sense of +all, that while battling against concrete economic evils, they sought to +obtain for Ireland the right to control her own affairs and cure her own +economic evils. It is often said that Parnell gave a tremendous impetus +to the Home Rule movement by harnessing it to the land question. True; +but what a strange way of expressing a truth! Anywhere outside Ireland +men would say that self-government was the best road to the reform of a +bad land system. + +With the tranquillity which was slowly restored by the alterations in +agrarian tenure and the immense economic relief derived from the +lowering of rents, a change came over the spirit of British +statesmanship. With the exception of the short Liberal Government of +1892-1895, which failed for the second time to carry Home Rule, +Conservatives were responsible for Ireland from 1886 to 1905. They felt +that opposition to Home Rule could be justified only by a strenuous +policy of amelioration in Ireland, and the efforts of three Chief +Secretaries, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Gerald Balfour, and Mr. George +Wyndham--efforts often made in the teeth of bitter opposition from Irish +Unionists--to carry out this policy, were sincere and earnest. The Act +of 1891, with its grants for light railways, its additional facilities +for Land Purchase, and its establishment of the Congested Districts +Board to deal with the terrible poverty of certain districts in the +west, may be said to mark the beginning of the new era. The Land Act of +1896 was another step, and the establishment of a complete system of +Irish Local Government in 1898 another. In the following year came the +Act setting up the Department of Agriculture, and in 1903 Mr. Wyndham's +great Land Purchase Act. Then came the strange "devolutionist" episode, +arising from the appointment of Sir Antony (now Lord) MacDonnell to the +post of Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, the Government who selected +him being fully aware that he was in favour of some change in the +government of Ireland. He entered into relations with a group of +prominent Irishmen, headed by Lord Dunraven, who were thinking out a +scheme for a mild measure of devolution. When the fact became known, +there was an explosion of anger among Irish Unionists. Mr. Wyndham, who +had been a popular Chief Secretary, resigned office, and was succeeded +by Mr. Walter Long; perhaps the most dramatic and significant example in +modern times of the policy of governing Ireland in deliberate and direct +defiance of the wishes and sentiments of the vast majority of Irishmen. + +The Liberal Government of 1906, coming into office under a pledge to +refrain from a full Home Rule measure, confined itself to the +introduction of the Irish Council Bill of 1907, which, rightly, in my +opinion, was repudiated by the Irish people, and accordingly dropped. +But the Government was in general sympathy with Nationalist Ireland, so +that a number of useful measures were added to the statute books; for +example, the Labourers (Ireland) Act of 1906, empowering Rural Councils, +with the aid of State credit, to acquire land for labourers' plots and +cottages; the Town Tenants Act, extending the principle of compensation +for improvements at the termination of a lease to the urban tenant; the +very important Irish Universities Act of 1908, which gave to Roman +Catholics facilities for higher education which they had lacked for +centuries, and, lastly, Mr. Birrell's Land Act of 1909, which was +designed partly to meet the imminent collapse of Land Purchase, owing to +the failure of the financial arrangements made under the Wyndham Act of +1903, and partly to extend the powers of the Congested Districts Board. + +To these measures must be added another which was not confined to +Ireland, but which has exercised a most potent influence, and by no +means a wholly beneficial influence, on Irish life and Irish finance, +the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, under which the enormous sum of two +and three-quarter millions is now allocated to Ireland.[44] + +The best that can be said of the legislation since 1881 is that it has +laid the foundations of a new social order. Agrarian crime has +disappeared and material prosperity has greatly increased. Government in +the interests of a small favoured class has almost vanished. It survives +to this extent, that civil administration and patronage, which are +still, be it remembered, removed from popular control, remain, in fact, +in Protestant and Unionist hands to an extent altogether +disproportionate to the distribution of creeds, classes, and opinions. +And, of course, in the major matter of Home Rule, the power of the +Unionist minority, as represented in the Commons by seventeen out of the +thirty-three Ulster representatives, and in the House of Lords by an +overwhelming preponderance of Unionist peers, is still enormous. But +within Ireland itself, central administration apart, the exceptional +privileges and exceptional political power of Protestants and landlords, +which lasted almost intact until forty years ago, is now non-existent. +The Disestablishment Act of 1869, while immensely enhancing the moral +power and religious zeal of the Church of Ireland, and even +strengthening its financial position, took away its political monopoly, +and through the final abolition of tithes, its baneful and irritating +interference with economic life. The successive measures of land +legislation, culminating in the transfer of half the land of Ireland +from landlord to peasant proprietorship, and the Local Government Act of +1898, surrendering at a stroke the whole local administration of the +country into popular control, destroyed the exceptional political +privileges of the landlord class. + +Ascendancy, then, in the old sense, is a thing of the past. What has +taken its place? What is the ruling power within Ireland? Is it a public +opinion derived from the vital contact of ideas and interests, and +taking shape in a healthy and normal distribution of parties? Is thought +free? Has merit its reward? Is there any unity of national purpose, +transcending party divisions? If it were necessary to give a categorical +"Yes" or "No" to these questions, the answer would be "No." Sane +energizing politics, and the sovereign ascendancy of a sane public +opinion, are absolutely unattainable in Ireland or anywhere else without +Home Rule. It is all the more to the credit of Irishmen that, in the +face of stupendous difficulties, and in a marvellously short space of +time since the attainment, barely twenty years ago, of the elementary +conditions of social peace, they have gone so far as they have gone +towards the creation of a self-reliant, independently thinking, united +Ireland. The whole weight of Imperial authority has been thrown into the +scale against them. Whatever the mood and policy of British upholders of +the Union, whether sympathetic or hostile, wise or foolish, their +constant message to both parties in Ireland has been, "Look to us. Trust +in us. You are divided. We are umpires," and the reader will no doubt +remember that the theory of "umpirage" was used in exactly the same way +in the Colonies, notably in Upper Canada,[45] to thwart the tendency +towards a reconciliation of creeds, races, and classes. Fortunately, +there have been Irishmen who have laboured to counteract the effects of +this enervating policy, and to reconstruct, by native effort from +within, a new Ireland on the ruins of the old. Whether or not they have +consciously aimed at Home Rule matters not a particle. Some have, some +have not; but the result of these efforts has been the same, to pull +Irishmen together and to begin the creation of a genuinely national +atmosphere. + +It is not part of my scheme to describe in detail the various movements, +agricultural, industrial, economic, literary, political, which in the +last twenty years have contributed to this national revival. Some have a +world-wide fame, all have been excellently described at one time or +another by writers of talent and insight.[46] My purpose is to note +their characteristics and progress, and to estimate their political +significance. In the first place it must be remembered that some of the +most important of the modern legislative measures have been initiated +and promoted by Home Rulers and Unionists, Roman Catholics and +Protestants, acting in friendly co-operation and throwing aside their +political and religious antagonisms. Such was the origin of the great +Land Purchase Act of 1903, which Mr. Wyndham drafted on the basis of an +agreement reached at a friendly conference of landlords and +representatives of tenants. But a far more interesting and hopeful +instance of co-operation had taken place seven years earlier. One of the +very few really constructive measures of the last twenty years, the Act +of 1899 for setting up the Department of Agriculture and Technical +Instruction, was the direct outcome of the recommendations of the Recess +Committee brought together in 1895 and 1896 by Sir Horace Plunkett; a +Committee containing Nationalist and Unionist Members of the House of +Commons, Tory and Liberal Unionist peers, Ulster captains of industry, +the Grand Master of the Belfast Orangemen, and an eminent Jesuit.[47] In +its reunion of men divided by bitter feuds, it was just the kind of +Conference that assembled in Durban in 1908, six years after a +devastating war, to discuss and to create the framework of South African +Union. That Conference was the natural outcome of the grant of Home Rule +to the defeated Boer States. The Irish Conference, succeeding a land-war +far more destructive and demoralizing, was brought together in spite of +the absence of Home Rule, and the prejudice it had to overcome,[48] is a +measure of the fantastically abnormal conditions produced by the denial +of self-government. There lay Ireland, an island with a rich soil and a +clever population, yet terribly backward, far behind England, far behind +all the progressive nations of Europe in agriculture and industry, her +population declining, her land passing out of cultivation,[49] her +strongest sons and daughters hurrying away to enrich with their wits and +sinews distant lands. There, in short, lay a country groaning for +intelligent development by the concentrated energies of her own people. + +"We have in Ireland," runs the first paragraph of the Report of the +Committee, "a poor country practically without manufactures--except for +the linen and shipbuilding of the north, and the brewing and distilling +of Dublin--dependent upon agriculture, with its soil imperfectly tilled, +its area under cultivation decreasing, and a diminishing population +without industrial habits or technical skill." + +The leeway to make up was enormous. To go no farther back than the +institution of the Penal Code and the deliberate destruction of the +woollen industry, two centuries of callous repression at the hands of an +external authority had maimed and exhausted the country whose condition +the Committee had met to consider. These facts the members of the +Committee frankly recognized in that part of the Report which is +entitled with gentle irony "Past Action of the State." Here, then, was a +purely Irish problem, intimately concerning every Irishman, poor or +rich, Roman Catholic or Protestant, a problem of which Great Britain, +though responsible both for its existence and its solution, knew and +cared little. The really strange thing is, not that representative +Irishmen should have met together to consider and prescribe for the +deplorable economic condition of their country, but that they should not +also, like the South African Conference, have drafted a Constitution for +Ireland, on the sound ground that a system of government which had +promoted and sustained the evils they described could never, with the +best will in the world, become a good government for Ireland. Yet for a +brief space of time these men actually had Home Rule, and by virtue of +that privilege they did better work for Ireland in six months than had +been done in two centuries. + +What is more, they used the Home Rule principle in their recommendations +for the establishment of a Department of Agriculture and Technical +Instruction. "We think it essential," they reported on p. 101, "that the +new Department should be in touch with the public opinion of the classes +whom its work concerns, and should rely largely for its success upon +their active assistance and co-operation." Its chief, they added, should +be a Minister directly responsible to Parliament, and on p. 103 they +advocated a Consultative Council, whose functions should be--(1) To keep +the Department in direct touch with the public opinion of those classes +whom the work of the Ministry concerns; and (2) to distribute some of +the responsibility for administration amongst those classes. Now these, +in Ireland, were revolutionary proposals. The idea of any part of the +Government "being in touch with public opinion" was wholly new. The idea +of "distributing responsibility for administration" amongst the subjects +of administration was startlingly novel. Ireland, both before and after +the Union, had always been governed on a diametrically opposite +principle. Since the Union, when Irish departmental Ministers, never +responsible to the people, disappeared, not one of the host of nominated +Irish Boards was legally amenable to Irish public opinion. Not one had +a separate Minister responsible even to the Parliament at Westminster, +which was not an Irish Parliament. _A fortiori_, not one relied on the +co-operation and advice of the classes for whose benefit it was supposed +to exist. + +Proposed, nevertheless, by a group of representative Irishmen, the +scheme for a democratically constituted Department of Agriculture passed +smoothly into law as soon as the machinery for ascertaining public +opinion on the matters at issue had been brought into existence. Mr. +Gerald Balfour, the Chief Secretary, was engaged at the time upon his +measure for the extension of Local Government to Ireland. This measure +became law in 1898, and the Department Act in 1899. Under that Act, the +duty was laid upon each of the new County Councils of electing two +members to serve upon a Consultative Council of Agriculture, to which a +minority of nominated members was added, and this Council in its turn +elects two-thirds of the members of an Agricultural Board, and supplies +four representatives to a Board of Technical Instruction, which, like +the Council and the Agricultural Board, has a predominantly popular +character.[50] + +At the summit stands the Minister, or Vice-President, as he is called +(for in accordance with ancient custom, the Chief Secretary is nominally +in supreme control of this as of all other Irish Departments), and a +large and efficient staff of permanent officials. He and his staff have +a large centralized authority, but this authority is subject to a +constitutional check in the shape of a veto wielded by the Boards over +the expenditure of the Endowment Fund. What is more important, policy +tends to be shaped in accordance with popular views by the existence of +the Council and the Boards. + +Here, then, is the germ of responsible government. At first sight a +critic might exclaim: "Why, here is democracy pushed to a point unknown +even in Great Britain, where Government Departments are wholly +independent of Local Councils." That is in a limited sense true, and it +is quite arguable that British Departments would be the better for an +infusion of local control. But we must not be misled by a false analogy. +Great Britain reaches the Irish ideal by other means. Her departmental +Ministers are directly responsible to a predominantly British House of +Commons where a hostile vote can at any moment eject them from +office.[51] There is no Irish Parliament, nor any kind of predominantly +Irish body which is vested with the same power. The Vice-President of +the Irish Department of Agriculture, an institution concerned +exclusively with Irish affairs, whether he sits in the House of Commons +or not (and for two years Mr. T.W. Russell had not a seat at +Westminster), could not be ejected from office even by a unanimous vote +of Irish Members of the House, with the moral backing of a unanimous +Irish people.[52] That is one of the anomalous results of the Union, and +it was a recognition, though rather a confused one, of this anomaly, +that inspired the ingenious compromise invented by the Recess Committee +for introducing an element of popular control. But what a light the +compromise throws on the anomaly which evoked it! Is it common sense to +make these elaborate arrangements for promoting an Irish Department on +an Irish popular basis while recoiling in terror from the prospect of +crowning them with a Minister responsible to ah Irish Parliament? The +consequence is that even in this solitary example of an Irish +Department under semi-popular control we see the subtle taint of Crown +Colony Government. Popular opinion, acting indirectly, first through the +Council and then through the Boards, can legally paralyze the Department +by declining to appropriate money in the way it prescribes, while +possessing no legal power to enforce a different policy or change the +personnel of administration. This is only an object-lesson. I hasten to +add that such a paralysis has never taken place, though some acrimonious +controversy, natural enough under the anomalous state of things, has +arisen over the office of Vice-President. There is now only one means by +which Irish opinion can, if it be so disposed, displace the holder of +the office, and that is a thoroughly unreliable and unhealthy means, +namely, through pressure brought to bear by one or other of the Irish +Parliamentary parties upon a newly elected British Ministry.[53] But why +in the world should the British party pendulum determine an important +Irish matter like this? Why, _a fortiori_, should it determine the +appointment to the office of Chief Secretary, the irresponsible Prime +Minister, or, rather the autocrat of Ireland? It is the _reductio ad +absurdum_ of the Union. + +The Department commands a large measure of confidence. It would command +far greater confidence if it were responsible to an Irish Parliament; +but Irishmen are sensible enough to perceive that as long as the Union +lasts, everyone is interested in making the existing system work +smoothly and well. The general policy as laid down in the first +instance, by the first Vice-President, Sir Horace Plunkett, has been +sound and wise;[54] to proceed slowly, while building up a staff of +trained instructors, inspectors, organizers; to devote money and labour +mainly to education, both industrial and agricultural, and to evoke +self-reliance and initiative in the people by, so far as possible, +spending money locally only where a local contribution is raised and a +local scheme prepared. The last aim met with a fine response. Every +County Council in Ireland raises a rate, and has a scheme for +agricultural and technical instruction. I can only enumerate some of the +multifarious functions which the Department evolved for itself or took +over from various other unrelated Boards and concentrated under single +control. It gives instruction in agriculture and rural domestic economy +(horticulture, butter-making, bee-keeping, poultry-keeping, etc.) +through schools, colleges, or agricultural stations under its own +direction, through private schools for both sexes, and through an +extensive system of itinerant courses conducted (in 1909) by 128 trained +instructors. It gives premiums for the breeding of horses, cattle, +asses, poultry, swine. It conducts original research, it experiments in +crops, and, among other things, is slowly resuscitating the depressed +industry of flax-growing, and starting a wholly new industry in the +southern counties, that of early potatoes. It sprays potatoes, +prescribes for the diseases of trees, crops, and stock, advises on +manures and feeding-stuffs, teaches forestry, and gives scholarships at +various colleges for proficiency in agricultural science. On the side of +Technical Instruction it teaches and encourages all manner of small +industries, such as lace-making. It superintends all technical +instruction in secondary schools, and organizes and subsidizes similar +instruction in a multitude of different subjects under schemes prepared +by local authorities, while at the same time carrying on an important +and extensive system of training teachers. It also superintends +sea-fisheries and improves harbours. + +The material results have been great; the moral results perhaps even +greater. Just as we should expect, wherever education goes, and wherever +men work together for economic improvement, unnatural antagonisms of +race and religion tend to disappear. This is not the result of any +direct influence wielded by the Department, which never finds it +necessary to lecture people on the duty of mutual tolerance; it is the +result of common sense and a small experience in Home Rule. High +officials of the Department have informed me that their work, for all +intents and purposes, is unhampered by local religious prejudices. A +spirit of keen and wholesome rivalry permeates the people. County and +Borough Committees in districts almost wholly Roman Catholic, with large +powers of patronage, almost invariably appoint the best men, regardless +of creed and local influence. Anyone who wishes to gain a glimpse of the +real Belfast of the present and the future, as distinguished from the +ugly, bigoted caricature of a great city which some even of its own +citizens perversely insist on displaying to their English friends, a +Belfast as tolerant and generous as it is energetic and progressive, +should visit the magnificent Municipal Technical Institute, where 6,000 +boys and girls, Roman Catholic and Protestant, mix together on equal +terms, and derive the same benefit from an extraordinary variety of +educational courses in a building furnished with lecture-rooms, +laboratories, experimental plant, and gymnasia, of a perfection hardly +to be surpassed in any city of the United Kingdom. + +Here is something grand and fruitful accomplished in eleven years, and +it is the outcome, be it remembered, of original, constructive thought +devoted by Irishmen to the needs of their own country. + +Let us also remember that it represents the application of State-aid to +economic development. But with the utmost caution, and the utmost +efforts to elicit self-help, one may go too far in the direction of +State-aid, and even in this sphere it is by no means certain that +Ireland is free from danger. Let us pass to another movement whose +essence is self-help: I mean the movement for Agricultural Co-operation. +Here again Sir Horace Plunkett was the originator. Indeed, with him and +his able associates and advisers, of whom Lord Monteagle and Mr. R.A. +Anderson, the Secretary of the I.A.O.S., were the first, the twin aims +of self-help and State-aid were combined as they should be, in one big, +harmonious policy. Self-help must, indeed, they held, be antecedent to, +and preparatory for, State-aid. The position confronting them was that +half a million unorganized tenant farmers, for the most part cultivating +excessively small holdings, and just beginning to emerge after +generations of agrarian war from an economic serfdom, were face to face +with the competition of highly organized European countries, and of vast +and rapidly developing territories of North and South America. It was as +far back as 1889 that the first propaganda was begun, and in 1894, a +year before the Recess Committee met, the Irish Agricultural +Organization Society was formed. By unwearied pains and patience, +seemingly hopeless obstacles had been overcome, apathy, ignorance, and +often contemptuous opposition from men of both political parties. For, +with that ruinous pessimism always endemic in countries not politically +free, and exactly paralleled in the Canada described by the Durham +Report of 1839, extremists were inclined to suspect any movement which +drew recruits from both political camps. Nevertheless, the island is now +covered with a network of 886 co-operative societies, creameries, +agricultural societies (for selling implements, foodstuffs, etc.), +credit banks, poultry societies, and other miscellaneous organizations. +The total membership is nearly 100,000, the total turnover nearly two +and a half millions.[55] Nearly half the butter exported from Ireland is +made in the 392 co-operative creameries, and at the other end of the +scale extraordinarily valuable work is done by the 237 agricultural +credit banks, which supply small loans, averaging only £4 apiece, for +strictly productive purposes on a system of mutual credit. + +Moral and material regeneration go together. The aim is to build up a +new rural civilization, to put life, heart, and hope into the monotony +of country life and unite all classes in the strong bonds of sympathy +and interest: a splendid ideal, applicable not to Ireland alone, but to +all countries, and Ireland may truly be said to be pointing the way to +many another country, Great Britain included. + +The Co-operative movement attracts the most intelligent and progressive +elements of the rural population. Strictly non-political itself, it +unites creeds and parties. It is as strong in predominantly Roman +Catholic districts as in predominantly Protestant districts, strongest +of all in Catholic Wexford. Probably two-thirds or more of the +co-operators are Home Rulers, but that only accidentally reflects the +distribution of Irish parties. On the local committees political animus +is unknown. The governing body contains members, lay and clerical, of +all shades of opinion. Step into Plunkett House, that hospitable +headquarters of the Organization Society, and if you have been nurtured +in legends about inextinguishable class and creed antipathies, which are +supposed to render Home Rule impossible and the eternal "umpirage" of +Great Britain inevitable, you will soon learn to marvel that anyone can +be found to propagate them. Here, just because men are working together +in a practical, self-contained, home-ruled organization for the good of +the whole country, you will find liberality, open-mindedness, +brotherhood, and keen, intelligent patriotism from Ulsterman and +Southerners alike. The atmosphere is not political. But you will come +away with a sense of the absurdity, of the insolence, of saying that a +country which can produce and conduct fine movements like this is +_unfit_ for self-government. I should add a word about a new +organization which only came into being this year, and which also has +its home at Plunkett House, the United Irishwomen, whose aim, in their +own words, is to "unite Irishwomen for the social and economic advantage +of Ireland." "They intend to organize the women of all classes in every +rural district in Ireland for social service. These bodies will discuss, +and, if need be, take action upon any and every matter which concerns +the welfare of society in their several localities. So far as women's +knowledge and influence will avail, they will strive for a higher +standard of material comfort and physical well-being in the country +home, a more advanced agricultural economy, and a social existence a +little more in harmony with the intellect and temperament of our +people." Anyone who wants to understand something of the spirit of the +new self-reliant Ireland which is springing up to-day should read the +thrilling little pamphlet (I cannot describe it otherwise) from which I +quote these words, and which introduced the United Irish-women to the +world, with its preface by Father T.A. Finlay, and its essays by Mrs. +Ellice Pilkington, Sir Horace Plunkett, and Mr. George W. Russell, +better known as "Æ," poet, painter, and Editor of the Co-operative +weekly, the _Irish Homestead_. Nor can I leave this part of my subject +without referring to that amazing little journal. No other newspaper in +the world that I know of bears upon it so deep an impress of genius. +There are no "politics," in the Irish sense, in it. It would be +impossible to infer from its pages how the Editor voted. What fascinates +the reader is the shrewd and witty analysis of Irish problems, the high +range of vision which exposes the shortcomings and reveals the +illimitable possibilities of a regenerated Ireland and the ceaseless and +implacable war waged by the Editor upon all pettiness, melancholy, and +pessimism. + +What the Agricultural Organization Society is doing for agriculture the +Industrial Development Associations, formed only in quite recent years, +are doing, in a different way, for the encouragement of Irish +industries. The Associations of Belfast, Cork, and other cities work in +harmony, and meet in an annual All-Ireland Industrial Conference. Their +effort is to secure the concentration of Irish brains and capital on +Irish industrial questions, to promote the sale of Irish goods, both in +Ireland, Great Britain, and foreign countries, and to protect these +goods against piracy and illicit competition.[56] Here again +co-operation for Irish welfare brings together the creeds and races, and +tends to extinguish old bigotries and antipathies. Here again the truth +is recognized that Ireland is a distinct economic entity whose +conditions and needs demand special study from her citizens. In a +country of which that basal truth is recognized it would seem +inexplicable that Protestants and Catholics who meet in committee-rooms +and on platforms to promote, outside Parliament, the common interests of +Ireland, should not unite as one man to demand an Irish Legislature in +which to focus those interests and make them the subjects of direct +legislative enactment, free both from the paternal and the coercive +interference of a country differently situated, and absorbed in its own +affairs. + +I pass from the agricultural and industrial movements to another +powerful factor in the reconstruction of Ireland, namely, the Gaelic +League, founded in 1893, whose success under the Presidency of Dr. +Douglas Hyde in reviving the old national language, culture, and +amusements, is attracting the attention of the world. Fortunately the +League encountered some ridicule at the outset and prospered +proportionately. Some of its work is not above criticism, but few +persons--and none who have the least knowledge of such intellectual +revivals elsewhere--now care to laugh at it. The League is non-political +and non-sectarian. Strange, is it not, that such a movement should have +to emphasize the fact? Strange paradox that in a country which is being +re-born into a consciousness of its own individuality, which is +regaining its own pride and self-respect, recovering its lost literature +and culture, and vibrating to that "iron string, Trust thyself," the +conflict for self-government, that elementary symbol of self-trust, +should still retain enough intestinal bitterness to compel men to label +national movements as non-political and non-sectarian! It would be idle, +of course, to pretend that this national movement, like all others in +Ireland, does not strengthen, especially among the younger generation, +which grows increasingly Nationalist, the sentiment for Home Rule. If it +did not, we should indeed be in the presence of something miraculously +abnormal. + +Meanwhile the Celtic revival does visible good. The language is no +longer a fad; it is an envied accomplishment, a mark of distinction and +education. Wherever it goes, North and South, it obliterates race and +creed distinctions, and all the terrible memories associated with them. +There are Ulstermen of Saxon or Scottish stock in whom the fascination +of Irish art and literature has extirpated every trace of Orangeism and +all implied in it. The language revivifies traditions, as beautiful as +they are glorious, of an Ireland full of high passions and stormy +domestic feuds, but united in sentiment, breeding warriors, poets, +lawgivers, saints, and fertilizing Europe with her missionary genius. +However far those times are, however grim and pitiful the havoc wrought +by the race war, it is nevertheless a fact for thinkers and statesmen +to ponder over, not a phantasy to sneer at, that Celtic Ireland lives. +Anglicization has failed, not because Celts cannot appreciate the +noblest manifestations of English genius in art, letters, science, war, +colonization, but because to repress their own culture and nationality +is at the same time to repress their power of appreciation and +assimilation. Until comparatively recent times, it was only the worst of +English literature and music, the cheapest newspaper twaddle, the +inanest music-hall songs, which penetrated beyond a limited circle of +culture into the life of the country. The revolt against this +sterilizing and belittling side of anglicization is strong and healthy. +It affects all classes. Farmers, labourers, small tradesmen, who had +never conceived the idea of learning for learning's sake, and who had +grown up, thanks to the national system of education, in all but +complete ignorance of their own country's history and literature, spend +time on reading and study and in the practice of the old indigenous +dances and music, which was formerly wasted in idleness or dissipation. +Temperance and social harmony are irresistibly forwarded. Nor is it a +question of a few able men imposing their will on the many, or of an +artificial, State-aided process. Though the language has obtained a +footing in more than a third of the State schools and in the National +University,[57] the motive force behind it comes from the people +themselves. In the country district, with which I am best acquainted, +boys and girls from very poor families are clubbing together to pay +instructors in the Irish language and dances, and the same thing is +going on all over Ireland. + +The brilliant modern school of poets and playwrights who, steeped in the +old Celtic thought and culture, have found for it such an exquisite +vehicle in the English tongue, speak for themselves and are winning +their own way to renown. The only criticism I venture to make is that +some of them are too much inclined to look backward instead of forward, +to idealize the far past rather than to illuminate the future, and to +delineate the deformities of national character produced by ages of +repression, rather than to aid in conjuring into being a virile, normal +nation. + +The name of the last movement to be referred to sums up all the others, +Sinn Fein. Unlike the others, it had a purely political origin, and for +that reason, probably, never made the same progress. Yet the explanation +is simple. In pursuance of the general purpose of inspiring Irishmen to +rely on themselves for their own salvation, economic and spiritual, Sinn +Feiners, like John Mitchel and others in the past, and like the +Hungarian patriots, attacked, with much point and satire, the whole +policy of constitutional and Parliamentary agitation for Home Rule. The +policy, they said, had failed for half a century; it was not only +negative and barren, but positively harmful. Nationalists should refuse +to send Members to Westminster and abide by the consequences. Sensibly +enough, most Irishmen, while recognizing that there was an element of +indisputable and valuable truth in this bold diagnosis, decided that it +was premature to adopt the prescription. Public opinion in Britain was +slowly changing, and confidence existed that this opinion would be +finally converted. If the Sinn Fein alternative meant anything at all, +it meant complete separation, which Ireland does not want, and a final +abandonment of constitutional methods. If another Home Rule Bill were to +fail, Sinn Fein would undoubtedly redouble its strength. Its ideas are +sane and sound. They are at bottom exactly the ideas which actuate every +progressive and spirited community, and which in Ireland animate the +Industrial Development Associations, the Co-operative movement, the +thirst for technical instruction, the Gaelic League, the literary +revival, and the work of the only truly Irish organ of government, the +Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. + +Now, where do we stand? Are the phenomena I have reviewed arguments for +Home Rule or against Home Rule? Do they tend to show that Ireland is +"fitter" now for Home Rule, or that she manages very well without Home +Rule? These are superfluous questions. They are never asked save of +countries obviously designed to govern themselves and obstinately denied +the right. Who would say now of Canada or Australia that they ought to +have solved their economic, agrarian, and religious problems and have +evolved an indigenous literature before they were declared fit for Home +Rule, or--still more unreasonable proposition--that their strenuous +efforts after self-help and internal harmony in the teeth of political +disabilities proved, in so far as they were successful, that external +government was a success? + +Yet these questions were, as a fact, asked of the Colonies, as they are +asked of Ireland. And misgovernment increased, and passions rose, and +blood flowed, while, in the guise of dispassionate psychologists, a +great many narrow, egotistical, and bullying people at home propounded +these arid conundrums. Where is our common sense? The Irish phenomena I +have described arise in spite of the absence of Home Rule, and the +denial of Home Rule sets an absolute and final bar to progress beyond a +certain point. + +That is certain; one cannot live in Ireland with one's eyes and ears +open without realizing it. All social and economic effort, successful as +it is up to a certain point, and strong as its tendency is to promote +nationalist feeling of the noblest kind, has to struggle desperately +against the benumbing influence of abstract "politics." Suspicion comes +from both sides. Both Unionists and Nationalists, for example, at one +time or another have looked askance on the Co-operative movement and on +the Department of Agriculture as being too Nationalist or too Unionist +in tendency. Unionists caused Sir Horace Plunkett to lose his seat in +Parliament in 1905; and Nationalists, though with some constitutional +justification, secured his removal from office in 1907. At this moment +there is friction and suspicion in this particular matter which seems to +the impartial observer to be artificial, and which would not exist, or +would be transmuted into something perfectly harmless, and probably +highly beneficial, were there any normal political life in Ireland and a +central organ of public opinion. As long as Great Britain insists, to +her own infinite inconvenience, upon deciding Irish questions by party +majorities fluctuating from Toryism to Radicalism, and thereby compels +Ireland to send parties to Westminster whose _raison d'être_ is, not to +represent crystallized Irish opinion on Irish domestic questions--that +is at present wholly impossible--but to assert or deny the fundamental +right for Ireland to settle her own domestic questions, so long will +these dislocations continue, to the grave prejudice of Ireland and the +deep discredit of Great Britain. Ireland, like Canada in 1838, has no +organic national life. Apart from the abstract but paramount question of +Home Rule, there are no formed political principles or parties. Such +parties as there are have no relation to the economic life of the +country, and all interests suffer daily in consequence. In a normal +country you would find urban and agricultural interests distinctly +represented, but not in Ireland. We should expect to rind clear-cut +opinions on Tariff Reform and Free Trade. No such opinions exist. On the +other hand, agreement on important industrial and agricultural questions +finds not the smallest reflection in Parliamentary representation. +Education, and other latent issues of burning importance, are not +political issues. A Budget may cause almost universal dissatisfaction, +but it goes through, and the amazing thing is that Unionists complain of +its going through! Most of the Parliamentary elections are uncontested, +though everybody knows that a dozen questions would set up a salutary +ferment of opinion if they were not stifled by the refusal of Home Rule. +The Protestant tenant-farmers of Ulster have identical interests with +those of other Provinces, and have profited largely by the legislation +extorted by Nationalists; but for the most part, though by no means +wholly, they vote Unionist. The two great towns, Dublin and Belfast, are +divided by the most irrational antagonism. Labourers, both rural and +urban, have distinct and important interests; the rural labourers have +no spokesman, the town-labourers only one. It was admitted to me by a +Unionist organizer in Belfast that that city, but for the Home Rule +issue, would probably return four labour members. Nor have parties any +close relation to the distribution of wealth. In the matter of incomes +the prosperous traders of Cork, Limerick, and Waterford are in the same +case as regards taxation with those of Londonderry and Belfast. +Publicans are Unionists in England, Nationalists in Ireland, both in +Ulster and elsewhere. Before the Home Rule issue was raised, Ulster was +largely Liberal. Ulster Liberalism is almost dead. Extreme Socialism may +almost be said to be non-existent in Ireland, yet Ireland is not only +administered on semi-collectivist principles, but continually runs the +risk of being involved in legislation of a Socialistic kind, which, +rightly or wrongly, she heartily dislikes. + +As for the landed aristocracy all over Ireland, their historic alliance +with the intensely democratic tenant-farmers of one small corner of +Ireland, North-East Ulster, against those of all the rest, presented +strange enough features in the past, and is now becoming artificial in +the highest degree. Thanks to Land Purchase, no landed aristocracy in +the world now has a better chance of throwing its wealth and +intelligence into public life for the good of the whole country, of +thinking out problems, of conciliating factions, and of ennobling public +life. The landlord who has sold his land is a free man, far freer than +the English landlord from misgivings caused by divergency of interest. +The opportunity is still there. Will they profit by it? One thing is +essential: they must become Nationalists, and in breathing that phrase, +one is conscious of all the misleading implications and the bitter +historical feuds it suggests. Yet a small but powerful group of +landlords is already leading the way. And the way, even before Home +Rule, in reality is so simple. I speak from close observation. If a man +is a good man, and worthy to represent a constituency, he has only to +declare his belief that he thinks that he and his own fellow-citizens +are fit to govern themselves. Irishmen, especially in Roman Catholic +districts, and, indeed, as an indirect result of Catholicism, have never +lost their belief in aristocracy. When a landlord, or any other +Protestant, comes forward as a Nationalist, he is welcomed. His +religion, whatever it may be, does not count. Parnell and Smith O'Brien +were Protestant landlords. Many of the most trusted popular leaders, +Tone, Robert Emmet, John Mitchel, Isaac Butt, and others in the past +have been Protestants. Ten Members of the present Nationalist party are +Protestants. The Home Rule issue would have lost some of its bitterness +if a Unionist electorate had ever elected a Catholic to Parliament. + +Still, it is unfortunately true that the great bulk of the landlords and +ex-landlords stand aloof from the Home Rule movement. The collateral +result is that far too many of them instinctively stand aloof even from +those purely economic and intellectual movements which tend to make a +living united Ireland out of chaos. The national loss is heavy; the +waste of talent and of driving-power, for Ireland needs driving-power +from her leisured and cultured classes, is melancholy to contemplate. + +Everywhere one sees waste of talent in Ireland. The land abounds in men +with ideas and potentialities waiting for those normal chances of +development which self-governed countries provide. Much of this good +material is crushed under unnatural political tyrannies caused by +ceaseless agitation for and against an abstract aim which should have +been satisfied long ago, so that the energies it absorbed might have +been diverted into practical channels. There is too much moral +cowardice, too little bold, independent thought and action. Nobody knows +what Ireland really is, and of what she is capable. Nobody can know +until she has responsibility for her own fate. + +Local government, where popular opinion is nominally free, suffers from +the absence of free central government. Is it not on the face of it +preposterous to give complete powers of local taxation and +administration to a country while withholding from it, as unsafe and +improper, central co-ordinating control? For any country but Ireland--at +any rate, in the British self-governing Colonies and the United +States--such a policy would be regarded as crazy. Still more +unreasonable is it to complain that local authorities under such a +system spend part of the energy which should be devoted wholly to local +affairs in abstract politics. I forbear from engaging in the statistical +war over the numbers of Catholics and Protestants employed and elected +by local bodies. One must remember, what Unionists sometimes forget, +that Ireland is, broadly speaking, a Roman Catholic country, and that +until thirteen years ago local administration and patronage were almost +exclusively in Protestant hands. We should naturally expect a marked +change; but, with that reminder, I prefer to appeal to the reader's +common sense. Deny national Home Rule, and give local Home Rule. What +would one expect to happen? What would have happened in any Colony? What +would Mr. Arthur Balfour himself have prophesied with certainty in the +case of any other country but Ireland? Why, this, that each little local +body would become an outlet for suppressed agitation, and that national +or anti-national politics, not urgent local necessities, would enter +into local elections and influence the composition of local bodies. And +what would be the further consequence? That numbers of the best local +men would stand aloof or be rejected, and that favouritism would find a +congenial soil. + +In point of fact, Irish local authorities, under the circumstances, are +wonderfully free from these evils, only another proof of the resilience +and vitality of the country under persistent mismanagement. On the whole +they bear comparison with British local authorities in thrift, purity, +and efficiency. None of them has ever yet had a scandal like that of +Poplar. All of them have shown sense and spirit in forwarding sanitation +and technical education. They vary widely, of course, the lowest units +in the scale being the least efficient, as in England. County Councils, +for example, are better than Rural District Councils. On the other hand, +Dublin Corporation, though not so bad as it is sometimes painted, +occasionally sets a very bad example. The standard of efficiency is +higher in the Protestant north than in the Catholic south, the standard +of religious toleration lower. But at bottom it is not a question of +theology, as every well-informed person knows, but a question of +politics. The same causes that keep the landed gentry out of Parliament +keep them, although not to the same degree, out of local politics. +Sometimes this is their own fault, for declining to take part in them; +for many of the Protestant upper class in Nationalist districts obtain +election in spite of being Unionists. Tolerance is slowly growing in +Nationalist, though not, it is to be feared, in Unionist, districts; +again a quite intelligible fact.[58] But when all is said and done, it +is an undeniable fact that Irish local authorities, especially those in +the poverty-stricken west, where all social activities are more +retrograde than elsewhere, are capable of great improvement, and that +improvement can come only by allowing them to concentrate on local +affairs, and obtain the co-operation of all classes and religions. The +very existence of a central Government of which Irishmen were proud +would influence the tone and standard of all minor authorities to the +bottom of the scale. + +Meanwhile, obvious and urgent problems, which no Parliament but an Irish +Parliament can deal with, cry aloud for settlement. The Poor Law, +railways, arterial drainage, afforestation, are questions which I need +only refer to by name, confining myself to the greater issues. +Education, primary and intermediate, is perhaps the greatest. The +present system is almost universally condemned, and its bad results are +recognized. It has got to be reformed. By no possibility can it be +reformed so long as the Union lasts, not only because the Boards, +National and Intermediate, which control education, are composed of +unelected amateurs, but because there is no means of finding out what +the national opinion is as to the course reform is to take. Meanwhile +the children and the country suffer. The Intermediate Board is a purely +examining and prize-giving body, and its system by general agreement is +imperfect. In the National or Primary schools the percentage of average +daily attendance (71.1 per cent.), though slowly improving, is still +very bad.[59] Many of the school-houses are, in the words of the +Commissioners, "mere hovels," unsanitary, leaky, ill-ventilated. The +distribution of schools and funds is chaotic and wasteful. Out of 8,401 +schools (in 1909-10)[60] nearly two hundred have an average daily +attendance of less than fifteen pupils. In 1730 the number is less than +thirty, and it is not only in sparsely inhabited country districts, but +in big towns, that the distribution is bad. The power of the +Commissioners to stop the creation of unduly small schools, and even +semi-bogus establishments which come into being in the great cities, is +imperfect. Another example of the curious mixture of anarchy and +despotism that the system of Irish government presents may be seen in +the Annual Report of the Commissioners. With a mutinous audacity which +would be laughable, if the case were one for laughing, the Commissioners +openly rail at the Treasury for the parsimony of its grants, and, in +order to stir its compassion, paint the condition of Irish education in +black colours. Imagine the various Departmental Ministers in Great +Britain publicly attacking in their Annual Reports the Cabinet of which +they were members! The Treasury, needless to say, is not to blame. It +pays out of the common Imperial purse all but a negligible fraction of +the cost of primary education in Ireland. Nothing is raised by rates, +and only £141,096 (in 1909-10) from voluntary and local sources, as +compared with £1,688,547 from State grants. The Treasury has no +guarantee that this money is well spent; on the contrary, it knows from +the Reports of the Commissioners themselves that a great deal of it is +very badly spent. The business is a comic opera, but it has a tragic +significance for Ireland. Primary education is so bad that a great +number of the pupils are absolutely unfit to receive the expensive and +excellent technical instruction organized by the Department of +Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and contributed to by the +ratepayers. The Belfast Technical Institute, for example, has to go +outside its proper functions, and spend from its too small stock in +providing introductory courses in elementary subjects, so as to equip +children for the reception of higher knowledge.[61] All over the country +the complaint is the same. No machinery whatever exists for +co-ordinating primary, secondary, technical, and University education, +and opportioning funds in an economical and profitable manner. + +Religion is the immediate cause of the trouble; absence of popular +control the fundamental cause. The national system of primary education, +designed originally in 1831 to be undenominational, has become rigidly +denominational. Out of 8,401 primary schools, 2,461 only are attended by +both Protestants and Roman Catholics. The rest are of an exclusively +sectarian character. Even the Protestants do not combine. The Church of +Ireland, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and other smaller +denominations, frequently have small separate schools in the same +parish. The management (save in the model schools, which are attended +only by Protestants) is exclusively sectarian, the local clergyman, +Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland, or Nonconformist having almost +autocratic control over the school. + +This education question has got to be thrashed out by a Home Ruled +Ireland, and the sooner the better. After Home Rule the Treasury grant +will stop, and Ireland will have to raise and apportion the funds +herself, and set her house in order. At whatever sacrifice of religious +scruples, and, it is needless to add that to the Roman Catholic +hierarchy the sacrifice will be the greatest, the Irish people must +control and finance its schools, whether through a central department +alone, or through local authorities as well. There is no reason in the +world why a compromise should not be arrived at which would secure +vastly increased efficiency and leave the teaching of denominational +religion uninjured. Other countries, where the same religions exist side +by side, have attained that compromise. Ireland will be judged by her +success in attaining it. + +Another important question is the treatment of the Congested Districts. +More than a third of Ireland is now under the benevolent jurisdiction of +a despotic Board.[62] So long as its funds are raised from general +Imperial taxation, the inevitable tendency is to shirk the thorough +discussion of this grave subject, to lay the responsibility on Great +Britain, to acquiesce in a policy of extreme paternalism, and to appeal +for higher and higher doles from the Treasury. This cannot go on. +Whoever, in the eyes of Divine Justice, was originally responsible for +the condition of the submerged west, and for the ruin of the evicted +tenants, Ireland, if she wants Home Rule, must shoulder the +responsibility herself, and think out the whole question independently. +The Congested Districts Board has done, and continues to do, good work +in the purchase and resettlement of estates; but even in this sphere +there are wide differences of opinion as to the proper methods and +policy to be employed, especially with regard to the division of +grasslands and the migration of landless men. Its other remedial work +(part of which is now taken over by the Department of Agriculture under +the Land Act of 1909), in encouraging fisheries, industries, and farm +improvements out of State money, is open to criticism on the ground of +its tendency to pauperize and weaken character. I do not care to +pronounce on the controversy, though I think that there is much to be +said for the view that money is best spent by encouraging agricultural +co-operation. Many able and distinguished men have devoted their minds +to the subject, but it is plain that Ireland as a whole has not thought, +and cannot think, the matter out in a responsible spirit, and that the +only way of reaching a truly Irish decision is through an Irish +Parliament, which both raises and votes money for the purpose.[63] The +reinstatement of evicted tenants teems with practical difficulties which +can only be solved in the same way. As long as Great Britain remains +responsible, errors are liable to be made which one day may be deeply +regretted. + +The same observation applies to all future land legislation, not +excepting Land Purchase, which I deal with fully in a later chapter.[64] +That great department of administration must, for financial reasons, be +worked in harmonious consultation with the British Government; but it +ought to be controlled by Ireland, and a free and normal outlet given to +criticisms like those emanating from Mr. William O'Brien, whatever the +intrinsic value of these criticisms. Purchase itself settles nothing +beyond the bare ownership of the land. It leaves the distribution and +use of the land, except in the "resettled" districts, where it was, with +a third or a quarter of the holdings so small as to be classed as +"uneconomic." Ireland is not as yet awake to the possibilities of the +silent revolution proceeding from the erection of a small peasant +proprietorship. The sense of responsibility in these new proprietors +will be quickened and the interests of the whole country forwarded by a +National Parliament. + +Temperance will never be tackled thoroughly but by an Irish Parliament. +All Irishmen are ashamed in their hearts of the encouragement given to +drunkenness by the still grossly excessive number of licensed houses, +which in 1909 was 22,591, and of the National Drink Bill, which in the +same year was £13,310,469,[65] or £3 11d. per head of a population not +rich in this world's goods. Temperance is not really a party or a +sectarian question. All the Churches make noble efforts to forward +reform, and in a rationally governed Ireland reform would be considered +on its merits. At present it is inextricably mixed up with Nationalist +and anti-Nationalist politics, and with irrelevant questions of Imperial +taxation. + +The latest examples of the embarrassment into which Ireland without Home +Rule is liable to drift from the absence of a formed public opinion and +the means to give it effect, are the labour troubles and the National +Insurance scheme. There are signs that English labour is thrusting +forward Irish labour in advance of its own will and in advance of +general Irish opinion. In all labour questions Ireland's position as an +agricultural country is totally different from that of Great Britain. +The same legislation cannot be applicable to both. Ireland should frame +her own. Under present conditions it is impossible to know the +considered judgment of Ireland. There is certainly much opposition to +Insurance, and if all Irishmen thoroughly realized that the scheme might +complicate the finance of Home Rule and involve a greater financial +dependence on Great Britain than exists even at present, they would +study it with still more critical eyes,[66] as they would certainly have +studied the Old Age Pensions scheme with more critical eyes. + +Here I am led naturally to the great and all-embracing questions of +Irish finance and expenditure, which lie behind all the topics already +discussed and many others. The subject is far too important and +interwoven with history to be dealt with otherwise than as an historical +whole, and that course I propose to take in a later part of the book. It +is enough to say that all the arguments for Home Rule are summed up in +the fiscal argument. Every Irishman worth his salt ought to be ashamed +and indignant at the present position. + +The whole machinery of Irish Government, and the whole fiscal system +under which Ireland lives, need to be thoroughly overhauled by Irishmen +in their own interests, and in the interests of Great Britain. Among +many other writers, Mr. Barry O'Brien, in his "Dublin Castle and the +Irish People," Lord Dunraven in "The Outlook in Ireland," and Mr. G.F.H. +Berkeley in a paper contributed to "Home Rule Problems," have lucidly +and wittily described the wonderful collection of sixty-seven +irresponsible and unrelated Boards nominated by the Chief Secretary, or +Lord-Lieutenant, which, with the official services beneath them, +constitute the colonial bureaucracy of Ireland; the extravagance of the +judicial and other salaries, and the total lack of any central control +worthy of the name. By omitting a number of insignificant little +bureaux, the figure 67, according to Mr. Berkeley's classification, may +be reduced to 42, of which 26 are directly under Castle influence, and +the rest either branches of British Departments or directly under the +Treasury. In 1906, out of 1,611 principal official posts, 626 were +obtained purely by nomination, and 766 by a qualifying examination only. +In an able-bodied male population, which we may estimate at a million, +there are reckoned to be about 60,000 persons employed by the State, or +1 in 18. If we add 180,000 Old Age Pensioners, we reach the figure of +nearly a quarter of a million persons, out of a total population of +under four and a half millions, dependent wholly or partially for their +living on the State, exclusive of Army and Navy pensioners; again about +1 in 18. Four millions of money are paid in salaries or pensions to +State employees, and two and three-quarter millions to Old Age +Pensioners. + +It is so easy to make fun about Irish administration that one has to be +cautious not to mistake the nature or exaggerate the dimensions of the +evil. The great defect is that the expenditure is not controlled by +Ireland and has no relation to the revenue derived from Ireland. The +Castle is not the odious institution that it was in the dark days of the +land war; but it is still a foreign, not an Irish institution, working, +like the Government of the most dependent of Crown Colonies, in a world +of its own, with autocratic powers, and immunity from all popular +influence. Beyond the criticism that one religious denomination, the +Church of Ireland, is rather unduly favoured in patronage, there is no +personal complaint against the officials. They are as able, kindly, +hard-working, and courteous as any other officials. Some of the +principal posts are held by men of the highest distinction, who will be +as necessary to the new Government as to the old. It is absolutely +essential, but it will not be easy, to make substantial administrative +economies at the outset, not only from the additional stress of novel +work which will be thrown upon a Home Rule Government, but from the +widespread claims of vested interests. It will require courageous +statesmanship, backed by courageous public opinion, to overhaul a +bureaucracy so old and extensive. Take the police, for example, the +first and most urgent subject for reduction. Adding the Royal Irish +Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police together, we have a +force of no less than 12,000 officers and men, a force twice as numerous +in proportion to population as those of England and Wales, and costing +the huge sum of a million and a half; and this in a country which now is +unusually free from crime, and which at all times has been naturally +less disposed to crime than any part of Great Britain. It is the +forcible maintenance of bad economic conditions that has produced Irish +crime in the past. Irishmen hotly resent that symbol of coercion, the +swollen police force, which is as far removed from their own control as +a foreign army of occupation. On the other hand, the force itself is +composed of Irishmen, and is a considerable, though an unhealthy, +economic factor in the life of the country. It performs some minor +official duties outside the domain of justice; it is efficient, and its +individual members are not unpopular. Reduction will be difficult. But +drastic reduction, at least by a half, must eventually be brought about +if Ireland is to hold up her head in the face of the world. + +The difficulty will extend through all the ramifications of public +expenditure. Ireland, through no fault of her own, against her +persistent protests, has been retained in a position which is +destructive to thrifty instincts. A rain of officials has produced an +unhealthy thirst for the profits of officialdom. No one feels +responsibility for the money spent for national purposes, because no one +in Ireland _is_, in any real sense, responsible. There is no Irish +Budget or Irish Exchequer to make a separate Irish Government logically +defensible. The people are heavily taxed, but, rightly, they do not +connect their taxes with the expenditure going on around them. On the +contrary, their mental habit is to look to Great Britain as the source +of grants, salaries, pensions. + +And the worst of it is that they are now at the point of being +financially dependent on Great Britain. After more than a century of +Union finance, after contributing, all told, over three hundred and +twenty millions of money to the Imperial purse over and above +expenditure in Ireland, they have now ceased to contribute a penny, and +are a little in debt. As we shall see, when I come to a closer +examination of finance, the main factor in producing this result has +been the Old Age Pensions. The application of the British scale, +unmodified, to Ireland is the kind of blunder which the Union +encourages. Ireland, where wages and the standard of living are far +lower than in England, does not need pensions on so high a scale, and +already suffers too much from benevolent paternalism. It was an +unavoidable blunder, given a joint financial system, but it has gravely +compromised Home Rule finance. + +For acquiescing in this and similar grants, beyond the ascertained +taxable resources of the country; for the general deficiency of public +spirit and matured public opinion in Ireland; for the backwardness of +education, temperance legislation, and other important reforms, the +Irish Parliamentary parties cannot be held responsible. They are +abnormal in their composition and aims, and, beyond a certain limited +point, they are powerless, even if they had the will, to promote Irish +policies. That is the pernicious result of an unsatisfied claim for +self-government. It is the same everywhere else. While an agitation for +self-government lasts, a country is stagnant, retrograde, or, like +Ireland, progressive only by dint of extraordinary native exertions. +Read the Durham report on the condition of the Canadas during the long +agitation for Home Rule, and you will recognize the same state of +things. The leaders of the agitation have to concentrate on the abstract +and primary claim for Home Rule, and are reluctant to dissipate their +energies on minor ends. Yet they, too, are liable to irrational and +painful divisions, like that which divides Mr. O'Brien from Mr. Redmond; +symptoms of irritation in the body politic, not of political sanity. +They cannot prove their powers of constructive statesmanship, because +they are not given the power to construct or the responsibility which +evokes statesmanship. The anti-Home Rule partisans degenerate into +violent but equally sincere upholders of a pure negation. + +Many of the able men who belong to both the Irish parties will, it is +to be hoped, soon be finding a far more fruitful and practical field for +their abilities in a free Ireland. But the parties, as such, will +disappear, on condition that the measure of Home Rule given to Ireland +is adequate. On that point I shall have more to say later. If it is +adequate, and Irish politicians are absorbed in vital Irish politics, +the structure of the existing parties falls to pieces, to the immense +advantage both of Ireland--including the Protestant sections of +Ulster--and of Great Britain. At present both parties, divided normally +by a gulf of sentiment, do combine for certain limited purposes of Irish +legislation, but both are, in different degrees and ways, sterile. The +policy of the Nationalist party has been positive in the past, because +it wrung from Parliament the land legislation which saved a perishing +society. It is essentially positive still in that it seeks Home Rule, +which is the condition precedent to practical politics in Ireland. More, +the party is independent, in a sense which can be applied to no other +party in the United Kingdom. Its Members accept no offices or titles, +the ordinary prizes of political life. But they themselves could not +contend that they are truly representative of three-quarters of Ireland +in any other sense than that they are Home Rulers. Half of the wit, +brains, and eloquence of their best men runs to waste. Some of them are +merely nominated by the party machine, to represent, not local needs, +but a paramount principle which the electors insist rightly on setting +above immediate local needs. + +The purpose of the Irish Unionist party in the Commons is purely +negative, to defeat Home Rule. It does not represent North-East Ulster, +or any other fragment of Ireland, in any sense but that. It is +passionately sentimental and absolutely unrepresentative of the +practical, virile genius of Ulster industry. The Irish Unionist peers, +in addition to voicing the same negative, are for the most part the +spokesmen of a small minority of Irishmen in whom the long habit of +upholding landlord interests has begun to outlive the need. + +I have said little directly about the problem of modern Ulster, not +because I underrate its importance, which is very great, but because I +have some hope that my arguments up to this point may be perceived to +have a strong, though indirect, bearing upon it.[67] The religious +question I leave to others, with only these few observations. It is +impossible to make out a historical case for the religious intolerance +of Roman Catholics in Ireland, or a practical case for the likelihood of +a Roman Catholic tyranny in the future. No attempt which can be +described as even plausible has ever been made in either direction. The +late Mr. Lecky, a Unionist historian, and one of the most eminent +thinkers and writers of our time, has nobly vindicated Catholic Ireland, +banishing both the theory and the fear into the domain of myth.[68] + +He has shown, what, indeed, nobody denies, that, from the measures which +provoked the Rebellion of 1641, through the Penal Code, to the middle of +the nineteenth century, intolerance, inspired by supposed political +necessities, and of a ferocity almost unequalled in history, came from +the Protestant colonists. In that brilliant little essay of his +Nationalist youth, "Clerical Influences" (1861), he described the +sectarian animosity which was raging at that period as "the direct and +inevitable consequence of the Union," and wrote as follows: "Much has +been said of the terrific force with which it would rage were the Irish +Parliament restored. We maintain, on the other hand, that no truth is +more clearly stamped upon the page of history, and more distinctly +deducible from the constitution of the human mind, than that a national +feeling is the only check to sectarian passions." He was himself an +anti-Catholic extremist in the sense of holding (with many others) that +"the logical consequences of the doctrines of the Church of Rome would +be fatal to an independent and patriotic policy in any land." But he +insists in the same passage "that nothing is more clear than that in +every land where a healthy national feeling exists, Roman Catholic +politicians are both independent and patriotic." + +He never recanted these opinions (which are confirmed by the subsequent +course of events) even after his conversion to Unionism, but derived his +opposition to Home Rule from a dread of all democratic tendencies,[69] +the only ground on which, if men would be willing to confess the naked +truth, it can be opposed. There the matter ought to rest. If the +doctrines of the Church of Rome are, in fact, inconsistent with +political freedom--I myself pronounce no opinion on that point--it is +plain to the most superficial observer that the Church, as a factor in +politics, stands to lose rather than to gain by Home Rule. British +statesmen have often accepted that view, and have endeavoured to use the +Roman Catholic hierarchy against popular movements, just as they +enlisted its influence to secure the Union. The Roman Catholic laity +have often subsequently rejected what they have considered to be undue +political dictation from the seat of authority in Rome. + +If I may venture an opinion, I believe that both of these mutually +irreconcilable propositions--that Home Rule means Rome Rule, and that +Rome is the enemy to Home Rule--are wrong.[70] Such ludicrous +contradictions only help to destroy the case against trusting a free +Ireland to give religion its legitimate, and no more than legitimate, +position in the State. Ireland is intensely religious, and it would be a +disaster of the first magnitude if the Roman Catholic masses were to +lose faith in their Church. The preservation of that faith depends on +the political Liberalism of the Church. + +Corresponding tolerance will be demanded of Ulster Protestants. At +present passion, not reason, governs the religious side of their +opposition to Home Rule. It is futile to criticize Ulster Unionists for +making the religious argument the spear-head of their attack on Home +Rule. The argument is one which especially appeals to portions of the +British electorate, and the rules of political warfare permit free use +of it. It was pushed beyond the legitimate point, to actual violence, in +the Orange opposition to responsible government in Canada in 1849. And +it has more than once inflamed and embittered Australian politics, as it +inflames the politics of certain English constituencies. But it is +hardly to be conceived that Ulster Unionists really fear Roman Catholic +tyranny. The fear is unmanly and unworthy of them. To anyone who has +lived in an overwhelmingly Catholic district, and seen the complete +tranquillity and safety in which Protestants exercise their religion, it +seems painfully abnormal that a great city like Belfast, with a +population more than two-thirds Protestant, should become hysterical +over Catholic tyranny. It would be physically impossible to enforce any +tyrannical law in Ulster or anywhere else, even if such a law were +proposed, and many leading Protestants from all parts of Ireland have +stated publicly that they have no fear of any such result from Home +Rule.[71] + +"Loyalty" to the Crown is a false issue. Disloyalty to the Crown is a +negligible factor in all parts of Ireland. Loyalty or disloyalty to a +certain political system is the real matter at issue. At the present day +the really serious objections to Home Rule on the part of the leading +Ulster Unionists seem to be economic. They have built up thriving trades +under the Union. They have the closest business connections with Great +Britain, and a mutual fabric of credit. They cherish sincere and +profound apprehensions that their business prosperity will suffer by any +change in the form of government. To scoff at these apprehensions is +absurd and impolitic in the last degree. But to reason against them is +also an almost fruitless labour. Those who feel them vaguely picture an +Irish Parliament composed of Home Rulers and Unionists, in the same +proportion to population as at present, and divided by the same bitter +and demoralizing feuds. But there will be no Home Rulers after Home +Rule, that is to say, if the Home Rule conceded is sufficient. I believe +that Ulster Unionists do not realize either the beneficent +transformation which will follow a change from sentimental to practical +politics in Ireland, as it has followed a similar change in every other +country in the Empire, or the enormous weight which their own fine +qualities and strong economic position will give them in the settlement +of Irish questions. + +Nor do they realize, I venture to think, that any Irish Government, +however composed, will be a patriotic Government pledged and compelled +for its own credit and safety to do its best for the interests of +Ireland. I have never met an Irishman who was not proud of the northern +industries, and it is obvious that the industrial prosperity of the +north is vital to the fiscal and general interests of Ireland, just as +the far more wealthy mining interests of the Rand are vital to the +stability and prosperity of the Transvaal, and were regarded as such and +treated as such by the farmer majority of the Transvaal after the grant +of Home Rule. Those interests have prospered amazingly since, and in +that country, be it remembered, volunteer British corps raised on the +Rand had been the toughest of all the British foes which the peasant +commandos had to meet in a war ended only four years before. + +If the fears of Ulster took any concrete form, it would be easier to +combat them; but they are unformulated, nebulous. Meanwhile, it is hard +to imagine what measure of oppression could possibly be invented by the +most malignant Irish Government which would not recoil like a boomerang +upon those in whose supposed interests it was framed. I shall have to +deal with this point again in discussing taxation, and need here only +remind the reader that Ulster is not a Province, any part of which could +possibly be injured by any form of taxation which did not hit other +Provinces equally. + +It is the belief of Ulster Unionists that their prosperity depends on +the maintenance of the Union, but the belief rests on no sound +foundation. Rural emigration from Ulster, even from the Protestant +parts, has been as great as from the rest of Ireland.[72] It is easy to +point to a fall in stocks when the Home Rule issue is uppermost, but +such phenomena occur in the case of big changes of government in any +country. They merely reflect the fact that certain moneyed interests do, +in fact, fear a change of government, and whether those fears are +irrational or not, the effect is the same. It is an historical fact, on +the other hand, that political freedom in a white country, in the long +run invariably promotes industrial expansion and financial confidence. +Canada is one remarkable example, Australia is another. The Balkan +States are others. Not that I wish to push the colonial example to +extremes. Vast undeveloped territories impair the analogy to Ireland; +but it is none the less true that when a country with a separate +economic life of its own obtains rulers of its own choice, and gains a +national pride and responsibility, it goes ahead, not backward. + +Intense, indeed, must be the racial prejudice which can cause Ulstermen +to forget the only really glorious memories of their past. Orange +memories are stirring, but they are not glorious beside the traditions +of the Volunteers. The Orange flag is the symbol of conquest, +confiscation, racial and religious ascendancy. It is not noble for +Irishmen to celebrate annually a battle in which Ireland was defeated, +or to taunt their Catholic compatriots with agrarian lawlessness to +which their own forefathers were forced to resort, in order to obtain a +privileged immunity from the same scandalous land laws. Ulstermen +reached spiritual greatness when, like true patriots, they stood for +tolerance, Parliamentary reform, and the unity of Ireland. They fell, +surely, when they consented to style themselves a "garrison" under the +shelter of an absentee Parliament, which, through the enslavement and +degradation of the old Irish Parliament, had driven tens of thousands of +their own race into exile and rebellion. + +They cherish the Imperial tradition, but let them love its sublime and +reject its ignoble side. It is sublime where it stands for liberty; +ignoble--and none knew this better than the Ulster-American +rebels--where it stands for government based on the dissensions of the +governed. + +The verdict of history is that for men in the position of the Ulster +Unionists, the path of honour and patriotism, and the path of true +self-interest, lies in co-operation with their fellow-citizens for the +attainment of political freedom under the Crown. It is not as if they +had to create a tradition. The tradition lives. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[42] See pp. 13-17 and 66-71. + +[43] Dealt with fully in Chapter XIV. + +[44] In 1910-11, £2,408,000 (Treasury Return No. 220, 1911); plus +£225,000 estimated increase owing to removal of Poor Law +disqualification (Answer to Question in House of Commons, February 15, +1911). + +[45] See p. 101. + +[46] See particularly "Ireland in the New Century," Sir Horace Plunkett; +"Contemporary Ireland," E. Paul-Dubois; "The New Ireland," Sydney +Brooks. + +[47] "Report of the Recess Committee," New Edition (Fisher Unwin). + +[48] Colonel Saunderson, for example, the leader of the Irish Unionists +in the Commons, refused publicly to be a member of a committee on which +Mr. Redmond sat. Mr. John Redmond himself wrote that he could not take a +very sanguine view of the Conference, but that he was "unwilling to take +the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful +legislation in Ireland." + +[49] Area under cultivation in 1875, 5,332,813 acres; in 1894, 4,931,011 +acres (in 1899, 4,627,545 acres; in 1900, on a system of classification +dividing arable land more accurately from pasture, there were only +3,100,397 acres arable, and in 1905 the figures were 2,999,082 acres) +(Official Returns). Population in 1841, 8,175,124; in 1851, 6,552,385; +in 1861, 5,798,976; in 1871, 5,412,377; in 1881, 5,174,836; in 1891, +4,704,750; in 1892, 4,633,808; in 1893, 4,607,462; in 1894, 4,589,260; +in 1895, 4,559,936 (in 1901, 4,458,775; in 1905, 4,391,543).--Census +Returns and _Thoms' Directory_. + +[50] _Council of Agriculture_: 68 members elected by County Councils; 84 +appointed by the Department from the various provinces. Total 102. + +_Board of Agriculture_: 8 members elected by Council of Agriculture; 4 +appointed by the Department. Total 12. + +_Board of Technical Instruction_: 10 members appointed by County +Boroughs; 4 elected by Council of Agriculture; 6 appointed by the +various Government Departments; 1 by a joint Committee of Dublin +District Councils. Total 21. + +[51] I am not forgetting Scotland. Her few local departments are +theoretically, but not practically, at the mercy of English votes and +influence. Scotch opinion, broadly speaking, governs Scotch affairs. +Precisely to the extent to which it does not so govern them, is a demand +for Home Rule likely to grow. + +[52] Even the Recess Committee (and we cannot wonder) but dimly grasped +the constitutional position when they laid stress on the necessity for +an Agricultural Minister "directly responsible to Parliament." +Logically, they should have first recommended the establishment of an +Irish Parliament to which the Minister should be responsible. To make +him responsible to the House of Commons was absurd; and a Departmental +Committee of 1907 has, in fact, recommended that the Vice-President +should not have a seat in Parliament, but should remain in his proper +place, Ireland. Meanwhile, the original mistake has caused friction and +controversy. Soon after the Liberal Ministry took office in 1906, Sir +Horace Plunkett, the first Vice-President, as a Unionist, was replaced +by Mr. T.W. Russell, a Home Ruler. On the assumption that such an Office +was Parliamentary, its holder standing or falling with the British +Ministry of the day, the step was quite justifiable, and even necessary. +On the opposite assumption, confirmed by the Departmental Committee, the +step was unjustifiable, that is, on the theory of the Union. An Irish +Parliament alone should have the power of displacing Irish Ministers. + +[53] See footnote, p. 159. + +[54] "Organization and Policy of the Department," Official Pamphlet. + +[55] + +STATISTICS OF THE IRISH AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT TO DECEMBER +31, 1909, WITH NUMBER OF SOCIETIES IN EXISTENCE ON DECEMBER 31, 1910 +(SUPPLIED BY THE I.A.O.S.): + +--------------------------------------------------------------------- +Description. |Number of |Membership.|Paid-up |Loan |Turnover. + |Societies. | |Shares. |Capital. | + |-----------| | | | + |1910.|1909.| | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------------- +Creameries | 392 | 380 | 44,213 | 138,354 | 111,365 | 1,841,400 +Agricultural | 169 | 155 | 16,050 | 6,253 | 40,326 | 112,222 +Credit | 237 | 234 | 18,422 | -- | 56,469 | 57,641 +Poultry | 18 | 18 | 6,152 | 2,292 | 4,026 | 64,342 +Industries | 21 | 21 | 1,375 | 1,267 | 1,450 | 7,666 +Miscellaneous| 37 | 15 | 4,633 | 15,015 | 2,864 | 48,987 +Flax | 9 | 9 | 589 | 482 | 5,796 | 2,286 +Federations | 3 | 3 | 227 | 6,753 | 6,360 | 259,925 +--------------------------------------------------------------------- + | 886 | 835 | 91,661 | 170,416 | 228,656 | 2,394,469 +--------------------------------------------------------------------- + + + +[56] An Irish Trademark has been secured, and has proved of great value +"Irish Weeks," for the furtherance of the sale of Irish products, are +held. The organ of the Association is the _Irish Industrial Journal_, +published weekly in Dublin. + +[57] On December 31, 1909, Irish was taught as an "extra subject" in +3,006 primary schools out of 8,401, and in 161 schools in Irish-speaking +districts in the West a bi-lingual programme of instruction was in force +(Report of Committee of National Education, 1910). Forty-six thousand +pupils passed the test of the inspectors. Irish in 1910 was made a +compulsory subject for matriculation at the National University. + +[58] The election by Nationalist votes of Lord Ashtown, a militant +Unionist peer of the most uncompromising type, in the spring of 1911 to +one of the Galway District Councils is a good recent example of this +tendency. + +[59] Permissive powers exist for County Councils to enforce compulsory +attendance. + +[60] Including 342 convent, 54 monastery, 125 workhouse, and 71 model +schools. + +[61] See "Prospectus of the Municipal Technical Institute, Belfast," +1910-11, pp. 55 and 57-58. Reading, Grammar, and Simple Arithmetic are +taught. + +[62] See Report of the Congested Districts Board, 1909-11. + +[63] See Report of Royal Commission on Congestion in Ireland (Cd. 4097); +especially a Memorandum by Sir Horace Plunkett, published as a separate +pamphlet by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. + +[64] See Chapter XIV. + +[65] Annual Report (1910) of the "Irish Association for the Prevention +of Intemperance." The estimate is that of Dr. Dawson Burns. By the +Licensing (Ireland) Act of 1902, the issue of any new licenses was +prohibited. + +[66] I write before the scheme has been fully discussed in Parliament. + +[67] It is scarcely necessary for me to remind the reader that the word +"Ulster," as used in current political dialectics, is misleading. Part +of Ulster is overwhelmingly Catholic; in part the population is divided +between the two creeds, and in two counties it is overwhelmingly +Protestant. In the whole province the Protestants are in a majority of +150,000, but since a number of Protestants vote Nationalist, the +representation of the province is almost equal, the Unionists holding +seventeen seats out of thirty-three. + +[68] "Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," "Leaders of Public Opinion in +Ireland," "Clerical Influences." + +[69] See "Democracy and Liberty." + +[70] Many Unionists are to be found in the same breath prophesying +Catholic tyranny under Home Rule and averring without any evidence that +clerical influence caused the repudiation in 1907 of the Council Bill, +because it placed education under a semi-popular body. + +[71] "Religious Intolerance under Home Rule: Some Opinions of Leading +Irish Protestants," pamphlet (1911) compiled by J. McVeagh, M.P. + +[72] The Census of 1911 shows that the population of Ireland is still +falling. The province of Leinster, mainly Catholic, alone shows a small +increase, derived from the counties of Dublin (including Dublin City) +and Kildare. In Ulster, Down and Antrim, which include the city of +Belfast, alone show an increase, but not so great as that of County +Dublin. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE + + +I. + +THE ELEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM. + + +It was not only to support the principle of Home Rule for Ireland that I +followed in some detail the growth of the Liberal principle of +government as applied to outlying portions of the British Empire. The +historical circumstances which moulded the form of each individual +Colonial Constitution, the Constitutions themselves, and the +modifications they have subsequently undergone, supply a mass of +material rich in interest and instruction for the makers of an Irish +Constitution. Nor is the analogy academical. Ireland is at this moment +under a form of government unique, so far as I know, in the whole world, +but resembling more closely than anything else that of a British Crown +Colony where the Executive is outside popular control, and the +Legislature is only partially within it; with this additional and +crowning inconvenience, that the Irish Crown Colony can obstruct the +business of the Mother Country. What we have to do is to liberate Great +Britain and to give Ireland a rational Constitution--not pedantically +adhering to any colonial model, but recognizing that, however closely +her past history resembles that of a Colony, Ireland, by her +geographical position, has a closer community of interest with Great +Britain than that of any Colony. + +Three main difficulties have to be contended with: first, that the +system to be overthrown is so ancient, and the prejudice against Home +Rule so inveterate; second, the Irish are not agreed upon any +constructive scheme; third, the confusion in the popular mind between +"Federal" and other systems of Home Rule. + + +A. + +With regard to the first of these obstacles, we have got to make a big +national effort to take a sensible and dispassionate view of the whole +problem. We must cease to regard Ireland as an insubordinate captive, as +a "possession" to be exploited for profit, or as a child to be humoured +and spoiled. All this is _vieux jeu_. It belongs to an utterly +discredited form of so-called Imperialism, which might more fitly be +called Little Englandism, masquerading in the showy trappings of +Bismarckian philosophy. We have gone too far in the "dismemberment" of +our historic Empire, and near enough to the dismemberment of what +remains, to apply this worn-out metaphor to the process of making +Ireland politically free. + +In Ireland we must build on trust, or we build on sand. + +What is best for Ireland will be best for the Empire. + +Let us firmly grasp these principles, or we shall fail. They may be +carried to the extreme point. If it were for Ireland's moral and +material good to become an independent nation, it would be Great +Britain's interest to encourage her to secede and assume the position of +a small State like Belgium, whose independence in our own interests we +guarantee. Since nobody of sense, in or out of Ireland supposes that her +interest lies in that direction, we need not consider the point; but it +is just as well to bear in mind that a prosperous and friendly neighbour +on a footing of independence is better than a discontented and backward +neighbour on a footing of dependence. The corollary is this--that any +restrictions or limitations upon the subordinate Irish Government and +Parliament which are not scientifically designed to secure the easy +working of the whole Imperial machinery, but are the outcome of +suspicion and distrust, will serve only to aggravate existing evils. +When the supreme object of a Home Rule measure is to create a sense of +responsibility in the people to whom it is extended, what could be more +perversely unwise than to accompany the gift with a declaration of the +incompetence of the people to exercise responsibility, and with +restraints designed to prevent them from proving the contrary? + +Centuries of experience have not yet secured general acceptation for +this simple principle. In this domain of thought the tenacity of error +is marvellous, even if we make full allowance for the disturbing effect +on men's minds of India and other coloured dependencies where despotic, +or semi-despotic, systems are in vogue. Since the expansion of England +began in the seventeenth century, it cannot be said that the principle +of trusting white races to manage their own affairs has ever received +the express and conscious sanction of a united British people. It has +been repeatedly repudiated by Governments in the most categorical terms, +and repudiated sometimes to the point of bloodshed. In other cases it +has met with lazy retrospective acquiescence on the discovery that +powers surreptitiously obtained or granted without formal legislation +had not been abused. The Australian Acts of 1850 and 1855 were the first +approach to a spontaneous application of the full principle; but even +then many statesmen were not fully alive to the consequences of their +action, while there was no public interest, and very little +Parliamentary interest, in the fate of these remote dependencies. The +fully developed modern doctrine of comradeship with the great +self-governing Dominions, a doctrine which we may date from the +accession of Mr. Chamberlain to Colonial Secretaryship in 1895, was not +the natural outcome of a belief in self-government, but a sudden and +effusive acceptation of its matured results in certain definite cases. +Irish Home Rule itself had, in the preceding decade, twice been rejected +by the nation. With the first opportunity, after 1895, of testing belief +in the principle, namely, in the Transvaal Constitution of 1905, the +Government failed. Finally, in 1906, when, to redeem that failure, for +the first time in the whole history of the Empire a Cabinet +spontaneously and unreservedly declared its full belief in the +principle, and translated that belief into law, the whole of the +Opposition, representing nearly half the electorate, washed their hands +of the policy, and, if the constitutional means had existed, would, +admittedly, have defeated it, as they had defeated the Home Rule Bills +of 1886 and 1893. The change of national opinion has, I believe, been +considerable; but the circumstances remain ominous for the dispassionate +discussion of the Irish Constitution. Patriotic people can only do their +best to ensure that the grant of Home Rule shall not be nullified by +restrictions and limitations which, if they are designed merely to +appease opposition, are destined to create friction and discontent. + +I am far from implying that restrictions are bad things in themselves. +All Constitutions, whether the sole work of the men who are to live +under them, like that of the United States, or the gift of a Sovereign +State to a dependency, or the joint work of a Sovereign and a dependent +State, contain restrictions designed for the common good. The criterion +of their value is the measure of consent they meet with from those who +have to live under and work the Constitution, and it is that +circumstance which makes it urgent that Irish opinion should be evoked +upon their future Constitution, and that the Irish Nationalist party +should think out its own scheme of Home Rule. The Constitution of the +United States contains many self-imposed restrictions upon the powers +both of the Central and the State Governments, in the interest of +minorities; and nobody accuses the Americans of having insulted +themselves. + +It will be no slur on Ireland, for example, if the most elaborate +safeguards against the oppression of the Protestant minority are +inserted in the Bill, provided that Nationalist Ireland, recognizing the +fears of the minority, spontaneously recommends, or, at any rate, freely +consents to their insertion--a consent which could not, of course, be +expected if their tendency was to derange the functions of Government or +cripple the Legislature. + +On the other hand, it would be a slur on Ireland which she would justly +resent, besides being a highly impolitic step, to deny to the Irish +Executive an important power, such, for example, as the control of its +own police. + + +B. + +It is a grave difficulty that there is no public opinion in Ireland as +to the form of the Irish Constitution. That is an almost inevitable +result of political conditions past and present. Violent intestinal +antagonisms are not favourable to constructive thought. The best men of +a country, working in harmony, are needed to devise a good Constitution, +and if any Irishman could succeed in convening a Conference like that +which created the South African Union, he would be famous and honoured +for ever in the annals of the future Ireland. That Conference, we must +remember, was itself the result of the grants of Home Rule two years +previously, and these grants in their turn were greatly facilitated by +the co-operation of Britons and Dutchmen.[73] Canada, in 1840, is a +warning of the errors made in constructing a Constitution without such +co-operation. Eventually it had to be torn up and refashioned. The best +way of avoiding any such error in Ireland's case is to expel the spirit +of distrust which animated the framers of the Canadian Union Act of +1840. + + +C. + +So much for the spirit in which we should approach the problem, and I +pass to the consideration of the problem itself. What is to be the +framework of Home Rule? I take it for granted that there must, in the +broad sense, be responsible government, that is to say, an Irish +Legislature, with an Irish Cabinet responsible to that Legislature, and, +through the Lord-Lieutenant, to the Crown. So much is common ground with +nearly all advocates of Home Rule, for I take it that there is no +question of reverting to anything in the nature of the abortive Irish +Council Bill of 1907.[74] But agreement upon responsible government does +not carry us far enough. What are to be the relations between the +subordinate Irish Parliament and Government, and the Imperial Parliament +and Government? + +We immediately feel the need of a scientific nomenclature. In popular +parlance, two possible types of Home Rule are recognized--"Federal" and +"Colonial." Both, of course, may be "Colonial," because there are +Colonial Federations as well as Colonial Unitary States. But, +nomenclature apart, the two possible types of Irish Home Rule correspond +to two distinct types of subordinate Constitution. The "Colonial" type +is peculiar to the British Empire, the other is to be found in many +parts of the world--the United States, for example, and Germany, and +Switzerland. + +Let us examine these types a little more closely, confining ourselves as +far as possible to the British Empire, past and present, because within +it we can find nearly all the instruction we need. As I showed in my +sketch of the growth of Colonial Home Rule, all the Colonies now classed +as self-governing, together with the American Colonies before their +independence, were originally unitary States, subordinate to the Crown, +each looking directly to Great Britain, possessing no constitutional +relation with one another, and gradually obtaining their individual +local autonomies under the name of "Responsible Government." New Zealand +and Newfoundland alone have maintained their original individualities, +and their Constitutions, from an historical standpoint, are the best +examples of the first of the two types we are considering. Now for the +Federal type. Very early in the history of the American Colonies (in +1643) the New England group formed amongst themselves a loose +confederation, which was not formally recognized by the British +Government, and which perished in 1684. In the next century the War of +Independence produced the confederation of all the thirteen Colonies, +but this was little more in effect than a very badly contrived alliance +for military purposes, and it was a keen sense of the inadequacy of the +bond that stimulated the construction of the Great Constitution of 1787, +the first Federal Union ever devised by the English-speaking race. All +the States combined to confer certain defined powers upon a Federal +Parliament, to which each sent representatives, and upon a Federal +Executive whose head, the President, all shared in electing. At the same +time, each State preserved its own Constitution and the power to amend +it, with the one broad condition that it must be Republican, and subject +to any limitation upon its powers which the Federal Constitution +imposed. + +Eighty years elapsed before any similar Federal Union was formed by +Colonies within the British Empire. As we have seen, all the various +North American Colonies which received Constitutions in the last quarter +of the eighteenth century, and all the Australasian Colonies similarly +honoured in the nineteenth century, were placed in direct relation to +the British Crown and in isolation from one another. Upper Canada had no +political ties with Lower Canada, Nova Scotia none with New Brunswick, +Victoria none with Tasmania. Several abortive schemes were proposed at +one time or another for the Federation of the North American Colonies, +but the first measure of amalgamation, namely, the union of the two +Canadas in 1840, was a step in the wrong direction, and bore, as I have +shown, a marked resemblance, particularly in the motives which dictated +it, to the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. It was a compulsory +Union, imposed by the Mother Country, and founded on suspicion of the +French. So far from being Federal, it was a clumsy and unworkable +Legislative Union of the two Provinces, which lasted as long as it did +only because the principle of responsible government, established in +1847, covered a multitude of sins. The somewhat similar attempt in +Australia in 1843 to amalgamate the two settlements of Port Phillip, +afterwards Victoria, and New South Wales, at a time when each had +evolved a distinct individuality of its own, was defeated by the +strenuous opposition of the Port Phillip colonists, and revoked in 1850. + +Meanwhile, all aspirations after Federation in the outlying parts of the +Empire were discouraged by the home authorities. The most practical plan +of all, Sir George Grey's great scheme of South African Federation in +1859, was nipped in the bud. Canada eventually led the way. The failure +of the Canadian Union brought about its dissolution in 1867 by the +Provinces concerned, under the sanction of Great Britain (an example of +really sensible "dismemberment"), and their voluntary Federation as +Ontario and Quebec, together with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, under +the collective title of the Dominion of Canada, and the subsequent +inclusion in this Federation of all the North American Provinces with +the exception of Newfoundland. + +Note, at the outset, that this Federation differed from that of the +United States in being founded on the recognition of an organic relation +with an external suzerain authority--an authority which the Americans +had abjured in framing their independent Republic. In the matter of +constitutional relations with Great Britain, the Dominion of Canada now +assumed, in its collective capacity, the position formerly held by each +individual Province, and still held by Newfoundland. Direct relations +between the individual Provinces of the Federation and the Mother +Country practically ceased, and were replaced by a Federal relation with +the Dominion. Provincial Lieutenant-Governors are appointed by the +Dominion Government acting in the name of the Governor-General, not +directly by the British Government,[75] and, although in constitutional +theory the Crown, as in every least fraction of the Empire, is the sole +and immediate source of executive authority, and an indispensable agent +in all legislation, not only in the Dominion, but in the Provinces,[76] +in actual practice the only organic connection left between a Province +and Great Britain is the right of appeal directly to the King in +Council, that is, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, +without the intervention of the Supreme Court of Canada. + +So much for the external relations of the Dominion. In respect to the +domestic relations between the Provinces and the Dominion, the Federal +principle used in Canada is fundamentally the same as that which obtains +in the United States and in every true Federation in the world, whether +Monarchical or Republican, whether self-contained, like the United +States, Germany, and Switzerland, or linked, as in the British Empire, +to a supreme and sovereign Government centred in London. Each Province, +as in every genuine Federation, is an _imperium in imperio_, possessing +a Constitution of its own, and delegating central powers to a Federal +Government. The nature and extent of the powers thus delegated or +reserved, and the character of the Federal Constitution itself, vary +widely in different Federations, but we need not consider these +differences in any detail. Let us remark generally, however, that the +powers of the Canadian Province are much smaller than those of the +American State, and that what lawyers call "the residuary powers"--that +is, all powers not specifically allotted--belong to the Dominion, +whereas in the United States and Switzerland they belong to the State or +Canton. + +The Australian Commonwealth of 1900 came into being in the same way as +the Dominion of Canada, by the voluntary act of the several Colonies +concerned--Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western +Australia, Queensland--under the sanction of the British Crown and +Parliament. New Zealand stood out, and remained, like Newfoundland, a +unitary State directly subordinate to Great Britain. Nor, in the matter +of relations with the Mother Country, were the federating Colonies +merged so completely in the Commonwealth as the Provinces of Canada in +the Dominion. The Canadians had not only to construct the Dominion +Constitution, but new Constitutions for two of the federating +Provinces--Ontario and Quebec--and it was natural, therefore, that they +should identify the Provinces more closely with the Dominion. The +Australians, having to deal with six ready-made State Constitutions, +left them as they were, subject only to the limitations imposed by the +Commonwealth Constitution. One of the results is that the State +Governors are still appointed directly by the British Government, not by +the Commonwealth. This constitutional arrangement, however, has no very +practical significance. The right of appeal direct from a State Court to +the King in Council, without the intervention of the High Court of +Australia, remains, as in Canada, the only direct link between the +individual States and the British Government. + +The Federal tie between the States and the Commonwealth, as defined in +the Act of 1900, is looser than that between the Provinces of Canada and +the Dominion, and bears more resemblance to the relation between a State +and the Federal Government of the United States. As in that country and +in Switzerland, residuary powers rest with the State or Canton +Governments, not with the Federal Government. + +The South African Union of 1909, comprising the Colonies of the Cape of +Good Hope, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony, had a +Federal origin, so to speak, in that the old Colonies agreed to abandon +a great part of their autonomies to a central Government and +Legislature; but the spirit of unity carried them so far as almost to +annul State rights. The powers now retained by the provincial +Legislatures are so small, and the control of the Union Government is so +far-reaching, that the whole system is rightly described as a Union, not +as a Federation. The Provinces, which are really little more than +municipalities, have no longer any relation except in remotest +constitutional theory with the Mother Country, their Administrators are +appointed by the Union, and, unlike the Provinces of Canada and the +States of Australia, they have not even an internal system of +responsible government.[77] No direct appeal lies to the King in Council +from the provincial Courts, which are now, in fact, only "divisions" of +the Supreme Court of South Africa. The Provinces, in short, do not +possess "Constitutions" at all. Their powers can be extinguished without +their individual assent by an Act of the Union Parliament, whereas the +Canadian Dominion has no power to amend either the Dominion or the +Provincial Constitutions, and in Australia constitutional amendments +must be agreed to by the States separately as well as by the +Commonwealth Parliament. But these revolutionary changes in the status +of the old South African Colonies were brought about, let us remember, +by the free consent of the inhabitants of South Africa, after prolonged +deliberation. + +The United States, the Australian Commonwealth, and the Canadian +Dominion are, then, the three genuine Federations which the +English-speaking races have constructed. The two last are included in +the present British Empire, and they stand side by side with the three +unitary Colonies--South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland. The +constitutional relation of each of these five bodies to the Mother +Country is precisely the same, although they differ widely in internal +structure, as in wealth and population. Within each of the two +Federations, as we have seen, there exists a nexus of minor +Constitutions, State or Provincial, which have virtually no relations +with the Mother Country, but are integral parts of the major Federation. + + + +II. + +FEDERAL OR COLONIAL HOME RULE? + + +We are now in a position to pose our main question, and the simplest +course is to pose it in an illustrative form. Broadly speaking, is the +relation between Ireland and Great Britain to resemble that between the +Province of Quebec and the Dominion of Canada, or that between the +Dominion of Canada and the United Kingdom? One might equally well +contrast the relation of Victoria to the Australian Commonwealth with +the relation of New Zealand or Newfoundland to the United Kingdom. I +choose the Canadian illustration because it is more compact and +striking, and because it corresponds more closely to the history and to +the realities of the case. Moreover, Quebec, although she had a no more +stormy domestic history, owing to lack of Home Rule, than Ontario, is +bi-racial, and on that account underwent in 1840 compulsory amalgamation +with her wholly British neighbour, just as Ireland, originally +bi-racial, was forcibly amalgamated with Great Britain in 1800. The +Canadian partners agreed to break this bond, to fashion a better one on +the Federal principle, in the manner vaguely adumbrated by advocates of +the "Federal" principle for Irish Home Rule, and, as regards their +relations with the Mother Country, to pool their interests and accept +representation by the Dominion alone. + +Quebec Home Rule or Dominion Home Rule? Needless to say, these are only +broad types chosen expressly to illustrate two possible types of +relation between Ireland and Great Britain, which I shall henceforth +refer to as "Federal" and "Colonial." There is no reason why we should +not profit in other respects by both examples, nor is there any +possibility of copying either faithfully. + +Both types fulfil the fundamental condition laid down at the beginning +of our discussion--both, that is to say, are consistent with responsible +government in Ireland. Quebec, in its inner working, is a microcosm of +the Dominion, and the Dominion system of responsible government is +almost an exact copy of the unwritten British Constitution. In Quebec +(as in all the Provinces and States of Canada and Australia) there is a +Cabinet, headed by a Prime Minister, composed of Members of the +Legislature, and responsible at once to that Legislature and to the +Lieutenant-Governor as representing the Crown. Ireland, under a similar +system (and, _a fortiori_, if she were put in the position of the +Dominion), would have a Cabinet responsible at once to the Irish +Legislature and to the Lord-Lieutenant representing the Crown. The +parallel is more apposite in the case of the Province of Quebec than in +the case of an Australian State, because, as I noted above, the +provincial Lieutenant-Governor is actually appointed by the Dominion +Government, and is in his turn responsible in the first instance to that +Government, just as the Irish Governor, or Lord-Lieutenant, who, under +Home Rule, will for the first time justify his existence, is, and will +still be, appointed by the British Government. + +But with the possibility of responsible government granted, it must be +confessed that the arguments against "Quebec Home Rule" as a measure of +practical politics at the present moment, are insuperable. In the first +place there is no question in the coming Bill of federalizing the United +Kingdom on the lines of the Dominion of Canada--that is, of constructing +a new Federal Parliament elected by the whole realm, together with new +local Legislatures elected by the various fractions of the realm. +Scottish and Welsh Home Rule are in the air, but they are not practical +issues. English Home Rule is not even in the air. I mean that +Englishmen, whatever their views on the congestion of Parliamentary +business owing to the pressure of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish affairs, +have not seriously considered the idea of a subordinate Legislature +exclusively English, which would be just as essential a feature of a +completely federalized kingdom as subordinate Legislatures exclusively +Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. + +Not that it is essential to the federalization of the United Kingdom +that Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales, should all have separate +Legislature. Any one of these fractions could coalesce with another or +others in a joint Legislature. It would be technically possible, though +highly unreasonable, to go to the extreme of giving Great Britain, +regarded as one Province, a separate Legislature; Ireland, regarded as +another Province, a separate Legislature; and, above these two +subordinate bodies, a new Imperial Parliament representing the whole +realm. Such a dual Federation was nearly coming about in Canada, when +Ontario and Quebec dissolved their Union and resolved to federate. It +became a quadruple Federation, owing to the adhesion of Nova Scotia and +New Brunswick; but in a dual form it would have worked just as well. It +is scarcely necessary to say that the disparity in population, +resources, and power between Ireland and Great Britain render a dual +Federation, which, of course, involves three Legislatures, chimerical. +What I want to insist on is that, whatever subdivisions are adopted, it +is absolutely essential to every Federation that there should be a +division of powers between a central and at least two local +Legislatures--three altogether. That is the minimum. Other things are +also essential, but for the moment we can confine ourselves to the +outstanding requirement. Now, there is no question in the coming Bill of +any such Federation. Later years may see such a development, whether +from pressure of work on the Imperial Parliament or from irresistible +demand for Home Rule from Scotland or Wales, or both, but not next year. +The Bill will contemplate two Parliaments, not three, namely, the +existing Imperial Parliament and the Irish Legislature. There is, +therefore, no question of Federal Home Rule, and the term "Federal," as +applied to Irish Home Rule at the present time, is meaningless. + +Nor can the coming Bill for Ireland make any preparation, technically, +for a general Federation. Morally, as I shall show, it might have an +important effect in stimulating local sentiment, not only in England, +Scotland, and Wales, but in Ireland, towards a general Federation in the +future, but in its mechanical structure it must be not merely +non-Federal, but anti-Federal. One often hears it carelessly propounded +that Irish Home Rule, so devised as to be applicable in later years, if +they so desire, to Scotland, Wales, and England, will give us by smooth +mechanical means a General Federation. This is a fallacy. At one stage +or another, the earliest or the latest, we should have to create a +totally new central Parliament, still elected by the whole people, but +exclusively devoted to Imperial affairs, and wholly exempt from local +business, before we possessed anything in the nature of a Federation. +But, whatever the future has in store, it would be a scandal if Irish +Home Rule were to be hampered or delayed by the existence of Scotch or +Welsh claims, and it is earnestly to be hoped that no action of that +kind will be taken. The case of Ireland is centuries old, and more +urgent than ever. It differs radically from any case that can possibly +be made for Scotland and Wales. + +The Bill, I repeat, must be anti-Federal, centrifugal. In the case of +Ireland we have first to dissolve an unnatural union, and then to revive +an old right to autonomy, before we can reach a healthy Federal Union. +Such, exactly, was the history of Canada. If, in that case, the +dissolution of the Legislative Union and the construction of the Federal +Union were consummated simultaneously in the British North America Act +of 1867, they were nevertheless two distinct phases, and of these two +phases the first, implying the revival of the old separate autonomies, +was the indispensable precursor of Federal Union. This antecedent +recognition of autonomy was not peculiar to Canada. Every Federation in +the world arose in the same way, by the voluntary act of States under +one Crown or suzerainty, but independent of one another, and it is of +the essence of Federalism that this psychological condition should +exist. Compulsory Federation would not last a year. It would indeed be +practicable to federalize the United Kingdom by one Legislative Act, but +the prior right to and fitness for complete Home Rule on the part of +each of the component parts would have to be implicitly recognized. + +It needs only a moment's consideration of Anglo-Irish history to see the +special applicability of the psychological rule to Ireland. The evils of +the Canadian Union, during the twenty-seven years of its duration, are +infinitesimal beside the mischief, moral and material, which have been +caused to both partners by the forcible amalgamation of Great Britain +and Ireland; the waste of indigenous talent, industrial and political; +the dispersion all over the globe of Irishmen; the conversion of friends +into enemies, of peaceable citizens into plotters of treason, of farmers +into criminals, of poets and statesmen into gaolbirds; the check to the +production of wealth and Anglo-Irish commerce; the dislocation and +demoralization of Parliamentary life; and, saddest results of all, the +reactionary effect upon British statesmanship, domestic and Imperial, +and the deterioration of Irish character within Ireland. The voluntary +principle--at any rate, among the English-speaking races--is as +essential to a true Union, like that of the South African Colonies or +that of Scotland and England, as to a Federation. It is a sheer +impossibility to create a perfect, mechanical Union on a basis of hatred +and coercion; witness the strangely anomalous colonial features +surviving in Irish Government--the Lord-Lieutenancy, the separate +administration, and the standing army of police. + +Persons inclined to reckon the advantages, whether of Federation or of +Union, in pounds, shillings, and pence, may regard the psychological +requirement as fanciful. It is not fanciful; on the contrary, it is +related in the clearest way to the concrete facts of the situation. +Before there is any question of Federation Ireland needs to find +herself, to test her own potentialities, to prove independence of +character, thought, and action, and to discover what she can do by her +own unaided will with her own resources. As I endeavoured to show in the +last chapter, these are the true reasons for Home Rule. + +Home Rule is neither a luxury nor a plaything, but a tremendously +exacting duty which must be undertaken by every country conscious of +repression and valuing its self-respect, and which Ireland is praying to +be allowed to undertake. When a people has learnt to understand the +extent of its own powers and limitations, then it can safely and +honourably co-operate on a Federal basis with other peoples, and, in the +interests of efficiency and economy, can delegate to a central +Government, partly of its own choice, functions hitherto locally +exercised. Once more, that is the origin of all true Federations, +British and foreign, in all parts of the world. + +If, then, the Home Rule Bill cannot in legal form be a federating or +unifying measure, it must be one of a precisely opposite character, and +a measure of devolution. It is a proof of the need for a scientific +nomenclature that the word "devolution" has to Irish ears come to mean +something similar in kind to "Federal" Home Rule, but less in degree, +and something different in kind from "Colonial" Home Rule, and +infinitely less in degree. What a tangle of truth and fallacy from the +misuse of a single word! It is associated rightly with the ill-starred +Irish Council Bill of 1907, and it has been universally but wrongly used +to indicate a small measure of local government in contradistinction to +the Home Rule Bills of Mr. Gladstone and, _a fortiori_, to any more +liberal schemes. + +Nevertheless, the problem before us is one of devolution pure and +simple, and the question is, how far is devolution to go? It may go to +the full length of Colonial Home Rule, that is, Ireland may be vested +with the full freedom now enjoyed by a self-governing Colony (for the +grants of Colonial Home Rule were measures of devolution), or it might +at the other extreme take the form of a petty municipal government. By +hypothesis, however, we are precluded from considering any scheme which +does not admit of responsible government in Ireland. That condition +commits us to something in the nature of "Colonial" Home Rule, now +enjoyed by States widely varying in size, wealth, and population, from +the Dominion of Canada, with over seven million inhabitants, to +Newfoundland, with under a quarter of a million inhabitants and very +slender resources. It is worth notice also (to shift our analogy for the +moment) that little Newfoundland, which, owing to divergency of +interest, has declined both federation with the Dominion and union with +any of the constituent parts of the Dominion, subsists happily and +peacefully by the side of her powerful neighbour; and that New Zealand, +for the same reason, prefers to occupy the same independent position by +the side of Australia. + + +III. + +THE EXCLUSION OR RETENTION OF IRISH MEMBERS AT WESTMINSTER.[78] + + +We have discarded the "Federal" solution as wholly impracticable, and +have arrived at the "Colonial" solution. And at this point I feel it +necessary to plead for the reader's patient, if reluctant, attention to +what follows. The solution I suggest is unpopular, mainly, I believe, +because prejudice has so beclouded the issue in the past, and because +for the eighteen years since the last Home Rule Bill, while prejudice +has diminished, the subject of Irish Home Rule has ceased to be studied +with scientific care. + +Where is the crux of the problem? In what provision of the coming Bill +will the difference between Federal Home Rule and Colonial Home Rule +arise? The answer is clear: in the retention or exclusion of Irish +Members at Westminster. No Colony has representatives at Westminster. +The Federal solution, on the other hand, whether it be applied to the +whole Empire or to the United Kingdom alone, involves an exclusively +Federal Parliament unconcerned with State or provincial affairs. That we +have not got. What we have got is an absolutely supreme and sovereign +Parliament which has legal authority, not only over all Imperial affairs +within and without the United Kingdom, but over the minutest local +affairs. Unrepresented though the Colonies are, they can legally be +taxed, coerced, enslaved at any moment by an Act passed by a party +majority in this Parliament. Such measures, though legal, would be +unconstitutional; but, both by law and custom, and in actual daily +practice, Parliament passes and enforces certain Acts affecting the +self-governing Colonies, and wields potential and actual authority of +all-embracing extent over the Empire and over the local affairs of the +United Kingdom. + +When we set up an Irish Legislature, then, we have to contemplate four +different classes of affairs in a descending scale: (1) Affairs of +common interest to the whole Empire; (2) affairs of exclusive interest +to the United Kingdom; (3) affairs exclusively British; (4) affairs +exclusively Irish. + +With regard to (1), the prospects of Imperial Federation do not affect +the Irish issue. It is no doubt illogical and sometimes highly +inconvenient that the British Cabinet and Parliament, representing +British and Irish electors only, should decide matters which deeply +concern the whole Empire, including the self-governing Colonies, but it +is the fact. In the meantime we are securing very effective consultation +with the self-governing Colonies by the method of Imperial Conference. A +Federal Parliament for the whole Empire is a possible though a remote +alternative to that system. Colonial representation in the present +Imperial Parliament is an altogether impracticable alternative. The +suggestion had often been made for the American Colonies at the height +of their discontent, later for Canada as an alternative to the Act of +1791, and in recent times also. The same fallacious idea underlay the +Union of Ireland with Great Britain and her representation in +Parliament, while retaining colonial institutions. At present the +prospects of Imperial Federation seem to be indifferent. On the other +hand, the affection between all branches of our race which is the +indispensable groundwork of Federation becomes visibly stronger, and +will become stronger, provided that we do not revert to the ancient and +discredited policy either of dictating to the Colonies or taking sides +with one or another of the parties within them, provided also that the +Colonies in their growing strength do not dictate to us or take sides +with one or other of our parties. + +But, whatever the prospects of Imperial Federation, so long as the +present situation lasts, there is no reason for giving a self-governing +Ireland more control over Imperial matters affecting the self-governing +Colonies than the self-governing Colonies themselves possess. The +present position is illogical enough; that would be to render it doubly +illogical. Representation of Ireland, therefore, at Westminster, on the +ground that she should take part in settling matters of the widest +Imperial purport, is indefensible. The alternative and much more +effectual method, as with the Colonies, is Conference. + +(2-4) But it is when we come to regard the United Kingdom as a +self-contained entity that the difficulty of retaining Irish Members at +Westminster appears most formidable. If we discard the Federal solution +we must discard it wholeheartedly, not from a pedantic love of logic, +but to avoid real, practical anomalies which might cause the whole +political machine to work even worse than it does at present. From what +I have written, it will be seen at once that to retain the Irish Members +in the House of Commons, while giving Ireland responsible government, +would be to set up a kind of hybrid system, retaining the disadvantages +of the Union without gaining the advantages of Federalism. A Federal +system needs a Federal Parliament, which we have not got, and shall not +get for a long time yet. To introduce into it a quasi-Federal element is +to mix oil with water. + +I state the proposition in this broad way at first in order to push home +the truth that Irish representation at Westminster will involve +anomalies and dangers which, beyond a certain very limited point, cannot +be mitigated. Methods of mitigation I will deal with in a moment. Let me +remark first upon the strange history of this question of Irish +representation at Westminster. Obviously it is the most fundamental +question of all in the matter of Home Rule. The whole structure of the +Bill hangs on it. It affects every provision, and particularly the +financial provisions. Yet Mr. Gladstone went no farther than to call it +an "organic detail," and in popular controversy it is still generally +regarded in that light, or even in a less serious light. As a matter of +history, however, it has proved to be a factor of importance in deciding +the fate of the Home Rule Bills. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone, in proposing to +exclude Irish Members altogether, roused a storm of purely sentimental +opposition. In 1893, in proposing to retain them--first with limited +functions, then on the old terms of complete equality with British +Members--he met with opposition even more formidable, because it was not +merely sentimental, but unanswerably practical. On both occasions Mr. +Chamberlain took a prominent part in the opposition: in 1886 because he +was then a Federalist, advocating "Quebec" Home Rule for Ireland, and +regarding the exclusion of Irish Members from Westminster as +contravening the Federal principle; in 1893 because, having ceased to be +a Home Ruler, he had no difficulty in showing that the retention of +Irish Members, either with full or limited functions, was neither +Federation nor Union, but an unworkable mixture of the two. + +These facts should be a warning to those who trifle thoughtlessly with +what they call "Federal" Home Rule. It was through a desperate desire to +conciliate that Mr. Gladstone caught at the Federal chimera in 1893, and +produced a scheme which he himself could not defend. And it was one of +the very statesmen that he sought to conciliate--a statesman, moreover, +possessing one of the keenest and strongest intellects of the time--who +snatched at the chimera in 1886, and argued it out of existence in 1893. +We Home Rulers do not want a repetition of those events. We want Home +Rule, and if we are to be defeated, let us be defeated on a simple +straightforward issue, not on an indefensible complication of our own +devising. + +Now to details. There are five ways of dealing with the question, and of +these I will take first the four different ways of including Irish +Members in the House of Commons, leaving their total _exclusion_ to the +last. + +1. Inclusion of Irish Members in their full numbers for all +purposes--that is, with a right to vote upon all questions--British, +Irish, and Imperial. [By "full numbers" I mean, not the existing figure +of 103, but numbers fully, and no more than fully, warrantable according +to the latest figures of population--say 70.] + +2. Inclusion in full numbers for limited purposes. + +3. Inclusion in reduced numbers for all purposes. [By "reduced numbers" +I mean in numbers less than population would warrant.] + +4. Inclusion in reduced numbers for limited purposes. + +Now (4) I only set out for symmetry. It has never been proposed by +anybody, and hardly needs notice. + +The three others are alike in two respects--that they leave untouched +the question of representation in the House of Lords, and that they +directly infringe both the Federal principle and the Union principle by +giving representation, both in a unitary and a subordinate Legislature, +to one portion of the realm. + +Let us look at No. 1--inclusion in full numbers for all purposes. This +was Mr. Gladstone's revised proposal of 1893, and it formed part of the +Bill thrown out by the Lords. The number of Irish Members was to have +been 80. But reduction, as Mr. Gladstone admitted, would scarcely affect +the inherent difficulties of inclusion. Nor must it be forgotten that +reduction from 103 to 70 can be justified only by the concession of a +large measure of Home Rule. It is one of the paradoxes of an unnatural +Union that, over-represented as Ireland is, she has not now power enough +to secure her own will. To reduce her numbers, while retaining large +powers over Irish affairs at Westminster, would be unjust. For the time +being I shall defer the consideration of those powers, and argue the +matter on broad principle, assuming that the powers retained in Imperial +hands are small enough to warrant a reduction from 103 to 70. + +Now let us apply our touchstone to this question of inclusion in "full" +numbers. Will it be good for Ireland? Surely not. + +(_a_) It will be bad for Ireland, in the first place, to have her +energies weakened at the outset by having to find two complete sets of +representatives, when she will be in urgent need of all her best men to +do her own work. There is no analogy with Quebec, Victoria, +Massachusetts, or Würtemburg, which had all been accustomed to +self-government before they entered their respective Federations. +Ireland has to find her best men, create her domestic policies, +reconstruct her administration, and the larger the reservoir of talent +she has to draw from the better. When true Federation becomes practical +politics it will be another matter. By that time she will have men to +spare. + +(_b_) More serious objection still, retention in full numbers will, it +is to be feared, tend to counteract the benefits of Home Rule in Ireland +by keeping alive old dissensions and bad political habits. If, after +long and hot controversy, a system is set up under which Great Britain +can still be regarded as a pacificator--half umpire and half +policeman--of what Peel called the "warring sects" of Ireland, it is to +be feared that the Members sent to London may fall into the old +unnatural party divisions; a Protestant minority seeking to revoke or +curtail Home Rule, and a Nationalist majority--paradoxical survival of a +pre-national period--seeking to maintain or enlarge Home Rule. These +unhappy results would react in their turn upon the Irish Legislature, +impairing the value of Home Rule, and making Ireland, as of old, the +cockpit of sectarian and sentimental politics. The same results would +have happened if, simultaneously with the concession of Home Rule to +Canada, Australia and South Africa, these Colonies had been given +representation in the British Parliament. + +(_c_) Whatever the extent of the danger I have indicated, inclusion in +full numbers will tend to keep alive the habit of dependence on Great +Britain for financial aid, a habit so ingrained, through no fault of +Ireland's, that it will be difficult to break if the Parliamentary +leverage is left intact. If ever there was a country which needed, as +far as humanly possible, to be thrown for a time--not necessarily for a +long time--upon its own resources, it is Ireland. Every other +self-governing Colony in the Empire has gone through that bracing and +purifying ordeal, accepting from the Mother Country, without repayment, +only the loan of military and naval defence, and Ireland can imitate +them without dishonour. + +What is bad for Ireland is sure to be bad for Great Britain, too, and +the bad effect in this case is sufficiently apparent. Imagine the result +if Quebec, besides having her own Legislature and her own +representatives in the Dominion Parliament, were to be represented also +in the Ontario Legislature. Ireland, besides controlling her own +affairs, free from British interference, would have a voice in British +affairs, and sometimes a deciding voice. "If you keep the Irish in," +said Mr. John Morley in 1886--and he meant in their full numbers--"they +will be what they have ever been in the past--the arbitrators and +masters of English policy, of English legislative business, and of the +rise and fall of British administrations." That is a rather exaggerated +account of the past, for had it been literally true Ireland would have +had Home Rule long ago; and it was unduly pessimistic about the future, +for it hardly made sufficient allowance for a change in Irish spirit as +a result of Home Rule; but there is a truth in the words which everybody +recognizes and whose recognition is one of the great motive forces +behind Home Rule. Even a total change in Irish sentiments and parties +would not remove the danger, and might intensify it by producing at +Westminster a solid instead of, as at present, a divided, Irish vote. It +would be truer, perhaps, to say what I said above, that retention of +Members would tend to stereotype Irish parties and the mutual antipathy +of Ireland and Great Britain. + +2. Inclusion in full numbers (say 70) for limited purposes. This (with +the figure of 80) was Mr. Gladstone's original proposal of 1893, and it +took the form of a clause known as the "In and Out Clause," which +purported to divide all Parliamentary business into Imperial, Irish, and +non-Irish business, and to give Irish Members the right to vote only on +Imperial and Irish subjects. Mr. Gladstone never disguised his view that +a sound classification was impracticable, and put forward the clause, +frankly, as a tentative scheme for the discussion of the House. Like its +successor, the "Omnes omnia" Clause, it was riddled with criticism, and +it was eventually withdrawn. Without investigating details, the reader +will perceive at once the hopeless confusion arising from an attempt to +inject a tincture of Federalism into a unitary Parliament, forming part +of an unwritten Constitution of great age and infinite delicacy. It is +not merely that it is absolutely impossible to distinguish rigidly +between Imperial, Irish, and British business. The great objection is +that there would be two alternating majorities in an Assembly which is, +and must be, absolutely governed by a party majority, and which, through +that majority, controls the Executive. It "passed the wit of man," said +Mr. Gladstone, to separate in practice the Legislative and Executive +functions in the British Constitution. At present a hostile vote in the +House of Commons overturns the Ministry of the day and changes the whole +British and Imperial administration. A hostile vote, therefore, +determined by the Irish Members, on a question affecting Ireland, such +as the application to Ireland of a British Bill, would seriously +embarrass the Ministry, if it did not overturn it. The log-rolling and +illicit pressure which this state of things would encourage may be +easily imagined. A Ministry might find itself after a General Election +in the position of having a majority for some purposes and not for +others. That was actually the case in 1893, when Mr. Gladstone, with a +majority, including the Irish Nationalists, of only 40, was carrying his +Bill through Parliament. It is actually the case now, in the sense that +if the Irish Nationalists voted with the Opposition, the Ministry would +be defeated. Any change for the better in Irish sentiment towards Great +Britain would _pro tanto_ mitigate the difficulty, but would not remove +it, and might, as I suggested above, increase it, by the creation of a +solid Irish vote. If Great Britain resents the present system, she alone +is to blame. As long as she insists on keeping the Irish Members out of +Ireland, where they ought to be, she thoroughly deserves their tyranny, +and would be wise to get rid of it by the means they suggest. Until they +are given Home Rule, they are not only justified in using their power, +but are bound, in duty and honour, to use it. To reproduce in the Home +Rule Bill, albeit in a modified form, conditions which might lead to the +same results as before would surely be a gratuitous act of unwisdom. + +3. Inclusion in reduced numbers for all purposes. By "reduced numbers" +is meant numbers less than the population of Ireland warrants. For the +sake of argument we may assume the number to be 35, that is, +approximately half the proper proportion; but directly we desert a +scientific principle of allocation, the exact figure we adopt is a +matter of arbitrary choice. + +Mr. Gladstone appears to have contemplated this plan for a brief period +in 1889; but he dropped it. Clearly it cannot be defended on any logical +grounds, but only as a compromise designed, as it avowedly was, to +conciliate British opinion. It would minimize but not remove the +difficulties inherent in No. 1; and so far as it did lessen these +difficulties, the representation given would be impotent and +superfluous. That is why I have taken it last in order of the three +possible methods of inclusion. It raises in the sharpest and clearest +form the important question underlying the whole of the discussion we +have just been through--namely, what are to be the powers delegated to +the Irish Parliament and Executive, and what are to be the powers +reserved to the Imperial Parliament and Executive? + +If the powers reserved are small, it will be possible to justify not +merely a small Irish representation in the House of Commons, but even +under certain conditions the total exclusion of Irish members. Indeed, +if the figure 35 corresponded to the facts of the case, one might as +well abandon these painful efforts to "conciliate British opinion," +accept total exclusion, and substitute Conference for representation. If +the powers reserved are large, full representation in spite of all the +crushing objections to it, will be absolutely necessary, in order to +safeguard Irish interests. Here is the grand dilemma, and it says little +for our common sense as a nation that we should submit to be puzzled and +worried by it any longer. Half the worry arises from the old and +infinitely pernicious habit of regarding Ireland as outside the pale of +political science, of ignoring in her case what Lord Morley has called +the "fundamental probabilities of civil society." Let us break this +habit once and for all and take the logical and politic course of total +exclusion, with its logical and politic accompaniment, a measure of Home +Rule wide enough to justify the absence of Irish representation at +Westminster. That will be found to be the path both of duty and of +safety. + +Let it be clearly understood that lapse of time has not diminished +appreciably the power of the arguments against the inclusion of Irish +Members in the House of Commons. On their merits, these arguments are +still unanswerable, and we had better recognize the fact. Mr. Balfour +said, in 1893, "Those questions" (of representation at Westminster) "are +not capable of solution, and the very fact that they are incapable of +solution affords, in our opinion, a conclusive argument against the +whole scheme, of which one or other of the plans in question must form a +part." Speaking as a Unionist, Mr. Balfour was right, and, as Home +Rulers, we should be wise to remember it. + +Lastly, even if the question of inclusion in the House of Commons were +"capable of solution," as it is not, there would remain the problem +raised by the House of Lords. It is idle to ignore the fact that the +bulk of the Irish peerage, and the Assembly of which it forms part, has +been for a century in consistent and resolute opposition to the views of +the vast majority of Irishmen. The recent curtailment of its powers, +whether a right or a wrong measure in itself, does not make it any the +more suitable as an Upper Chamber, under a Home Rule scheme, for the +decision of important Irish questions reserved for settlement at +Westminster; indeed, the bare proposal is the best imaginable example of +the extraordinary complications which would ensue from the introduction +of a quasi-Federal element into a unitary Constitution. + +Federal Upper Chambers, so far from being hostile to State rights, are +almost invariably framed on the principle of giving disproportionately +large representation to the smaller States. In the United States and +Australia, for example, every State, however small, has an equal number +of Senators. + +It will be clear now that there are two distinct ways of approaching the +question of the framework of Home Rule. One may begin with the nature +and extent of the powers reserved or delegated, and proceed from them to +the inclusion and exclusion of Irish representation at Westminster, or +one may begin with the topic of inclusion or exclusion and proceed from +it to the nature and extent of powers. While premising that we must +trust Ireland and evoke her sense of responsibility, I chose the latter +of the two courses, because I believe it to be on the whole the most +illuminating and trustworthy course. It is also the more logical course, +though I should not have adopted it for that reason alone; and I have +already given, I hope, some good reasons to show that in this matter +logic and policy coincide. Englishmen pride themselves on the lack of +logic which characterizes their slowly evolved institutions, but they +may easily carry that pride to preposterous extremes. Faced now with the +necessity of making a written Constitution which will stand the test of +daily use they would commit the last of innumerable errors in Irish +policy if, with full warning from experience elsewhere, they were to +frame a measure whose unprecedented and unworkable provisions were the +outcome of a distrust of Ireland which it was the ostensible object of +the measure itself to remove. + + +IV. + +IRISH POWERS AND THEIR BEARING ON EXCLUSION. + + +I pass to what I suggest to be the right solution: Total exclusion, as +proposed by Mr. Gladstone in 1886, though he shrank from recommending +what he knew to be its financial corollary. Mr. Bright regarded +exclusion as the "best clause" of a dangerous scheme, and Mr. +Chamberlain has admitted that he attacked it, as he attacked the +proposals for Land Purchase, which he knew to be right, in order to +"kill the Bill."[79] I propose only to recapitulate the merits of +exclusion before dealing with the alleged difficulties of that form of +Home Rule, and in particular with the point on which the controversy +mainly turns--Finance. + +To give Ireland Colonial Home Rule, without representation in London, is +to follow the natural channel of historical development. Ireland was +virtually a Colony, and is treated still in many respects as an inferior +type of Colony, in other respects as a partner in a vicious type of +Union. We cannot improve the Union, and it is, admittedly, a failure. +Let us, then, in broad outline, model her political system on that of a +self-governing Colony. + +History apart, circumstances demand this solution. It is the best +solution for Ireland, because she needs, precisely what the Colonies +needed--full play for her native faculties, full responsibility for the +adjustment of her internal dissensions, for the exploitation, unaided, +of her own resources, and for the settlement of neglected problems +peculiar to herself. As a member of the Imperial family she will gain, +not lose. And the Empire, here as everywhere else, will gain, not lose. + +These ends will be jeopardized if we continue to bind her to the British +Parliament, and restrict her own autonomy accordingly. Reciprocally, we +damage the British Parliament and gratuitously invite friction and +deadlock in the administration either of British or of Imperial affairs, +or both. Of the difficulties raised we can mitigate one only by bringing +another into existence. Endeavouring to minimize them all by reducing +the Irish representation to the lowest point, we either do a gross +injustice to Ireland, by diminishing her control over interests vital to +her, or, by conceding that control, remove the necessity for any +representation at all. Most Irish Unionists would, I believe, prefer +exclusion to retention. One gathers that from the debates of 1893, and +the view is in accordance with the traditional Ulster spirit, and the +spirit generally displayed by powerful minorities threatened with a Home +Rule to which they object on principle. It was the spirit displayed by +the Upper Canadian minority, in 1838-39 (_vide_ p. 101), in threatening +to leave the Empire rather than submit to Home Rule, and by the +Transvaal minority in the lukewarm and divided support given to the +half-baked Constitution of 1905, and in the hearty welcome given to the +full autonomy of 1906. How the Colonists expressed themselves matters +nothing. We must make generous allowance for hot party feeling and old +prejudices. The Canadian minorities did not really mean to call in the +United States, nor does it signify a particle that some of the +Johannesburgers vowed that anything could be borne which freed them from +the interference of a Liberal Government. These opinions are transient +and negligible. The spirit is essentially healthy. Paradox as it may +seem, the uncompromising attitude of Ulster Unionists, as voiced by the +ablest representative they ever had, Colonel Saunderson,[80] is hopeful +for the prospects of Home Rule. They fight doggedly for the Union, but I +believe they would prefer a real Home Rule to a half-measure, and in +making that choice they would show their virility and courage at its +true worth. + +Where are the dangers and difficulties of exclusion? The dangers first. +I believe, from a study of events in the last twenty-five years, that +the strongest opposition to it was founded, not so much upon a +reluctance to give Ireland powers full enough to render needless her +representation at Westminster, but on a jealous desire to keep Irish +Members under surveillance, as a dangerous and intractable body of men +who would hatch mischief against the Empire if they were allowed to +disappear from sight; the same kind of instinct which urged +revolutionary Paris to stop the flight of Louis and to keep him under +lock and key. In the case of Ireland it is possible to understand the +prevalence of this instinct in 1886, though even then it was irrational +enough. But in 1911 we should be ashamed to entertain it. Irish plots +against the Empire have passed into electoral scares, and if they had +not, representation in London would be no safeguard. We should also +dismiss the more rational but groundless view that Imperial co-operation +necessitates representation in a joint Assembly. Conference is a better +method. Anyone who studies the proceedings of the last Imperial +Conference and observes the number and variety of the subjects discussed +and the numerous and valuable decisions arrived at, will realize how +much can be done by mutual good-will and the pressure of mutual +interest.[81] + +It may be objected that, with one or two exceptions of quite recent +date, the Colonies have contributed nothing to the upkeep of the Empire, +except in the very indirect form of maintaining local military forces, +that their present tendency --unquestionably a sound tendency--is to +co-operate, not by way of direct money contribution to Imperial funds, +but by the construction of local Navies out of their own money, and, in +time of peace, under their own immediate control, and that Ireland +cannot be allowed to follow their example. The objection has no point. +Ireland, through no fault of her own, has reached a stage (if we are to +trust the Treasury figures) where she no longer pays any cash +contribution to Imperial expenses, nor is it possible to look back with +any satisfaction upon the enormous total of her cash contributions in +the past. They were not the voluntary offerings of a willing partner, +but the product of a joint financial system which, like all consequences +of a forced Union, was bad for Ireland. If we consider that a similar +attempt to extort an Imperial contribution from the American States led +to their secession; that the principle was definitely abandoned in the +case of the later Colonies; that, on the contrary, large annual sums +raised in these islands were, until quite recent times, spent for +purposes of defence within these Colonies; that in the South African War +two hundred and fifty million pounds were spent in order to assist +British subjects in the Transvaal to obtain the rights of freemen in a +self-governing Colony; and that to this day indirect colonial +contributions in the shape of local expenditure are small in proportion +to the immense benefit derived from the protection of the Imperial Navy, +Army, and Diplomacy, and from the assistance of British credit; if we +then reflect that before the Union Ireland was, in the matter of +contribution, somewhat in the same position as Canada or Australia +to-day--that is, paying no fixed cash tribute, but voluntarily assuming +the burden, very heavy in time of war, of certain Army establishments; +that for seventeen years after the Union contributions fixed on a scale +grossly inequitable drove her into bankruptcy; that from 1819 until two +years ago, she paid, by dint of excessive taxation and in spite of +terrible economic depression, a considerable share, and sometimes more +than her proportionate share, of Imperial expenditure;[82] if, finally, +we remember that, cash payments apart, Irishmen for centuries past have +taken an important part in manning the Army and Navy, have fought and +died on innumerable battle-fields in the service of the Empire, and have +contributed some of its ablest military leaders; if we consider all +these facts soberly and reasonably, we shall, I believe, agree that it +would be fair and right to place a Home Ruled Ireland in the position of +a self-governing Colony, with a moral obligation to contribute, when her +means permit, and in proportion to her means, but without a statutory +and compulsory tribute. + +What form should that contribution eventually take? Does it necessarily +follow that Ireland should be given power to construct her own Navy, and +raise and control her own troops? Let us use our common sense, and use +it, let me add, fearlessly. If Ireland really _wanted_ full colonial +powers, if, like Australia and Canada, she would be discontented and +resentful at their denial, we should be wise to grant them, and rely on +common interests and affections to secure friendly co-operation. Does it +not stand to reason that a friendly alliance even with a foreign power, +such as France, to say nothing of the far more intimate relations with a +consanguineous Colony, is better business than any arrangement for +common forces unwillingly or resentfully acceded to? But, as I pointed +out in Chapter VIII., all these uneasy speculations about independent +Irish armaments are superfluous. Ireland does not want separate +armaments. The sporadic attempts to discourage enlistment in the +Imperial forces are, as every sensible person should recognize, the +results of refusing Home Rule. They would have occurred in every Colony +under similar circumstances, and they do occur in one degree or another +wherever countries agitate vainly for Home Rule. If Russia misinterprets +such phenomena, we have, let us hope, more political enlightenment than +Russia. + +Ireland's strategical situation bears no analogy to that of Australia +and Canada, which, for geographical reasons, are compelled, as South +Africa will be compelled, to make a certain amount of independent +provision, not only for military, but for naval defence, and would be +wanting in patriotic feeling if they did otherwise. New Zealand, on the +other hand, is too small to be capable of creating a Navy, and rightly +contributes to ours. We have arrived at an interesting psychological +point when Australia and Canada both seem to be inclined to reserve, in +theory, a right to abstain from engaging their Navies in a war +undertaken by Great Britain, but nobody will be alarmed by this +theoretical reservation. It is an insignificant matter beside the Naval +Agreement reached at the last Conference (1911)--an agreement worth more +than volumes of unwritten statutes--to the effect that the personnel of +the colonial fleets is to be interchangeable with that of the Imperial +fleet and that in a joint war colonial ships are to form an integral +part of the British fleet under the control of the Admiralty. With such +an agreement in existence, it becomes superfluous to lay stress upon the +fact that without formal and complete separation from the Mother Country +in time of peace, the neutrality of a Colony would not be recognized by +a belligerent enemy of Great Britain in time of war. In any case these +developments have no concern for Ireland, which does not want, and need +not be given, power to raise a local Navy. Nor, with regard to the +regular land forces, will anything be changed. Troops quartered in +Ireland will be, as before, and as in the Colonies now, under complete +Imperial control. So will Imperial camps, magazines, arsenals, +dock-yards. On the other hand, arrangements should certainly be made to +permit the raising of Volunteer forces in Ireland. There are large +numbers of Irishmen in the British Territorial Army, and Ireland sent +five companies to the South African War. Though the poverty of the +country will for a long time check the growth of Volunteer forces, it is +the Union which presents the only serious obstacle to their +establishment. No surer proof of the need for Home Rule could be adduced +than the fact that it was held to be impossible to extend the +Territorial system to Ireland. One of the objects of Home Rule is to +remove this suspicious atmosphere. Whether local power to organize and +arm Volunteers in Ireland should be given to the Irish authority, or, as +in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, reserved to the Imperial +Government, is, if we trust Ireland, as we must, a secondary and not a +vital matter, which would not affect the question of representation at +Westminster.[83] Probably it would be most convenient to leave the +matters in the hands of the Irish Legislature. In any case, the +Command-in-Chief of all forces in Ireland, regular or volunteer, would, +as in the Colonies,[84] be vested in the King. + +The control of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan +Police does not affect the question of representation at Westminster. +With or without representation, Ireland should be given the control of +all her own police forces from the first, without the restrictions +imposed by the Bills of 1886 and 1893 with regard to Imperial control of +the existing forces.[85] + +With the important exception of taxation, with which I shall deal last, +no other power which should properly be reserved to the Imperial +Parliament, or delegated to the Irish Parliament, has any appreciable +bearing upon the exclusion of Irish Members from the House of Commons. +Nor do any of them raise issues which are likely to be troublesome. +Common sense and mutual convenience should decide them. The Army, Navy, +and other military forces I have already dealt with. The Crown, the +Lord-Lieutenant, War and Peace, Prize and Booty of War, Foreign +Relations and Treaties (with the exception of commercial Treaties), +Titles, Extradition, Neutrality,[86] and Treason, are subjects upon +which the Colonies have no power to legislate or act, and of which it +would be needless, strictly, to make any formal statutory exception in +the case of Ireland, though the exception no doubt will be made in the +Bill. Naturalization, Coinage, Copyright, Patents, Trademarks, are all +matters in which the Colonies have local powers, whose existence, and +the limitations attaching to them, are determined either solely by +constitutional custom or with the addition of an implied or express +statutory authority.[87] The two former would, I should think, be wholly +reserved to the Imperial Parliament. In the case of the latter three, +which were wholly reserved in the Bill of 1886 and 1893, Ireland might +be placed in the position of a self-governing Colony.[88] + +In Trade and Navigation it would be wise to take the same course. The +Home Rule Bill of 1886, without giving Ireland representation at +Westminster, denied her all powers over Trade and Navigation. The Bill +of 1893 gave her powers over Trade within Ireland and Inland Navigation, +and these powers at any rate should be given in the coming Bill, +together with the larger functions also; though Ireland would naturally +leave in operation the great bulk of the statutes concerned, since they +intimately affect the commercial and industrial relations of the two +countries. For the rest, Ireland no more than the Colonies can be freed +from a measure of Imperial control maintained by Acts like the Merchant +Shipping Act of 1894. + +The Postal Service in Ireland should, as in the Bill of 1886, come under +Irish control. + +In the Home Rule Bill of 1893 (Section 34) it was laid down that for +three years the Irish Legislature should not "pass an Act respecting the +relations of landlord or tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of +land generally." Such a provision repeated in the coming Bill would be +inconsistent with the absence of Irish Members from Westminster. But I +take it for granted that there is no question of its repetition. At +first it might appear that Land Purchase should be distinguished from +other branches of land legislation and reserved to the Imperial +Government on the ground that it needs Imperial credit. I shall deal +with this point fully in Chapter XIV., and only need here to express the +view that Land Purchase cannot be separated from other branches of land +legislation, or from the Congested Districts Board, or even from the +control of the police, and that we are bound to give, and shall be +acting wisely in giving, all these powers to the Irish Legislature from +the first. + +It is necessary perhaps to add that non-representation at Westminster +does not in the smallest degree affect the complete legal supremacy of +the Imperial Parliament over the subordinate Irish Legislature. This +Legislature will in legal language be a "local and territorial" body, +like those of the Colonies. It will be the creature of Parliament, and +could be amended or even extinguished by it in a subsequent Act. The +Bill of 1886 (perhaps because it never reached the Committee stage) said +nothing explicit about the supremacy, though the Bill of 1893, while +providing for representation at Westminster, repeatedly (and sometimes +quite superfluously) affirmed it--in the Preamble, for example, and in a +rider to Clause 2. The King's authority, through the Lord-Lieutenant, +will be supreme in Ireland, as, through the Governors, it is supreme in +the Colonies. Every Irish Bill, like every Colonial Bill, will require +the Royal Assent, given through the Lord-Lieutenant, who will correspond +to the Colonial Governors. The Lord-Lieutenant, like his colonial +counterpart, will have to exercise both his Executive and Legislative +functions in a double capacity: in the first instance by the advice of +his Irish Cabinet, but subject to a veto by the British Cabinet. This +dual capacity has belonged to all Colonial Governors ever since the +principle of responsible government was established. As I showed in +earlier chapters, it was regarded even by Lord John Russell as +impossible and absurd as late as 1840; but it ought by now to be +understood by every educated man, and we may hope to be spared the +philosophical disquisitions and hair-splitting criticisms which it +evoked from men who should have known better in the Home Rule debates of +1893. + +Laws framed at Westminster will be applicable to Ireland, as they are +frequently made applicable to the Colonies.[89] Conversely, only through +the express legislative authority of Westminster will an Irish, like a +Colonial Act,[90] be held to operate outside the borders of Ireland. + +Apart from the strict legal omnipotence of Imperial sovereignty, it is, +of course, impossible to say now what the exact constitutional position +of Ireland will be under any form of Home Rule. No Bill can state it +fully in set terms. Time, custom, and judicial decisions will build up a +body of doctrine. It is so with the Colonies, whose exact constitutional +relations with the Mother Country are still a matter of juristic debate, +and are only to be deduced from the study of an immense number of +judicial decisions and of Imperial Acts passed subsequently to the grant +of the original Constitutions. Some of these Acts I have already +illustrated. The one Act of general application, namely, the Colonial +Laws Validity Act, cannot be read without the rest, though in form it +appears to contain a complete set of rules. While giving general power +to a self-governing Colony "to make laws for the peace, welfare, and +good government of the Colony" (words which will also necessarily appear +in the Home Rule Bill), the Act makes void all colonial laws or parts of +laws which are "repugnant to the provisions of any Act of Parliament +extending to the Colony to which such law shall relate," and this +provision will no doubt, be applied, _mutatis mutandis,_ to Ireland, as +it was in Section 32 of the Home Rule Bill of 1893. The Irish +Legislature, that is, will be able "to repeal or alter any enactments in +force in Ireland except such as either relate to matters beyond the +power of the Irish Legislature, or, being enacted by Parliament after +the passing of this Act, may be expressly extended to Ireland." + +It will be noticed that the words "beyond the power of the Irish +Legislature" referred to the subjects expressly excepted in the Bill +itself. This is one of the points in which the Irish Constitution will +bear at any rate a superficial resemblance to that of a Province or +State within a Federation rather than to that of a self-governing +Colony. The practice of expressly, and in the text of a Constitution, +forbidding a self-governing Colony to legislate upon certain subjects, +or of expressly reserving concurrent or exclusive powers of legislation +to the Mother Country, has fallen into disuse since the establishment of +the principle of responsible government. Such restrictions were inserted +in the Canadian Union Act of 1840, where the old right of the Mother +Country to impose customs duties in the Colonies for the regulation of +commerce was reaffirmed, and even in the Acts of 1855 for giving full +powers of self-government to the Australian Colonies, which were +forbidden to impose intercolonial customs, though they were expressly +granted the power of imposing any other customs duties they pleased,[91] +but they do not appear in modern Constitutions, for example in the +Transvaal Constitution of 1906. As I have indicated, this implies no +change in the strict legal theory of Colonial subordination to the +Mother Country; for, although the tendency of modern juristic thought is +to ascribe "plenary" power to a Colony, restrictions nevertheless do +exist in practice, and are contained, express or implicit, in a number +of disjointed Acts. + +A Federating Colony, on the other hand, like a foreign Federation, has +in its own self-made, domestic Constitution to apportion powers with +some approach to precision between the federal and the provincial +authorities, and in this respect the Irish Bill, in reserving certain +powers to the Imperial Parliament, will resemble a federating Bill, and +it should follow the American and Australian precedents in leaving +residuary powers to the subordinate or Irish Legislature, not, in +accordance with the Canadian precedent, to the Parliament at +Westminster. That is an indispensable corollary of excluding Irish +Members from Westminster. + +In speaking of powers reserved or delegated, and of residuary or +unallocated powers, I have thus far referred only to powers which must +be exercised, or at any rate may need to be exercised, if not by the +subordinate legislature, then by the superior Parliament. Those +restrictions on the Irish Legislature which are imposed in order to +protect the religious or economic interests of a minority within the +State, or as a recognition that there are certain kinds of laws which it +is morally wrong to pass, fall into an altogether different category. By +implication they morally bind the superior Parliament too, and are +irrelevant, therefore, to the question of representation. They will be +necessary, no doubt, in the coming Irish Bill, though they need not be +so extensive as those which are to be found in Clause 4 of the Bill of +1893, some of which are borrowed from the famous anti-slavery amendments +of 1865-1869 to the Constitution of the United States.[92] In inserting +them we shall again be following the "Federal" rather than the +"Colonial" model. No such restrictions have been imposed by the Mother +Country upon any self-governing Colony. The nearest approach, perhaps, +to such a tendency was the provision in the Transvaal Constitution of +1906 (Section 39), that "any law whereby persons not of European birth +or descent may be subjected or made liable to any disabilities or +restrictions to which persons of European birth or descent are not also +subjected or made liable" should be specially "reserved"--that is, sent +home by the Governor--for the signification of the Royal pleasure; but +no similar provision appeared in the Act of 1909 for constituting the +South African Union. In Federal systems, on the other hand, such +restrictions, taking the form of self-denying ordinances, are common, +whether appearing in the Federal Constitution itself or in the +subordinate State Constitutions. The Constitution of the United States, +for example, in addition to the anti-slavery provisions noted above, +enacts that the National Government cannot (by Amendment I.) establish +any religion or prohibit its free exercise, or (by Amendment V.) take +private property for public use without just compensation, or (by +Article 1, § 9) grant a title of nobility. Neither (by Amendment XIV. +and Article 1, § 10 respectively) can a State do these things. By +Article 1, § 10, a State cannot pass a law impairing the obligation of a +contract. Exactly similar restrictions appear in many of the individual +State Constitutions. Others forbid the establishment of any church or +sect; the introduction of armed men "for the suppression of domestic +violence"; "perpetuities or monopolies," and a variety of other things. +Analogous provisions are to be found in the British North America Act, +1867 (constituting the Dominion of Canada), where the provincial +Legislatures are forbidden to interfere with certain rights and +privileges of religious bodies in the matter of education. There are no +limitations of the kind in the Australian Commonwealth Act of 1900. +Australia, no doubt, correctly represents the tendency of modern thought +on this matter. Some of the American safeguards have produced great +inconvenience. Nor can it be denied that the most elaborately contrived +legal safeguards are of less value than the moral safeguard afforded by +the sense of honour, justice, and prudence in the community. The +existence of these qualities in Ireland, as in other white countries, is +the true foundation of Home Rule. Some day Irishmen will ask, as a +united country, for the repeal of these statutory safeguards. + +That brings me to the penultimate point of importance, which may be held +to affect the inclusion or exclusion of Irish Members at Westminster--I +mean the question of future constitutional amendment. Here the colonial +analogies are a little complicated. Since the Australian Colonies Act of +1850, in the new grant of a Constitution to a self-governing Colony, +power has invariably been given to amend its own Constitution, without, +of course, detracting from any powers specified in it for preserving the +sovereignty of the Mother Country. Canada, when federating in 1867, took +the somewhat singular course of making no provision in her Federal +Constitution for its subsequent amendment, though, by Section 92 of the +British North America Act, she gave her Provinces the exclusive right to +amend their own Constitutions, a right which three of them have used to +abolish their Upper Chambers. The Dominion Constitution, then, cannot be +amended otherwise than by an Imperial Act. Such amending Acts are +promoted by the Dominion Government without any specially devised +machinery for ascertaining the public opinion of Canadians. Australia, +on the other hand, when federating in 1900, made elaborate arrangements, +which have been put several times into operation, for the amendment of +the Federal Constitution by the Australian people itself, without an +Imperial Act. Now, it will follow as a matter of course that Ireland +will be given powers, as in both the previous Bills,[93] to amend her +own Constitution within certain defined limits, after a certain lapse of +time, and without encroaching upon Imperial authority. For my part I +would strongly urge that the powers now to be conferred should be much +wider; for I believe that Ireland alone can make a really perfect +Constitution for herself. But, that point apart, the question arises of +the further amendment, outside such permissive powers, of the Home Rule +Act itself, which will, of course, contain within its four corners the +whole of the Irish Constitution, so far as it can be written down. No +special arrangements were made for such a contingency in the Bill of +1893, presumably because Ireland was to be represented at Westminster +and would have a share in the making of any amending act. In the Bill of +1886, which excluded the Irish Members, Mr. Gladstone proposed (in +Clause 39) that no alteration of the Act should be made (apart, of +course, from points left for Irish alteration) except (1) by an Imperial +Act formally assented to by the Irish Legislature, or (2) by an Imperial +Act for the passing of which a stated number of Members of both branches +of the Irish Legislature should be summoned to sit at Westminster. + +It will be clear, I think, now, in 1911, that this latter proposal is +not worth revival. No substantial amendment of the Act should properly +be made without the formal consent of the Irish Legislature, +representing Irish public opinion, and the prior consultation with the +Irish Cabinet which such consent would imply. If the lamentable +necessity ever arose of amending the Act against the wishes of Ireland, +the sudden invasion of Westminster by a body of angry Irish Members, too +small to affect the result (for otherwise the attempt to amend would not +be made) and large enough to revive the old political dislocation and +passion, would not simplify the process of amendment or be of value to +anybody concerned. The proposal was probably only suggested by a vague +leaning towards the Federal principle, which, in the present case, we +should certainly reject. It serves indeed as one more illustration of +the anomalies which might result from the inclusion of Irish Members at +Westminster. No more unhealthy position could be imagined than one which +would render it possible for an amendment of the Home Rule Act, whether +in the direction of greater latitude or of stricter limitation, to +depend solely upon the Irish vote in an Assembly predominately +non-Irish. That is not to the discredit of Ireland. The system would be +just as indefensible, whatever the subordinate State concerned. It would +be Federalism run mad, and would make Alexander Hamilton turn in his +grave. It is worth while to note that, even under a sane and normal +Federal system, the Irish Constitution would be less easily alterable in +either direction than under the plan of treating her as a self-governing +Colony. In the latter case action is direct and simple, while most +Federal Constitutions are extraordinarily difficult to amend. The +Dominion of Canada is only an apparent exception. + +I turn lastly to Finance, the point which most closely affects +representation at Westminster, and which distinguishes any form of +quasi-Federal Home Rule most sharply from its alternative, "Colonial" +Home Rule. + +All Federal systems necessarily involve a certain amount of joint +finance between the superior and the inferior Government. The +distribution of financial powers varies widely in different Federations, +but all have this feature in common--that the central or superior +Government controls Customs and Excise, and is to a large degree +financed by means of the revenue derived from those sources. The United +States Government, as distinguished from that of the individual States, +pays in this way for almost its entire expenditure.[94] So does the +Dominion of Canada;[95] while in the Australian Commonwealth the +receipts from Customs and Excise alone more than cover the whole +Commonwealth expenditure.[96] + +Finance makes or mars Federations. Some Federations or organic Unions of +independent States have come into being through a strong desire in the +separate States to have, among other things, a common system of Customs, +and in the case of the German Empire and the South African Union a +Customs Union or _Zollverein_ has preceded Federation. These phenomena +are the most marked illustration of the general truth that a common +desire to federate, or unite, on the part of individual States is a +condition precedent to a sound Federation or Union. On the other hand, +finance, especially the question of joint Customs, has sometimes +presented obstacles to a Federation which, on other grounds, was +earnestly desired. The long delay in achieving the Australian Federation +was largely due to the desire of New South Wales to maintain her Free +Trade system, while the financial arrangements generally caused most of +the practical difficulties met with in arranging the Federation both of +Canada and Australia, and in their subsequent domestic relations. Nova +Scotia in the former case, and Western Australia in the latter, held out +to the last instant, and the former subsequently had to receive +exceptionally favourable treatment. In both Federations some measure of +friction is chronic, and in neither has a perfectly satisfactory system +been evolved. The Union of Ireland and Great Britain in 1800 was in this +respect, as in all others, a flagrant departure from sound principle. +The Customs Union which followed it was a forced Customs Union, and, +together with the other financial arrangements between the two +countries, has produced results incredibly absurd and mischievous. Some +of these results I briefly indicated in Chapter V. In the following +chapters I shall tell the whole story fully, and I hope to convince the +reader that we should follow, not only historically, but morally and +practically, the correct line of action if, in dissolving the +Legislative Union, we dissolve the Customs Union also. That would +involve a virtually independent system of finance for Ireland, and place +her fiscally in the position of a self-governing Colony. If and when a +real Federation of the United Kingdom becomes practical politics, she +would then have the choice of entering it in the spirit and on the terms +invariably associated with all true Federations or Unions. That is, she +would voluntarily relinquish, in her own interest, financial and other +rights to a central Government solely concerned with central affairs. + +I need scarcely point out in this connection the vital importance of the +question of representation at Westminster. Ireland resembles the +self-governing Colonies, and differs from Great Britain, in that the +greater part of the revenue raised from her inhabitants is derived from +Customs and Excise--that is, from the indirect taxation of commodities +of common use. If she is denied control of these sources of revenue +under the coming Bill, it will be absolutely necessary, in spite of all +the concomitant difficulties, to give her a representation at +Westminster which is as effective as it can be made. But let it be +realized that we could not make her control over her own finance as +effective as that exercised by a small State within a Federation, +because such a State, however small, has equal, or at any rate +disproportionately large, representation in the Federal Upper Chamber, +and Federal Upper Chambers can reject Money Bills. The Upper Chamber in +Ireland's case would be the House of Lords, where she could scarcely be +given effective representation, and which, in any case, cannot reject +Money Bills. + +Let us now examine Ireland's claim for fiscal autonomy. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[73] See p. 140. + +[74] The Bill set up a Council of eighty-two elected and twenty-four +nominated members, with the Under-Secretary as an _ex-officio_ member. +So far it resembled the abortive Transvaal Constitution of 1905 (see p. +130), but the Irish Council was only to be given control of certain +specified Departments, and was financed by a fixed Imperial grant. It +was to have no power of legislation or taxation, and was under the +complete control of the Lord-Lieutenant. + +[75] This arrangement, which is peculiar to the Canadian Federation, is +regarded by some authorities as a somewhat serious infraction of the +Federal principle, since it seems to imply executive control of the +Province by the central Government. The Governors of the States in the +Australian Federation are appointed by the Home Government. + +[76] The Judicial Committee has ruled "that the relation between the +Crown and the Provinces is the same as that between the Crown and +Dominion in respect of such powers, executive and legislative, as are +vested in them respectively." (Maritime Bank of Canada _v._ +Receiver-General of New Brunswick, 1892). + +[77] They are governed by Executive Committees, the members of which +need not be members of the Councils. + +[78] In writing upon this subject, I am indebted to an able paper by Mr. +Basil Williams, which is to be found in "Home Rule Problems." + +[79] "Life of Parnell," R. Barry O'Brien, pp. 149 and 139-141. + +[80] _E.g._, in 1893, on Clause I. of the Home Rule Bill (Hansard, p. +490): "The Irish minority were willing to be treated on the footing of a +Colony, but they protested against a supremacy which would enable the +honourable gentleman who formed the Irish Government to appeal to the +Imperial Parliament for the assistance of the Army and Navy to compel +the Irish minority to obey their behests." + +[81] Cd. 5741, 1911. Some of the subjects discussed were Commercial +Relations and Shipping, Navigation Law, Labour Exchanges, Uniformity in +Copyright, etc., Emigration, Naturalization, Compensation for Accidents, +etc. + +[82] I am summarizing facts fully narrated in Chapters XI. and XII. + +[83] In the Federal Constitutions of Australia and Canada the central +Federal Parliament is responsible for the colonial defences, but the +Provinces or States are, of course, represented in the Federal +Parliament. + +[84] Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, Sec. 58, and +British North America Act, 1867, Sec. 15. Until quite recently it was +the custom always to give the command of the Canadian Militia to a +British officer lent to Canada. The present Commander, however, is a +Canadian. + +[85] See Appendix. + +[86] A Colony may make local regulations to carry out an Imperial Law +about extradition and neutrality, but may not touch the law. + +[87] For the constitutional position of self-governing Colonies, the +author owes much to Mr. Moore's "Commonwealth of Australia." + +[88] The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, and the +British North America Act, 1867, in order to delimit the respective +powers of the Federal and Provincial Legislatures, set out a list of +subjects on which the Federal Parliament has exclusive or collateral +power to legislate. There is implied, of course, a pre-existing right on +the part of the Colony, as a whole, _qua_ Colony, to legislate on the +matters referred to in the list. But the pre-existing right is subject +to any pre-existing constitutional or statutory limitations. _E.g.,_ +"Naturalization and Aliens" is in the list of Commonwealth powers (Sec. +51, xix.), and of the Canadian powers (Sec. 91, xxv.), but the power of +any Colony is limited by Acts of 1847 and 1879 to giving naturalization +within its own borders. (At the Imperial Conference of 1911 a scheme was +foreshadowed for standardizing naturalization throughout the Empire.) + +"Copyright" is also in both lists, but the colonial power is limited by +the International Copyright Act of 1886, which, by Sec. 8, implies that +a "British possession" may only make laws "respecting the Copyright +within the limits of such possession of works produced in that +possession." This Copyright Act is an example of implied limitation and +sanction together. The Coinage Act of 1853 is an example of implied +sanction only, in empowering a Colony to legislate as if the Act had not +been passed. Another class of Imperial Acts confers _direct_ powers to +legislate on certain subjects--_e.g.,_ the Australian Colonies Custom +Duties Act of 1873 (removing the restrictions imposed upon intercolonial +duties in 1850). The Naturalization Acts are partly of this character, +and other examples are the Colonial Naval Defence Act of 1865, and +certain provisions of the Army Act of 1881, and the Colonial Courts of +Admiralty Act of 1890. + +[89] _E.g.,_ Colonial Attorneys Belief Act, 1857; Colonial Probates Act, +1892; parts of the Finance Act, 1894; and Wills Act, 1861. + +[90] _E.g.,_ Colonial Laws made under sanction of the following Imperial +Acts: Colonial Prisoners Removal, 1869; Merchant Shipping, 1894; +Sections 478 and 736, Colonial Marriages, 1866. + +[91] _E.g.,_ 18 Vict. Ch. 55, Sections 42 and 43. + +[92] See Appendix, under the head of restrictions on "Irish Matters." +For convenience, land legislation is included in the list, though it +clearly belongs to a different category, and I have so dealt with it +above. + +[93] In the Bill of 1886 (Clause 11, Subsec. 7) and in the Bill of 1893 +(Clause 8, Subsec. 3) power was given to alter the qualifications of the +franchise, etc., for the Lower House--in the former Bill after the first +dissolution, in the latter after six years. + +[94] In 1910, of the total Federal revenue of 675,511,715 dollars, +623,616,963 dollars were raised in this way, or twelve-thirteenths. +(Postal revenue, which balances Postal receipts, is excluded.) + +[95] In 1909-10 Dominion revenue from Customs and Excise was 75,409,487 +dollars. Total ordinary expenditure (excluding capital accounts), +79,411,747 dollars. + +[96] Estimate for 1910-11. Total Federal revenue, £16,841,629; revenue +from Customs and Excise, £111,700,000. Total Federal expenditure +£11,122,297. £5,267,500 will be available for return to the State +exchequers (see pp. 245-246). + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +UNION FINANCE + + +I ask the reader to follow with particular care the following historical +summary of Anglo-Irish finance. None of it is irrelevant, I venture to +say. It is not possible to construct a financial scheme, or to criticize +it when framed, without a fairly accurate knowledge of the historical +facts. + + +I. + +BEFORE THE UNION.[97] + +Before the Union Ireland had a fiscal system distinct from that of Great +Britain, a separate Exchequer, a separate Debt, a separate system of +taxation, a separate Budget. Yet she can never truly be said to have had +financial independence, because she was never a truly self-governing +country. Until 1779, when the Protestant Volunteers protested with arms +in their hands against the annihilation of Irish industries in the +interest of British merchants and growers, her external trade and, +consequently, her internal production, were absolutely at the mercy of +Great Britain. As I showed in Chapter I., Ireland was treated +considerably worse than the most oppressed Colony, with permanently +ruinous results. On the other hand, her internal taxation, never above a +million a year, and her Debt, never above two millions in amount, were +not heavy. But from 1779, through Grattan's Parliament to the Union, a +short period of twenty-one years, Ireland, though still governed on the +ascendancy system by an unrepresentative and corrupt Parliament of +exactly the same composition as before, nevertheless had financial +independence in the sense that her Parliament had complete control of +Irish taxation, revenue, and trade. It was, moreover, in these financial +matters that the Parliament showed most genuine national patriotism, +together with a greatly enhanced measure of the Imperial patriotism +traditional with it. Internal taxation, except in time of war, was still +comparatively light; depressed home industries were judiciously +encouraged by bounties; no attempt was made at vindictive retaliation +upon British imports, though Irish exports to Great Britain were still +unmercifully penalized; and sums, growing to a relatively enormous size +during the French War, which began in 1793, were annually voted for the +Imperial forces. This voluntary contribution, which had averaged +£585,000 in the eleven years of peace, from 1783 to 1793, rose to +£3,401,760 in 1797,[98] and in 1799, when Ireland was paying the bill +for British troops called in to suppress her own Rebellion, to +£4,596,762, out of a total Irish expenditure for the year on all +purposes, military and civil, of £6,854,804. Not more than half, on the +average, of these war expenses were met out of the annual taxes. Debt +was created to meet the balance; but neither the debt, heavy as it was, +nor the taxes, were intolerably burdensome--that is, if we regard +Ireland as financially responsible for Imperial wars and for the +suppression of a Rebellion which was provoked by scandalous +misgovernment. Tax revenue rose from £1,106,504 in 1783, when the free +Parliament first prepared a Budget, to £3,017,758 in 1800, and averaged +a million and a half. In the same period the total amount of the funded +and unfunded Irish Debt rose from £1,917,784 to £28,541,157, almost the +whole of this increase having taken place in the seven years of war +immediately preceding the Union. In Great Britain both Debt and taxation +had risen in a larger ratio, and were relatively far greater. For +example, in the six years, 1793-1798 inclusive, £186,000,000 had been +added to the British Debt, only £14,000,000 to the Irish Debt. In 1801 +the British Debt stood at £489,127,057; the Irish Debt at £32,215,223. + + +II. + +FROM THE UNION TO THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION OF 1894-1896. + + +The Union of 1800, therefore, could not be justified on the ground that +a poor country would profit by fiscal amalgamation with a rich country, +and Pitt and Castlereagh, when framing the Union Act, recognized that +truth by leaving Ireland with a separate fiscal system, as before; +though the administration of this system was, of course, now to be +wholly in British hands. There were to be separate Exchequers, +Debts,[99] taxes, and balance-sheets, with the following restrictions: +That prohibitions against imports and bounties on exports (corn +excepted), should cease reciprocally in both countries; that, with the +exception of 10 per cent. ad valorem duties on a variety of articles +named, there should be mutual free trade; and that no tax on any article +of consumption should be higher in Ireland than in Great Britain. + +But although Pitt and Castlereagh ostensibly carried out the principle +of separate fiscal systems, they laid the foundations for a fiscal +amalgamation which was disastrous to Ireland. Since his Commercial +Propositions of 1785, Pitt had never abandoned the idea of obtaining +from Ireland an obligatory annual contribution to Imperial services +based on some fixed principle. By Clause 7 of the Act of Union he +achieved his aim. It was settled that for twenty years Ireland should +contribute in the proportion of 1 to 71/2 (or 2 to 15)--that is, that +Great Britain should pay 15/17, or 88.24 per cent., of common Imperial +expenses, including the charge for debt contracted for Imperial +services, and Ireland 2/17, or 11.76 per cent. Nobody now denies that +this ratio was grossly unjust to Ireland. It took no account of the +relative pre-Union Debts; it took no account of the tribute of nearly +four millions paid in rents to absentee English proprietors; it was +based on superficial deductions from inadequate and misleading data, and +the Act was hardly passed before its absurdity became manifest. Fifteen +years of almost incessant war followed the Union. Ireland, even by +raising taxation to the highest possible point, was unable to pay her +contribution without contracting a Debt colossal in proportion to her +resources. While Great Britain only doubled her Debt, and paid 71 per +cent. of her expenses out of current taxation, the Irish Debt +quadrupled, and in 1817 reached the portentous total of £112,634,773; +while only 49 per cent. of Irish expenditure was paid for out of +revenue. Here is a little table which shows the effect upon Ireland of +Clause 7 of the Act of Union: + + Five Years. Average Average + Revenue. Expenditure. + £ £ + { 1785-1790 1,246,000 1,247,000 +Before Union ---{ 1790-1795 1,340,000 1,646,000 + { 1795-1800 2,100,000 4,601,000 + + { 1801-1806 3,643,000 7,270,000 +After Union ---{ 1806-1811 4,885,000 9,061,000 + { 1811-1816 5,927,424 13,188,000 + +The scandal could no longer be overlooked. It was impossible to raise +the Irish taxes. Their yield was already showing signs of diminishing. +But the Act of Union had provided for the situation which had arisen. +One of the sections of the famous Clause 7 enacted that if and when the +separate Debts of the two countries should reach the proportion of their +respective Imperial contributions, Parliament might, if it thought fit, +declare that all future expenses of the United Kingdom should be +defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in +both countries, "_subject only to such exemptions and abatements in +favour of Ireland as circumstances may appear from time to time to +demand_." The framers of this section had anticipated that the English +Debt would sink to the level of the Irish Debt. Anglo-Irish finance +teems with grim jokes of this sort; but the section was useful in either +event. With its terms before them, a Committee sat to consider the state +of Ireland, with the result that, by an Act which came into operation on +January 5, 1817, the Exchequers, Debts, revenues, and expenditures, but +not as yet the taxes, of the two countries were amalgamated. In +Professor Oldham's words,[100] "the corpse of Ireland's insolvency was +huddled into the grave, and no questions were to be asked." The whole +expenditure, Imperial and local, of the United Kingdom, Ireland +included, was to be defrayed out of a Consolidated Fund, and the +arrangements, therefore, for a separate Irish contribution on a fixed +basis to Imperial services were cancelled. Henceforth her Imperial +contribution, for anyone who troubled to calculate it, was represented +by the excess of revenue raised within Ireland over the expenditure in +Ireland. A mutual free trade was also established, not instantaneously, +but in the course of a few years. By 1824 all duties, as between Ireland +and England, had ceased, and in 1826 the custom-houses ceased to record +the transit of goods between England and Ireland, except in articles +such as spirits, on which a different excise duty was charged. No +statistics were compiled, therefore, of Anglo-Irish trade until ninety +years later, when the Irish Department of Agriculture began to prepare +returns. Such was the origin of our Customs Union against the world +(for, needless to say, those were still the days of high Protection), +and it is instructive to compare it with the voluntary pacts of the +German States and South African Colonies, and with their political +results. + +In one important point unification was left incomplete. It was +impossible in 1817 to equalize internal taxation in the two countries, +though it was held desirable to do so, because Ireland could not have +borne the higher British scale, and suffered enough under her own. +Regard, too, was had at first to those important words in the Act of +Union which guaranteed to Ireland such "exemptions and abatements" as +might appear fair. But they were soon forgotten. Without any inquiry +into the taxable capacity of Ireland, the stamp, tea, and tobacco duties +were equalized early in the period, the enhancement in Ireland of the +last duty from 1s. to 3s. on raw tobacco, and from 1s. to 16s. on +manufactured tobacco, laying an exceptionally heavy burden on the Irish +poor. Meanwhile the abolition, after the close of the war, of taxes +representing about sixteen millions a year, and purely affecting Great +Britain, gave a relief to her which Ireland did not feel. But it was not +until 1853, when Mr. Gladstone extended the income-tax to Ireland, and +raised the Irish spirit duty, that the principle of "exemptions and +abatements" was most seriously infringed. Mr. Disraeli followed in 1855 +with a further elevation of the spirit duty, which was finally equalized +with the British duty in 1858, at 8s. a gallon; while in 1860 both +duties were raised to 10s. In the seven years 1853-1860 the taxation of +Ireland was raised by no less than two and a half millions per annum. It +will be recalled that the great famine had taken place in 1846-47, and +that between the Census of 1841 and that of 1861 the population sank +from eight to six millions, while the British population rose from +eighteen and a half to twenty-three millions. The statistical result of +the increased taxes, therefore, was to show a rise in taxation per head +of the Irish people from 13s. 11d. in 1849 to £1 5s. 4d. in 1859, while +in Great Britain it rose only from £2 7s. 8d. to £2 10s. during the same +period. Equality of taxation has never been wholly established, for to +this day a few quite unimportant taxes are not levied, or are levied on +a lower scale in Ireland;[101] but from 1858 onward we may regard the +taxation of the two countries as almost identically the same. + +In the meantime a great revolution, also beginning at the time of the +famine, had taken place in the fiscal system of the United Kingdom. Free +Trade with the outside world had been established, and whatever we may +conclude about its effect, it had been established, as we know, with a +special view to British industrial interests, and without the smallest +concern for Irish interests, which were predominantly agricultural. It +was certainly followed by an immense industrial expansion and prosperity +in Great Britain; it was certainly initiated at the lowest point of +Ireland's moral and physical wretchedness. Opinions differ as to the +precise economic effect upon Ireland. Miss Murray, in her thoughtful and +exhaustive study of the commercial relations between England and +Ireland, holds that, as agricultural producers, the Irish lost far more +than they have gained as consumers of foodstuffs, while a number of +small and struggling rural industries, whose powerful counterparts in +Great Britain could easily withstand foreign competition, did undeniably +succumb in Ireland. + +My own opinion is that the past influence upon Ireland of free trade, in +the first instance with Great Britain, and later with the outside world, +though a highly interesting and important topic in itself, is commonly +exaggerated, to the neglect of the vastly more important question of the +tenure of land. Free trade did not cause the famine. On the contrary, +the presage of the famine was one of the minor causes which induced Peel +to take up Cobden's policy for the free importation of foodstuffs. The +effect of that policy upon Ireland sinks into insignificance beside an +agrarian system which had reduced the mass of the Irish peasants to +serfs, kept them near the borders of destitution, and in a state of +sporadic crime for a century and a half before, and for forty years +after the repeal of the Corn Laws, and, at the climax of a period of +high protection for agricultural products, rendered it possible for a +mere failure of the potato-crop to cause death to three-quarters of a +million persons. These things do not happen in properly governed, in +other words in self-governed, countries, whatever their fiscal system, +and they have never happened to Irishmen in any other part of the world +but in their own fertile island. Manufacturing industries stand on a +different footing. Most of the staple industries of Ireland, notably the +woollen industry, and the aptitudes which brought them into being, were +deliberately destroyed long ago by fiscal measures imposed by England, +and their destruction aggravated the misery and exhaustion produced by a +bad land system. How far their partial revival under the fiscal Home +Rule of Grattan's Parliament was genuine, and might, with a continuance +of fiscal Home Rule, have been permanent, it is impossible to say. The +retarding effect of the Rebellion, and the long start already obtained +by Great Britain in the industrial race, are factors beyond accurate +calculation. But one thing is certain, that the revival of industries +was, at that stage, of trivial importance beside the rural regeneration +of Ireland, and that Grattan's Parliament had not the remotest influence +for good upon the land question, which it neglected as heartlessly as +its predecessors for a century before and its successors for seventy +years afterwards.[102] + +Industries are valuable assets for any country; but countries almost +wholly agricultural, like Denmark, can prosper remarkably, and without +Protection, provided that they possess or evolve a sound system of +agrarian tenure, in other words, a sound relation between tenant and +landlord, or, in default of that, peasant ownership. In every country in +the world that has been a _sine qua non_ of prosperity. Suppose that +English labourers had built out of their own money and by their own +hands the factories, docks, and railways in which they worked, and that +the resulting profits, wages deducted, went solely to ground landlords. +That gives us some idea of the old Irish land system, whose overthrowal +began only in 1870; a system under which the landlord put no capital +into the land, though his rent represented the full profits of the +tenant's capital and labour, less an amount equivalent to a bare +subsistence wage, governed by competition. + +The present influence upon Ireland of the Imperial fiscal system, now +that peasant proprietorship has been half accomplished, is another +matter upon which I shall have to say more presently, when we have +completed our review of Anglo-Irish finance. Let us return to the point +we had reached: that free trade with the outside world and the +equalization of taxation between Great Britain and Ireland approximately +coincided in point of time, and were also contemporaneous with rapid and +continuous growth in the wealth and population of Great Britain, and a +steady and continuous decline in the Irish population. We know now, +moreover, though nobody knew it then, because the calculation was not +yet made, that Ireland was paying a large contribution to Imperial +services, over and above her local expenditure. In the half-century +between 1810 and 1860 she had paid an average yearly sum of nearly four +millions, and a total sum of nearly two hundred millions. In the year +1859-60, when the now equalized spirit duties were raised to 10s., she +paid £5,396,000; a sum considerably more than double the expenditure on +Irish services, and equivalent to no less than five-sevenths of the +revenue raised in Ireland. + +Parliament gave no serious attention to any of these phenomena from the +time of the fiscal union in 1817 until after the introduction of Mr. +Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill in 1893. No settled conclusions were +arrived at as to the relative wealth of the two countries, as to the +capacity of Ireland to bear the British scale of taxation, or even as to +the amount of revenue derived from and expended in the countries +respectively, with the consequent contributions made to common Imperial +services. A Committee sat in 1864-65, which compiled some interesting +information and heard some important witnesses, but ignored the main +questions at issue and produced what Sir Edward Hamilton described later +as an "impotent" Report. Sir Joseph MacKenna, an able Irish banker, +again and again, between 1867 and 1876, pleaded for an inquiry into +Anglo-Irish finance, alleging gross injustice in the incidence of Irish +taxation, and obtained nothing more than a rough return showing that +between 1841 and 1871 the gross tax revenue per head of the population +had risen in Ireland from 9s. 6.7d. to £1 6s. 2.2d. and had fallen in +Great Britain from £2 9s. 9.5d. to £2 4s. 1.6d. For the first time also +it was shown that the national beverages of England and Ireland, beer +and whisky, respectively, were taxed in a ratio unfair to Ireland. In +1886 Mr. Gladstone, in preparing his first Home Rule Bill, had to +re-open the question of the relative resources of Ireland and Great +Britain for the first time since the Union, because he proposed a fixed +annual contribution, unchangeable for thirty years, from Ireland towards +the Imperial services. He fixed the contribution at one-fifteenth or +approximately half that of two-seventeenths fixed by Pitt in 1800, and +the new figure was certainly not too low. In 1888 the question was again +incidentally raised by Mr. Goschen, who apportioned certain equivalent +grants towards local taxation in England, Scotland, and Ireland, in the +proportion of 80, 11, 9, apparently on the principle that those were the +proportions in which each country respectively contributed to Imperial +expenditure. Mr. Gladstone, in preparing the Home Rule Bill of 1893, +made investigations which threw additional light on the true amount of +revenue derived from Ireland, with allowance made for revenue from +dutiable goods taxed in Ireland but consumed in Great Britain, and _vice +versa_, but his financial scheme, as revised in the course of the +Session and passed by the House of Commons, evaded the crucial issue by +making Ireland's contribution to Imperial services a quota, one-third, +of her true annual revenue. This quota, moreover, was indirectly +reduced by temporary subsidies in aid of Irish charges (_e.g._, for +Police) and was estimated, with these deductions, not to exceed at the +outset one-fortieth. + + +III. + +THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION OF 1894-1896. + + +It was now apparent that, with or without Home Rule, the whole subject +needed serious investigation, and in 1894, after the defeat of Mr. +Gladstone's Bill, a Royal Commission under the Presidency of Mr. Hugh +Childers was appointed to consider the "Financial Relations between +Great Britain and Ireland." Their Report deserves careful study, because +it contains within it all the essential materials for forming a judgment +upon the financial problem of to-day. All that it lacks are the +complementary figures of the subsequent seventeen years, and these +figures, which I shall presently add, do not affect the conflict of +principles, though they throw into more vivid relief than ever the +outcome of conflicting principles. + +In composition it was a very strong Commission; it consulted the highest +financial authorities in the Kingdom; it made for two years an +exhaustive examination, historical and practical, of the questions +submitted to it, and although the members disagreed on some important +points, the conclusions upon which they were unanimous cannot be +impugned. The terms of reference were: + +"1. Upon what principles of comparison, and by the application of what +specific standards, the relative capacity of Great Britain and Ireland +to bear taxation may be most equitably determined. + +"2. What, so far as can be ascertained, is the true proportion, under +the principles and specific standards so determined, between the taxable +capacity of Great Britain and Ireland. + +"3. The history of the financial relations between Great Britain and +Ireland at and after the Legislative Union, the charge for Irish +purposes on the Imperial Exchequer during that period, and the amount of +Irish taxation remaining available for contribution to Imperial +expenditure; also the Imperial expenditure to which it is considered +equitable that Ireland should contribute." + +It will be observed that Questions 1 and 2 deal with abstract points, +No. 3 (except the last clause) with concrete facts.[103] + +In their short unanimous Report the Commissioners began by stating that +"Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purposes of this inquiry, be +considered as separate entities." + +To Question 1 they made no unanimous answer. This was immaterial, +because, as a result of numerous tests (assessment to estate duties and +income-tax, consumption of commodities, population, etc.) all arrived +unanimously at an answer to the next question. + +Answer to Question 2 (and incidentally, as will be seen, to part of +Question 3): "That whilst the tax revenue of Ireland is about +_one-eleventh_ of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity +of Ireland is very much smaller, _and is not estimated by any of us as +exceeding one-twentieth_." + +The wording of the answer needs to be explained by reference to the text +of the Report. + +(_a_) In saying "tax revenue" the Commissioners meant to exclude non-tax +revenue--_e.g._, Post Office receipts, etc.--but the Commissioners in +their various separate Reports generally employed the figures of total +revenue. Taking these as our basis, the Irish revenue then raised would +have been nearly one-twelfth instead of one-eleventh of the British +revenue. In other words, of the total revenue of the United Kingdom, +Ireland paid nearly _one-thirteenth_. (_b_) As to the true Irish taxable +capacity of "one-twentieth," some confusion arises owing to the use of +the phrase by different Commissioners in different senses. Mr. Childers +and Sir David Barbour appear to have meant one-twentieth of the United +Kingdom's taxable capacity, the others one-twentieth of Great +Britain's. In order to be on the conservative side, I shall adopt the +former estimate. The discrepancy is not material to the conclusions of +the Commissioners, as, for reasons which I need not go into, they agreed +that the minimum amount of over-taxation was two millions and +three-quarters. + +This was the main outstanding conclusion of the Royal Commission. +Translated into figures, it showed the following facts: In 1893-94 the +total revenue of the United Kingdom from all sources was £96,855,627. Of +this sum the revenue contributed by Great Britain from all sources was +£89,286,978; by Ireland, £7,568,649--that is, between one-eleventh and +one-twelfth of the British revenue. + +If Ireland in 1893-94 had paid in proportion to her true taxable +capacity of one-twentieth, the maximum arrived at by any member of the +Commission, the revenue derived from her would have been £4,842,781. + +In other words, there was held to be an excess payment from Ireland of +£2,725,868. + +It was not suggested by any member of the Commission that Ireland, since +the Union, had grown richer at a more rapid rate than England, and was +therefore more capable of bearing taxation. On the contrary, it was +admitted that she had grown, relatively, much poorer. On the most +moderate estimate, therefore, the over-taxation of Ireland since the +Union, computed strictly on the principle laid down, could be +represented as amounting in 1894 to something like two hundred and fifty +millions, or, if we date from the fiscal union of 1817, two hundred +millions. + +The answer given by the Commissioners to Question 3, so far as it goes, +is explanatory of the previous answer. + +"That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events +showed, she was unable to bear. + +"That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 +was not justified by the then existing circumstances." + +And they added the opinion "that identity of rates of taxation does not +necessarily involve equality of burden." + +Their answers, so far as they were complete, to the other inquiries +contained in Question No. 3 about the tax revenue of Ireland and the +net contribution of Ireland in the past to Imperial services, are to be +found in figures included in the body of the Report, and these figures +formed, of course, the basis of their unanimous conclusion as to the +over-taxation of Ireland. + +These figures, to which I have often alluded in this volume, necessitate +a short digression, because they and subsequent Returns of the same sort +form the only official data upon which to estimate the present financial +position of Ireland. + +They were extracted partly from annual Returns originally issued by the +Treasury for the Home Rule Bill of 1893, and entitled "Financial +Relations (England, Scotland, and Ireland)," and partly from a new +document known as the "Pease" Return, No. 313 of 1894. These Returns, +taken together, represented the first serious attempt by the Treasury to +construct an account covering a period from 1819-20 to 1890-91, and +showing (_a_) the exact revenue derived from Ireland and Great Britain +respectively; (_b_) the local expenditure in Ireland and Great Britain +respectively, as distinguished from Imperial expenditure incurred for +the benefit of the whole United Kingdom; (_c_) the net contribution of +Ireland and Great Britain respectively to this latter expenditure for +Imperial services only. + +Since 1894 two regular annual Returns have been compiled, the one +showing the revenue, local expenditure, and net Imperial contribution of +Scotland, Ireland, and England (including Wales), the other giving an +historical summary of similar figures for Great Britain and Ireland +only, from 1819-20 to the current date. + +Two insoluble problems have had to be grappled with by the Treasury in +preparing these Returns: first, to differentiate Imperial expenditure +from local expenditure; second, to arrive at the "true" net revenue of +the partners as distinguished from the revenue collected within their +respective limits. Both these problems arise whenever an attempt is made +to look behind a system of unitary finance into the burdens and +contributions of different portions of a united realm, and the latter, +though not the former, of the two may arise in just as acute a form if +the realm consists of federated States with a common system of Customs +and Excise. + +With regard to the first problem, it is, of course, easy, in the case of +a Federation, to distinguish between central, or Federal, expenditure +and local, or State, expenditure, because the functions of the Federal +Government and State Governments are delimited in the Constitution, and +the separate expenditures form the subject of separate balance-sheets. +But in a Union, and above all in a Union to which one part of the realm +is an unwilling party, like that of the British Isles, it is clear that +no absolutely accurate line can be drawn between Imperial and local +expenditure. The Army, the Navy, and a number of other things are +clearly enough Imperial, but there are many debatable items. For +example, Is the upkeep of the Lord-Lieutenant an Irish or an Imperial +charge? Is a loss on Post Office business in Ireland to be charged +against Ireland, or should Ireland be credited with a proportion of the +profits of the whole postal business of the United Kingdom? More +searching questions still: Is the enormous charge for the Irish Police, +which is under Imperial control, and exists avowedly for the purpose of +forcibly maintaining, in the Imperial interest, an unpopular form of +government in Ireland, to be charged against Ireland? Or, again, should +Ireland be debited with the cost of the machinery for carrying out Land +Purchase, a policy admittedly rendered necessary by the enforced +maintenance in the past of bad land laws? Obviously such questions can +never be answered so as to satisfy both Irishmen and Englishmen, because +they go to the root of the political relations between Ireland and Great +Britain. The Royal Commission, therefore, was naturally unable to give a +unanimous answer to the last clause of Question No. 3 of their Terms of +Reference--namely, "What is the Imperial expenditure to which Ireland +should equitably contribute?" Some members held that under the Union +even a theoretical classification was unjustifiable, while it was +obvious that under the Union no effect could be given to it. Still, the +classification had to be made, in order to arrive at a theoretical +estimate of the financial situations of Great Britain and Ireland +respectively, and the Treasury, charged with the preparation of this +estimate, took the only course open to it in reckoning as Irish +expenditure all expenditure which would not have to be incurred if +Ireland did not exist. It was the perfectly correct course for the +Treasury to take in dealing with the task set before them, and, as we +shall see, it provides the only basis on which to construct the +balance-sheet of a financially independent Ireland. + +The insolubility of the second problem--that of discovering the "true" +revenue of Ireland and Great Britain respectively--arises from the +difficulty of tracing the passage of dutiable articles from one part of +the kingdom to the other, and of tracing the incidence of direct imposts +such as income-tax and stamps. The great bulk of Irish revenue is +derived from indirect taxes on commodities, liquor, tobacco, tea, sugar, +etc. Since the consumer pays the tax, revenue is rightly credited to the +country of consumption. The tax, for example, on tobacco manufactured in +Ireland may be collected in Ireland, but the revenue from Irish-made +tobacco exported to and consumed in Great Britain is rightly credited to +Great Britain. The converse holds true. Half the tea consumed in Ireland +has paid duty in London, but the whole of the revenue from tea consumed +in Ireland must be credited to Ireland. Now, since 1826, no official +records had been kept by the Customs-houses of the transit of goods +between Ireland and England, except in the solitary case of spirits. The +data, therefore, did not exist, and do not exist now, except in the case +of spirits, for an accurate computation. This is frankly confessed by +the Treasury officials. They base their published figures on certain +arbitrary methods of calculation which have never been submitted to any +public inquiry, and which, as they admit, contain an element of +guesswork. The matter is an exceedingly important one to Ireland, +because ever since 1870 an increasingly heavy deduction has been made by +the Treasury from her "collected" revenue, and her "true" revenue has +proportionately diminished. Part of this deduction is no doubt due to +the fact that her exports of tobacco and liquor have, in recent times, +much exceeded her imports, but the margin for error is nevertheless +large. Mr. Gladstone, in framing his Home Rule Bill of 1886, was so +sensible of the inherent difficulties of the calculation that, while +retaining Customs and Excise under Imperial control, he credited to the +Irish Exchequer the whole of the revenue collected within Ireland. On +the balance of Anglo-Irish exchange in dutiable articles, as roughly +estimated at that time, this provision meant an annual allowance to +Ireland of nearly a million and a half pounds, the principal reason +being that Ireland, which is a larger manufacturer of spirits and +tobacco, was exporting more than she consumed of these commodities. In +the Bill of 1893, as part of a wholly different financial scheme, Mr. +Gladstone abandoned the plan just described, and provided for the annual +calculation of "true" Irish revenue, as distinguished from "collected" +revenue; but it is a proof of the obscurity and intricacy of the whole +business that the Treasury officials made a mistake of £400,000 in the +initial calculation, with the result that Mr. Gladstone had to recast +his financial scheme from top to bottom. + +In the Return of 1894, as presented to the Royal Commission, this error +was eliminated, but the method of calculation remained imperfect. Nobody +knows now what the true figures are, and there is good reason to think +that Irish revenue has always been, and still is, substantially +underestimated. + +The same obscurity shrouded, and still shrouds, the "true" Irish revenue +from income-tax and stamps, whose proceeds it is exceedingly difficult +to trace under a system of unitary finance, and which are traced by the +Treasury in a fashion again admittedly unreliable.[104] + +In regard to taxes on consumption the same difficulty has been met with +in Australia since the federation of the Colonies and the delegation to +the Commonwealth Government of exclusive control over Customs and +Excise. The product of these duties makes up the bulk of Australian +revenue, and is far too large for the needs of the Commonwealth +Government. The Constitution of 1900 provided that the surplus should be +returned to the individual States in proportion to their "true" +contributions to the revenue, and for the calculation of these "true" +contributions an elaborate system of book-keeping was instituted, in +order to trace the ultimate place of consumption of dutiable articles. +Each State was then credited with its "true" revenue, and debited, among +other things, with a proportionate share of the expense of any +Department transferred by the Constitution from the State to the +Commonwealth. The system caused general dissatisfaction, owing, as the +Australian Official Year Book puts it, "to the practical impossibility +of ensuring that in every case a consuming State will be duly credited +with revenue collected on its behalf in a distributing State." That is +the well-founded complaint of Ireland in regard to the Treasury returns. +Hitherto in Australia efforts to change the system for another +allocating the surplus on a basis of population have not been +successful.[105] The Canadian Federal Constitution uses the basis of +population for the distribution of small subsidies to the Provinces, but +complaints have arisen as to its fairness. British Columbia, for +example, for a long time complained that her subsidy was too small, one +of the grounds being that her consumption of dutiable goods was +unusually large. No means existed of verifying this complaint by +figures.[106] + +With this explanatory digression about a very important feature of +Anglo-Irish finance, I return to the findings of the Royal Commission of +1894-1896. The figures supplied to them were as shown on the opposite +page. + +It will be noticed that the average "true" revenue of Ireland was +stationary at a little over five millions from 1820 to 1850, rose with a +bound to seven and a half millions with the equalization of taxes in the +decade 1850-1860, and remained stationary at that figure for the +remaining thirty-four years. Expenditure in Ireland quadrupled in the +whole sixty-four years; and the net contribution to Imperial services, +after rising from three and a half millions (in round numbers) in 1820 +to five and a half millions in 1860, fell automatically, as the +expenditure rose, and had stood at two millions from 1890 afterwards. +Population had fallen by two millions, but the "true" revenue raised per +head of population rose from 15s. 5d. in 1819 to £1 13s. 5d. in 1894, +while the local expenditure rose from 4s. 7d. per head in 1820 to £1 5s. +in 1894. + +STATEMENT SHOWING THE ESTIMATED LOCAL EXPENDITURE INCURRED IN IRELAND, +AND THE BALANCE OF TRUE REVENUE WHICH IS AVAILABLE FOR IMPERIAL SERVICES +AFTER SUCH EXPENDITURE HAS BEEN MET: + + Revenue as Adjustment Estimated Estimated Balance Population + Collected (+) or (-) True Local available + Revenue Expenditures for + Imperial + Services +Decadal +figures. £ £ £ £ £ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- +1819-20 5,253,909 + 2,655 5,256,564 1,564,880 3,691,684 6,801,000 +1829-30 4,161,217 +1,040,908 5,502,125 1,345,579 4,156,576 7,767,401 +1839-40 4,571,150 + 841,739 5,412,889 1,789,567 3,626,322 8,175,124 +1849-50 4,338,091 + 523,374 4,861,465 2,247,687 2,613,778 6,574,278 +1859-60 7,097,994 + 602,430 7,700,334 2,304,334 5,396,000 5,798,967 +1869-70 7,331,058 + 95,274 7,426,332 2,938,122 4,488,210 5,412,377 +1879-80 7,831,316 - 550,520 7,280,856 4,054,549 3,226,307 5,174,836 +1889-90 9,005,932 -1,271,254 7,734,678 5,057,708 2,676,970 4,704,750 + +Annual +figures. £ £ £ £ £ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- +1890-91 9,301,463 -1,506,988 7,734,475 5,723,399 2,071,076 -- +1891-92 9,639,344 -1,671,226 7,968,105 6,021,810 1,946,295 -- +1892-93 9,425,177 -1,986,780 7,438,397 5,540,508 1,897,880 -- +1893-94 9,650,649 -2,082,000 7,568,649 5,602,555 1,966,094 1,638,000 + +In 1893-94, the last year under review, Ireland, in round figures, was +producing a net revenue of seven and a half millions, was costing five +and a half millions, and was, therefore, contributing to Imperial +services a surplus of two millions. In the same year, while contributing +her two millions, she was overtaxed, according to the lowest estimate of +the Commissioners, by two and three-quarter millions. + +But the significance of these figures cannot be discerned without an +examination of their counterparts on the British side of the account. In +the whole period Great Britain's "true" revenue had risen from +£51,445,764 to £89,286,978; her local expenditure from £4,439,333 to +£30,618,586, and her net contribution to Imperial services from +£47,006,431 to £58,668,392. Her population had increased from +13,765,000 in 1820 to 33,469,000 (estimated) in 1893, but her "true" +revenue had _fallen_ per head of the population from £3 13s. to £2 13s. +4d. (approximately), although her local expenditure had risen from 4s. +7d. to £1 2s. (approximately). In other words, a great increase of +wealth had enabled the British taxpayer to pay far more while feeling +the burden far less. The converse was true of Ireland. + +The current state of the account in 1893-94 was as follows: + + Great Britain Ireland + 1893-94 (Population, (Population, Totals. + 33,469,000). 4,638,000). + + £ £ £ +"True" Revenue 89,286,978 7,568,649 96,855,627 +Local Expenditure 30,618,586 5,602,555 36,221,141 +Net contribution to Imperial + Services 58,668,392 1,966,094 60,634,486 + +Great Britain, though raising in "true" revenue between eleven and +twelve times as much as Ireland, was costing only between five and six +times as much to administer as Ireland, and was therefore contributing +to Imperial services twenty-eight times as much as Ireland. + +Now the Commissioners had stated that the taxable capacity of Ireland +was not one-eleventh, but, at the utmost, one-twentieth --in other +words, that she ought to contribute not more than one-twentieth of the +United Kingdom revenue. On that basis she should as we have seen, have +been showing a revenue in 1893-94 not of £7,568,649, but of £4,842,781. + +But, if her local expenditure had also been proportionate to her true +taxable capacity of one-twentieth, instead of standing at £5,602,555, it +would have stood at £1,811,057, or two-thirds less, while if her net +contribution to Imperial services had likewise been a twentieth, instead +of paying £1,966,094, she would have had to pay £3,031,724, or a million +more. + +The conclusion, therefore, might be extracted from the figures that, +although by hypothesis overtaxed, Ireland was drawing a balance of +profit, because, by having more spent on her--or, to put it in another +way, by costing more to govern, she paid a million less to the common +purse than if she had been taxed according to her capacity. + +This was precisely the conclusion drawn by one member of the Commission, +Sir David Barbour, and implicitly acquiesced in by one other member, Sir +Thomas Sutherland. All the other Commissioners agreed that there was +something seriously amiss, and declined to regard the disproportionately +high expenditure on Ireland as compensation for the over-high taxation. +The O'Conor Don, as successor in the chairmanship to Mr. Childers, and +four others contented themselves with setting forth the facts, but made +no recommendations, on the ground that the Commission had not been asked +to make any. Mr. Childers, who died before the completion of the +inquiry, left a Draft Report recommending that a special grant, +amounting to two millions a year, should for the future be allocated to +Ireland. The other six members, dividing into two groups of three, under +Lord Farrer and Mr. Sexton respectively, and stating their views in two +different Reports, all agreed that a form of Home Rule giving financial +independence to Ireland was the only solution of the difficulty. + +The questions at issue were not at all obscure. Any apparent obscurity +was caused by the terms of reference to the Commission, which assumed +the permanence of the Union, while it was absolutely impossible for the +Commission, divided though its members were in politics, to start work +at all without, as they said, considering Great Britain and Ireland as +"separate entities." The reader must be on his guard against +exaggerating the "over-taxation of Ireland" in its purely cash aspect. +The really important points were: (1) The suitability of the Irish taxes +and the responsibility for levying them; (2) the amount and suitability +of the expenditure in Ireland and the responsibility for its +distribution. In order to see conflicting principles stated in their +clearest form the reader should compare the terse and vigorous reports +of Sir David Barbour on the one hand, and of Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, +and Mr. Currie on the other. + +It was Sir David Barbour's great merit that he was not afraid of his own +conclusions. He frankly stated, like all the other Commissioners, that +Ireland's taxation, considered by itself, without regard to Irish +expenditure, was unsuitable and unjust. He recognized that a system of +taxation which was suitable for a rich, industrial, and expanding +country like Great Britain was unsuitable for a poor, agricultural, and +economically stagnant country like Ireland. He had before him the +figures showing that two-thirds of the Irish population was rural, and +that between three and four-fifths of the English population was +urban.[107] He laid special stress on the fact that five-sevenths of +Irish revenue, as compared with less than half the British revenue, was +derived from taxes on commodities of general consumption, pressing +heavily on the poor, and set forth the figures showing that the product +of these taxes represented a charge of £1 2s. 0.95d. per head of the +population in Ireland, and £1 1s. 0.05d. in Great Britain, although the +wealth per head of Great Britain, as he admitted, "was much greater than +the wealth of Ireland per head."[108] His conclusion was that this state +of affairs, though regrettable, could not be helped, because, under the +Union, whose permanence he took for granted, a change of general +taxation to suit Ireland was simply impracticable. He did, it is true, +point out incidentally that the same hardship might be said to affect +poor localities in Great Britain and poor individuals in Great Britain, +but he recoiled from the absurd fallacy involved in saying that on that +account Ireland was not unjustly taxed. If he had gone to that length he +could never have signed the unanimous Report. + +I only mention this latter point because some outside critics have been +bold enough to assert the fallacy in its completeness, proving, as they +easily can, that the purchase of a pound of tea or a pint of beer is as +great an expense to a man with 10s. a week in Whitechapel as to a man +with 10s. a week in Connemara. Such reasoning nullifies the whole +science of taxation. It would be as sensible to say that our whole +fiscal system might wisely be transplanted in its entirety to any +foreign country or to any self-governing Colony absolutely irrespective +of their social and economic conditions and of their habits. Yet Ireland +in these respects has always differed from Great Britain at least as +much as any self-governing Colony and many European countries. The +tea-tax produces scarcely anything in France; it produces an enormous +amount relatively in Ireland, and is a greater burden there than in +Great Britain. The wine-tax is not felt by Ireland; it is felt more by +England; it would cause a revolution in France. Beer is taxed lightly in +the United Kingdom, but the Irishman drinks only half as much beer as +the Englishman. Meat is untaxed, but the Irish poor eat no meat. Spirits +and tobacco are highly taxed, and they are consumed more largely in +Ireland than in England. And so on. The whole Commission recognized that +the circumstances of the two countries were different, and stated "that +identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of +burden." + +Nor could Sir David Barbour have dissociated himself from these +conclusions without destroying the rest of his argument. He pointed out +with truth that merely to reduce Irish taxation to its correct level, +and to leave Irish expenditure where it was, would be to wipe out +Ireland's contribution to Imperial purposes and leave her with a subsidy +from Great Britain of three-quarters of a million. On the other hand, he +held, as I have already indicated, that unduly heavy taxation in Ireland +was already compensated for by an excess of local expenditure in Ireland +as compared with Great Britain. But how, on its merits, and apart from +the question of taxation, could such an excess be justified? The Act of +Union had provided for indiscriminate expenditure in the event of a +fiscal union. Most of the other Commissioners, indeed, had objected to +the idea of distinguishing between "Imperial" expenditure and "local" +expenditure, and striking a balance called an "Imperial contribution," +without, at the same time, distinguishing politically between Ireland +and Great Britain. In other words, they took up the not very logical +position that Ireland must be considered as a separate entity for +purposes of finance owing to the phrase about "abatements and +exemptions," but not for purposes of expenditure. Whether this was a +correct interpretation of the Act of Union has always been a matter of +dispute, but the practical problem is little affected thereby. Sir David +Barbour thought it an incorrect interpretation, and reached the more +logical position that Ireland, both for revenue and expenditure, could +be regarded as a separate entity. This view enabled him to put forward +an argument which, while ostensibly palliating the over-taxation of +Ireland, in reality condemned the whole of the political system +established by the Union. We can, he said, in effect, rightly +distinguish between Imperial and local expenditure, and it is +permissible to spend more on Ireland than on Great Britain. By so +spending more we not only cancel our debt to Ireland, but make her a +present of a million which would otherwise go to swell her contribution +to Imperial purposes. Now, to get at the pith of this argument, the +reader must bear in mind what Sir David Barbour thought it needless to +remark upon, that Ireland had, and has, a separate quasi-colonial system +of administration of her own, but outside her own control, a system of +which he approved. In other words, besides having to be considered in +finance as a "separate entity," she was to a large extent in actual +fact, politically, a "separate entity," though not a self-governing +entity, to which through the channel of the Irish Government Departments +a special large quota for local expenditure could be easily allocated. +As an economist, therefore, and as an upholder of the strangely +paradoxical system set up by the so-called "Union," Sir David Barbour +was absolutely consistent. + +So were Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, and Mr. Currie in coming to +diametrically opposite conclusions. The crux of the discussion, stripped +of academical reasoning, was simple. Everything turned, obviously, on +the nature, amount, and origin of Irish expenditure. Sir David Barbour +had passed lightly over these vital points, recommending only that any +future _saving_ of expenditure in Ireland ought to be used for Irish +purposes--a further admission of Ireland's separate political +existence--and shutting his eyes to future _increases_ of expenditure. +Lord Farrer and his colleagues, while agreeing that it was impossible to +alter the taxation of Ireland so long as the Union lasted, agreed that +additional local expenditure in Ireland could not be regarded as a +set-off to undue taxation, not only because such a doctrine was +inherently fallacious on economic grounds, and would hardly be listened +to in the case of any other country than Ireland, but because Irish +expenditure was subjected to no proper means of control. Both Irish +revenue and Irish services, the former being only theoretically, the +latter actually, distinct and separate, were outside the control of +Irishmen, who had therefore no motive for economy. Nor was there any +proper measure of determining what expenditure was good for Ireland and +what was bad, though they held that there was reason to believe that +much of Irish administration was both bad and costly. With regard to the +extensive system of Imperial loans, whose charge swelled the Irish +expenditure, they quoted the unchallenged evidence of Mr. Murrough +O'Brien[109] to the effect that the system of Imperial loans for +temporary emergencies and charity loans--"made to keep the people quiet +or to keep them alive"--tends to increase the poverty of Ireland, "does +not prevent the recurrence of famine, distress, and discontent," and +that "a great deal of the money nominally meant to be spent on +productive works has been misspent and wasted." They also dwelt, with +emphasis, on official figures showing the extravagance of Civil +Government in Ireland, the cost having risen from 1s. 10d. per head of +the population in 1820 to 19s. 7d. per head in 1893, whereas the cost of +Civil Government in Great Britain had only risen from 1s. 7d. to 11s. +5d. The charge for legal salaries and five principal Departments in +Ireland was double the right figure according to population, and +represented an excess cost of nearly £200,000. In wealthy and +progressive Belgium, Civil Government cost 10s. per head, or little more +than half as much per head as in Ireland.[110] The absurdity of +representing such excess charges and the wasteful expenditure of a +blundering philanthropy, as a recompense for over-taxation, was +manifest. + +Meanwhile, the rise in the cost of Irish Government, coupled with a +stagnant revenue, had decreased the annual contribution of Ireland to +Imperial services, which had fallen from five and a half millions in +1860 to two millions in 1894; unless, indeed, half the cost of Irish +police, virtually a branch of the Imperial Army, and costing double the +amount of Scottish and English police, were to be reckoned, not as an +Irish expense, on the principle adopted by the Treasury, but as a part +of Imperial expenditure. In any case both partners suffered from +excessive and unwise expenditure in Ireland. + +The gist of their conclusions was as follows:[111] + +1. It is impossible, under the Union, to vary taxation for the benefit +of Ireland. + +2. Additional benevolent expenditure in Ireland is not a remedy for +over-taxation.[112] + +"We entertain a profound distrust of benevolences, doles, grants-in-aid, +by whatever name they are called, ... or by whatever machinery it is +proposed to distribute them, convinced, as we are, that in some form or +other political influence or personal interest will creep in so as to +defeat, in part at any rate, the attainment of the objects for which the +expenditure is made." + +3. "We believe that the expenditure of public funds cannot be wisely and +economically controlled unless _those who have the disposal_ of public +money are made _responsible_ for raising it as well as spending it." +Grants of money "tend to weaken the spirit of independence and +self-reliance," the absence of which qualities "has been the main cause +of the backward condition" of Ireland. + +4. "One sure method of redressing the inequality which has been shown to +exist between Great Britain and Ireland will be to put upon the Irish +people the duty of levying their own taxes and of providing for their +own expenditure." + +5. "If it is objected that the course we suggest may lead to the +imposition of new Customs duties in Ireland, we might reply that in this +case, as in that of the Colonies, _freedom is a greater good than free +trade._ We doubt, however, whether Irishmen, if entrusted with their own +finance, would attempt to raise fiscal barriers between the two +countries; for we are satisfied that Ireland, and not Great Britain, +would be the loser by such a policy. The market of Great Britain is of +infinitely greater importance to Ireland than that of Ireland to Great +Britain." The only point on which the three Commissioners differed +concerned Ireland's contribution to Imperial services. Lord Farrer and +Mr. Currie, taking Home Rule as the foundation of their argument, and +prophesying, quite correctly, that under the Union, in a few years, +Ireland's contribution would disappear altogether, recommended that no +such contribution should be exacted by law until Ireland's taxable +capacity approximately reached that of Great Britain. Lord Welby, +regarding Home Rule as an essential but a distant ideal, was for an +immediate reorganization of Anglo-Irish finances which should provide +for a large reduction of Irish Civil expenditure, the saving to be +devoted, on Sir David Barbour's principle, to Irish purposes, and for a +fixed contribution from Ireland to the Army, Navy, National Debt, etc. +How Lord Welby, consistently with his previous argument, could count +upon any reduction of expenditure in Ireland under the existing +political system it is difficult to see. At any rate, subsequent events +proved both him and Sir David Barbour signally wrong on this important +point.[113] + +In every other point the wisdom of the three Commissioners has been +abundantly proved by lapse of time. Do not the conclusions set forth +above bear upon them the stamp of common sense? If it were not for the +inveterate prejudice against Home Rule on other than financial grounds, +no one would dream of disputing them; for they are based on principles +universally accepted in every part of the British Empire but Ireland, +and in most parts of the civilized world. They constitute, in fact, +financially, one of the strongest arguments possible for political Home +Rule. + +There, at any rate, lies a clear issue. Seventeen years have not altered +the essential principles involved. On the contrary, it will be seen that +every year of the seventeen has strengthened the argument of Lord Farrer +and his colleagues, and weakened the argument of Sir David Barbour. But, +before proceeding to this final demonstration, let me in general terms +describe what befell the Royal Commission's Report, which was published +in 1896. For a moment all Ireland, irrespective of class or creed, was +alight with patriotic excitement. Few listened to Sir David Barbour's +view, namely, that so long as Irish expenditure came near Irish revenue +there could be no Irish grievance. Home Rulers and Unionists met on +friendly platforms to denounce the over-taxation of Ireland and to +display figures showing the hundreds of millions of profit made by +Great Britain out of an unconscionable fiscal bargain. This criticism +missed the real point and the unanimity was short-lived. No change could +be made in the system without Home Rule, and the dissension about Home +Rule was strong enough to prevent Irishmen from uniting against a fiscal +system which was not only unjust but demoralizing to Ireland. A Unionist +Government was in power for nine more years after 1896, and a Liberal +Government, pledged temporarily not to give Home Rule, for four further +years. The natural result was that, in default of Home Rule, all parties +in Ireland embraced Sir David Barbour's insidiously attractive +reservation, and have ever since fallen into the habit of regarding +additional expenditure on Ireland, not only on its merits, but as a +set-off to excessive taxation and as something having no relation +whatever to the taxable resources of the country. Nobody took seriously +Sir David Barbour's counsel of perfection about the reduction of the +cost of Irish Civil Government and the allocation of the saving to +Ireland, because such a process was, humanly speaking, impossible. +Expenditure is never reduced except by those who raise the money for it. +On the other hand, in the face of the findings of the Royal Commission, +and in the face of Ireland's economic condition, no Government which +refused Home Rule could have refused large additional Irish expenditure. +Much of it, indeed, was merely an automatic reflection of the immense +growth of national expenditure in the wealthy and expanding +partner-country over the water, and took the form of "equivalent +grants," whether for the corresponding British head of expense or for +something totally different. No doubt some of the money was well spent, +but all of it came in a wrong form, through wrong channels, and was +regarded in Ireland in a false light. Lastly came Old Age Pensions +applied on the British scale to a far poorer population. + +Every word of Lord Welby's and Lord Farrer's condemnation was justified +by events; every prophecy they made has been fulfilled. And the worst of +it is that the delay has damaged the prospects of Home Rule. The habit +of dissociating income from revenue becomes inveterate. The habit of +nursing an old grievance and of expecting "restitution" for funds +unwarrantably levied in the past is hard to shake off. Restitution has +gone too far already. Perpetuated, it would ruin Ireland. Home Rulers +worth their salt must leave this cry to those Unionists who descend to +use it; but it is surely amazing that any Irishman, least of all those +who claim to represent the wealth and intelligence of the country, +should tolerate a political system which inexorably involves a fiscal +system so humiliating to Ireland. Until three years ago it could easily +have been put an end to without affecting the independent solvency of +Ireland, even on the basis of an enormously swollen civil expenditure, +and with the inclusion of services strictly Imperial in origin and +character. Now it is a different matter, and we are faced with the +opposition of British statesmen who, by sustaining the Union, drove +Ireland to the verge of insolvency, and now use insolvency as an +argument against Home Rule. + +One respects the clean and honest side of Unionism, but there can be +nothing but reprobation for the meanness of this latter-day argument. +For generations Ireland herself has asked to be free both from coercion +and bribes, sanely conscious in her soul that both are equally +demoralizing. The aim--though in the past not generally the conscious +aim--of Unionism was to sap the moral fibre of Ireland now by one means, +now by the other. At last the aim is avowed, so that men who applauded +Mr. Chamberlain in 1893 for sneering at Irish patriotism as a "sickly +plant which needed to be watered by British gold" merely because her +contribution under the Home Rule Bill was to be small are now urging +Ireland to maintain the Union--in Mr. Walter Long's words--for its +"eleemosynary benefits."[114] Ireland herself must and will rise to a +higher moral level than that, when she is fully awake to the gravity of +the situation. Those who love her most will not lose a minute in +explaining that situation. Too much time already has been lost. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[97] The Treasury Returns of 1869, "Public Income and Expenditure," in +two volumes, are the basis of all information up to that date. + +[98] Mr. Secretary Pelham in this year estimated that Ireland, though +contributing nothing in money to the Navy, had furnished no less than +38,000 men to the Navy since the beginning of the war. + +[99] Pre-Union Debts were to be separate. Post-Union Debt _contracted +for Imperial services_ was to be regarded as joint, and its charge was +to be borne by the two countries in the proportions of their respective +contributions (see below); but post-Union Debt contracted by Ireland for +domestic services was to be kept separate. + +[100] Eight lectures delivered in the National University, Dublin, in +1911. + +[101] Inhabited house duty, railway passenger tax, carriages, armorial +bearings, etc. The license for dogs is half the English scale. + +[102] On Foster's Corn Law of 1784, see p. 51. + +[103] The text of the unanimous conclusions was as follows: + +1. That Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purpose of this inquiry, +be considered as separate entities. + +2. That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events +showed, she was unable to bear. + +3. That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 +was not justified by the then existing circumstances. + +4. That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve +equality of burden. + +5. That, whilst the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventh +of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is +very much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding +one-twentieth. + +[104] Detailed criticism of the current Treasury accounts under this +head will be found on pp. 276-278. + +[105] A referendum taken on April 13, 1910, defeated the new proposals. +See "Report of Premiers' Conference held at Brisbane, May, 1907" +(Commonwealth Parliamentary Sessional Paper, No. 13, 1907), and for a +clear statement of the whole subject, the "Year-Book (1911) of the +Commonwealth of Australia." (The relevant clauses of the Constitutional +Act are Nos. 88 to 93.) The reasons for the failure of the system were +summarized as follows: + +"1. The trouble and expense which the necessary record entails. + +"2. The practical impossibility of ensuring that in every case a +consuming State will be duly credited with revenue collected on its +behalf in a distributing State. + +"3. The difficulty involved in equitably determining the amount to be +debited to the several States in respect of general Commonwealth +expenses. + +"4. The uncertainty on the part of the State Governments as to the +amount which will become available. + +"5. The impossibility of securing independent State and Commonwealth +finance." + +See also pp. 295-299. + +[106] See Proceedings of the Conference of Provincial Premiers, 1906, at +Ottawa (Canadian Sessional Papers, vol. xl.), especially McBride's +Memorandum for British Columbia. Numerous other grounds for special +treatment were alleged--_e.g.,_ abnormal cost of civil government, due +to vast extent of Province. + +[107] Final Report, p. 24 (Census figures of 1891). + +[108] Final Report, p. 122. + +[109] Final Report, p. 50. + +[110] Ibid., pp. 48, 49. + +[111] Ibid., pp. 51-54. + +[112] They were at issue here with Mr. Childers, who, in his Draft +Report, proposed halving the rates on Irish railways and further +endowing the Congested Districts Board. But Mr. Childers, though a Home +Ruler, felt himself bound by the Terms of Reference not to suggest a +Home Rule solution. + +[113] Lord Welby (Final Report, p. 54) compared his proposal for Ireland +with the system in the Isle of Man, where the proceeds of a tariff +distinct from that of Great Britain were devoted in the first instance +to the payment of a fixed Imperial contribution and the surplus to local +needs. But in the Isle of Man the whole point was that the tariff was a +local tariff, chosen by Manxmen to suit themselves, while the +administration was under Manx control. + +[114] Letter to the _Belfast Telegraph_, October 7, 1911. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE PRESENT FINANCIAL SITUATION + + +I. + +ANGLO-IRISH FINANCE TO-DAY. + + +The finances of Ireland since the Union, when reviewed by the Royal +Commission in 1894-1896, exhibited five principal features: + +1. A declining population. + +2. An estimated true taxable capacity falling as compared with that of +Great Britain, and standing in 1893-94 at a maximum of 1 to 19. + +3. A revenue stationary for thirty-four years, and showing in 1893-94 a +ratio of 1 to 12 with that of Great Britain. + +4. A growing local expenditure (though stationary for the last four +years). + +5. A dwindling net contribution to Imperial services (though stationary +for the last four years). + +If we review the subsequent seventeen years, we find: + +1. A population still declining, though at a slower rate. + +2. An estimated true taxable capacity still falling as compared with +that of Great Britain, and now standing at a maximum of 1 to 24.[115] +That is, Ireland ought strictly to be paying no more than +one-twenty-fifth of the United Kingdom revenue. + +3. A revenue rising, but very slowly and inelastically as compared with +that of Great Britain, and now showing a ratio of 1 to 15; so that the +"over-taxation" of Ireland, as reckoned on the Royal Commission's +principles, is still at least three millions.[116] + +4. A local expenditure growing rapidly and disproportionately to Irish +revenue; now just double the expenditure of 1893-94. + +5. A net contribution to Imperial services automatically diminishing +with the growth of Irish expenditure, disappearing altogether in +1909-10, and now converted into an adverse balance against Ireland of +£1,312,500. + +In Great Britain during the same seventeen years, population, taxable +capacity, revenue, expenditure, and net contribution to Imperial +services have all grown steadily, and, what is more important, in +healthy proportions to one another. + +On the next page will be found the comparative figures for Ireland and +Great Britain of revenue, expenditure, and contribution for 1893-94 and +1910-11. + +Let me remark at the outset _(a)_ that they and other official figures +given in this chapter are taken from the annual Treasury returns alluded +to at p. 242, "Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland, and Ireland)" +and "Imperial Revenue (Collection and Expenditure) (Great Britain and +Ireland)." For the current year 1910-11 the official numbers of these +Returns are 220 and 221, and the latter of the two is virtually a +continuation of the original return, No. 313 of 1894; _(b)_ that the +non-collection of a large part of the revenue of 1909-10, owing to the +delay in passing the Budget, makes the revenue figures of the last two +years, regarded in isolation, misleading; those of the first year being +abnormally low, those of the last abnormally high. I therefore give the +mean figures of the two years. Expenditure is, of course, unaffected, +_(c)_ That the Irish revenue shown as "true" is reduced by heavy +deductions from the revenue as actually collected in Ireland. At p. 244 +I explained that this adjustment can be regarded only as approximately +correct, owing to the admittedly unreliable methods adopted by the +Treasury, _(d)_ That the revenue shown includes non-tax as well as tax +revenue. + + Ireland. Great Britain. + + 1893-94. 1910-11. 1893-94. 1910-11. + +Population 4,638,000 4,381,951 33,469,000 40,834,790 + (estimated) + +"Collected" revenue £9,650,649 £11,704,500 £88,728,428 £156,574,250 +(including non-tax (mean of two (mean of two +revenue) years, 1910- years, 1910- + 11, 1909-10) 11, 1909-10) + +"True" revenue £7,568,649 £10,032,000 £89,286,978 £155,137,250 +(including (mean of two (mean of two +non-tax revenue) years, 1910- years, 1910- + 11, 1909-10) 11, 1909-10) + +Local Expenditure £5,602,555 £11,344,500 £30,618,586 £60,544,000 + + +Contribution to £1,966,094 Nil[A] £58,668,392 £94,593,250 +Imperial Services + +[A] Local Expenditure in excess of "true" revenue (as averaged for +years, 1910-11, 1909-10): £1,312,500. + +Irish expenditure has been rapidly overtaking Irish revenue during the +last three years. In 1907-08 there was a balance available for Imperial +services of £1,811,000; in 1908-09, of only £583,000; and in 1910-11, on +the basis of a mean of that and the previous year, the deficit shown +above of £1,312,500. The principal cause is the Old Age Pensions Vote, +which began in 1908. + +If all the elements of the problem be considered together, it will be +seen that the fiscal partnership is as ill-matched as ever, and has +produced results increasingly anomalous. Each of the partners and their +united interests suffer. Ireland is still more heavily taxed relatively +to Great Britain, yet Ireland's contribution to Imperial services has +been converted into a minus quantity. Why? Because Irish expenditure, +paid out of the common purse, has doubled, while Irish revenue has +increased by less than a third. + +Let me give the final survey of Anglo-Irish finance since the Union, in +the tabular form shown by Professor Oldham at the meeting of the British +Association in September, 1911: + + NET BALANCES PAID BY IRELAND TO GREAT BRITAIN. + + Single Irish "True" Expenditure Balance Decadal + Year. Revenue. in Ireland. One Year. Balance. + £ £ £ £ + 1819-20 5,256,564 1,564,880 3,691,684 36,916,840 + 1829-30 5,502,125 1,345,549 4,156,576 41,565,760 + 1839-40 5,415,889 1,789,567 3,626,322 36,263,220 + 1849-50 4,861,465 2,247,687 2,613,778 26,137,780 + 1859-60 7,700,334 2,304,334 5,396,000 53,960,000 + 1869-70 7,426,332 2,938,122 4,488,210 44,882,100 + 1879-80 7,280,856 4,054,549 3,226,307 32,263,070 + 1889-90 7,734,678 5,057,708 2,676,970 26,769,700 + 1899-1900 8,664,500 6,980,000 1,684,500 16,845,000 + + Averaged Balances for 90 years 315,603,470 + Add, Actual Balances, 1900-09 16,214,000 + + Net Payments, in 99 years 331,817,470 + Deduct Drawings, deficit of 1909-10 2,357,500 + + Net Payments, in 100 years 329,459,970 + Add, Actual Balance, 1910-11 321,000 + +Net Balances paid by Ireland to Great Britain, 1809-1911 329,780,970 + +What has become of Sir David Barbour's argument in favour of the +existing fiscal system? He admitted that Ireland was overtaxed by two +millions and three-quarters. But he showed, it will be remembered, that +if not only the revenue, but the expenditure and contribution to +Imperial services had all been in proportion to Ireland's real taxable +capacity of one-twentieth, she would have been a loser by a +million.[117] Ireland, therefore, he argued, had certainly no grievance, +while Great Britain received the substantial, though not strictly +sufficient, sum of two millions as Ireland's contribution to Imperial +expenses. + +Let us apply the same reasoning to the present situation. Ireland, by +hypothesis, is "overtaxed" by three millions,[118] but if not only the +revenue, but the expenditure and contribution to Imperial services of +Ireland were all in proportion to her real taxable capacity, which we +may estimate now at one-twenty-fifth, we find that she would be a loser +by five millions. Her "true" revenue from all sources _ought_ on this +supposition to be £6,605,900; it _is_ £10,032,000. Her local expenditure +_ought_ to be £2,875,540; it _is_ £11,344,500. Her contribution to +Imperial services _ought_ to be £3,730,360; it _is_ a minus quantity of +£1,312,500. Sir David Barbour's reasoning, then, leads us to this +astounding paradox, that Ireland, while overtaxed by three millions, +gains five millions by the arrangement. Moreover, whether we accept Sir +David Barbour's reasoning or not, it is a fact that to-day Ireland, +which contributed to Imperial services five and a half millions in 1860, +and two millions in 1894, now, so far from contributing anything, costs +a million and a quarter more than she brings in. This, certainly, was +not a result he either anticipated or would have approved of. On the +contrary, he anticipated a reduction in Irish civil expenditure, to be +saved for Irish purposes, without prejudice to the Imperial +contribution. It makes the brain dizzy to compare his anticipation with +the reality. + +How, on the other hand, stands the argument of Lord Farrer and Mr. +Currie? They prophesied a great increase in Irish expenditure and the +disappearance of the contribution to Imperial services. That has come +true. Lord Welby (and indeed the majority of the Commission) was with +them in declining to regard excessive local expenditure as a set-off to +excessive and unsuitable taxation, and in condemning root and branch the +system of grants, aids, and doles as wasteful in itself and as sapping +the self-reliance of Irishmen. There again they were right. They were at +one with all their colleagues in holding that under the Union it was +impossible to differentiate between the taxation of Ireland and Great +Britain, and they prescribed, as the only sound remedy, Home Rule. Once +more they were right. + +The figures of to-day constitute the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the +Union. For over a century in Ireland we have defied the laws of +political economy, but they have conquered us at last. Sound finance +demands that revenue and expenditure should be co-related. Ireland's +economic circumstances are widely different from those of Great Britain, +but she has been included, without any regard to her needs and without +any reference to Irish expenditure, in a system of taxation designed +exclusively for the capacities and needs of Great Britain. Hence Irish +revenue is both excessive and inadequate. + +"Excessive"? "Inadequate"? What do these terms really mean? Let us once +and for all clear our minds of all obscurity and look the facts in the +face. No one knows what Irish revenue and expenditure ought to be, or +would be, if Irishmen had controlled their own destinies. It is useless +to parade immense sums as the cash equivalent of over-taxation; it is +idle to array against them rival figures of over-expenditure. Normal +Irish revenue and normal Irish expenditure are matters of speculation. +For all we know, Ireland, had she been permitted normal political +development, would be raising a larger revenue, and feeling it less; +while it is absolutely certain that she would be paying her own way and +contributing to Imperial services more, in proportion to her resources, +than she did before the Union. The political and therefore the economic +development of Ireland have been deliberately and forcibly arrested. I +do not say malignantly, because there was no malignant intention. But +the action, if mistaken, was deliberately and consistently sustained. +Much of Irish industrial talent was lost irrevocably before the old +industrial restrictions were removed. There remained the land, an +immense source of potential wealth, if properly developed under a +rational system of agrarian tenure. For the best part of a century after +the Union, the agrarian tenure, dating from the first genuine +colonization of Ireland, when the land was confiscated wholesale and the +peasantry enslaved, was maintained by force of arms. Thirty years ago +(if we date from the Land Act of 1881) we began to change this tenure +into another equally defective, though far more favourable to the +tenant. A little later, but only eight years ago, on a thorough and +systematic scale, we began the parallel policy of Land Purchase. Even +now, having transferred half the land to peasant ownership, and placed +the other half under judicial rents, many of our statesmen are unwilling +to give Ireland the control of its own affairs. On the contrary, step +by step with the economic enfranchisement of the farmers, has gone the +policy of destroying their personal and political independence, and +forcing them to look outside their own country for financial aid, by +spending money upon Ireland which Irishmen have no direct responsibility +for raising. What a travesty of statesmanship! First, having assisted +the farmer to buy his own land, to clap him on the back with "Now, my +fine fellow, you are a free man." In the same breath to tell him that he +is not fit to have a direct voice in the management of his own country's +affairs, and to try and reconcile him to this insult by sapping that +very independence of character which the acquirement of a freehold has +begun to instil in him. + +I described in Chapter IX. how a number of patriotic Irishmen, working +both at industrial and agricultural development, have striven to +counteract this fatal tendency, and to persuade their countrymen to rely +on themselves alone. But I venture to repeat what I said then, that +without the bracing discipline of Home Rule, and, above all, of the +financial Home Rule, these efforts are doomed to comparative failure. + +It is absolutely necessary to produce an equilibrium between revenue and +expenditure in Ireland, as in every other country in the world. Whatever +the temporary strain upon Ireland, whatever the sacrifices involved, the +thing must be done, and done now or never. Great Britain's interest is +something, but it is trivial beside that of Ireland. The situation is +growing worse, not better, and Irishmen should unite to insist that the +whole system should stop. + + +II. + +IRISH EXPENDITURE. + + +Let us look a little more closely at Irish expenditure, as disclosed in +the Treasury returns. + +For purposes of comparison, I set out first the main heads of Civil +Expenditure for England, Scotland, and Ireland in the year 1910-11:[119] + + Population. England, Scotland, Ireland, + 36,075,269. 4,759,521. 4,381,951. + + £ £ £ +Civil Government Charges, 1910-11: + (_a_) On Consolidated Fund: + (1) Civil List, Salaries, Pensions, + and Miscellaneous Charges 340,500 148,000 138,500 + (2) Development and Road + Improvement Funds + (3) Payments to Local Taxation + Accounts, etc. 7,199,500 1,204,500 1,477,500 + (_b_) Voted 26,121,500 4,180,500 8,026,000 + +Total Civil Government Charges 33,661,500 5,533,000 9,642,000 + +Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue 3,157,000 464,000 298,000 +Post Office Services 15,798,500 1,930,000 1,404,500 + +Total Expenditure 52,617,000 7,927,000 11,344,500 + + £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. +Per head of population 1 9 2 1 13 31/2 2 11 9 + + +The totals, if we consider relative populations, appear startling. + +Look at the third, or Irish, column, and set aside the two last items, +"Customs, Excise, and Inland Revenue," and "Post-Office Services," which +represent the cost of collecting Irish Revenue and maintaining the Irish +postal, telegraph, and telephone services. We may note in passing, +however, that the Post-Office receipts in Ireland in 1910-11, according +to the Treasury estimate, were less than the outgoings by £249,000 +(receipts, £1,155,500; outgoings, £1,404,500). + +The Civil Government Charges are the most important heads of expense, +and these are divided into two main classes: (_a_) charged on +Consolidated Fund; (_b_) Voted. + +Class (_a_) consists of (1) Salaries, Pensions, etc.; (2) Development +and Road Improvement Funds; (3) Payments to Local Taxation Accounts. + +In other parts of Return No. 220 will be found the details of +expenditure in these various classes: + +(1) The Salaries and Pensions need not detain us long. The principal +item is judicial salaries, £102,000, as compared with £282,000 for +England, which has more than eight times the population of Ireland. +Another item, £20,000 for the Lord-Lieutenant, is double the sum +allotted to any Colonial Governor, even of the Dominion of Canada, which +has nearly twice the population of Ireland. But the extravagance lies, +not in the cash amount, but in the fact that the Irish Lord-Lieutenancy +is, under present conditions, an anomalous institution. No Irishman +would grudge a penny of the sum if the Lord-Lieutenant, like a Colonial +Governor, presided over a responsibly governed Ireland. + +(2) Road Improvement and Development Funds. This category is blank for +the year 1910-11. There will be payments for the current year which will +swell the Irish expenditure. + +(3) Payments to Local Taxation Accounts, £1,477,500. This raises an +intricate subject, into which I cannot enter in great detail. It is well +known that the whole system of relieving local taxation out of Imperial +taxation needs thorough revision. Meanwhile Ireland, like other parts of +Great Britain, has been allotted at various times a multitude of +different grants under various Acts, but principally under the Local +Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, and the Finance Acts of recent years. + +Local Government on the British pattern was, as I have already +described, extended to Ireland only in 1898. The money now raised in +Ireland by Local Taxation is about £4,800,000, exclusive of the Grants +in Aid which we are now considering, and which appear, rightly, on the +national balance-sheet because they come from the common purse.[120] +They are based on different principles, and originated in many different +ways. Some are fixed annual sums, determined either by some arbitrary +standard or (as in the case of the Licence Duty grants and the Customs +and Excise grants[121]) on the Irish proceeds of certain duties in a +year taken as standard. The Estate Duty grants still vary with the total +product of duties in the United Kingdom, and are still allocated on the +proportion settled by Mr. Goschen in 1888--namely, 9 parts to Ireland, +11 to Scotland, and 80 to England.[122] If the proportion were to be +revised now, and, on Mr. Goschen's method, made to correspond to the +respective estimated contributions to Imperial Services, Ireland, +instead of getting £418,000, would get nothing at all. The largest item +in the list--namely, the "Agricultural Grant," a fixed annual sum of +£728,000, dating from the Local Government Act of 1898--was designed +partly to reconcile Irish landlords to the passage of that Act. Nearly +half of it represented the remission of the landlord's half-share of the +poor-rate on agricultural land, as estimated in the standard year +1896-97. The English precedent for this was the Agricultural Rates Act +of 1896, which relieved the English owner of agricultural land in a +similar way. Irish conditions were so different, however, that it was +felt necessary in this case to balance the landlord's boon with an +equivalent boon to the tenant; so that half the tenant's share of the +county cess was also remitted. The result was a disproportionately large +grant as compared with those received by England and Scotland.[123] We +must remark, as one of the minor intricacies of Irish finance, that all +these grants do not actually go in relief of Local Taxation. Some of +them are diverted to public Departments, such as the Board of +Intermediate Education, the Congested Districts Board, and the +Department of Agriculture. + +All these grants will cease, as such, after Home Rule, while their +amount must be reckoned as part of the cost of Irish Government. The +Irish Parliament will have to revise the whole system of relief to Local +Taxation and establish it on some simple and rational basis. Meanwhile, +it is important to remember that the Irish grants form the major part of +the Guarantee Fund set up by the Land Purchase Acts, and, until the last +amending Land Act of 1909, were chargeable--the Estate Duties Grant, hi +the first instance, the Agricultural Grant in the second instance--with +the increasingly heavy losses incurred in floating Land Stock below par. +In 1908-09 the sums so withdrawn amounted to £90,000. That liability was +removed by Mr. Birrell's Act, and they now remain chargeable only with +any arrears in the annuities paid by the purchasing tenants. This is a +negligible liability, and should properly be placed upon the Irish +Government as a whole, which, if it pleased, could recover the money +from localities.[124] + +We now reach the category _(b)_ "Voted," and find in the Irish column +the truly enormous sum of £8,026,000--nearly double that of Scotland +(£4,180,500), which has a population slightly greater, and more than a +third of that of England (£26,121,500), which has a population eight +times as great. + +When we search the various tables of detailed expenditure, three +prominent items arrest our attention: + +Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police[125] £1,464,500 +Old Age Pensions £2,408,000 +Public (_i.e._, Primary) Education £1,632,000 + + £5,504,500 + +Those three items may be said to epitomize the history of Ireland under +the Union--coercion, pauperization, deficient education. The first two +are, of course, intimately connected. The existing cost of police, +surviving needlessly at the monstrous figure shown, represents the past +cost of enforcing laws economically hurtful to Ireland. The economic +hurt is reflected in the cost of Old Age Pensions paid to a +disproportionately large number of old people, below the official +standard of wealth, in a country drained by emigration for seventy years +past of its strongest sons and daughters. Police in Ireland costs twice +as much as in England and Scotland, where (with the exception of the +_London Metropolitan Police_) it is a local, not a national charge, +while Irish Old Age Pensions cost in 1910-11 more than twice as much as +Scottish Pensions, and amounted to two-fifths of English Pensions.[126] +With full allowance for excess payments owing to the lack of all birth +records prior to a certain date, the Irish figure is relatively +enormous. It is £100,000 greater than the whole cost of Irish Government +in 1860, and, with the addition made in the estimates of the present +year, it is just a million more than what, according to Sir David +Barbour's reasoning, would have been the whole cost of Irish Government +in 1893-94, had Irish expenditure, like Irish revenue, been in +proportion to the taxable capacity of Ireland. + +I touched upon the Irish aspect of the policy of Old Age Pensions at p. +181. Whatever the pecuniary charge, I suggest that it is absolutely +necessary for Ireland in the future to control both payment and policy, +and she might find it in her best interest, with due notice and due +regard to present interests, to halve the scale of pensions. It is not a +question of the general policy of Old Age Pensions, but of the +applicability of a certain scale to Ireland, where agricultural wages +(for example) average only 11s. 3d. as compared with 18s. 4d. for +England, and 19s. 7d. for Scotland.[127] Of all ways of remedying a +backward economic condition, that of excessive pensions is the worst. + +The cost of Irish Primary Education--£1,632,000, as I pointed out in +Chapter IX.--is at once too high and too low; too high in the sense that +much of it is wasted owing to the lack of popular control, too low in +the sense that it is a scandal to spend nearly as much on police as on +the education of children, and £800,000 more on Old Age Pensions than on +the education of children. If part or even the whole of the additional +expense eventually necessary is raised by rates, so much the better. +Accurate comparison is difficult with the English and Scottish +expenditure on elementary education, because the greater part of the +cost in those countries is borne by private endowments and local rates, +whereas in Ireland no local rate is raised for elementary education, +there are no endowments, and private subscriptions are very small.[128] +It is certain, however, that far greater sums, in proportion to +population, are spent in England and Scotland than in Ireland. This is +little to be wondered at if we consider the painful history of education +in Ireland; but we cannot recall the past, and, as I urged in Chapter +IX., one of the first duties of a free Ireland will be to improve the +education of the children. + +The Irish vote for Universities and Colleges, £166,000, has been swelled +by the recent establishment of the National University. No item in the +whole list represents money better spent. + +With regard to other Irish services, I shall make use, with Professor +Oldham's consent, of some interesting tables compiled by him, showing +the principal variations in Irish expenditure since the year +1891-92.[129] + +They include certain expenses which I have already alluded to, and +others which I shall have to remark upon further, besides giving a +general view of the growth in the cost of Irish government. Neither of +lists A or B is exhaustive: + +A. INCREASES OF EXPENDITURE. + + 1910-11. 1891-92. + £ £ +1. Old Age Pensions 2,408,000 -- +2. Primary Education 1,632,000 843,755 +3. Universities and Colleges 166,000 26,000 +4. Payments to Local Taxation Account 1,477,500 399,260 + +5. Ireland Development Grant 191,500 -- + +6. Post Office 1,404,500 749,046 +7. Cost of collecting Irish Revenue 298,000 223,362 +8. Surveys of the United Kingdom 81,000 47,603 + +9. Land Commission 414,500 91,826 +10. Department of Agriculture 415,000 44,630 +11. Other items (five[130]) 240,500 172,918 + --------- --------- + 8,728,500 2,598,400 + +Nos. 1 to 4 I have already dealt with, but it is interesting to note the +contrasting figures of 1893-94. + +No. 5. The Ireland Development Grant of £191,500 is interesting as an +example of the haphazard methods of Anglo-Irish finance. It is an annual +sum voted for various development purposes, and was originally +established (at the figure of £185,000) in 1903 as an equivalent for the +capitation grants for school attendance in England, given under the +Education Act of 1902 in lieu of school fees. In allotting the Irish +equivalent, Mr. Goschen's proportion of 80, 11, 9 was for the first time +condemned by all parties. What the proportion ought to be was a matter +of dispute, but it was fixed in this case on the basis of population. +Since the English grant has now risen to £2,500,000, the Irish +proportion therefore is now, strictly speaking, inadequate. + +Nos. 6, 7, and 8 are examples of charges debited by the Treasury against +Ireland which are open to criticism as long as the Union lasts, and +which meet with much complaint in Ireland. Obviously, however, the first +two at any rate are charges which an Ireland financially independent +would have to bear. + +No. 9. The Land Commission vote of £414,500 is of course the direct +result of an abnormally bad system, necessitating abnormal and costly +remedial administration. Ireland herself is not morally responsible for +a penny of it, but if she is wise she will shoulder the cost as a +corollary of responsible government. Small administrative economies may +be made, and the cost will disappear altogether with the completion of +Land Purchase, say in fifteen years, but in the immediate future no +reduction can be counted on with certainty. The figure given includes +the cost of the Land Commission proper, which deals with Judicial Rents +and manages finance, as well as the cost of the Estates Commissioners +who conduct the machinery of Land Purchase. It also includes losses on +the flotation of Land Stock at a discount, and the interest and +sinking-fund on the Stock raised to pay the bonus to landlords. + +No. 10. The vote of £415,000 for the Department of Agriculture, whose +origin and functions I described in Chapter IX., does not accurately +show the actual cost of the Department, because it excludes the greater +part of an Endowment Income of £166,000 a year, derived partly from the +Irish Church Fund, partly from the Irish Local Taxation Account, and +partly from the interest on a capital endowment of £200,000, as well as +other small miscellaneous grants. But it includes a sum of about £44,000 +for some museums, colleges, gardens, etc., whose English counterparts +are subsidized under different votes, as well as the sum of £144,000 +for the Congested Districts Board.[131] Nor does this latter sum +represent the full cost of the Congested Districts Board, which has also +an Endowment Income from the Irish Church Fund of £41,250, a subsidy +from the Ireland Development Grant, and a fluctuating income from +various sources--rents, etc. + +Part of the expense of the Department itself must be regarded as +abnormal, in view of the extraordinarily backward economic condition of +the country when it was founded. Nor, valuable as the Department's work +is, can it be safely assumed that the cost is not extravagant. As long +as any Department relies on an Imperial vote there can be no certainty +that the expenditure will be economical. The whole cost of the Congested +Districts Board is abnormal. Its very existence is evidence of the +failure of external government in Ireland, and, as I urged in Chapter +IX., the whole question of the treatment of the congested districts +needs thorough investigation at the hands of a responsible Irish +Government. + + B. REDUCTIONS IN EXPENDITURE. + + 1910-11. 1891-92. + + £ £ +1. Relief of Distress 5,000 183,675 +2. Pauper Lunatics Grant 111,655 +3. Teachers' Pensions Grant 90,000 +4. Railways (Ireland) Grant 61,000 341,934 +5. Local Government Board 92,500 132,748 +6. Chief Secretary's Offices 27,500 39,681 +7. Registrar-General's Office 13,000 29,926 +8. Justice and Police 2,090,500 2,129,849 + --------- --------- + 2,289,500 3,059,468 + +Most of these reductions are deceptive. No. 1 is the saving of an +abnormal grant, Nos. 2 and 5 signify mere transfers to Grants in Aid of +Local Taxation, No. 7 a transfer of duties to the Department of +Agriculture. + +The table shows a total reduction of £769,968, while Table A shows a +total increase of £6,130,000. Together they account for an increase +since 1891-92 of £5,360,032. + +Here is a similar table, confined to Justice and Police: + +C. EXPENDITURE ON JUSTICE AND POLICE. + + 1910-11. 1891-92. + £ £ +1. Judicial Salaries ... ... ... 102,000 110,244 +2. Dublin Metropolitan Police ... 93,500 91,998 +3. Royal Irish Constabulary ... ... 1,371,000 1,362,348 +4. Judicial Pensions, etc. ... ... 15,000 18,656 +5. Law Charges ... ... ... ... 65,500 71,977 +6. Superior Courts Offices ... ... 110,500 116,851 +7. County Courts Offices ... ... 109,000 112,895 +8. Prisons, etc. ... ... ... ... 112,000 134,429 +9. Reformatories, etc. ... ... ... 112,000 110,451 + + 2,090,500 2,129,849 + +To Nos. 1, 2, and 3 I have already referred. The whole charge of two +millions, though it shows a slight decrease in twenty years, is grossly +out of proportion to the resources of Ireland. Under heads 6 and 7 are +included a number of posts which are notoriously little more than +sinecures. + +To sum up once more, the cost of the Irish Government as paid out of the +common purse in the last completed financial year was £11,344,500, or £2 +11s. 9d. per head of the population, as compared with a cost per head of +£1 9s. 2d. in England, and in Scotland of £1 13s. 31/2d. But this is not +the minimum figure with which we have to reckon in considering the Home +Rule scheme; some items show a marked increase in the Estimates of the +current year: (1) The increase in Old Age Pensions, not certain yet, +will be at least £250,000. (2) The Land Commission is £544,000, as +compared with £414,500. (3) Universities and Colleges, £186,256, as +compared with £166,000. (4) Department of Agriculture, £426,609, as +compared with £415,000. (5) Registrar-General's Office, £29,020, as +compared with £13,000. (6) Valuation and Boundary Survey, £44,581, as +compared with £30,000. (7) Public Works and Buildings in Ireland, +£273,370, as compared with £215,000. Even with allowance for +over-estimates, especially in the last of these items,[132] we must +anticipate an increase of nearly half a million under the above heads, +to which we must add £150,000 recently allocated by the Road Board to +Ireland for the year 1911-12, and £34,750 already allocated by the +Development Commissioners. If Ireland comes prematurely into the +National Insurance scheme, and assumes eventual financial responsibility +for her share of the cost, that will be an additional source of expense; +but it is to be hoped that her leaders, in common prudence, will +henceforth endeavour to stem the rising flood of Irish expenditure, and +so facilitate the retrenchments imperatively necessary under Home Rule. +As it is, the total outgoings of the current year (1911-12), swelled by +the increases shown above, will probably amount to £12,000,000, while +this total will in its turn be added to by the office costs of the Irish +Legislature and the salaries of Ministers. + +The scheme framed cannot assume immediate economies, and a responsible +Ireland alone can decide the nature and extent of the drastic economies +which must be made in the future. Beyond the brief remarks and hints +made in the course of this chapter, I myself venture only to lay down +the broad proposition that, to the last farthing, Irish revenue must +govern and limit Irish expenditure. For any hardship entailed in +achieving that aim Ireland will find superabundant compensation in the +moral independence which is the foundation of national welfare. She will +be sorely tempted to sell part of her freedom for a price. At whatever +cost, she will be wise to resist. + +If Irish revenue is to be the measure of Irish expenditure, it follows +that it must be wholly, or at any rate predominately, under Irish +control. Let us look a little more closely, therefore, into its amount +and composition. + + +III. + +IRISH REVENUE. + + +As I have already pointed out, in order to arrive at the present revenue +of Ireland, our best course is to take the mean tax revenue of the two +years 1909-10 and 1910-11, and to add to it the non-tax revenue of +1910-11, which was, of course, unaffected by the delay in passing the +Budget of 1909. For clearness, however, I first set out separately the +Irish figures of these two years, distinguishing between tax revenue and +non-tax revenue, and giving the "collected" revenue and the "true" +revenue in different columns: + + 1909-10. 1910-11. + + Revenue as Revenue as + Collected. "True." Collected. "True" + +TAX REVENUE. £ £ £ £ +Customs 2,742,000 2,755,000 3,103,000 2,977,000 +Excise 4,487,000 2,898,000 5,826,000 3,734,000 +Estate, etc., Duties 684,000 684,000 1,144,000 1,144,000 +Stamps 293,000 315,000 326,000 351,000 +Income Tax 388,000 451,000 1,825,000 2,164,000 +Land Value Duties -- -- 1,000 1,000 + +Total Irish Revenue from +Taxes 8,594,000 7,103,000 12,225,000 10,371,000 + +NON-TAX REVENUE. +Postal Service 900,000 900,000 935,000 935,000 +Telegraph Service 180,000 180,000 185,500 185,500 +Telephone Service 30,000 30,000 35,000 35,000 +Crown Lands 26,000 26,000 24,500 24,500 +Miscellaneous 116,000 116,000 114,500 114,500 + +Total Irish Non-Tax +Revenue 1,252,000 1,252,000 1,294,500 1,294,500 + +Aggregate Irish 9,846,000 8,355,000 13,519,500 11,665,500 +Revenue + +Percentage of the Aggregate +Revenue of the +United Kingdom 7.52 6.38 6.57 5.67 + +On p. 276 are the details of the mean tax revenue, "collected" and +"true," of the two years 1909-10, 1910-11, with the non-tax revenue of +the latest year, 1910-11, added to them. + +PRESENT IRISH REVENUE (MEAN OF THE LAST TWO YEARS). + + +Details of Revenue. Mean Collected Mean "True" or + Tax "Contributed" Tax + Revenue of the Revenue of the + Years 1909-10, Years 1909-10, + 1910-11. 1910-11. + + TAX REVENUE. £ £ +Indirect{Customs 2,922,500 2,866,000 +Taxation{Excise 5,156,500 3,316,000 + (incl. licences + £284,500) + +Total Indirect Taxation 8,079,000 6,182,000 + + {Estate Duties 914,000 914,000 +Direct Taxation{Stamps 309,500 333,000 + {Income Tax 1,106,500 1,307,500 + {Land Value Duties 1,000 1,000 + +Total Direct Taxation 2,331,000 2,555,500 + +Total Tax Revenue 10,410,000 8,737,500 + +NON TAX REVENUE (1910 11). +Postal Service 935,000 935,000 +Telegraph Service 185,500 185,500 +Telephone Service 35,000 35,000 +Crown Lands 24,000 24,500 +Miscellaneous 114,500 114,500 + +Total Non Tax Revenue (1910 11) 1,294,500 1,294,500 + + Collected "True" or + Revenue "Contributed" + at the Revenue at the + Present Day. Present Day, + +Aggregates 11,704,500 10,032,000 + +The two aggregate figures at the bottom, £11,704,500 and £10,032,000, +approximately represent the Treasury estimate of the "collected" and the +"true" revenue of Ireland, respectively, at the present day. They are +confirmed by the figures of previous years; for the average revenue of +the five years, 1904-09, was as follows: "collected," £11,320,000; +"true" or "contributed," £9,612,400, the new taxation of 1909-10 having +added £500,000 to the "true" revenue. I must again remind the reader, +however, that the figures are open to the criticism that the adjustment +between the "collected" tax revenue and the "true" revenue is inaccurate +owing to the methods employed by the Treasury. It will be observed that +the resulting net deduction from the "collected" tax revenue of to-day, +a deduction attributable, on the balance of the various figures, almost +exclusively to Excise,[133] and mainly to the Excise duty on spirits, +amounts to £1,672,500, and makes all the difference between the solvency +and insolvency of Ireland regarded as an independent financial unit. Her +expenditure, it will be remembered, was £11,344,500, her "collected" +revenue £11,704,500, leaving a surplus of £360,000, which becomes a +deficit of £1,312,500 if we reckon only the "true" or "contributed" +revenue of £10,032,000. On the other hand, the principle, as +distinguished from the methods of adjustment, is perfectly sound if we +wish to arrive at a correct idea of the financial position of Ireland. +The £1,672,500 virtually represents the duties on goods exported from +Ireland, and consumed in Great Britain, or rather the excess of these +duties over those levied on goods exported from Great Britain and +consumed in Ireland. The consumer pays the tax on dutiable commodities, +and a financially independent Ireland could not raise revenue twice over +from the same commodity. She would, for example, have to give a drawback +from the Excise duty on spirits exported to England, since a Customs +duty would be levied on its import into England. On the other hand, she +would be entitled to every penny of revenue derived from the tea and +sugar imported into and consumed within her borders, and to the full +income tax on property held by Irishmen. + +Now, for two reasons, I do not propose to make any exhaustive inquiry +into the accuracy of Treasury adjustments for "true" revenue. My first +reason is, that full material for calculation cannot be obtained by any +private individual, and could not be obtained and worked up even by the +Treasury without an enormous expenditure of time and trouble. The most +careful inquiry I have seen is embodied in an exceedingly able pamphlet +by "an Irishman," entitled "The Financial Relations of Ireland with the +Imperial Exchequer," and I mention below a few of the criticisms made by +the writer. His and other investigations seem to prove that Irish +revenue is considerably underestimated, perhaps by half a million.[134] +My second reason is that errors of adjustment in either direction cannot +affect in any substantial way the kind of financial scheme we are to +adopt in the Home Rule Bill. + +Let us fix our attention, then, on the second of the two columns in the +table on p. 276, showing the aggregate "true" revenue of Ireland at the +present day. Disregard the non-tax revenue from the various postal +services (which represents payment for services rendered, and is +swallowed up by an excess on the expenditure side of £249,000), and +examine the heads of tax revenue shown in the upper half of the column. +It will be seen that 70-75 per cent. of Irish "true" revenue is derived +from Customs and Excise duties, which, with the exception perhaps of +licence duties, may be classed as indirect taxation. The deduction for +"true" revenue, it will be observed, has considerably modified the +proportion, which for "collected" revenue works out at 77.61 per cent., +or nearly four-fifths. + +As the reader is aware, this is not a new feature in Irish finance. It +formed the basis of the Report of the Financial Relations Commission +with regard to the over-taxation of Ireland. Much the greater part of +Irish revenue, even since the abolition of protective duties and the +substitution of direct taxation, has always been derived from taxes on +articles of common consumption, the simple reason being that Ireland is +a country where there is little accumulated wealth from which to extract +direct taxation. In Great Britain, whose circumstances dictate the +finance of the United Kingdom, no less than 54.79 per cent. of the tax +revenue is derived from direct taxation, only 45.21 per cent. from +Customs and Excise.[135] + +The Irish figures show that to retain in the hands of the Imperial +Parliament the control of Irish Customs and Excise will be to retain +almost paramount control over Irish revenue; to deny Ireland the main +lever she needs for co-ordinating her expenditure and her revenue, and +for making her taxation suitable to her economic conditions. It will be +to preserve the framework of a fiscal system which the highest financial +authorities have pronounced to be unfair to Ireland, and which +incontrovertible facts show to be uneconomical both for Ireland and +Great Britain. + +Meanwhile that system has at length produced a deficit, with which I +shall deal in the next chapter. Its amount, probably exaggerated, must +necessarily remain uncertain under the present fiscal Union. One thing +alone is certain, that it will grow as long as that Union lasts. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[115] _I.e._, on the generally accepted basis of (1) assessment to death +duties, (2) assessment to income-tax. With regard to (1), in the last +report of the Inland Revenue Commissioners, the figure for the United +Kingdom was £371,808,534; for Ireland, £15,872,302, or 1/234. With +regard to (2), the figure for the United Kingdom was 1009.9 millions; +for Ireland, 39.7 millions, or 1/254. Deduct a small allowance for the +difference between resources and taxable capacity, and the result +approximately is one-twenty-fifth. + +[116] + +Total revenue (including non-tax revenue) of United + Kingdom (mean of two years. 1909-10, 1910-11) £165,147,500 +One-twenty-fifth £6,605,900 +Actual "true" revenue contributed by Ireland (mean + of two years, 1909-10, 1910-11) £10,032,000 + ----------- +"Over-taxation" £3,426,100 + +If only the tax-revenue be taken, the over-taxation amounts to +£3,109,800 (total revenue for United Kingdom, £140,680,000; +one-twenty-fifth=£5,627,200; actual Irish revenue, £8,737,000). Some +members of the Royal Commission made certain allowances for education +grants, etc., which it would be useless to parallel now. + +[117] See pp. 248-249. + +[118] See p. 259, footnote. + +[119] Treasury Return, No. 220, 1911. + +[120] A list is given at p. 10 of Return 220 (1911), and an admirable +exposition of the whole subject from the Irish standpoint will be found +in Professor Oldham's seventh published lecture on the "Public Finances +of Ireland" (1911). + +[121] The "Whisky Money" was so treated under the Finance Act of 1910. + +[122] See p. 238. + +[123] Between 1896 and 1898 the equivalent grants to Scotland and +Ireland were based on the Goschen proportion, 80, 11, 9, the English +grant being taken as standard. Scotch grants are now determined by +special legislation. + +[124] See Chapter XIV. + +[125] Only part of the Dublin Metropolitan Police is paid out of State +Funds, the rest by the City of Dublin. + +[126] The relative figures were: Ireland, £2,408,000; Scotland, +£1,064,000; England, £6,325,500. The recent removal of the +disqualification for Poor Law Relief adds considerably to these amounts. + +[127] In the poorest parts of Ireland they range as low as 9s. + +[128] See pp. 174-176. In 1908, England and Wales spent £21,987,004 on +elementary education, and raised £10,467,804 for it in rates. Of the +rest, £11,104,305 came from Parliamentary grants. Fees and endowment +incomes of voluntary schools are not included (Statistical Abstract of +United Kingdom, 1910). + +The actual Parliamentary Votes, as they appear in the accounts for +1910-11, are: England (Class IV.), "Board of Education," £14,166,500; +Scotland, "Public Education," £2,250,000; Ireland, "Public Education," +£1,632,000. But the English Votes include sums devoted to technical +education, museums, etc., whose counterparts in Ireland come under other +departments. + +[129] Two years earlier than the date I have chiefly used for the +purposes of comparison, but the difference is not material. In point of +fact, the expenditure was £300,000 less in the later than in the earlier +year. + +[130] (1) Rates on Government Buildings; (2) Superannuation; (3) +Government Printing; (4) Board of Works; (5) Home Office. + +[131] Department of Agriculture, Endowment Fund: + + { (1) Local Taxation Account £78,000 + Income from --{ (2) Irish Church Fund £70,000 + (3) Interest on Capital sum of £200,000. + + Also (in 1909-10): + From Ireland Development Fund £7,000 + Under an Act of 1902 £5,000 + + + +[132] The amount _voted_ for Public Works in 1910-11 was £259,848 [see +"Civil Service Estimates" for 1911-12 (No. 63--1911)]; the amount +_spent_, according to Return No. 220, £215,000. + +[133] Under the heads of Excise, the principal deduction is in Spirits +(£1,793,000 in 1910-11) and Beer (£309,000 in 1910-11). + +The items of Irish tax revenue in which the Treasury make _no_ +adjustment are: Excise Licenses (£356,000 in 1910-11); Club Duty (£2,000 +in 1910-11); "other items" (£10,000 in 1910-11); Cards and Patent +Medicines (£10,000 in 1910-11); "Estate, etc., Duties" (£1,144,000 in +1910-11); Income Tax (Schedules A and B) (£694,000 in +1910-11--abnormally large figure owing to non-collection in previous +year); Land Value Duties (£1,000 in 1910-11). + +All the heads of Customs revenue are subject to adjustment, though the +total result is only a small deduction from Ireland (£126,000 in +1910-11). In all but two the adjustment is in favour of Ireland. The two +exceptions are "Foreign Spirits," where a deduction of £25,000 is made +in 1910-11, and Tobacco, where a deduction of £620,000 is made in +1910-11. + +[134] _Income Tax_, Schedules C and D (dividends from Government Stocks, +public companies, foreign dividends, etc.). The Treasury estimate (as +stated in a side-note to the Return) is based on statistics of _Estate +Duty_ for the five years ending 1908. But what light can Estate Duty +throw on (for example) the dividends collected at the source from +British or foreign securities held by Irish banks? Schedule C deals with +"Government Stocks, etc.," Schedule D with "Public Companies, Foreign +Dividends, etc.," but in the adjustment for "true" revenue no +distinction is made between them. Now the Banking Statistics (Ireland) +of 1910 show that dividends were payable at the Bank of Ireland on +£38,732,000 of Government securities, and that, in addition, a debt +bearing interest was due to the Bank from the Government of 21/2 millions. +Income Tax on these items alone would be £65,000, less rebates; but the +whole of Schedule C, which includes Foreign and Colonial Government +Stocks, is given in 1909-10 as only £30,000. + +No attempt is made to credit Ireland with a share of the profits made by +English and Scottish companies through business done in Ireland. + +The only reliable items in Income Tax are those of A and B (Land, +Houses, and Occupation of Land), where in 1908-09 Ireland contributed +about 6 per cent. of the total; under other heads, according to the +Treasury, only 3.5 per cent. The writer estimates the true contribution +as several hundred thousand pounds more. + +_Post Office_.--The Treasury give no clue as to how they calculate the +profit and loss on Postal Services. Figures of letters, telegrams, +parcels, etc., delivered in Ireland are known from the +Postmaster-General's report, but the report does not distinguish Irish +from English postal orders, of which 1211/2 millions were issued in the +United Kingdom in 1909-10. There is good reason to believe that a part +of the postal profit now wholly credited to England should in reality be +credited to Ireland. + +_Stamps_.--Far too little allowance is made by the Treasury for stamps +on transfers executed through English and Scottish exchanges for shares +bought or sold by Irishmen, and for bonds, deeds, insurances, issues of +capital, etc. + +_Tea and Sugar_.--The Treasury base their calculation "on quantities +inter-changed between Great Britain and Ireland in 1903-04," and I learn +from the Inland Revenue Department that by this means the consumption +per head of the population was arrived at, and that the present official +figures are based on the assumption that the relation of consumption per +head in Ireland to consumption per head in the United Kingdom as a whole +has not altered since 1903-04. The unreliability of this assumption is +manifest. It is probable that the heavy additional duty on spirits has +raised the consumption of tea in Ireland more than in Great Britain, and +the figures of Imports compiled by the Department of Agriculture seem to +confirm this view. + +[135] On the basis of the mean revenue of 1909-10 and 1910-11. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE + + +I. + +THE ESSENCE OF HOME RULE. + + +Let us now sum up this financial question, and give its place in the +general problem of Home Rule. In Chapter X. I argued that, on broad +grounds of political policy, Ireland, in her own interest, and in the +general interest of the United Kingdom, should have "Colonial" Home Rule +without representation in the Imperial Parliament. Leaving finance +temporarily aside, while observing that any substantial Imperial control +over Irish finance would defeat the "colonial" solution of the problem, +I endeavoured to show that there were no tenable grounds of a +non-financial character for retaining Irish Members at Westminster, nor +any dangers to be feared from excluding them. I have now reviewed the +history of Anglo-Irish finance up to the present day, and I hope in so +doing to have proved that, so far from presenting an obstacle to +"Colonial" Home Rule, the financial conditions demand such a solution. +Finance and policy are inseparably one. All the considerations which +render Home Rule desirable lead irresistibly to the financial +independence of Ireland, with complete control assigned to her over all +branches of taxation. Without financial independence it is impossible to +realize the objects of Home Rule. It would be a miracle were the case +otherwise. Ireland would, indeed, be abnormal if, after her history, she +could reach prosperity and stability without passing through a phase of +financial independence. No parallel, even in the most distant degree, +could be found for any such metamorphosis in the whole of the British +Empire. + +If we study Ireland's interest, we shall promote Imperial interests. The +main object of Home Rule is to make Ireland self-reliant. Lord Welby and +his colleagues were right in 1896 when they declared that ideal to be +impracticable without giving Ireland entire responsibility both for her +revenue and her expenditure. This declaration is as true as ever. The +situation has changed only in one respect: that financial independence +will now mean a financial sacrifice to Ireland, whereas in 1896 it would +have meant a financial gain to Ireland--that is, if Lord Welby's +recommendation in favour of remitting the Irish contribution to Imperial +services had been carried out. At that time Ireland contributed two +millions. Now Great Britain contributes over a million to Ireland. +Sooner or later that subsidy must stop, and the sooner it stops the +better. + +But it is of vital importance that Ireland should understand the +situation. The present position is dangerous, because the Irish people +at large are ignorant of the facts, and their leaders are taking no +steps to enlighten them. The reasons are intelligible, but they are not +sound reasons. Paced with the facts and the choice, Ireland would not +hesitate, but she must know the facts and understand the nature of the +choice. + + +II. + +THE DEFICIT. + + +Let us deal at once with the question of the deficit. It is +inconceivable surely that the existence of a deficit should be used as +an argument against financial independence, much less as an argument +against Home Rule in general. Will anyone be found to say that an island +with a fertile soil, several nourishing industries, and a clever +population of four and a half millions, is to be regarded, whatever its +past history, as incapable of supporting a Government of its own out of +its own resources? Let nobody be tempted by the fallacy that, given +time, Ireland will regain financial stability under the fiscal Union, +and at a later stage, perhaps, be more fitted to bear the burden of +fiscal independence. The supposition is chimerical. The present system, +besides being radically vicious in a purely scientific sense, undermines +the moral power of Ireland to secure her own regeneration. + +It is now 1911. The deficit, once a large surplus, came into being only +two years ago. It was the direct and inevitable result of a fiscal Union +against which Ireland has for generations unceasingly protested, and it +was a result actually foretold in 1896 by Lord Welby and his two +colleagues. It could have been averted, as they pointed out, only by a +form of Home Rule giving financial independence to Ireland. But the +warning was older than the Report of the Financial Relations Commission. +Mr. Gladstone told the House of Commons in 1886, when introducing his +Home Rule Bill, that no limit could be set to Irish expenditure under +the Union; he and Sir William Harcourt repeated the warning in 1893, and +if the reader will study the debates on the financial clauses of the +Bill of 1893,[136] he will find pages of bitter diatribe founded on the +small net contribution from Ireland to Imperial services for which the +revised financial scheme provided. Ireland, said the Opposition, was to +make money out of Great Britain, and escape her fair proportion of +Imperial charges. Mr. Chamberlain showed that, with allowance for +payment from the Imperial purse of part of the cost of Irish police, the +net initial contribution was about one-fortieth, and asked: "Is Irish +patriotism a plant of such sickly growth that it has to be watered with +British gold?" The taunt was as pointless as it was cruel, for although +the Union had kept Ireland poor, Irish leaders, in spite of that +poverty, had asked for a financial independence which Mr. Gladstone in +neither of his Bills felt disposed to give her. Mr. Chamberlain had his +way; the Union was maintained, and as a result Ireland's actual +contribution of two millions at that date has been replaced by a subsidy +from Great Britain. Are we to be told now by Unionists that the Union +must be maintained in order to maintain this subsidy? or by Home Rulers +that the Irish deficit is an argument for the perpetuation of the +financial dependence which caused it, and an insuperable bar to the +financial independence which alone can extinguish it? + +No; let us look the facts in the face. Here is a deficit officially +given as £1,312,000. It is probably less, owing to an underestimate of +Irish revenue. But it may grow to be more, even with allowance for an +automatic growth of revenue, owing to the increased votes of the present +year, and the expenses peculiar to the establishment of the new Irish +Legislature and Government. What her really healthy and normal revenue +should be only Ireland herself can discover in the future. What her +right expenditure should be she alone can determine. We can only work +upon the data we have before us. Economy cannot be instantaneous, either +in Ireland or anywhere else. Assume, then, an initial deficit in the +Irish balance-sheet on the basis of present taxation. Its exact size +cannot affect the manner of dealing with it. How are we to deal with it? + +Let us dismiss at once the theory of "restitution" with the earnest hope +that we shall hear nothing of it in the coming controversy. No Irishman +will argue that a subsidy to the extent of, or exceeding the deficit, is +a good thing in itself, and should be large and lasting because it will +represent compensation for money unfairly exacted in the past. It is, +indeed, true that the Union impoverished Ireland, but the most grievous +wrong was moral, and for that wrong alone is reparation possible. Home +Rule is not worth fighting for if it has not as its end and aim a +self-reliant and self-supporting Ireland. Nor does it improve the +argument in the least to represent the subsidy as productive expenditure +for the purpose of raising Ireland's taxable capacity and improving her +economic position. No money raised outside of Ireland will have that +effect. Once admit the principle of restitution, and where are you to +stop? What rational or scientific limit can be set to it? More pertinent +question still, what are the conditions which will inevitably be imposed +in exchange? Ireland cannot have it both ways. She must either hold out +for financial independence or, for every financial boon, submit to a +corresponding deduction from her political liberty. + +If there were no alternative between financial independence without a +farthing of temporary aid, and permanent financial dependence with a +permanent loss of liberty, it would pay Ireland a thousandfold in the +future to choose the former scheme, remodel taxation promptly to meet +the initial deficit, and with equal promptitude set on foot such a +drastic reduction of expenditure as would ensure the rapid attainment of +a proper financial equilibrium. When once the Irish realized the issue, +they would accept the responsibility with all its attendant sacrifices, +which would no doubt be severe. + +But there is an alternative, and that is to make good the initial +deficit, whatever the financial authorities finally pronounce it to be, +with an initial subsidy of equal size, or perhaps of somewhat greater +size so as to admit of a small initial surplus, _but destined to +diminish by stated amounts, and within a few years to terminate_. To +such assistance, given unconditionally, Ireland has an unanswerable +claim, and to such assistance she ought, in my opinion, to limit her +claim. Until two years ago she contributed uninterruptedly, and +sometimes excessively, to the support of the Empire. With men and money +she has made efforts for the common weal which no self-governing Colony +has made, though she has been treated, politically and financially, as +not even a Crown Colony has been treated. Just at the point where the +self-governing Colonies, thanks to the liberty allowed them, are +beginning to contribute indirectly to the defence of the Empire, +Ireland, as the ultimate result of a century of coercive government, +ceases to contribute. She can claim honourably, if she wills, to be +placed, by temporary financial aid from the authority which is +responsible for her undoing, in the financial position of a +self-governing Colony. + +From the British point of view it is difficult to see any valid +objection to the course suggested. There will be no stinginess in the +settlement. Even if there were any disposition in that direction, it +would be idle to grudge the initial subsidy, because an equivalent sum +is already being paid. The Union will infallibly continue to accentuate +the deficit and increase the resulting burden on the taxpayers of Great +Britain. The plan proposed would eventually remove that burden. But, +obviously, its success hinges on the concession of full financial powers +to an Ireland unrepresented at Westminster. In their own interests, if +not for very shame, Englishmen should decline to make use of the old +adage, that "he who pays the piper should call the tune." For more than +a century Ireland paid the piper and England called the tune--and what a +tune, and with what results! Representation has nothing to do with the +case. Precedents are needless, but there are, as a fact, many. Crown +Colonies have frequently received free grants for the relief of +distress--Jamaica and other West Indian islands, for example. The +Transvaal and Orange River Colony received several millions after the +war to enable the ruined farmers to start business on a footing of +solvency. During the whole period of their adolescence, and, indeed, +until quite a recent date, all the self-governing Colonies were +virtually subsidized by the allocation of British forces for local +defence, maintained at the Imperial charge. And Ireland paid her share +of this charge. Similar garrisons were, are, and will be, maintained in +Ireland. Yes, but Ireland contributed to their cost, and in course of +time will, it is to be hoped, resume her contributions with a gladder +heart and a freer conscience than ever before. + +Canada was economically stagnant under coercion. If, in her case, we had +carried coercion as far as we carried it in Ireland, it would have been +necessary to give her a temporary subsidy in order to enable her to +assume the position of a self-governing Colony. Ireland's proximity does +not alter economic laws. "Facts are stubborn things," and these are the +Irish facts. Duty apart, no more profitable investment could possibly be +made by the British tax-payer than a subsidy designed to enable Ireland +to stand on her legs again. The present tribute to her is a dead loss. + +The subsidy, if given, ought, I submit, on no account to be earmarked, +on the bad precedent set by the Bills of 1886 and 1893,[137] for any +particular head of expenditure in Ireland, as for Police, Pensions, Land +Commission, or Education. As I have shown previously, nothing is easier +than to pick out items of excessive expenditure, or of +under-expenditure, for which Ireland is not herself responsible. But to +allocate a grant specially to any of these purposes would be superfluous +unless the intention were to maintain Imperial control over the service +in question. As I urged in Chapter X., none of the services mentioned +above ought to be retained under Imperial control. Extravagance in the +first three will not be properly checked, save by a responsible Ireland. +Nor will extra money on Education be properly spent until it is raised +and spent by Ireland. There are no other services, with the possible +exception of Posts, to which a subsidy could possibly be applicable. +Even in that case an earmarked subsidy would be out of place. But Posts +are outside the point we are discussing. If for mutual convenience they +were to be kept under Imperial control--a step which would not render +imperative Irish representation at Westminster--their finance would +remain, as at present, common to the whole United Kingdom. There is +officially held, on bad evidence, to be a loss on Irish Posts of +£249,000, and this loss is debited against Ireland, and goes to swell +the deficit we have been considering. With the Posts under Imperial +control, the initial deficit to be made good by subsidy would be reduced +by the amount of the loss. Should it, however, be decided that Ireland +is fairly entitled to a share of the large general profit earned by the +Postal Services of the United Kingdom, the annual profit so attributable +to Ireland would be set off against the annual subsidy as long as the +subsidy lasted, and after it was at an end would be a clear item of +revenue to Ireland. My own opinion, as I stated in Chapter X., is that +the Irish postal system, whether standing by itself it shows a profit or +a loss, ought to be under Irish control. + + +III. + +FUTURE CONTRIBUTION TO IMPERIAL SERVICES. + + +This must be left a voluntary matter for Ireland, as it is for the +self-governing Colonies. There is no contribution from Ireland at +present, and to fix a future date at which a fixed contribution, like +that from the Isle of Man, should begin, is a course hardly practicable +even if it were desirable. + + +IV. + +IRELAND'S SHARE OF THE NATIONAL DEBT. + + +Until two years ago Ireland, of course, contributed, _inter alia_, to +the annual interest and sinking fund, amounting in 1910-11 to +£24,554,000, on the National Debt of the United Kingdom. It is +impossible to estimate her share of the capital of the Debt, and I +scarcely think that anyone would seriously propose to encumber the new +Ireland with an old Debt, based on some arbitrary estimate. For the +great bulk of Debt created in the past she has little moral +responsibility--no more, at any rate, than the self-governing Colonies. +In this respect she must begin, like them, with a clean sheet. + + +V. + +IRELAND'S SHARE OF IMPERIAL MISCELLANEOUS REVENUE. + + +On the other hand, Ireland, in consideration of the remissions +mentioned, must renounce the share to which she is technically entitled +of the Imperial Miscellaneous Revenue, derived mainly from Suez Canal +shares and the Mint, and amounting altogether in 1910-11 to +£2,769,500.[138] + + +VI. + +IRISH CONTROL OF CUSTOMS AND EXCISE. + + +Let us now come to close quarters with this important issue. The grand +argument on the affirmative side is that the products of these duties +represent nearly four-fifths of the tax revenue collected in Ireland. +What are the objections? + +We need scarcely consider the general objection, sometimes made +ostensibly in the interests of Ireland, that her public men have little +financial experience. The fact is true, and it is not their fault. But +the financial scheme cannot reasonably be based on a recognition of a +temporary lack of experience. + +I place Customs and Excise together because I believe there is no +serious question of making a distinction between the two, and of +allowing Ireland to levy and collect her own Excise duties, while +denying her authority over Customs. It is true that until 1860 such a +distinction was made, and a lower Excise duty levied upon Irish than +upon British spirits;[139] but the tendency in all modern States is to +make the authority over Customs the same as that over Excise, and any +departure from that principle, in the case of modern Ireland, is likely +to cause considerable inconvenience. License Duties, which are included +under the head of Excise, may, no doubt, without much inconvenience, be +differentiated from the rest, but their Irish proceeds (£284,000) are +too small to influence the question. + +Excise, then, follows Customs. What are the objections to giving +Ireland, like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, control over her +own Customs? Without doubt, the establishment of a new Customs barrier +between Ireland and Great Britain is in itself a drawback. The +Custom-house machinery exists, of course, at present, because Ireland is +an island; nor would the additional function of checking British as well +as foreign imports into Ireland cause any great increase of expense; but +since the great bulk of Irish external trade is with Great Britain, +there will unquestionably be a certain amount of inconvenience and +expense both to Ireland and Great Britain in submitting merchandise on +both sides of the Irish Channel to the passage of a Customs barrier. + +That seems to be the limit to which criticism can justly go in the case +of Ireland and Great Britain. That is as far as it goes in the analogous +case of New Zealand and the Australian Commonwealth, where a small +island State has a separate Customs system from that of a large, +wealthy, and populous neighbour of the same race, and with many +identical interests. That is as far as it goes in the parallel case of +little Newfoundland and the great Dominion of Canada. Neither the +Dominion nor the Commonwealth claim that proximity, power, and racial +identity give them the right to control the trade and taxation of their +small independent neighbours, nor does the smallest friction result from +the mutual independence. On the contrary, both the Dominions and the +Commonwealth were founded on that vital principle of a pre-existent +State independence surrendered voluntarily for larger ends. The whole +Empire depends on the principle of local autonomy, and, above all, on +the principle of local financial autonomy. Endeavours in America to +sustain the opposite theory led to disaster. We have for generations +regarded it as perfectly natural that the self-governing Colonies should +have Customs systems of their own, even when they are used for the +purpose of imposing heavy duties on goods coming from the Mother +Country, and we know that that liberty has borne fruit a hundredfold in +affection and loyalty to the Imperial Government. Until the Union of +Great Britain and Ireland it was regarded as equally natural that +Ireland should have control of her own Customs, along with all other +branches of revenue. Even after the Union, although there was no Irish +control over anything Irish, it was recognized, until the fiscal +unification of the two countries in 1817, that Irish conditions required +a separate Customs system, which, in fact, existed until 1826.[140] How +fiscal unification and the subsequent abolition of separate Customs was +brought about I have told in Chapter XI. It is not a pleasant story. To +say the least, the conditions, moral and material, were not such as to +warrant the inference that there is any inherent necessity for joint +Customs between Ireland and Great Britain. The presumption raised by all +subsequent events is in the opposite direction. + +But the tradition of unified Customs, now nearly a century old, has +immense potency, and unless it is fearlessly scrutinized and challenged, +may be able, reinforced by the passions excited by the great controversy +over Free Trade and Protection, to defy the warnings writ large upon the +page of history. The tradition must be so challenged. Say what we will +about the proximity of Ireland and Great Britain, descant as we will in +law-books, pamphlets, leading articles, debates, on what ought +theoretically to be the fiscal relations of the two countries, we cannot +escape from the fact that, in this as in so many other respects, both +the human and economic problem before us is fundamentally a colonial +problem, and that its being so is not the fault of Ireland, but of Great +Britain. + +Belief in Home Rule seems to me necessarily to involve a willingness to +give Ireland her Customs. Great Britain has no moral right to lay it +down that her views about trade shall govern the course of Irish policy; +and if Great Britain believes sincerely in Home Rule, she should be +willing to trust Ireland, regardless of the economic consequences, and +regardless of the effect upon the great Tariff controversy. + +The effect upon that controversy I shall not discuss. It seems to me to +possess only a tactical and electioneering interest, and that side of +the Home Rule problem I have rigidly avoided, while expressing in +general terms my belief that sound policy and sound tactics in reality +coincide. The Home Rule Bill is far more likely to be wrecked by +timidity than by boldness, by precautions and compromises than by a +fearless accommodation of British policy to Irish facts and needs. + +As to the danger to Great Britain of separate Irish Customs, it seems +to me to be greatly exaggerated. Ireland's own interests will primarily +dictate her action. What she will decide her interest to be, nobody can +foretell with certainty beyond a limited point, because Irish public +opinion is not formed. Ireland has taken little or no part in the fiscal +controversy, for the simple reason that she has been absorbed in the +task of getting Home Rule, and until she gets it she is precluded from +formulating a trustworthy national opinion on most of the great subjects +which agitate modern societies. There is, however, no tradition in +favour of high Protection, even from Grattan's commercially free +Parliament. The question of a low protective or purely revenue tariff on +imports has not received any serious investigation. Let us frankly admit +at the outset that no country in the world, economically situated as +Ireland is, dispenses with a general tariff of some sort, and +undoubtedly there are to-day a good many Irishmen outside political life +who advocate the encouragement of infant Irish manufacturing industries +by sufficient protective duties directed against Great Britain as well +as against the outside world. It would be strange if there were not, in +view of the distressing past history of Ireland's throttled industries, +and in view of the strenuous efforts now being made by the Development +Associations to push the manufacture and sale of Irish goods in all +parts of the world. There are many avowed Free Traders also; nor are the +Development Associations themselves officially protectionist. The +opinion is sometimes expressed that Ireland, which could easily be +self-supporting in the matter of food, occupies an unhealthy position in +exporting a large proportion of her own agricultural produce, butter, +bacon, meat, etc., and in importing for her own consumption inferior +British and foreign qualities of some of the principal foodstuffs; but, +so far as it is possible to ascertain it, the predominant opinion seems +to be that an agricultural tariff would not be a good remedy for this +weakness, if it be one, and that Ireland's future development, like that +of Denmark, lies in the increasingly scientific organization of her +agricultural industries, and in the better cultivation of her own soil. +"Better farming, better business, better living," to use the admirable +motto invented by Sir Horace Plunkett for the I.A.O.S. In the absence of +an Irish Legislature, no special importance can be attached to +individual expressions of opinion. Yet a measure of prophecy is +permissible. The Irish Legislature will have to study the national +interest, and it is possible to say with certainty at least this--that +Ireland's interest lies in maintaining close and friendly trade +relations with Great Britain. Unfortunately, we have no means of +accurately ascertaining the amount of trade done by Ireland with Great +Britain and with foreign and colonial countries respectively. Irish +commerce takes, of course, three forms: _(a)_ Direct trade with +countries outside Great Britain; _(b)_ indirect trade with these +countries via Great Britain; _(c)_ direct local trade with Great +Britain. The statisticians of the Irish Department of Agriculture make +only an imperfect attempt to distinguish between these classes, but +their figures, so far as they go, prove beyond question that the great +bulk of Irish external commerce belongs to Class _(c)_--local trade with +Great Britain. The total value of Irish trade in 1909 is estimated at +£125,675,847, of which £63,947,155 was for imports, £61,728,692 for +exports. Probably 80 per cent., at least, of this trade was strictly +local. Certainly Great Britain is the market for very nearly the whole +of Irish agricultural produce, and for most of her exports of linen, +ships, tobacco, liquor, etc. Any aggressive action likely to provoke a +tariff war would be ruinous to Ireland, while it would hurt Great +Britain far less in proportion. But, in fact, both countries would +suffer, Great Britain from the loss of an easily accessible food-supply +of extraordinary value, not only for economic, but for strategical +reasons; Ireland from the loss of an excellent and indispensable +customer. + +On the other hand, whatever Ireland's trade policy may be, she certainly +needs the power of fixing her own duties upon commodities like tea and +sugar, which are of foreign origin, and are now merely transported to +her through British ports. Taxation of this sort is a matter of the +deepest concern to a country where agricultural wages average only +eleven shillings a week, and which cannot reduce its exorbitant Old Age +Pensions Bill without giving some compensatory relief to the classes +concerned. Tobacco, of which in its manufactured forms Ireland is a +considerable producer as well as a large consumer, belongs to the same +category. Liquor is an important article of production in Ireland, as +well as of consumption, and the Irish Legislature ought to be able to +form and carry out its own liquor policy. Ireland is just as able and +willing to promote temperance as Great Britain, and just as competent to +reconcile a temperance policy with due regard to producing and +distributing interests. + +The Customs tariff is an Irish question, not an Ulster question. The +interests of the Protestant farmers of North-East Ulster are identical +with those of the rest of Ireland, and obviously it will be a matter of +the profoundest importance for Ireland as a whole to safeguard the +interests of the shipbuilding and linen industries in the North in +whatever way may seem best. The Industrial Development Associations, +which are affiliated in a national organization, and are far above petty +sectarian jealousies, may be trusted to see that Ireland steers a safe +financial course in her trade policy. + +If there is little or no danger that a Home-Ruled Ireland will commit +tariff follies of her own, she has unquestionably a right to escape from +further entanglement in the tariff policy of Great Britain. What may be +the issue of Great Britain's great fiscal controversy nobody can +foretell. But as long as a protective tariff remains the cardinal point +in the constructive policy of one of the British parties, there is a +strong likelihood of such a tariff, which would be uniform for the whole +United Kingdom, being carried into law. Free Traders, like myself, may +deplore the possibility, but we cannot shut our eyes to it. That tariff, +if and when it is framed, will, like the Free Trade tariff of the past, +be framed without regard to Irish interests, which are predominantly +agricultural, and with exclusive regard to British interests, which are +mainly industrial. Whatever may have been the original ideal of the +Conservative Protectionists, however highly they may once have valued +the protection of agriculture, irresistible political forces have driven +them in the direction of a tariff framed mainly to secure the adhesion +of the great manufacturing towns. The electoral power of these towns, +the growing resentment of the working classes in most parts of the world +at the increasing cost of living, the fact that Great Britain cannot +under any conceivable circumstances feed her own population, have been +reflected in the definite abandonment by the party leaders of the +proposed small duty against colonial imports, and in the admission by +Mr. Bonar Law at Manchester, during the last General Election, that the +proposed tariff would not benefit the farmers. Nor will the failure of +the Reciprocity Agreement between Canada and the United States +appreciably diminish the obstacles to food-taxes in the United Kingdom. +Any practicable protective tariff, therefore, on the ground of its +injustice to Ireland, would cause strong and legitimate resentment in +that country, which is subjected to the most formidable competition from +foreign and colonial foodstuffs, but whose great competition in +manufactured goods is Great Britain herself. The one Irish industry +which might favour it is the linen industry of the North. It would have +no attraction for the shipbuilding industry, which in no part of the +British Isles has anything to gain by Protection, as I believe all +parties to the controversy agree. Other small manufacturing industries +would complain that they gained nothing; while the agricultural +population would complain that, as consumers, they would be damaged by +higher prices for clothing and other manufactured articles, while as +producers they were ignored. + +The difficulty is only one further proof of the dissimilarity of +economic conditions between Great Britain and Ireland, and of the +artificial and unnatural character of the present fiscal union. Justice +to Ireland demands its dissolution. The dangers are imaginary. Liberals, +however firm their belief in Free Trade, should hold, with Lord Welby +and his Home Rule colleagues on the Financial Relations Commission, that +"even if Ireland initiates a protective policy, in this case, as in that +of the Colonies, freedom is a greater good than Free Trade." As for the +Protectionists, I have never seen an argument from that source, and I do +not see how any consistent or plausible argument could possibly be +framed, to show that a uniform tariff for the United Kingdom could be +fair to Ireland. Professor Hewins, the leading Tariff Reform economist, +virtually acknowledges the impossibility in his Introduction to Miss +Murray's "Commercial Relations between England and Ireland." There were +two sound lines of policy, he points out, which might have been adopted +towards Ireland in the period prior to the Union: (1)To have placed her +on a level of equality with the Colonies, applying the mercantile +system indiscriminately and impartially to the Colonies and to her; or +(2) to have aimed from the first at the financial and commercial unity +of the British Isles. Neither of these courses was taken. Ireland, while +kept financially and commercially separate, "was in a less favourable +position than that of a Colony." With regard to the present, "Most of +the difficulties of an economic character," says the Professor, "in the +financial relations between England and Ireland, arise from the +differences of economic structure and organization between the two +countries. If Ireland were a highly organized, populous, manufacturing +country, the present fiscal system would probably work out no worse than +it does in the urban districts of Great Britain. But whatever be the +virtues or demerits of that system, it was certainly not framed with any +reference to the economic conditions which prevail in Ireland." We wait +for the seemingly unavoidable political inference, but in vain. +Professor Hewins is a Unionist. "A 'national' policy for Ireland ... is +never likely to be possible." Well, that is plain speaking, and the more +plainly these things are said the better. Let Unionists, if they will, +tell Ireland frankly that she must eternally suffer for the Union, but +let them not pretend, as they do pretend, that Ireland profits by the +Union. + + +VII. + +FEDERAL FINANCE. + + +Directly we leave the simple path of financial independence, and +endeavour to construct schemes which on the one hand disguise the +financial difficulties of Ireland, and on the other provide for Imperial +control of Irish Customs and Excise, we involve ourselves in a tangle of +difficulties. A brief examination of these schemes will throw into still +stronger relief the merits of the simpler solution. + +First of all, let us dispose finally of the Federal analogy. In Chapter +X. I showed that the framework of Home Rule cannot be Federal, because +the conditions of Federation do not exist in the United Kingdom. One of +the invariable features of a Federation is the Federal control of +Customs and Excise, but I pointed out that an equally invariable +condition precedent to Federation was the willingness on the part of a +self-supporting State, previously possessing complete financial +independence, to abandon its individual control over this realm of +taxation to a Federal Government of its own choosing,[141] and that no +such condition existed in the case of Ireland. But some features of +Federal finance undoubtedly may be made to show a superficial analogy to +Anglo-Irish conditions, and may therefore have an attraction for those +who shrink from giving Ireland financial independence. In the first +place, it is possible to find Federal precedents for the payment out of +the common purse of certain large items of Irish expenditure. There is +no precedent for the payment of Police, but Old Age Pensions, for +example, are paid in Australia by the Commonwealth, not by the States. +The chief point of interest, however, is the mechanism of Federal +finance. The Australian and Canadian Federations are the only two which +suggest even a remote parallel. There the subordinate States are +actually "subsidized" by regular annual payments out of Federal +revenues, mainly derived from Customs and Excise, and in the case of +Australia, as I observed at p. 245, the process at present entails an +elaborate system of bookkeeping to distinguish between the "collected" +and "true" revenue of the several States, similar in kind to the +calculations now made by the Treasury for ascertaining the "collected" +and "true" revenue derived from Ireland, Scotland, and England.[142] + +In Australia this system of bookkeeping is discredited, although the +recent attempt by a Commonwealth Referendum to abolish both it and the +financial system of which it forms a part just failed. It is to be hoped +that, whatever financial scheme is adopted for Ireland, this bad +colonial precedent, together with the precedent of the Home Rule Bill of +1893, will not be made pretexts for perpetuating a system whose defects +are so glaring, and which is a source of continual dissatisfaction to +Ireland. If Irish Customs and Excise are to be outside Irish control, +while their proceeds are to be credited to Ireland, let her whole +collected revenue from those sources be credited to her, in spite of the +excessive allocation that step would involve. + +Apart from this point of similarity in mechanism, the Australian and +Canadian subsidies to the States and Provinces respectively are of no +value as models for a Home Rule Bill. Let us examine the case of +Australia. There the Commonwealth, besides having exclusive control of +Customs and Excise, has general powers of taxation concurrently with the +States, though in practice Commonwealth taxation is almost entirely +confined to Customs and Excise. All surplus Commonwealth revenue is, by +the present law, returnable to the States, and the total annual amount +so returned must not be less than three-fourths of the total proceeds of +Customs and Excise; so large are these proceeds, and so small, +relatively, the expenses of the Commonwealth Government.[143] Here at +the outset is a feature which places Australian Federal Finance in an +altogether different category to that of the United Kingdom, where only +47.6 per cent, of the revenue is from Customs and Excise. Nor are the +distributions of surplus revenue to the States really "subsidies," even +in the case of the poorest States, but repayments, on a method laid down +in the Constitution, of that part of the State contribution to Federal +services which the Federal Government does not want. Here the system of +bookkeeping is of some service to us, because it reveals, approximately, +at any rate, both the contribution and the actual repayment, which is +based on a calculation of the amount saved to the State by the +transference of certain departments to the Federal Government, set off +by a _per capita_ charge for new Federal expenditure, as, for example, +for Old Age Pensions (see Table on p. 297). + +The great bulk of the tax revenue shown comes, as I have said, from +Customs and Excise, and it is unnecessary to set out the respective +figures of revenue derived from these duties.[144] It will be seen, +after deducting repayments from contributions, that even the poorest +States make a substantial net contribution to Federal purposes. On the +other hand, the relative proportion of revenue contributed by Western +Australia and Tasmania is diminishing. In Western Australia it was 12-49 +per cent. of the whole in 1905, 8-13 per cent. of the whole in 1909. In +the same period, not only relatively, but actually, the gross +contribution of Western Australia has diminished from £1,431,624 in 1905 +to £1,166,126 in 1909, while the repayment to her has also diminished +from £1,031,223 in 1905 to £627,933. Tasmania's repayment is also +diminishing, though her gross contribution has increased. These +circumstances suggest a slight resemblance to the growing disproportion +between the resources of Ireland and Great Britain, but they do not +assist us towards a solution of the Irish problem. Each Australian +State, while contributing the whole of its Customs and Excise to the +Federal Government, receives back at least half, and in some cases +two-thirds,[146] and adds that sum to its own independent revenue for +the maintenance of the State Government. The sum refunded amounts on +the average to a little below a quarter of the total State revenue--to +be accurate, 23.01 per cent. Of the remaining 76.99 per cent., only 10 +per cent, on the average is derived from direct taxation; 10.10 per cent +from public lands, 4.15 per cent, from miscellaneous services, and no +less than 52.55 per cent, from Public Works--railways, tramways, +harbours, etc. + +CONTRIBUTIONS OF, AND REPAYMENTS TO, THE STATES OF THE AUSTRALIAN +COMMONWEALTH, 1908-09.[145] + +----------------------------------------------------------- + Contributions to Repayments from + Revenue. Commonwealth. +----------------------------------------------------------- + £ £ +New South Wales 5,621,958 3,326,276 +Victoria 3,750,161 1,987,435 +Queensland 1,989,540 1,027,047 +South Australia 1,307,621 716,957 +Western Australia 1,166,126 627,938 +Tasmania 515,387 244,747 + ------------------------------- + Total Common- Total + wealth Revenue. Repayments. + -------------------------------- + 14,350,793 7,930,395 +----------------------------------------------------------- + +Here are the details of revenue for 1908-1909 in the richest and the +poorest State, respectively: + +Particulars. New South Wales. Tasmania. + £ £ +Refunded by the Commonwealth 3,377,213 232,342 +Taxation (direct) 907,249 250,835 +Public Works and Services 7,309,062 329,192 +Land 1,778,002 96,519 +Miscellaneous 274,600 25,017 + +Totals 13,646,126 934,405 + +Now, Ireland raises no public revenues at all from Public Works, only +£24,500 out of a total of ten millions from public lands; while 29.25 +per cent, of her "true" tax revenue comes from direct taxation and 70.75 +per cent, from Customs and Excise. To take away even a third of her +receipts from Customs and Excise would be to leave her with a deficit of +three millions and a half, which would have to be made up by additions +to a direct taxation, which is already vastly higher than in any part of +Australia. She needs every penny of her revenue from whatever source +derived, and there is no possibility of extracting from her a +contribution to Imperial services, unless it be an illusory contribution +based on faked figures. + +The real moral to be derived from the Australian comparison is that both +Australia and Ireland are countries where accumulated wealth is +comparatively small, and where the importance of indirect taxation is +very great. All the more reason for giving Ireland control of her own +indirect taxation. Canada, and, indeed, all the self-governing Colonies, +suggest the same moral. In Canada the Federal or Dominion Parliament has +an unlimited power of taxation, the Provinces being vested only with the +concurrent right of direct taxation within their respective borders +(B.N. America Act, Clauses 91 and 92). In practice, nearly the whole +Federal tax revenue is derived from Customs and Excise. We have no +materials for a comparison of gross and net provincial contributions, +because no records are compiled. Under an Act of 1907, revising the +former arrangements, two small subsidies, forming a fixed charge on the +gross Federal revenue, and bearing no specific proportion to the income +from Customs and Excise, are given to each Province. + +1. A subsidy (from £20,000 to £40,000) based on the total provincial +population. + +2. A payment of 80 cents per head of the provincial population. + +Both together are very small by comparison with the Australian payments. +Neither is really a subsidy, though it is given that name, but the +return of a surplus indirectly contributed. It is, indeed, conceivable +that a new and poor Province might actually contribute less than she +received back. One Province, British Columbia, having long complained +that she contributed far more than her share, and received back too +little, obtained an exceptional grant of £20,000 under the Act of +1907.[147] The sums raised independently in each Province for the +support of the provincial administration are, as in Australia, derived +to a very slight extent from direct taxation, and to a very large extent +from public property; not, as in Australia, from railways, tramways, +etc., but mainly from vast tracts of public land. In this respect the +Provinces resemble the Dominion, which derives a large revenue from the +same source. + +In three vital points, then, Anglo-Irish finance differs from that of +the Colonial Federations. Ireland's whole net income comes from taxes; +she needs it all; and her economic conditions are totally different from +those of Great Britain. So far from borrowing anything from Federal +finance, we should deduce from it the moral of financial independence +for Ireland. With all the powerful centripetal forces, moral and +material, which originally united, and now hold together, the federated +States of Australia and Canada, there is continual controversy, and +sometimes considerable friction, over finance, generally in connection +with the position of the poorer Provinces or States. Some problems are +still unsolved. Good authorities, among them Sir Arthur Bourinot, think +that the Canadian subsidies are unsound. Australia is dissatisfied with +her system. The American States, while giving up Customs and Excise, are +self-supporting entities; but that system has its drawback, in Federal +extravagance. We must remember, too, that even if these examples were of +any use to us, the weak States or Provinces in a Federation have a +greater control over Federal financial policy than Ireland could have +under any scheme which reserved Customs and Excise to the Imperial +Parliament; because the Federal principle, partially infringed only in +the case of Canada, is to give them disproportionately high +representation in the Upper Federal chamber, which can reject money +Bills.[148] + +On all counts, Ireland's position is that of a country which +imperatively needs fiscal isolation similar to that enjoyed by States +prior to Federation, before it can dream of embarking on the perilous +sea of quasi-Federal finance. Trouble enough comes from the present +joint system. We should make a clean sweep of it, permit Ireland, with a +minimum of temporary assistance, to find her own financial equilibrium, +and so lay the foundation, perhaps, for a genuine Federation in the +future. + + +VIII. + +ALTERNATIVE SCHEMES OF HOME RULE FINANCE[149] + + +Historically, these fall into two classes; though, as I shall show, they +are for all intents and purposes merged in one to-day. + +The two classes are--(1) The Gladstonian; (2) the "Contract." + +1. _Mr. Gladstone's Schemes_.--It is unnecessary to examine these in +close detail, though, if the reader cares to do so, he will find details +set forth in the Appendix. Four outstanding features were common to the +schemes both of 1886 and 1893: (_a_) Permanent Imperial control over the +imposition of Customs and Excise; (_b_) Irish control over all other +taxation; (_c_) an annual Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure; +(_d_) Imperial payment of part cost of the Irish Police. + +With regard to (_a_), the most important point of difference in the two +Bills was that under the first Ireland was credited with her whole +"collected" revenue from Customs and Excise, under the second (as +amended) with only her "true" revenue, which was less than the former by +£1,700,000. Another point in which the two Bills differed was the +permission to Ireland, under the Bill of 1893, after six years, to +collect her own Excise. Both imposition and collection were wholly +reserved under the Bill of 1886. I have already given grounds for the +impolicy of retaining control over Customs and Excise. Let me only ask +the reader, in conclusion, to figure the situation. How could Ireland +frame a financial policy? Three-quarters of the revenue, as at present +levied, of a country profoundly dissimilar economically from Great +Britain, and in need of drastic reforms of expenditure and marked +changes in taxation, would be permanently outside the reach of an Irish +Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, in spite of the representation at +Westminster which Imperial control would entail, would in the long-run +fluctuate according to British needs and notions. In the long-run, I +repeat; but incidentally there would be sharp and damaging conflicts. +Occasions might occur like that of 1909, when the majority of Irishmen, +rightly or wrongly, resented the form of new taxation, and would have +secured the rejection of the Budget had not that step been hurtful to +the prospects of Home Rule. It will be useless to blame either Ireland +or Great Britain. Every country is bound to study its own circumstances. +A similar crisis would have imperilled even the strongest Federation. We +are not in the least concerned at the moment with the goodness or +badness of that famous Budget. We are concerned with the effect on the +relations of the two countries, and with the indefeasible right of +Ireland and Great Britain to do what they consider best for their own +interests. + +With regard to (_b_), the Bill of 1893 differed from that of 1886 in the +provision of a suspensory period of six years, during which all existing +taxation in Ireland was to be under Imperial control, though Ireland +could impose additional taxes of her own. After six years--and, under +the Bill of 1886, from the outset--Ireland was to have control over all +taxation other than Customs and Excise. Where is the wisdom in +selecting direct taxation as peculiarly suitable to Irish control? It is +already higher in Ireland than in any country economically situated as +Ireland is. Yet Ireland's power to reduce it will be very small and very +difficult to use, if she is rigidly excluded from changes in the +indirect taxation which presses mainly on the poor. Would she naturally +be inclined to increase direct taxation? Land Value Duties produce next +to nothing in Ireland, and their extension would be unpopular. The +existing rates of Income-Tax and Estate Duties cannot be raised, though +their incidence might be extended to cover poorer elements of the +population, as, for example, the small farmers. That is a kind of +measure which the farmers would, if necessary, willingly agree to, in +order to balance the accounts of a financially independent Ireland, but +it is not the kind of measure they would care about when their national +finance was dictated by Great Britain. If one cared to make a +dialectical point, one could add that a common argument against Home +Rule is a fear of oppressive taxation of the rich or oppressive taxation +of North-East Ulster, at the hands of an Irish Parliament, through high +direct imposts. The fear is one of those which scarcely need serious +discussion. If Irish statesmen were as black as their most industrious +traducers paint them, they could not by any ingenuity invent any new +direct tax which would not hit all the provinces equally, saving perhaps +a tax on pasture ranches, which would hit North-East Ulster least; while +super-taxes on the exceptionally rich, if they were worth the trouble of +collecting, would drive wealth out of a poor country at the very moment +when it was most urgently necessary to gain the confidence of investors +and the few wealthy residents. + +With regard to (c), Mr. Gladstone's various devices for obtaining from +Ireland a contribution to Imperial services possess now only a +melancholy and academical interest, because, without an elaborate +manipulation of the accounts, so as to disguise their true significance, +no such contribution can possibly be obtained. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone +provided for an annual payment from Ireland, fixed in amount for thirty +years; in 1893 for the contribution of a _quota_--namely, one-third--of +her "true" annual revenue from Imperial taxes, to run for six years, and +then to be revised. His calculations were conditioned to some extent by +_(d),_ the part payment from the Imperial purse of the cost of Irish +Police, coupled, of course, with continued Imperial control of that +Police, pending its replacement by a new civil force. It is easy enough +in ways like this to show a balance in Ireland's favour, and, at the +same time, to cripple the responsibility of the Irish Legislature by +transferring selected services from the Irish to the Imperial side of +the account. We can extend the process to Old Age Pensions, the Land +Commission, and what not. As I have repeatedly urged, this course is +radically unsound. As for the Police, there can be no responsible +government without control of the agents of law and order. + +By crediting Ireland with her whole "collected" revenue, we can give her +at once a balance of half a million. By freeing her from the payment of +Old Age Pensions, we can make the balance three millions. With the +elimination of the Land Commission and the Police, we can make it five +millions. Then we can postulate an imaginary taxable capacity, an ideal +contribution to Imperial services, and a hypothetical share of the +National Debt, and so arrive at a Budget which will look well on paper, +but which will deceive nobody, and be open to crushing criticism. + +2. "_Contract_" _Finance_.--It will be seen that both Mr. Gladstone's +schemes set up in Ireland--though under the Bill of 1893 only after six +years--a dual system of taxation, Imperial and Irish, after the Federal +model. The revenue, "collected" or "true," derived from Imperial taxes +levied in Ireland, was to be paid, after the deduction of sums due to +the Imperial Government on various accounts, into the Irish Exchequer. +And into the same Exchequer went the proceeds of taxes levied by Ireland +herself. The distinguishing feature of "Contract" finance is that it +maintains the fiscal unity of the British Isles. All taxation in Ireland +would be permanently levied and collected, as before, by the Imperial +Parliament, Ireland being allowed only the barren and illusory privilege +of levying new additional taxes of her own. Out of the Imperial +Exchequer a lump sum of fixed amount, or a sum equivalent to the revenue +_collected_ in Ireland, would be handed over to Ireland, by contract, as +it were, for the maintenance of the Administration. + +The simplicity of this scheme seems to me to be its only merit. It +disposes of all complicated bookkeeping, all heart-burnings over "true" +and "collected" revenue, and all controversies, for a long time at any +rate, over an Irish contribution to the Empire; while it involves and +immensely facilitates a subsidy based on the reservation of selected +Irish services for Imperial management and payment. On the other hand, +it is not Home Rule. It annihilates the responsibility of Ireland for +her own fortunes, and is, indeed, altogether incompatible with what we +know as responsible government. Its germ appeared in the Irish Council +Bill of 1907--a Bill which did not pretend to set up anything +approaching responsible government, and to which the scheme was +therefore in a sense appropriate, though it must, I think, have produced +mischievous results if it had been carried into law.[150] + +I wish to speak with the utmost respect of Lord MacDonnell and the other +patriotic Irishmen who have advocated this kind of financial solution. +There was a time when it might have been good policy for Ireland to +obtain any--even the smallest--financial powers of her own as a lever, +though a very bad lever, for the attainment of more. But we ought now to +make a sound and final settlement, and I do earnestly urge upon all +those who have Irish interests at heart to reject schemes which merely +evade, if they do not actually aggravate, some of the pressing +difficulties of the Irish problem of to-day. The fact that Contract +finance works well in India is _prima facie_ a reason why it should not +work well in Ireland. It does not exist, and it could not be made to +show good results, in any community of white men. If anyone is disposed +to trace a faint analogy--which in any case would be a false +analogy--with the lesser of the two small subsidies given by the +Dominion of Canada in aid of the Provincial administrations,[151] let +him imagine what the moral and practical consequences would be if, +instead of constituting a small fraction of the provincial income, this +subsidy were increased to a lump sum calculated by the Dominion +Government as correct and sufficient for the whole internal government +of the Province. And the pernicious results in a Canadian Province would +be trivial beside the pernicious results in Ireland, where the whole +system of expenditure and revenue needs to be recast; where large +economies are needed, together with additional outlay on education; and +where above all, the sense of national responsibility, deliberately +stifled for centuries, needs to be evoked. Nothing could be more cruel +to Ireland than to give her a fictitious financial freedom, and then to +complain that she did not use it well. No nation could use freedom well +under the Contract system of finance, whether based on a fixed grant or +on revenue derived from Ireland. It is not in human nature to reduce +expenditure unless the reduction is reflected in reduced taxation. Every +official threatened with retrenchment, even in the services under Irish +control and, _a fortiori,_ in the services outside Irish control, would +have a grievance in which the public would sympathize, while resentment +at an unequal fiscal union would be unabated. Irish statesmen, like any +other men in the same position, would be exposed unfairly to the +continual temptation of preserving institutions and payments as they +were, of making changes only of personnel, and of annually appealing to +Great Britain for more money for new expenditure. These appeals could +not possibly be refused. If Great Britain chooses to place Ireland in a +position of financial dependence, she must take the consequences and pay +the bill, as in the past, even if the bill exceeds the revenue derived +from Ireland. But, indeed, under Contract finance, attempts to make +Irish expenditure conform to Irish revenue would necessarily be +abandoned. + +Bad as the results must be, we are inexorably driven to some form of +Contract finance directly we relinquish its anti-type, financial +independence. There is very little practical difference between the +Gladstonian and later plans. We may be drawn along the downward path +either by considerations of revenue, or considerations of expenditure, +or by both combined. To retain Imperial control of Customs and Excise, +while crediting the Irish proceeds to Ireland, is in itself equivalent +to making three-quarters of Irish tax revenue take the form of an annual +money grant fixed by Great Britain. If Englishmen also want to retain +control over Irish Police, and Irishmen are short-sighted enough to +desire Imperial control, as a corollary of Imperial payment, of Old Age +Pensions, National Insurance, or Land Purchase, there at once are four +millions, or more than a third of present Irish expenditure, withheld +from Irish authority. To cover the remaining seven millions by a +Contract allowance, instead of going through the pretence of allotting +items of revenue and of deducting a contribution to Imperial services, +is a step which is only too likely to commend itself to harassed +statesmen. But it would not be Home Rule. + +This is not a matter of speculation, but of experience. As long ago as +1818, in the case of Canada, we discarded as vicious the old doctrine +that a dependency ought not to be allowed to provide for the whole cost +of government out of its own taxes, for fear that its Legislature would +control policy. If we are going to remove features which make Ireland +resemble a Crown Colony now, do not let us import others which recall +the ancient fallacies of a century ago. + +There remains to be considered the important question of loans, and to +that I shall devote a separate chapter. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[136] Hansard, July 21 and 25, 1893. + +[137] Both Bills provided for part payment of the cost of Irish Police +from Imperial funds. + +[138] Return No. 220. + +[139] See p. 234. + +[140] See p. 234. + +[141] I need scarcely point out that the newly-created Provinces of the +Dominion of Canada are exceptions to this rule. But there is no analogy +with Ireland. Such Provinces are carved out of newly settled public +territory and given local government. + +[142] See pp. 244-245, and 277-278. + +[143] Until two years ago even the remaining one-fourth, added to other +small items of Commonwealth revenue, was too large for the expenditure, +and a part of it was returned annually to the States. + +[144] The other principal source of revenue is from Posts, but that is +almost exactly balanced by expenditure, so that it barely affects the +amount of the repayment to the States. + +[145] These figures are taken from the Official Year-Book of the +Commonwealth of Australia, No. 3, 1901-1909. + +[146] It must be understood that the law requiring three-quarters of the +Commonwealth revenue from Customs and Excise to be returned to the +States does not imply that each State should have three-quarters of its +contribution returned, but that the total amount returned should be at +least three-quarters. + +[147] See p. 244. + +[148] Except perhaps in the case of Canada. + +[149] The Author is indebted, here and elsewhere, to papers by Messrs. +C.R. Buxton, P. MacDermot, and R.C. Phillimore, in "Home Rule Problems." + +[150] By Clause 5 the following sums were allocated to the Irish Council +for five years: (1) £3,750,000 for the maintenance of eight Government +Departments; (2) £300,000 for public works; (3) £114,000 supplemental. + +[151] See p. 299. Under the Act of 1867, No. 2 was earmarked for this +purpose. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +LAND PURCHASE FINANCE[152] + + +I. LAND PURCHASE LOANS. + + +The data of the land problem are as follows: + +The superficial area of Ireland is 20,350,725 acres, and in 1909 it was +utilized as follows:[153] + + Acres. Percentage. + +Area under tillage, hay and fruit 4,582,697 22.5 +Area under pasture 9,997,445 + 61.6 +Grazed mountain land 2,548,569 +Woods, etc. 301,444 1.5 + +Bog, barren mountain, water, + roads, townlands, etc. 2,925,570 14.4 + +Total 20,350,725 100.0 + +The agricultural area, calculated by the exclusion of the last item in +the above column, works out at 17,425,155 acres, but since bog forms +part of a large number of farms, we may, for the purposes of Land +Purchase, place the agricultural area of Ireland at 18,739,644 acres, +the figure given in the Census of 1901, and its annual value for rating +purposes, as given in the same census, at £10,061,667. + +This area is divided into 603,827 agricultural holdings, which are in +the hands of 554,060 occupiers, and vary in size from vast pasture +ranches to the tiny plots of miserable rock-sown soil, which abound in +the congested districts of the west. + +But small holdings largely predominate. More than two-thirds do not +exceed 30 acres; 153,565 are between 5 and 15 acres, and 147,580 are +below 5 acres. + +Size, however, is by itself an imperfect index to value. The effects of +the ancient confiscations and of the extraordinarily unequal +distribution of land which they and the bad Irish agrarian system +produced may be gauged by the valuation figures of the Census of 1901, +which showed that 335,491, or 68.5 per cent, of the total number of +holdings had an annual value (for rating purposes) not exceeding £15, +while they covered only a little more than a third of the total +agricultural area; 134,182 of these holdings were rated below £4, and +covered only 1,360,000 acres. + +All farms rated below £4, and a large number of those below £15, may be +regarded as "uneconomic"--that is, incapable by themselves of supplying +a decent living to the farmer and his family. + +I shall say no more here about the legislation beginning forty years +ago, which revolutionized the agrarian tenure derived directly from the +Penal Code, and converted the Irish tenant into a "judicial" tenant with +a rent fixed by the Land Commission, with security of tenure, and free +sale of the tenant-right.[154] There are now in Ireland two distinct +classes of occupying tenants, "judicial" tenants, and purchasing +tenants, and it is upon the question of the State-aided transference of +the land from the landlord to the tenant that I wish to concentrate the +reader's attention. + +The principle of Land Purchase is this: The State advances money, raised +by a public loan, to the tenant, who pays off the landlord with it, and +becomes for a fixed period the tenant of the State. During this period +he pays, in lieu of rent, an annuity, which represents both interest and +sinking-fund on the capital sum advanced to him. At the end of the +period, which, of course, will vary with the fixed annual amount of the +sinking-fund, he becomes owner in fee-simple of his farm. + +There is no charity to the tenant. He borrows the money and pays it back +in a perfectly regular way, and the State has made a temporary +investment of a profitable character. + +And now, for the last time, I must trouble the reader with a little +indispensable history. There are four phases in the history of Irish +Land Purchase. + +1. John Bright was the first British statesman to maintain that no +healthy and lasting readjustment of the relations between landlord and +tenant in Ireland could ever be made by law. He advocated State-aided +purchase; and in the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869 and the Land +Acts of 1870 and 1881, clauses were inserted allowing the State to +advance money for Land Purchase. The conditions, however, were so +onerous, both to landlord and tenant, that only 7,665 tenants out of +more than half a million were able to avail themselves of these purchase +clauses. + +2. The Ashbourne Act of 1885 was the first successful measure of the +kind. Five millions were advanced under it, and five millions more under +an extending Act of 1887. Next came the Act of 1891, empowering the loan +of thirty-three millions, followed by the amending and simplifying Act +of 1896. These Acts form a body of legislation by themselves, of which I +need refer only to a few salient characteristics. They were all alike in +settling the tenant's annuity (in lieu of rent) at 4 per cent, on the +purchase money, though the proportions allocated to interest and +sinking-fund varied. Under the first two Acts the period for final +redemption of his loan by the tenant was forty-nine years, under the +third forty-two years, though this period was extended to seventy years +if the tenant availed himself of decadal reductions in the annuity, +proportionate to the capital paid off by the sinking-fund. + +The average price of the holdings sold under these Acts represented +seventeen and a half years' purchase, and the tenant's great inducement +to buy was that, by the aid of cheap State credit, the annuity he paid, +even over so short a period as forty-nine years, represented a reduction +of more than 20 per cent, on his existing judicial rent. + +Under the first Act, that of 1885, the landlord received the purchase +money in cash, under the other two, in guaranteed 3 per cent, or 2| per +cent, stock, an arrangement which suited him very well as long as +Government stocks maintained the high level which they reached in the +period preceding the South African War. With the heavy fall in stocks +during and after the war, purchase came to a standstill. The net result +of the operations under the Acts of 1885 to 1896 was that close upon +twenty-four million pounds were advanced to 72,000 tenants, occupying +about two and a half million acres, out of the total of 18,739,644 +acres which constitute the agricultural area of Ireland. + +3. Once begun, purchase had to be continued, if for no other reason than +that a purchasing tenant paid in annuity a substantially lower sum than +the non-purchasing judicial tenant paid in rent, with the additional, if +distant, prospect of an absolute fee-simple in the future. + +Mr. Wyndham, acting on the recommendation of a friendly Conference +between landlords and tenants, took the bull by the horns in 1903, and +carried the great Land Act of that year. Under the Wyndham Act the +system of cash payment to the landlord, dropped since 1891, was resumed, +on a basis calculated to give a selling landlord a sum which, invested +in gilt-edged 3 or 31/4 per cent. stocks, would yield him as much as the +second term judicial rents on the holdings sold, less 10 per cent., +representing his former cost of collection; while the annuity payable by +the tenant in lieu of rent was reduced from 4 to 31/4 per cent., of which +21/2 per cent, was interest on the purchase money advanced, and 1/2 per +cent, was sinking-fund. This reduction involved an extension of the +period of redemption from forty-nine to sixty-eight and a half years. +The annuity was calculated to represent an average reduction of from 15 +to 25 per cent, on second-term judicial rents. Since the gross income of +the landlord was to be reduced only by 10 per cent. on a basis of 3 per +cent. investments, while the annual payment by the tenant was to be +reduced by an average of 20 per cent., clearly there was a gap to be +filled up, and this gap was filled by a State bonus to the selling +landlord of 12 per cent, on the purchase money, a bonus which went +wholly to him personally, clear of all reversionary rights under +settlements. A sum of twelve millions altogether was to be expended on +the bonus. + +In addition to direct sales between landlord and tenant through the +Estates Commissioners, large powers were also given both to the Land +Commission and the Congested Districts Board for the purchase and resale +of certain classes of estates--land in congested districts, untenanted +land, etc. + +The Act was enormously popular. The landlord, in view of the manifold +insecurities of land tenure in Ireland, made an excellent bargain, and +the tenant, tempted by the immediate transformation of his rent into an +annuity of reduced amount, ignored the extension by twenty years of the +period of redemption, and was willing to agree at high prices for the +purchase of his land. The average price of land sold rose from the +seventeen and a half years' purchase under the old Acts to over twenty +years' purchase, and the soil of Ireland rapidly began to change hands. +But the Act broke down on finance, as adapted to what were then +estimated as the requirements of the purchase operation. The estimate +for the total sum required was one hundred millions, and the purchase +money was to be raised by successive issues of 2-3/4 per cent. +Guaranteed Land Stock. Sums needed from time to time for payment of the +landlord's bonus were also raised by stock, and were placed to an +account known as the Land Purchase Aid Fund. + +Now, any loss on flotation, due to stock being issued at a discount, was +to be borne, in the first instance, by the Ireland Development +Grant,[155] and, if and when that was exhausted, by the ratepayers of +Ireland through deduction from the grants in aid of Local Taxation.[156] +The stock, like all Government stocks at that period, fell heavily from +the first, and in 1908 the point was reached when further issues would +have entailed a heavy loss payable out of Irish rates, growing +ultimately, as it was calculated, to an annual charge of more than half +a million. The infliction of such a burden upon the ratepayers of +Ireland was felt to be inequitable. Ireland was not responsible for the +evils which necessitated purchase, and even if she were, the ratepayers +were not the right persons to be mulcted. Meanwhile, purchase was at a +complete standstill. + +4. This serious situation led to Mr. Birrell's Land Act of 1909, which +was based upon the Report of a Treasury Committee which sat in the +previous year.[157] The problem was twofold: (a) how to deal with future +agreements to purchase, between landlord and tenant;(6) how to deal with +agreements to purchase pending under the Act of 1903, but as yet +uncompleted. + +(a) With regard to future agreements, there are four main points:(1) The +old policy of payment in stock, instead of in cash, is reverted to, and +the stock is a 3 per cent. stock. + +(2) The tenant's annuity is raised from 31/4 to 31/2 per cent. + +(3) The period of redemption is reduced from sixty-eight and a half +years to sixty-five and a half years. (4) The landlord's bonus is +allocated on a graduated scale, under which the higher the price the +land is sold at, the less is the bonus conferred. These changes, though +no doubt somewhat prejudicial to the prospects of Land Purchase, were +absolutely necessary, owing to a cause beyond human control--the +condition of the money-market. + +(b) In regard to pending purchase agreements arrived at under the old +Act, no alteration is made in the terms of the bargains already +concluded between landlord and tenant; but changes are made in the +method of financing these agreed sales. Briefly, parties can obtain +priority in treatment among the enormous mass of cases awaiting the +decision of the Land Commission by agreeing to accept 2-3/4 per cent. +stock at a price not lower than 92 per cent, (which means, at present +prices, that the loss on flotation is split between the landlord and the +State), or, by waiting their turn, they can obtain half the price in +stock at 92, and half in cash. Payments elected to be made wholly in +cash come last of all. Bonus to be paid in cash as before. + +Losses caused by the flotation of stock at a discount no longer fall +upon the Irish rates. Any loss not capable of being borne by the Ireland +Development Grant is to be borne by the Imperial Exchequer. + +Other important clauses gave compulsory powers of purchase to the +Congested Districts Board, and, in the case of "congested estates" and +untenanted land outside the jurisdiction of the Board, to the Estates +Commissioners. Otherwise Purchase and Sale remained voluntary. + +So much for the history of Land Purchase. How exactly do we stand at the +present moment? + +In round numbers, nearly 24 millions have actually been advanced under +the old Acts prior to 1903, and up to March of this year (1911) a +further sum of 421/4 millions had actually been advanced under the Wyndham +Act of 1903 and the Birrell Act of 1909.[158] + +That makes a total of 661/2 millions actually advanced to 165,133 tenants +up to March of 1911, covering the purchase of nearly 6 million acres of +land, or nearly a third of the total agricultural area of Ireland. The +tenants of the land are now quasi-freeholders, and will eventually be +complete freeholders. In addition, agreements for the purchase of +properties by 150,490 tenants, under the Wyndham and Birrell Acts, at a +total price of 461/2 millions, for 41/2 million acres, were pending in +March, 1911, though the sale and vesting were not yet completed. The +properties represented by these agreements will be duly transferred in +the course of the next few years, though the congestion of business is +very great. + +That will make a total of 113 millions advanced to 315,623 tenants for +the purchase of 11 million acres under all Acts up to and including that +of 1909. Now, how much more will be required? We have only one recent +official estimate--that made by the Land Commission in 1908 for the +Treasury Committee which sat to consider the crisis in Land Purchase. It +did not pretend to give an accurate forecast, but only to estimate the +maximum amount which would be needed, on the assumption that all unsold +land would eventually be sold at the average price reached under the Act +of 1903.[159] It is certain that the amount so calculated, covering as +it does all classes and descriptions of agricultural land, and including +land farmed by the landlord himself, as well as short-term pasture +tenancies,[160] will considerably exceed the actual requirements. Some +of the unsold land, especially of the pasture land, will never need to +be sold; nor is the average purchase price likely to remain permanently +as high as that obtained under the Act of 1903. + +Still, this speculative estimate gives us an outside figure which is +useful. The conclusion from it is that 95 millions may be required to +finance all future sales initiated under the Act of 1909. + +But if we want to know how much cash may be wanted, dating from March, +1911, onwards, to finance Land Purchase, we must add the 461/2 millions +needed for sales now agreed upon, and waiting to be carried through, but +not yet completed. That brings the total to 1411/2 millions. + +For the reasons given above, I think we might very well strike off 20 +from the 95 millions of future sales, and so reduce the total to 1211/2 +millions. + +Two further questions remain to be considered: (1) Can we assume that in +the future purchase will proceed smoothly? (2) Who pays for the +machinery of Land Purchase, and what is the security for the money +advanced? + +1. The Act of 1909 is still young. At the end of March, 1911, +applications had been lodged for the direct sale of 5,477 holdings at a +price of £1,623,526, representing an average of 20-8 years' purchase, +and negotiations were in progress for the purchase by the Congested +Districts Board of estates worth another 11/2 millions. Total, a little +over 3 millions--a substantial amount of business in view of the +artificial acceleration caused by events in 1907 and 1908, the +subsequent reaction, and the enormous arrears of business still +remaining to be cleared up. + +We should naturally expect a slight check to purchase under the Act of +1909, since the inducement both to landlord and tenant is less. The +tenant would be inclined to hold out for a lower price because his +annuity is higher (though signs of this check are not yet apparent), and +the landlord is paid in a stock whose market price seems to be slowly +but steadily falling. It is now (November, 1911) at 861/4. On the other +hand, the wise change in the allocation of the bonus places a +much-needed premium on sales of poor land at low prices, and reverses +the process by which a wealthy landlord of good land sometimes obtained +the largest reward for submission to sale.[161] Moreover, there is +constant pressure towards purchase owing to the better financial +position of the purchasing tenant over the non-purchasing or judicial +tenant, while the fear in the landlord's mind of further periodical +reductions in the judicial rents tends to induce him to meet this +pressure halfway. + +Still, there is a point beyond which such pressure might not be strong +enough to carry on voluntary Purchase, especially if the 3 per cent, +stock continued to fall. Wide powers of compulsion,[162] covering +considerably more than a third of Ireland, and including the poorest +areas, where purchase is most needed, already exist under the Act of +1909. Some think that general compulsion will be needed. Other +well-informed men count with confidence on completing all the necessary +part of the purchase of Irish land in from twelve to fifteen years under +the existing system. On the other hand, it is necessary to contemplate +the possible need for universal compulsion. + +2. Cost of the working of Land Purchase, and security for the money +advanced. It is just as well to make these points perfectly clear, in +view of the legends which obtain circulation about the "giving" of +British money for the purchase of Irish land. + +The cost of the Land Purchase machinery falls at present on the +taxpayers of the whole United Kingdom, including, of course, those of +Ireland. It amounted in 1909-10, as I showed in the last chapter, to +£414,500, and for 1911 the estimate is £544,395. This sum includes the +administrative cost of the Land Commission and Estates Commissioners, +the temporary losses on flotation caused in financing, under the Act of +1909, the balance of agreements made under the Act of 1903, and the +bonus to landlords. + +The Treasury, in their returns estimating the revenue and expenditure of +various parts of the United Kingdom, debit the whole of this sum against +Ireland, and, moral responsibility apart, I regard it as necessary that, +under Home Rule, Ireland should assume both the cost and the management +of Purchase. + +Apart from the annual vote I have mentioned, Land Purchase pays for +itself. The security for the individual holders of the Guaranteed Land +Stock by means of which the purchase money is raised is the Consolidated +Fund of the United Kingdom, but the Consolidated Fund has never been +called upon for a penny, either for interest or capital, and never will +be. + +At present the initial security of the Government which controls the +Consolidated Fund--in other words, the initial security of the United +Kingdom taxpayers--is the Irish rates; for the grants in aid of Irish +local taxation still form a guarantee fund chargeable with the unpaid +annuities of defaulting tenants, though they have escaped the liability +for losses on the notation of stock at a discount. The ultimate security +is the purchased land itself; for, in the last resort, a defaulting +tenant who, it must be remembered, is a State tenant, can be sold up. +But the really important security is the tenant himself. The Irish +tenants, treated properly, pay their debts as honestly and punctually as +any other class of men in the world. Annuities in arrear are negligible. +The last Report of the Land Commission shows that out of two million +pounds of annuities due from 165,133 purchasing tenants, and close upon +another two millions of interest (in lieu of rent) upon holdings agreed +to be purchased by 150,490 tenants--a total of nearly four million +pounds--only £28,084 were uncollected on March 31 last. The cases of +hopeless default, leading to a sale of the land, were only fifty-four. +Not a penny has actually been lost. + +The State, then, or, if we choose so to put it, the United Kingdom +taxpayers, are safe from loss, and make a good investment. There has +never been the faintest symptom of a strike against annuities, and the +only cause which could conceivably ever suggest such a strike would be +the irritation provoked by a persistent refusal to grant Home Rule. Even +that possibility I regard as out of the question, because there is a +sanctity attaching to annuities which it would be hard to impair. Still, +to speak broadly, it is true that Home Rule will improve a security +already good, and that Home Rule, with financial independence, will make +it absolutely impregnable. + +Let me sum up. + +More than half the agricultural land of Ireland is sold to the tenants, +or agreed to be sold. Eleven million acres out of 183/4 million acres have +changed hands, or will soon change hands; 315,623 out of 554,060 +occupiers now pay annuities or interest in lieu of rent, to the amount +of nearly 4 million pounds. In regard to value, out of a total value of +208 millions for the whole agricultural land of Ireland, 661/2 millions +have actually been advanced for purchase, 461/2 millions are due to be +advanced under signed agreements; and, on the extreme estimate of the +Land Commission, based on the supposition that all the remaining land +will ultimately be sold, 95 millions more will have to be advanced. +Total future liability on the extreme estimate, 1411/2 millions; or, if we +take the more moderate and reasonable figure I suggested, 1211/2 millions. + +Now, two conditions must be laid down-- + + 1. Purchase ought to continue. + + 2. Cheap Imperial credit is necessary for it. + +These conditions ought not to entail, beyond a strictly limited point, +the continued control of Purchase by the Imperial Government. That step, +as I suggested at p. 221, might involve Imperial control over (1) the +Congested Districts Board; (2) the whole work of the Land Commission, +outside Purchase, and all Irish land legislation; (3) the Irish police; +because the power of distraint for annuities, the last resource of the +creditor Government, rests, of course, with the arm of the law. + +Any one of these consequences, as I have urged, would be inconsistent +with responsible government in Ireland. + +What are the objections to Irish control over Purchase, with its +corollary, Irish payment of the running costs of Purchase? Two distinct +interests have to be considered: (1) That of the British taxpayer; (2) +that of the landlord. + +1. If we carry out the plan I have advocated, the British taxpayer, as +soon as he ceases to contribute to the diminishing subsidy suggested at +p. 284 in order to meet the initial deficit in the national Irish +balance-sheet, will cease to contribute anything towards the running +costs, landlord's bonus, and flotation losses of a Purchase operation +for the necessity of which Great Britain, in the past, was in reality +responsible. Great Britain is under a moral obligation to continue to +support Land Purchase with her national credit, which is indispensable. +She is also entitled to demand whatever reasonable conditions she thinks +fit, for example, a share in the nomination of Land and Estates +Commissioners; while any new legislation will, in the ordinary course, +need her assent. The security, as I said above, will be impregnable. The +purchasing tenant would become the tenant of the Irish State. The Irish +Government, as a whole, instead of the individual annuitants, would, of +course, be responsible to the Imperial Government, would collect the +annuities itself, and bear any contingent loss by their non-payment. To +repudiate a public obligation of that sort would be as ruinous to +Ireland as the repudiation of a public debt is to any State in the +world. + +In point of fact, the Irish Government would find it good policy to +popularize Irish Land Stock in Ireland. At present prices the 3 per +cent, stock is among the cheapest and safest in the world, and would +return to the farmer thrice as much interest as the average bank deposit +which he now favours. + +Mercifully, there is no exact historical precedent for such a case as +Ireland, though, on a small scale, Prince Edward Island is an +instructive parallel.[163] But if precedents, in the shape of guaranteed +loans to self-governing Colonies, are needed, they exist. The most +relevant and recent is the Imperial guaranteed loan of 35 millions made +to the Transvaal by Mr. Balfour's Government in 1903 after the great +war. Why it should be a heresy to do for Ireland what we did for the +Transvaal, I am at a loss to conceive. The loan became, of course, an +obligation of the Colony when it received Home Rule, and in 1907 a +further guaranteed loan of 5 millions was authorized, of which 4 +millions has been issued. Like Irish Land Stock, these loans are secured +on the Consolidated Fund; but I do not think a fear is now suggested +that the Consolidated Fund is in danger on that account. Prophecies of +that sort were common enough in the mouths of those who opposed +Transvaal Home Rule, but they did not long survive its enactment. + +Another precedent is a guaranteed railway loan to Canada in 1873 of +£3,600,000, which is just now becoming redeemable, while the Crown +Colony of Mauritius received a guaranteed loan of £600,000 in 1892. The +British and Irish taxpayers have also made themselves responsible for +£9,424,000 on account of Egypt; £6,023,700 on account of Greece; and +£5,000,000 on account of Turkey. The total nominal amount of the +guaranteed loans to countries, colonial or foreign, outside the United +Kingdom is £63,647,700. The total amount outstanding on March 31, 1911, +was £59,474,200, and the Government holds securities only to the value +of £4,800,556 against these liabilities, leaving the net liability of +the taxpayer at £54,673,644. + +The net liability of the taxpayer at the same date on account of Irish +Guaranteed Land Stocks of all descriptions was £65,764,054.[164] Ireland +has a claim to Imperial credit far superior to any of the Colonies, +dependencies, or foreign Powers mentioned, and the credit should not +entail control, or the representation of Ireland at Westminster. + +Incidentally, it goes without saying that Ireland, in common with the +Colonies, should receive the very valuable privilege of having +independent loans raised by herself inscribed at the Bank of England, +and made trustee securities. + +2. It may be argued that the Congested Districts Board and the Land +Commission, and through them Irish statesmen, may be subjected to local +pressure hostile to the landlord's interests, and that the Irish +Government would feel itself more free for social and other reforms if +the land question were placed legally outside their purview. My answer +is, in the first place, that Great Britain would cease to lend if her +conditions were unfulfilled; in the second place, that in this, as in +all matters, we are bound to place faith in the self-respect and sense +of justice of a free Ireland--in its common prudence, too; for it would +be a disaster whose magnitude is universally recognized in Ireland if +any course were to be taken which prevented the landlord class from +joining in the great work of making a new Ireland. Fair treatment of the +landlords by a free Ireland, as distinguished from fair treatment at the +hands of an external authority, would do more than anything else to +bring about a reconciliation. That is human nature all the world over. + + +II. MINOR LOANS TO IRELAND. + + +It remains only to refer briefly to two other cases where Ireland +benefits from Imperial credit. + +(1) The Labourers (Ireland) Act of 1906 sanctioned the advance of money +through the Land Commission to Rural Councils for building labourers' +cottages--a class of loans previously made by the Public Works +Commissioners of Ireland. £3,111,816 had been advanced under this head +on March 31, 1911, and £1,138,184 had been applied for. The money is +raised by guaranteed 23/4 per cent, stock in the same way as the money for +Land Purchase. + +(2) In addition, there are the loans granted by the Irish Commissioners +of Public Works. In their capacity as lenders, which is only one of a +multitude of capacities, the Commissioners are really a subordinate +branch of the Treasury, and fulfil the same function as the Public Works +Loans Commissioners in Great Britain. They lend principally to local +authorities for all manner of public works and public health +requirements, also to private individuals, mainly for the improvement of +land, and, to a small extent, to Arterial Drainage Boards and to +railways. They get their money from the National Debt Commissioners, and +in 1909-10 issued loans to the amount of £293,233--a figure which shows +a considerable reduction on that of the previous two years.[165] The +total amount of 35,000 outstanding loans on March 31, 1910, was +£9,608,110, of which between two-thirds and three-quarters were due from +local authorities. The interest varies, as in Great Britain, from 23/4 to +5 per cent., according to the nature of the security, and in 1909-10 +averaged £3 10s. 6d. Most of the loans are secured on local rates, where +the interest payable is either 31/2 or 33/4 per cent., according to the +period of the loan; others on undertakings such as harbours; and others +on the land for the improvement of which the money is borrowed. + +Here, then, are two small and secondary problems. Under Home Rule +Ireland will have no claim to further Imperial credit for loans of +either of the above classes. On the other hand, there is no reason why +the Treasury, if it pleases, and on its own terms, should not lend as +before, though not directly, as it virtually does now, but indirectly, +by loan to the Irish Government. The security will be just as good, and +probably better. If a negligent Local Government Board under Irish +control sanctions reckless loans by local authorities, and a negligent +Irish Government advances for such loans money borrowed from Great +Britain, the Irish Treasury will suffer. Such eventualities need not +seriously be considered. The analogy with the Transvaal and Canada +loans, which were mainly for public works, is very close. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[152] Parts of this chapter have appeared in a paper by the Author in +"Home Rule Problems." + +[153] Agricultural Statistics of Ireland, 1909. + +[154] See pp. 10-17, 66-71. + +[155] See p. 270-271. + +[156] See p. 267. + +[157] Cd. 4005, 1908. + +[158] This and subsequent figures are taken from an answer to question +in the House of Commons, July 25, 1911, and from the current Exports of +the Land Commission and Estates Commissioners. + +[159] Cd. 4412, 1908. The basis taken was the Poor Law valuation of the +lands unsold, multiplied by the number of years purchase of the lands +sold under the Act of 1903. On this basis the value of the land neither +sold nor agreed to be sold in 1908 was £103,931,848. On the basis of +acreage, the estimate worked out at £102,078,448, and on the basis of +holdings (regarded as unreliable by the Commissioners) at £92,660,694. +The total sum required from first to last, including sums already +advanced under all the various Acts, was £208,366,175. + +[160] Pasture land let on eleven months' tenancies (a common form of +tenure) counts as untenanted land, and is subject to purchase by the +Land Commissioners, compulsorily, if necessary. + +[161] But not always. Heavily mortgaged landlords profited most, +perhaps, under the Act of 1903. + +[162] Only once exercised up to October, 1911: over Lord Inchiquin's +estate in Clare, to be acquired for the relief of congestion. + +[163] See p. 75. There the loan for compulsory Land Purchase was +ultimately raised by the Dominion of Canada, as one of the conditions +upon which Prince Edward Island entered the Federation in 1873. Under +the Land Purchase Act, passed in 1875 by the Island Legislature, with +the assent of the Dominion, three Commissioners adjudicated upon the +sales; representing the Island Government, the Landlords, and the +Dominion Government respectively. + +[164] Finance accounts of the United Kingdom, 1911. + +[165] Report of the Commissioners of Public Works, 1910. The amount in +1907-08 was £434,796; in 1908-09, £361,282. The Commissioners have been +lending since 1819, and have lent since that date £48,792,319. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE IRISH CONSTITUTION[166] + + +I have dealt with the major issues of Home Rule. The exclusion or +retention of Irish Members at Westminster, and the powers--above all, +the financial powers--of the Irish State, are the two points of cardinal +importance. As I have shown, they are inseparably connected, and form, +in reality, one great question. + +I have endeavoured to prove that from whatever angle we approach that +central issue, whether we argue from representation to powers, or from +powers to representation, and whether the particular powers we argue +from be financial, legislative, or executive; whether we place Irish, +British, or Imperial interests in the forefront of our exposition--we +are led irresistibly to the colonial solution--that is, to the cessation +of Irish representation at Westminster, coupled with a concession to +Ireland of the full legislative and executive authority appropriate to +that measure of independence, and, above all, with fiscal autonomy. + +All the other provisions of the Bill are secondary. They may be divided +into two categories, which necessarily overlap: + +1. Provisions concerning Ireland only. + +2. Provisions defining the Imperial authority over Ireland. + +The structure of the Irish Legislature, the position of the Irish +Judiciary, the safeguards for minorities, the provision made for +existing servants of the State, the statutory arrangements, if any, for +the future reorganization of the Irish Police--these and other questions +are of great intrinsic importance, and need the most careful discussion; +but they are altogether subordinate to those we have already considered. +If it be over-sanguine to hope, in Ireland's interest, that they will be +discussed in a calm and dispassionate way, we can at least demand that +those provisions belonging to the second category, which present no +appreciable difficulty, will not excite bitter and barren disputes like +those of 1893. + +It is not within the scope of this volume to discuss exhaustively the +secondary provisions of the Bill, or to suggest the exact statutory form +which those provisions, major or minor, should take. In this chapter I +shall deal briefly with matters which I have hitherto left aside, and +incidentally give more precision to the points upon which I have already +suggested a conclusion, in both cases indicating, so far as possible, +the most useful precedents and parallels from other Constitutions. The +result will be the rough sketch of a Home Rule Bill. + + +PREAMBLE. + +"Whereas it is expedient that _without impairing or restricting the +supreme authority of Parliament_, an Irish Legislature should be +created, etc." So ran the opening sentence of the Home Rule Bill of +1893. The words I have italicized are harmless but superfluous. They +have never appeared in the Constitutions granted to Colonies, even at +periods when the Colonies were most distrusted. Nothing can impair the +supreme authority of Parliament. + + +EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY. + +In all parts of the Empire, power emanates from the Sovereign, and is +wielded locally in his name. + +Section 9 of the British North America Act of 1867 runs as follows: "The +Executive Government and authority of and over Canada is hereby declared +to continue and be vested in the Queen." Similar words are used in the +South Africa Act of 1909, and in the Commonwealth of Australia +Constitution Act of 1900. Curiously enough, these were Acts to legalize +the Federation, or Union, of separate Colonies, and were passed at a +time when the principle embodied needed no affirmation. In earlier Acts +for granting Colonial Constitutions, the principle was taken for +granted, and implied in numerous provisions, but not stated explicitly. +The most recent unitary Constitution, that of the Transvaal (Section +47), was even more reticent, though the principle was none the less +clear. The point is unimportant, and the words used in the Home Rule +Bills of 1886 and 1893 (Clauses 5 and 7 respectively), modified to meet +a change of Sovereign, will serve very well: "The Executive power in +Ireland (or the Executive Government of Ireland) shall continue vested +in His Majesty...." + +Thereon follow the provisions for delegation of the Royal authority, +first to the Sovereign's personal Representative in Ireland, and then +through him to the members of the Irish Executive. The simpler these +provisions are, the better. What we know as responsible government has +never been defined in any Act of Parliament. The phrase "responsible +government" has only once appeared in any Constitution--namely, in the +preamble of the Transvaal Constitution granted in 1906, and even then no +attempt was made at definition, though certain sections, like certain +sections in the Australian Constitutions of 1855 and in the later +Federal Acts, inferentially suggested features of responsible +government. + +The system is two-sided. Ministers are responsible on the one hand to +the King direct, as in Great Britain, or to the King's Representative, +as in the Colonies, and, on the other hand, to the elected Legislature. +Ireland will resemble a Colony in being a dependent State under a +Representative of the King--namely, the Lord-Lieutenant. This personage, +corresponding to the Colonial Governor, will also have to act in a dual +capacity. On the one hand he will be responsible to the King, or, +virtually, to the British Cabinet, and, on the other hand, he will be +bound by an unwritten law to nominate for the Government of Ireland +persons acceptable to the elected Legislature, and in Irish matters to +act by their advice in all normal circumstances. + +Let us dispose first of the relation of the Ministers and of other +public officials to the Legislature. There will be no question, +presumably, of giving statutory power to this relation. It is an +unwritten custom--(1) that Ministers must be members of one branch of +the Legislature; (2) that they must hold the confidence of the elected +branch; (3) that, as a Cabinet, they stand or fall together; and, +lastly, (4) that all non-political officials are excluded from the +Legislature. The first and the last of these conventions have taken +legal form in some isolated cases;[167] the other two appear in no +statute that has yet been framed.[168] + +Neither have the functions in practice exercised by the Ministry or +Cabinet, nor the relations which in practice exist between it and the +King's Representative, ever had statutory definition. Whatever form the +Home Rule Bill takes, it cannot give legal precision to these things. +The King's Representative always nominates an Executive Council--that +is, a Cabinet to "advise" him in the Government, and whether, as in the +Bill of 1893, that Council is called an Executive Committee of the Privy +Council of Ireland by analogy with the Dominion of Canada, where it is +the "King's Privy Council for Canada," or whether it is merely an +Executive Council is immaterial. That it is, nominally, the +constitutional duty of the King's Representative (like that of the King +himself) to perform executive acts on the advice of his Ministers is +never stated expressly. He is always, and generally in the text of the +Constitution, vested with the power of summoning, proroguing, and +dissolving the Legislature, and of giving or withholding the Royal +Assent to Bills. He also, by unwritten law, wields the prerogative of +Pardon, and appoints all public servants; and in all these cases, except +in the case of appointing non-political officials, he occasionally has +to act on his own personal responsibility. + +This personal responsibility cannot be distinguished in practice from +his responsibility to the Crown, which appoints and can remove him. +Cases have arisen where the Governor of a self-governing Colony has +written home for special guidance on some specific point, and where the +answer given has been that he must act on his own responsibility, or +follow the advice of his Ministers. All Colonial Governors, however, +whether or not their powers are defined in the Constitution, are +appointed by Commission from the Crown with powers defined in Letters +Patent and Instructions as to their exercise. These Letters Patent and +Instructions are not of much importance in the case of a self-governing +Colony where responsible advice so largely controls the action of the +Governor. Sometimes the executive powers given by Instructions to the +Governor are indirectly alluded to in the Constitution, as in the South +Africa Act of 1909, where, by Clause 9, under the head of "Executive +Government," the Governor-General is "to exercise such powers and +functions of the King as His Majesty may be pleased to assign to him." +In the Australian and Canadian Acts of 1900 and 1867 respectively, the +words do not appear. I name this point because in Clause 5 of the Home +Rule Bill of 1893, and Clause 7 of the Bill of 1886, a similar course +was taken in providing that the Lord-Lieutenant should "exercise any +prerogatives, or other executive power of the Queen, the exercise of +which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty." The words are not +strictly necessary. The Lord-Lieutenant will, of course, have his +Letters Patent and Instructions, but the powers of the Crown are +theoretically absolute. If the Crown, acting under responsible British +advice, should wish to defy the Irish Legislature, it could do so +whatever the terms of the Bill. + +Naturally, there will be certain Imperial and non-Irish matters in which +the Lord-Lieutenant will act primarily under the orders of the British +Cabinet, and the Departmental British Minister primarily responsible for +Irish-Imperial matters would be the Home Secretary.[169] + +The question may be raised, as in 1893 (July 3, Hansard), whether a +staff of Imperial officials ought not to be set up to conduct any +Imperial business which has to be done in Ireland, on the analogy of the +Federal staff in the United States. I hope Mr. Gladstone's answer will +still hold good--that no such staff is needed; that the Irish officials +will be responsible, and ought, on the Home Rule principle, to be +trusted, as they are trusted in the Colonies. + +The Royal Assent to Bills is always a matter for express enactment in +the Constitution, but here the "instructions" of the Governor, and even +his personal "discretion," have generally been alluded to in recent +Constitutions, whether conferred by Act or Letters Patent. The typical +form of words is that the Governor "shall declare his Assent according +to his discretion, but subject to His Majesty's instructions."[170] The +Home Rule Bill of 1893 left out reference to "discretion," and, on the +other hand, is, I think, the only document of the kind in which the +"advice of the Executive Council" has ever been expressly alluded to, +although the practice, of course, is that the Assent, normally, is given +or withheld on that advice. The Transvaal Constitution of 1906 (Section +39) was unique in prescribing that special instructions must be received +by the Governor in the case of each proposed law, before the Assent is +given. I hope that will not be made a precedent for Ireland. Such +precautions only irritate the law-makers, and serve no useful purpose. + +Colonial Governors, besides the power of Assent and Veto, may "reserve" +Bills for the Royal pleasure, which is to be signified within two years. +Moreover, Bills which have received the Governor's Assent may be +disallowed within one or two years.[171] Neither of these provisions +appeared in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, and neither appear to +be strictly necessary, owing to the proximity of Ireland. Whatever is +done, we may hope that the practice now established in Canada, where the +Federal Government never disallows a provincial law on any other ground +than that it is _ultra vires_, and, _a fortiori_, the similar practice +as between Great Britain and the Dominions, may be imitated in the case +of Ireland. + +To sum up, the terse and simple words of the Bill of 1886 really +enunciate all that is necessary: + +[Sidenote: Constitution of the Executive Authority.] + +"7.--(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." + +LORD-LIEUTENANT AND CIVIL LIST. + +The restriction as to the religion of the Lord-Lieutenant will, of +course, be removed. There is no reason why his term of office should be +limited by law. His salary, payable by Ireland, should perhaps be stated +in the Act, as in the case of Canada and South Africa, though not in +that of Australia. Australia, on the other hand, has a statutory Civil +List, and a fixed Civil List was an invariable feature of the old +Constitutions given to self-governing Colonies. Canada and South Africa +are under no such restrictions, and it would be very inexpedient to +impose them upon Ireland. + + +LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY. + +The Irish Legislature will be given power, according to the historic +phrase, "to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of +Ireland," subject to restrictions afterwards named. That the laws should +be only "in respect of matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some +part thereof" goes without saying, and need not be copied from the Bill +of 1893 (Clause 2). Nor need the superfluous proviso in the same clause +be reproduced, asserting the "supreme power and authority of the +Parliament of the United Kingdom." The supreme power becomes none the +more supreme for such assertions. Clause 2 of the Bill of 1886 is simple +and decisive: + + "2. With the exceptions of and subject to the restrictions in this + Act mentioned, it shall be lawful for (Her) Majesty (the Queen), by + and with the advice of the Irish Legislative Body, to make laws for + the peace, order, and good government of Ireland, and by any such + law to alter and repeal any law in Ireland." + +With the restrictions on the powers of the Legislature I dealt fully +enough in Chapter X.,[172] and I need only summarize my conclusions: + +1. _Reservations of Imperial Authority._--The Irish Legislature should +_not_ have power to make laws upon-- + +{The Crown or a Regency. +{Making of War or Peace. +{Prize and Booty of War. +{Army or Navy. +{Foreign Relations and Treaties (excepting Commercial Treaties). +{Conduct as Neutrals. +{Titles and Dignities. +{Extradition. +{Treason. +Coinage. +Naturalization and Alienage. + +Reservation of the nine subjects included in the bracket is implied, +without enactment, in all colonial Constitutions, but in the Irish Bill +it is no doubt necessary that all reserved powers should be formally +specified. + +All powers not specifically reserved will belong to the Irish +Legislature, subject to those restrictions, constitutional or statutory, +which in matters like Trade and Navigation, Copyright, Patents, etc., +bind the whole Empire. + +Section 32 of the Bill of 1893, borrowed from the Colonial Laws Validity +Act, will no doubt be applied. + +2. _Minority Safeguards_.--This point, too, I dealt with in Chapter +X.[173] Let the Nationalist Members come forward and frankly accept any +prohibitory clauses which the fears of the minority may suggest, +provided that they do not impair the ordinary legislative power which +every efficient Legislature must enjoy. Almost every conceivable +safeguard for the protection of religion, denominational education, and +civil rights was inserted in the Bill of 1893, including even some of +the "slavery" Amendments to the United States Constitution. The list may +require revision--(_a_) in view of the recent establishment of the +National University, and the disappearances of all apprehension about +the status of Trinity College, Dublin; (_b_) in regard to an +extraordinarily wide Sub-clause (No. 9) about interference with +Corporations; (_c_) in regard to the words, "in accordance with settled +principles and precedents," which appeared in Sub-clause (No. 8) +(Legislature to make no law "Whereby any person may be deprived of life, +liberty, or property without due process of law[174] _in accordance with +settled principles and precedents_," etc.). A debate on this question +may be found in Hansard, May 30, 1893. The words italicized were added +in Committee on the motion of Mr. Gerald Balfour, though the +Attorney-General declared that they gave no additional strength to the +phrase "due process of law," while they certainly appear calculated to +provoke litigation. Sir Henry James appeared to think that they made the +suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act _ultra vires._ If that is their +effect, there is no reason why they should be inserted. Even a Canadian +Province, whose powers are more limited than those of the subordinate +States in any other Federation, has "exclusive" powers within its own +borders over "property and civil rights,"[175] and can, beyond any +doubt, suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, if it pleases. + +The same superfluous words appeared in Sub-clause (No. 9) about +Corporations. + + +THE IRISH LEGISLATURE.[176] + +As I urged in Chapter X., this is a subject in which large powers of +constitutional revision--much larger than those contained in either of +the Home Rule Bills--should be given to the Irish Legislature itself, +corresponding to the powers given by statute to the self-governing +Colonies, and to the powers always held by the constituent States of a +Federation. In the Bill itself it would be wisest to follow beaten +tracks as far as possible, and not to embark on experiments. Present +conditions are, unhappily, very unfavourable for the elaboration of any +scheme ideally fit for Ireland. + +_A Bi-Cameral Legislature._--Working on this principle, we must affirm +that Ireland's position, without representation in the Imperial +Parliament, would certainly make a Second Chamber requisite. Three of +the Provinces within the Federation of Canada (Manitoba, British +Columbia, and Ontario) prefer to do without Second Chambers--so do most +of the Swiss Cantons--but all the Federal Legislatures of the world are +bi-cameral, and all the unitary Constitutions of self-governing Colonies +have been, or are, bi-cameral. + +_The Upper Chamber._--One simple course would be to constitute the Upper +Chamber of a limited number of Irish Peers, chosen by the whole of their +number, as they are chosen at present for representation in the House of +Lords. Historical and practical considerations render this course out of +the question, though some people would be fairly sanguine about the +success of such a body in commanding confidence, on the indispensable +condition that all representation at Westminster were to cease. It has +been membership, before the Union of an ascendency Parliament, and after +the Union of an absentee Parliament, which has kept the bulk of the +Irish peerage in violent hostility to the bulk of the Irish people. +Those Peers who seek and obtain a career in an Irish popular +Legislature--to both branches of which they will, of course, be +eligible--will be able to do valuable service to their country. The same +applies to all landlords. Now that land reform is converting Ireland +itself into a nation of small landholders, who, in most countries, are +very Conservative in tendency, the ancient cleavage is likely to +disappear. Indeed, an ideal Second Chamber ought perhaps to give special +weight to urban and industrial interests, while aiming, not at an +obstructive, but at a revising body of steady, moderate, highly-educated +business men. + +We have to choose one of two alternatives: a nominated or an elective +chamber. The choice is difficult, for second chambers all over the world +may be said to be on their trial. On the other hand, nothing vital +depends upon the choice, for experience proves that countries can +flourish equally under every imaginable variety of second chamber, +provided that means exist for enabling popular wishes, in the long-run, +to prevail. The European and American examples are of little use to us, +and the widely varied types within the Empire admit of no sure +inferences. Allowance must be made for the effect of the Referendum +wherever it exists (as in Australia and Switzerland), as a force tending +to weaken both Chambers, but especially the Upper Chamber of a +Legislature. It does, indeed, seem to be generally admitted, even by +Canadians, that the nominated Senate of the Dominion of Canada, which is +added to on strict party principles by successive Governments, is not a +success, and it was so regarded by the Australian Colonies when they +entered upon Federation, and set up an elective Senate. The South +African statesmen, who had to reckon with racial divisions similar to +those in Ireland, compromised with a Senate partly nominated, partly +elected, but made the whole arrangement revisable in ten years.[177] + +It would be desirable, perhaps, on similar grounds of immediate policy, +to let those who now represent the minority in Ireland have a deciding +voice in the matter. No arrangement made otherwise than by a free +Ireland herself can be regarded as final, and I suggest only that a +nominated Chamber would be the best expedient at the outset, or in the +alternative a partly nominated, partly elected Chamber. + +If and in so far as the Upper Chamber is elective, should election be +direct or indirect? There is a somewhat attractive Irish precedent for +indirect election, namely, the present highly successful Department of +Agriculture, whose Council and Boards the County Councils have a share +in constituting,[178] and I have seen and admired a most ingenious +scheme of Irish manufacture for constructing the whole Irish Legislature +and Ministry on this principle. But the objections appear to be +considerable. Local bodies in the future should not be mixed up in +national politics. That has been their bane in the past. Besides, the +principle of indirect election is under a cloud everywhere, most of all +in the United States. Australia rejected it in 1900, and the South +Africans, while giving it partial recognition in the Senate, made the +expedient provisional. + +_The Lower House_.--The Lower House might very well be elected on the +same franchise and from the same constituencies as at present, subject +to any small redistributional modifications necessitated by changes of +population. This is certainly a matter which Ireland should have full +power to settle for itself subsequently. + +Lord Courtney's proposals for Proportional Representation[179] merit +close consideration and possess great attractions, especially in view of +their very favourable reception from Nationalists in Ireland. My own +feeling is that such novel proposals may overload a Bill which, however +simply it be framed, will provoke very long and very warm discussion. If +the system were to be regarded by the present minority as a real +safeguard for their interests, its establishment, on tactical grounds +alone, would be worth any expenditure of time and trouble; but, if they +accept the assumption that existing parties in Ireland are going to be +stereotyped under Home Rule, and then point to the paucity of Unionists +in all parts of Ireland but the north-east of Ulster, they can +demonstrate that no _practicable_ enlargement of constituencies could +seriously influence the results of an election. My own view, already +expressed, is that, provided we give Ireland sufficient freedom, wholly +new parties must, within a short time, inevitably be formed in Ireland, +and the old barriers of race and religion be broken down, and, +therefore, that all expedients devised on the contrary hypothesis will +eventually prove to be needless and might even prove unpopular and +inconvenient. On the other hand, merits are claimed, with a great show +of reason, for Proportional Representation, which are altogether +independent of the protection of minorities from oppression. It is +claimed that the system brings forward moderate men of all shades of +opinion, checks party animus, and steadies the policy of the State. But +I think that a free Ireland should be the judge of these merits. At +present the bulk of the people do not understand the subject, and need +much education before they can appreciate the issue. + +Meanwhile, the conventional party system, based on conventional +constituencies, will, to say the least, do no more harm to Ireland than +to any other State in the Empire. Any minor defects will be +infinitesimal beside the vast and beneficial change wrought by +responsible government. + + +DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN THE TWO HOUSES. + +It is essential to provide for this, and it would be difficult to better +the proposal in the Bill of 1893: that after two years, or an +intervening dissolution, the question should be decided by a joint vote +in joint session. + + +MONEY BILLS AND RESOLUTIONS. + +To originate in the Lower House on the motion of a Minister. + + +POLICE. + +The Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police should be +under Irish control from the first. The former force will undoubtedly +have to be reconstituted, and its reconstitution, as an ordinary Civil +Police, ought to be undertaken by the Irish Government, but the +financial interests of "retrenched" officers and men should be +safeguarded in the Bill itself. + + +JUDGES. + +All future appointments should be made by the Irish Government, without +the suspensory period of six years named in the Bill of 1893. Present +Irish Judges should retain their appointments, as in both previous +Bills. The precedent of Canada, where provincial Judges, unlike the +State Judges of Australia, are appointed and paid by the Federal +Government, is certainly not relevant. + + +LAW COURTS. + +The Federal analogy, except in one particular noticed under the next +heading, has no application to Ireland. Only one provision of any +importance is needed, namely, that Appeals, in the last resort, should +be to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council instead of to the +House of Lords. The Judicial Committee is the final Court of Appeal for +the whole Empire, and, strengthened by one or more Irish Judges, should +hear Irish Appeals. It is true that the tribunal has been subjected to +some criticism lately, especially from Australia. Federal States +naturally wish to secure pre-eminent authority for their own Supreme +Courts. But the tribunal is, on the whole, popular with the colonial +democracies, and the argument from distance and expense does not apply +to Ireland. At the end of an interesting discussion at the last Imperial +Conference, in which suggestions were put forward for strengthening the +Judicial Committee by Colonial Judges, it was agreed that new proposals +should be made by the Imperial Government for an Imperial Final Court of +Appeal in two divisions, one for the United Kingdom, another for the +Colonies. If that step is taken, the position of Ireland will need fresh +consideration.[180] + + +DECISION OF CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS.[181] + +The validity of an Irish Act which has received the Royal Assent will, +like that of a Colonial Act which has received the Royal Assent, be +determined in the ordinary course by the Irish Courts, with an ultimate +appeal to the Judicial Committee, which should be strengthened for the +occasion by one or more Irish Judges. But both the previous Home Rule +Bills made the convenient provision that the Lord-Lieutenant should have +the power of referring questions of validity arising on a Bill, before +its enactment, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for final +decision. There is a useful Canadian precedent for this provision, in +the Imperial Act passed in 1891, for giving the Governor-General in +Council power, in the widest terms, to refer, _inter alia_, questions +touching provincial legislation to the Supreme Court of Canada, with an +appeal from it to the Judicial Committee.[182] To follow this precedent +would not involve any Federal complications. + + +EXCHEQUER JUDGES. + +If Ireland controls her own Customs and Excise, no provision for this +tribunal appears to be necessary, unless it be that some counterpart is +needed for the Colonial Courts of Admiralty.[183] The Bill of 1886 +(Clause 20) limited the jurisdiction to revenue questions. The Bill of +1893 (Clause 19) widened it to include "any matter not within the power +of the Irish Legislature," or "any matter affected by a law which the +Irish Legislature have not power to repeal or alter." The minds of the +authors of this clause were evidently affected by the Federal principle +which involves two judicial authorities--one for Federal, one for +provincial matters. There seems to be no reason for embarking on any +such complications in the case of Ireland. + + +SAFEGUARDS FOR EXISTING PUBLIC SERVANTS IN IRELAND.[184] + +Retrenchment, and in some departments drastic retrenchment, will be +needed in the Irish public service, just as it was needed in the +Transvaal after the grant of Home Rule to that Colony. It is highly +desirable that statutory provision should be made safeguarding existing +interests. No such provision was made in the case of the Transvaal, and +some bad feeling resulted. The past responsibility for excessive Civil +expenditure lies, of course, on Great Britain, as it lay in the case of +the Transvaal, and on grounds of abstract justice it would have been +fair in that case for Great Britain to have assumed a limited part of +the expense of compensating retrenched public servants. The practical +objections to such a policy are, however, very great. In this, as in all +matters, Ireland will gain more by independence than by financial aid, +however strongly justified. All payments should be a direct charge upon +the Irish Exchequer, not, as in some cases under the Bill of 1893, upon +the Imperial Exchequer in the first instance, with provision for +repayment from Ireland. + + +FINANCE. + +I summarize the conclusions already indicated in previous chapters: + +1. Fiscal independence, with complete control over all Irish taxation +and expenditure. + +2. Initial deficit to be supplied by a grant-in-aid, diminishing +annually and terminable in a short period, say, seven years. + +3. Future contribution to Imperial services to be voluntary. + +4. Remission to Ireland of her share of the National Debt, and +relinquishment by Ireland of her share of the Imperial Miscellaneous +Revenue. + +5. Imperial credit for Land Purchase to be extended as before, by loans +guaranteed on the Consolidated Fund, under any conditions now or +hereafter to be made by the Imperial authorities. + +Loans to the Public Works Commissioners to be optional. + + +REPRESENTATION AT WESTMINSTER. + +To cease. + + +CONFERENCE BETWEEN THE IRISH AND IMPERIAL AUTHORITIES. + +This is a very important point, because friendly consultation, as at +present with the Colonies, will take the place of Irish representation +in the Imperial Parliament, and will prove a far more satisfactory means +of securing harmony and co-operation. Arrangements similar to those of +the Imperial Conference, only more precise and efficient, and of a +permanent character, should be made for consultation between the Irish +and British authorities on all subjects where the interests of the two +countries touch one another. The need for more frequent consultation +with the Colonies is being felt with increasing force, and although no +permanent consultation body has yet been created, special _ad hoc_ +conferences have recently been held--for Defence in 1909, and for +Copyright in 1910--in addition to the quadrennial meetings, where a vast +amount of varied topics are discussed, and the most valuable decisions +arrived at.[185] + +What the precise machinery should be in the case of Anglo-Irish +relations I do not venture to say. The Ministers of the respective +countries will be so easily accessible to one another that there would +seem to be no need for the frequent attendance of a powerful personnel +at joint meetings. But a Standing Committee, with a small official +staff, would be necessary. + + +CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.[186] + +For amendment of the Home Rule Act itself it is not possible to make any +statutory provision. Like all Constitutional Acts, it will only be +alterable by another Imperial statute, which, if it were needed, should +be promoted by Ireland. But one of the most important clauses in the Act +itself will be that defining Ireland's power to amend her own +Constitution without coming to Parliament. I venture to repeat the view +that this power should be as wide as possible, consistently with the +maintenance of the Imperial authority, and subject, of course, to +provisions prescribing--(1) a time-limit for the initial arrangements; +(2) the method of ascertaining Irish opinion; and (3) the majority in +the Legislature, or in the electorate, or in both, necessary to sanction +a constitutional change.[187] If a Home Rule Constitution, passed into +law in the heat of a party fight at Westminster, proves to be perfect, a +miracle will have been performed unparalleled in the history of the +Empire. At this moment a Committee of Ireland's ablest men of all +parties should be at work upon it, with an instructed public opinion +behind them. So only are good Constitutions made, and even the very best +need subsequent amendment. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[166] For details of prior Home Rule Bills, see the Appendix. + +[167] The Victorian and South Australian Constitutions of 1855 state in +clear terms that the Ministry must be members of the Legislature, and +all the Australian Constitutions of the same date, except that of +Tasmania, formally exclude all other officials from the Legislature. The +Transvaal Constitution of 1906 made no reference to either point; nor do +the Federating Acts of 1867, 1900, and 1909 for Canada, Australia, and +South Africa. + +[168] A fifth custom, very common, of compelling new Ministers to seek +re-election is incorporated in most of the Australian Constitutions, but +was expressly ruled out in Section 47 of the Transvaal Constitution of +1906. + +[169] See Hansard, July 3, 1893, Speech of Mr. John Morley. + +[170] The words "subject to this Constitution" or "subject to this Act" +are sometimes added, but have no special significance. The Australian +Commonwealth Constitution Act does not mention the Governor's +"instructions," but only his "discretion." + +[171] British North America Act, 1867, Sects. 55-57; Commonwealth of +Australia Constitution Act, 1900, Sects. 58-60. + +[172] See especially pp. 213-229. + +[173] See pp. 223-225. + +[174] Taken from Amendment XIV. to the United States Constitution, +passed July 28, 1866. + +[175] British North America Act, 1867, Sect. 92 (13). But the Province +may not encroach on powers reserved to the Dominion--e.g., in bankruptcy +(Gushing v. Depuy [before Jud. Comm. of Privy Council]). See the +"Constitution of Canada," J.E.C. Munro, pp. 247-253. There has been much +litigation over points where Dominion and Federal powers overlapped. +(See "Federations and Unions of the British Empire," H.E. Egerton, pp. +151-153). + +[176] For the proposals of the Bills of 1886 and 1893, see Appendix. + +[177] South Africa Act, 1909, Sects. 24 and 25. + +[178] See pp. 155-162. + +[179] See Pamphlet No. 17, published by Proportional Representation +Society, and an excellent paper by Mr. J.F. Williams in "Home Rule +Problems." + +[180] Cd. 5741, 1911, pp. 46-51. + +[181] See Appendix and the Bill of 1886, Clause 25; Bill of 1893, Clause +22. + +[182] 54 and 55 Vict., Ch. 25, Sect. 4. + +[183] Courts of Admiralty in the Colonies are regulated by Imperial +Acts, though by an Act of 1890 large powers were conferred on the +Colonies of declaring ordinary Courts to be Courts of Admiralty (see +Moore's "Commonwealth of Australia," pp. 11 and 251). + +[184] See Clauses 27-30 of the Bill of 1886, and Clauses 25-28 of the +Bill of 1893. + +[185] See the Precis of Proceedings, Cd. 5741, 1911. + +[186] See pp. 225-227. + +[187] See Section 128 of the Australia Constitution Act, 1900, and +Section 152 of the South Africa Act, 1909. + + + + +CONCLUSION + + +Is it altogether idle to hope that some such body will yet come into +existence, if not in time to influence the drafting of the Bill, at any +rate to bring to bear upon its provisions the sober wisdom, not of one +party only in the State, but of all; and so, if it were possible, to +give to the charter of Ireland in her "new birth of freedom" the +sanction of a united people? + +Home Rule will eventually come. Within the Empire, the utmost achieved +by the government of white men without their own consent is to weaken +their capacity to assume the sacred responsibility of self-government. +It is impossible to kill the idea of Home Rule, though it is possible, +by retarding its realization, to pervert some of its strength and +beauty, and to diminish the vital energy on which its fruition depends. +And it is possible in the case of Ireland, up to and in the very hour of +her emancipation, after a struggle more bitter and exhausting than any +in the Empire, to heap obstacles in the path of the men who have carried +her to the goal, and on whom in the first instance must fall the +extraordinarily difficult and delicate task of political reconstruction. +They will be on their mettle in the eyes of the world to prove that the +prophets of evil were wrong, to show sympathy and inspire confidence in +the very quarters where they have been most savagely traduced and least +trusted, and they will have to exhibit dauntless courage in attacking +old abuses and promoting new reforms. They will need their hands +strengthened in every possible way. + +The help must come--and it cannot come too soon--from the working +optimists of Ireland, from the hundreds of men and women, of both +parties and creeds, who are labouring outside politics to extirpate that +stifling undergrowth of pessimism which runs riot in countries denied +the light and air of freedom. All these people agree on the axiom that +Ireland has a distinct individual existence, and that her future depends +upon herself. No one should dare to stop there. Let him who feels +impelled to stop there at any rate act with open eyes. In expecting to +realize social reconstruction without political reconstruction--however +divergent the aims may now seem to be--he expects to achieve what has +never been achieved in any country in the Empire, and to achieve this +miracle in the very country which has suffered most from political +repression, and possesses the most fantastic system of government to be +found in the King's dominions. The thing is impossible, and if at bottom +he feels it to be so, and inclines sadly to the view that political +servitude is but the least of two evils, I would only venture to suggest +this: Is it not a finer course to stake something on a risk run in every +white community but Ireland rather than to face the certainty of half +achievement? And is it not, after all, a sound risk to trust the very +men who now respond to the appeal for self-reliance, mutual tolerance, +and united effort in their private affairs, not to renounce these +qualities and abuse the rights of citizenship when the public affairs of +their country are under their own control? + +As for the risk to Great Britain, I have only this last word to say: Let +her people, not for the first time, show that they can rise superior to +the philosophy, as fallacious in effect as it is base and cowardly in +purpose, which sets the safety of a great nation above the happiness and +prosperity of a small one. Within the last few weeks the wheel has +turned full circle, and the almost inexplicable contradiction which has +existed for so long between Unionism and Imperialism has been +illuminated with a frank cynicism rare in our public life. It is being +said that the freedom given to Canada cannot be given to Ireland, +because the separation from the Empire theoretically rendered possible +by such a step would be immaterial in the case of Canada, which is +distant, but perilous in the case of Ireland, which is near. If this be +Imperialism, it should stink in the nostrils of every decent citizen at +home and abroad. + +It is true, to our shame, that, by little more than an accident, Canada +obtained the freedom which gave her people harmony, energy, and wealth +in the teeth of this mean and selfish doctrine. But Lord Durham took a +higher view. Let me recall the memorable words which he added to his +long and brilliant argument for liberty as a source, not only of +domestic regeneration, but of affection and loyalty to the Motherland: +"_But at any rate our first duty is to secure the well-being of our +colonial countrymen;_ and if, in the hidden decrees of that wisdom by +which this world is ruled, it is written that these countries are not +for ever to remain portions of the Empire, we owe it to our honour to +take good care that, when they separate from us, they should not be the +only countries on the American continent in which the Anglo-Saxon race +shall be found unfit to govern itself." + +Lord Durham was doubly right; in his prophecy of the closer union +liberty would promote, and in elementary law which he laid down, of +moral obligation which, whatever the result, he held superior to +dynastic calculations. It is a fact of ominous significance that the +intellectual successors of the men who most hotly repudiated both these +doctrines in 1838 are being driven by pressure of their Irish views to +revive that repudiation in 1911, and to revive it in the midst of the +most effusive protestations of the need for still closer union with a +Colony which would either have undergone the fate of Ireland or have +ceased to be a member of the Empire if their philosophy had triumphed. I +do not believe there is any conscious cant in that flagrant +contradiction, but I do firmly believe that so long as their error about +Ireland poisons in them the springs of Imperial thought, some element of +fallacy lies in any Imperial policy they undertake. In common prudence, +at any rate, they should avoid telling Canada, while beckoning her +nearer to the heart of the Empire, that they only gave her freedom +because she was so far. + +But I rely still on an awakening, on a fundamental change of spirit. The +Empire owes everything to those who have disputed, sometimes at the cost +of their lives, illegitimate authority. Some day the politicians who now +spend sleepless nights with paste and scissors in ransacking the ancient +files of the world's Press for proofs that Mr. Redmond once used words +signifying that he aimed at "separation"--whatever that phrase may +mean--will regret that they ever demeaned themselves by such petty +labour, and will place Mr. Redmond among the number of those who have +saved the Empire from the consequences of its own errors. + + + + +APPENDIX + + +COMPARATIVE TABLE, SHOWING THE PRINCIPAL PROVISIONS OF THE HOME RULE +BILLS OF 1886 AND 1893 + +HOME RULE BILL OF 1886. HOME RULE BILL OF 1893. + + THE IRISH LEGISLATURE. + +To consist of the Crown and _Two To consist of the Crown and +Orders_, sitting together, and _Two Houses_, sitting separately. +unless either Order demands a +separate vote, voting together. + +1. _First Order_, to consist of 1. _Council_, of 48 Councillors +_(a)_ 75 members elected on a £25 elected on a £20 franchise from +franchise from a new set of a new set of constituencies. +constituencies. Term of office, Term of office, eight years. +ten years. _(b)_ 28 Peerage +members, to give place by +degrees to elective members as in +_(a)_. + +_2. Second Order_, 204 members 2. _Assembly_ of 103 members +elected as at present. Two from each elected as at present. +constituency (with an alteration +in the case of Cork). + +Dissolution at least every five Dissolution at least every five +years. years. + + _Money Bills_ and votes to + originate in the Assembly. + + + DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN ORDERS OR HOUSES. + +After three years or a After two years or a +dissolution question to be dissolution question to be +decided by joint vote. decided by joint vote in + joint session. + + + + ESTRICTIONS ON IRISH LEGISLATURE. + + 1. _Imperial Matters_. + +_No power to make laws about_-- + _Nor_ with: the Lord-Lieutenant, +The Crown, War or Peace, Army or conduct as Neutrals, Extradition, +Navy, Volunteers or Militia, Trade-marks, nor (for six years) +Prize or Booty of War, Treaties, Post Office in or out of +Titles, Treason, Naturalization, Ireland. +Trade or Navigation, +Lighthouses, etc., Coinage, But Trade _within Ireland_ and +Copyright, Patents, Post Office _inland_ Navigation conceded to +(except within Ireland). Ireland. + + + 2. _Irish Matters. + +No power to make laws for the purpose of_-- + +(1) _Establishing or endowing (1) Ditto, ditto, but more +any religion_ or imposing explicit and far-reaching. +disabilities or conferring +privileges on account of +_religion_, or affecting the +undenominational constitution +of National schools, etc. + +(2) Impairing rights or property (2) Ditto, ditto, or "without +of corporations, without address for due process of law" and +both Orders and consent of Crown. compensation. + + (3) Depriving anyone of _life, + liberty, or property_ without + due process of law in accordance + with settled precedents, or + denying _equal protection of + laws_, or taking property + without _just compensation_. + + (4) Imposing disabilities or + conferring privileges on account + of _birth, parentage, or place + of business_. + + (5) (_For three years_) + respecting relations of + _landlord and tenant_ or the + purchase and letting of _land_ + generally. + + + IRISH REPRESENTATION IN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT. + +To cease altogether (except in Ireland to send 80 members to +the case of a proposed Westminster (instead of 103). +alteration of the Home Rule Act). Peers as before. + + + EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY. + +The Crown, as represented by the Lord-Lieutenant, acting in Irish +affairs with the advice of an Irish Cabinet responsible to the Irish +Legislature. + + + POWER OF VETO ON IRISH LEGISLATION. + +To be held by Lord-Lieutenant To be held by Lord-Lieutenant, +(acting normally on the advice _acting on advice of Irish +of Irish Cabinet?), but subject Cabinet_, but subject to +to instructions from Imperial instructions from Imperial +Government. Government. + + + FINANCE. + + 1. _Taxation_. + +_Customs and Excise_ still to be (1) _For six years_ all existing +levied by Imperial Parliament and taxes to continue to be imposed +collected by Imperial officers. by Imperial Parliament and +All other taxes to be under Irish collected by Imperial officers. +control. + + Ireland to have power to impose + additional taxes of her own. + + (2) _After six years_, Customs + and Excise to remain Imperial + taxes; all others to be under + Irish control. But Excise to be + collected, though not levied, + by Ireland. + + + 2. _Ireland's Revenue_. + +_Gross_ revenue collected in (1) _True_ Irish revenue from +Ireland from Imperial and Irish Imperial taxes (_i.e._, with +taxes and Crown Lands, etc.; allowance made for duties +_plus_ an Imperial grant towards collected in Ireland on +the cost of Irish Police. (Total articles consumed in Great +cost at that time £1,500,000: Britain, and _vice versa_). +Ireland to pay £1,000,000, +Treasury any surplus over (2) Revenue from Irish taxes +£1,000,000, until cost reduced and Crown Lands. +to that point.) + (3) Imperial grant of one-third + of annual cost of Irish Police + (equal in first year to + £486,000). + + + 3. _Ireland's Contribution to Imperial Exchequer_. + +(1) _For thirty years_ Ireland (1) _For six years_ Ireland to +to pay fixed annual maximum sums, pay _one-third of the "true" +representing Ireland's share of revenue raised in Ireland from +(a) Army, Navy, Civil List, etc.; Imperial taxes and Crown +(b) National Debt. Payments not Lands_. (Estimated share for +to be increased, but might be first year, £2,276,000, or +diminished. Share for Army, Navy, about one-twenty-eighth of +etc., never to exceed total Imperial expenditure.) +one-fifteenth of total cost. +Total payments under these heads +for first year, £3,242,000. + +(2) _After thirty years_, (2) _After six years_, both +contribution _to be revisable_. method and amount of + Ireland's contribution to be + revised and settled afresh. + + + 4. _Contribution to Special War Taxes_. + +Optional to Ireland. For six years compulsory on + Ireland to pay her + proportional share of any + such tax levied. + + + _5. Post Office_. + +To be taken over by Ireland For six years to remain under +under Irish Act. Imperial control. Profit or + loss on Irish posts to be + credited to or debited + _against_ Ireland. + + + POLICE. + +Dublin Police to be under Both Dublin Police and +Imperial control for two years. Constabulary, as long as they +Constabulary, "while that force should exist, to be under +subsists," to be under Imperial Imperial control. +control, but Ireland to have +power to create a new force Meanwhile an ordinary locally +under control of local controlled civil police to be +authorities. gradually established by Irish + Government, and to take the + place of the old forces. + + But _for six years_, Imperial + Government to have the power + to maintain in existence the + old forces, if considered + expedient. + + + JUDGES. + + _Present Irish Judges to Remain_. + +All future Irish Judges to be For six years future Irish +appointed by Irish Government. Supreme Court Judges (not + County Court Judges, etc.) + to be appointed by Imperial + Government. After six years + by Irish Government. + + + LAW COURTS. + + _Constitution to Remain the Same_. + + But appeals to the House of + Lords to cease; instead, to + the Judicial Committee of + the Privy Council. + + + CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS. + + _(As to Validity of Irish Laws, etc.)_. + +To be decided by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (including +one or more Irish Judges). + + + EXCHEQUER JUDGES. + +Legal proceedings in Ireland All legal proceedings in +or against Imperial revenue land Ireland _which touch any +authorities to be referred, if matter_ (financial or +either party wishes, to the otherwise) _not within the +Exchequer Division Judges of power of the Irish +the United Kingdom. Legislature_ to be referred, + if either party wishes, to + two Exchequer Judges appointed + and paid by the Imperial + Government. Appeal to be to + the Judicial Committee of the + Privy Council. + + + LORD-LIEUTENANT + + _Might be of any Religion_. + +Term of office indefinite. Term of office six years. + + + CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. + +After the first dissolution, After six years, Legislature +Legislature to have power to to have power to reconstitute +reconstitute Second Order. Assembly. + + + + +REMARKS ON THE FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS. + +The arrangements differed widely in the two Bills. + +The main points of likeness were: (1) That from the first there was to +be a _separate Irish Exchequer_; (2) that for all time Ireland was to be +_denied control over the imposition of Customs and Excise_--that is to +say, over about _three-quarters of her revenue_ as then raised; (3) that +about _a third of the cost of the Irish Police_ was to be paid by the +Imperial Government; (4) that payments due from Ireland to the Imperial +Government were to be made a first charge on proceeds of Imperial taxes +in Ireland. + +The principal points of difference were: + +1. Under the Bill of 1886, apart from the very important restriction of +Customs and Excise, Ireland was at once to have freedom to control her +own taxation. + +Under the Bill of 1893 (as amended) there was to be a suspensory period +of six years during which all existing taxes were to continue to be +imposed by the Imperial Government; but with power to Ireland to add +taxes of her own. _Amounts_ of Imperial taxes might be varied, but _no +new ones_ imposed, except specially for war. After six years, financial +freedom, except in Customs and Excise. Excise, however, was to be +_collected_, though not levied, by Ireland. + +2. "_Collected" and "True" Revenue_.--In 1886, Ireland was credited with +all the revenue _collected in Ireland_ from Customs and Excise _(i.e.,_ +the "gross" revenue from those taxes), but she had to pay the cost of +collection herself. + +In 1893 allowance was made for duties collected in Ireland on articles +consumed in Great Britain, and _vice versa,_ Ireland being credited only +with her "true" revenue--that is, revenue from dutiable articles +_consumed in Ireland._ Similar allowances made in the Income Tax +account. A joint Anglo-Irish Committee was to settle these adjustments. +This system involved a deduction from the first year's gross Irish +revenue of nearly two millions. (In 1886 the corresponding sum, credited +to Ireland, was £1,400,000.) On the other hand, in 1893 the greater part +of the cost of collection (£235,000) was not to be borne by Ireland. + +3. _Imperial Contribution by Ireland._--In 1886, a fixed annual maximum, +which might be diminished, but could not be exceeded, revisable in +thirty years. + +In 1893 (for six years) an annually ascertained _quota_--namely, a third +of Ireland's "true" revenue (exclusive of taxes imposed by herself). + +4. _Ireland's Budget._--Note the important point that under both Bills +three-quarters of Irish revenue was derived from Customs and Excise, +over which, in 1886, Ireland could exercise no control; in 1903 only the +control given by the presence of eighty members in the House of Commons. +In both cases Ireland was to be wholly responsible for her own civil +expenditure (except for the existing Police). Under both Bills Ireland +was intended to start with a surplus of about half a million, which may +be regarded roughly as the equivalent, in both cases, of the Imperial +share of the cost of the Irish Police. But note that, in 1886, Ireland +being pledged to pay a fixed million of the cost of Police, would obtain +no relief until the cost was reduced below a million; while in 1893, +paying two-thirds of the annually ascertained cost, she would obtain +relief from any annual reduction. The Police referred to was, of course, +the then existing Police, imperially organized and controlled. The new +civil Police eventually set up in substitution would be financed and +controlled by the Irish Government. The charges, therefore, on the +British taxpayer would, it was expected, be a rapidly diminishing one. + +The loss on Irish posts in 1893, debited against Ireland, was estimated +at £52,000. + +5. _Special War Taxes._--Ireland's contribution optional in 1886; in +1893, compulsory (at any rate, for six years, which would have included +the beginning of the South African War). + + + + +INDEX + +Abercromby, Sir R., 57, 129 +Absentee taxes, in Ireland, 23-30; + in Australasia, 116 +Absenteeism, + in Ireland, 12, 51; + in Prince Edward Island, 75-76; + in Upper Canada, 80; + in Lower Canada, 85; + in Australia, 110 +Acadia. See Maritime Provinces +Act of Union, 1800, 60-64, 232-233 +Administrators, in South Africa, 197 +Agricultural Co-operation. See Irish Agricultural Organization Society, + also 168, 177 +Agricultural Grant, Ireland, 267 +Agricultural Rates Act, 1896, 267 +Agricultural Statistics, Ireland, 150, 306-308 +Amendment of Constitution, + Ireland, 225-227, 338; + Colonies, 225-226, 338 +American Colonies, + colonization of, 8-9; + land tenure in (see Land Tenure); + mercantile system, 17-18, 30; + government of, 22-23, 33; + Revolution in, 30-35, 72, 74. + See also United States +Anglo-Normans, in Ireland, 6-7 +Annuities, tenant's. See Land Purchase +Armagh, Peep o' Day Boys in, 55 +Army Act, 1881, 220 (footnote) +Army and Navy, 218-219, 329 +Arnold, Benedict, 40 +Ashbourne Act, 1885, 309. + See also Land Acts +Australian Colonies Act, 1850, 107, 225 +Australian Colonies Customs Duties Act, 1873, 220, footnote +Australian Colonies, history of, + See Chapter VI., and under names of the various States; + federation of, as Commonwealth of Australia, 119, 196, 198; + finance in, 227-228, 245-246, 288, 295-298. + See also Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, + Constitutions, Federal Systems, Customs and Excise, Subsidies + +Baldwin, Robert, in Upper Canada, 82, 103 +Balfour, Arthur,138, 152, 172, 212 +Balfour, Gerald, 152, 158, 338 +Baltimore, Lord, 21 +Barbour, Sir David, on Anglo-Irish Finance, 249-257 +Barry, Sir Redmond, 114 +Belfast, 45, 146, 162, 170, 175 +Belgium, cost of Government in, 253 +Berkeley, G.F.H., 178 +Bidwell, B., in Upper Canada, 82 +Birrell, Augustine, his Land Act of 1909. + See Land Acts, Land Tenure, Land Purchase +Bloemfontein, Convention of, 123 +Boer War of 1880-1881, 125; + of 1899-1902, 128-129, 133,216 +Bonus to landlords, 310-312, 317. + See also Land Purchase +Boomplatz, battle of, 1848, 123 +Botha, General, 143 +Brand, President, 124 +Bright, John, 69, 71, 213, 308 +British Columbia, finances of, 246, 299; + Upper Chamber in, 331 +British North America Act, + 1867, citations from, 219, 220 (footnote), 225, 299, 323, + 325 (footnote), 327, 330 (footnote); + 1891, 335. + See also Canada +Buller, Charles, 87, 89, 94-95 +Burgh, Hussey, 36 +Burke, Edmund, 12, 27-29, 34, 59, 74, 77 +Burke, Robert O'Hara, 114 +Butt, Isaac, 71, 135, 171 + +Canada, Upper and Lower, + history of, (see Chapter V. and Introduction, viii, 340-341); + relations of, with American Colonies, 72; + with United States, 80, 87, 92, 101; + Union of the two Provinces proposed, 76-78, + carried out, 96-104, 106, 192, 194, 198, 200-201, 223, + and Introduction, viii; + comparison of history with that of Transvaal, 132-135; + confederation of, as the Dominion of Canada, proposed, 82, 96, + carried out (1867), 97, 193-196; + finance in, 227-228, 298-299, 304. + See also Constitutions, Federal Systems, Customs and Excise, Subsidies, + Guaranteed Loans, British North America Acts, 1867, 1891 +Carleton, Sir Guy, 73, 129 +Carnarvon, Lord, 123-124 +Carolina, plantation of, 9, 10, 23 +Carson, Sir Edward, Introduction, x +Casey, Judge, 115 +Castlereagh, Lord, 62, 134, 135 +Catholic Relief Act, + 1778, 36; + 1793, 52-53, 55 +Chamberlain, Joseph, 1-4, 11, 103, 206, 257, 282 +Channel Islands, finance, 288 +Charlemont, Lord, 16, 46-47, 61 +Charles II., King, 9 +Chartist movement, 88 +Chatham, Lord, 27, 29-31, 34, 74 +Chief Secretary, 64,160; + compared with Canadian Governor, 102 +Childers, Hugh, + in Prince Edward Island, 76 (footnote); + as Chairman of Royal Commission on finance, 239-257 +Church Funds, Irish, 271-272 +Civil List, 328 +Civil servants, + Ireland, 336; + Transvaal, 336 +Clare, Earl of, See Fitzgibbon +Clergy Reserves, + Upper Canada, 82; + Lower Canada, 84-85 +Cockburn, Sir John, 85 +Coinage, + colonial and Irish powers over, 219, 220 (footnote); + Act of 1853, 220 (footnote) +Collins, Francis, in Upper Canada, 82 +Colonial Attorneys Relief Act, 1857, 222 (footnote) +Colonial Courts of Admiralty Act, 1890, 220 (footnote), 336 (and footnote) +Colonial Defence forces, 215-219 (and footnote) +Colonial Laws Validity Act, 222 +Colonial Marriages Act, 1866, 222 (footnote) +Colonial Naval Defence Act, 1865, 220 (footnote) +Colonial Office, 79 +Colonial Prisoners' Removal Act, 1869, 222 (footnote) +Colonial Probates Act, 1892, 222 (footnote) +Commercial Propositions of 1785, 43, 232 +Commercial Restrictions, + Ireland, 17-19, 30, 37, 236, 294; + American Colonies, 17-18, 30; + Canada, 78 +Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, citations from, 219, + 220 (footnote), 296, 324-325 (footnote), 338 (footnote), 332 +Conferences, Imperial, 205, 215, 337; + suggestions for, with Ireland under Home Rule, 205, 215, 337 +Congested Districts Board, 152, 176-167; + in Land Purchase, 310, 314; + under Home Rule, 176-177, 317, 319 +Connecticut, 8-9, 23 +Constitutional Act, 1791, Canada, 76-79, 80 +Constitutional Doubts, settlement of, 335 +Constitution, Irish, summary of proposed, Chapter XV. +Constitutions: + Transvaal, + of 1905, 130-137; + of 1906, 137-139, 223-224, 323-324, 325 (footnote); + United States, 191, 193-197, 224-225, 227; + Dominion of Canada, 219, 220, 227, 327, 328, 330, 331, 334; + Australian States, 107-108, 325 (footnote); + Commonwealth of Australia, 196, 213, 219, 220, 227, 332; + South African Union, 197, 224. + See also Federal Systems and individual Colonies +Continental Congress. 1774, 35 +"Contract" finance, 300, 303-306 +Contribution of Ireland to Imperial services; + in the eighteenth century, 26, 231; + during the Union, 216, 234, 237-239, 247, 253-254, 282; + under Home Rule, 216, 282, 286-287, 302-303,337 +Convict system, Australia, 74 +Copyright, 219-20 (footnote); + Imperial Conference on, 337 +Corn Laws, Repeal of, 236 +Cornwallis, Lord, 35, 62 +Courtney, Lord, 333 +Cromwell, Oliver, 9 +Crown Colony, features of, in Irish Government, 1-2, 64, 144, 157, 179, + 188, 213, 284, 306 +Crown Lands, revenue from, 275 +Currie, B.W., 249, 252 +Customs and Excise, + Ireland, control of, under Home Rule, 227-229, 231-234, 275-279, + 287-294, 300-301; + Australia, 227-228, 245-246, 288, 295-299; + Canada, 227-228; + United States, 227-228; + in Colonies generally, 254, 288. + See also Finance, Federal Systems +Debt, Irish public, until 1816, 230-233 +Danish invasions, 6 +Declaration of Independence, + Irish, 38; + American, 35 +Declaratory Acts for America and Ireland, 23-24, 31, 34, 45 +Defender Society, 55-56 +Deficit, in Irish Revenue, + amount of, 259-260, 277, 279; + method of dealing with, 281-286, 337 +Denmark, agricultural policy in, 237, 290 +Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, 152; + founding of, 155-162; + allusions to, 234, 274, 291, 332 +Derby, Lord, 123 +Derry, Bishop of, 47 +Development Commissioners, grants to Ireland, 274 +Devolution movement, 152 +Devon Commission, 1845, 69 +Dillon, John, 146 +Disagreement between two Chambers of Irish Legislature, 334 +Disestablishment of Irish Church, 70, 103, 154 +Disraeli, Benjamin, 109, 235 +Dissenters, in Ireland, 9, 19-20, 24, 31; + in American Colonies, 9, 20; + in Canada, 80-82 +Dublin, 170, 173, 186 +Duffy, Sir C. Gavan, 114-116 +Dunraven, Lord, 152, 178 +Durban, Conference at, for Closer Union, 156-157, 192 +Durham, Lord, Introduction, viii, 88-91, 94-99, 104, 126 +Durham Report, 94-99, 104, 133 +Dutch East India Company, 120 + + +Education, Ireland, 71, 170, 174-176, 285; + finance of, 268-269; + England, 269; + Scotland, 269 +Egerton, H.E., 31, 330 +Elgin, Lord, 93, 102-103, 105 +Emancipation, Catholic, 52-53, 57, 62-63, 88 +Emigration, from Ireland, 19-20, 31, 87, 111, 148, 156, 186 +Emmett, Robert, 83, 86, 135, 171 +Encumbered Estates Act, 1849, 69, 111 +Equalization of taxes, in Ireland and Great Britain, 234-235, 246 +Estate duties, assessment to, + as test of taxable capacity, 240, 238; + yield of, in Ireland, 275-276 +Estates Commissioners. See Land Purchase +Eureka Stockade, 1854, 112-113 +Evicted tenants, 177 +Executive authority, + in Colonies, 221-222, 323-328; + in Ireland, under Home Rule, 221-222, 323-328 +Executive Council, + in Upper Canada, 79, 81, 100; + in Lower Canada, 79, 84, 100 +Extradition, + Colonial powers over, 219 (and footnote); + Irish powers over, 219, 329 + + +"Family Compact," + in Upper Canada, 81; + in the Maritime Provinces, 88 +Famine, Irish, 1847, 69, 103, 236 +Farrer, Lord, 249, 252-256 +"Federal" Home Rule, 188, 192-206, 226-227, 294-300 +Federal systems, in general, 192-197; + Upper Chamber in, 212-213, 229, 300, 331-332; + division of powers, as in Home Rule Bill, 223, 330; + Amendment of Constitution, 225-227; + finance, 227-229, 242-246, 294-300; + judiciary, 334-336; + settlement of constitutional questions, 335. + See also Canada, Australian Colonies, South Africa, United States, + Switzerland, Germany, Constitutions +Fenianism, 70 +Financial relations of Ireland and Great Britain + (see Chapters XI., XII., XIII.); + before the Union, 230-231, 290; + from the Union to 1896, 232-57; + Royal Commission on, 1894-1896, 239-57; + present situation, 178-181, and Chapters XII. and XIII. +Finance, of the Home Rule Bill, Chapter XIII., and summary, 337 +Finance, Colonial. See Federal Systems, and under names of Colonies +Finance Act, 1894, 222 (footnote) +Finance Act, 1909, 259, 301 +Finlay, Father T.A., 165 +Fiscal amalgamation, 1817, 233, 289 +Fisher, J., author of "The End of the Irish Parliament," 13, 54 +Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, Introduction, xi, and 49, 58-9, 60, 62, 65, + 97, 126, 131, 134, 146 +Fitzgibbon, James, 81 +Fitzwilliam, Lord, 53-54 +Flood, Henry, 46-47 +Ford, Patrick, 149 +Fortescue, Hon. J.W., 39-40 +Foster's Corn Law, 51, 236 (footnote) +Fox, Charles James, + on Canada, 78-79; + on Ireland, 91 +France, Seven Years' War with, 26; + in Canada, 72-73; + in American War of Independence, 35; + effect of, on Ireland, 35; + effect of French Revolution on Ireland, 54-55; + invasions of Ireland, 56 +Franklin, Benjamin, 31, 33-34 +Free Trade, opinion in Ireland on, 170, 290; + influence of, on Ireland, 235-237. + See also Tariff Reform, Customs and Excise +French-Canadians. See Chapter V., especially pages 72-78, 83-87, 96-97; + also 121 +Frere, Sir Bartle, 124 + +Gaelic League, 166-168 +Geelong, 114 +Georgia, 9, 21 +Germany, 147; + Federal Constitution of, 195, 228 (Zollverein) +Gladstone, W.E., + Irish land reform, 68, 70, 99; + on colonial liberty, 109-111; + his Transvaal and Irish policies, 125, 128; + on representation of Ireland at Westminster, 203-211; + taxation of Ireland, 234-235; + on Irish expenditure, 282; + financial schemes in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, 300-303, + and Appendix; + for details of the Bills generally, see Appendix and in the text _passim_ +Gourlay, William, in Upper Canada, 82 +Governors, + in American Colonies, 23, 33; + in the Canadas, 79, 102; + in the Dominion of Canada, 195, 199; + in the Commonwealth of Australia, 195 (footnote), 196, 221 +Grattan, Henry, 44, 45, 46, 50, 53 +Grattan's Parliament, Chapter III. +Greene, General, 40 +Greville's "Memoirs," 94, 103 +Grey, Sir George, in Australasia, 115-117; + in South Africa, 123-124, 194 +Grote, George, 89, 92 +Guarantee Fund, 267. See also Land Purchase +Guaranteed Loans, + to Ireland (see Land Purchase); + to the Transvaal and Canada, 318; + to Crown Colonies and Foreign Powers, 318-319 + + +Habeas Corpus Act, 330 +Hamilton, Sir Edward, 238 +Hancock, John, 35 +Henderson, Professor G.C., 116 +Henry VIII., Ireland in the reign of, 8 +Hewins, Professor W.A.S., 293-294 +Holland, Bernard, 33 +Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. + For details, see Appendix, allusions in text _passim_ +"Home Rule Problems," edited by + Basil Williams, Introduction, xiv, + and pp. 178, 203, 307, 333 +House of Lords: under the Union, 64; + after Home Rule, 212, 229, 300 +Howe, Joseph, in Nova Scotia, 88 +Hume, philosophy of, 59 +Hume, Joseph, 89, 90, 109 +Hyde, Dr. Douglas, 166 + +Imperial Federation, 204-205 +"In and Out" Clause, 209 +Income Tax, + first imposition of, in Ireland, 234-235; + assessment to, as test of taxable capacity, 240, 258; + yield of, in Ireland, 275-276; + errors in computing Irish yield, 278 (footnote) +India, 12 +Indians, in America, 10 +Industrial Development Associations, 165, 168, 290, 292 +Insurance, National, 178, 274, 306 +International Copyright Act, 1886, 220 (footnote) +Ireland Development Grant, 311 +Irish Agricultural Organization Society, 162-165 +Irish Council Bill, 1907, 192, 304 +_Irish Homestead_, 165 +Irish Members at Westminster. See Representation at Westminster +Irish Universities Act, 1908, 153, 173 +Isle of Man, finance of, 255, 288 +Jamaica, 1, 284 +James, Sir Henry, 330 +Jebb, Richard, 117-118 +Johannesburg, 131, 133 +Judges, Irish, under Home Rule, 334-5; + Exchequer Judges, 336 +Judicial salaries, Ireland, 273 + + +Kilmore, 114 +Kitchener, Lord, 129 +Kruger, President Paul, 124 +Kyte, Ambrose, 114 + + +Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1906, 153, 320 +Labour questions, in Ireland, 170, 178 +Lafontaine, Sir Louis, 103 +Laing's Nek, 125 +Lalor, Peter, 112-113 +Land Acts, Irish, of 1870, 16-17, 68, 70-71, 151, 309; + 1881, 16-17, 70, 103, 151, 309; + 1885, 309; + 1887, 70, 151; + 1891, 70, 152, 309-310; + 1896, 70, 152, 309; + 1903, 71, 103, 152-153, 155, 310-321; + 1909, 153, 311-321. + See also Land Tenure, Land Purchase +Land Commission, 70; + cost and control of, 273, 303, 317-319 +Land League, 70 +Land Purchase in Ireland, Chapter XIV., 71, 151, 152-153, 177, 243, 285, 337; + in Prince Edward Island, 75, 318 +Land Tenure, in Ireland, 11-17, 51, 55-57, 65, 66-70, 143, 151-152, + 177, 236-237; + in America, 10, 15; + in Prince Edward Island, 13, 75-76, 115, 143; + in Upper Canada, 80; + in Lower Canada, 84-85; + in Australia, 115-116; + in New Zealand, 116. + See also Land Acts, Land Purchase +Lanyon, Sir Owen, 124, 127 +Law, Bonar, 293 +Law Courts, Ireland, 334-335 +Lecky, Professor W.H., Introduction, vi and ix, and 6, 13, 16, 19, + 29, 49, 57, 183 +Legislative Councils, in America, 23; + in Upper Canada, 79, 81, 100-102; + in Lower Canada, 79, 84, 100 +Legislature, Irish, powers of, general, 213-229, 328-330; + financial powers, Chapter XIII., and 317-321, 337; + composition of, 330-334. + For restrictions on, see also Safeguards for Minorities +Legislatures, Colonial, powers and limitations of, general, 215-229. + See also Constitutions, Federal Systems, and under names of Colonies +Leinster, plantations in, 9 +Lieutenant-Governors, in Dominion of Canada, 195, 221 +Limerick, Treaty of, 12, 63 +Local Government Board, cost of, 272 +Local Government, working of, in Ireland, 103, 172-174 +Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, 103, 154, 158 +Local taxation, Ireland, 266; + grants in aid of, 266-267, 311 +Locker-Lampson, G., Introduction, vi, and 65 +Londonderry, Lord, 61 +Long, Walter, Introduction, x, xi, and 142, 152 +Lord-Lieutenant, + before the Union, 22-23, 32-33; + under the Union, 64; + under Home Rule, 192, 199, 219, 221, 266, 324-327, 328, 335 +Louisburg, capture of, 73 +Lyttelton, Mr. Alfred, 131-132, 135 + + +MacDonnell, Lord, 61, 152, 304 +Mackenzie, W.L., in Upper Canada, 74, 82, 86-87, 94, 105 +McKenna, Sir J., 238 +McManus, T.B., 115 +Maine, 8 +Majuba, 125, 128 +Malta, 1 +Manitoba, 331 +Maritime Provinces, 72, 75, 88, 95, and Chapter V. + See also Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island +Maryland, 8-9, 21 +Massachusetts, 8, 10, 22-23 (and footnote), 35 +Meagher, T.F., 113-114 +Melbourne, Lord, 94 +Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, 220, 222 +Mill, John Stuart, 67, 69, 89, 95 +Milner, Lord, 129, 131, 138-139, 142 +Miscellaneous revenue, Imperial, Ireland's share of, 286-287 +Mitchel, John, 113-114 +Molesworth, Sir William, 89, 93-94, 109 +Molyneux, on Irish liberty, 31 +Montreal, 74-75, 103 +Montgomery, General, 35, 75 +Moore, W. Harrison, author of "The Commonwealth of Australia," 219 +Morgan's Riflemen, 73 +Morley, Lord, his "Life of Gladstone," Introduction, x, and 109, 125; + on Irish Members at Westminster, 209; + on Clause 7 of the Bill of 1886, 326 +Municipal Technical Institute, Belfast, 162, 175 +Municipal Reform Act, 1840, 103 +Munster, plantations in, 9 +Murray, Miss A.E., 17, 235, 293 + +Natal, 140, 196 +National Debt, Ireland's contribution to, 286-287, 337 +Naturalization, 219, 220 (footnote), 329 +Naval Agreement, 1911, 218 +Navigation Acts, 17-18 +Navies, Colonial. See Colonial Defence Forces +Neilson, John, in Lower Canada, 85 +Nelson, Wilfred, in Lower Canada, 85 +Netherlands Government, 121 +Neutrality, 219, 329 +New Brunswick, Chapter V., and 72, 75-76, 88, 97, 194 +New England, 9, 21, 120 +Newfoundland, 73, 193-197, 288 +New Haven, 8 +New Netherlands, plantation of, 9 +New South Wales, 106-107, 114, 117, 120, 194, 196; + finance in, 297-298, 300 +New Zealand, 106, 108, 115-117, 147, 193, 197, 217, 288 +Ninety-two Resolutions, Lower Canada, 86 +Nixon, Captain John, 35 +North Carolina, 21 (footnote) +Nova Scotia, Chapter V., and 72, 76, 88, 97, 102, 194 + + +Oakboys, in Ulster, 16 +O'Brien, Barry, 178, 213 +O'Brien, Murrough, 253 +O'Brien, Smith, 83, 103, 114, 171 +O'Brien, William, 177, 181 +O'Callaghan, Dr., in Lower Canada, 85 +O'Connell, Daniel, 70-71, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 99, 123 +O'Conor Don, the, 249 +Octennial Act, 168, 357 +O'Hara, James, 81 +Old Age Pensions, 153, 178-179, 181, 273, 285, 291, 303 +Oldham, Professor C.H., on Irish finance, 234, 262, 270 +O'Loughlen, Sir Brian, in Victoria, 114 +"Omnes Omnia" Clause, 209 +Ontario, Province of, + prior to 1867, See Canada; + after 1867, see Canada, Confederation of, and 194, 196, 331 +Orange Free State, 120, 123-124, 126, 135, 196, 285 +Orange Society, + in Ireland, 55, 137, 155, 184, 187; + in Canada, 87, 103, 184; + in Australia, 114, 184 +O'Shanassy, Sir John, in Victoria, 114 + +Paley, Dr., Philosophy of, 59 +Papineau, Louis, in Lower Canada, 47, 85-87, 94, 105 +Parliamentary parties, Irish, 181-182 +Parliament, Irish (pre-Union), 24, 43, 50-58, 61, 62; + finance under, 230-231, 290 +Parnell, Charles Stewart, 135, 151, 171 +Patents, 219 +Peace of Paris, 26 +Peel, Sir Robert, on the Repeal of the Union, 91-92, 99, 236 +Peep o' Day Boys, 55 +Penal Code, 12-14, 26, 36, 55, 57, 65, 72, 156, 183, 308 +Penn, William, 9 +Pennsylvania, 9, 21 +Pilkington, Mrs., 165 +Pitt, William, 50, 53, 54, 62, 74, 96, 106, 135, 232 +Plantations, of Ireland and America, 8-9 +Plunkett House, 164 +Plunkett, Sir Horace, 155, 159 (footnote), 160, 165 +Police, Irish, + present position and cost of, 253, 273; + under Home Rule, 180, 219, 285, 334 +Poor Law (Ireland), 71, 174 +Port Phillip. See Victoria +Postal Services, Irish, powers over, 220; + loss on, 243, 275, 286 +Poynings' Act, 24, 45 +Preamble, Home Rule Bill, 323 +Prince Edward Island, 13, 72, 74, 88, 97, 115. + See also Land Tenure, Land Purchase +Prize and Booty of War, 219, 329 +Proportional Representation, 333 +Proprietary Colonies of America, 10, 23 +Public Works, Commissioners of, Ireland, 319-321, 337 + +Quakers, 9, 21 +_Quarterly Review_, 99 +Quebec, town of, 74 +Quebec, Province of, prior to 1791, 72-78; + from 1791 to 1867, see under names of Lower Canada and Canada; + after 1867, see Canada, Confederation of, and 194, 196, 198-200, 208; + present Constitution of, compared with Irish Home Rule, 198-200, 206, 209 +Quebec Act, 1774, 73-74 +Queensland, 109, 196; + finance in, 297 + +Railways, Ireland, 71, 174 +Raleigh, Sir Walter, 8 +Rebellions, Irish, + of 1798, 55, 56; + of 1848, 83, 103 +Recess Committee, action and report of, 155-162 +Reciprocity Agreement, 293 +Redmond, John, 141, 148, 156, 181, 341 +Reform, Parliamentary (Ireland), 45-46, 50-58; + Great Britain, 48, 53, 59, 88 +Repeal of the Union, 70, 91 +Representation at Westminster, of Ireland, 203-229, 284, 337; + of American Colonies (proposals for), 34, 205; + of Canada (proposals for), 77 +Residuary powers, under Home Rule, 223. + See also Federal Systems +Retief, Piet, 122 +Revenue, from Ireland. + See Financial Relations, Estate Duties, Income Tax, Customs and Excise +Revenue, "true" and "collected," + method of estimating in United Kingdom, 242-246, 275-278 (and footnotes); + in Australia, 242-246, 296 +Revolution, Irish, 1780-2, Chapter II.; + American, 1775, Chapter II +Rhode Island, 8, 23 (footnote) +Road Board, grants to Ireland, 274 +Roebuck, J.A., 89, 90, 94 +Rose, Holland, 75 +Royal Assent, 221, 326-327 +Ruskin, John, 106 +Russell, George W., 165 +Russell, Lord John, on Canada, 87, 90, 91, 92, 99, 100, 102, 221; + on Australia, 109-110 +Russell, T.W., 159 (and footnote) +Rutland, Lord, 54, 77 + +Safeguards for Minorities, Ireland, 191, 223-225, 329-330; + United States, 224, 329-330; + Canada, 225; + Australia, 225 +St. Lawrence, River, 75 +Salaberry, Colonel, 83 +Sand River Convention, 1852, 123 +Saunderson, Colonel, 156 (footnote), 215 (and footnote) +Scotland, 104, 159 (footnote); + Home Rule for, 200-203; + revenue from, and expenditure on, 238, 242; + police in, 253; + education in, 269 +Selborne, Lord, 142 +Seventh Report of Grievances (Upper Canada), 82, 86 +Seven Years' War, 26, 72 +Sexton, T., 249 +Shepstone, Sir T., 124 +Sinn Fein, 168 +Smith, Adam, 51 +Smith, Sir Harry, 123 +Socialism, in Ireland, Introduction, xiv, 144, 170 +South Africa Act, 1909, citations from, 140-141, 323, 326, 332, 338 +South African Colonies, + history of, see Chapter VII., + and under Cape of Good Hope, Transvaal, Orange Free State, Natal; + Federal Union, proposed (1859), 117, 123; + Conference for Closer Union (1908), 140, 156-157; + Union of 1909, 140-143, 196-197; + see also South Africa Act, 1900, Constitutions, Federal Systems +South Australia, 106-107, 116, 196; + finance in, 297 +Spanish Colonies, 25 +Spirit duty, 234-235, 237-238, 244 +Stamp Act (1765), and Revenue Duties (America), 27, 34-35, 72 +Stanley, Lord, 90-92 +Steelboys, in Ulster, 16 +Subsidies, + to Ireland, under Home Rule, 281-286, 337; + to Colonies, 284-285; + by Federal Governments to subordinate States or Provinces, 296-300, 304 +Suez Canal shares, revenue from, 287 +Supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, 204, 221-225, 323, 328 +Supreme Court, + of Australia, 196, 334-335; + of South Africa, 197, 334-335; + of Canada, 195, 334-335 +Sutherland, Sir T., 249 +Swift, Dean, 32 +Switzerland, Federal Constitution of, 195, 331 +_Sydney Bulletin_, 117, 143 + +Tariff Reform, opinion in Ireland on, 170; + effect of, on Ireland, 289, 292-293; + opinion of Professor Hewins on, for Ireland, 293-294 +Tariffs. See Customs and Excise, Free Trade, Tariff Reform +Tasmania, 106-107, 113, 196; + finance in, 297-298, 300 +Taxable capacity of Ireland: in 1800, 232; + in 1894, 238-257; + in 1911, 258-260 +Technical Instruction, Ireland, 161, 175 +Temperance Reform, Ireland, 177-178, 292 +Tenant League, 70 +Ten Resolutions (1837), 87 +Territorials, Ireland, 118, 218 +Thompson, Poulett, Lord Sydenham, 102 +Titles, power of conferring, 219, 329 +Tone, Wolfe, 54, 56, 57, 62, 73, 76, 86, 135 +Toronto, 81 +Townshend, Lord, 25, 32 +Townshend, Charles, 27 +Town Tenants Act, 153 +Trade, external, of Ireland, 147-148, 291 +Trade and Navigation, Colonial and Irish powers over, 220, 329 +Trade-mark, + Irish, 165; + Colonial and Irish powers over, 219 +Transvaal, Introduction, xiv, 120, 123-143, 196, 318, 336, + and whole of Chapter VII. + See also South African Colonies, Constitutions +Treason, 219, 329 +Treasury, Committee on Land Purchase, 1908, 311; + Returns (Financial Relations), 242-246, 259-260, 264-279 +Treaties, power of making, 219, 329 +Trek, the Great, 120-123, 128, 133 +Trimleston, Lord, 25 + +Ulster, plantation of, 8, 9; + land tenure in, 15, 52, 55-7; + emigration from, 15, 19-20, 31, 186; + Orange Society in (see Orange Society); + comparison with Canadian minorities, 92, 97-9, 100-2, 214; + with Transvaal minority, 139, 186, 214; + views of, with regard to representation at Westminster, 214-215; + under Home Rule, Introduction, x, xii, 170, 182-187, 302, 333 +Ulster Custom. See Ulster, Land Tenure in +"Umpirage," of Great Britain, + in Canada, 101, 155; + in Ireland, 155, 208 +"Undertakers," 25, 81 +Union, + of Ireland and Great Britain, Chapter IV.; + compared with that of the two Canadas, Introduction, viii, 77-78, + 96-104, 106, 192, 194, 198, 200-201; + of the Canadas (see Canada) +United Empire Loyalists, 74-75, 80 +United Irishmen, 54, 56, 76 +United States, relations with Canada, 80, 87, 92, 101; + emigration to, from Ireland, 111, 148; + feeling towards Ireland, 148-149; + Constitution of, 193-195. + See also Federal Systems, Constitutions, Safeguards for Minorities, + Customs, and Excise +Universities, Irish, 153, 273, 329 +Upper Chamber, Irish, under Home Rule, 331-332. + See also Federal Systems + +Van Diemen's Land. See Tasmania +Vereeniging, Peace of, 129 +Victoria, Chapter V., and 106-107, 114-115, 194, 196, 198, 208; + finance in, 297 +Virginia, 8, 22 +Volksraad, 124 +Volunteers, Ireland (1778-1783), 37, 44-45, 52, 54, 60-61, 73, 103, + 135, 187, 230. + See also Territorials + +Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, + in Canada, 89, 94-95, 104; + in Australia, 108-109, 116 +Wakefield, Vicar of, 107 +Wales, Home Rule for, 199-200 +War and Peace, power of making, 219, 329 +Washington, General George, 40 +Welby, Lord, on Anglo-Irish finance, 249-256, 280-281, 282, 293 +Wellington, Duke of, on Ireland and Canada, 70, 88, 90, 126 +Wentworth, William, in Australia, 107, 114, 120 +Western Australia, 106-108, 115, 196, and Chapter V. +West Indies, banishment of Irish to, 9; + grants-in-aid to, 284 +Whiteboys, 16, 51, 56, 67, 107 +Willcocks, Stephen, in Upper Canada, 82 +William IV., on Canada, 99 +Williams, Basil, Editor of "Home Rule Problems," Introduction, xiv, 203 +Wills Act, 1861, 222 (footnote) +Wilmot, Samuel, in New Brunswick, 88 +Wyndham, George, 152; + his Land Act of 1903, 71, 152, 310, etc. + +Young, Arthur, on Ireland, 14, 32, 69 +Young Ireland movement, 71, 114, 135 + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Framework of Home Rule, by Erskine Childers + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE *** + +***** This file should be named 15086-8.txt or 15086-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/0/8/15086/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: The Framework of Home Rule + +Author: Erskine Childers + +Release Date: February 17, 2005 [EBook #15086] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1>THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>ERSKINE CHILDERS</h2> + +<h4>AUTHOR OF</h4> + +<h3>"THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS," "WAR AND THE ARME BLANCHE," "GERMAN INFLUENCE +ON BRITISH CAVALRY"; EDITOR OF VOL. V. OF THE <i>TIMES</i> "HISTORY OF THE +WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA," ETC.</h3> + +<h6>LONDON</h6> + +<h6>EDWARD ARNOLD</h6> + +<h6>1911</h6> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + + + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER</td><td> </td><td align='left'>PAGES</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</a></td><td align='left'><a href="#Page_vii">vii</a>-<a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td><td align='left'>THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a>-<a href='#Page_20'>20</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td><td align='left'>REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_21'>21</a>-<a href='#Page_41'>41</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td><td align='left'>GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_42'>42</a>-<a href='#Page_59'>59</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td><td align='left'>THE UNION</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_60'>60</a>-<a href='#Page_71'>71</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td><td align='left'>CANADA AND IRELAND</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_72'>72</a>-<a href='#Page_104'>104</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td><td align='left'>AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_105'>105</a>-<a href='#Page_119'>119</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td><td align='left'>SOUTH AFRICA AND IRELAND</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_120'>120</a>-<a href='#Page_143'>143</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td><td align='left'> THE ANALOGY</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_144'>144</a>-<a href='#Page_149'>149</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td><td align='left'>IRELAND TO-DAY</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_150'>150</a>-<a href='#Page_187'>187</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td><td align='left'>THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_188'>188</a>-<a href='#Page_229'>229</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#X_I">I.</a> The Elements of the Problem</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_188'>188</a>-<a href='#Page_197'>197</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#X_II">II.</a> Federal or Colonial Home Rule</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_198'>198</a>-<a href='#Page_203'>203</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#X_III">III.</a> The Exclusion or Retention of Irish Members +at Westminster</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_203'>203</a>-<a href='#Page_213'>213</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#X_IV">IV.</a> Irish Powers and their Bearing on Exclusion</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_213'>213</a>-<a href='#Page_229'>229</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td><td align='left'>UNION FINANCE</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_230'>230</a>-<a href='#Page_257'>257</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XI_I">I.</a> Before the Union</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_230'>230</a>-<a href='#Page_231'>231</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XI_II">II.</a> From the Union to the Financial Relations +Commission of 1894-1896</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_232'>232</a>-<a href='#Page_239'>239</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XI_III">III.</a> The Financial Relations Commission of 1894-1896</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_239'>239</a>-<a href='#Page_257'>257</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td><td align='left'>THE PRESENT FINANCIAL SITUATION</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_258'>258</a>-<a href='#Page_279'>279</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XII_I">I.</a> Anglo-Irish Finance To-day</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_258'>258</a>-<a href='#Page_264'>264</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XII_II">II.</a> Irish Expenditure</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_264'>264</a>-<a href='#Page_274'>274</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XII_III">III.</a> Irish Revenue</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_274'>274</a>-<a href='#Page_279'>279</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a> </td><td align='left'>FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_280'>280</a>-<a href='#Page_306'>306</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XIII_I">I.</a> The Essence of Home Rule</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_280'>280</a>-<a href='#Page_281'>281</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XIII_II">II.</a> The Deficit</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_281'>281</a>-<a href='#Page_286'>286</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XIII_III">III.</a> Further Contribution to Imperial Services</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_286'>286</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XIII_IV">IV.</a> Ireland's Share of the National Debt</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_286'>286</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XIII_V">V.</a> Ireland's Share of Imperial Miscellaneous Revenue</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_287'>287</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XIII_VI">VI.</a> Irish Control of Customs and Excise</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_287'>287</a>-<a href='#Page_294'>294</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XIII_VII">VII.</a> Federal Finance</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_294'>294</a>-<a href='#Page_300'>300</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XIII_VIII">VIII.</a> Alternative Schemes of Home Rule Finance</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_300'>300</a>-<a href='#Page_306'>306</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td><td align='left'>LAND PURCHASE FINANCE</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_307'>307</a>-<a href='#Page_321'>321</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XIV_I">I.</a> Land Purchase Loans</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_307'>307</a>-<a href='#Page_319'>319</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#XIV_II">II.</a> Minor Loans to Ireland</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_319'>319</a>-<a href='#Page_321'>321</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td><td align='left'>THE IRISH CONSTITUTION</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_322'>322</a>-<a href='#Page_338'>338</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CONCLUSION</td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_339'>339</a>-<a href='#Page_341'>341</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#APPENDIX">APPENDIX</a></td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_342'>342</a>-<a href='#Page_347'>347</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><a href="#INDEX">INDEX</a></td><td align='left'><a href='#Page_348'>348</a></td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION" />INTRODUCTION</h2> + + +<p>My purpose in this volume is to advocate a definite scheme of +self-government for Ireland. That task necessarily involves an +historical as well as a constructive argument. It would be truer, +perhaps, to say that the greater part of the constructive case for Home +Rule must necessarily be historical. To postulate a vague acceptance of +the principle of Home Rule, and to proceed at once to the details of the +Irish Constitution, would be a waste of time and labour. It is +impossible even to attempt to plan the framework of a Home Rule Bill +without a tolerably close knowledge not only of Anglo-Irish relations, +but of the Imperial history of which they form a part. The Act will +succeed exactly in so far as it gives effect to the lessons of +experience. It will fail at every point where those lessons are +neglected. Constitutions which do not faithfully reflect the experience +of the sovereign power which accords them, and of the peoples which have +to live under them, are at the best perilous experiments liable to +defeat the end of their framers.</p> + +<p>I shall enter into history only so far as it is relevant to the +constitutional problem, using the comparative method, and confining +myself almost exclusively to the British Empire past and present. For +the purposes of the Irish controversy it is unnecessary to travel +farther. In one degree or another every one of the vexed questions which +make up the Irish problem has arisen again and again within the circle +of the English-speaking races. As a nation we have a body of experience +applicable to the case of Ireland incomparably greater than that +possessed by any other race in the world. If, from timidity, prejudice, +or sheer neglect, we fail to use it, we shall earn the heavy censure +reserved for those who sin against the light.</p> + +<p>For the comparative sketch I shall attempt, materials in <a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii" />the shape of +facts established beyond all controversy are abundant. Colonial history, +thanks to colonial freedom, is almost wholly free from the distorting +influence of political passion. South African history alone will need +revision in the light of recent events. When, under the alchemy of free +national institutions, Ireland has undergone the same transformation as +South Africa, her unhappy history will be chronicled afresh with a +juster sense of perspective and a juster apportionment of responsibility +for the calamities which have befallen her. And yet, if we consider the +field for partisan bias which Irish history presents, the amount of +ground common to writers of all shades of political opinion is now +astonishingly large. The result, I think, is due mainly to the good +influence of that eminent historian and Unionist politician, the late +Professor Lecky. Indeed, an advocate of Home Rule, nervously suspicious +of tainted material, could afford to rely solely on his "History of +Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," "Leaders of Public Opinion in +Ireland," and "Clerical Influences,"<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1" /><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> which are Nationalist textbooks, +and, for quite recent events, on "A Consideration of Ireland in the +Nineteenth Century," by Mr. G. Locker-Lampson, the present Unionist +Member for Salisbury. A strange circumstance; but Ireland, like all +countries where political development has been forcibly arrested from +without, is a land of unending paradox. It is only one of innumerable +anomalies that Irish Nationalists should use Unionist histories as +propaganda for Nationalism; that the majority of Irish Unionists should +insist on ignoring all historical traditions save those which in any +normal country would long ago have been consigned by general consent to +oblivion and the institutions they embody overthrown; and that Unionist +writers such as those I have mentioned should be able to reconcile their +history and their politics only by a pessimism with regard to the +tendencies of human nature in general, or of Irish nature in particular, +with which their own historical teaching, founded on a true perception +of cause and effect, appears to be in direct contradiction.</p> + +<p>The truth is that the question is one of the construction, not of the +verification, of facts; of prophecy for the future, rather <a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix" />than of bare +affirmation or negation. No one can presume to determine such a question +without a knowledge of how human beings have been accustomed to act +under similar circumstances. Illumination of that sort Irish history and +the contemporary Irish problem incontestably need. The modern case for +the Union rests mainly on the abnormality of Ireland, and that is +precisely why it is such a formidable case to meet. For Ireland in many +ways is painfully abnormal. The most cursory study of her institutions +and social, economic, and political life demonstrate that fact. The +Unionist, fixing his eyes on some of the secondary peculiarities, and +ignoring their fundamental cause, demonstrates it with ease, and by a +habit of mind which yields only with infinite slowness to the growth of +political enlightenment, passes instinctively to the deduction that +Irish abnormalities render Ireland unfit for self-government. In other +words, he prescribes for the disease a persistent application of the +very treatment which has engendered it. Whatever the result, there is a +plausible answer. If Ireland is disorderly and retrograde, how can she +deserve freedom? If she is peaceful, and shows symptoms of economic +recuperation, clearly she does not need or even want it. In other words, +if all that is healthy in the patient battles desperately and not in +vain, first against irritant poison, and then against soporific drugs, +this healthy struggle for self-preservation is attributed not to native +vitality, but to the bracing regimen of coercive government.</p> + +<p>This train of argument, so far from being confined to Ireland, is as old +as the human race itself. Of all human passions, that for political +domination is the last to yield to reason. Men are naturally inclined to +attribute admitted social evils to every cause—religion, climate, race, +congenital defects of character, the inscrutable decrees of Divine +Providence—rather than to the form of political institutions; in other +words, to the organic structure of the community, and to rest the +security of an Empire on any other foundation than that of the liberty +of its component parts. If, in one case, their own experience proves +them wrong, they will go to the strangest lengths of perversity in +misreading their own experience, and they will seek every imaginable +pretext for distinguishing the case from its predecessor. Underlying all +is a nervous terror of the abuse of freedom founded on the assumption +that <a name="Page_x" id="Page_x" />men will continue to act when free exactly as they acted under the +demoralizing influence of coercion. The British Empire has grown, and +continues to grow, in spite of this deeply rooted political doctrine. +Ireland is peculiar only in that her proximity to the seat of power has +exposed her for centuries to an application of the doctrine in its most +extreme form and without any hope of escape through the merciful +accidents to which more fortunate communities owe their emancipation. +Canada owes her position in the Empire, and the Empire itself exists in +its present form to-day, owing to the accident that the transcendantly +important principle of responsible government advocated by Lord Durham +as a remedy for the anarchy and stagnation in which he found both the +British and the French Provinces of Canada in 1838, did not require +Imperial legislation, and was established without the Parliamentary or +electoral sanction of Great Britain. Lord Durham was derided as a +visionary, and abused as unpatriotic for the assertion of this simple +principle. Far in advance of his time as he was, he himself shrank from +the full application of his own lofty ideal, and consequently made one +great, though under the circumstances not a capital, mistake in his +diagnosis, and it was to that mistake only that Parliament gave +legislative effect in 1840. By one of the most melancholy ironies in all +history Ireland was the source of his error, so that the Union of the +Canadas, dissolved as a failure by the Canadians themselves in 1867, was +actually based on the success of the Anglo-Irish Union in repressing a +dangerous nationality. Did the proof of the error in Canada induce +Englishmen to question the soundness of the precedent on which the error +was based? On the contrary, the lesson passed unnoticed, and the Irish +precedent has survived to darken thought, to retard democratic progress, +and to pervert domestic and Imperial policy to this very day. It even +had the truly extraordinary retrospective effect of obliterating from +the minds of many eminent statesmen the significance of the Canadian +parallel; for it is only six years ago that a Secretary of State for the +Colonies penned a despatch recommending for the Transvaal a form of +government similar to that which actually produced the Canadian +disorders of 1837, and supporting it by an argument whose effect was not +merely to resuscitate what time had proved to be false in Durham's +doctrine, but to discard what time had proved <a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi" />to be true. As for +Ireland herself, I know no more curious illustration of the strong +tendency, even on the part of the most fair-minded men, to place that +country outside the pale of social or political science, and of the +extreme reluctance to judge its inhabitants by the elementary standards +of human conduct, than the book to which I referred above—Mr. +Locker-Lampson's "A Consideration of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century." +For what he admits to be the ruinous results of British Government in +the past, the author in the last few pages of a lengthy volume has no +better cure to suggest than a continuance of British government, and he +defends this course by a terse enumeration of the very phenomena which +in Durham's opinion rendered the grant of Home Rule to Canada +imperative, concluding with a paragraph which, with the substitution of +"Canada" for "Ireland," constitutes an admirably condensed epitome of +the arguments used both by politicians at home, and the minorities in +Canada, in favour of Durham's error and against the truth he +established.</p> + +<p>Mr. Lecky represents a somewhat different school of thought, and reached +his Unionism by reasoning more profound and consistent, but, on the +other hand, wholly destructive of the Imperial theory as held by the +modern school of Imperialists. His fear and distrust of democracy in all +its forms and in all lands<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2" /><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> was such that he naturally dreaded Irish +Nationalism, which is a form of democratic revolt suppressed so long and +by such harsh methods as to exhibit features easily open to criticism. +But the gist of his argument would have applied just as well to the +political evolution of the self-governing Colonies. Indeed, if he had +lived to see the last Imperial Conference, the pessimism of so clear a +thinker would assuredly have given way before the astounding contrast +between those countries in which his political philosophy had been +abjured, and the only white country in the Empire where by sheer force +it had been maintained intact.</p> + +<p>If my only object in writing were to contribute something toward the +dissipation of the fears and doubts which render it so hard to carry any +measure, however small, of Home Rule for Ireland, I should hope for +little success. Practical men, with a practical decision to make, rarely +look outside the immediate facts before them. Extremists, in a case like +that <a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii" />of Ireland, are reluctant to take account of what Lord Morley +calls "the fundamental probabilities of civil society." Sir Edward +Carson would be more than human if he were to be influenced by a +demonstration that the case he makes against Home Rule is the same as +that made by the minority leaders, not only in the French, but in the +British Province of Canada. Most of the minority to which he appeals +would now regard as an ill-timed paradox the view that the very vigour +of their opposition to Home Rule is a better omen for the success of +Home Rule than that kind of sapless Nationalism, astonishingly rare in +Ireland under the circumstances, which is inclined to yield to the +insidious temptation of setting the "eleemosynary benefits"—to use Mr. +Walter Long's phrase<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3" /><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>—derived from the British connection above the +need for self-help and self-reliance. The real paradox is that any +Irishmen, Unionist or Nationalist, should tolerate advisers who, however +sincere and patriotic, avowedly regard Ireland as the parasite of Great +Britain; who appeal to the lower nature of her people; to the fears of +one section and the cupidity of both; advising Unionists to rely on +British power and all Irishmen on British alms. A day will come when the +humiliation will be seen in its true light. Even now, I do venture to +appeal to that small but powerful group of moderate Irish Unionists who, +so far from fearing revenge or soliciting charity, spend their whole +lives in the noble aim of uniting Irishmen of all creeds on a basis of +common endeavour for their own economic and spiritual salvation; who +find their work checked in a thousand ways by the perpetual maintenance +of a seemingly barren and sentimental agitation; who distrust both the +parties to this agitation; but who are reluctant to accept the view +that, without the satisfaction of the national claim, and without the +national responsibility thereby conferred, their own aims can never be +fully attained. I should be happy indeed if I could do even a little +towards persuading some of these men that they mistake cause and effect; +misinterpret what they resent; misjudge where they distrust, and in +standing aloof from the battle for <a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii" />legislative autonomy, unconsciously +concede a point—disinterested, constructive optimists as they are—to +the interested and destructive pessimism which, from Clare's savage +insults to Mr. Walter Long's contemptuous patronage, has always lain at +the root of British policy towards Ireland.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, for those who like or dislike it, Home Rule is +imminent. We are face to face no longer with a highly speculative, but +with a vividly practical problem, raising legislative and administrative +questions of enormous practical importance, and next year we shall be +dealing with this problem in an atmosphere of genuine reality totally +unlike that of 1886, when Home Rule was a startling novelty to the +British electorate, or of 1893, when the shadow of impending defeat +clouded debate and weakened counsel. It would be pleasant to think that +the time which has elapsed, besides greatly mitigating anti-Irish +prejudice, had been used for scientific study and dispassionate +discussion of the problem of Home Rule. Unfortunately, after eighteen +years the problem remains almost exactly where it was. There are no +detailed proposals of an authoritative character in existence. No +concrete scheme was submitted to the country in the recent elections. +None is before the country now. The reason, of course, is that the Irish +question is still an acute party question, not merely in Ireland, but in +Great Britain. Party passion invariably discourages patient constructive +thought, and all legislation associated with it suffers in consequence. +Tactical considerations, sometimes altogether irrelevant to the special +issue, have to be considered. In the case of Home Rule, when the balance +of parties is positively determined by the Irish vote, the difficulty +reaches its climax. It is idle to blame individuals. We should blame the +Union. So long as one island democracy claims to determine the destinies +of another island democracy, of whose special needs and circumstances it +is admittedly ignorant, so long will both islands suffer.</p> + +<p>This ignorance is not disputed. No Irish Unionist claims that Great +Britain should govern Ireland on the ground that the British electorate, +or even British statesmen, understand Irish questions. On the contrary, +in Ireland, at any rate, their ignorance is a matter for satirical +comment with all parties. What he complains of is, that the British +electorate is beginning to carry its ignorance to the point of believing +that <a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv" />the Irish electorate is competent to decide Irish questions, and +in educating the British electorate he has hitherto devoted himself +exclusively to the eradication of this error. The financial results of +the Union are such that he is now being cajoled into adding, "It is your +money, not your wisdom, that we want." Once more, an odd state of +affairs, and some day we shall all marvel in retrospect that the Union +was so long sustained by a separatist argument, reinforced in latter +days by such an inconsistent and unconscionable claim.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, if only the present situation can be turned to +advantage, this crowning paradox is the most hopeful element in the +whole of a tangled question. It is not only that the British elector is +likely to revolt at once against the slur upon his intelligence and the +drain upon his purse, but that Irish Unionism, once convinced of the +tenacity and sincerity of that revolt, is likely to undergo a dramatic +and beneficent transformation. If they are to have Home Rule, Irish +Unionists—even those who now most heartily detest it—will want the +best possible scheme of Home Rule, and the best possible scheme is not +likely to be the half measure which, from no fault of the statesman +responsible for it, tactical difficulties may make inevitable. If the +vital energy now poured into sheer uncompromising opposition to the +principles of Home Rule could be transmuted into intellectual and moral +effort after the best form of Home Rule, I believe that the result would +be a drastic scheme.</p> + +<p>Compromise enters more or less into the settlement of all burning +political questions. That is inevitable under the party system; but of +all questions under the sun, Home Rule questions are the least +susceptible of compromise so engendered. The subject, in reality, is not +suitable for settlement at Westminster. This is a matter of experience, +not of assertion. Within the present bounds of the Empire no lasting +Constitution has ever been framed for a subordinate State to the +moulding of which Parliament, in the character of a party assembly, +contributed an active share. Constitutions which promote prosperity and +loyalty have actually or virtually been framed by those who were to live +under them. If circumstances make it impossible to adopt this course for +Ireland, let us nevertheless remember that all the friction and enmity +between the Mother Country and subordinate States have arisen, not from +the <a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv" />absence, but from the inadequacy of self-governing powers. Checks +and restrictions, so far from benefiting Great Britain or the Colonies, +have damaged both in different degrees, the Colonies suffering most +because these checks and restrictions produce in the country submitted +to them peculiar mischiefs which exist neither under a despotic régime +nor an unnatural Legislative Union, fruitful of evil as both those +systems are. The damage is not evanescent, but is apt to bite deep into +national character and to survive the abolition of the institutions +which caused it. The Anglo-Irish Union was created and has ever since +been justified by a systematic defamation of Irish character. If it is +at length resolved to bury the slander and trust Ireland, in the name of +justice and reason let the trust be complete and the institutions given +her such as to permit full play to her best instincts and tendencies, +not such as to deflect them into wrong paths. Let us be scrupulously +careful to avoid mistakes which might lead to a fresh campaign of +defamation like that waged against Canada, as well as Ireland, between +1830 and 1840.</p> + +<p>The position, I take it, is that most Irish Unionists still count, +rightly or wrongly, on defeating Home Rule, not only in the first +Parliamentary battle, but by exciting public opinion during the long +period of subsequent delay which the Parliament Bill permits. Not until +Home Rule is a moral certainty, and perhaps not even then, do the +extremists intend to consider the Irish Constitution in a practical +spirit. Surely this is a perilous policy. Surely it must be so regarded +by the moderate men—and there are many—who, if Home Rule comes, intend +to throw their abilities into making it a success, and who will be +indispensable to Ireland at a moment of supreme national importance. +Irretrievable mistakes may be made by too long a gamble with the chances +of political warfare. Whatever the scheme produced, the extremists will +have to oppose it tooth and nail. If the measure is big, sound, and +generous, it will be necessary to attack its best features with the +greatest vigour; to rely on beating up vague, anti-separatist sentiment +in Great Britain; to represent Irish Protestants as a timid race forced +to shelter behind British bayonets; in short, to use all the arguments +which, if Irish Unionists were compelled to frame a Constitution +themselves, they would scorn to employ, and which, if grafted on the Act +<a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi" />in the form of amendments, they themselves in after-years might +bitterly regret. Conversely, if the measure is a limited one, it will be +necessary to commend its worst features; to extol its eleemosynary side +and all the infractions of liberty which in actual practice they would +find intolerably irksome. Whatever happens, things will be said which +are not meant, and passions aroused which will be difficult to allay on +the eve of a crisis when Ireland will need the harmonious co-operation +of all her ablest sons.</p> + +<p>If, behind the calculation of a victory within the next two years, there +lies the presentiment of an eventual defeat, let not the thought be +encouraged that a better form of Home Rule is likely to come from a Tory +than from a Liberal Government. Many Irish Unionists regard the prospect +of continued submission to a Liberal, or what they consider a +semi-Socialist, Government as the one consideration which would +reconcile them to Home Rule. No one can complain of that. But they make +a fatal mistake in denying Liberals credit for understanding questions +of Home Rule better than Tories. That, again, is a matter of proved +experience. Compare the abortive Transvaal Constitution of 1905 with the +reality of 1906, and measure the probable consequences of the former by +the actual results of the latter. Let them remember, too, that every +year which passes aggravates the financial difficulties which imperil +the future of Ireland.</p> + +<p>The best hope of securing a final settlement of the Irish question in +the immediate future lies in promoting open discussion on the details of +the Home Rule scheme, and of drawing into that discussion all Irishmen +and Englishmen who realize the profound importance of the issue. This +book is offered as a small contribution to the controversy.</p> + +<p>For help in writing it I am deeply indebted to many friends on both +sides of the Irish Channel, in Ireland to officials and private persons, +who have generously placed their experience at my disposal; while in +England I owe particular thanks to the Committee of which I had the +honour to be a member, which sat during the summer of this year under +the chairmanship of Mr. Basil Williams, and which published the series +of essays called "Home Rule Problems."</p> + +<p>E.C.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="ERRATA" id="ERRATA" />ERRATA</h2> + + +<p>Since this book went to press the Treasury has issued a revised version +of Return No. 220, 1911 [Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland, and +Ireland)], cancelling the Return issued in July, and correcting an error +made in it. It now appears that the "true" Excise revenue attributable +to Ireland from <i>spirits</i> in 1910-11 (with deductions made by the +Treasury from the sum actually collected in Ireland) should be +£3,575,000, instead of £3,734,000, and that the total "true" Irish +revenue in that year was, therefore, £11,506,500, instead of +£11,665,500. In other words, Irish revenue for 1910-11 was +over-estimated in the Return now cancelled by £159,000.</p> + +<p>The error does not affect the Author's argument as expounded in Chapters +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a> and <a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a>; but it necessitates the correction of a number of +figures given by him, especially in Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a>, the principal change +being that the deficit in Irish revenue, as calculated on the mean of +the two years 1909-10 and 1910-11, should actually be £1,392,000, +instead of £1,312,500.</p> + +<p>The full list of corrections is as follows:</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, line 9, <i>for</i> "£1,312,500," <i>read</i> "£1,392,000."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, table, third column, line 6, <i>for</i> "£10,032,000," <i>read</i> +"£9,952 500"; last line, <i>for</i> "£1,312,500," <i>read</i> "£1,392,000."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, table, last column, last line but one, <i>for</i> "£321,000," +<i>read</i> "£162,000"; last line (total), <i>for</i> "£329,780,970," <i>read</i> +"£329,621,970."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, line 7, <i>for</i> "£10,032,000," <i>read</i> "£9,952,500"; line 10, +<i>for</i> "£1,312,500," <i>read</i> "£1,392,000."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_275">275</a>. table, last column, line 2, <i>for</i> "£3,734,000," <i>read</i> +"£3,575,000"; line 7, <i>for</i> "£10,371,000," <i>read</i> "£10,212,000"; line +14, <i>for</i> "£11,665,500," <i>read</i>, "£11,506,500"; in text, last line but +one of page, <i>for</i> "£10,032,000," <i>read</i> "£9,952,500."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, line 5, <i>for</i> "£500,000," <i>read</i>, "£340,000"; table, last +column, line 2, <i>for</i> "£3,316,000," <i>read</i> "£3,236,500"; line 3, <i>for</i> +"£6,182,000," <i>read</i> "£6,102,500"; line 9, <i>for</i> "£8,737,500," <i>read</i> +"£8,658,000"; last line, <i>for</i> "£10,032,000," <i>read</i> "£9,952,500."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, line 2, <i>for</i> "£1,672,500," <i>read</i> "£1,752,000"; line 7, <i>for</i> +"£1,312,500," <i>read</i> "£1,392,000"; line 8, <i>for</i> "£10,032,000," <i>read</i> +"£9,952,500"; line 12, <i>for</i> "£1,672,500," <i>read</i> "£1,752,000"; +footnote, line 1, <i>for</i> "£1,793,000," <i>read</i> "£1,952,000."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, line 8, <i>for</i> "70.75," <i>read</i> "70.48."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, sixth line from bottom, <i>for</i> "£1,312,500," <i>read</i> +"£1,392,000."</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, line 8 and footnote, and page 295, lines 21-31: A temporary +measure has been passed (Surplus Revenue Act, 1910), under which the +Surplus Commonwealth Revenue is returned to the States on a basis of £1 +5s. per head of the population of each State.</p> + + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, line 2, <i>omit</i> "like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands." +These islands have distinct local tariffs, but they cannot be said to be +wholly under local control.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" /></p> +<h2><a name="THE_FRAMEWORK_OF_HOME_RULE" id="THE_FRAMEWORK_OF_HOME_RULE" />THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I" />CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA</h3> + + + +<h4><a name="I_I" id="I_I" />I.</h4> + + +<p>Ireland was the oldest and the nearest of the Colonies. We are apt to +forget that she was ever colonized, and that for a long period, although +styled a Kingdom, she was kept in a position of commercial and political +dependence inferior to that of any Colony. Constitutional theory still +blinds a number of people to the fact that in actual practice Ireland is +still governed in many respects as a Colony, but on principles which in +all other white communities of the British Empire are extinct. Like all +Colonies, she has a Governor or Lord-Lieutenant of her own, an Executive +of her own, and a complete system of separate Government Departments, +but her people, unlike the inhabitants of a self-governing Colony, +exercise no control over the administration. She possesses no +Legislature of her own, although in theory she is supposed to possess +sufficient legislative control over Irish affairs through representation +in the Imperial Parliament. In practice, however, this control has +always been, and still remains, illusory, just as it would certainly +have proved illusory if conferred upon any Colony. It can be exercised +only by cumbrous, circuitous, and often profoundly unhealthy methods; +and over a wide range of matters it cannot by any method whatsoever be +exercised at all.</p> + +<p>To look behind mere technicalities to the spirit of government, Ireland +resembles one of that class of Crown Colonies of which Jamaica and Malta +are examples, where the in<a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" />habitants exercise no control over +administration, and only partial control over legislation.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4" /><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> + +<p>Why is this?</p> + +<p>Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, always frank and fearless in his political +judgments, gave the best answer in 1893, when opposing the first reading +of the second of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills. "Does anybody doubt," +he said, "that if Ireland were a thousand miles away from England she +would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" Now this +was not a barren geographical truism, which might by way of hypothesis +be applied in identical terms to any fraction of the United +Kingdom—say, for example, to that part of England lying south of the +Thames. Mr. Chamberlain never made any attempt to deny—no one with the +smallest knowledge of history could have denied—that Ireland, though +only sixty miles away from England, was less like England than any of +the self-governing Colonies then attached to the Crown, possessing +distinct national characteristics which entitled her, in theory at any +rate, to demand, not merely colonial, but national autonomy. On the +contrary, Mr. Chamberlain went out of his way to argue, with all the +force and fire of an accomplished debater, that the Bill was a highly +dangerous measure precisely because, while granting Ireland a measure of +autonomy, it denied her some of the elementary powers, not only of +colonial, but of national States; for instance, the full control over +taxation, which all self-governing Colonies possessed, and the control +over foreign policy, which is a national attribute. The complementary +step in his argument was that, although nominally withheld by statute, +these fuller powers would be forcibly usurped by the future Irish +Government through the leverage offered by a subordinate Legislature and +Executive, and that, once grasped, they would be used to the injury of +Great Britain and the minority in Ireland. Ireland ("a fearful danger") +might arm, ally herself with France, and, while submitting the +Protestant minority to cruel persecution, would retain enough national +unity to smite Britain hip and thigh, and so avenge the wrong of ages.</p> + +<p>Even to the most ardent Unionist the case thus presented <a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" />must, in the +year 1911, present a doubtful aspect. The British <i>entente</i> with France, +and the absence of the smallest ascertainable sympathy between Ireland +and Germany, he will dismiss, perhaps, as points of minor importance, +but he will detect at once in the argument an antagonism, natural enough +in 1893, between national and colonial attributes, and he will remember, +with inner misgivings, that his own party has taken an especially active +part during the last ten years in furthering the claim of the +self-governing Colonies to the status of nationhood as an essential step +in the furtherance of Imperial unity. The word "nation," therefore, as +applied to Ireland, has lost some of its virtue as a deterrent to Home +Rule. Even the word "Colony" is becoming harmless; for every year that +has passed since 1893 has made it more abundantly clear that colonial +freedom means colonial friendship; and, after all, friendship is more +important than legal ties. In one remarkable case, that of the conquered +Dutch Republic in South Africa, a flood of searching light has been +thrown on the significance of those phrases "nation" and "Colony." +There, as in Ireland, and originally in Canada, "national" included +racial characteristics, and colonial autonomy signified national +autonomy in a more accurate sense than in Australia or Newfoundland. But +we know now that it does not signify either a racial tyranny within +those nations, or a racial antipathy to the Mother Country; but, on the +contrary, a reconciliation of races within and friendship without.</p> + +<p>Would Mr. Chamberlain recast his argument now? Unhappily, we shall not +know. But it does seem to me that recent history and his own temperament +would force him to do so. As in his abandonment of Free Trade, it was a +strong and sincere Imperialist instinct that eventually transformed him +from the advocate of provincial Home Rule into the relentless enemy of +Home Rule in any shape. Take the Imperial argument, shaken to its +foundations by subsequent events, from the case he stated in 1893, and +what remains? Two pleas only—first, the abnormality of Irishmen; +second, Ireland's proximity to England. The first expresses the old +traditional view that Ireland is outside the pale of all human analogy; +the exception to all rules; her innate depravity and perversity such +that she would abuse power where others respect it, derive enmity <a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" />where +others derive friendship, and willingly ruin herself by internal +dissension and extravagant ambitions in order, if possible, at the same +time to ruin England. Unconnected, however loosely, with the high +Imperial argument, I do not believe that this plea could have been used +with sincerity by Mr. Chamberlain even in 1893. He was a democrat, +devoted to the cause of enfranchising and trusting the people; and this +plea was, after all, only the same anti-democratic argument applied to +Ireland, and tipped with racial venom, which had been used for +generations by most Tories and many Whigs against any extension of +popular power. Lord Randolph Churchill, the Tory democrat, in his +dispassionate moments, always scouted it, resting his case against Home +Rule on different grounds. It was strange enough to see the argument +used by the Radical author of all the classic denunciations of class +ascendancy and the classic eulogies of the sense, forbearance and +generosity of free electorates. It was all the stranger in that Mr. +Chamberlain himself a few years before had committed himself to a scheme +of restricted self-government for Ireland, and in the debates on Mr. +Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill of 1886, when the condition of Ireland +was far worse than in 1893, had declared himself ready to give that +country a Constitution similar to that enjoyed by Quebec or Ontario +within the Dominion of Canada. But politics are politics. Under the +inexorable laws of the party game, politicians are advocates and swell +their indictments with every count which will bear the light. The system +works well enough in every case but one—the indictment of a +fellow-nation for incapacity to rule itself. There, both in Ireland and +everywhere else, as I shall show, it works incalculable mischief. Once +committed irrevocably to the opposition of Mr. Gladstone's Bills, Mr. +Chamberlain, standing on Imperial ground, which seemed to him and his +followers firm enough then, used his unrivalled debating powers to +traduce and exasperate the Irish people and their leaders by every +device in his power.</p> + +<p>One other point survives in its integrity from the case made by Mr. +Chamberlain in 1893, and that is the argument about distance. Clearly +this is a quite distinct contention from the last; for distance from any +given point does not by itself radically alter human nature. Australians +are not <a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" />twice as good or twice as bad as South Africans because they +are twice as far from the Mother Country. "Does anybody doubt"—let me +repeat his words—"that if Ireland were a thousand miles from England +she would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" The +whole tragedy of Ireland lies in that "if"; but the condition is, +without doubt, still unsatisfied. Ireland is still only sixty miles away +from the English shores, and the argument from proximity, for what it is +worth, is still plausible. To a vast number of minds it still seems +conclusive. Put the South African parallel to the average moderate +Unionist, half disposed to admit the force of this analogy, he would +nevertheless answer: "Ah, but Ireland is so near." Well, let us join +issue on the two grounds I have indicated—the ground of Irish +abnormality, and the ground of Ireland's proximity. It will be found, I +think, that neither contention is tenable by itself; that a supporter of +one unconsciously or consciously reinforces it by reference to the +other, and that to refute one is to refute both. It will be found, too, +that, apart from mechanical and unessential difficulties, the whole case +against Home Rule is included and summed up in these two contentions, +and that the mechanical problem itself will be greatly eased and +illuminated by their refutation.</p> + + +<h4><a name="I_II" id="I_II" />II.</h4> + +<p>Those sixty miles of salt water which we know as the Irish Channel—if +only every Englishman could realize their tremendous significance in +Anglo-Irish history—what an ineffectual barrier "in the long result of +time" to colonization and conquest; what an impassable barrier—through +the ignorance and perversity of British statesmanship—to sympathy and +racial fusion!</p> + +<p>For eight hundred years after the Christian era her distance from Europe +gave Ireland immunity from external shocks, and freedom to work out her +own destiny. She never, for good or ill, underwent Roman occupation or +Teutonic invasion. She was secure enough to construct and maintain +unimpaired a civilization of her own, warlike, prosperous, and +marvellously rich, for that age, in scholarship and culture. She +<a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" />produced heroic warriors, peaceful merchants, and gentle scholars and +divines; poets, musicians, craftsmen, architects, theologians. She had a +passion for diffusing knowledge, and for more than a thousand years sent +her missionaries of piety, learning, art, and commerce, far and wide +over Europe. For two hundred years she resisted her first foreign +invaders, the Danes, with desperate tenacity, and seems to have absorbed +into her own civilization and polity those who ultimately retained a +footing on her eastern shores.</p> + +<p>With the coming of the Anglo-Normans at the end of the twelfth century +the dark shadow begins to fall, and for the first time the Irish Channel +assumes its tragic significance. England, compounded of Britons, +Teutons, Danes, Scandinavians, Normans, with the indelible impress of +Rome upon the whole, had emerged, under Nature's mysterious alchemy, a +strong State. Ireland had preserved her Gaelic purity, her tribal +organization, her national culture, but at the cost of falling behind in +the march of political and military organization. Sixty miles divided +her from the nearest part of the outlying dominions of feudal England, +150 miles from the dynamic centre of English power. The degree of +distance seems to have been calculated with fatal exactitude, in +correspondence with the degrees of national vitality in the two +countries respectively, to produce for ages to come the worst possible +effects on both. The process was slow. Ireland was near enough to +attract the Anglo-Norman adventurers and colonists, but strong enough +and fair enough for three hundred years to transform them into patriots +"more Irish than the Irish"; always, however, too near and too weak, +even with their aid, to expel the direct representatives of English rule +from the foothold they had obtained on her shores, while at the same +time too far and too formidable to enable that rule to expand into the +complete conquest and subjugation of the realm.</p> + +<p>"The English rule," says Mr. Lecky, "as a living reality, was confined +and concentrated within the limits of the Pale. The hostile power +planted in the heart of the nation destroyed all possibility of central +government, while it was itself incapable of fulfilling that function. +Like a spear-point embedded in a living body, it inflamed all around it +and deranged every <a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" />vital function. It prevented the gradual reduction +of the island by some native Clovis, which would necessarily have taken +place if the Anglo-Normans had not arrived, and instead of that peaceful +and almost silent amalgamation of races, customs, laws, and languages, +which took place in England, and which is the source of many of the best +elements in English life and character, the two nations remained in +Ireland for centuries in hostility."</p> + +<p>From this period dates that intense national antipathy felt by the +English for the Irish race which has darkened all subsequent history. It +was not originally a temperamental antipathy, or it would be impossible +to explain the powerful attraction of Irish character, manners, and laws +for the great bulk of the Anglo-Norman colonists. Nor within Ireland, +even after the Reformation, was it a religious antipathy between a +Protestant race and a race exclusively and immovably Catholic. It was in +origin a political antipathy between a small official minority, backed +by the support of a powerful Mother Country struggling for ascendancy +over a large native and naturalized majority, divided itself by tribal +feuds, but on the whole united in loathing and combating that +ascendancy. Universal experience, as I shall afterwards show, proves +that an enmity so engendered takes a more monstrous and degrading shape +than any other. Religion becomes its pretext. Ignorance makes it easy, +and interest makes it necessary, to represent the native race as savages +outside the pale of law and morals, against whom any violence and +treachery is justifiable. The legend grows and becomes a permanent +political axiom, distorting and abasing the character of those who act +on it and those who, suffering from it, and retaliating against its +consequences, construct their counter-legend of the inherent wickedness +of the dominant race. If left to themselves, white races, of diverse +nationalities, thrown together in one country, eventually coalesce, or +at least learn to live together peaceably. But if an external power too +remote to feel genuine responsibility for the welfare of the +inhabitants, while near enough to exert its military power on them, +takes sides in favour of the minority, and employs them as its permanent +and privileged garrison, the results are fatal to the peace and +prosperity of the country <a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" />it seeks to dominate, and exceedingly +harmful, though in a degree less easy to gauge, to itself. So it was +with Ireland; and yet it cannot fail to strike any student of history +what an extraordinary resilience she showed again and again under any +transient phase of wise and tolerant government.</p> + +<p>Such a phase occurred in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII., +when, after the defeat of the Geraldines, for the first time some +semblance of royal authority was established over the whole realm; and +when an effort was also made, not through theft or violence, but by +conciliatory statecraft, to replace the native Brehon system of law and +land tenure by English institutions, and to anglicize the Irish chiefs. +The process stopped abruptly and for ever with the accession of Mary, to +be replaced by the forcible confiscation of Irish land, and the +"planting" of English and Scotch settlers.</p> + +<p>Ireland, for four hundred years the only British Colony, is now drawn +into the mighty stream of British colonial expansion. Adventurous and +ambitious Englishmen began to regard her fertile acres as Raleigh +regarded America, and, in point of time, the systematic and State-aided +colonization of Ireland is approximately contemporaneous with that of +America. It is true that until the first years of the sixteenth century +no permanent British settlement had been made in America, while in +Ireland the plantation of King's and Queen's Counties was begun as early +as 1556, and under Elizabeth further vast confiscations were carried out +in Munster within the same century. But from the reign of James I. +onward, the two processes advance <i>pari passu</i>. Virginia, first founded +by Raleigh in 1585, is firmly settled in 1607, just before the +confiscation of Ulster and its plantation by 30,000 Scots; and in 1620, +just after that huge measure of expropriation, the Pilgrim Fathers +landed in New Plymouth. Puritan Massachusetts—with its offshoots, +Connecticut, New Haven and Rhode Island—as well as Catholic Maryland, +were formally established between 1629 and 1638, and Maine in 1639, at a +period when the politically inspired proscription of the Catholic +religion, succeeding the robbery of the soil, was goading the unhappy +Irish to the rebellion of 1641. While that rebellion, with its fierce +excesses and pitiless reprisals, was convulsing<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" /> Ireland, the united +Colonies of New England banded themselves together for mutual defence.</p> + +<p>A few years later Cromwell, aiming, through massacre and rapine, at the +extermination of the Irish race, with the savage watchword "To Hell or +Connaught," planted Ulster, Munster, and Leinster with men of the same +stock, stamp, and ideas as the colonists of New England, and in the +first years of the Restoration Charles II. confirmed these +confiscations, at the same time that he granted Carolina to Lord +Clarendon, New Netherlands to the Duke of York, and New Jersey to Lord +Berkeley, and issued fresh Charters for Connecticut and Maryland. +Finally, Quaker Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1682, and in 1691 William +III., after the hopeless Jacobite insurrections in favour of the last of +the Stuarts, wrung the last million acres of good Irish land from the +old Catholic proprietors, planted them with Protestant Englishmen, and +completed the colonization of Ireland. Forty years passed (1733) before +Georgia, the last of the "Old Thirteen Colonies," was planted, as Ulster +had been planted, mainly by Scotch Presbyterians.</p> + +<p>During the greater part of this period we must remember that conquered +Ireland herself was contributing to the colonization of America. Every +successive act of spoliation drove Catholic Irishmen across the Atlantic +as well as into Europe, and gave every Colony an infusion of Irish +blood. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century this class of +emigration was for the most part involuntary. Cromwell, for example, +shipped off thousands of families indiscriminately to the West Indies +and America for sale, as "servants" to the colonists. The only organized +and voluntary expedition in which Irish Catholics took part was that to +Maryland under Lord Baltimore. The distinction in course of time became +immaterial. In the free American air English, Scotch, and Irish became +one people, with a common political and social tradition.</p> + +<p>It is interesting, and for a proper understanding of the Irish question, +indispensable, briefly to contrast the characteristics and progress of +the American and Irish settlements, and in doing so to observe the +profound effects of geographical position and political institutions on +human character. I shall afterwards ask the reader to include in the +comparison <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" />the later British Colonies formed in Canada and South Africa +by conquest, and in Australia by peaceful settlement.</p> + +<p>Let us note, first, that both in America and Ireland the Colonies were +bi-racial, with this all-important distinction, that in America the +native race was coloured, savage, heathen, nomadic, incapable of fusion +with the whites, and, in relation to the almost illimitable territory +colonized, not numerous; while in Ireland the native race was white, +civilized, Christian, numerous, and confined within the limits of a +small island to which it was passionately attached by treasured national +traditions, and whose soil it cultivated under an ancient and revered +system of tribal tenure. The parallel, then, in this respect, is slight, +and becomes insignificant, except in regard to the similarity of the +mental attitude of the colonists towards Indians and Irish respectively. +In natural humanity the colonists of Ireland and the colonists of +America differed in no appreciable degree. They were the same men, with +the same inherent virtues and defects, acting according to the pressure +of environment. Danger, in proportionate degree, made both classes +brutal and perfidious; but in America, though there were moments of +sharp crisis, as in 1675 on the borders of Massachusetts, the degree was +comparatively small, and through the defeat and extrusion of the Indians +diminished steadily. In Ireland, because complete expulsion and +extermination were impossible, the degree was originally great, and, +long after it had actually disappeared, haunted the imagination and +distorted the policy of the invading nation.</p> + +<p>In America there was no land question. Freeholds were plentiful for the +meanest settlers and the title was sound and indisputable. In the +"proprietary" Colonies, it is true, vast tracts of country were +originally vested by royal grants in a single nobleman or a group of +capitalists, just as vast estates were granted in Ireland to peers, +London companies, and syndicates of "undertakers"; but by the nature of +things, the extent of territory, its distance, and the absence of a +white subject race, no agrarian harm resulted in America, and a healthy +system of tenure, almost exclusively freehold, was naturally evolved.</p> + +<p>In Ireland the land question was the whole question from the first. If +the natives had been exterminated, or their remnants <a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />wholly confined, +as Cromwell planned, to the barren lands of Connaught, all might have +been well for the conquerors. Or if Ireland had been, in Mr. +Chamberlain's phrase, a thousand miles away, all might have come right +under the compulsion of circumstances and the healing influence of time. +That the Celtic race still possessed its strong powers of assimilation +was shown by the almost complete denationalization and absorption of a +large number of Cromwell's soldier-colonists in the south and south-east +under what Mr. Lecky calls the "invincible Catholicism" of the Irish +women. But the Irish were not only numerous, but fatally near the seat +of Empire. The natives—Irish or Anglo-Irish—were still more than twice +as numerous as the colonists; they were scattered over the whole +country, barren or fertile, and that country was within a day's sail of +England. The titles of the colonists to the land rested on sheer +violence, sometimes aggravated by the grossest meanness and treachery, +and these titles were not recognized by the plundered race. Even with +their gradual recognition it would have been difficult to introduce the +English system of tenure, which was radically different and repellent to +the Irish mind. The bare idea of one man absolutely owning land and +transmitting it entire to his heirs was incomprehensible to them.</p> + +<p>The solution for all these difficulties was unfortunately only too easy +and obvious. England was near, strong, and thoroughly imbued with the +policy of governing Ireland on the principle of antagonizing the races +within her. It was possible, therefore, by English help, under laws made +in England, to constitute the Irish outlaws from the land, labourers on +it, no doubt, that was an economic necessity, precarious occupiers of +plots just sufficient to support life; but, in the eyes of the law, +serfs. The planters of the southern American Colonies imported African +negroes for the same purpose, with irretrievably mischievous results to +their own descendants. Nor is it an exaggeration to compare the use made +of the Irish for a certain period to the use made of these negroes, for +great numbers of the Irish were actually exported as slaves to +Barbadoes, Jamaica, and even to Carolina.</p> + +<p>The outlawed multitude in Ireland were deprived, not only of all rights +to the land, but, as a corollary, of all social <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" />privileges whatsoever. +"The law," said an Irish Lord Chancellor, "does not suppose any such +person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." The instrument of ostracism +was the famous Penal Code, begun in William's reign in direct and +immediate defiance of a solemn pledge given in the Treaty of Limerick, +guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Catholics, and perfected in +the reign of Anne. This Code, ostensibly framed to extirpate +Catholicism, was primarily designed to confirm and perpetuate the +gigantic dislocation of property caused by the transference of Irish and +Anglo-Irish land into English and Scotch ownership. Since the rightful +owners were Catholic, and the wrongful owners Protestants, the laws +against the Catholic religion—a religion feared everywhere by +Englishmen at this period—were the simplest means of legalizing and +buttressing the new régime. I shall not linger over the details of the +Code. Burke's description of it remains classic and unquestioned: "A +complete system full of coherence and consistency, well digested and +composed 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."</p> + +<p>The aim was to reduce the Catholics to poverty, ignorance, and +impotence, and the aim was successful. Of the laws against priests, +worship, education, and of the bars to commerce and the professions, I +need not speak. In the matter of property, the fundamental enactments +concerned the land, namely, that no Catholic could own land, or lease it +for more than thirty years, and even then on conditions which made +profitable tenure practically impossible. This law created and sustained +the serfdom I have described, and is the direct cause of the modern land +problem. It remained unaltered in the smallest respect for seventy +years, that is, until 1761, when a Catholic was permitted to lease for +sixty-one years as much as fifty acres of bog not less than four feet +deep. Long before this the distribution of landed property and the +system of land tenure had become stereotyped.</p> + +<p>This system of tenure was one of the worst that ever existed on the face +of the globe. It has been matched in portions of<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" /> India, but nowhere +else in this Empire save in little Prince Edward Island, where we shall +meet with it again. In Ireland, where it assumed its worst form, violent +conquest by a neighbouring power not only made it politic to outlaw the +old owners, but precluded the introduction of the traditional English +tenures, even into the relations between the British superior landlord +and the British occupying colonist. The bulk of the confiscated Irish +land, as I have mentioned, had been granted in fee to English noblemen, +gentlemen, or speculators, who planted it with middle or lower-class +tenants. A number of Cromwell's private soldiers settled in Leinster and +Munster, and, holding small farms in fee, formed an exception to this +rule. But the greater part of Ireland, in ownership, as distinguished +from occupation, consisted of big estates, and a large number of the +English owners, being only a day's sail from England, became, by natural +instinct, habitual absentees. Others lived in Dublin and neglected their +estates. Absenteeism, non-existent in America, assumed in Ireland the +proportions of an enormous economic evil. In England the landlord was, +and remains, a capitalist, providing a house and a fully equipped farm +to the tenant. In Ireland he was a rent receiver pure and simple, +unconnected with the occupier by any healthy bond, moral or economic. +The rent-receiving absentee involved a resident middleman, who +contracted to pay a stipulated rent to the absentee, and had to extract +that rent, plus a profit for himself, out of the occupiers, whether +Catholic serfs, Protestant tenants, or both, and usually did so by +subdivision of holdings and disproportionate elevation of rents. Over +three of the four Provinces of Ireland—for a small part of Ulster was +differently situated—the middleman himself frequently became an +absentee and farmed his agency to another middleman, who by further +subdivisions and extortions made an additional private profit, and who, +in his turn, would create a subsidiary agency, until the land in many +cases was "subset six deep."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5" /><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The ultimate occupier and sole creator +of agricultural wealth lived perpetually on the verge of starvation, +beggared not only by extortionate rents, partly worked out in virtually +forced labour, but by extortionate tithes paid to the alien Anglican +Church, <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" />in addition to the scanty dues willingly contributed to the +hunted priests of his own prescribed religion. His resident upper +class—though we must allow for many honourable exceptions—was the +Squirearchy, satirized by Arthur Young as petty despots with the vices +of despots; idle, tyrannical, profligate, boorish, fit founders of the +worst social system the modern civilized world has ever known. The +slave-owning planters of Carolina were by no means devoid of similar +faults, which are the invariable products of arbitrary control over +human beings, but there the physiological gulf between the dominant and +subject race was too broad and deep to permit of substantial +deterioration in the former. In Ireland the ethnological difference was +small; the artificial cleavage and deterioration great in inverse +proportion.</p> + +<p>For the greater part of a century, in every part of Ireland, tenancies +of land, whether held by Catholic or Protestant, by lease or at will, +were alike in certain fundamental characteristics. The tenant had +neither security of tenure nor right to the value of the improvements +which were invariably made by his own capital and labour. Even a +leaseholder, when his lease expired, had no prescriptive claim to +renewal, but must take his chance at a rent-auction with strangers, the +farm going to the highest bidder. If he lost, he was homeless and +penniless, while the fruits of his labour and capital passed into other +hands. The miserable Catholic cottier was, of course, in a similar case, +though relatively his hardship was less, since his condition, being the +lowest possible in all circumstances, could scarcely be worse. +Obviously, in a case where the landlord was neither the capitalist nor +the protector and friend of the tenant, the possession of those +elementary rights, security of tenure and compensation for improvements, +was the condition precedent to the growth of a sound agrarian system. +Their denial was incompatible with social order. Yet they were denied, +and for one hundred and eighty years an intermittent struggle to obtain +them by violence and criminal conspiracy degraded and retarded Ireland.</p> + +<p>But a marked distinction grew up between a small portion of Ireland and +the rest. James I.'s plantation of Ulster had been far more drastic and +thorough than any operation of the kind before or since. Later +immigrants had flowed in, and <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" />at the beginning of the eighteenth +century in the north-eastern portion—the predominantly Protestant +Ulster of to-day—Scotch Protestant tenants, mainly Presbyterian, were +thickly settled, and formed an industrious community of strong and +tenacious temper. In the original leases granted by the concessionaires +in the seventeenth century, fixity of tenure was implied, and a nominal +rent levied, somewhat after the American model; but under the example of +other Provinces, and the economic pressure exerted by the growth in the +Catholic population, these privileges seem to have been almost wholly +obliterated. The absentee landlords, reckless of social welfare, exacted +the rack or competitive rent. As in the south and west, tithes to the +Established Church and oppressive and corrupt local taxation for roads +and other purposes, aggravated the discontent. For agrarian reasons +only—and there were others which I shall mention—many thousands of +Protestants left Ireland for ever. It required a long period of outrage +and conspiracy, attaining in 1770 the proportions of a small civil war, +and at the end of the century, by the anti-Catholic passions it +inspired, wrecking new hopes of racial unity, to establish what came to +be known as the Ulster Custom of Tenant Right. If Protestant freemen had +to resort to these demoralizing methods to obtain, and then only after +irreparable damage to Ireland, the first condition of social stability, +a tolerable land system, the effect of the agrarian system on Catholic +Ireland, prostrate under the Penal Code, may be easily imagined.</p> + +<p>In addition to excessive subdivision of holdings and excessive tithes, +rents, and local burdens, another agrarian evil, unknown in the vast and +thinly populated tracts of America intensified the misery of the Irish +peasantry of the eighteenth century. This was the conversion of the best +land from tillage into pasture, with the resulting clearances and +migrations, and the ultimate congestion on the worst land. Lecky quotes +a contemporary pamphlet, which speaks of the "best arable land in the +kingdom in immense tracts wantonly enjoyed by the cattle of a few +individuals, and at the same time the junctions of our highways and +streets crowded with shoals of mendicant fellow-creatures." This change +from arable to pasture has been a common and often in the long run <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" />a +healthy, economic tendency in many countries, England and Scotland +included, though temporarily a fruitful source of misery. Under normal +conditions the immediate evils right themselves in course of time. +Nothing was normal in Ireland, and any breath of economic change in the +outside world reacted cruelly on the wretched subject class, which +produced, though it did not enjoy, the greater part of the wealth of the +kingdom. Under an accumulation of hardships famine was periodic, and +from 1760, when the first Whiteboys appeared, disorder in one degree or +another was chronic. The motive, it is universally agreed now, was +material, not religious. The Whiteboys of the south and west were the +counterparts of the Protestant Steelboys and Oakboys of the north, and +even in the south and west there were Protestant as well as Catholic +Whiteboys. Lord Charlemont, the Protestant Irish statesman, denying this +now well-ascertained fact, was nevertheless explicit enough about the +cause of the disorders. "The real causes," he said, "were ... exorbitant +rents, low wages, want of employment, farms of enormous extent let by +their rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing land-jobbers, +by whom small portions of them were again let and relet to intermediate +oppressors, and by them subdivided for five times their value among the +wretched starvers upon potatoes and water; taxes yearly increasing, and +still more tithes, which the Catholic, without any possible benefit, +unwillingly pays in addition to his priest's money ... misery, +oppression, and famine."<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6" /><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> + +<p>Agrarian crime, operating through an endless succession of secret +societies, Whiteboys and Rightboys in the eighteenth century; Terry +Alts, Rockites, Caravats, Ribbonmen, Moonlighters, in the nineteenth, +was rampant for nearly two centuries, long surviving the repeal of the +Penal Code; and its last echoes may be heard at this moment. In the +absence of all wholesome law, violence and terror were the only means of +self-defence. The remedy applied was retaliatory violence under forms of +law. Nothing whatsoever was done to remove the essential vices of +agrarian tenure during the eighteenth century; nothing tentative even +during the nineteenth century until the year 1870; nothing effective and +permanent until<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" /> 1881, when, as far as humanly possible, it was sought +to give direct statutory expression to the Ulster Custom, with the +addition of the principle of a fair judicial rent. Englishmen should +realize this when they discuss Irish character. It is a very old story, +but nine out of ten Englishmen, when talking vaguely of Irish +discontent, disloyalty, and turbulence, forget, or have never learnt, +this and other fundamental facts. As for the Irish landlords, we must +remember that the founders of that class differed in no respect from +other English landlords, or from the aristocratic American +concessionaires, just as their compatriot tenants and lessees were +identical in stock with the American colonists. Their descendants and +successors have been the victims of circumstance. Each generation has +inherited the vested interests of the last, and it is not in human +nature to look far behind vested interests into the wrongful acts which +created them and the bad laws that perpetuate them. Doubly victimized +have been those resident landlords who at all periods, from the earliest +era of colonization, in spite of temptation and bad examples around +them, have acted towards their tenantry as humane and patriotic +citizens. A bad agrarian system infects the whole body politic. Good +landlords and contented tenants inevitably suffered with the rest.</p> + +<p>In commerce and industry, as in land, the Irish Colony stood at a heavy +disadvantage by comparison with America. From the Restoration onward, +English statesmen took the same view of both dependencies, namely, that +their commercial interests should be wholly subordinate to those of the +Mother Country, and the same Department, the Board of Trade and +Plantations, made the fiscal regulations for Ireland and America. The +old idea that for trade purposes Ireland counted as an integral part of +the United Kingdom did not last longer than 1663. But it was not wholly +abrogated by the great Navigation Act of that year, which, though it +placed harsh restrictions on the Irish cattle trade with England, did +not expressly exclude Irish ships from the monopoly of the colonial +trade conferred upon English vessels, so that for seven years longer a +tolerably prosperous business was carried on direct between Ireland and +the American Colonies.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7" /><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> An<a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" /> Act of 1670, prohibiting, with a few +negligible exceptions, all direct imports from the Colonies into +Ireland, gave a heavy check to this business, arrested the growth of +Irish shipping, and, in conjunction with subsequent measures of +navigational, fiscal, and industrial repression, converted Ireland for a +century into a kind of trade helot. She was treated either as a foreign +country, as a Colony, or as something inferior to either, according to +the dictation of English interests, while possessing neither the +commercial independence of a foreign country nor the natural and +indefeasible immunity which distance, climate, variety of soil, and +unlimited room for expansion continued to confer, in spite of all +coercive restraints, upon the American Colonies. Though the British +trade monopoly was certainly a contributory cause in promoting the +American revolution, it was never, any more than the British claim to +tax, a severe practical grievance. The prohibition of the export of +manufactures, and the compulsory reciprocal exchange of colonial natural +products for British manufactured goods and the chartered merchandise of +the Orient, were not very onerous restrictions for young communities +settled in virgin soil; nor, with a few exceptions like raw wool, whose +export was forbidden, were the American natural products of a kind which +could compete with those of the Mother Country. The real damage +inflicted upon the Colonies by the mercantile system—one which its +modern defenders are apt to forget—was moral. To practise and condone +smuggling was habitual in America, and some of the English Governors set +the worst example of all by making a profit out of connivance at the +illicit traffic. "Graft" was their creation. The moral mischief done was +permanent, and it resembled in a lesser degree the mischief done in +Ireland both by bad agrarian and bad commercial laws. Ireland, owing to +her proximity, was in the unhappy position of being a competitor in the +great staples of trade, both raw and manufactured, and she was near +enough and weak enough to render it easy to stamp out this competition +so far as it was thought to be inimical to English interests. The cattle +and provision trade with England had been damaged as far back as 1663, +and was killed in 1666, though the export of provisions to foreign +countries survived, and became almost the sole source of Irish trade +during the eighteenth century. The policy with <a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />raw wool was to admit +just as much as would satisfy the English weavers without arousing the +determined opposition of the competitive English graziers. The Irish +manufactured wool trade, a flourishing business, for which Irishmen +showed exceptionally high aptitude, and which in the normal course of +things would probably have become her staple industry, was destroyed +altogether, avowedly in the interests of the English staple industry, by +prohibitory export duties imposed in 1698. Subsidiary +industries—cotton, glass, brewing, sugar-refining, sail-cloth, hempen +rope, and salt—were successively strangled. One manufacture alone, that +of linen, centred in the Protestant North, was spared, and for a short +period was even encouraged, not because it was a Protestant industry, +but because at first it aroused no trade jealousy in England, and was in +some respects serviceable to her. In 1708, when it was proposed to +extend the industry to Leinster, considerations of foreign trade +provoked an outburst of hostility, and harassing restrictions were +imposed on this industry also. On the whole, however, it suffered less +than the rest, and lived to become one of the two important +manufacturing industries of present-day Ireland.</p> + +<p>English policy was as fatuous as it was cruel. Numbers of the Irish +manufacturers and artisans, both Catholic and Protestant, emigrated to +Europe, and devoted their skill and energy to strengthening industries +which competed with those of England. Within Ireland, since industry and +commerce formed the one outlet left by the Penal Code for Catholic +brains and capital—though even here the Code imposed harassing +disabilities—the commercial restrictions completed the ruin of the +proscribed sect. But at this period the main source of weakness to +Ireland, of strength to America, and of danger to the Empire as a whole, +was the Protestant emigration. Lecky estimates that 12,000 Protestant +families in Dublin and 30,000 in the rest of the country were ruined by +the suppression of the wool trade. The great majority of these +Protestants were Presbyterians belonging to North-East Ulster, and +descendants of the men who had defended that Province with such +desperate gallantry against the Irish insurgents under the deposed James +II. Political power in Ireland was wielded in the interests of a small +territorial and<a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" /> Episcopalian aristocracy, largely absentee. The +Dissenters belonged to the middle and lower classes, and were for the +most part tenants or artisans. Creed and caste antipathies were combined +against them. Their value as citizens was ignored. Though their right to +worship was legally recognized by an Act of 1719, they remained from +1704 to 1778 subject to the Test, were incapacitated for all public +employment, and were forbidden to open schools. Under an accumulation of +agrarian, economic, and religious disabilities, they naturally left +Ireland to find freedom in America. And it is beyond question that they +turned the scale against the British arms in the great War of +Independence.<a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" /></p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II" />CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND</h3> + + +<p>In the Old World and in the New, therefore, two societies, composed of +human beings similar in all essential respects, were growing up under +the protection of the British Crown; the one servile, the other free; +the one stagnant where it was not retrograde, the other prosperous, +progressive, and, by the magnetism of its own freedom, progress, and +prosperity, steadily draining its Irish fellow of talent, energy, and +industrial skill.</p> + +<p>What was the ultimate cause of this glaring divergency? Religion, as a +spiritual force, was not the root cause. The American Colonies, with +three exceptions—the earliest Virginia, the latest Georgia, and the +Catholic community of Maryland—were formed by Dissenters,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8" /><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> exiles +themselves from persecution, but not necessarily forbearing to others, +and, in the case of the New England Puritans, bitterly intolerant. It is +interesting to observe that the Quakers and the Catholics, men standing +at the opposite poles of theology, set the highest example of tolerance. +Quaker Pennsylvania enforced absolute liberty of conscience, and Quakers +in all the Provinces worked for religious harmony and freedom. Catholic +Maryland, as long as its government remained in Catholic hands, and +under the guidance of the wise and liberal Proprietary, Lord Baltimore, +pursued the same policy, and attracted members of sects persecuted in +New England.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9" /><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> The parallel with Ireland is signifi<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />cant. At the end of +the seventeenth century, when a quarrel was raging between the Crown and +Massachusetts over the persecution of Quakers in that Colony, and for a +further period in the eighteenth century, Quaker missionaries and +settlers were conducting a campaign of revivalism in Ireland with no +molestation from the Catholics, though with intermittent obstruction +from magistrates and Protestant clergy. Wesleyans received the same +sympathetic treatment.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10" /><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> The tolerance shown by Irish Catholics, in +spite of terrible provocation, is acknowledged by all reputable +historians. Nor was Protestant intolerance, whether Anglican or +Nonconformist, of a deeper dogmatic shade than anywhere else in the +King's dominions. But in Ireland it was political, economic, and social, +while in America it was purely theological, and, moreover, purely +American. The Episcopalian ascendancy in Ireland represented foreign +interests, and therefore struck against Dissent as well as against +Popery, and estranged both. The root of the American trouble, leading to +the separation of the Colonies, was political and wholly unconnected +with religion. The root of the Irish trouble, adventitiously connected +with religion, lay, and lies still, in the Irish political system. Other +evils were transient and curable; this was permanent. The Penal Code was +eventually relaxed; the disabilities of the Dissenters were eventually +removed; the commercial servitude was abolished, but the political +system <i>in essentials</i> has never been changed. Let us see what it was +and how it worked at the period we are considering, again by comparison +with America.</p> + +<p>Though the word "plantation" was applied alike to the colonization of +Ireland and America, Ireland was never called a Colony, but a Kingdom. +The distinction was not scientific, and operated, like all other +distinctions, to the injury of Ireland. Neither country was represented +in the British Parliament. In both countries the representatives of the +Crown were appointed by England, and controlled, in America almost +completely, in Ireland absolutely, the Executive and<a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" /> Judges. In Ireland +the Viceroy was always an Englishman; in America, the Governors of a few +of the non-proprietary Colonies were colonials, but most Governors were +English, and some of the proprietary class were absentees.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11" /><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> In the +case both of Ireland and America the English Government claimed a +superior right of control over legislation and taxation, and in both +cases it was found necessary to remove all doubts as to this right by +passing Declaratory Acts, for Ireland in 1719, for America in 1766. The +great difference lay in the Legislature, and was the result of different +degrees of remoteness from the seat of power. America was profoundly +democratic from the beginning, outpacing the Mother Country by fully two +centuries. There was no aristocracy, and in most Colonies little +distinction between upper and middle classes. The popular Assemblies, +elected on the broadest possible franchise, were truly representative. +Some of the Legislative Councils, or Upper Chambers, were elective also. +Most of them, although nominated, and therefore inclined to be hostile +to the popular body, were nevertheless of identical social composition; +so that there was often an official, but never a caste, ascendancy. From +very early times there was occasional friction between the Home +Government, represented by the Governors, and the colonial democracies, +over such matters as taxation, official salaries, quartering of troops, +and navigation laws. Writs of <i>quo warranto</i> were issued against +Connecticut, Carolina, New York, and Maryland, in the latter part of the +seventeenth century, and the Charter of Massachusetts, after long +wrangles with the Crown, was forfeited in 1684, and not restored until +1692, after a period of despotic government under Sir Edmund Andros. But +for a century or more the system worked well enough upon the whole. +Under the powerful lever of the representative Assembly, neutralized by +the ever-present need for military protection from the Mother Country, +and with the wholesome check to undue coercion set by the broad +Atlantic, <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" />civic freedom grew and flourished to a degree unknown in any +other part of the civilized world.</p> + +<p>In Ireland civic freedom was unknown. There was no popular Assembly. A +wealthy aristocracy of English extraction and of Anglican faith, partly +resident, partly absentee, and wholly subservient to the English +Government, constituted the Upper House of that strange institution +known as Parliament, and to a great extent nominated and controlled the +Lower House through means frankly corrupt. Representation was almost +nominal; close pocket-boroughs predominated, and seats were bought and +sold in the open market. In the year 1790 more than a third of the +Members of the House of Commons were placemen, 216 Members out of 300 +were elected by boroughs and manors, and, of these, 176 were elected by +individual patrons. Fifty-three of these patrons, nominating 123 +Members, sat as Peers in the Upper House. Cash, places, and peerages, +were the usual considerations paid for maintaining a Government +majority. The Catholics, from three-quarters to five-sixths of the +population, had neither votes nor members; the Dissenters scarcely any +members and an almost powerless vote. The Irish Legislature, by an Act +as old as 1495, the famous Poynings' Law, could neither initiate nor +pass a measure without the consent of the English Privy Council, and the +Declaratory Act of 1719 confirmed the power of making English Acts +applicable to Ireland. Government in England itself was, no doubt, +unrepresentative and corrupt at that period, and the people paid the +penalty in full; but it was a national government, under the aegis of +the national faith, and resting, however remotely, on the ultimate +sanction of the people, just as American opinion, more democratically +ascertained, continued to control the major part of American affairs. In +Ireland the Government was systematically anti-Irish. There was no +career for Irishmen in Ireland. Both Catholics and Dissenters were +excluded from all civil and military offices; the highest posts were +generally given to Englishmen born and bred, and the country, +Episcopalian only to a fractional extent, was ruled by a narrow +Episcopalian oligarchy of wealthy landowners and prelates, who bartered +Irish freedom for the place and power of their own families and +dependents. The conditions of this sordid exchange were the ground of +the <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />first important Anglo-Irish political struggle in the eighteenth +century, when the English Viceroy, Townshend, succeeded in 1770-71, at +the cost of half a million, in transferring the bribing power, and +therefore the controlling power, from the "Undertakers," as they were +known, direct to the Crown.</p> + +<p>There seems to have been no continuous English policy beyond that of +making Ireland completely subservient to English interests and purposes, +and often to purposes of the most humiliating and degrading kind. The +Irish Pension List has earned immortal infamy. Jobs too scandalous to +pass muster in England were systematically foisted upon the Irish +establishment. Royal mistresses, a host of needy Germans, a Danish Queen +banished for adultery, lived in England or abroad upon incomes drawn +from the impoverished Irish Exchequer. Nor was it only a question of +pensions. Quantities of valuable sinecure offices were habitually given +to Englishmen who never came near the shores of Ireland. In short, the +English policy towards Ireland was similar to Spain's policy towards her +South American Colonies, minus the grosser forms of physical cruelty and +oppression. Yet Ireland, like the American Colonies until the verge of +the revolutionary struggle, was consistently loyal to the Crown both in +peace and war. The loyalty of Catholic Ireland, poverty-stricken, +inarticulate, almost leaderless, and shamefully misgoverned, does not, +from the human standpoint, appear worthy of admiration, but it was a +fact. The few Catholic noblemen outdid the Protestants in expressions of +devotion; the Whiteboy risings were as little disloyal as religious. Not +a hand stirred for James or his heirs when Jacobite plots and risings +were causing grave public danger in England and Scotland. Catholic Lord +Trimleston offered exclusively Catholic regiments with Catholic officers +to George III. for foreign service in 1762, though they were vetoed by +what his Viceroy Halifax called the "ill-bred bigotry" of the Irish +Parliament. Nor was it till thirty years after that date that Protestant +discontent, under intolerable provocation, assumed an anti-dynastic and +Republican form. To compare the Imperial spirit displayed by America and +Ireland in their views and action is difficult, partly because the +various American Colonies differed widely, partly because there existed +in Ireland no organ of government <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />which could express popular feeling. +Neither country, of course, paid any cash contribution to Imperial +expenses, though both could fairly claim that the English monopoly of +trade imposed an indirect tribute of indefinite size, while Ireland, in +pensions, rents to absentees, and sinecure appointments, was drained of +many millions more. American patronage was an element of substantial +value to England, but it was not on the Irish scale. America on the +whole, perhaps, showed less patriotic feeling than Ireland. With full +allowance for the lack of sympathy and understanding shown by the +British regulars to the American volunteers in their co-operation in the +French wars, it can scarcely be denied that the colonists, together with +much heroism and public spirit, showed occasional slackness and +parsimony in resisting the penetration of a foreign Power which +threatened to hem in their settlements from the St. Lawrence to the +mouth of the Mississippi. Ireland during the Seven Years' War, and until +the Peace of Paris in 1763, maintained a war establishment of 24,000 +troops. She maintained a peace establishment of 12,000 troops, and from +1767 onwards of 15,000 troops. There never seems to have been a whisper +of protest from the Catholic population against these measures, nor, +except in the matter of the American War, to which we shall come +presently, from the Protestants. It may be added that, after 1767, +Catholics in considerable numbers were surreptitiously enlisted in the +ranks, in spite of the Penal Code, and from then until the present day +have fought for the Flag as staunchly as any other class of the King's +subjects.</p> + +<p>It never occurred to responsible English statesmen that here was ground, +firm as a rock in America, and firm enough in Ireland, on which, if only +they obeyed the instincts and maxims upon which England herself had +risen to greatness, they might build a mighty and durable Imperial +structure. That loyalty, to be genuine and lasting, must spring from +liberty was a truth they did not appreciate, and to this truth, +strangely enough, in spite of the lessons of nearly a century and a +half, a numerous school of English statesmen is still blind. It was no +doubt a fatality that the smouldering discontent both of America and +Ireland burst into flame in the reign of a monarch who endeavoured, even +within the limits of Britain, <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />to regain the arbitrary power which had +cost their throne to the Stuarts; it was an additional fatality that the +standard of public morals among the class through which he ruled during +the period of crisis had fallen to lower depths than ever before or +since. Even incorruptible men were either weak and selfish or subject to +some cardinal defect of temper or intellect which, at times of crisis, +neutralized their genius. Chatham and Burke were the noblest figures of +the time, yet Chatham, in his highest mood a nobler and truer champion +of American liberty than Burke, was Minister—nominally, at any +rate—when the Revenue Duties imposed upon the American Colonies in 1867 +destroyed in a moment the reconciliation brought about by the repeal of +the Stamp Act. Burke was surely false to his political philosophy in +founding his American argument on expedience rather than on principle. +Chatham was a thorough democrat, trusting the people, poor or rich, rude +or cultured, common or noble, American or British. Burke, at a time when +the reflection of the genuine opinion of the nation in a pure and free +Parliament might have saved us, as his splendid orations could not save +us, from a disastrous war, scouted Parliamentary reform, and took his +unconscious share in playing the game of the most narrow coercionist +Tories like Charles Townshend and George III.</p> + +<p>Of the interminable chain of fatalities which sicken the mind in +following every phase of Ireland's history, Burke's rigid temperamental +conservatism always seems to me the most fatal and the most melancholy. +It is not that he, the greatest intellect Ireland has ever produced, +made his career in England. By the time one reaches the period in which +he lived one gets used to the expatriation of Irish brains and vigour, +not only to England and America, but to Spain, France, Russia, and +Germany. It is that his intellect was so constituted as in the long run +to be useless, and on some occasions absolutely harmful, to Ireland, +sincerely as he loved her, and often as he supported measures for her +temporary benefit, and rejoiced in their temporary success. An incident +occurred in 1773 which tested his worth to Ireland, and incidentally +threw into strong light English views of Ireland and America at the +period immediately preceding the revolutionary epoch. The Irish +Government, not with any high social aim, but in despera<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" />tion at the +growing Treasury deficit, proposed a tax upon the rents of absentee +landlords, and the fate of the measure, like all Irish measures, had to +be decided in the first instance in England. North's Tory Ministry +actually consented to it. Chatham, far from the active world, and too +broken in health to influence policy either way, wrote a powerful plea +for it; but a strong group of Whig magnates, themselves wealthy absentee +proprietors of Irish land, signed a vehement remonstrance which carried +the day against it, and the author of this remonstrance, of all men in +the world, was the Irishman Burke, who, owning not an acre of Irish land +himself, devoted all his transcendent talents, all the subtlety and +variety of his reasoning, to clothing the selfish greed of others with +the garb of an enlightened patriotism.</p> + +<p>He was wrong fundamentally about Ireland, and only superficially right +about America. In the terms of this celebrated remonstrance, as +illuminated by his own private correspondence, his consistency is +revealed. By the very nature of things, he maintained, the central +Parliament of a great heterogeneous Empire must exercise a supreme +superintending power and regulate the polity and economy of the several +parts as they relate to one another, a principle which, of course, would +have justified the taxation of America, and which, save on the ground of +expediency alone, he would certainly have applied to America. The +proximity of Ireland helped his logic, and surely logic was never +distorted to stranger ends. The "ordinary residence" of the threatened +Irish landowners was in England, "to which country they were attached, +not only by the ties of birth and early habit, but also by those of +indisputable public duties," as though these facts did not constitute in +themselves a damning satire on the system of Irish Government. They were +to be "fined" for living in England, as though that fine were not the +most just and politic which could be conceived, if it went even an inch +towards establishing the principle that Ireland's affairs were the +business of responsible resident Irishmen, or towards the further +principle, enshrined in Drummond's celebrated phrase of seventy years +later in regard to the agrarian system which these Whig noblemen shared +in founding, that "property has its duties as well as its rights." +Finally, argued Burke, heaping irony upon <a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" />irony, the tax would lead +directly to the "separation" of the two Kingdoms both in interest and +affection. The Colonies would follow the Irish example, and thus a +principle of disunion and separation would pervade the whole Empire; the +bonds of common interest, knowledge, and sympathy which now knit it +together would everywhere be loosened, and a narrow, insulated, local +feeling and policy would be proportionately increased.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12" /><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> Such was +Burke's Imperialism, as evoked by an Irish measure which struck at the +root of a frightful social evil and of a vicious political system. But +the idea expressed by Burke—the spirit of his whole argument—went far +beyond this particular absentee tax or any similar tax proposed, as +happened in one instance, by a Colony. It was the superbly grandiose +expression, and all the more insidiously seductive in that it was so +grandiose, of a principle which all thinking men now know, or ought to +know, is the negation of Empire, which lost us America, which came +within an ace of losing us Canada, which might well have lost us South +Africa, and which has in very fact lost us, though not yet irrevocably, +the "affection," to use Burke's word, of Ireland. We may call local +patriotism "narrow and insulated," if we please, but we recognize now, +in every case save that of Ireland, that it is the only foundation for, +and the only stimulant to, Imperial patriotism.</p> + +<p>Chatham, an Englishman of the English, was nevertheless a better +Irishman than Burke, and therefore a better Imperialist. "The tax," he +wrote, "was founded on strong Irish policy. England, it is evident, +profits by draining Ireland of the vast incomes spent here from that +country. But I could not, as a Peer of England, advise the King, on +principles of indirect, accidental English policy, to reject a tax on +absentees sent over here as the genuine desire of the Commons of Ireland +acting in their proper and peculiar sphere, and exercising their +inherent exclusive right by raising supplies in the manner they judge +best." Chatham, in short, applied precisely the same argument to Ireland +as, in his memorable speeches of the next year (1774), he applied to +America, and in both cases he was right. The only mistake he made was in +his estimate of that <a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" />travesty of a representative assembly, the Irish +House of Commons, which, at the secret instigation of the Viceroy, +though without actual coercion, eventually threw out a tax so +distasteful to its English patrons. But the argument for financial +independence remained unassailable, and eventually the Irish Parliament +itself summoned up the courage to adopt and act upon it.</p> + +<p>It may seem almost impossible that in a body so corrupt and exclusive a +national sentiment should have arisen. But every elective assembly, +however badly constituted, contains the seeds of its own regeneration, +and, under even moderately favourable circumstances, moves irresistibly +towards freedom. The pity was that circumstances, save for one brief and +invigorating interlude, were persistently unfavourable to Ireland. The +task was enormous, demanding infinitely more self-sacrifice than even +the ablest and most prescient of her Parliamentarians realized. Until it +was too late, in fact, they never awoke to the true nature of the task, +dazzled by illusory victories. Rotten to the core as the Irish +Parliament was, they sought, strengthened by popular influences, to make +it the instrument for freeing Ireland from a paralyzing servitude; and +up to a point they succeeded, but they did not see that the only +security for real and permanent success was to reform the Parliament +itself. There the inveterate spirit of creed and class ascendancy, +resting in the last resort on English military power, survived long +enough to nullify their efforts.</p> + +<p>The American Revolution and the Irish revolutionary renaissance—the one +achieved by a long and bitter war, the other without +bloodshed—originated and culminated together, were derived from the +same sources, and ran their course in close connection. In Ireland the +movement was exclusively Protestant, in America unsectarian; but in both +cases finance was the lever of emancipation. America, resenting the +commercial restrictions imposed by the Mother Country, but not, until +passion had obscured all landmarks, contesting their abstract justice, +and suffering no great material harm from their incidence, fought for +the principle of self-taxation—a principle which did, of course, +logically include, as the Americans instinctively felt, that of +commercial freedom. Ireland, harassed by commercial restrictions far +more onerous, naturally regarded <a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" />their abolition as vital, and the +control of internal taxation as subsidiary. Apart from concrete +grievances, both countries had to fear an unlimited extension of British +claims founded on the all-embracing Declaratory Acts of 1719 and 1766.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately for herself, Ireland for seventy years or more had been +steadily supplying America with the human elements of resistance in +their most energetic and independent form, and robbing herself +proportionately Approximately, how many Protestants belonging mainly to +Ulster, whether through eviction from the land, industrial unemployment, +or disgust at social and political ostracism, left Ireland for America +in the course of the eighteenth century, it is impossible to say; but +the number, both relatively to population and relatively to the total +emigration, Catholic and Protestant, to all parts of the world, was +undoubtedly very large. Mr. Egerton, in his "Origin and Growth of the +English Colonies," reckons that in 1775 a sixth part of the thirteen +insurrectionary Colonies was composed of Scots-Irish exiles from Ulster, +and that half the Protestant population of that Province emigrated to +those Colonies between 1730 and 1770. As the crisis approached, +emigration became an exodus. Thirty thousand of the farming class are +said to have been driven west by the wholesale evictions of the early +seventies, and ten thousand weavers followed them during the disastrous +depression in the linen trade caused by interruption of commerce with +America. The majority went to the northern Colonies, especially +Pennsylvania, took from the first a vehement stand against the Royal +claims, and supplied some of Washington's best soldiers. A minority went +to the backwoods of Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina, and were little +heard of until as late in the war as 1780, when Tarleton began his +anti-guerilla campaign in the South. Then they woke up, and became, like +their compatriots of the North, formidable and implacable foes.</p> + +<p>Ireland and America, therefore, embarked on their struggle with the +English Parliament in close sympathy. The treatise of Molyneux on Irish +liberty was read with wide approval in America. Franklin visited and +encouraged the Irish patriots, and the Americans in 1775 issued a +special address to them, asserting an identity of interest. Chatham, on +the eve of war, dwelt strongly in the House of Lords upon the same +identity <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" />of interest, and in doing so expressly coupled together Irish +Catholics and Protestants.</p> + +<p>Although united by interest and sentiment, Ireland and America entered +on the struggle under widely varying conditions. The American Colonies +were thirteen separate units, with only a rude organization for common +action, and in each of these units there existed a cleavage of opinion, +based neither on class nor creed, between rebels and loyalists. In spite +of this weakness, the revolt was thoroughly national in the sense that +it was organized and maintained through the State Assemblies, resting on +a broad popular franchise. In Ireland, unbought and unofficial opinion +was united against England. On the other hand, there was no national +Legislature; only an enslaved and unrepresentative Legislature, tempered +by a band of exceptionally brilliant and upright men, and continually +thrust forward in spite of itself into bold and independent action by +unconstitutional pressure from the unrepresented elements outside. +Success so won, as we shall see, was delusive.</p> + +<p>We may note two important additional circumstances: first, the dense +mist of ignorance in which, and largely in consequence of which, England +began her quarrel both with America and Ireland. The average Englishman +was probably even more ignorant of Ireland, which was sixty miles away, +than of America, which was three thousand miles away. I am not at all +sure that that fact is not true still. At any rate, it was true then. +Yet knowledge of Ireland was more necessary, because her condition was +bad in ways unknown in America. In all the essentials of material +well-being, America was supremely fortunate, while Ireland was in the +depths of misery. It is not that this misery went undescribed or +unlamented, or that it was not realized by a small number of Englishmen. +Some of the most famous writings of the time, from the mordant satire of +Swift to the learned and elaborate diagnosis of Arthur Young, laid bare +the hideous ravages wrought by misrule in Ireland; but they had little +or no effect upon English statesmen, and were unread by the only classes +from which, if they had had knowledge, proper practical sympathy might +have come. Until Townshend's Viceroyalty (1767-1772) most of the Irish +Viceroys were absentees for the greater part <a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" />of their term of office, +leaving the conduct of Irish affairs to English Bishops and Judges, the +wisest and most humane of whom could make little or no impression on +English official indifference. American Governors were at any rate +resident, or mainly resident, and a few were good and popular +administrators, though the information which most of them supplied to +the Home Government showed a blindness to what was going on under their +very eyes which would be incomprehensible if we did not know by +experience that it is the invariable result of irresponsible rule over +white men, whether at home or abroad. If, without the presence of race +distinctions, it needed Parliamentary reform in England itself to force +the ruling class to study with real sympathy the needs, character, and +desires of their own people, naturally the same ruling class, sending +out its own members or dependents to America, obtained the most +grotesquely distorted notions of what Americans were and what they +wanted or resented. "Their office," wrote Franklin of the Governors,<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13" /><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> +"makes them indolent, their indolence makes them odious, and, being +conscious that they are hated, they become malicious. Their malice urges +them to continual abuse of the inhabitants in their letters to +Administration, representing them as disaffected and rebellious, and (to +encourage the use of severity) as weak, divided, timid, and cowardly. +Government believes all, thinks it necessary to support and countenance +its officers," etc. The same spirit pervades the official correspondence +of even the best Irish Viceroys of the eighteenth century, and +ultimately had a far more disastrous effect in that there were at all +times in Ireland ancient elements of social dissension which needed only +skilful fomentation by her English rulers to ruin all hopes of +reconciliation and unity. That phase was to come after the first Irish +victories. For the present the system—for it can scarcely be called a +policy—was to irritate all Irishmen and all Americans alike, +irrespective of creed, class, or sentiment, and thus to create on each +side of the Atlantic that dangerous phenomenon, an united people.</p> + +<p>The other noticeable point, admirably described by Mr. Holland in his +"Imperium et Libertas," is the confusion of political ideas in regard to +the status of white dependencies—<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" />a confusion greatly augmented by +loose and misleading analogies with India and the tropical Colonies. +Even a genius like Burke, as I have already pointed out, was misled. +Chatham came nearest to the truth, but, naturally, the actual outbreak +of war with America checked his political thinking, and threw him back +on the bare doctrine of supremacy, right or wrong. It was not fully +understood that there must be a radical difference between the +government of places settled and populated by white colonists and of +places merely exploited by white traders. All the prerogatives of the +Crown and Parliament were theoretically valid over both classes of +dependency, and to abandon any of them seemed to most men of that day to +be inconsistent with Imperial supremacy. Honest and fair-minded +politicians and thinkers tried in vain to reconcile local freedom with +Imperial unity. We have the key now, though we have made no use of it in +Ireland; but most of our forefathers not only had no glimmering of the +truth when the fratricidal war began, but learnt nothing from the war +itself, and remained unenlightened for sixty years more. If the +renunciation in 1778 of the right to tax the Colonies, and the +negotiations founded thereon, had led to a peace, it is quite certain +that friction would have subsequently arisen on other points. The idea +of what we now know as "responsible government" was unknown. Short of +coercive war, there seemed to be only two altogether logical +alternatives—complete separation and legislative Union. America +obtained the one, Ireland was eventually to undergo the other; but it is +interesting to remember that suggestions, rejected by Franklin as +useless, were made for the representation of the American Colonies in +the English Parliament, just as suggestions for a legislative Union +between Ireland and England appeared intermittently all through the +eighteenth century, long before such a Union was a question of practical +politics.</p> + +<p>I need only briefly summarize the incidents which ended in the year 1782 +with the final loss of the American Colonies, and the simultaneous +achievement by Ireland of an apparent legislative independence. To take +America first, the Stamp Act was passed in 1765, and, thanks to the +tumult it created, repealed by the Whigs in 1766, though the Declaratory +Act which accompanied the repeal neutralized its good results.<a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" /> The new +Revenue Duties on glass, paper, painters' colours, and tea were imposed +in 1767, reviving the old irritation, and all but that on tea were +removed, after a period of growing friction, in 1770. Another +comparative lull was succeeded by fresh disorder when in 1773 the East +India Company was permitted to send tea direct to America, and Boston +celebrated its historic "tea-party." The coercion of Massachusetts +followed, with Gage as despotic Military Governor, and, as a result, all +the Colonies were galvanized into unity. In September, 1774, the +Continental Congress met, framed a Declaration of Rights, and obtained a +general agreement to cease from all commerce with Britain until +grievances were redressed. Fresh coercion having been applied, war broke +out in 1775. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, +by John Hancock, President of Congress and the descendant of an Ulster +exile, and was first read aloud in Philadelphia by Captain John Nixon, +the son of an evicted Wexford farmer. Another Irishman, General +Montgomery, led the invasion of Canada.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14" /><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> The war, with manifold +vicissitudes, dragged on for eight years; but the surrender of +Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, virtually ended the physical +struggle, while the resolution of the House of Commons on February 27, +1782, against the further prosecution of hostilities, ended the contest +of principle.</p> + +<p>The turning-point had been the intervention of the French in 1778, and +the same event was to turn the scale in Ireland. There, for many years +past, the public finances had been sinking into a more and more +scandalous condition. Taxation was by no means heavy, but pensions and +sinecures multiplied, and the debt swelled. Inevitably there grew up +within Parliament a small independent opposition which would not be +bribed into conniving at the ruin of Ireland, while even bought placemen +were stung into throwing their votes into the Irish rather than the +English scale. Frequent efforts were made to use the insufficiency of +the hereditary revenue as a lever for gaining control of finance and for +obtaining domestic reform. An Octennial Act, passed in 1768, went a +little way towards transforming Parliament from a permanent privileged +Committee, under the control of the Executive, into the semblance <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />at +least of a free Assembly, and the first dissolution under this Act, in +1776, produced the famous Parliament which, though elected on the same +narrow and corrupt basis as before, in the space of six years first +admitted the principle of toleration for all creeds, and wrested from +English hands commercial and legislative autonomy. It came too late to +avert—if, indeed, it could ever have averted—the implication of +Ireland in the American War, its predecessor of 1775 having, in defiance +of Irish opinion, subscribed an Address to the Crown, expressing +"abhorrence" of the American revolt and "inviolable attachment to the +just rights" of the King's Government, and having obediently voted four +thousand Irish troops for the war.</p> + +<p>Nor, for all the impassioned eloquence of Grattan and Hussey Burgh, did +the real driving-power of the new Parliament come from within its own +ranks, but from the unrepresented multitude outside. A clause removing +the test from Dissenters was struck out of the Catholic Relief Act of +1778, mainly owing to dictation from England, but partly from resentment +against Presbyterian sympathy with the American cause. It was only in +1780, when the Presbyterians were enrolled in that formidable +revolutionary organization known as the Volunteers, that a test which +had excluded them from all share in the government of their adopted +country for seventy-four years was repealed. As for the Catholics, the +small measure of legal relief granted to them excited no opposition +anywhere. Parts of the Penal Code, especially the laws against worship +and the clergy, had become inoperative with time and the sheer +impossibility of enforcement. The religion, naturally, had thriven under +persecution, so that in spite of the Code's manifold temptations to +recant, only four thousand converts had been registered in the last +fifty years. The laws designed to safeguard the wholesale confiscations +of the previous century had long ago achieved their purpose, and men +were beginning to perceive the fatal economic effects of keeping the +great mass of the people poor and ignorant. The real spirit of +toleration shown in the enactments of 1778, the most important of which +enabled Catholics to obtain land on a lease of 999 years, was small +enough if we consider the quiescence of the Catholics for generations +past, the absence of all tendency in them <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" />towards counter-persecution, +or even towards intolerance of Protestantism in any of its forms, +Quaker, Huguenot, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Methodist, in spite of +their own overwhelming numbers and of the burning grievance of the +tithes. Politically they were a source of great strength to the +Government. When the Presbyterians condemned the American War, the +Catholic leaders memorialized the Government in favour of it as warmly +as the tame majority in Parliament.</p> + +<p>Conservatives by religion, their devotion to authority annulled all +instincts of revenge for the hideous wrongs of the past. The Government, +now on the verge of a war with the two great Catholic Powers of Europe, +began to realize this, and to feel the wisdom of some degree of +conciliation. After all, only four years before they had not merely +tolerated, but established, the Catholic Church in the conquered +province of Quebec, with the result that the French Canadians remained +loyal during the American War. But neither the Government nor the finest +independent men in Parliament—not even Grattan—entertained the +remotest idea of admitting Irish Catholics to any really effective share +in the Government which their loyalty made stable. That noble but +hopeless conception originated later, as the dynamic impulse for +commercial freedom and legislative independence was originating now, +outside the walls of Parliament.</p> + +<p>The rupture with France in 1778 denuded Ireland of troops, and called +into being the Protestant Volunteers; a disciplined, armed body, headed +by leaders as weighty and respectable as Lord Charlemont. This body, +formed originally for home defence, by a natural and legitimate +transition assumed a political aspect, and demanded from a dismayed and +terrorized Government commercial freedom for Ireland. For once in her +life Ireland was too strong to be coerced. Punishment like that applied +to Massachusetts was physically impossible. The bitter protests of +English merchants passed unheeded, and the fiscal claims of the +Volunteers, with their cannon labelled "Free Trade or this," were +granted in full early in 1780. The moral was to persist. From 40,000 the +numbers of the Volunteers rose in the two succeeding years to 80,000, +and they stood firm for further concessions. The national movement grew +like a river in spate; it swept forward the <a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />lethargic Catholics and +engulfed Parliament. In a tempest of enthusiasm Grattan's Declaration of +Independence was carried unanimously in the Irish House of Commons on +April 16, 1782, and a month later received legal confirmation in England +at the hands of the same Whig Government and Parliament which broke off +hostilities with America, and in the same session.</p> + +<p>America took her own road and worked out her own magnificent destiny. +Most of us now honour Washington and the citizen troops he led. We say +they fought, as Hampden and their English forefathers fought, for a +sublime ideal, freedom, and that they were chips of the old block. But +let not distance delude us into supposing that they were without the +full measure of human weakness, or that they did not suffer +considerable, perhaps permanent, harm from the ten years of smothered +revolt and lawless agitation, followed by the seven years of open war +which preceded their victory. Washington's genius carried them safely +through the ordeal of the war, and the still more exacting ordeal of +political reconstruction after the war, but it is well known how nearly +he and his staunchest supporters failed. The Revolution, like all +revolutions, brought out all the bad as well as all the good in human +nature. Bad laws always deteriorate a people; they breed a contempt for +law which coercion only aggravates, and which survives the establishment +of good laws. As I have already indicated, the dislike and the +systematic evasion by smuggling of the trade laws during the long period +when the revolt was incubating harmed American character, and probably +sowed the seed of future corruption and dissension. However true that +may be, it is certainly true that the American rebels showed no more +heroism or self-sacrifice than the average Englishman or Irishman in any +other part of the world might have been expected to show under similar +conditions. Historians and politicians, to whom legal authority always +seems sacrosanct and agitation against it a popular vice, who mistake +cause and effect so far as to derive freedom from character, instead of +character from freedom, can make, and have made, the conventional case +against Home Rule for the Americans as plausibly as the same case has, +at various times, been made against Home Rule for Canada, South Africa, +and Ireland. Since all white men are <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" />fundamentally alike in their +faults as well as in their virtues, there is always abundant material +for an indictment on the ground of bad character. The Americans of the +revolutionary war, together with much fortitude, integrity, and public +spirit, showed without doubt a good deal of levity, self-seeking, +vindictiveness, and incompetence; and whoever chooses to amass, magnify, +and isolate evidences of their guilt can demonstrate their unfitness for +self-government just as well as he can demonstrate the same proposition +in the case of Ireland. Mr. J.W. Fortescue, the learned and entertaining +historian of the British Army, has done the former task as well as it +can be done. He denounces the whole Colony of Massachusetts—men of his +own national stock—as the pestilent offspring of an "irreconcilable +faction," which had originally left England deeply imbued with the +doctrines of Republicanism. Having gained, and by lying and subterfuge +retained, some measure of independence, they sank from depth to depth of +meanness and turpitude. They struggled for no high principle, and +refused to be taxed from England, simply because they were too +contemptibly stingy and unpatriotic to pay a shilling a head towards the +maintenance of the Imperial Army. It is always the "mob," the +"ruffians," the "rabble," of Boston who carry out the reprisals against +the royal coercion, and, like the Irish peasants of the nineteenth +century, they are always the half-blind, half-criminal tools of +unscrupulous "agitators." It has been, and remains, an obsession with +the partisans of law over liberty all the world over that the fettered +community, wherever it may be and however composed, does not really want +liberty, but that the majority of its sober citizens are dragged into an +artificial agitation by mercenary scribes and sham patriots—a view +which is always somewhat difficult to reconcile, as students of American +and Irish history are aware, not only with the facts of prolonged and +tenacious resistance, but with the other view, equally necessary to the +argument for law, that the whole community is sinfully unfit for +liberty; and Mr. Fortescue falls into the usual maze of +self-contradiction and obscurity when he tries to give an intelligible +account of a war which lasted seven long and weary years, and yet was +"factitious," initiated by an hysterical rabble, stimulated and +sustained by the basest and pettiest motives, and which, he <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" />contends, +was "the work of a small but energetic and well-organized minority +towards which the mass of the people, when not directly hostile, was +mainly indifferent." Happily, Mr. Fortescue's candour as an historian of +facts gives us the clue to this strange tangle. We find no evidence that +the sober loyalist majority who sustain one side of his argument, and +whom we should expect to find crushing the revolt with ease in +co-operation with the British regular troops, were, in fact, a majority, +nor that they were either better or worse men, or more or less ardent +patriots, than the mutinous minority, or the British regular soldiers +themselves. Their loyalty, like the disloyalty of the other side, is +sometimes interested and evanescent, more often sincere and tenacious; +they are given to desertion, like Washington's troops, like Lee's and +Grant's troops nearly a century later, like the Boer troops and like all +Volunteer levies, which have somehow to combine war with the duty of +keeping their homes and business afloat. We find, too, that a +counter-current of desertion flows from the British, and still more from +the German, regulars, also a natural enough phenomenon in what was +virtually a civil war for liberty; so that "General Greene was often +heard to say that at the close of the war he fought the enemy with +British soldiers, and that the British fought him with those of +America." And then Mr. Fortescue, ignoring the British side of the case, +exultingly quotes against the Americans "the cynical Benedict Arnold, +who knew his countrymen," and who said: "Money will go farther than arms +in America." Yet Arnold, whose opinion of his countrymen Mr. Fortescue +accepts as correct and conclusive, was himself, not a plain deserter, +but a perjured military traitor of the most despicable kind. We may +conclude, perhaps, after taking a broad view of the whole Revolution, +that Washington not only knew his countrymen, who were Mr. Fortescue's +countrymen, better than Arnold, but was a better representative of their +dominant characteristics.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15" /><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p> + +<p>Mr. Fortescue is peculiar in the violence of his prepossession, and we +know the source of that prepossession, a passionate love of the British +Army, which does him great honour, while it distorts his political +vision. I should not refer at such <a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" />length to his view of the American +War were it not that, whenever a concrete case of Home Rule comes up for +discussion, his philosophy is apt to become the typical and predominant +philosophy. Historical sense seems to vanish, and the same savage racial +bias supervenes, whether the unruly people concerned are absolutely +consanguineous, closely related, or of foreign nationality. Instead of a +general acceptance of the ascertained truth that men thrive and coalesce +under self-government and sink into deterioration and division under +coercion, we get the same pharisaical assumption of superiority in the +dominant people, the same attribution of sordid and ugly motives to the +leaders of an unruly people, the same vague idealization of the loyalist +minority, the same fixed hallucination that the majority does not want +what by all the constitutional means in its power it says it wants, and +the correspondingly fatal tendency to gauge the intensity of a +conviction solely by the amount of physical violence it evokes, while +making that very violence an argument for the depravity of those who use +it, and a pretext for denying them self-government.</p> + +<p>All this is terribly true in the case of Ireland, and when I next revert +to the American continent, the reader will observe that the same ideas +were entertained towards Canada, the only white Colony left to the +British Empire after the loss of the thirteen States.<a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" /></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III" />CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT</h3> + + +<p>We left Ireland in 1782 apparently in possession of a triumph as great +as that of America, though won without bloodshed and without the least +tincture of sedition; for the Volunteers of 1782 were as loyal to the +Crown as the most ardent American royalists. In the light of political +ideas developed at a much later period, we know that the American +Colonies might have remained within the Empire, even if their utmost +claims had been granted. Had the idea of responsible government been +understood, it would have been realized that their exclusive control of +taxation and legislation was not inconsistent with Imperial Union, but +essential to it. Grattan and his Irish friends, ignorant of the true +solution, honestly thought, in the intoxication of the moment, that they +had solved the problem so disastrously bungled for America. The facts of +ethnology and geography seemed to have been recognized. Ireland and +England, united by a Crown which both reverenced, stood together, like +Britain and the Dominions of to-day, as sister nations, with the old +irritating servitude swept away, and the bonds of natural affection and +natural interest substituted. That the close proximity of the two +nations, however marked the contrast between their natural +characteristics, made these bonds far more necessary and valuable than +in the case of America, stood to reason, and, again, the fact was +recognized in Anglo-Irish relations. America had fought rather than +submit to a forced contribution to Imperial funds. Nobody in Ireland, in +or out of Parliament, had ever objected in principle to an indirect +voluntary contribution in troops, and now that the American War was +ended, non-Parliamentary objections to one particular application of the +principle had no further substance. Nor, as was shortly to be shown in +the reception <a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />given in Ireland to Pitt's abortive Commercial +Propositions of 1785, was there any objection to a direct contribution +in money on a fixed annual scale in return for a mutual free trade.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16" /><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> +The sun had surely risen over a free yet loyal Ireland.</p> + +<p>Never was there a more complete delusion. It would have been far better +for Ireland if she had never had a Parliament at all, but had had to +seek her own salvation in the healthy rough-and-tumble of domestic +revolution. The mere name of "Parliament" seems perpetually to have +hypnotized even its best members, and the illusion was at its highest +now. Nothing essential had been changed. Commercial freedom was the most +real gain, because it involved the definite repeal of certain trade-laws +and the permission to Ireland to make what she liked and send it where +she liked; but it was a small gain without some means of finding out +what Ireland really liked, and translating that will, without external +pressure, into law. The Parliament was neither an organ of public +opinion nor a free agent. It was even more corrupt and less +representative than before. It was as completely under the control of +the English Government as before. The modern conception of a Colonial +Ministry serving under a constitutional Governor selected by the Crown, +but acting with the advice of his Ministry, was unknown. The English +Government, through its Lord-Lieutenant, still appointed English +Ministers in Ireland, and in the hands of these Ministers lay not only +that large portion of the national income known as the hereditary +revenue, but the whole machinery of patronage and corruption. Even the +legislative independence was unreal; for majorities still had to be +bought, Irish Bills had still to receive the Royal Assent, that is, +English ministerial assent; so that powerful English pressure could be, +and was, brought to bear upon their policy and construction. And the +worst of it was that English pressure here and elsewhere meant then what +it meant in the next century, and what it too often means now, English +party pressure exercised spasmodically and ignorantly, in order to serve +sectional English ends. In short, Ireland, so far from being <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" />a nation, +was still virtually a Colony, subjected to the worst conceivable form of +colonial Government, groaning under economic evils unknown in the least +fortunate of the Colonies, and without the numerous mitigating +circumstances and the hope of ultimate cure due to remoteness from the +seat of Empire. On the contrary, nearness to England, and, above all, +nearness to France, where the misrule and miseries of ages were about to +culminate in a fearful upheaval of social order, complicated immensely +the problem of regeneration in Ireland.</p> + +<p>What was the remedy? Parliamentary reform. The Volunteers saw this +instantly. Parliament itself scouted the idea of reform, because it +threatened the Protestant ascendancy. Any weakening of the Protestant +ascendancy was unthinkable to Irish statesmen, even to Grattan, who in +1778 had coined the grandiose phrase that "the Irish Protestant could +never be free until the Irish Catholic had ceased to be a slave," and +who afterwards explained what he meant by saying that the liberty of the +Catholic was to be only such as was "entirely consistent with the +Protestant ascendancy," and that "the Protestant interest was his first +object." Ascendancy, then, in the mind of the ruling class in Ireland +was fundamental. What was its corollary? Dependence on England. +Ascendancies, whether based on creed or property, or, as in Ireland, on +both, cannot last in any white community without external support, and +the external support for ascendancy in Ireland was English force without +and English bribes within. There was the chain of causation, the vicious +circle rather; and yet Grattan, who never touched a bribe, thought he +had freed his beloved Ireland from the English influences which were +throttling her. He could not see that the more he wrestled for the +independence of a sham Parliament, while resisting its transformation +into a real Parliament, the more he strengthened those influences, +because he inevitably widened the gulf between Parliament and the Irish +people. The glamour his brilliant gifts had thrown over the Irish +Parliament only served to divert his own mind and the minds of other +talented and high-minded men from the seat of disease in Ireland. Time +and talent were wasted from the first over points of pride, trivialities +which seemed portentous to over-sensitive minds; metaphysical puzzles as +to the exact nature of the <a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" />relations now existing between Ireland and +England; whether the repeal of the Poynings' Act and the Declaratory Act +were sufficient guarantees of freedom; whether Ireland herself should +nominate a Regent or accept the nomination from England. Meanwhile, the +sands were running out, and Ireland was a slave to a minute but powerful +minority of her sons and, only through them, to England.</p> + +<p>Yet the heart of Ireland was sound. All the materials for regeneration +were there. The Catholics, whom by an old inherited instinct Grattan +professed to dread, were the most Conservative part of the population, +so Conservative as to be unaware of the source of their miseries, +without the smallest leaning towards a counter-ascendancy, and without a +notion of sedition or rebellion. Paradox as it seems, if they leaned in +any political direction, it was dimly towards the constituted authority +of the day, the Irish Parliament. But the truth is that they were +without political consciousness, behind the times, unappreciative of the +new forces operating round them. In sore need of courageous and +enlightened guidance from men of their own faith, they were almost +leaderless. The leeway to be made up after the destructive action of the +penal laws was so enormous that Catholic philanthropists had no time or +will for high politics, and devoted their whole energy to the further +relaxation of those laws, to the education of their backward +co-religionists, and to the mitigation of poverty. For relief they +instinctively looked towards the only legal source of relief, though the +source of secular oppression, Parliament. But this was habit. The +Catholics at this time were like clay in the hands of the potter, open +to any curative and ennobling impulse. That impulse came, as was right +and natural, from the Protestant side. The only healthy political +organization in Ireland in 1782 was that of the Volunteers of the North, +with their headquarters at Belfast. They represented all that was best +in the Protestant population. They had won the practical victory, such +as it was, Parliament, with all its flaming rhetoric, only the titular +victory. They grasped the essential truth that Parliament was rotten, +and that Ireland's future depended on its reform. Numbering some 80,000 +or 100,000, they at once began to press for reform, and, since they had +no constitutional resources, to overawe<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" /> Parliament. Parliament at once +stood on its dignity and on its civil rights against the "Pretorian +bands." "And now," said Grattan in his magnificent way, "having given a +Parliament to the people, the Volunteers will, I doubt not, leave the +people to Parliament, and thus close specifically and majestically a +great work."</p> + +<p>But the work was not begun. Parliament was the enemy of the people, and +the Volunteers knew it. Now, what was the "people" in the minds of the +Volunteers? Undoubtedly they did not, after a century of racial +ascendancy, perform the miracle of accepting at once in its entirety the +principle of absolute political equality for all Irishmen, Catholic and +Protestant alike. Such mental revulsions rarely occur among men, and +when they do occur are apt to produce reactionary cataclysms. But they +did from the first give a real meaning to Grattan's vague rhetoric about +Catholic slaves; from the first they made overtures towards the +Catholics, and ventilated proposals for the Catholic franchise as a part +of their scheme of reform ten years before that enfranchisement, without +Parliamentary reform and therefore valueless, became a practical issue. +For the present these proposals were outvoted, and the effective demand +of the Volunteers, as framed in the great Convention held at Dublin in +November, 1783, was for a purification and reconstruction of Parliament +on a democratic Protestant basis. The Catholic franchise had been +strongly supported, but by the influence of Charlemont and Flood +rejected. It is, of course, easy to maintain in theory that a democratic +Protestant ascendancy so designed was as incompatible with Irish freedom +as an aristocratic and corrupt ascendancy; but nobody with faith in +human nature or any knowledge of history, will care to affirm that the +process of reform would have ended with the enactment of the Volunteer +Bill. No present-day Protestant Ulsterman should entertain such a +dishonouring doubt. Mercifully, men are so made that, if left to +themselves, they go forward, not backward. A pure Assembly, formed on +the Volunteer plan, stimulated by the enlightened conscience which such +an Assembly invariably develops, by the discovery of the fundamental +identity of interests between the great bulk of Catholics and +Protestants, and by the manly instinct of self-preservation <a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" />against +undue English encroachment, would have moved rapidly towards tolerance +and equality.</p> + +<p>But the Assembly which might have saved Ireland never came into being. +The Volunteers were in weak and incompetent hands. The metamorphosis +they had undergone from a body formed for home defence into a militant +political organization found them at the critical moment unprovided with +the right stamp of leader. Flood, who helped to draft their Bill, was a +brilliant but unscrupulous and discredited Parliamentarian, and a +fanatical advocate of an unimpaired Protestant ascendancy. Lord +Charlemont, one of the most influential founders of the movement, and a +man of the highest integrity, was lukewarm for reform, an aristocrat and +an ascendancy man to the finger-tips, dreading the mysterious forces he +had helped to call into being, and desirous to keep them, as he said, +"respectable." Was it respectable for armed men to dictate to a +Parliament, however just their cause? As often happens in the ferment of +popular movements, the one leader who spoke undiluted truth and sense +spoke it in florid and unmeasured language and was himself of a figure +and behaviour little likely to inspire permanent confidence. This was +the famous Bishop of Derry, called by Charlemont a blasphemous Deist, by +Wesley an exemplary Divine, by Fox a dishonest madman, and by Jeremy +Bentham "a most excellent companion, pleasant, intelligent, well-bred, +and liberal-minded to the last degree." He was certainly vain and +ostentatious, certainly a democratic free-thinker, but a full knowledge +of his character is not of much concern to us. The point is that he was +right about Ireland's needs, though the wrong man at the moment to drive +home her claims. Many finer agitators than he have failed in causes just +as good. Many without half his merits have succeeded. We shall find his +Canadian counterparts later in the figures of Mackenzie and Papineau.</p> + +<p>The crisis came on November 29, 1783, when the Reform Bill reached +Parliament, and was introduced by Flood, wearing the Volunteer dress. It +was rejected on the first vote. No doubt the circumstances were +humiliating, and if there had been any serious inclination in Parliament +towards self-reform and the relinquishment of an odious and mischievous +monopoly, <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />we should freely forgive rejection. But there was little or +none, as after-events proved, and the real humiliation lay, not in the +dictation of the Irish Volunteers, but in the fact that the Volunteers +themselves were overawed by a strong body of British regular troops, +mustered for the occasion under General Burgoyne. The vicious circle was +complete. Forced to choose between reform and dependence on England, +Parliament chose the latter. And only a year and a half before Grattan +had dazzled his hears with the words: "Ireland is now a nation ... <i>esto +perpetua</i>."</p> + +<p>There are very few critical dates in Irish history, and of those few the +night of November 29, 1783, was the most critical of all. It marked the +climax of a brief and bright renaissance from the long stagnation of the +eighteenth, and heralded a decline into the long agony of the nineteenth +century, a decline concealed by the fictitious lustre which still hangs +over the first decade of Grattan's unreformed Parliament, but none the +less already present. The Volunteers, their grand opportunity lost, +slowly broke up. Should they have used force, even under the threat of +Burgoyne's guns? It would have been infinitely better both for England +and Ireland if they had. Nothing but force could avail. Never would +force have been better justified, for the very soul of a people "rang +zwischen Tod und Leben."</p> + +<p>It is hard, nevertheless, to blame the Volunteers for not appreciating +the full magnitude of the crisis and acting accordingly. They were ahead +of their time as it was in the political instinct which taught them the +vital importance of a reformed Parliament. They were far ahead of +England, where the younger Pitt had failed to carry Reform a few months +before, and was to fail again two years later when he urged reform for +Ireland. They were even ahead of their time in religious +tolerance—witness the Gordon riots in London two years before. Their +Parliament wore the crown and spoke the regal language of a patriot +Assembly. For five years they themselves had glorified justifiably in +the perfect discipline and sobriety with which they had used their +irregular power. Their most trusted leaders suggested that they would +yet achieve their ends without violence, while the large majority of the +Volunteers themselves were still as loyal to the Crown as the<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" /> +Catholics, and were inclined, therefore, to shrink from action which, +although in itself not in the remotest degree connected with dynastic +questions, involved a theoretical conflict with the Crown, and perhaps +an actual collision with Royal troops. One of the last acts of the +Volunteer Convention, before its dissolution, was to pass an address to +the King expressing fervent zeal for the Crown, reminding him of their +quiet and dignified behaviour in the past, and praying that "their +humble wish to have certain manifest perversions of the Parliamentary +representation of this kingdom remedied by the Legislature in some +reasonable degree, might not be imputed to any spirit of innovation in +them, but to a sober and laudable desire to uphold the Constitution, to +confirm the satisfaction of their fellow-subjects, and to perpetuate the +cordial union of the two kingdoms." This document might have been copied +<i>mutatis mutandis</i> from the American petitions prior to the war, and was +to be reproduced almost word for word in Canadian petitions dealing with +less serious grievances whose neglect at the hands of the Government did +actually lead to armed rebellion. It must be taken, as Mr. Lecky truly +says, as the "defence of the Convention before the bar of history." +Drawn up by the most moderate and least prescient leaders, it was a +vindication of the past, not a pledge for the future; for "from that +time," as Mr. Lecky writes, "the conviction sank deep into the minds of +many that reform in Ireland could only be effected by revolution, and +the rebellion of 1798 might be already foreseen."</p> + +<p>The story of that transition, with all its disastrous consequences in +the denationalization of Ireland, in the arrest of healing forces, in +the reawakening of slumbering bigotries and hatreds, in the artificial +transformation of Catholics into anti-English rebels, and Protestants +into anti-Irish Loyalists, in the long agony of the land war, the tithe +war, the Church war, and the loathsome savageries of the rebellion +itself, is one of the most repulsive in history. It is repulsive because +you can watch, as it were, upon a dissecting-table the moral fibre of a +people, from no inherent germ of decay, against reason, against nature, +visibly wasting under a corrosive acid. Typical figures stand out: the +strong figure of Fitzgibbon, voicing ascendancy in its crudest and +ugliest form; at the other <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />extreme the ardent but inadequate figure of +Wolfe Tone, affirming in words which expressed the literal truth of the +case that "to subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break +the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our +political evils, and to assert the independence of my country—these +were my objects." Midway stands Grattan, the defeated and disillusioned +"Girondin," as Mr. Fisher aptly calls him,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17" /><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> blind until it was too +late to the errors which plunged his country into anarchy, and retiring +in despair when he saw that anarchy coming. And on the other side of the +water, Pitt, dispassionately prescribing for Ireland in 1784, while +there was yet time, the radical remedy, Reform, patiently turning, when +that was refused, to palliatives like mutual free trade in 1785 and the +Catholic franchise in 1793; and meanwhile, with an undercurrent of cool +scepticism, preparing the ground for the only alternative to Reform, +short of a revolutionary separation of the two countries, legislative +Union, and remorselessly pushing that Union through by the only +available means, bribery.</p> + +<p>In this wretched story we seek in vain for individual scapegoats. +Tracing events to their source, we strike against two obstructions, +proximity and ignorance, and we may as well make them our scapegoats. If +proximity had implied knowledge and forbearance, all would have been +well, but it implied just the reverse, and prohibited the kind of +solution which, after very much the same sort of crisis, and in the +teeth of ignorance and error, was afterwards reached in the case of +Canada and South Africa.</p> + +<p>The immediate cause is clear. The failure of Reform is the key to the +Rebellion and the Union. In a patriotic anxiety to idealize Grattan's +Parliament, with a view to justifying later claims for autonomy, +Irishmen have generally shut their eyes to this cardinal fact, and have +preferred to dwell with exaggerated emphasis on the little good that +Parliament did rather than on the enormous evils which it not only left +untouched, but scarcely observed. We must remember that it was not only +a Protestant body, but a close body of landlords, with an infusion of +lawyers and others devoted to the interest of land<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" />lords. In that +capacity it was incapable of diagnosing, much less of remedying, the +gravest material ills of Ireland. In the very narrow domain where the +landlord interest was not concerned, as in industrial and commercial +matters, Parliament seems to have acted on the whole with wisdom. It +endeavoured to encourage industries, while refusing to squander its +newly won commercial powers in waging tariff wars with Great Britain, +where prohibitive duties against Irish goods still continued to be +imposed. But Ireland was no longer an industrial country. All the +encouragement in the world could not replace lost aptitudes or bring +back the exiled craftsmen who, during a century past, had left Ireland +to enrich European countries with their skill. The favoured linen +industry alone survived to reach its present flourishing condition. The +revival in other manufactures, even in that of wool, which was +remarkably rapid and strong, seems to have been artificial and +transient. No wonder; for, while Ireland had been stagnant for a +century, her great competitor, England, had been steadily building up +that capacity for organized industry which, under the inventive genius +of Arkwright, Hargreaves, and Watt, and the economic genius of Adam +Smith, made the last twenty years of the eighteenth century such a +marvellous period of industrial expansion, and eventually converted +England from an agricultural into a manufacturing nation. Ireland was +hopelessly late in the race. On the other hand, the fertile land of +Ireland remained as the indestructible source of wealth and the prime +means of subsistence for the great bulk of the four and a half million +souls who inhabited the country. Parliament seems to have been almost +indifferent to the miseries of the agricultural population, wholly +indifferent, certainly, to their source, the vicious agrarian system +which it was the interest of its own members to sustain. Foster's famous +Corn Law without doubt increased tillage, and, in conjunction with the +inflated prices for produce caused by the French War, gave a powerful +though a somewhat unhealthy impulse to the trade in corn. But it +enriched only the landlords, and left untouched the real abuses, +absenteeism, middlemanism, insecurity of tenure, rack-rents, and tithes. +The Whiteboy risings of the sixties and seventies recurred, and were met +with Coercion Acts as stupid and cruel as those of the nineteenth +<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" />century. The tithe grievance, which festered and grew into civil war in +the nineteenth century, was never touched. While tenants in North-East +Ulster were painfully and forcibly establishing their custom of tenant +right in the teeth of the law, the inhuman system of cottier tenancy, +which was to last until 1881, became more and more firmly rooted in +other parts of Ireland.</p> + +<p>None but a democratic Assembly could possibly have grappled with these +evils; nor is there any reason to suppose that in the existing condition +of Ireland a Protestant democratic Assembly, even if temporarily it +retained its sectarian character, would have grappled with them less +boldly and drastically than an Assembly composed of Catholics and +Protestants. The material interests of nineteen-twentieths of the people +were the same, while the education and intelligence belonged mainly to +the Protestants. Ulster tenants had as much need of good land laws as +other tenants. Tithes were as much disliked in the north as in the +south. The Established Church was the Church of a very small minority, +and its clergy, numbers of whom were absentees, were as unpopular as the +absentee landlords and the absentee office-holders and pensioners.</p> + +<p>But with no redress, and, what is more important, no prospect of redress +for the primary ills of Ireland, the centrifugal forces of religion and +race had full scope for their baneful influence. And it was at the very +moment when tolerance was steadily gaining ground among all classes that +these spectres of ancient wrong were summoned up to destroy the good +work.</p> + +<p>How did this come about? Let us remember once more that everything +hinged on Reform. Reform gained a little, but suffered far more, by its +association with the question of Catholic franchise, which was useless +without Reform, while it was the corollary of Reform. Nothing is more +remarkable than the growth of academic tolerance during this period, +doubtful and suspect as the motives sometimes were. It is true that the +great Relief Act of 1793, giving Catholics the vote and removing a +quantity of other disqualifications, would scarcely have been sanctioned +by the Parliamentary managers without the stern dictation of Pitt, whose +mind was strongly influenced by the violent anti-Catholic turn just +taken by the<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" /> French Revolution; but, once sanctioned, it passed +rapidly, and was received with universal satisfaction in the country at +large. Without "Emancipation," that is, the permission to elect +Catholics to sit in Parliament and hold office, the franchise was +illusory and even harmful. In the counties the forty-shilling "freehold" +vote ("freehold" was an ironical misnomer) encouraged Protestant +landlords for another generation, before and after the Union, still +further to subdivide already excessively small holdings, while the +benefits to be derived from the admission to power of propertied +Catholics, with all their intensely Conservative instincts, were thrown +away. Emancipation apart, the franchise without Reform was a complete +farce, for the boroughs, which controlled the Parliamentary balance, +were the personal property of Protestant landlords, and the 110 +Parliamentary placemen were indirectly their tools. As usual, the men of +light and leading contributed unconsciously to the strength of a system +which, in their hearts, as honest men, they condemned. Each of them had +some fatal defect of understanding. Grattan became a strong Emancipator, +but remained an academic and ineffectual reformer striving in vain to +reconcile Reform with a passionate abhorrence of democracy and a +determination to keep power in the hands of landed property. In England, +which was Protestant in the Established sense, he would have done no +more harm than Burke, who for the same reason fought Reform as strongly +as Pitt and his father Chatham had advocated it. But in Ireland, which +was Catholic and Nonconformist, landed property signified Episcopalian +landed property, that is, the narrowest form of ascendancy. Charlemont +was an even stranger paradox. He was an academic Reformer before +Grattan, but not an Emancipator, arriving at the same sterility as +Grattan through a religious bias which Grattan ceased to feel, a bias +inspired, not by a fanatical fear of democracy in itself, but by a fear +of Catholic revenge for past wrongs. These men and their like, admirable +and lovable as in many respects they were, were useless to Ireland in +those terrible times. Whether Emancipation, unaccompanied by Reform, had +any real chance of passing Parliament in 1795, when the Whig Viceroy +Fitzwilliam, the one Viceroy in the eighteenth century who ever +conceived the idea of governing<a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" /> Ireland according to Irish ideas, came +over from England with the avowed intention of proposing it, is a matter +of conjecture. Fitzwilliam was snuffed out by Pitt, and recalled under +circumstances which still remain a matter of controversy. All we can say +with certainty is that the opinion of Ireland at large was absolutely +ignored, and that English party intrigues and English claims on Irish +patronage had much to do with the result. On the whole, however, I agree +with Mr. Fisher that too much importance has been given to this episode, +especially by Mr. Lecky, who devotes nearly a volume to it.</p> + +<p>The anti-national Irish Parliament was past praying for. Long before +1795 the Irish aristocracy had lost whatever power for good it ever +possessed, and most of the resolute reformers of Wolfe Tone's +middle-class Protestant school had turned, under the enthralling +fascination of the French Revolution, into revolutionaries. Reform had +been refused in 1782; again, and without coercion from the Volunteers, +in 1783. It was refused again in 1784, against the advice of Pitt and at +the instigation of Pitt's own Viceroy, Rutland, whom Pitt had +urged—what a grim irony it seems!—to give "unanswerable proofs that +the cases of Ireland and England are different," and who answered with +truth that the ascendancy of a minority could only be maintained "by +force or corruption." Every succeeding year showed the same results. +Wolfe Tone was more than justified, he was compelled, to convert his +Society of United Irishmen, founded in 1791, into a revolutionary +organization and to seek by forcible means to overthrow the Executive +which controlled Parliament and, through it, Ireland. Since the symbol +of the Irish Executive was the British Crown, he, of course, abjured the +Crown, though he had no more quarrel with the Crown as such than had the +American or Canadian patriots. He simply loved his country, and from the +first saw with clear eyes the only way to save her. Tolerance to him was +not an isolated virtue, but an integral part of democracy. He took +little interest in the Parliamentary side of Catholic relief, realizing +its hollow unreality, and, in the case of the Bill of 1793, actually +ridiculing the absurd spectacle of the Catholic cottiers being herded to +the poll by their Protestant landlords. Nor was he even an extreme +Democrat, for he advocated a ten-pound, instead of a forty shilling +<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" />franchise. His original pamphlet of 1791 contains nothing but the most +sober political common sense.</p> + +<p>His aim was to unite Irishmen of all creeds to overthrow a Government +which did not emanate from or represent them, and which was ruinous to +them. It is not surprising that he failed. Ireland was very near +England. French intervention had been decisive in distant America, and +the French Revolution in its turn had been hastened by the American +example. But the intervention in Ireland of Republican France, for +purely selfish and strategic reasons, without effective command of the +sea, and with the stain of the Terror upon her, was of little material +value and a grave moral handicap to the Irish Revolutionists. It is the +manner of Tone's failure and the consequences of his failure that have +such a tragic interest. A united Ireland could have dispensed with the +aid of France. What prevented unity? Tone laboured to bring both creeds +together, and to a certain degree was successful. Until the very last it +was the Catholics, not the Protestants, who shrank most from revolution. +Yet, in the Rebellion of 1798, the North never moved, while Catholic +Wexford and Wicklow rose.</p> + +<p>The root cause is to be found in those agrarian abuses whose long +neglect by the Irish Parliament constituted the strongest justification +for Reform. The Orange Society, founded under that name in 1795, +originated in the "Peep o' Day Boys," a local association formed in +Armagh in 1784 for the purpose of bullying Catholics. There is no doubt +that the underlying incentive was economic. Even when the Penal Code had +lost in efficacy, its results survived in the low standard of living of +the persecuted Catholics. As I pointed out in a former chapter, the +reckless cupidity of the landlords in terminating leases and fixing new +rents by auction, with the alternative of eviction, threw those +Protestant tenants who did not emigrate into direct competition with +Catholic peasants of a lower economic stamp, who because they lived on +little could afford to offer fancy rents. Hence much bitter friction, +leading to sordid village rows and eventually to the organized +ruffianism of the Peep o' Day Boys. The Catholic Franchise Act of 1793, +unaccompanied by Emancipation, actually intensified the trouble by +removing the landlord's motive to prefer a Protestant tenant on account +of his vote. Under ill-treatment, <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />the Catholics naturally retaliated +with a society known as the "Defenders," and in some districts were +themselves the aggressors. Defenderism, in its purely agrarian aspect, +spread to other parts of Ireland, where Protestants were few, and became +merged in Whiteboyism. This had always been an agrarian movement, +directed against abuses which the law refused to touch, and without +religious animus, although the overwhelming numbers of the Catholics in +the regions where it flourished would have placed the Protestants at +their mercy. In Ulster both the contending organizations necessarily +acquired a religious form and necessarily retained it. But at bottom bad +laws, not bigotry, were the cause. There was nothing incurable, or even +unique, about the disorders. Analogous phenomena have appeared +elsewhere, for example, in Australia, between the original squatters on +large ranches and new and more energetic colonists in search of land for +closer settlement. Under a rational system of tenure and distribution +there was plenty of good land in Ireland for an even larger population. +Tone, who was a middle-class lawyer, seems never to have appreciated +what was going on. So far from healing the schism, he appears to have +widened it by throwing the United Irish Committee of Ulster into the +scale of the Catholics against the Orangemen. But, in truth, he was +helpless. Good administration only could unite these distracted +elements, and without the Reform for which he battled, good +administration was impossible. The dissension, widening and acquiring an +increasingly religious and racial character, paralyzed Ulster, which +originally was the seat of the Revolution. The forces normally at work +to favour law and order—loyalty to the Crown, dislike of the French +Revolution, and resentment at Franco-Irish conspiracies—gathered +proportionately greater strength.</p> + +<p>The Southern Rebellion of 1798—a mad, pitiful thing at the best, the +work of half-starved peasants into whose stunted minds the splendid +ideal of Tone had scarcely begun to penetrate—was a totally different +sort of rebellion from any he had contemplated. It was neither national +nor Republican. The French invasions had met with little support; the +first with positive reprobation. Nor was it in origin sectarian, +although, once aflame, it inevitably took a sectarian turn. Several of +the <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" />prominent leaders were Protestants. Priests naturally joined in it +because they were the only friends the people had had in the dark ages +of oppression. In so far as it can be regarded as spontaneous, it was of +Whiteboy origin, anti-tithe and anti-rack-rent. But it was not even +spontaneous; that is another dreadful and indisputable fact which +emerges. The barbarous measures taken to repress and disarm, prior to +the outbreak, together with the skilfully propagated reports of a coming +massacre by Orangemen, would have goaded any peasantry in the world to +revolt, and the only astonishing thing is that the revolt was so local +and sporadic. General Sir Ralph Abercromby retired, sickened with the +horrors he was forbidden to avert. "Within these twelve months," he +wrote of the conduct of the soldiery at the time of his resignation, +"every crime, every cruelty that could be committed by Cossacks or +Calmucks has been transacted here.... The struggle has been, in the +first place, whether I was to have the command of the Army really or +nominally, and then whether the character and discipline of it were to +be degraded and ruined in the mode of using it, either from the facility +of one man or from the violence and oppression of a set of men who have +for more than twelve months employed it in measures which they durst not +avow or sanction."</p> + +<p>Abercromby's resignation, in Mr. Lecky's opinion, "took away the last +faint chance of averting a rebellion." Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare, was now +supreme in the Government, and henceforth represents incarnate the +forces which provoked the Rebellion and founded upon it the Union. He +had bided his time for a decade, watching the trend of events, +foreseeing their outcome, and smiling sardonically at the ineffectual +writhings of the men of compromise. He stands out like a block of black +granite over against the slender figure of Wolfe Tone, who was his +anti-type in ideas and aims, his inferior in intellect, his superior in +morals, but no more than his rival in sincerity, clarity, and +consistency of ideas. Clare was a product of the Penal Code, the son of +a Catholic Irishman who, to obtain a legal career, had become a +Protestant. He himself was not a bigot, but a very able cynic, with a +definite theory of government. Tolerance, Emancipation, Reform, were so +<a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" />much noxious, sentimental rubbish to him, and he had never scrupled to +say so. Ireland was a Colony, English colonists were robbers in Ireland, +and robbers must be tyrants, or the robbed will come by their own again; +that was his whole philosophy,<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18" /><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> his frigid and final estimate of the +tendencies of human nature, and his considered cure for them. Racial +fusion was a crazy conception not worth argument. Wrong on one side, +revenge on the other; policy, coercion. As he put it in his famous +speech on the Union, the settlers to the third and fourth generation +"were at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island." "Laws must be +framed to meet the vicious propensities of human nature," and laws of +this sort for the case of Ireland should, he held with unanswerable +logic, properly be made in England, not by the travesty of a Parliament +in Ireland, which, in so far as it was in any degree Irish, had shown +faint but ominous tendencies towards tolerance and the reunion of +Irishmen. He never took the trouble to demonstrate the truth of his +theory of revenge by a reasoned analysis of Irish symptoms. He took it +for granted as part of a universal axiomatic truth, and, like all +philosophers of his school, pointed to the results of misgovernment and +coercion as proofs of the innate depravity of the governed and of their +need for more coercion. Anticipating a certain limited class of Irishmen +of to-day, often brilliant lawyers like himself, he used to bewail +English ignorance of Ireland, meaning ignorance of the incurable +criminality of his own kith and kin. He was just as immovably cynical +about the vast majority of his own co-religionists as about the +conquered race. If, as was obvious, so far from fearing the revenge of +the Catholics, their unimpeded instinct was to take sides with them to +secure good government, they were not only traitors, but imbeciles who +could not see the doom awaiting them. Yet Fitzgibbon's admirers must +admit that his consistency was not complete. He was perfectly cognizant +of the real causes of Irish discontent. He was aware of the grievances +of Ulster, and his description of the conditions of the Munster +peasantry in the Whiteboy debates of 1787 is classical. If pressed, he +would have answered, we may suppose, that it was impolitic to cure +<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />evils which were at once the consequence of ascendancy and the +condition of its maintenance. That other strange lapse in 1798, when he +described the unparalleled prosperity of Ireland since 1782 under a +Constitution which, in the Union debates of 1800, he afterwards covered +with deserved ridicule as having led to anarchy, destitution, and +bankruptcy, must be attributed to the exigencies of debate; for he was +an advocate as well as a statesman, and occasionally gave way to the +temptation of making showy but unsubstantial points.</p> + +<p>These slips were rare, and do not detract from the massive coherence of +his doctrine. He remains the frankest, the most vivid, and the most +powerful exponent of a theory of government which has waged eternal +conflict with its polar rival, the Liberal theory, in the evolution of +the Empire. The theory, of course, extends much farther than the +bi-racial Irish case, to which Fitzgibbon applied it. It was used, as we +shall see, to meet the bi-racial circumstances of Canada and South +Africa, and it was also used in a modified form to meet the uni-racial +circumstances of Australia and of Great Britain itself. Anyone who reads +the debates on the Reform Bill of 1831 will notice that the opposition +rested at bottom on a profoundly pessimistic distrust of the people, and +on the alleged necessity of an oligarchy vested with the power and duty +of "framing laws to meet the vicious propensities of human nature." In a +word, the theory is in essence not so much anti-racial as +anti-democratic, while finding its easiest application where those +distinctions of race and creed exist which it is its effect, though not +its purpose, to intensify and envenom. Fitzgibbon is a repulsive figure. +Yet it would be unjust to single him out for criticism. Like him, the +philosophers Hume and Paley believed in oligarchy, and accepted force or +corruption as its two alternative props. Burke thought the same, though +the Pitts thought otherwise. Fitzgibbon's brutal pessimism was only the +political philosophy of Paley, Hume, and Burke pushed relentlessly in an +exceptional case to its extreme logical conclusion. But we can justly +criticize statesmen of the present day who, after a century's experience +of the refutation of the doctrine in every part of the world, still +adhere to it.<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV" />CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE UNION</h3> + + +<p>The worst feature of Fitzgibbonism is that it has the power artificially +to produce in the human beings subject to it some of the very phenomena +which originally existed only in the perverted imagination of its +professors. Some only of the phenomena; not all; for human nature +triumphs even over Fitzgibbonism. There has never been a moment since +the Union when a representative Irish Parliament, if statesmen had been +wise and generous enough, to set such a body up, would have acted on the +principle of revenge or persecution. Nor, in spite of all evidences to +the contrary, has there ever been a moment when Protestant Ulstermen, +heirs of the noble Volunteer spirit, once represented in such a +Parliament, would have acted on the assumption that they had to meet a +policy of revenge. Nevertheless, Fitzgibbonism did succeed, as it was to +succeed in Canada, in making pessimism at least plausible and in +achieving an immense amount of direct ascertainable mischief.</p> + +<p>The rift between the creeds and races, just beginning to heal three +generations after the era of confiscation, but reopened under the +operations of economic forces connected with race and religion, yet +perfectly capable of adjustment by a wise and instructed Government, +yawned wide from 1798 onwards, when Government had become a soulless +policeman, and scenes of frenzy and slaughter had occurred which could +not be forgotten. Swept asunder by a power outside their control, +Protestants and Catholics stood henceforth in opposite political camps, +and it became a fixed article of British policy to govern Ireland by +playing upon this antagonism. The flame of the Volunteer spirit never +perished, but it dwindled to a spark under the irresistible weight of a +manufactured reaction. Dis<a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" />senters and Anglicans united, not to lead the +way in securing better conditions for their Catholic fellow-countrymen, +not for the interests of Ireland as a whole, but under the ignoble +colours of religious fanaticism. Hence that strangely artificial +alliance between the landlords of the South and West and the democratic +tenantry, artisans, and merchants of the North; an alliance formed to +meet an imaginary danger, and kept in being with the most mischievous +results to the social and economic development of Ireland. Since the +Protestant minority had made up its mind to depend once more on the +English power it had defied in 1782, the old machine of Ascendancy, +which had showed certain manifest signs of decrepitude under Grattan's +Parliament, was reconstructed on a firmer, less corrupt, and more +lasting basis.</p> + +<p>The Legislative Union is not a landmark or a turning-point in Irish +history. It reproduced "under less assailable forms" the Government +which existed prior to 1782. The real crisis, as I have said, came at +the end of 1783, when the Volunteers tried, by reforming Parliament, to +give Irish Government an Irish character. It is essential to +remember—now as much as ever before—that Ireland has never had a +national Parliament. She has never been given a chance of +self-expression and self-development. It is useless, though Home Rulers +frequently give way to the temptation, to advocate Home Rule by arguing +from Grattan's Parliament. O'Connell, in the Repeal debate of 1834, +devoted hours to praising that Parliament, and had his own argument +turned against him with crushing force by the Secretary to the Treasury, +who easily proved that it was the most corrupt and absurd body that ever +existed. The same game of cross-purposes went on in the Home Rule +debates of 1886 and 1893, and reappeared but this year in a debate of +the House of Lords (July 4, 1911), when the Roman Catholic Home Ruler, +Lord MacDonnell, eulogized Grattan's Parliament in answer to Lord +Londonderry, the Protestant Unionist landlord, who painted it in its +true colours. Yet Lord Londonderry springs from the class and school of +Charlemont, who, by refusing to act as an Irishman, hastened the ruin of +the Parliament which Lord Londonderry satirizes, and Lord MacDonnell +from the race which was betrayed by that Parliament. The anomaly need +not surprise us. It is not <a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" />stranger than the fact that the Union would +never have been carried without Catholic support in Ireland.</p> + +<p>The point we have to grasp is that Ireland was a victim to the crudity +and falsity of the political ideas current at the time of the Union, +persistent all over the Empire for long afterwards, and not extinct yet. +Between Separation, personified by Tone, and Union, personified by +Fitzgibbon, and carried by those milder statesmen, Castlereagh and Pitt, +there seemed to be no alternative. Actually there was and is an +alternative: a responsible Irish Parliament and Government united to +England by sympathy and interest.</p> + +<p>The Parliamentary history of the Union does not much concern us. +Bribery, whether by titles, offices, or cash, had always been the normal +means of securing a Government majority in the Irish House of Commons. +Corruption was the only means of carrying the vote for the Union, and +the time and labour needed for securing that vote are a measure of the +rewards gained by those who formed the majority. Disgusting business as +it was, we have to admit that a Parliament which refused to reform +itself at the bidding of all that was best and healthiest in Ireland +did, on its own account, deserve extinction. The sad thing is that the +true Ireland was sacrificed.</p> + +<p>Pitt and Castlereagh, though they plunged their hands deep in the mire +to obtain the Union, quite honestly believed in the policy of the Union. +They were wrong. They merely reestablished the old ascendancy in a form, +morally perhaps more defensible, but just as damaging to the interests +of Ireland. In addition to absentee landlords, an alien and a largely +absentee Church, there was now an absentee Parliament, remote from all +possibility of pressure from Irish public opinion, utterly ignorant of +Ireland, containing within it, for twenty-nine years, at any rate, +representatives of only one creed, and that the creed of the small +minority. Pitt had virtually pledged himself to make Catholic +Emancipation an immediate consequence of the Union, and his Viceroy, +Cornwallis, had thereby obtained the invaluable support of the Catholic +hierarchy and of many of the Catholic gentry. The King, half mad at the +time, refused to sanction the redemption of the pledge, and Pitt, to his +deep dishonour, accepted the insult and dropped the scheme. +Fitzgibbonism in its extreme <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" />form had triumphed. It was a repetition of +the perfidy over the Treaty of Limerick a century before. Indeed, at +every turn of Irish history, until quite recent times, there seems to +have been perpetrated some superfluity of folly or turpitude which shut +the last outlet for natural improvement. It cannot be held, however, +that the refusal of Emancipation for another generation seriously +damaged the prospects of the Union as a system of government. After it +was granted, the system worked just as badly as before, and in all +essentials continues to work just as badly now. Inequalities in the +Irish franchise were only an aggravation. In order to cripple Catholic +power, Emancipation itself was accompanied in 1829 by an Act which +disfranchised at a stroke between seven and eight tenths of the Irish +county electorate, nor was it until the latest extension of the United +Kingdom franchise, that is, eighty-five years after the Union, that the +Irish representation was a true numerical reflection of the Irish +democracy. But these were not vital matters. In the Home Rule campaigns +of 1886 and 1893, Irish opinion, constitutionally expressed, was +impotent. The vital matter was that the Union killed all wholesome +political life in Ireland, destroyed the last chance of promoting +harmony among Irishmen, and transferred the settlement of Irish +questions to an ignorant and prejudiced tribunal, incapable of +comprehending these questions, much less of adjudicating upon them with +any semblance of impartiality.</p> + +<p>The Legislative Union was unnatural. The two islands, near as they were +to each other, were on different planes of civilization, wealth, and +economic development, without a common tradition, a common literature, +or a common religion. Each had a temperament and genius of its own, and +each needed a different channel of expression. Laws applicable to one +island were meaningless or noxious in the other; taxation applicable to +a rich industrial island was inappropriate and oppressive for a poor +agricultural island. And upon a system comprising all these +incompatibilities there was grafted the ruinous principle of ascendancy.</p> + +<p>There is nothing inherently strange about the difference between England +and Ireland. Artificial land-frontiers often denote much sharper +cleavages of sentiment, character, physique, language, history. A +sea-frontier sometimes makes a less, sometimes a more, effective line of +delimitation. Den<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" />mark and Sweden, France and England, are examples. +Nor, on the other hand, did the profound differences between Ireland and +England preclude the possibility of their incorporation in a political +system under one Crown. We know, by a mass of experience from Federal +and other systems, that elements the most diverse in language, religion, +wealth, and tradition may be welded together for common action, provided +that the union be voluntary and the freedom of the separate parts be +preserved. The first conditions of a true union were lacking in the case +of Ireland. The arrangement was not voluntary. It was accompanied by +gross breach of faith, and it signified enslavement, not liberty.</p> + +<p>A true Union was not even attempted. The Government of Ireland, in +effect, and for the most part in form, was still that of a conquered +Colonial Dependency. It was no more representative in any practical +sense after the Union than before the Union. The popular vote was +submerged in a hostile assembly far away. The Irish peerage was regarded +rightly by the Irish people as the very symbol of their own degradation, +the Union having been purchased with titles, and titles having been for +a century past the price paid for the servility of Anglo-Irish +statesmen. But the peerage, in the persons of the twenty-eight +representatives sent to Westminster, still remained a powerful nucleus +of anti-Irish opinion, infecting the House of Lords with anti-Irish +prejudice, and often opposing a last barrier to reform when the +opposition of the British House of Commons had been painfully overcome. +In truth the cardinal reforms of the nineteenth century were obtained, +not by persuasion, but by unconstitutional violence in Ireland itself. +There was still a separate Executive in Ireland, a separate system of +local administration, and until 1817 a separate financial system, all of +them wholly outside Irish control. The only change of constitutional +importance was that the Viceroy gradually became a figure-head, and his +autocratic powers, similar to those of the Governor of a Crown Colony, +were transferred to the Chief Secretary, who was a member of the British +Ministry. Gradually, as the activity of Government increased, there grew +up that grotesque system of nominated and irresponsible Boards which at +the present day is the laughing-stock of the civilized world. The whole +<a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" />patronage remained as before, either directly or indirectly, in English +hands. If it was no longer manipulated in ways frankly corrupt, it was +manipulated in a fashion just as deleterious to Ireland. Before, as +after, the Union there was no public career in Ireland for an Irishman +who was in sympathy with the great majority of his countrymen. To win +the prizes of public life, judgeships, official posts, and the rest, it +was not absolutely necessary to be a Protestant, though for a long time +all important offices were held exclusively, and are still held mainly, +by Protestants; but it was absolutely necessary to be a thoroughgoing +supporter of the Ascendancy, and in thoroughgoing hostility to Irish +public opinion as a whole. In other words, the unwritten Penal Code was +preserved after the abolition of the written enactments, and was used +for precisely the same pernicious purpose. It was a subtle and sustained +attempt "to debauch the intellect of Ireland," as Mr. Locker-Lampson +puts it, to denationalize her, and to make her own hands the instrument +of her humiliation. The Bar was the principal sufferer, because now, as +before, it was the principal road to humiliation. Fitzgibbons +multiplied, so that for generations after the Union some of the ablest +Irish lawyers were engaged in the hateful business of holding up their +own people to execration in the eyes of the world, of combating +legislation imperatively needed for Ireland, and of framing and carrying +into execution laws which increased the maladies they were intended to +allay.</p> + +<p>Let nobody think these phenomena are peculiar to Ireland. In many parts +of the world where Ascendancies have existed, or exist, the same methods +are employed, and always with a certain measure of success. Irish moral +fibre was at least as tough as that of any other nationality in +resisting the poison.</p> + +<p>But the results were as calamitous in Ireland as in other countries. No +country can progress under such circumstances. The test of government is +the condition of the people governed. Judged by this criterion, it is no +exaggeration to say that Ireland as a whole went backward for at least +seventy years after the Union. Even Protestant North-East Ulster, with +its saving custom of tenant-right, its linen industry, and all the +special advantages derived from a century of privilege, though it +escaped the worst effects of the depression, suffered by <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" />emigration +almost as heavily as the rest of Ireland, and built up its industries +with proportionate difficulty. Over the rest of Ireland the main +features of the story are continuous from a period long antecedent to +the Union. A student of the condition of the Irish peasantry in the +eighteenth and in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth centuries +can ignore changes in the form or personnel of government. He would +scarcely be aware, unless he travelled outside his subject, that +Grattan's Parliament ever existed, or that subsequently a long +succession of Whig and Tory Ministers, differing profoundly in their +political principles, had alternately sent over to Ireland Chief +Secretaries with theoretically despotic powers for good or evil. These +"transient and embarrassed phantoms" came and went, leaving their +reputations behind them, and the country they were responsible for in +much the same condition.</p> + +<p>It is not my purpose to enter in detail into the history of Ireland in +the nineteenth century, but only to note a few salient points which will +help us to a comparison with the progress of other parts of the Empire. +It is necessary to repeat that the basis upon which the whole economic +structure of Ireland rested, the Irish agrarian system, was inconsistent +with social peace and an absolute bar to progress. I described in +Chapter I. how it came into being and the collateral mischiefs attending +it. During the nineteenth century, by accident or design, these +mischiefs were greatly aggravated. Until 1815 high war prices and the +low Catholic franchise stimulated subdivision of holdings, already +excessively small, and the growth of population. With the peace came +evictions, conversions into pasture, and consolidation of farms. The +disfranchisement of the mass of the peasantry which accompanied +Emancipation in 1829 inspired fresh clearances on a large scale and +caused unspeakable misery, with further congestion on the worst +agricultural land. "Cottier" tenancy, at a competitive rent, and +terminable without compensation for the improvements which were made +exclusively by the tenant, was general over the greater part of Ireland. +Generally it was tenancy-at-will, with perpetual liability to eviction. +Leaseholders, however, were under conditions almost as onerous. The +labourer, who was allowed a small plot, which <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" />he paid for in labour, +was in the worst plight of all. In addition, burdensome tithes were +collected by an alien Church and rents were largely spent abroad. If +Irish manufactures had not been destroyed, and there had been an outlet +from agriculture into industry, the evil effects of the agrarian system +would have been mitigated. As it was, in one of the richest and most +fertile countries in the world the congestion and poverty were +appalling. Competition for land meant the struggle for bare life. Rent +had no relation to value, but was the price fixed by the frantic bidding +of hungry peasants for the bare right to live. The tenant had no +interest in improving the land, because the penalty for improvement was +a higher rent, fixed after another bout of frantic competition.</p> + +<p>"Almost alone amongst mankind," wrote John Stuart Mill,<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19" /><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> "the cottier +is in this condition, that he can scarcely be either better or worse off +by any act of his own. If he were industrious or prudent, nobody but his +landlord would gain; if he is lazy or intemperate, it is at his +landlord's expense. A situation more devoid of motives to either labour +or self-command, imagination itself cannot conceive. The inducements of +free human beings are taken away, <i>and those of a slave not +substituted</i>. He has nothing to hope, and nothing to fear, except being +dispossessed of his holding, and against this he protects himself by the +<i>ultima ratio</i> of a defensive civil war. Rockism and Whiteboyism were +the determination of a people, who had nothing that could be called +theirs but a daily meal of the lowest description of food, not to submit +to being deprived of that for other people's convenience.</p> + +<p>"Is it not, then, a bitter satire on the mode in which opinions are +formed on the most important problems of human nature and life, to find +public instructors of the greatest pretension imputing the backwardness +of Irish industry, and the want of energy of the Irish people in +improving their condition, to a peculiar indolence and insouciance in +the Celtic race? Of all vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration +of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most +vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character +to inherent natural differences."</p> + +<p>The "civil war" referred to by Mill as the <i>ultima ratio</i> of <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" />the +cottier tenant went on intermittently for ninety years of the nineteenth +century, as it had gone on during the eighteenth century, and was met by +coercive laws of the same general stamp. Until Mr. Gladstone took the +question in hand in 1870, no reformer could get a hearing in Parliament. +Bill after Bill, privately introduced, met with contemptuous rejection +in favour of some senseless measure of semi-military coercion. There +can, I believe, be no doubt that responsible Irish opinion, made +effective, would have grappled with the evil firmly and conscientiously. +Until the peasant class was driven to the last pitch of desperation, +their leaders did not conceive, and, indeed, never wholly succeeded in +implanting, the idea of a complete overthrowal of landlordism. The +peasant was not unwilling to pay rent. He had, and still has, a deep, +instinctive respect for a landed aristocracy, and was ready, and is +still ready, to repay good treatment with an intensity of devotion +difficult to parallel in other parts of the United Kingdom. In that +veritably cataclysmic dispersion of the Irish race which ensued upon the +great famine, rent continued to be paid at home out of sums remitted +from relatives in America. No less than nineteen millions of money were +thus remitted, according to the Emigration Commissioners of 1863, +between 1847 and that date. The Roman Catholic Church, as in every part +of the world, was strongly on the side of law and order, and, indeed, on +many occasions stepped in to condemn disorder legitimately provoked by +intolerable suffering. The wealthy and educated landlord class, face to +face in a free Parliament with the tenant class, including, be it +remembered, the Ulster Protestant tenants, with grievances less acute in +degree, but similar in kind, would have consented to meet reform halfway +under the stimulus of patriotism and an enlightened self-interest. +Against the great majority of Irish landlords there was no personal +charge. They came into incomes derived from a certain source under +ancient laws for which they were not responsible. But, acting through +the ascendancy Parliament far away in London, they remained, as an +organized class—for we must always make allowance for an enlightened +and public-spirited minority—blind to their own genuine interests and +to the demands of humane policy. Their responsibility was transferred to +English statesmen, who were not fitted, by temperament or <a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" />training, to +undertake it, and who always looked at the Irish land question, which +had no counterpart in England, through English spectacles. We cannot +attribute their failure to lack of information. At every stage there was +plenty of unbiassed and instructed testimony, Whig and Tory, Protestant +and Catholic, independent and official, as to the nature and origin of +the trouble. Mill and Bright, in 1862, only emphasized what Arthur Young +had said in 1772, and what Edward Wakefield, Sharman Crawford, Michael +Sadler, Poulett Scrope, and many other writers, thinkers, and +politicians had confirmed in the intervening period, and what every +fair-minded man admits now to be the truth. Commission after Commission +reported the main facts correctly, if the remedies they proposed were +inadequate. The Devon Commission, reporting in 1845, on the eve of the +great famine, condemned the prevalent agrarian tenure, and recommended +the statutory establishment of the Ulster custom of tenant right. A very +mild and cautious Bill was introduced and dropped.</p> + +<p>Next year came the famine, revealing in an instant the rottenness of the +economic foundations upon which the welfare of Ireland depended. The +population had swollen from four millions in 1788 to nearly eight and a +half millions in 1846, an unhealthy expansion, due to the well-known law +of propagation in inverse ratio to the adequacy of subsistence. What +happened was merely the failure of the potato-crop, not a serious matter +in most countries, but in Ireland the cause of starvation to +three-quarters of a million persons, and the starting-point of that vast +exodus which in the last half of the nineteenth century drained Ireland +of nearly four million souls. The famine passed, and with it all +recollection of the report of the Devon Commission. Hitherto most of the +land legislation had been designed to facilitate evictions. Now came the +Encumbered Estates Act of 1849, whose purpose was to facilitate the +buying out of bankrupt Irish landlords, and whose effect was to +perpetuate the old agrarian system under a new set of more mercenary +landlords, pursuing the old policy of rack-rents and evictions. In the +three years 1849-1852, 58,423 families were evicted, or 306,120 souls. +Aroused from the stupor of the famine, the peasants had to retaliate +with the same old defensive policy of outrage. Peace<a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" />ful agitation was +of no use. The Tenant League of North and South, formed in 1852, claimed +in vain the simplest of the rights granted under pressure of violence in +1870 and 1881.</p> + +<p>Violence, indeed, was the only efficient lever in Ireland for any but +secondary reforms until the last fifteen years of the century, when a +remedial policy was spontaneously adopted, with the general consent of +British statesmen and parties. Fear inspired the Emancipation Act of +1829, which was recommended to Parliament by the Duke of Wellington as a +measure wrong in itself, but necessary to avert an organized rebellion +in Ireland. Tithes, the unjust burden of a century and a half, were only +commuted in 1838, after a Seven Years' War revolting in its incidents. +Mr. Gladstone admitted, and no one who studies the course of events can +deny, that without the Fenianism of the sixties, and the light thrown +thereby on the condition of Ireland, it would have been impossible to +carry the Act—again overdue by a century—for the disestablishment of +the Irish Church in 1869, or the Land Act, timid and ineffectual as it +was, of 1870. Without the organized lawlessness of the Land League it +would have been equally impossible to bring about those more drastic +changes in Irish land tenure which, amidst storms of protest from vested +interests affected, were initiated under the great Land Act of 1881, +and, after another miserable decade of crime and secret conspiracy, +extended by the Acts of 1887, 1891, and 1896.</p> + +<p>Briefly, the effect of these Acts was to establish three principles: a +fair rent, fixed by a judicial tribunal, the Land Commission, and +revisable every fifteen years; fixity of tenure as long as the rent is +paid; and free sale of the tenant-right.</p> + +<p>The remedy eventually brought widespread relief, but, from a social and +economic standpoint, it was not the right remedy. There is no security +for good legislation unless it be framed by those who are to live under +it. Constructive thought in Ireland for the solution of her own +difficulties and the harmonizing of her own discordant elements had been +systematically dammed, or diverted into revolutionary excesses, which, +in the traditional spirit of Fitzgibbonism, were made the pretext for +more stupid torture. Thus, O'Connell, whose attachment to law was so +strong that in 1843, when the Repeal agitation had reached seemingly +irresistible proportions, he deliberately restrained it, <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />was tried for +sedition. So, too, were dissipated the brilliant talents of the Young +Ireland group and the grave statesmanship of Isaac Butt. Fits intervened +of a penitent and bungling philanthropy which has left its traces on +nearly all Irish institutions. For example, it was decided in 1830 that +the Irish must be educated, and a system was set up which was +deliberately designed to anglicize Ireland and extirpate Roman +Catholicism. Four years later, in defiance of Irish opinion, a Poor Law +pedantically copied from the English model was applied to Ireland. The +railway system also was grossly mismanaged. And so with the land. When +reform eventually came, the evil had gone too far, and it was beyond the +art of the ablest and noblest Englishmen, inheriting English conceptions +of the rights of landed property, to devise any means of placing the +relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland, inhuman and absurd as +they were, on a sound and durable basis. The dual ownership set up by +the Land Acts was more humane, but in some respects no less absurd and +mischievous. It exasperated the landlord, while, by placing before the +tenant the continual temptation of further reductions in rent, it tended +to check good cultivation.</p> + +<p>Men came to realize at last that the complete expropriation of the +landlords through the State-aided purchase of the land was the only +logical resource, and this process, begun tentatively and on a very +small scale as far back as 1870, under the inspiration of John Bright, +and extended under a series of other Acts, was eventually set in motion +on a vast scale by the Wyndham Act of 1903.</p> + +<p>I leave a final review of Purchase and of other quite recent remedial +legislation, as well as the far more important movements for +regeneration from within, to later chapters. Meanwhile, let us pause for +a moment and pronounce upon the political system which made such havoc +in Ireland. All this havoc, all this incalculable waste of life, energy, +brains, and loyalty, was preventable and unnecessary. Ethics and honour +apart, where was the common sense of the legislative Union? Would it +have been possible to design a system better calculated to embitter, +impoverish, and demoralize a valuable portion of the Empire?</p> + +<p>Let us now turn our eyes across the Atlantic, and observe the effects of +an Imperial policy founded on the same root idea.<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V" />CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>CANADA AND IRELAND</h3> + + +<p>In comparing the history of Canada with the closely allied history of +Ireland, we must bear in mind that in the last half of the eighteenth +century the present British North America consisted of three distinct +portions: Acadia, or the Maritime Provinces, which we now know as +Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, +colonized originally by a few Frenchmen and later by Scotch and Irish; +Lower Canada, extensively colonized by the French, which we now know as +the Province of Quebec; and Upper Canada, which we now know as Ontario, +colonized last of all by Americans under circumstances to be described.</p> + +<p>In 1763, before the repeal of any part of the Penal Code against Irish +Roman Catholics, the French Catholic Colony of Lower Canada, with a +population of about seventy thousand souls and the two small towns of +Quebec and Montreal, passed definitely into British possession under the +Treaty of Paris, which brought to a conclusion the Seven Years' War. +Fortunately, there was no question, as in Ireland, of expropriating the +owners of the soil in favour of State-aided British planters, and hence +no question of a Penal Code, even on the moderate scale current in Great +Britain at the same period. On the contrary, it became a matter of +urgent practical expediency to conciliate the conquered Province in view +of the growing disaffection of the American Colonies bordering it on the +South. This disaffection, assuming ominous proportions on the enactment +of the Stamp Act in 1765, was itself an indirect result of the conquest +of Canada a few years before; for the claim to tax the Americans for +Imperial purposes arose from the enormous expense of the war of conquest +and of the subsequent charges for defence and upkeep. It was forgotten +that<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" /> American volunteers had captured Louisburg in 1745, and had borne +a distinguished part in later operations, and that to lay a compulsory +tax upon them would banish glorious memories common to America and +Britain. Henceforward, conquered French Canada was made a political +bulwark against rebellious America. The French colonists, a peaceable, +primitive folk, as attached to their religion as the Irish, and devoted +mainly to agriculture, retained, as long as they desired it, the old +French system of law known as the Custom of Paris and the free exercise +of their religion. Like the Irish, they were strongly monarchical and +strongly conservative in feeling, and as impervious to the Republican +propaganda emanating from their American neighbours as the Catholic +Irish always at heart remained to the revolutionary principles of Wolfe +Tone's school. Unmolested in their habits and possessions, they +philosophically accepted the transference from the Bourbon to the +Hanoverian dynasty, and became an indispensable source of strength to +George III. when that monarch was using his German troops to coerce his +American subjects and his British troops to overawe the Ulster +Volunteers.</p> + +<p>In 1774, immediately before the outbreak of a war against which Ireland +was protesting, and in which, with the soundest justification, the +Irish-Americans, Catholic and Protestant, took such a prominent part +against the British arms, the Quebec Act was passed giving formal +statutory sanction to the Catholic religion, and setting up a nominated +legislative Council, whose members were subject to no religious test. In +Ireland it was not till six years later, and, as we have seen, by means +of precisely the same pressure—British fear of America—that the Irish +Protestant Volunteers obtained the abolition of the test for Dissenters, +while Catholics in Ireland were still little more than outlaws, and had +to wait for nearly sixty years for complete emancipation. The result of +the Quebec Act, together with the sympathetic administration of that +great Irishman, Sir Guy Carleton, was the firm allegiance of the French +Province in spite of an exceedingly formidable invasion, during the +whole of the American War, and even after the intervention of European +France. It is part of the dramatic irony of these occurrences that some +of the invading army was composed of Morgan's Irish-American riflemen, +and <a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" />that one of the two joint leaders of the invasion was the +Irish-American, General Richard Montgomery, who fell at the unsuccessful +assault of Quebec on December 31, 1775.</p> + +<p>In spite of Burke's noble appeal in the House of Commons, toleration in +the abstract had nothing to do with the treatment of the French +Catholics. British Catholics in the neighbouring Prince Edward Island +were denied all civil rights in 1770, and only gained them in 1830. In +England, the Quebec Act with difficulty survived a storm of indignation, +in which even Chatham joined. The small minority of British settled in +Quebec and Montreal made vehement protests, while the American Congress +itself in 1774 committed the irreparable blunder of making the +establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Canada one of its +formally published grievances against Great Britain. When war broke out, +and the magnitude of the mistake was seen, efforts were made to seduce +the Canadians by hints of a coming British tyranny, but the Canadians +very naturally abode by their first impressions.</p> + +<p>The peace of 1783 and the final recognition of American Independence led +to results of far-reaching importance for the further development of the +British Empire. Out of the loss of the American Colonies came the +foundation of Australia and of British Canada. Before the war it had +been the custom to send convicts from the United Kingdom to penal +settlements in the American Colonies. The United States stopped this +traffic. Pitt's Government decided, after several years of doubt and +delay, to divert the stream of convicts to the newly acquired and still +unpopulated territory of New South Wales, made known by the voyages of +Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks. At the same period a very different +class of men, seeking a new home, were thrown upon the charity of the +British Government. These were the "United Empire Loyalists," as they +styled themselves, some 40,000 Americans, with a sprinkling of Irishmen +among them, such as Luke Carscallion, Peter Daly, Willet Casey, and John +Canniff,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20" /><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> who had fought on the Royalist side throughout the war, and +at the end of it found their fortunes ruined and themselves the objects +of keen resentment. Pitt, with a "total lack of Imperial imagination,"<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" /> +as Mr. Holland Rose puts it,<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21" /><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> does not seem to have considered the +plan of colonizing Australia with a part of these men, 433 of whom were +reported to be living in destitution in London three years after the +war. No more alacrity was shown in relieving the distress of those still +in America. In 1788, however, a million and a quarter pounds were voted +by Parliament for relief, and large grants of land were made in Canada, +whither most of the Loyalists had already begun to emigrate. Some went +to the Maritime Provinces, notably to the region now known as New +Brunswick; a few went to the towns of the Quebec Province, for the +country lands on the lower reaches of the St. Lawrence were already +monopolized by the French "habitants"; the rest, estimated at 10,000, to +the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence and along the shores of the Lakes +Ontario and Erie, in short, to what we now know as the Province of +Ontario, and to what then became known as Upper Canada.</p> + +<p>From this moment the three Canadas gain sharp definition. To the west +Upper Canada, exclusively American or, as we must now say, British in +character; next to the east, and cutting off its neighbour from the sea, +the ancient Province of Lower Canada, predominantly French, with a +minority of British traders in the two towns Quebec and Montreal; last +of all the Maritime Provinces, small communities with an almost +independent history of their own, although, like Upper and Lower Canada, +they eventually presented a problem similar fundamentally to the Irish +problem on the other side of the Atlantic. Prince Edward Island is the +closest parallel, for, besides the Catholic disabilities of 1770, in +1767 the whole of its land had been granted away by ballot in a single +day to a handful of absentee English proprietors, who sublet to +occupiers without security of tenure, with the result that a land +question similar to that of Ireland arose, which inflamed society and +retarded the development of the island for a whole century. Ultimately, +moreover, statesmen were driven to an even more drastic +solution—compulsory and universal State-aided land purchase.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22" /><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> Before +the period we have now reached,<a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" /> Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, +which was carved out of it, had been given rude systems of +representative Government, and New Brunswick, also at one time a part of +Nova Scotia, received a Constitution in 1784.</p> + +<p>The great question after the American War was how to govern the two +contiguous Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, the one newly settled by +men of British race and Protestant faith, the other also under the +British flag, but overwhelmingly French and Catholic, both, in the +critical half-century to come, to be reinforced by immigrants from the +Old World, and to a large extent from misgoverned Ireland. But let the +reader once and for all grasp this point, that, once out of Ireland, +there ceases, not immediately, but in course of time, to be any racial +or political distinction between the different classes of Irishmen, +whose antagonism at home, artificially provoked and fomented by the bad +form of government under which they lived, so often made Ireland itself +a very hell on earth. I want to dwell on this point in order to avoid +confusion when I speak of the bi-racial conditions of Lower Canada and +Ireland respectively.</p> + +<p>To return to the question of Government. The American Colonies were +lost. Here in Canada was an opportunity for a new Imperial policy, +better calculated to retain the affections of the colonists. Three +distinct problems were involved:</p> + +<p>1. Was French or Lower Canada, with its small minority of British, to be +given representative Government at all?</p> + +<p>2. If so, was it to be left as a separate unit, or was it to be +amalgamated in a Union with its neighbour, Upper Canada?</p> + +<p>3. Whichever course was taken, what was to be the relation between the +Home Government and Canada?</p> + +<p>All these questions arise in the case of Ireland itself, and the +parallel in each case is interesting. In Canada they were determined for +the space of half a century by the Constitutional Act of 1791, passed at +the period when Grattan's unreformed Parliament was hastening to its +fall, and Wolfe Tone was founding his Society of United Irishmen. Let us +take in turn the three questions posed above.<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" /></p> + +<p>1. The British minority in Lower Canada, supported by a corresponding +school in England, were strong for an undisguised British ascendancy, +without any recognition of the French. They urged, what was true, that +the French were unaccustomed to representative government, and implied, +what was neither true nor politic, that they could not, and ought not +to, be educated to it. If there was to be an Assembly at all, it should, +they claimed, be wholly British and Protestant, or, in the alternative, +the Protestant minority only should be represented at Westminster. In +other words, they wished either for the pre-Union Irish system or for +the post-Union Irish system, both of them, as time was just beginning to +prove, equally disastrous to the interests of Ireland. We are not +surprised to find these ideas supported by the Irishman Burke, in whom +horror of the French Revolution had destroyed the last particle of +Liberalism. If Pitt lacked "Imperial imagination," he knew more than +most of his contemporaries about the elementary principles of governing +white men. It was only a few years before that he had urged upon his +Irish Viceroy, Rutland, a reform of the Irish Parliament which might +have united the races and averted all the disasters to come, and in this +very year (1791) he was pressing forward the Catholic franchise in +Ireland. The French in Canada must, he said, be represented in a popular +Assembly equally with the British, and on the broadest possible +franchise, and they were.</p> + +<p>2. The next question was that of the union or separation of Upper and +Lower Canada. Here, and from the same underlying motive, the British +minority in Lower Canada were for the Union, partly on commercial +grounds, but mainly as a step in the direction of overcoming French +influence. Upper Canada, wholly British, was, on the whole, neutral. +Pitt, on high principle, again took correct ground. He did not, indeed, +foresee that separation, for geographical reasons, would cause certain +inconveniences; but he did understand—and experience in both Provinces +ultimately proved him right—that it was absolutely hopeless to try and +avert social and racial discord by artificially swamping the French +element. He declared, then, for the separation of the two Canadas into +two distinct Provinces. Note the beginnings of another, though a +<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" />distant, analogy with the relations of Ireland and Great Britain, +distant because the French at this time largely outnumbered the British +of both Provinces, and in after-years maintained something very near a +numerical equality. But the same underlying principle was involved. +Pitt, in the Legislative Union of Ireland and Great Britain nine years +later, constructed without geographical necessity, indeed, in defiance +of geography and humanity, the very system which, in a form by +comparison almost innocuous, he had condemned for Canada; but not, we +must in fairness remember, before doing his part at an earlier date to +arrive at a solution which, given a fair chance, would have rendered the +Union of Ireland and England unnecessary.</p> + +<p>3. So far, good. But there still remained a further question far +transcending the other in importance—What was to be the relation +between the Home Government and the new Colonies? Here all British +intellects, that of Fox alone excepted, were as much at a loss as ever. +One simple deduction was made from what had happened in America, namely, +that the new Colonies must not be forced to contribute to Imperial funds +by taxes levied from London. That claim had already been abandoned in +1778 by the Colonial Tax Repeal Act, which nevertheless expressly +reserved the King's right to levy "such duties as it may be expedient to +impose for the regulation of commerce," the sum so raised to be retained +for the use of the Colony. No one made the more comprehensive deduction, +even in the case of wholly British Upper Canada, that Colonial affairs +should be controlled by Colonial opinion, constitutionally ascertained, +and that the British Governor should act primarily through advisers +chosen by the majority of the people under his rule. We must bear in +mind that, had Grattan's Parliament been reformed, and the warring races +in Ireland been brought into harmony, it would still have had to pass +through the crucial phase of establishing its right to choose Ministers +by whose advice the Lord-Lieutenant should be guided, that is, if it +were to become a true Home Rule Parliament of the kind we aim at to-day.</p> + +<p>From the date of the Constitutional Act passed for Canada in 1791, it +took fifty-six troubled years and an armed rebellion in each Province to +establish the principle of what we call<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" /> "responsible Government" for +Canada, and, through Canada, for the rest of the white Colonies of the +Empire. During these fifty-six years, which correspond in Irish history +to a period dating from the middle of Grattan's Parliament down to the +great Famine, ascendancies, with the symptoms of disease which always +attended ascendancies, grew up in Canada, as they had in Ireland, in +spite of conditions which were far more favourable in Canada to healthy +political growth. Canada started with this great advantage over Ireland, +that instead of a corrupt parody of a Parliament, each of her Provinces, +under the Constitutional Act of 1791, had a real popular Assembly, +elected without regard to race or religion. It was the Upper House or +Legislative Council, as it was called, that interposed the first +obstacle to the free working of popular institutions. In both Provinces +this Council was nominated by the Governor, and could be used, and was +naturally used, to represent minority interests and obstruct the popular +assembly. Fox had correctly prophesied that it would soon come "to +inspire hatred and contempt." But he did not mean that such a chamber +was in itself an insuperable bar to harmony. Nominated or hereditary +second chambers are not necessarily inconsistent with popular +government, provided that the Executive Government itself possesses the +confidence of the representative Assembly. Under that lever, obstruction +eventually gives way. But this idea of a tie of confidence between the +Governors and the governed was exactly what was lacking.</p> + +<p>The Executive Council in each Province was also chosen by the British +Governor or Lieutenant-Governor, generally a military man, from persons +representing either his own purely British policy or the ideas of a +privileged colonial minority, and without regard to the wishes or +opinions of the Colonial Assembly, just as the Executive officers in +Ireland, both before and after the Union, were chosen out of +corresponding elements by the Lord-Lieutenant or Chief Secretary, acting +under the orders of the British Government, and without any regard to +the wishes or opinions of the majority of Irishmen. Behind all, in +remote Downing Street stood the British Government, in the shape of the +Colonial Office for Canada and the Irish Office for Ireland, both +working in dense ignorance of the real <a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" />needs of the countries for which +they were responsible, and permeated with prejudice and pedantry. To +complete the parallel, there was now a foreign Power in the close +neighbourhood of each dependency, the United States in the case of +Canada, France in the case of Ireland, both of them Republican Powers, +and both able and willing to take advantage of disaffection in the +dependencies in order to further a quarrel with the Mother Country. We +have seen the results in Ireland. Let us now observe the results in +Canada, taking especial care to notice that an ascendancy Government +gives rise to the same type of evil in a uni-racial as in a bi-racial +community.</p> + +<p>Let us glance first at what happened in Upper Canada, which was +uni-racial, that is, composed of settlers from the United Kingdom +(including Ireland) and America. Here the original settlers, the "United +Empire Loyalists" from America, formed from the first, and maintained +for half a century, an ascendancy of wealth and religion over the +incoming settlers, who soon constituted the majority of the population. +As in Ireland, though in a degree small by comparison, there was a land +question and a religious question, closely related to one another. +Happily, it was not a case of robbery, but of simple monopoly. +Excessively large grants of land, nine-tenths of which remained +uncultivated, were obtained by the original settlers, most of whom were +Episcopalian in faith, and, under the Act of 1791, further tracts of +enormous extent, which for the most part lay waste and idle, were set +apart in each township, under the name of "Clergy Reserves" for the +Episcopalian Church. Since the majority of the incoming settlers were +Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, or Roman Catholics, many of them +from the Protestant and Catholic parts of Ireland, some from America, +some even from Germany, these conditions caused intense irritation, +checking both the development of the country and the growth of solid +character among the colonists. Absentee ownership was a grave economic +evil, though happily it was not complicated and embittered by a vicious +system of tenure. Education suffered severely through the diversion of +the income from public lands to private purposes.</p> + +<p>The ascendancy was maintained on lines familiar in Ireland—through the +mutual dependence of the colonial minority and <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" />the Home Government +acting through its Governor. A few leading Episcopalian families from +among the United Empire Loyalists, installed at Toronto, with the +support of a succession of High Tory Lieutenant-Governors, monopolized +the Executive Council, the Legislative Council, the Bench, the Bar, and +all offices of profit, denying a Canadian career to the vast majority of +Upper Canadians, just as Irishmen were excluded from an Irish career. +For a long time the Assembly itself, which retained its original +Constitution long after the influx of immigrants had rendered necessary +its enlargement on a new electoral basis, was a subject of monopoly +also. Even when enlarged in 1821 it was helpless against the nominated +Council and Executive, backed by Downing Street. The oligarchy came to +be known by the name of the "family compact," and, as the reader will +observe, it bore a close resemblance in form to the "undertaker" system +in Ireland before the Union, and to the monopoly of patronage obtained +by certain families, notably the Beresfords.</p> + +<p>While the Colony was still small, the system worked tolerably well; but +from the second decade of the nineteenth century onwards, when the +population grew from 150,000 to 250,000 in 1832, and to 500,000 a few +years later, and the Episcopalians sank into a numerical minority as low +as a quarter, troubles of the Irish type became proportionately acute. +The Colony was in reality perfectly content with its position under the +Crown, and in the war with America in 1812 all classes and creeds united +to repel invasion with enthusiasm. One of the prominent leaders was an +Irishman, James Fitzgibbon, and a poor Irish private, James O'Hara, won +fame by refusing to surrender at the capture of Toronto Fort. As usual, +however, a fictitious standard of "loyalty," which, in fact, meant +privilege, was set up, obscuring those questions of good government +which were the only real matters at issue in Canada, as in Ireland. +There were Republican immigrants of many denominations from America, +Radicals of Cobbett's school from England and Scotland, tenants of a +democratic turn from Ulster, and a growing stream of Catholic cottiers +flying from the "clearances" and tithe war in other Irish Provinces. All +these classes of men made excellent settlers, and only wanted fair and +equal treatment to make them perfectly peaceable citizens.<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" /> To the +official oligarchy, however, even their moderate leaders came to be +viewed as rebels, and were often subjected to imprisonment or to +banishment.</p> + +<p>Among others William Gourlay, a Scotsman, Stephen Willcocks and Francis +Collins, Irishmen, all three perfectly respectable reformers, suffered +in this way. Bidwell, the great Robert Baldwin, and other good men were +rendered powerless for good. As invariably happens in any part of the +world where a course is pursued which estranges moderate men and +embitters extreme men, agitators came to the front lacking that +self-control and sense of responsibility which the sobering education of +office alone can give, and generally ruining themselves while they +benefit humanity at large. Chief of these was W.L. Mackenzie, a +Presbyterian Scot from Dundee. All this man really wanted was what +exists to-day as a matter of course in all self-governing +countries—responsible government. He even conceived that great idea of +the Confederation of British North America, which came to birth in 1867. +Thwarted in his attacks on the oligarchy, he degenerated into violent +courses, and ultimately organized, or rather was provoked into +organizing, the rebellion of 1837. The grievances which led to this +outbreak were genuine and severe, and were all in course of time +admitted and redressed. One, the powerlessness of the Assembly, owing to +the control by the Executive of annual sums sufficient to pay the +official expenses of Government, corresponded to a pre-Union Irish +grievance, and was remedied by an Act of 1831. Most of the other +grievances were incurable by constitutional effort. They may be found +summarized in the "Seventh Report of Grievances," a temperate and +truthful document drawn up by a Committee of the Assembly in 1835. The +huge unsettled Clergy Reserves and Crown Lands were the worst concrete +abuse, and matters had just then been aggravated by the sudden +establishment of scores of sinecure rectories. Jobbery, +maladministration, and the dependence of the judges on the Executive +were other complaints; but the main assault was made quite rightly on +the form of the Colonial Government, which rendered peaceful reform of +any abuse as impossible as in Ireland, and the cardinal claim was that +the Executive should act, not under the dictation of Downing Street, of +an irresponsible Governor, or of a narrow colonial <a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />oligarchy, but in +accordance with popular opinion. Mackenzie's rebellion of 1837 was a no +more formidable affair than the similar efforts in Ireland made under +incomparably greater provocation by Emmett in 1803 and Smith O'Brien in +1848, and was as easily suppressed; but, unlike the Irish outbreaks, and +in conjunction with a revolt arising in the same year and from similar +causes in the adjoining Province of Lower Canada, it led to a complete +change of system.</p> + +<p>In Lower Canada the same preposterous system of government was +aggravated by the presence of the two races, French and English. Yet +there was nothing inherently dangerous or unwholesome about this +situation. The French, like the Catholics in Ireland, never showed the +smallest tendency towards religious intolerance, nor were they less +loyal at heart than the Radicals of Upper Canada or the Tories of either +Province. They took the same energetic part in repelling the American +invasion of 1812, and produced at least one remarkable leader in the +person of Colonel Salaberry, who commanded the French-Canadian +Voltigeurs. Like their co-religionists in Ireland, they were +temperamentally averse to Republicanism in any shape, whether on the +American model over the border or on the model of revolutionary France, +where Republicanism since 1793 was anti-Catholic and the result of +miseries and oppressions as bad as those in Ireland; whence, moreover, +many priests and nobles fled from persecution to Lower Canada. As in +eighteenth-century Ireland, we find that the Roman Catholic clergy, the +<i>seigneurs</i> or aristocrats, and the <i>habitants</i> or peasants, were of a +Conservative cast, throwing their weight, often even against their own +interests, into the scale of the established Government, while the +lawyers and journalists alone produced determined agitators. The racial +cleavage, moreover, as in Ireland, was artificially accentuated by the +political system. There was in reality a strong community of interest +between the British lower class and the French lower class against the +tyranny of an official clique, and to the end a substantial number of +Englishmen worked with the French for reform; but with the failure of +their efforts came that inevitable tightening of the bonds of race, even +against interest, which we have seen operating with such lamentable +effect in Ireland. And, as in Ireland, we find the best instincts <a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" />of +the people withered and perverted into rebellion by "Fitzgibbonism," the +policy of distrust and coercion.</p> + +<p>The British official ascendancy, supreme from the first, became +extraordinarily rigid. The Executive Council and Legislative Council +were almost entirely British, the Assembly overwhelmingly French. There +were no regular heads of departments, so that the Governor had no +skilled advice, much less responsible advice. The Councils blocked all +legislation they disliked, and for more than forty years, by means of +unrestricted control over a large part of the provincial revenues, were +able to defy the Assembly. It will be observed that, although Ireland +never had anything worth calling an Assembly, her structure both before +and after the Union was essentially the same, in that Irish public +opinion, whether voiced by the Volunteers against the unreformed +Parliament or after the Union by the Nationalist party at Westminster, +was powerless. The existence of a popular Assembly in Canada only made +the anomalies more obvious.</p> + +<p>There were, of course, marked divergencies of character and less marked +divergencies of interest between the French majority and the British +minority in Canada. The French, by comparison, were a backward and +conservative race, less well educated and less progressive and energetic +both in agriculture and commerce than the British. On the other hand, +subsequent experience showed that, under free constitutional government, +British intelligence, wealth, and energy would, here as elsewhere, have +preserved their full legitimate influence. Under a system which +throttled French ideas and aspirations, and treated the most harmless +popular movements as treasonable machinations, deadlock and anarchy were +in the long run inevitable.</p> + +<p>The popular demands were much the same as those in Upper Canada: control +of the purse, the independence of the judges, an elective Legislative +Council, and a curtailment of the arbitrary powers and privileges of the +Executive, which led to gross jobbery, favouritism, and extravagance. As +in Upper Canada, the greatest practical grievance, though it assumed a +somewhat different form, was the disposal of the public lands. Here, +too, there were extensive and undeveloped Clergy Reserves for the +Episcopalian Church, as well as free <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" />grants on a large scale to +speculators. The estates of the Jesuit Order had been confiscated, so +that disputes about their disposal were tinged with religious +bitterness. But most of the friction over the land question came from +the operations of a chartered land company, which, under the protection +of the Government, and with financial and political support from +England, dealt with the unsettled land in a manner very unfair and often +corrupt, and promoted here, as in Upper Canada and Ireland, absentee +ownership.</p> + +<p>The popular agitation ran the same course as in Upper Canada, reached +its crisis at the same moment, threw into prominence the same types of +men, moderate and extreme, and produced the same waste of good human +material and distortion of human character, both in the ascendant and +the subject classes. As Sir John Cockburn tells us in his "Political +Annals of Canada" (p. 177), some of the most incendiary speakers and +writers (in 1836) were "most able and worthy men, who in the subsequent +days of tranquillity occupied most prominent and distinguished positions +in the public service, revered as loyal, true, and able statesmen by all +classes." The popular movement was by no means wholly French. A Scot, +John Neilson; an Englishman, Wilfred Nelson; and an Irish journalist, +Dr. O'Callaghan, were prominent members of a kind of Radical party; but +the ablest and most influential among the agitators, and in every +respect more admirable than Mackenzie, was the Frenchman, Louis +Papineau, who first became Speaker of the Assembly in 1817, and retained +that high position until the verge of the rebellion of 1837. By no means +devoid of superficial faults, but eloquent, honest, accomplished and +adored by his compatriots, here was a man who, if he had been given +reasonable scope for his talents, and steadied by official +responsibility, would have been a tower of strength to the Colony and +the British connection. He corresponds in position and aims, and to a +certain extent in character and gifts, to his great Irish contemporary, +O'Connell. But O'Connell was too conservative to produce great results. +Papineau, dashing himself in vain for twenty years against the +entrenched camp of the ascendancy, finally degenerated, like Mackenzie, +into a commonplace rebel.</p> + +<p>The phases through which the agitation passed before it <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" />reached this +disastrous point need only a brief review. Naturally enough, owing to +the bi-racial conditions, friction had arisen earlier in Lower than in +Upper Canada, yet the first recognition of the flagrant defects of the +Constitution was not made till 1828, when a Committee of the British +House of Commons published a Report which, though its recommendations +were mild and inadequate, was in effect a censure of the whole political +system of the Province and an admission of the justice of the agitation. +There was no result for four years, while matters went from bad to worse +in the Colony. At last, in 1832, under an Act similar to that passed for +Upper Canada, all the provincial revenues were placed under the control +of the Assembly in return for the voting of a fixed Civil List. This +well-meant half-measure made matters worse, because it left the Assembly +just as powerless as before over the details of legislation and +administration, while giving it the power to paralyze the Government by +refusing all, instead of only part, of the supplies. This it proceeded +to do, and in the next five years large deficits were piled up, and the +Colony became insolvent.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, in February, 1834, a year before the publication of the +"Seventh Report of Grievances" in Upper Canada, and three months before +O'Connell's celebrated motion in the House of Commons for the Repeal of +the Union between England and Ireland, the Assembly of Lower Canada, at +Papineau's instance, passed the equally celebrated "Ninety-two +Resolutions." Bombastic and diffuse, like parts of O'Connell's speech, +this historic document nevertheless was as true in all really essential +respects as Mackenzie's manifesto and as O'Connell's tremendous +indictment of the system of Government in Ireland. All three men, +O'Connell with far the most justification, demanded the same thing, good +government for their respective countries under a responsible Parliament +and Ministry. They all occasionally used wild language, O'Connell the +least wild. O'Connell, who nine years later deliberately quenched a +popular revolt he could have headed, failed in his aim as completely as +Tone, Emmett, and Smith O'Brien, who pressed their efforts to the point +of violence. Mackenzie and Papineau, who took to arms, succeeded in +their aim.<a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" /></p> + +<p>The crisis in Lower Canada was precipitated, and, indeed, provoked, by a +challenge thrown out in March, 1837, from the British House of Commons, +where, at Lord John Russell's instance, the Ten Resolutions were agreed +to, which amounted in effect to a denial of all the colonial claims and +a declaration of war upon those who made them. Papineau had to eat his +words or make them good, and he chose the latter course. His +insurrection was arranged in concert with that of the Upper Province, +broke out simultaneously in the winter of 1837, and was extinguished +with little difficulty. The men who made it suffered. Canada and the +Empire profited. Both Papineau and Mackenzie, following the precedent of +Wolfe Tone with France, endeavoured with little success to engage +American sympathy and the aid of her army, though Canada had as little +desire for American rule as Ireland had for French rule.</p> + +<p>Let us remark, as an interesting fact for those who imagine that +Irishmen are always instinctively on the side of turbulence and +disorder, that the Irish immigrants who poured into Canada at the +average annual rate of 20,000 in the years—terrible years in +Ireland—preceding the rebellions,<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23" /><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> acted much as we might expect. In +the Lower Province, following the lead of the French Catholic hierarchy, +they declared in November, 1837, against Papineau's party, and thus +strengthened the hands of the Government when the crisis approached.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24" /><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> +In the Upper Province Catholics were strongly on the side of reform, but +took no part in the rebellion. Orangemen in both Provinces, as we might +guess, sided as strongly with the ascendancy parties, but colonial air +seems to have taken some of the theological venom out of Orangeism. If +Charles Buller is to be trusted, some Catholics joined the societies in +Upper Canada, which were more Tory than religious, and the healths of +William of Orange and the Catholic Bishop Macdonnell were drunk in +impartial amity.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25" /><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p> + +<p>In the meantime, three of the four outlying Provinces of<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" /> North +America—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island—where the +same form of Constitution prevailed as in Upper and Lower Canada, had +been passing through a similar phase of misgovernment and agitation +during the previous thirty years. Each suffered under a little +monopolist ascendancy, called by the same name, "the family compact," +and sustained, against the prevailing sentiment and interest, by the +British Governor, and in each had arisen, or was arising, the same loud +demand for responsible government. Samuel Wilmot in New Brunswick, +Joseph Howe in Nova Scotia, were the best-known spokesmen. There was no +violence, but a growing dislocation. In five Provinces of North America, +therefore, the Colonial Government had broken down or was tottering, and +from exactly the same cause as in Ireland, though under provocation +infinitely less grave. For the moment, however, attention was +concentrated upon the Canadas, where, as a result of the rebellion, the +Constitution of Lower Canada was suspended early in 1838. In the summer +of 1838 Lord Durham, the Radical peer, was sent out by Melbourne's +Ministry as Governor-General, with provisionally despotic powers, and +with instructions to advise upon a new form of government.</p> + +<p>Before we come to Durham's proposals, let us pause and examine the state +of home opinion on the Irish and Colonial questions. The people of Great +Britain at large had no opinion at all. They were ignorant both of +Canada and Ireland, and had been engaged, and, indeed, were still +engaged, in a political struggle of their own which absorbed all their +energies. The Chartist movement in 1838 was assuming grave proportions. +The Reform, won in 1832 under the menace of revolution and in the midst +of shocking disorders, was in reality a first step toward the domestic +Home Rule that Ireland and the five Provinces of North America were +clamouring for. Tory statesmen were quite alive to this political fact, +and condemned all the political movements, British, Irish, and Colonial, +indiscriminately and on the same broad anti-democratic grounds. The Duke +of Wellington, who was not a friend of the Reform Act, and had only +adopted Catholic Emancipation in order to avoid civil war in Ireland, +speaking about Canada in the House of Lords on January 18, 1838, coupled +together the United<a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" /> States, British North America, and Ireland as +dismal examples of the folly of concession to popular demands. Pointing +to the results of the Canada Act of 1831, to which I have already +alluded, and which gave the Assemblies control of the provincial +revenue, and with an eye, no doubt, on the tithe war barely at an end in +Ireland, he said: "Let noble lords learn from Canada and our other +dominions in North America what it is to hold forth what are called +popular rights, but which are not popular rights here or elsewhere, and +what occasion is given thereby to perpetuate a system of agitation which +ends in insurrection and rebellion."</p> + +<p>The Whig statesmen who, if we except Peel's short Administration of +1834-35, were in power from 1830 to 1841, though by no means democratic +men, were clear enough about Reform for Great Britain, but nearly as +ignorant and quite as wrong about Ireland and Canada as the Tories. The +only prominent Parliamentarian who, as after events proved, correctly +diagnosed and prescribed for the disease in both countries was +O'Connell. Not fully alive to the Irish analogy, but correct from first +to last about Canada, was a small group of independent Radicals, of whom +Roebuck, Hume, Grote, Molesworth, and Leader were the principal +representatives. After the insurrections in Canada came John Stuart +Mill, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Charles Buller, and with them Lord Durham +himself.</p> + +<p>No one can understand either Irish or Colonial history without reading +the debates of this period in the Lords and Commons on Canada and +Ireland. Alternating with one another with monotonous regularity, they +nevertheless leave an impression of an extraordinary lack of +earnestness, sympathy, and knowledge, and an extraordinary degree of +prejudice and of bigotry in the Parliament to whose care for better or +worse the welfare of nearly ten millions of British citizens outside +Great Britain was entrusted. Save for an occasional full-dress debate at +some peculiarly critical juncture, the debates were ill-attended. The +prevailing sentiment seems to have been that Ireland and Canada, +leavened by a few respectable "loyalists" and officials, on the whole, +were two exceedingly mutinous and embarrassing possessions, which, +nevertheless, it was the duty of every self-respecting Briton to dragoon +into <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" />obedience. Both dependencies were assumed to be equally expensive, +though, in fact, Ireland, as we know now, was showing a handsome profit +at the time, whereas Canada was costing a quarter of a million a year. +For the rest, the pride of power tempered a sort of fatalistic apathy. +In the case of Ireland the element of pure selfishness was stronger, +because the immense vested interests, lay and clerical, in Irish land +were strongly represented. The proximity of Ireland, too, rendered +coercion more obvious and easy. Otherwise, her case was the same as that +of Canada. "The Canadas are endeavouring to escape from us, America has +escaped us, but Ireland shall not escape us," said an English member to +O'Connell just before the Repeal debate of 1834. Such was the current +view.</p> + +<p>Yet, as in the case of Ireland and of the lost American Colonies, the +materials for knowledge of Canada were considerable. Petitions poured +in; Committees and Commissions were appointed, and made reports which +were consigned to oblivion. Roebuck, one of the small Radical group, was +himself a Lower Canadian by birth, and acted as agent at Westminster for +the popular party in that Province. He was as impotent as O'Connell, the +spokesman of the Irish popular party. If the Colonial Office was not +quite the "den of peculation and plunder" which Hume called it in +1838,<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26" /><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> it was an obscure and irresponsible department, where jobbery +was as rife as in Dublin Castle. In the ten years of colonial crisis +(1828-1838), there were eight different Colonial Secretaries and six +Irish Chief Secretaries.</p> + +<p>Over and above all this apathy and arrogance was the perfectly genuine +incapacity to comprehend that idea of responsible government which even +the most hot-headed and erratic of the colonial agitators did +instinctively comprehend. Until Durham had at last opened Lord John +Russell's eyes, the great Whig statesman was as positive and explicit as +the Tories, Wellington and Stanley, in declaring that it was utterly +impossible for the Monarch's Representative overseas to govern otherwise +than by instructions from home and through Ministers appointed by +himself in the name of the King. One constitutional King ruled over +Great Britain, Canada, and<a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" /> Ireland. He could not be advised by two sets +of Ministers. The thing was not only an unthinkably absurd nullification +of the whole Imperial theory, but, in practice, would destroy and +dissolve the Empire. William IV. himself told Lord Melbourne that it was +his "fixed resolution never to permit any despatch to be sent ... that +can for a moment hold out the most distant idea of the King ever +permitting the question even to be entertained by His Majesty's +confidential servants of a most remote bearing relative to any change of +the appointment of the King's Councils in the numerous Colonies." Lord +Stanley said, in 1837, that the "double responsibility" was impossible, +that there must either be separation or no responsible government, and +that it was "no longer a question of expediency but of Empire." Lord +John Russell, polished, sober, scorning to descend to the mere vulgar +abuse of the colonials which disfigured the utterances of many of his +opponents, struggling visibly to reconcile Liberalism with Empire, +nevertheless arrived at the same conclusion. In a debate of March 6, for +example, in the same year, in proposing the defiant Resolutions which +provoked the rebellion in Canada, he argued at length that a responsible +Colonial Ministry was "incompatible with the relations of a Mother +Country and a Colony," and would be "subversive of the power of the +British Crown," and again, on December 22, that it meant "independence." +O'Connell rightly replied to the former speech that Russell and his +followers were supporting "principles that had been the fruitful source +of civil war, dissension, and distractions in Ireland for centuries." +The Radical group pushed home the Irish parallel. Hume quoted, as +applicable to Canada, Fox's saying: "I would have the whole Irish +Government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices, and I firmly +believe ... that the more she is under Irish Government the more she +will be bound to English interests." Molesworth declared, what was +perfectly true at that moment of passion and folly, that his extreme +political opponents wanted to make the reconquest of Ireland a precedent +for the reconquest of Canada.</p> + +<p>It would repay the reader to turn back from this debate to the Irish +Repeal Debate of three years earlier, and listen to Sir Robert Peel +stating as one of the "truths which be too <a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" />deep for argument," that the +Repeal of the Union "must lead to the dismemberment of this great +Empire, must make Great Britain a fourth-rate Power, and Ireland a +savage wilderness," which, as a matter of fact, it was at the very time +he was speaking, after thirty years of the Legislative Union, and seven +hundred years of irresponsible government. We must listen to him +claiming that the beneficent and impartial British Government was +"saving Ireland from civil war" between its own "warring sects," +whereas, in fact, it was that Government which had brought those warring +sects into being, which had fomented and exploited their dissensions, +which had provoked the rebellion of 1798, and by its shameful neglect +and partiality in the succeeding generation had flung Ireland into a +social condition hardly distinguishable from "civil war." And we must +realize that closely similar arguments, with special stress on the right +of taxation, had been used for the coercion of the American Colonies, +and that exactly the same arguments, founded on the same inversion of +cause and effect, were used to defend the coercion of Canada. There, +also, the Fitzgibbonist doctrine of revenge and oppression by a majority +vested with power was freely used, even by Lord John Russell, in his +speech of March 6, 1837, and of December 22 in the same year, when he +spoke of the "deadly animosity" of the French and "of the wickedness of +abandoning the British to proscription, loss of property, and probably +of lives." He ignored the fact that the same state of anarchy had been +reached in uni-racial Upper Canada as in bi-racial Canada, and that the +"loyalists" in both cases were not only in the same state of unreasoning +alarm for their vested rights, but, in the spirit of the Ulstermen of +that day and ever since, were threatening to "cut the painter," and +declare for annexation to the United States if their ascendancy were not +sustained by the Home Government. Then, as to-day, the ascendant +minority were supported in their threats by a section of British +politicians. Lord Stanley's speech of March 8, 1837, where he boasted +that the "loyal minority of wealth, education, and enterprise" would +protect themselves, and, if necessary, call in the United States, is +being matched in speeches of to-day. In all the debates of the period it +is interesting to see the ignorance which prevailed about the troubles +in Upper Canada.<a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" /> The racial question in Lower Canada, owing to the +analogy with Ireland, was seized on to the exclusion of the underlying +and far more important political question in both Provinces.</p> + +<p>Against the policy of the two great political parties in England the +little group of Radicals struggled manfully, and in the long run not in +vain, although for years they had to submit to insult and contumely in +their patriotic efforts to expose the vices of the colonial +administration and to avert the rebellion they foresaw in the Canadas. +What they feared, with only too good cause, was that the American and +Irish precedents would be followed, and war made for the coercion of the +Canadas, to be followed, if successful, by a still more despotic form of +government, which would in its turn provoke a new revolt. Rather than +that such a catastrophe should take place, they went, rightly, to the +extreme point of saying that an "amicable separation" should be +arranged, maintaining, what is indisputable, that the claims of humanity +should supersede the claims of possession. With Russell himself +declaring till the eleventh hour that responsible government was out of +the question because it meant "separation," they were quite justified in +demanding that separation, if indeed inevitable, should come about by +agreement, not as the possible result of a fratricidal war. For such a +war, though Russell could not see it until Durham made him see it, was +the only alternative to the grant of responsible government. But the +Radicals never used this argument unless circumstances forced them to. +Molesworth, in a debate of March 6, 1838, denounced the prevailing view +of the Colonies, insisted that we should be proud of them and study +their interests, that reform, not separation, should be our aim. The +Radicals were fully aware of the alternatives, and were unwearied in +pointing out the justice and policy, in the Imperial interests, of +acceding to the colonial popular demands. Grote had expressed the truth +in the December debate of 1837, when he implored the House "not to use a +tone of triumph at the superior power of England," but to remember that +the colonists, "though freemen, like ourselves," desired to remain, "if +they could do so with honour, in connection with England as the Mother +Country." He was followed by a gentleman named Inglis, who said that "it +was in Canada as in Ireland," a faction <a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" />called itself Canada, and that +we must bring "back the colonists," like the Irish, "to subordination."</p> + +<p>Roebuck, who led the Radicals in Canadian matters, had some of the +faults of Papineau and Mackenzie; yet posterity should give him and his +comrades credit for a constructive Imperialism which the great men of +his day lacked. It is now known that he and Sir William Molesworth +powerfully influenced Durham's policy. In a paper he drew up at Durham's +request on the eve of that nobleman's departure for Canada he sketched a +plan, imperfect in some details, but wise in broad conception, for +pacifying the Canadas, and went further in elaborating a scheme, also +defective, for the Confederation of British North America under the +Crown on the lines conceived by the despised demagogue, Mackenzie.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27" /><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> +But the two men who, by influencing Durham, probably did most to save +Canada for the Empire and to lay the foundations of the present Imperial +structure, were Charles Buller, the Radical M.P., and Edward Gibbon +Wakefield, both of whom accompanied the new Governor-General to Canada, +and who are generally believed to have inspired, if they did not +actually write, the greater part of the celebrated Report which became +the Magna Charta of the self-governing Colonies of the Empire.</p> + +<p>A word about the events which ended in the publication of this Report. +Durham reached Canada at the end of May, 1838, and in November was +recalled in disgrace for exceeding—strange as it seems!—the almost +absolute powers temporarily entrusted to him. He was an extraordinary +mixture of a despot and a democrat, an extreme Radical in politics, an +autocrat in manners, as vain and tactless as he was generous and +sincere, making bitter enemies and warm friends in turn. He began by +winning and ended by estranging almost every class in both Provinces of +Canada, and returned to England to all appearances a spent and +extinguished meteor. There is some truth, perhaps, in Greville's +observation that, had he been "plain John Lambton," he would never have +been chosen for Canada. It is certain that those who sent him there +little dreamed of the consequences of their action. Lord Melbourne, the +Prime Minister, in a letter to the Queen, charged him with magnifying +the Canadian troubles "in order <a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />to give greater <i>éclat</i> to his own +departure."<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28" /><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> Still, he did his work of investigation faithfully, and +formed his conclusions sanely, and there were plain men of greater +ability at his elbow in the persons of Wakefield and Buller, by whose +advice he was wise enough to be guided. All opinion was against him when +news came of his recall, and even Roebuck was denouncing him in the +<i>Spectator</i> for his autocratic excesses; but a brilliant article by John +Stuart Mill in the <i>Westminster Review</i>, pleading for time and +confidence, arrested the tide of obloquy.</p> + +<p>Durham's long Report, and the events which followed it, ought to be +studied carefully by every voter, however lowly, who has a voice in +deciding the fate of Irish Home Rule. After an exhaustive discussion of +the causes of disorder in Canada, Durham made two recommendations, the +first of incalculable importance, and proved by subsequent experience to +be right; the second of minor consequence, and proved by subsequent +experience to be wrong.</p> + +<p>The first was that responsible government should be inaugurated both in +Canada and in the Maritime Provinces of North America, whose +constitutional troubles Durham also discussed. His proposal was that the +Governor should govern in accordance with advice given by Colonial +Ministers in whom the popular Assembly reposed confidence, and who, +through that Assembly, were in touch with popular opinion; for it was to +the strangulation of popular opinion that Durham attributed all the +disorders and disasters of the past. This recommendation was eventually +adopted, not in the Act subsequently passed, but by instructions to the +Governors concerned; instructions which were first interpreted in the +full liberal spirit by Lord Elgin in 1847. The Maritime Provinces at +various dates and under various Governors received full responsible +government by 1854. Responsible government proved the salvation of +Canada and the Empire, as it would have proved, if given the chance, the +salvation of Ireland and a source of immensely enhanced strength to the +Empire.</p> + +<p>The second and less important recommendation, afterwards embodied in the +Act of 1840, was the Union of the two Provinces of Upper and Lower +Canada. Here Lord Durham, misled unhappily by the Irish precedent, fell +into an error. During <a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" />his visit to Canada he came near to accepting +that higher conception of a Federal Union with local Home Rule for each +Province, outlined by Roebuck and Mackenzie, and eventually consummated +thirty years later. When he came home to London he made a <i>volte face</i>, +rejecting the Federal idea and accepting its antitype, that Legislative +and Administrative Union of the two Provinces which had been rejected by +Pitt in 1791. There were, of course, economic arguments for Union apart +from the racial factor; but they do not seem to have been decisive with +Durham. At the last moment he gave way to a dread of predominant French +influence in Lower Canada, similar at bottom to his dread of the +unchecked influence of the British minority. While he feared that the +latter, if let alone, would inaugurate a reign of terror, he added also: +"Never again will the present generation of French-Canadians yield a +loyal submission to a British Government." The argument is inconsistent +with the whole spirit of the Report, which attributes the friction in +both Provinces to bad political institutions. It is probable that Durham +was really more influenced by the quite reasonable recognition that the +French were relatively backward in civilization and ideas. He sought, +therefore, both to disarm them politically and to anglicize them +socially, by amalgamating their political system with that of wholly +British Upper Canada. His calculation was that in a joint assembly the +British would have a small but sufficient majority. The estimated +population of Lower Canada was 550,000, of whom 450,000 were French, and +100,000 British and Irish; that of Upper Canada 400,000, all British and +Irish. That is to say, that in both Provinces together there was a +British and Irish majority of 100,000. The calculation over-estimated +the British element, but in the event this mistake proved to be +immaterial. Though Durham himself appears to have intended +representation to be in strict accordance with population, the Union +Act, passed in 1840, allotted an equal number of representatives in the +Joint Assembly to each of the old Provinces. The assumption here was +that the British Members from Upper Canada would unite with those of old +Lower Canada to vote down the French, just as the Ulster Protestants +voted with English members to vote down the Irish majority.<a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" /></p> + +<p>In practice the Union, after lasting twenty-six years, eventually broke +down. Durham's fear of French disloyalty proved to be as groundless as +his ideal of complete anglicization was futile. It was neither +necessary, sensible, nor possible to extinguish French sentiment, and +human nature triumphed over this half-hearted effort to apply in +dilution the medicine of Fitzgibbonism to the Colonies. Little harm was +done, because the introduction of responsible government, far +transcending the Union in importance, worked irresistibly for good. +Parties did not run wholly on racial lines, but racialism was encouraged +by the equal representation of the two Provinces in the Assembly, in +spite of the greater growth of population in the Upper Province. The +system was unhealthy, and at last produced a state of deadlock, in which +two exactly equal parties were balanced, and a stable Government +impossible. When that point was reached, men began to observe the strong +and supple Constitution of the adjacent United States, and to recognize +that a politically feeble Canada was courting an absorption from that +quarter which all Canadians disliked. The Legislative Union was +dissolved by the mutual consent of the Provinces with the approval of +the Mother Country, and in 1867, under the British North America Act, +the Federal Union was formed which exists in such strength and stability +to-day. Fear of French disloyalty or tyranny was a night-mare of the +past, even with the British minority in Lower Canada. It was realized +that French national sentiment was perfectly consistent with racial +harmony under the British flag. Upper Canada became Ontario, Lower +Canada Quebec. Each Province reserved a local autonomy for itself, and +each at the same moment voluntarily surrendered certain high powers to a +supreme centralized Government, in which both had confidence. Such a +political system is capable of indefinite expansion. Nova Scotia and New +Brunswick joined the Federation at the outset, Prince Edward Island and +British Columbia a little later, and were followed in turn by the +successively developed Provinces which now form the united and powerful +Dominion of Canada.</p> + +<p>Turn back to Ireland and weigh well the analogy. <i>Mutatis mutandis</i>, +almost every paragraph of the Durham Report applied with greater force +to the Ireland of his day. The <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" />ascendancy of a caste and creed minority +in Upper Canada; of a race minority in Lower Canada; "the conflict of +races, not of principles"; the consequent obliteration of natural +political divisions, and the substitution of unnatural and vindictive +antagonisms demoralizing both sides to every quarrel; the universal +disgust with and distrust of the British Government, though for reasons +diametrically opposite; the hopelessness of true reforms; the +perpetuation of abuses; the stagnation of trade and agriculture; the +re-emigration to America, and the abuses of a Church Establishment with +endowments from sources by right public—all these phenomena and many +others had their counterpart in Ireland. Some have disappeared. The +Church is disestablished. The land question is on the way to settlement. +The old ascendancy is mitigated. But many of the political, and all the +psychological, features of the situation which Durham described do, +alas! exist to-day in Ireland. Ireland, like the Canada of 1838, is a +land of bewildering paradox. There is a similarly unwholesome arrest of +free political life, the same unnatural division of parties, the same +suppression of moderate opinion, and the same inevitable maintenance of +a Home Rule agitation, harmful in itself, because it retards the country +and accentuates for the time being the very divisions it seeks to cure, +but absolutely necessary for the final salvation of Ireland. Durham, in +the case of Canada, saw the truth, and swept into the limbo of +discredited bogies the old figments of the coercionists. In a singularly +noble and profound passage (p. 229), revealing the ethical basis on +which his philosophy rested, he declared that even if the political +freedom of the Colony were to lead in the distant future to her +separation from the Empire, she nevertheless had an indefeasible moral +right to the blessings of freedom; but he prophesied correctly that the +connection with the Empire "would only become more durable and +advantageous by having more of equality, of freedom, and of local +administration."</p> + +<p>If only Irish and British Unionists would realize that these words came +from a profound knowledge of human nature in the mass, and are +applicable to Irishmen in Ireland just as much as to Irish, British, +French, and Dutch in the Colonies!</p> + +<p>The tenacity of the old superstition is extraordinary, and we can see it +in the case of Canada. It remains a wonder to this <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />day how responsible +government was ever introduced. There can be no question that the Act of +1840 only secured a smooth passage because, in providing for the Union +of the French and British Provinces, it represented a superficial +analogy to that Union of Britain and Ireland which had paralyzed Irish +aspirations. Durham himself had actually quoted both the Irish and +Scotch Unions as successful expedients for "compelling the obedience of +a refractory population," and thus arrived at the outstanding and +solitary defect of his otherwise noble scheme. And O'Connell, in a +debate upon the Report on June 3, 1839, opposed the Canadian Union for +Irish reasons, and in language which after-experience proved to be +perfectly correct. Happily, as we have seen, the defect was small and +curable, because the analogy with Ireland, where there was no +responsible, but, on the contrary, a separate and wholly irresponsible +Executive Government, and whose interests were upheld by only 100 +Members in a House of 670, was exceedingly remote. On responsible +government itself the Canadian Act of 1840 was entirely silent. We may +thank Providence for the fact. Durham's cardinal proposals had received +unbridled vituperation as sentimental rubbish where they were not +treasonable poison, the whole controversy taking precisely the same form +as in 1886 and 1893 over Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills for Ireland. +The <i>Quarterly Review </i> spoke of "this rank and infectious Report," +though it is fair to say that Peel and Wellington did not join in such +wild language. Five months after the issue of Lord Durham's Report, Lord +John Russell, in the debate of June 3, was denying, with the approval of +all but the Radicals, the possibility of responsible government as +emphatically as ever. Durham seems to have partially converted him in +the summer, for in introducing the Act itself in 1840 he cautiously +committed himself to the plan of instructing the Canadian Governor to +include in his Executive Council, or Cabinet, men expressly chosen +because they possessed the confidence of the Assembly. But the Act as it +stood, ignoring this vital change, was impeccably Conservative, and on +that account went through. In some points it seemed, without good +reason, to be even reactionary, and was regarded in that light with +displeasure by the Radicals, with satisfaction by Whigs and Tories.<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" /> +While confirming the control of revenue by the Assembly, in return for a +fixed civil list, it took away from the Assembly, and vested in the +Executive, the power of recommending money votes, and it also retained +the Legislative Council or Upper Chamber as a nominated, not as an +elective, body. Provided that the Executive had the confidence of the +representative Assembly or Lower House, the first point was perfectly +sound, and the second was not vital; but there was no security for the +condition precedent other than Russell's vague outline of subsequent +policy. While the supreme power of the King, acting with or without the +Governor, was reaffirmed in the most vigorous terms, there was not a +word in the Act about the composition of the Executive Council or its +relation to the Assembly.</p> + +<p>In Canada much the same misconceptions prevailed, and promoted the +acceptance of the Act by the supporters of the old ascendancies. The +question of the Union and the question of responsible government, both +raised by Lord Durham's Report, became inextricably confused, and the +various petitions and resolutions of the time reflect this confusion. +The French opposed the Union and supported responsible government on the +same grounds, and in almost identical terms, as the Irish opposed, and +still oppose, their Union with Great Britain, and ask for responsible +government in Ireland. Moderate Britishers supported both proposals, but +the extremists of the old ascendancy bitterly denounced the whole theory +of responsible government, Union or no Union. Their views are ably and +incisively set forth by a Committee of the old Legislative Council of +Upper Canada, that is, by the members of the "family compact," in a +protest signed and transmitted to London, where it was quoted with +approval by Lord John Russell. It may be found, together with other +petitions of the time, in the "Canadian Constitutional Development" of +Messrs. Grant and Egerton. With a few unessential changes and +modifications, the whole document might be signed to-day by a Committee +of Ulster Unionists, and I heartily wish that every Ulsterman would read +it in a spirit of reason and generosity, and observe how every line of +it was falsified by history, before he declares that the situation of +Ulster is peculiar, and sets his hand or gives his adhesion <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" />to a +similar document. The signatories, who, it must be remembered, were a +small ruling minority of the colonists, whose power was artificially +sustained by the British Governor, claim that they alone, in glorifying +and in battling for "colonial dependence," are the true Imperialists. +They hold dear the "unity of the Empire." Responsible government within +their own Colony would lead to the "overthrowal" of that Empire, and the +reduction of Britain to a "second-rate Power." A colonial Cabinet is +absurd; the local and sectional interests are too strong; the British +Government must remain as "umpire" to keep the parties from flying at +one another's throats. The majority, who are themselves a prey to +divisions (and one thinks of Nationalist splits), are seeking only for +illegitimate power; the minority are for "justice and protection, and +impartial government." Yet in the same breath we are told that all is +happy and peaceable as it is. Why subject the Colony to the dissensions +of party? Why foster a spirit of undying enmity among a people disposed +to dwell together in harmony? The signatories argue from the history of +Ireland and Scotland, "which never had responsible government, yet +government became impracticable the moment it approached to equal +rights." Hence a Union, because "government must be conducted with a +view to some supreme ruling power, which is not practicable with several +independent Legislatures." Finally, Loyalists and Imperialists as they +are, they are not going to stand an attempt to "force independence" on +them. They will take the matter into their own hands, and, if necessary, +call in the United States to "replace the British influence needlessly +overthrown."</p> + +<p>I do not quote this sort of thing in order to add any tinge of +bitterness to present controversies. The signatories lived to see their +errors and to be ashamed of what they wrote. They, like the Irish +Unionist leaders of to-day, were able and sincere men, unconscious, we +may assume, that their pessimism about the tendencies of their +fellow-citizens was really due to the defective institutions which they +themselves were upholding, and to the forcible suppression of the finer +attributes of human nature; unconscious, we may also assume, of +identifying loyalty with privilege, and "the supreme ruling power" with +their own ruling power; unconscious that what they <a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />called "Imperial +Unity" was in reality on the verge of producing Imperial disruption; and +wholly unconscious, certainly, of the ghastly irony of their analogy +drawn from the brutally misgoverned, job-ridden, tithe-ridden, +rack-rented Ireland of their day, living, for no fault of its own, under +a condition of intermittent martial law, and hurrying at that moment +towards the agony of the famine years. Less severe in degree, analogous +abuses perpetuated in their own interest existed in their own Colony, +and were only abolished under the new régime which they attacked with +such vehemence before it came, and which, because it transformed and +elevated their own character and that of their fellow-citizens, while +drawing them closer to the old country, they afterwards learned to +regard with pride and thankfulness.</p> + +<p>As an effective contrast to the mistaken views of the Upper Canadian +statesmen, the reader cannot do better than study the letters of Joseph +Howe, the brilliant Nova Scotia "agitator," to Lord John Russell, in +answer to that statesman's speech of June 3, 1839, when he argued +against responsible government, and quoted the Upper Canadian manifesto +as his text. These letters make a wonderful piece of sustained and +humorous satire, of which every word was true and every word applicable +to Ireland. Howe's portrait, for example, of the average Colonial +Governor applies line for line to the average Chief Secretary, coming at +an hour's notice to a country he has never seen, and knows nothing of, +vested with absolute powers of patronage, and often pledged to carry out +a policy in direct conflict with the wishes of the vast majority of the +people whose interests he is supposed to guard.</p> + +<p>The Act of 1840 went through, but it had little to do with the +regeneration and reconciliation of Canada. Poulett Thompson, the first +Governor, peremptorily declined to admit the principle of Ministerial +responsibility. Some good reforms were, indeed, made in the early years, +but the Act was on the verge of breaking down when Lord Elgin, Durham's +son-in-law, came to Canada as Governor-General in 1847. After many party +changes and combinations, French influence was temporarily in the +ascendant, and in 1849 a Bill was on the stocks for compensating French +as well as British subjects for losses in the rebellion of 1837. Elgin, +following the advice of his<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" /> Ministers, of whom Baldwin was one, +Lafontaine another, gave the Royal Assent to the Bill. The British, with +the old cry of "loyalism," and with Orangemen in the van, rioted, mobbed +the Governor, and burnt down the Parliament House at Montreal. Elgin, +expostulating with Lord John Russell, who was as pessimistic as ever, +and threatened with recall, stuck to his guns under fierce obloquy, and +the principle of responsible government was definitely established. It +was applied at about the same period to the other British Provinces of +North America, with the ulterior results I have described, and in a few +years to Australia.</p> + +<p>The great year, then, was 1847, the year of the Irish famine, and the +year before the pitiful rebellion of Smith O'Brien, surrendering in the +historic cabbage-garden. Our thoughts go back sixty-four years to 1783, +when the American War of Independence ended; when, as a result of that +war, British Canada and Australia were founded, and when, at the +crisis—premature, alas!—of Ireland's fortunes, the Volunteers in vain +demanded the Reform which might have saved their country. Look into +historical details, read contemporary debates, and watch the contrast. +Within five years of responsible government Canada solved all the great +questions which had been convulsing society for so long, and turned her +liberated energies towards economic development. In Ireland the abuses +of ages lingered to a point which seems incredible. The Church was not +disestablished, amid outcries of imminent ruin and threats of a +Protestant rebellion, till 1869, when Canada had already become a +Federated Dominion. The Irish land question, dating from the seventeenth +century, was not seriously tackled until 1881, not drastically and on +the right lines till 1903. Education languishes at the present day. +Canada started an excellent system of municipal and local government in +the forties. In Ireland, while the minority, in Greville's words, were +"bellowing spoliation and revolution," an Act was passed in 1840 with +the utmost difficulty, removing an infinitesimal part of the gross +abuses of municipal government under the ascendancy system, and it was +not till 1898 that the people at large are admitted to a full share in +county and town government. Even this step inverted the natural order of +things, for the new authorities are hampered in their work by the +incessant <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" />political agitation for the Home Rule which should have +preceded their establishment, as it preceded it in Great Britain and +Canada. Home Rule, the tried specific, was resisted, as those who read +the debates of 1886 and 1893 will recognize, on the same grounds as +Canadian Home Rule, in the same spirit, and often in terms absolutely +identical.</p> + +<p>Was it because Ireland, unlike Canada, was "so near"? Let us reflect. +Did Durham advocate Canadian Home Rule because Canada was "so far"? On +the contrary, it was a superficial inference, drawn not merely from +Ireland, but from Scotland, and since proved to be false both in Canada +and South Africa, that made him shrink from the full application of a +philosophy which was already far in advance of the political thought and +morality of his day. Is it to be conceived that if he had lived to see +the Canadian Federation, the domestic and Imperial results of South +African Home Rule, and the consequences of seventy more years of +coercive government in Ireland, he would still have regarded the United +Kingdom in the light of a successful expedient for "compelling the +obedience of refractory populations"? In truth, Durham, like ninety-nine +out of a hundred Englishmen of his day, knew nothing of Ireland, not +even that her political system differed, as it still differs, <i>toto +coelo</i> from that of Scotland, and came into being under circumstances +which had not the smallest analogy in Scotland. So far as his knowledge +went, he was a student of human nature as affected by political +institutions. Wakefield, who advised him, was a doctrinaire theorist who +put his preconceived principles into highly successful practice both in +Australia and Canada. They said: "Your coercive system degrades and +estranges your own fellow-citizens. Change it, and you will make them +friendly, manly, and prosperous." They were right, and one reflects once +more on the terrible significance of Mr. Chamberlain's admission in +1893, that "if Ireland had been a thousand miles away, she would have +what Canada had had for fifty years."<a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI" />CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND</h3> + + +<p>I have described the Canadian crisis at considerable length because it +was the turning-point in Imperial policy. Yet policy is scarcely the +right word. The Colonists themselves wrenched the right to +self-government from a reluctant Mother Country, and the Mother Country +herself was hardly conscious of the loss of her prerogatives until it +was too late to regret or recall them. The men who on principle believed +in and laboured for Home Rule for Canada were a mere unconsidered +handful in the country, while most of those who voted for the Act of +1840 thought that it killed Home Rule. No general election was held to +obtain the "verdict of the predominant partner" on the real question at +issue, with the cry of "American dollars" (which had, in fact, been +paid); with lurid portraits of Papineau and Mackenzie levying black-mail +on the Prime Minister, and quotations from their old speeches to show +that they were traitors to the Empire; with jeremiads about the terrors +of Rome, the abandonment of the loyal minority, and the dismemberment of +the Empire, to shake the nerves and stimulate the slothful conscience of +an ignorant electorate. Had there been any such opportunity we know it +would have been used, and we can guess what the result would have been; +for nothing is easier, alas! than to spur on a democracy with such cries +as these to the exercise of the one function it should refrain +from—interference with another democracy, be it in Ireland or anywhere +else. As it was, a merciful veil fell over Canada; Lord Elgin's action +in 1849 passed with little notice, and a mood of weary indifference to +colonial affairs, for which, in default of any Imperial idealism, we +cannot be too thankful, took possession of Parliament and the nation.<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" /></p> + +<p>It was in this mood that the measures conferring self-government on the +Australasian Colonies, 12,000 miles away from the Mother Country, and +exciting proportionately less concern than Canada, were passed a few +years later.</p> + +<p>From the landing of the first batch of convicts at Botany Bay in 1788, +New South Wales, the Mother Colony, was a penal settlement pure and +simple, under military Government, for some thirty years. The island +Colony, Tasmania, founded under the name of Van Diemen's Land in 1803, +was used for the same purpose. Victoria, originally Port Phillip, just +escaped a like fate in 1803, and remained uncolonized till 1835, when +the free settlers set their faces against the penal system, and in 1845, +acting like the Bostonians of 1774 with the famous cargo of tea, refused +to allow a cargo of convicts to land. South Australia, first settled in +1829, also escaped; so did New Zealand, which was annexed to the Crown +in 1839. Western Australia, dating from 1826, proceeded on the opposite +principle to that of Victoria. Free from convicts until 1849, when +transportation to other Colonies was checked at their own repeated +request, and came to an end in 1852, this Colony, owing to a chronic +shortage of labour, actually petitioned the Home Government to divert +the stream of criminals to its shores, with the result that in ten +years' time nearly half the male adults in the Colony, and more than +half in the towns, were, or had been, convicts. It was not until 1865, +under strong pressure from the other Colonies, that the system was +finally abolished which threw Western Australia forty years behind its +sister Colonies in the attainment of Home Rule.</p> + +<p>The transportation policy has been unmercifully criticized, and with all +the more justice in that Pitt, when the American war closed the +traditional dumping-ground for criminals, had the chance of employing +the exiled loyalists of America, many of whom were starving in London, +as pioneers of the new lands in the Antipodes. "The outcasts of an old +society cannot form the foundations of a new one," said a Parliamentary +Report of July 28, 1785. But they could do so, and did do so. Ruskin's +saying, <i>à propos</i> of Australia, that "under fit conditions the human +race does not degenerate, but wins its way to higher levels," comes +nearer the truth. In an <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" />amazingly short time after the transportation +policy was reversed the taint disappeared. We must remember, however, +that, sheer refuse as some of the convicts were, especially in the later +period, a large number of the earlier convicts were the product of that +"stupid severity of our laws" which the Vicar of Wakefield deplored, and +to this category belonged many an unhappy Irish peasant, sound in +character, but driven into Whiteboyism, or into the rebellions of 1798 +and 1803 by some of the worst laws the human brain ever conceived. +Hundreds of these men survived the barbarous and brutalizing ordeal of a +penal imprisonment to become prosperous and industrious citizens.</p> + +<p>It was not until 1825, or thereabouts, that free white settlers, many +Irishmen among them, came in any substantial number to the Mother Colony +of New South Wales, and not until 1832 that these men began to press +claims for the management of their own affairs, under the inspiration of +an Irish surgeon's son, William Wentworth, the Hampden of Australia. The +later Colonies rapidly came into line, Western Australia, for the reason +given above, remaining stationary. The first representative institutions +were granted in 1842 to New South Wales, and in 1850 to Victoria, South +Australia, and Tasmania. At that date, therefore, these settlements +stood in much the same constitutional position as the Canadas had stood +in 1791 (although technically their Constitutions were of a different +kind), but with this important difference, that the Act of 1850, "for +the better Government of Her Majesty's Australian Colonies," gave power +to those Colonies to frame new Constitutions for themselves. This they +soon proceeded to do, each constructing its own, but all keeping in view +the same model, the British Constitution itself, and aiming at the same +ideal, responsible Government by a Colonial Cabinet under a Government +representing the Crown. Since responsible Government in Great Britain +itself was not a matter of legal enactment, but the product of slowly +evolved conventions and precedents, to which political scientists had +not yet given a scientific form, it is no wonder that the colonial +Constitution-makers found great difficulty in expressing exactly what +they wanted in legal terms, and, indeed, none of them came near +succeeding; but time, their own political instinct, a succession <a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" />of +sensible Governors, and the forbearance of the Home Government solved +the problem, and evolved home-ruled States legally subordinate to the +Crown, but with a Constitution closely resembling our own. The +Constitutions became law by Acts of the Imperial Parliament passed by a +Liberal Ministry in 1855. They are of unusual interest because they +represent the first rude attempt to put into legal language a small part +of the theory of the British Constitution as applied to dependencies of +the Crown.</p> + +<p>In the most vital point of all, the relation of the dependency to the +Home Government (as distinguished from questions of internal political +structure), they are almost as reserved as the Canadian Act of 1840, +which, as we have seen, did not recognize by a word the duty of the +Governor to govern through a Colonial Cabinet. In certain clauses they +hint, by distant implication, at the existence of such a Cabinet, +responsible to the colonial popular Legislature—the Canadian Act did +not assume even that—but they do not anywhere imply that the Governor +is bound normally to place himself in the hands of that Cabinet, while +they expressly and rightly reaffirm the supreme power of the Crown, +whether acting through the Governor or not, over colonial legislation.</p> + +<p>How far this reticence about responsible Government facilitated the +passage of the Australian Acts in the British Parliament, as it +certainly facilitated the Canadian Act of 1840, it is difficult to +decide. It was probably a factor of some importance. At any rate, it is +true to say that Home Rule, as in Canada, was mainly a result of +practice rather than of statutory enactment. The case of New Zealand is +a striking example of this. In 1852 New Zealand obtained from a Tory +Government a Constitutional Act, which resembles the Canadian Act of +1840 in abstaining from any expression, direct or indirect which implies +the existence of a Colonial Cabinet, and it is probable that the framers +of the Act intended no such development, but on the contrary +contemplated a permanent, irremovable Executive. But the Act was no +sooner passed than an agitation began for responsible government, under +the leadership of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, part-author of the Durham +Report, and at that time a member of the New Zealand Assembly. By 1855, +when the Australian Acts were <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" />passed, New Zealand, without further +legislation, had obtained what she wanted.</p> + +<p>To complete the story, Queensland, carved out of New South Wales in +1859, entered upon full responsible government at once, and Western +Australia, retarded for so long by the servile system of convict-labour, +gained the same rights in 1890.</p> + +<p>Reading the debates of the middle of the nineteenth century, one is left +with the impression that the Australasian Colonies obtained Home Rule by +virtue of their distance, and because most politicians at home could not +be bothered to fight hard against a principle which at bottom they +disliked as heartily for the Colonies as for Ireland. The views of the +various parties were not much changed since the days of the crisis in +Canada. There were some able Colonial Secretaries who thoroughly +understood and believed in the principle of responsible government. On +the other hand, some Liberals were not yet converted, though Liberal +Governments fathered the Constitutional Acts of 1850 and 1855. +Disraeli's well-known saying in 1852 that "these wretched Colonies will +all be independent, too, in a few years, and are a mill-stone round our +necks," was typical of the Tory attitude.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29" /><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> Lord John Russell, in the +same year, 1852, was complaining, as Lord Morley tells us,<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30" /><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> that we +were "throwing the shields of our authority away," and leaving "the +monarchy exposed in the Colonies to the assaults of democracy." A group +of Radicals, headed by Sir William Molesworth and Hume in Parliament, +and by Wakefield from outside, still pushed the policy of emancipation +energetically and persistently on the principle which they had urged in +the case of Canada, that freedom was better both for the Colonies and +the Mother Country.</p> + +<p>But Molesworth and Wakefield gained one illustrious convert and +coadjutor in the person of Mr. Gladstone, whose speeches on the Colonies +at this period, 1849 to 1855, placed him, in regard to that topic, in +the Radical ranks, and in veiled opposition to the Whig leaders. Lord +Morley quotes a minute from his hand, written in 1852 in answer to the +view of Lord John<a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" /> Russell, referred to above, where he says "that the +nominated Council and independent Executive were not 'shields of +authority,' but sources of weakness, disorder, disunion, and +disloyalty." His Parliamentary and platform speeches, passing with +little notice at the time, nevertheless remain the most eloquent and +exalted expression of wise colonial policy that is to be found in our +language. If it was not till a generation later that he applied the same +arguments to the case of Ireland, the arguments nevertheless did apply +to Ireland almost word for word. Proximity to the Mother Country does +not affect them. Mr. Gladstone attacks the problem on its human side, +showing that coercive government is always and everywhere bad for those +who administer it, and bad for those who live under it, expensive, +inefficient, demoralizing, and that the longer it is maintained the more +difficult it is to remove. He condemns the fallacy of preparing men by +slow degrees for freedom, and the "miserable jargon about fitting them +for the privileges thus conferred, while in point of fact every year and +every month during which they are retained under the administration of a +despotic Government renders them less fit for free institutions." As to +cost, "no consideration of money ought to induce Parliament to sever the +connection between any one of the Colonies and the Mother Country," but +the greater part of the cost, he urged, was due to the despotic system +itself. His words are more applicable to the Ireland of to-day than the +Ireland of the middle of the nineteenth century, for it is one of the +many painful anomalies of Irish history that that country, at the lowest +point of its economic misery, was paying a relatively enormous +contribution to Imperial funds, and, incidentally, to the colonial vote, +while the Colonies were maintained at a loss correspondingly large, and +at times even larger.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31" /><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> But cost is, after all, a very small matter. +The first consideration is the character and happiness of human beings, +and here Gladstone's words, like Durham's, have a universal application. +If the reader cannot study them at length in<a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" /> Hansard, he should read +the great speech on the New Zealand Bill in 1852, and Lord Morley's +masterly summary of others. I conclude with a passage quoted by him from +a platform speech at Chester in 1855, the year when the Australian +Constitutions were sanctioned. "Experience has proved that if you want +to strengthen the connection between the Colonies and this country, if +you want to see British law held in respect, and British institutions +adopted and beloved in the Colonies, never associate with them the hated +name of force and coercion exercised by us at a distance over their +rising fortunes. Govern them upon a principle of freedom." At that +moment, after half a century of coercion and neglect under what was +called the "Union," Ireland was bleeding, as it seemed, to death. +Scarcely recovered from the stunning blow of the famine, she was +undergoing in a fresh dose of clearances and evictions the result of +that masterpiece of legislative unwisdom, the Encumbered Estates Act. +Her people were leaving her by hundreds of thousands, cursing the name +of England as bitterly as the evicted Ulster farmers and the ruined +weavers of the eighteenth century had cursed it, and bearing their +wrongs and hatred to the same friendly shore, America. For the main +stream of emigration, which before the Union had set towards the +American States, and from the Union until the famine towards Canada, +reverted after the famine towards the United States, impregnating that +nation with an hostility to Great Britain which in subsequent years +became a grave international danger, and which, though greatly +diminished, still remains an obstacle to the closer union of the +English-speaking races. On the other hand, it is interesting to observe +that among the Irish emigrants to countries within the Empire, and a +very important part of this emigration was to Australasia, the +anti-British sentiment was far less tenacious, though the affection for +their own native country was no less passionate.</p> + +<p>Whatever we may conclude about the motives behind the concession of Home +Rule to Australia and New Zealand, we may regard it as fortunate that +they lay too far away for any close criticism from statesmen at home, +whether before or after the attainment of self-government. Most of these +statesmen would have been scandalized by the manner in which these +vigorous young democracies, destitute of the <a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" />patrician element, shaped +their own political destiny by the light of nature and in the teeth of +great difficulties. Almost to a man their leaders in this great work +would have been regarded as "turbulent demagogues and dangerous +agitators," and often were so regarded, when the rumour of their +activities penetrated to far-off London. The old catchwords of +revolution, spoliation and treason, consecrated to the case of Ireland, +would have been applied here with equal vehemence, and were in fact +applied by the official classes in the Colonies themselves, round whom +small anti-democratic groups, calling themselves "loyal," crystallized, +as in the Provinces of Upper Canada and in Ireland, and with whom the +ruling classes at home were in instinctive sympathy. There were stormy, +agitated times, there were illegal movements against the reception of +convicts, struggles over land questions, religious questions, financial +questions, the emancipation of ex-convicts, and the many difficult +problems raised by the discovery of gold and the mushroom growth of +digger communities in remote places. There was in the air more genuine +lawlessness—irrespective, I mean, of revolt against bad laws—than ever +existed in Ireland, though there was never at any time any practical +grievance approaching in magnitude to the practical grievances of +Ireland at the same period. But, could the spirit of English +statesmanship towards analogous problems in Ireland have been maintained +in Australasia, systematically translated into law and enforced with the +help of coercion acts by soldiers and police, communities would have +been artificially produced presenting all the lawless and retrograde +features of Ireland.</p> + +<p>The famous affair of the Eureka Stockade in 1854 is an interesting +illustration. A great mass of diggers collected in the newly discovered +Ballarat goldfields had petitioned repeatedly against the Government +regulations about mining licences, for which extortionate fees were +levied. This was before responsible government. The goldfields were not +represented in the Legislature, and there was no constitutional method +of redress. The authorities held obstinately to their obsolete and +irritating regulations, and eventually the miners revolted under the +leadership of an Irishman, Peter Lalor, and with the watchword "Vinegar +Hill." There was a pitched battle with the <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" />military forces of the +Crown, ending after much bloodshed in the victory of the soldiers. Lalor +was wounded, and carried into hiding by his friends. Other captured +rioters were tried for "high treason" before juries of townsmen picked +by the Crown on the lines long familiar in Ireland; but even these +juries refused to convict, as they so often refused to convict in cases +of agrarian crime in Ireland. The State trials were then abandoned, a +Royal Commission reported against the licence system, and Parliamentary +representation was given to the goldfields. It came to be universally +acknowledged that the talk of "treason" was nonsense, that the outbreak +had been provoked by laws which could not be constitutionally changed, +and that the moral was to change them, not to expatriate and persecute +those who had suffered under them. Lalor reappeared, entered political +life, became Speaker of the reformed Assembly of 1856, and lived and +died respected by everyone. He now appears as a prominent figure in a +little book entitled "Australian Heroes," and it is admitted that the +whole episode powerfully assisted the movement for responsible +government in the Colony. Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Mitchell, and others +concerned in the Irish rebellion of 1848 were at that moment languishing +in the penal settlement of Tasmania for sedition provoked by laws fifty +times worse; laws, too, that a Royal Commission three years earlier had +shown to be inconsistent with social peace, and which others +subsequently condemned in still stronger terms. From their first +establishment far back in the seventeenth century it took two centuries +to abolish these laws. In the Australian case it took one year.</p> + +<p>As for the Irishmen of all creeds and classes who took such an important +part in the splendid work of building up these new communities, and who +are still estimated to constitute a quarter of the population, one can +only marvel at the intensity of the prejudice which declared these men +"unfit" for self-government at home, and which is not yet dissipated by +the discovery that they were welcomed under the Southern Cross, not only +as good workaday citizens in town, bush, or diggings, but as barristers, +judges, bankers, stock-owners, mine-owners, as honoured leaders in +municipal and political life, as Speakers of the Representative +Assemblies, and as Ministers and Prime<a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" /> Ministers of the Crown.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32" /><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> is +true, and the fact cannot surprise us, that the intestinal divisions of +race and creed in Ireland itself, stereotyped there by ages of bad +government, were at first to a certain extent reproduced in Australia, +as in Canada. Aggressive Orangeism was to be found sowing discord where +no cause for discord existed. But the common sense of the community and +the pure air of freedom tended to sterilize, though they have not to +this day wholly killed, these germs of disease. A career was opened to +every deserving Irishman, whether Catholic or Protestant. Hungry, +hopeless, listless cottiers from Munster and Connaught built up +nourishing towns like Geelong and Kilmore. Two Irishmen, Dunne and +Connor, were the first discoverers of the Ballarat goldfields. An +Irishman, Robert O'Hara Burke, led the first transcontinental +expedition, and another Irishman, Ambrose Kyte, financed it; Wentworth +was the father of Australian liberties. An Irish Roman Catholic, Sir +Redmond Barry, founded the Public Library, Museum, and University of +Melbourne. In the political annals of Victoria and New South Wales the +names of Irish Catholics, men to whom no worthy political career was +open in their own country, were prominent. Sir John O'Shanassy, for +example, was three times Prime Minister of Victoria, Sir Brian +O'Loughlen once. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, a member of O'Shanassy's +Cabinets, and at last Prime Minister himself, is the colonial statesman +whose career and personality are the best proof of what Ireland has lost +in high-minded, tolerant, constructive statesmanship, through a system +which silenced or drove from her shores the men who loved her most, who +saw her faults and needs with the clearest eyes, and who sought to unite +her people on a footing of self-reliance and mutual confidence. One of +the ablest of O'Connell's young adjutants, editor and founder of the +<i>Nation</i>, part-organizer of the Young Ireland Movement which united men +of opposite creeds in one of the finest national movements ever +organized in any country, Duffy's central aim had been to give Ireland a +native Parliament, where Irishmen could solve their own problems for +themselves. He saw the rebellion of 1848 fail, and Mitchell, Smith +O'Brien, Meagher, McManus, <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" />and O'Donoghue transported to Tasmania; he +laboured on himself in Ireland for seven years at land reform and other +objects, and in 1855 gave up the struggle against such hopeless odds, +and reached Melbourne early in 1856 in time to sit in the first +Victorian Parliament returned under the constitutional Act of 1855. From +the beginning to the end of an honourable political career which lasted +thirty years, he made it his dominant purpose to ensure that Australia +should be saved from the evils which cursed Ireland; from government by +a favoured class, from land monopoly, and from religious inequality and +the venomous bigotries it engenders, and he took a large share in +bringing about their exclusion. His Land Act of 1862, for example, where +he had another Roman Catholic Irishman, Judge Casey, as an auxiliary, +put an end in those districts where it was fairly worked to the grave +abuses caused by the speculative acquisition of immense tracts of land +by absentee owners, and promoted the closer settlement of the country by +yeoman farmers.</p> + +<p>In Australia, as in Canada, we see the vital importance of good land +laws, and can measure the misery which resulted in Ireland from an +agrarian system incalculably more absurd and unjust than anything known +in any other part of the Empire. The stagnation of Western Australia was +originally due to the cession of huge unworkable estates to a handful of +men. South Australia was retarded for some little time from the same +cause, and Victoria and New South Wales were all hampered in the same +way. It was not a question, as in Ireland, and to a less degree in +Prince Edward Island, of the legal relations between the landlord and +tenant of lands originally confiscated, but of the grant and sale of +Crown lands. Yet the after-results, especially in the check to tillage +and the creation of vast pasture ranches, were often very similar.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33" /><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p> + +<p>Duffy was not the only colonial statesman to apply Irish experience to +the problems of newly settled countries. An Englishman who became one of +the greatest of colonial statesmen and administrators, the Radical +Imperialist, Sir George Grey, began life as a Lieutenant on military +service in Ireland in the year 1829, and came away sick with the scenes +he had <a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />witnessed at the evictions and forced collections of tithes +where his troops were employed to strengthen the arm of the law. +"Ireland," his biographer, Professor Henderson, tells us,<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34" /><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> "was to +him a tragedy of unrealized possibilities." The people had "good +capacities for self-government," but Englishmen "showed a vicious +tendency to confuse cause and effect," and attributed to inherent +lawlessness what was a revolt against bad economic conditions. "All that +they or their children could hope for was to obtain, after the keenest +competition, the temporary use of a spot of land on which to exercise +their industry"; "for the tenant's very improvements went to swell the +accumulations of the heirs of an absentee, not of his own." "Haunted by +the Irish problem," Grey made it his effort first in South Australia, +and afterwards in New Zealand, where he was both Governor and Premier at +various times, to secure the utmost possible measure of Home Rule for +the colonists, and, in pursuance of a policy already inaugurated by +Edward Gibbon Wakefield, to establish a land system based, not on +extravagant free grants, or on private tenure, but on sales by the State +to occupiers at fair prices. The aim was to counteract that excessive +accumulation of people in the large cities which, thanks to imperfect +legislation, still exists in most of the Australian States. Subsequent +New Zealand land policy has been generally in the right direction, and +is acknowledged to be highly successful. In the Australian mainland +States the absentee and the squatter caused constant difficulties and +occasional disorder. The Commonwealth at the present day is suffering +for past neglect, and has found itself within the last year compelled to +imitate New Zealand in placing taxes on undeveloped land, with a higher +percentage against absentees.</p> + +<p>Let us add that Grey, like Duffy and most of the strongest advocates of +Home Rule for the Colonies, was a Federalist long before Federation +became practical politics, seeing in that policy the best means of +achieving the threefold aim of giving each Colony in a group ample local +freedom, of binding the whole group together into a compact, coherent +State, and of strengthening the connection between that State and the +Mother Country. As Governor at the Cape from 1854 to 1861 <a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" />he vainly +urged the Home Government to promote a Federal Union of the various +South African States, Dutch and British, in order, as he said, to create +"an United South Africa under the British flag," a scheme which, it is +generally agreed, could then have been carried out, and which would have +saved South Africa from terrible disasters. And he wished to apply the +same Federal principle to the Australian Colonies, and to the case of +Ireland and Great Britain.</p> + +<p>He realized earlier than most men that the talk of "separation" and +"disloyalty" was, in his own words already quoted, the result of a +"vicious tendency to confuse cause and effect," and that to govern men +by their own consent, to let them work out their own ideals in their own +way, to encourage, not to repress, their sense of nationality, is the +best way to gain their affection, or, if we choose to use that very +misleading word, their loyalty.</p> + +<p>Australia and New Zealand present remarkable examples of this beneficent +process, Australia in particular, because there, for a long time even +after the introduction of responsible government and, indeed, until a +dozen years ago, there was a large party of so-called "disloyalists" who +were never weary of decrying British influences and upholding Australian +nationality. Mr. Jebb, in his "Colonial Nationalism," gives an +interesting account of this movement and of its organ, the widely +circulated <i>Sydney Bulletin</i>, with its furiously anti-British views, its +Radicalism, its Republicanism, and what not. He shows amusingly how +entirely harmless the propaganda really was, and what a healthy effect +it actually had in promoting an independence of feeling and national +self-respect among Australians, to such a degree that when the South +African War broke out, there was a universal outburst of patriotism and +a universal desire, which was realized, to share to the full as a nation +in the expense, danger, and hardships of the war. Mr. Jebb adds the +interesting suggestion that the reluctance of New Zealand to enter the +Australian Federation may be partly due to the strong individual +sentiment of nationality evoked within her by the war and the +exceptional exertions she made to aid the Imperial troops.</p> + +<p>His book is a psychological study of men in the mass. What he sets out +to prove, and what he does successfully prove, is that the encouragement +of minor nationalities is not merely <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" />consistent with, but essential to, +the unity of the Empire. Yet he never mentions Ireland, not even for the +purpose of proving her an exception to the rule, and I do not think I +ever gauged the full extent of the prejudice against that country until +I realized that in such a book such a topic did not receive even a line +of notice; yet one would naturally suppose that it was as important to +the Empire, morally and strategically, to possess the affection and +respect of four and a half million citizens within 60 miles of the +British coast as of the same number of citizens at the Antipodes.</p> + +<p>Mr. Jebb is a Unionist. How he reaches his conclusion I do not know. It +would seem to be beyond human power to construct a case against Home +Rule for Ireland, with its strongly marked individuality of character +and sentiment, which did not textually stultify his case for the more +distant dependencies. His party generally is in sympathy with the views +expressed in his book, and has done much to further them. How do they +reconcile them with opposition to Home Rule for Ireland? How do they +explain away the support for that policy in the Dominions? It seems to +me that their only resource would be to say: "We are bound to maintain, +and we have the necessary physical force to maintain, the present +political system in Ireland, because to alter it would impair the formal +legislative 'unity' of the United Kingdom; but let us frankly admit that +as long as we take this view there can be no 'Union' in the highest +sense of the word. Ireland must be retarded and estranged. We cannot +raise Territorial Volunteers within her borders; on the contrary, we +must keep and pay for a standing army of police to preserve our +authority there. Her population must diminish, her vital energy ebb away +to other lands; as a market for our goods and as a source of revenue for +Imperial purposes she must remain undeveloped and unprogressive. She +will continue rightly to agitate for Home Rule, and this agitation will +always be baneful both to her and to us. It will distract her energies +from her own economic and social problems. It will embitter and degrade +our politics, and dislocate our Parliamentary institutions. She must +suffer, we must suffer, the Empire must suffer. It is sad, but +inevitable."</p> + +<p>Morality aside, is that common sense? Is it strange that <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" />the Colonies +themselves regard such logic, when applied to Ireland, as perverted and +absurd?</p> + +<p>Before leaving Australia we have only to recall the fact that at the +close of the last century, after a generation of controversy and +negotiation, the Canadian example of 1867 was at length imitated, and +the Federal Union formed which amalgamated all the mainland States, +together with Tasmania, in the Commonwealth of Australia, and that the +Union was sanctioned and legalized by the Imperial Act of 1900. New +Zealand preferred to remain a distinct State. The Australians departed +in some important respects from the Canadian model, the main difference +being that a greater measure of independence was retained by the +individual States, and smaller powers delegated to the central +Government. This was a matter of voluntary arrangement as between the +States themselves, the Home Government standing wholly aside on the +sound principle that Australia knew its own interests best, and that +what was best for Australia was best for the Empire.<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII" />CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>SOUTH AFRICA AND IRELAND</h3> + + +<p>In the years 1836-37, when Wentworth was agitating for self-government +in New South Wales, and when Canada was in rebellion for the lack of it, +thousands of waggons, driven by men smarting under the same sort of +grievance, were jolting northward across the South African veld bearing +Dutch families from the British Colony of the Cape of Good Hope to the +new realms we now know as the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal. The +"Great Trek" was a form of protest against bad government to which we +have no parallel in the Empire save in the wholesale emigrations from +Ireland at various periods of her history—after the Treaty of Limerick, +again after the destruction of the wool trade, again in 1770-1777, after +the Ulster evictions, and lastly after the great famine. The trekkers, +like the Irish emigrants, nursed a resentment against the British +Government which was a source of untold expense and suffering in the +future. Indeed, the whole history of South Africa bears a close +resemblance to the history of Ireland. In no other part of the Empire, +save in Ireland, was the policy of the Home Government so persistently +misguided, in spite of constantly recurring opportunities for the repair +of past errors. Fatality seems from first to last to have dogged the +footsteps of those who tried to govern there. Before the British +conquest the Dutch East India Company and the Netherlands Government +were as unsuccessful as their British successors, whose legal claim to +the Cape, established for the second time by conquest in 1806, was +definitely confirmed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The Dutch +colonists were a fine race of men, whose ancestors, like the Puritan +founders of New England, had fled in 1652 from religious persecution, +and who retained the virile qualities of their race. Though in <a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" />many +respects they resembled the backward and intensely conservative +French-Canadian inhabitants, they differed from them, and resembled +their closer relatives in race, the New Englanders, in an innate passion +for free representative government. They had rebelled repeatedly against +their Dutch oppressors, and had gone through a brief Republican phase. +It is an example, therefore, of the thoughtless inconsequence of our old +colonial policy that we gave the French-Canadians, who were the least +desirous of it, the form, without the spirit, of representative +institutions, while we denied, until it was too late to avert racial +discord, even the form to the Cape Dutch. In truth, the Colony seems to +have been regarded purely in the light of a naval station, while the +British and Irish inflow of settlers, dating from about the year 1820, +contemporaneously with the advent of free settlers in Australia, +suggested the possibility of racial oppression by the Dutch majority. +Yet if there was little real reason to fear oppression by the French in +Canada, there was still less reason to fear such oppression in the Cape, +where Dutch ideals and civilization were far more similar to those of +the British. In America the absorption of the Dutch Colonies in the +seventeenth century had led to the peaceful fusion of both races, nor +was there any reason why, under wise rule, the same fusion should not +have occurred in South Africa. Until 1834 authority was purely military +and despotic. In that year was established a small Legislative Council +of officials and nominated members, with no representative element. In +1837 came the Great Trek.</p> + +<p>No one disputes that the Dutch colonists had grievances, without the +means of redress. As usual, we find a land question in the shape of +enhanced rents charged by Government after the British occupation; the +Dutch language was excluded from official use, and English local +institutions were introduced with unnecessary abruptness; but the +principal grievance concerned the native tribes. Slavery existed in the +Colony, and its borders were continually threatened by these tribes. The +Dutch colonists were often terribly brutal to the natives; nevertheless +there is little doubt that a tactful and sympathetic policy could easily +have secured for them a more humane treatment, and the abolition of +slavery without economic dislocation. But a strong humanitarian +sentiment was <a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />sweeping over England at the time, including in its range +the negro slaves of Jamaica and the unconquered Kaffirs of South Africa, +but absolutely ignoring, let us note in passing, the economic serfdom of +the half-starved Irish peasantry at our very doors. Members of this +school took too little account of the tremendous difficulties faced in +South Africa by small handfuls of white colonists in contact with hordes +of savages. The Colonial Government, with a knowledge of the conditions +gained only from well-meaning but somewhat prejudiced missionaries, +endeavoured from 1815 onwards to enforce an impracticable equality +between white and coloured men, and abolished slavery at one sudden +stroke in 1833 without reasonable compensation. A large number of the +Dutch, unable to tolerate this treatment, deserted the British flag. +Those that remained were under suspicion for more than thirty years, so +that political progress was very slow. It was not till 1854 that the +Colony received a Representative Assembly, and not until 1872, eighteen +years later than in Australia, and twenty-five years later than in +Canada, that full responsible government was established.</p> + +<p>Piet Retief, one of the leaders of the voluntary exiles, had published a +proclamation in the following terms before he joined the trek: "We quit +this Colony under the full assurance that the English Government has +nothing more to require of us, and will allow us to govern ourselves +without its interference in the future. We are now leaving the fruitful +land of our birth, in which we have suffered enormous losses and +continual vexation, and are about to enter a strange and dangerous +territory; but we go with a firm reliance on an all-seeing, just, and +merciful God, whom we shall always fear and humbly endeavour to obey." +This was high language, yet after-events proved that a steady, +consistently fair treatment on our part would even then have reconciled +these men to a permanent continuance of British sovereignty. +Unfortunately, our policy oscillated painfully between irritating +interference and excessive timidity. First of all attempts were made to +stop the trek by force, then to compel the trekkers to return by cutting +off their supplies and ammunition, then to throttle their development of +the new lands north of the Orange and Vaal Rivers by calling into being +fictitious <a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" />native States on a huge scale in the midst of and around +them, then tardily to repair the disastrous effects of this policy; but +not before it had led to open hostilities (1845). Hostilities, however, +had this temporarily good result, in that it brought to the front one of +the ablest and wisest of the Cape Governors, Sir Harry Smith, who +defeated the Boers at Boomplatz in 1848, established what went by the +name of the Orange River Sovereignty, and in a year or two secured such +good and peaceful government within its borders as to attract +considerable numbers of English and Scotch colonists. The malcontents +retired across the Vaal. Then came an abrupt change of policy in the +Home Government, a sudden desire actuated mainly by fear of more native +wars, to cancel all that was possible of our commitments in South +Africa. The Transvaal, by the Sand River Convention, was declared +independent in 1852, the Orange Free State, by the Convention of +Bloemfontein, in 1854. This was to rush from one extreme to the other. +It was as though in 1847 we had erected Quebec into a sovereign State +instead of giving it responsible government under the Crown, or as if in +1843 we had been so deeply convinced by O'Connell's second agitation for +repeal that we had leapt straight from coercive government to the +foundation of an independent Republic in Ireland, instead of giving her +the kind of Home Rule which she was asking for.</p> + +<p>It was not yet too late to mend. In 1854, when the cession of the Free +State had just been carried out, Sir George Grey, whom we have met with +in Australia and New Zealand, came as High Commissioner to the Cape. In +1859 he made the proposal I alluded to in the last chapter for +federating all the South African States, including the two new +Republics. There is little doubt that the scheme was feasible then. The +Orange Free State was willing to join, and, indeed, had initiated +proposals for Federation. Its adhesion would have compelled the +Transvaal, always more hostile to British rule, to come in eventually, +if not at once; for the relations of the two Republics were friendly +enough at the time to permit one man, Pretorius, to be President of both +States.</p> + +<p>The scheme was rejected by Lord Derby's Tory Cabinet, and Grey, a +"dangerous man," as Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, dubbed him, +was recalled.<a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" /></p> + +<p>Sixteen years later, in 1875, Lord Carnarvon himself, as a member of the +Disraeli Ministry, revived the project. Converted in his views of the +Colonies, like many of his Tory colleagues at this period, he had +carried through Parliament the Federation of Canada in 1867, and hoped +to do the same with South Africa. But it was too late. The Cape +Parliament, now in possession of a responsible Ministry, was hostile, +while twenty years of self-government, for the most part under the great +President Brand, had changed the sentiments of the Free State. +Federation, then, was impossible. On the other hand, the Transvaal was +in a state of political unrest and of danger from native aggression, +which gave a pretext for reversion to the long-abandoned policy of +annexation, and to that extreme Carnarvon promptly went in April, 1877. +He took this dangerous course without ascertaining the considered wishes +of the majority of the Boers, acting through his emissary, Sir T. +Shepstone, on the informal application of a minority of townsmen who +honestly wished to come under British rule.</p> + +<p>Rash as the measure was, lasting good might have come of it had the +essential step been taken of preserving representative government. The +promise was given and broken. For three years the Assembly, or +Volksraad, was not summoned. Once more home statesmanship was blind, and +local administration blunderingly oppressive. Shepstone was the wrong +man for the post of Administrator. Sir Owen Lanyon, his successor, was +an arrogant martinet of the stamp familiar in Canada before 1840, and +painfully familiar in Ireland. The refusal of an Assembly naturally +strengthened the popular demand for a reversal of the annexation, and +this demand, twice pressed in London through a deputation headed by Paul +Kruger, obscured the whole issue, and raised a question of British +national pride, with all its inevitable consequences, where none need +have been raised. There was a moment of hope when Sir Bartle Frere, who +stands, perhaps, next to Sir George Grey on the roll of eminent High +Commissioners, endeavoured to pacify the Boer malcontents, and drafted +the scheme of a liberal Constitution for the Transvaal. But one of the +last acts of the Tory Government, at the end of 1879, was to recall +Frere for an alleged transgression of his powers in regard to the Zulu +War, and to pigeon-hole his scheme. Mr. Gladstone, who in <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" />opposition +had denounced the annexation with good enough justification, though in +terms which under the circumstances were immoderate, found himself +compelled to confirm it when he took office in April, 1880. But he, too, +allowed the liberal Constitution to sleep in its pigeon-hole. He was +assured by the officials on the spot that there was no danger, that the +majority were loyal, and only a minority of turbulent demagogues +disloyal; and in December, 1880, the rebellion duly broke out, and the +Transvaal Republic was proclaimed. What followed we know, war, Laing's +Nek, Majuba, and one more violent oscillation of policy in the +concession of a virtual independence to the Transvaal.</p> + +<p>Whatever we may think of the policy of this concession, and Lord Morley +has made the best case that can be made for Mr. Gladstone's action, it +is certain that it was only a link in a long chain of blunders for which +both great political parties had been equally responsible, and of which +the end had not yet come. The nation at large, scarcely alive until now +to the existence of the Colonies, was stung into Imperial consciousness +by a national humiliation, for so it was not unnaturally regarded, +coming from an obscure pastoral community confusedly identified as +something between a Colony, a foreign power, and a troublesome native +tribe. The history of the previous seventy years in South Africa was +either unknown or forgotten, and Mr. Gladstone, who in past years had +preached to indifferent hearers the soundest and sanest doctrine of +enlightened Imperialism, suddenly appeared, and for ever after remained +in the eyes of a great body of his countrymen, as a betrayer of the +nation's honour. Resentment was all the greater in that it was +universally believed that Laing's Nek and Majuba were unlucky little +accidents, and that another month or two of hostilities would have +humbled the Boers to the dust.</p> + +<p>This illusion, which is not yet eradicated, and which has coloured all +subsequent discussion of the subject, lasted unmodified until the first +months of the war in 1899, when events took place exactly similar to +Laing's Nek and Majuba, and were followed by a campaign lasting nearly +three years, requiring nearly 500,000 men for its completion, and the +co-operation of the whole Empire. It is impossible to estimate the +course events would have taken in 1881 had the war been <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" />prolonged. If +the Free State had joined the Transvaal, it may be reasonably +conjectured that we should have been weaker, relatively, than in 1899. +Though the Boers were less numerous, less well organized, and less +united as a nation in 1881, they were even better shots and stalkers +than in 1899, because they had had more recent practice against game and +natives; nor was there a large British population in the Transvaal to +counteract their efforts and supply magnificent corps like the Imperial +Light Horse for service in arms against them. Our army, just as brave, +was in every other respect, especially in the matter of mounted men and +marksmanship, less fitted for such a peculiar campaign, and could have +counted with far less certainty upon that assistance from mounted +colonial troops without which the war of 1899-1902 could never have been +finished at all. Our command of the sea was less secure; the Egyptian +War of 1882 was brewing, and Ireland, where the Great Land Act of 1881 +was not yet law, was seething with crime and disorder little +distinguishable from war itself, and demanding large bodies of troops.</p> + +<p>If the further course of a war in 1881 is a matter of speculation, what +we all know for certain is, first, that the conditions which led to war +were produced by seventy years of vacillating policy, and, second, that +war itself would have been a useless waste of life and treasure, unless +success in it had been followed, as in 1906, by the grant of that +responsible Government which all along had been the key to the whole +difficulty, the condition precedent to a Federal Union of the South +African States, and to their closer incorporation in the Empire.</p> + +<p>Few persons realized this at the time. The whole situation changed +disastrously for the worse. Arrogance and mutual contempt embittered the +relations of the races. Then came a crucial test for the Boer capacity +for enlightened and generous statesmanship. Gold was discovered in the +Transvaal, and a large British population flocked in. The same problem, +with local modifications, faced the Boers as had been faced in Upper and +Lower Canada, and for centuries past in Ireland. Were they to trust or +suspect, to admit or to exclude from full political rights, the +new-comers? Was it to be the policy of the Duke of Wellington or of the +Earl of Durham, of Fitzgibbon or the Volunteers? They chose the wrong +course, and set up <a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" />an oligarchical ascendancy like the "family compact" +of Upper Canada and Nova Scotia. Can we be surprised that they, a rude, +backward race, failed under the test where we ourselves, with far less +justification, had failed so often? Their experience of our methods had +been bad from first to last. Their latest taste of our rule had been the +coercive system of Lanyon, and they feared, with only too good reason, +as events after the second war proved, that any concession would lead to +a counter-ascendancy of British interests in a country which was legally +their own, not a portion of the British dominions. We had suffered +nothing, and had no reason to fear anything, from the Irish and +French-Canadian Catholics, nor from the Nonconformist Radicals of Upper +Canada. It would have been well if a small fraction of the abuse +lavished on the tyrannical Boer oligarchy six thousand miles away had +been diverted into criticism of the government of a country within sixty +miles of our shores, where a large majority of the inhabitants had been +for generations asking for the same thing as the Uitlander minority in +the Transvaal—Home Rule—and were stimulated to make that demand by +grievances of a kind unknown in the Transvaal.</p> + +<p>But the British blood was up; the Boer blood was up. Such an atmosphere +is not favourable to far-seeing statesmanship, and it would have taken +statesmanship on both sides little short of superhuman to avert another +war. The silly raid of 1895 and its condonation by public opinion in +England hastened the explosion. Can anyone wonder that public opinion in +Ireland was instinctively against that war? Only a pedant will seize on +the supposed paradox that a war for equal rights for white men should +have met with reprobation from an Ireland clamouring for Home Rule. +Irish experience amply justified Irishmen in suspecting precisely what +the Boers suspected, a counter-ascendancy in the gold interest, and in +seeing in a war for the conquest of a small independent country by a +mighty foreign power an analogy to the original conquest of Ireland by +the same power. It is hard to speak with restraint of the educated +men—men with books and time to read them, with brains and the wealth +and leisure to develop them—who to this very day abuse their talents in +encouraging among the ignorant multitude the belief that the Irish +leaders <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" />of that day were, to use the old hackneyed phrase, "traitors to +the Empire." If we look at the whole of these events in just +perspective, if we search coolly and patiently for abiding principles +beneath the sordid din and confusion of racial strife, we shall agree +that in some respects Irishmen were better friends to the Empire than +the politicians who denounced them, and sounder judges of its needs. Yet +there can be no doubt that the Transvaal complications, followed +unhappily by the Gordon episode in the Soudan, reacted fatally on +Ireland, and that the Irish problem in its turn reacted with bad effect +on the Transvaal. When the statesman who refused to avenge Majuba in +1881 proposed his Irish Home Rule Bills in 1886 and 1893, it was easy +for prejudiced minds to associate the two policies as harmonious parts +of one great scheme of national dismemberment and betrayal. Boers, +Irish, and Soudanese savages, all were confusedly lumped together as +dangerous people whom it was England's duty to conquer and coerce.</p> + +<p>The South African War of 1899-1902 came and passed. People will discuss +to the end of time whether or not it could have been avoided. Parties +will differ to the end of time about its moral justification. For my own +part, I think it is pleasanter to dwell on the splendid qualities it +evoked in both races, and above all on the mutual respect which replaced +the mutual contempt of earlier days. I myself am disposed to think that +at the pass matters had reached in 1896 nothing but open war could have +set the relations of the two races on a healthy footing.</p> + +<p>But bold and generous statesmanship was needed if the fruits of this +mutual respect were to be reaped. The defeated Republics were now +British Colonies, their inhabitants British subjects. After many +vicissitudes we were back once more in the old political situation of +1836 before the Great Trek, and the policy which was right then was +right now. Bitter awakening as it was to our proud people after a war +involving such colossal sacrifices, it was still just as true as of old +that in Ireland, Canada, Australia, South Africa, or anywhere else, it +is utterly impossible for one white democracy to rule another properly +on the principle of ascendancy. It was physically possible, thanks to +Ireland's proximity, to deny that country Home Rule, but it would not +have been even physically possible <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" />in the Transvaal and Orange River +Colony. Yet the idea was conceived and the policy strongly backed which +could only have had the disastrous effect of bringing into being two +Irelands in the midst of our South African dominions. It is not yet +generally recognized that we owe the defeat of this policy in the first +instance to Lord Kitchener. From the moment he took the supreme military +command in South Africa at the end of 1900, while prosecuting the war +with iron severity and sleepless energy, he insisted on and worked for a +settlement by consent, with a formal promise of future self-government +to the Boers. In this he was in sharp opposition to Lord Milner, who +desired to extort an unconditional surrender. Of these two strong, able, +high-minded men, the soldier, curiously enough, was the better +statesman. In temperament he recalls the General Abercromby of 1797 on +the eve of the Irish rebellion, still more perhaps General Carleton, who +administered French Canada in the critical period after its conquest and +during the American War. Lord Milner, in political theory, not in +personality, corresponds to Fitzgibbon. His view was that British +prestige and authority could only be maintained in the future by thus +humbling the national pride of our adversaries, who, moreover, by the +formal annexations of 1900, carried into effect when the war was still +young, were by a legal fiction rebels, not belligerents. Lord Kitchener, +besides seeing, as the responsible soldier in the field, the sheer +physical impossibility of lowering the Boer national pride by any +military operations he had the power to undertake, from the beginning of +the guerilla war onwards, was a truer judge of human nature and a better +Imperialist at heart in realizing that the self-respect of the Boers was +a precious asset, not a dangerous menace to the Empire, and that the +whole fate of South Africa depended on a racial reconciliation on the +basis of equal political rights, which would be for ever precluded by +compelling the Boers to pass under the Caudine Forks.</p> + +<p>Fortunately Lord Kitchener was supported by the Home Government, and the +Peace of Vereeniging took the form of a surrender on terms, or, +virtually, of a treaty, formally guaranteeing, among other things, the +concession "when circumstances should permit" of "representative +institutions leading <a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />up to self-government." The next ordeal of British +statesmanship came when the time arrived in 1905 to redeem this promise. +There were two distinctly defined alternatives: one, to profit by +experience and to give responsible government at once; the other, for +the time being, to copy one of the constitutional models which had long +been obsolete curiosities in the history of all the white Colonies, +which had never failed to produce mischievous results, whether in a +bi-racial or a uni-racial community, and which were in reality suited +only to groups of officials and traders living in the midst of +uneducated coloured races in tropical lands. The Government, and we +cannot doubt that their traditional policy toward Ireland warped their +views, declared for the latter alternative, and issued under Letters +Patent a Constitution which happily never came into force. Like the Act +of Union with Ireland, it gave the shadow of freedom without the +substance. It set up a single Legislative Chamber, four-fifths elective, +but containing, as <i>ex-officio</i> members, the whole of the Executive +Council as nominated by the Crown. Executive power, therefore, together +with the last word in all legislation, was to remain wholly in the hands +of the Crown, acting through a Ministry not responsible to the people's +representatives. It would have been difficult to design a plan more +certain to promote friction, racialism, and an eventual deadlock, +necessitating either a humiliating surrender by the Government under +pressure of the refusal of supplies, or a reversion to despotic +government which would have produced another war. With wide differences +of detail and with the added risk of financial deadlock, it was sought +to establish the kind of political situation prevalent in Ireland after +the Act of Union. The executive power in that country, and, with the +exception of the Department of Agriculture, the policy and personnel of +the host of nominated Boards through which its affairs are administered, +still stand wholly outside popular control, while legislation in +accordance with Irish views is only possible when, in the fluctuation of +the British party balance, a British Ministry happens to be in sympathy +with these views, and only too often not even then.</p> + +<p>Statesmen who looked with complacency on the history of a century in +Ireland under such a system naturally took a <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />similar view of the +Transvaal, deriving it from the same low estimate of human tendencies. +The literature, despatches, and speeches of the period carry us straight +back to the Canadian controversies of 1837-1840, and beyond them to the +Union controversy of 1800. In one respect the parallel with the Irish +Union is closer, because, while British opinion in Lower Canada was +predominantly against responsible government, there was in Ireland a +strong current of unbribed Protestant opinion against the Union. +Similarly, in the Transvaal, there was a strong feeling among a section +of the British population, coinciding with the general wishes of the +Dutch population, in favour of full responsible government. In other +words, the mere prospect of self-government lessened racial cleavage, +brought men of the two races together, and began the evolution of a new +party cleavage on the normal lines natural to modern communities. The +whole question was keenly canvassed at public meetings and in the Press +from November, 1904, to February 5, 1905, and in Johannesburg a British +party of considerable strength took the lead in demanding the fuller +political rights, and formed the Responsible Government Association. The +controversy was embodied in a Blue-Book laid before Parliament,<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35" /><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> and +at every stage of its progress the facts were cabled home by Lord Milner +to the Government, who thus had the whole situation before them when +they came to their decision.</p> + +<p>It would be worth the reader's while to study with some care the terms +of the despatch announcing that decision.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36" /><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> He will feel himself in +contact with fundamental principles, undisturbed by individual bias; for +no one could suspect Mr. Lyttelton, the genial and popular Secretary of +State who penned the despatch, of any violent prejudices. Yet the spirit +of the whole despatch, though gentle and persuasive in its terms, is the +spirit of Fitzgibbon's brutally outspoken argument for the extinction of +the Irish Parliament, and the complete exclusion of Irish Roman +Catholics from influence over their country's affairs. The despatch +begins, it is true, by explaining that the proposed Constitution is only +intended to be temporary; that it had been the invariable custom to +grant freedom to the Colonies by degrees, and that the custom <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" />must be +followed; but the reasons adduced for following it, if we consider that +they were adduced in the year 1905, instead of a century and a half +back, constitute one of the strangest of all the strange inversions of +historical cause and effect which a Home Rule controversy has ever +suggested to the human brain. Instead of inferring from our bitter +experiences in Upper and Lower Canada, which are mentioned in the +despatch, and in Ireland, which is not, that race distinctions increase +instead of lessening the necessity for responsible government, Mr. +Lyttelton complacently quotes bi-racial Lower Canada as a precedent for +his Transvaal Constitution. Quite frankly, though in curiously +misleading terms,<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37" /><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> he records the fact that a similar Constitution +there led to deadlock and rebellion. Without intention to deceive, he +ignores the fact that wholly British Upper Canada reached the same pass +for the same reasons; and he appears to look forward with equanimity to +the passage of the unfortunate Transvaal through an identically painful +phase of history toward the <a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" />same sanguinary climax. The radical error +in the official version of events in Canada appears in the comparison +between the rebellions of 1837 and the South African War of 1899-1902. +To contrast the "brief armed rising" in Canada with the three years' war +in South Africa, and to argue that a degree of freedom could safely be +given after the former, which would involve great danger after the +latter, was to show ignorance of the chain of historical events and +blindness to their true moral. The underlying idea is the one applied to +the old American Colonies and for centuries to Ireland, namely, that the +more mutinous a dependency is, the less reason for giving it Home Rule, +with the paradoxical corollary applied even to this day in Ireland, that +if it is not disorderly it does not need Home Rule. So from age to age +statesmen run their heads against facts, perpetuate the errors of their +forefathers, and do their unconscious best to intensify the evils they +deplore. It was erroneous to regard either the Canadian Rebellions or +the Boer War as events which rendered responsible government more or +less dangerous. Each of these events was itself the climax of a long +period of irresponsible misgovernment dating from about the same period, +the second decade of the nineteenth century, and demanding the same +remedy. In the Boer case, continuity was twice broken by grants of +independence, and the climax proportionally delayed, but the origin of +the trouble was the same. If the Boers had not trekked <i>en masse</i> from +Cape Colony in order to escape from misgovernment, both movements—in +the Cape and Canada—might have come to a head in exactly the same year, +1837.</p> + +<p>In sober, weighty, tactful phrases, carefully chosen to avoid giving +needless offence to the Dutch, the despatch laboriously overthrows the +Liberal theory of government, and works out the negation of all Imperial +experience. It deplores the "bitter memories" of war, which free +institutions, by tending to "emphasize and stereotype the racial line," +will make more, not less bitter, and which can be effaced only by the +"healing effect of time." We think of the Durham Report, of Ireland, and +marvel. We recollect the bulky Blue-Book at Mr. Lyttelton's elbow as he +wrote, full of speeches and articles by Englishmen, showing quite +correctly, as has since been proved, that the "racial line" in +Johannesburg was growing fainter <a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />daily with the mere prospect of +responsible government. These men were not afraid of the Dutch, and said +so. The answer was that they ought to be, or, in the persuasive language +of diplomacy, as follows:</p> + +<p>"His Majesty's Government trust that those of British origin in the +Transvaal who, with honest conviction, have advocated the immediate +concession of full responsible government, will recognize the soundness +and cogency of the reasons, both in their own interests and in those of +the Empire, for proceeding more cautiously and slowly, and that under a +political system which admittedly has its difficulties they will, +notwithstanding a temporary disappointment, do their best to promote the +welfare of the country and the smooth working of its institutions."</p> + +<p>Then came a chivalrous compliment to the Dutch for their "gallant +struggle" in the war, coupled with a reminder that they are not to be +trusted with political power, a reminder so courteously worded that it, +too, becomes a compliment:</p> + +<p>"The inhabitants of Dutch origin have recently witnessed, after their +gallant struggle against superior power, the fall of the Republic +founded by the valour and sufferings of their ancestors, and cannot be +expected, until time has done more to heal the wound, to entertain the +most cordial feelings towards the Government of the Transvaal. But from +them also, as from a people of practical genius, who have learned by +long experience to make the best of circumstances, His Majesty's +Government expect co-operation in the task of making their race, no +longer in isolated independence, a strong pillar in the fabric of a +world-wide Empire. That this should be the result, and that a complete +reconciliation between men of two great and kindred races should, under +the leading of Divine Providence, speedily come to pass, is the ardent +desire of His Majesty the King and of His Majesty's Government."</p> + +<p>The tone recalls the tone of Pitt and Castlereagh in proposing the +Union. But Fitzgibbon went more directly to the point in saying outright +that, Ireland having been conquered and confiscated, the colonists "were +at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island," and that laws must +be framed by an external power to "meet the vicious propensities of +human <a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />nature." Let us recognize unreservedly that the words of the +Transvaal despatch were the outcome of deep and sincere conviction. That +is the worst of it. From age to age Ireland has to suffer for the depth +and sincerity of these convictions. There, too, the cleavage of race and +religion, never complete, always defying the official efforts to +"stereotype and emphasize it," to quote the despatch of 1905, grows +fainter with time, and will grow fainter as long as the national +movement lives to draw men together in the common interest of Ireland. +The Volunteers, Wolfe Tone, Emmet, many of the Young Irelanders, Isaac +Butt, Parnell, were Protestants. And there is a strong band of +Protestant Home Rulers to-day in Ulster and out of it, landlords, +tenants, capitalists, labourers, Members of Parliament, and clergymen, +who declare that they are not afraid of Catholic oppression, and who are +told by Unionists that they ought to be. And in Ireland, too, the Roman +Catholic majority are told, rarely, it is true, in the courteous phrases +of Mr. Lyttelton's despatch, that they "cannot be expected to entertain +the most cordial feelings towards the Government." In Ireland, also, is +a "political system which admittedly has its difficulties," ironical +euphemism for a system whose analogue in the Transvaal could have been +used by the subject race, had they so willed, to bring civil government +to a standstill, without the means of furnishing anything better, and +which under the Act of Union can be, and has been, used to dislocate the +Parliamentary life of the United Kingdom. The Boers were asked "as a +people of practical genius" to assist the "smooth working" of an +unworkable Constitution, so as to promote the "reconciliation of two +great and kindred races." The Irish are pursued with invective for +legitimately using the constitutional power given them in order, while +freeing Parliament from an intolerable incubus, to gain the right to +elicit character and responsibility in themselves by shouldering their +own burdens and saving their own souls.</p> + +<p>If the official view of the Transvaal was mistaken, the summit of error +was reached in the view taken of the Orange River Colony. In that +Colony, which was almost wholly pastoral and Dutch, and which until the +war had enjoyed free institutions uninterruptedly for half a century, +and had made remarkably good vise of them, representative government, +<a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" />even of the illusory kind designed for the Transvaal, was to be +indefinitely postponed, postponed at any rate until the results of the +"experiment" in the Transvaal had been observed.</p> + +<p>The Government "recognize that there are industrial and economic +conditions peculiar to the Transvaal, which make it very desirable in +that Colony to have at the earliest possible date some better means of +ascertaining the views of the different sections of the population than +the present system affords. The question as regards the Orange River +Colony being a less urgent one, it appears to them that there will be +advantage in allowing a short period to intervene before elective +representative institutions are granted to the last-named Colony, +because this will permit His Majesty's Government to observe the +experiment, and, if need be, to profit by the experience so gained."</p> + +<p>What is the train of reasoning in this strange specimen of political +argument? It was important to "ascertain the views" of the bi-racial +Transvaal, but needless to ascertain the views of the practically +homogeneous Orange River Colony. The "question" there is a "less urgent +one." What question? Why less urgent? Is it that the British minority, +being so very small, is more liable to oppression by the Dutch? That is +a tenable point, though by parity of reasoning it would seem to make the +question more, not less, urgent, and the importance of "ascertaining the +views" of the different sections of the population, greater, not less. +Or is it the diametrically opposite train of thought, namely, that an +assumed improbability of disorder owing to the homogeneity of the +population is a reason, not for giving Home Rule, but for withholding +it? These contradictions and confusions are painfully familiar in +anti-Home Rule dialectics all over the world. A quiet Ireland does not +want Home Rule; a turbulent Ireland is not fit for it. If the Unionist +element in Ireland is strong, that is clearly an argument for +withholding Home Rule in deference to the wishes of a strong minority. +If the minority, on the other hand, is proved to be small, all the +greater reason for withholding it, because oppression by the majority +will be easier. So the sterile argument swings back and forth, and men +still talk of "experiments"<a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" /> and "profiting by experience," while the +demonstration of their errors is written in the blood and tears of +centuries, and while masses of facts accumulate, demonstrating the great +truth that free democratic government, whatever its disadvantages and +dangers—and it has both—is the best resource for uniting, +strengthening, and enriching a community of white men.</p> + +<p>The Transvaal Constitution of 1905 was cancelled on the incoming of the +Liberal Ministry at the end of that year, and in the following year full +responsible government was granted both to the Transvaal and Orange +River Colony, with the results that we know. Instantaneously there +permeated the bi-racial urban society in the Transvaal a new sense of +brotherhood. Men of different race, as far apart in spirit as the +members of the Kildare Street Club, the Orange Societies, and the +Ancient Order of Hibernians, met and made friends because it was not +only natural but necessary to make friends, since on all alike lay the +burden of doing their best for their country on a basis of equal +citizenship. Nobody out there called the new system an "experiment." The +wrench once over, the thing once done, there was general unanimity that +whatever the difficulties—and there were great difficulties—it was the +right thing to be done under the circumstances, and if this unanimity +was combined, rightly or wrongly, with a good deal of resentment against +the Liberal attitude at home towards Chinese labour, nobody is any the +worse for that. The day will come when even that burning question will +be seen in its true perspective as an infinitesimally small point beside +the great principle of responsible government, which includes the +decision of labour questions, together with all other branches of +domestic policy.</p> + +<p>Conservative opinion at home has been slower to change than British +opinion in the Transvaal. But, again, this was natural. Parties had long +been divided on the South African question. The abrupt reversal of +policy was felt as a humiliation, and the ingrained mental habits +engendered by the traditional policy towards Ireland yielded slowly, +grudgingly, and fearfully to the proof of error in South Africa. It is +not for the sake of opening an old wound, but solely because it is +absolutely necessary for the completion of my argument, that<a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" /> I have to +recall the angry and violent speeches which followed the announcement of +the new policy; the dogmatic prognostications of Imperial disruption, of +financial collapse, and of a cruel Boer tyranny in the emancipated +Colonies; the charges of wanton betrayal of loyalists, of disgraceful +surrender to "the enemy." Some of the leading actors in these scenes, +notably Mr. Balfour and Mr. Lyttelton, have since acknowledged that they +were wrong, while apparently feeling it their duty as honourable and +loyal men to give a somewhat misleading turn to an old controversy in +their praise of Lord Milner's services to South Africa. That Lord +Milner, in his administration during and after the war, did, indeed, do +a vast amount of sound and lasting work for South Africa is perfectly +true, and he deserves all honour for it. Probably no public servant of +the Empire ever laboured in its service with more unstinted devotion and +a higher sense of duty. But good administration is not an adequate +substitute for knowledge of men, and that knowledge Lord Milner lacked. +He did no service to the British colonists of South Africa in telling +them that they had been shamefully betrayed by the Home Government in +1906. It would have been wiser to advise them to rely on themselves and +on the justice and wisdom of their Dutch fellow-citizens. His violent +speeches in 1906-1908 about the calamitous results of permitting Dutch +influences free play in South Africa—speeches breathing the essential +spirit of Fitzgibbonism—would have wrought incalculable mischief had +they coincided with effective British policy; while his view, as +expressed in the House of Lords,<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38" /><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> that a preparatory régime of +benevolent despotism, showing "the obvious solicitude of the Government +for the welfare of the people," and taking shape "in a hundred and one +works of material advancement," would "win us friends and diminish our +enemies," evinces an ignorance of the ordinary motives influencing the +conduct of white men, which would be incredible if we had not Irish +experience before us. "Twenty years of resolute government," said Lord +Salisbury. "Home Rule will be killed by kindness," said many of his +successors. In later chapters I shall have to show what well-meant +kindness and resolute government have done for Ireland. If even at this +late hour<a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" /> Lord Milner would frankly acknowledge his error, I believe he +would enormously enhance his reputation in the eyes of the whole Empire.</p> + +<p>As practical men, let us remember that the Constitutions of 1906 would +not have become law if, instead of being issued under Letters Patent, +they had had to pass through Parliament in the form of a Bill. The whole +Conservative party, following Lord Milner, was vehemently against the +Letters Patent. Those who witnessed the debate upon them in the House of +Commons will not forget the scene. I recall this fact without any desire +to entangle myself in the current controversy about the Upper House, but +with the strictly practical object of showing that because a Home Rule +Bill is defeated in Parliament, as the Irish Bills of 1886 and 1893 were +defeated, it does not necessarily follow that its policy is wrong. Nor +does it follow that its policy is wrong if that defeat in Parliament is +confirmed by a General Election. Home Rule for Canada never had to pass, +and would not have passed even the Parliamentary test. Skilful and +determined organization could have wrecked even the Australian +Constitutions. No one, certainly, could have guaranteed a favourable +result of a General Election taken expressly upon the Transvaal and +Orange River Constitutions of 1906, with the whole machinery of one of +the great parties thrown into the scale against them. We know the case +made against Ireland on such occasions, and the case against the +conquered Republics was made in Parliament with ten times greater force. +If anyone doubts this, let him compare the speeches on Ireland in 1886 +and 1893 with the speeches on South Africa in 1905-06. With the +alteration of a name or two, with the substitution, for example, of +Johannesburg for Ulster, the speeches against South African and Irish +Home Rule might be almost interchangeable. For electioneering purposes, +evidences, in word and act, of Boer treason, rapacity, and +vindictiveness, could have been made by skilful orators to seem damning +and unanswerable. All the arts for inflaming popular passion under the +pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that +patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises. The material would have +been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient +numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious <a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" />phrases dropped +by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the +speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the +Peace Conference, would have been ready for the hoardings and the +fly-sheets, and they would have had an appreciable effect.</p> + +<p>Am I weakening the case for democracy itself in pressing this view? +Surely not. One democracy is incapable of understanding the domestic +needs and problems of another. Whenever, therefore, a democracy finds +itself responsible for the adjudication of a claim for Home Rule from +white men, it should limit itself to ascertaining whether the claim is +genuine and sincere. If it is, the claim should be granted, and a +Constitution constructed in friendly concert with the men who are to +live under it. That way lies safety and honour, and, happily, the +democracy is being educated to that truth. If this be a counsel of +perfection; if the difficult and delicate task of settling the details +of Irish Home Rule is to be hampered and complicated by the +resuscitation of those time-honoured discussions over abstract +principles which ought long ago to have been buried and forgotten, let +every patriotic and enlightened man at any rate do his best to sweeten +and mollify the controversy, to extirpate its grosser manifestations, +and to substitute reason for passion.</p> + +<p>The grant of responsible government to the Transvaal and Orange River +Colony reacted with amazing rapidity on South African politics as a +whole. It took the Canadian Provinces twenty-seven years (if we reckon +from 1840), and the Australian States forty-five years (if we reckon +from 1855), to reach a Federal Union. Hardly a minute was wasted in +South Africa. Under very able guidance, the scheme was canvassed almost +from the first, and in two years trusted leaders of both races, +representing Natal, Cape Colony, and two newly emancipated +Colonies—men, some of whom had been shooting at one another only five +years before—were sitting at a table together hammering out the details +of a South African Union. Here, indeed, was shown the "practical genius" +which the Government of 1905 had piously invoked for their abortive +Constitution. In the spirit of forbearance, of sympathy, of wise +compromise, which governed the proceedings of this famous Conference, +was to be found <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" />the measure of the longing of all parties to extinguish +racialism and make South Africa truly a nation. The Imperial Act +legalizing the arrangements ultimately arrived at by the agreement of +the colonists was passed in 1909. The political system constructed +cannot be called Federal. The framers rejected the Australian model, and +went much beyond the Canadian model in centralizing authority and +diminishing local autonomy; nor can there be any doubt that the +strongest motive behind that policy was that of securing the harmony of +the two white races.</p> + +<p>All this was the result of trusting the Dutch in 1906. "We cannot expect +you to trust us, and we shall not trust you," said the despatch of 1905. +We know what the consequences of that policy would have been. It is not +a question of imagination or hypothesis. It is a question of the +operation of certain unchanging laws in the conduct of all white men. +Good or bad, our government would have been detested. We should have +manufactured sedition, lawlessness, and discord. Then the tendency would +have been strong to follow the old Irish precedent, and make the evil +symptoms we had ourselves educed the pretext for tightening the screw of +anti-popular government. It would have been said that we must sustain +our prestige to the end and at all costs, a phrase which often cloaks +the obstinacy of moral cowardice. Or, too late to escape the contempt of +the Boers, we might have abruptly surrendered to clamour. It would have +taken a long time to reach union then. Contempt is a bad foundation.</p> + +<p>It brings one near despair to see the Union of South Africa used by men +who should know better as an argument against Irish Home Rule. The chain +of causation is so clear, one would think, as to be incapable of +misconstruction. But there seems to be no limit in certain minds to the +prejudice against the principle of Home Rule. If it is seen to work +well, the phenomenon is hurriedly swept into oblivion, and its results +attributed with feverish ingenuity to any cause but the true one. The +very speed with which the antidote pervades the body politic and expels +the old poison helps these untiring propagators of error to suppress the +history of recuperation, and to ascribe the cure of the patient to a +treatment which, if applied long enough, would have killed him.<a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" /> The +Conservative party appear to have now reached this amazing conclusion: +that they and Lord Milner were the authors of the South African Union, +and that that Union is a weapon sent them by Providence for combating +the Irish claims. This is what Ireland has to pay for being the sport of +British parties. Individual statesmen may point at past mistakes; but a +party, as a party, can never admit error: it is against the rules. To +make things easier, there is that question-begging phrase, the "Union." +If South Africa, like Australia, had been federalized, this windfall +would have been lost, because the word "Federal" might have suggested +some form of Federal Home Rule for Ireland. Labels mean an enormous +amount in politics.</p> + +<p>There is not the slightest doubt that Mr. Walter Long, and even Lord +Selborne, who, as High Commissioner, actually witnessed the whole +evolution from responsible government in the two conquered States to the +Union of South Africa, are perfectly sincere in their opposition to +Irish Home Rule. But, I would respectfully suggest, it is their duty to +use their knowledge and convictions in the right and fair way. Let them +say, if they will, ignoring the intermediate and indispensable phase of +Home Rule in South Africa: "Here are two Unions; never mind how they +arose. Both are good: all Unions are good. The modern tendency to unify +is sound; do not let us react to devolution." Let them, in other words, +confine their argument to the domain of political science. What, I +submit, they should refrain from, is the imputation of sordid motives to +Nationalist leaders, the prognostications of religious and racial +tyranny in Ireland, and all those inflammatory arguments against the +principle of Home Rule which have been used all the world over, from +time immemorial, for the maintenance of Unions based on legal, not on +moral, ties, which were used against responsible government for the +Transvaal, and which, I venture to affirm, degrade our public life.</p> + +<p>I am assuming for the moment that most Conservatives will elect to use +the South African parallel in the way that Mr. Long and Lord Selborne +have used it, that is, while tacitly approving in retrospect of the Home +Rule of 1906, to argue from Union to Union. But it is of no use to blink +the <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" />fact that there are pessimists who will put forward an antithetical +case, boldly declaring that we were wrong ever to trust the Boers, that +racialism is as bad as ever, that General Botha's loyalty is cant, the +Cullinan diamond an insult, and that South Africa will go from bad to +worse under a Dutch tyranny. Party propaganda is quite elastic enough to +permit the two opposite views to be used to convince the same electorate +at the same election. Pessimists are always active in these affairs, and +they can always produce something in the nature of a plausible case, +because it stands to reason that the evils of generations cannot be +swept away in a moment, either in South Africa or Ireland. Miracles do +not happen, and the pessimists, who are the curse of Ireland to-day, +will be able to demonstrate with ease that the free Ireland of to-morrow +will not enter instantaneously upon a millennium. It is useless to +attempt to convert these extremists. For a century back, Hansard and the +columns of daily papers have been full of their unfulfilled jeremiads +about Canada, about Australia, and about the very smallest and most +tardy attempts to give a little responsibility to the majority of +citizens in Ireland. The vocabulary of impending ruin has been exhausted +long ago; there is nothing new to be said. But those who care to study +in a cool temper the course of recent South African politics in the +columns of the <i>Times</i>, or, better still, in those of that excellent +magazine for the discussion of Imperial affairs, the <i>Round Table</i>, will +conclude that extraordinary progress has been made towards racial +reunion, and that in this respect no serious peril threatens South +Africa. The settlement, by friendly compromise at the end of the last +session, of the very thorny question of language in the education of +children, is a good example of what good-will can accomplish under free +institutions. By a laboured construction of fragments of speeches culled +from the utterances of exceptionally vehement partisans, it would be +still possible to make up a theory of the "disloyalty" of the South +African Dutch. It would have been equally possible for a painstaking +British student of the <i>Sydney Bulletin</i> within recent memory to start a +panic over the imminent "loss" of Australia. Some people think that +Canada is as good as "lost" now. Yet the Empire has never been so strong +or so united as to-day.<a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII" />CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>THE ANALOGY</h3> + + +<p>Let the reader endeavour to see the closely related stories of Ireland +and of these more distant communities as a whole, undistracted by the +varying degrees of their proximity to the Mother Country, making his +study one of men and laws, and remembering that Ireland was the first +and nearest of the British Colonies. Does not she become a convex +mirror, in which, swollen to unnatural proportions, the mistakes of two +centuries are reflected? Principles of government universal in their +nature, transcending geography, and painfully evolved in more distant +parts of the Empire, we have thrown to the winds in Ireland. Economic +evils, resembling, in however distant a degree, those of Ireland, have +irritated and retarded every community in which they have been allowed +to take root. A sound agrarian system has been the primary need of every +country. To take the closest parallel, if absentee proprietorship and +insecurity of tenure kept little Prince Edward Island, peacefully and +legally settled, backward and disturbed for a century, it is not +surprising that Ireland, submitted to confiscation, the Penal Code, and +commercial rum, did not flourish under a land system beside which that +of Prince Edward Island was a paradise. Tardy redress of the worst Irish +abuses is no defence of the system which created them and sustained them +with such ruinous results. No white community of pride and spirit would +willingly tolerate the grotesque form of Crown Colony administration, +founded on force, and now tempered by a kind of paternal State +Socialism, under which Ireland lives to-day. Unionism for Ireland is +anti-Imperialist. Its upholders strenuously opposed colonial autonomy, +and but yesterday were passionately opposing South African autonomy. +To-day colonial autonomy is <a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" />an axiom. But Ireland is a measure of the +depth of these convictions. There would be no Empire to idealize if +their Irish principles had been applied just a little longer to any of +the oversea States which constitute the self-governing Colonies of +to-day. As it is, these principles have wrought great and perhaps +lasting mischief which, in the righteous glow of self-congratulation +upon what we are accustomed to call our constructive political genius, +we are too apt to overlook. It was bad for America to pass through that +phase of agitation and discord which preceded the revolutionary war. It +was demoralizing for the Canadas to be driven into rebellion by the +vices of ascendancy government. Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Australian +autonomy, was right in satirizing the "miserable jargon" about fitting +men for political privileges, and in demonstrating the harm done by +withholding those privileges. And the Irish race all over the world, +fine race as it is, would be finer still if Ireland had been free.</p> + +<p>The political habits formed in dealing with Ireland have disastrously +influenced Imperial policy in the past. Cannot we, by a supreme national +effort, reverse the mental process, and, if we have always failed in the +past to learn from Irish lessons how not to treat the Colonies, at any +rate learn, even at the eleventh hour, from our colonial lessons how to +treat Ireland? Must we for ever sound the old alarms about "disloyalty" +and "dismemberment" and "abandonment of the loyal minority to the tender +mercies of their foes"; phrases as old as the Stamp Act of 1765? Must we +carry the "gentle art of making enemies," practised to the last point of +danger in the Colonies, to the preposterous pitch of estranging men at +our very doors, while pluming ourselves on the friendship of peoples +12,000 miles away? These are anxious times. We have a mighty rival in +Europe, and we need the co-operation of all our hands and brains. On a +basis of mere profit and loss, is it sensible to maintain a system in +Ireland which weakens both Ireland and the whole United Kingdom, clogs +the delicate machinery of Parliamentary government, and, worked out in +hard figures of pounds, shillings, and pence, has ceased even to show a +pecuniary advantage?</p> + +<p>Have Unionists really no better prescription for the constitutional +difficulties caused by the Union than to reduce <a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" />the representation of +Ireland in Parliament so as to give Ireland still less control than at +present over her own affairs? Is that seriously their last word in +statesmanship, to exasperate Nationalist Ireland without even providing +in any appreciable degree a mechanical remedy for disordered political +functions? The idea has only to be stated to be dismissed. It is not +even practical politics. Some things are sheer impossibilities; and to +leave the Union system as it is, while reducing representation, is one +of them.</p> + +<p>We revert, then, to a contemplation of the well-tried expedient, "Trust, +and you will be trusted." But then we have to meet pessimists of two +descriptions, the honest and the merely cynical. The honest pessimist +(often, unhappily, an educated Irishman) says: "The Irish in Ireland are +an incurably criminal race. They differ from Irishmen elsewhere and from +Anglo-Saxons everywhere. Air and soil are unaccountable. The Union +policy has been, and remains, a painful but a quite inevitable +necessity. It is sound, now and for all time." The cynical pessimist, on +the other hand, admits the errors of past policy, but says frankly that +it is too late to change. "We have gone too far, raised passions we +cannot allay." I shall not try further to confute the honest pessimist. +The preceding chapters have been written in vain if they do not shatter +the theory of original sin. And to the cynical pessimist, who is a +reincarnation of our old friend Fitzgibbon (for that clear-headed +statesman frankly imputed original sin to the conquerors of Ireland, as +well as to the conquered), I would only say: "Use your common sense." +These panics over the vagaries and excesses of an Irish Parliament, +always groundless, are beginning to look highly ridiculous. In 1893, +when the last Home Rule Bill was being discussed, a Franco-Irish +alliance was the fear. Now it is the other way, and the <i>Spectator</i> has +been writing solemn articles to warn its readers that Mr. Dillon, in a +speech on foreign policy, has shown ominous signs of hostility to +France. In the election of January, 1910, an ex-Cabinet Minister +informed the public that Home Rule meant the presence of a German fleet +in Belfast Lough—at whose invitation he did not explain, though he +probably did not intend to insult Ulster. This wild talk has not even +the merit of a strategical foundation.<a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" /> It belongs to another age. +Ireland has neither a fleet nor the will or money to build one. Our +fleet, in which large numbers of Irishmen serve, guarantees the security +of New Zealand, and if it cannot maintain the command of home waters, +including St. George's Channel, our situation is desperate, whether +Ireland is friendly or hostile. We guarantee the independent existence +of the kingdom of Belgium, which is as near as Ireland, with military +liabilities vastly more serious than any which Ireland could conceivably +entail; but we do not claim, as a consequence, to control the Executive +of Belgium and remove her Parliament to Westminster, in order to be +quite sure that the Belgians are not intriguing against us with Germany. +Germany, our alarmists fear, is to invade Ireland, and Ireland is to +greet the invaders with open arms. The same prophecy was being made not +more than three years ago of the South African Dutch. After asking for a +century and a half to manage her own affairs, the Irish are not likely +to ask to be ruled by Germans. The German strategists are men of common +sense. If they were fortunate enough to gain the command of the sea, +they could make no worse mistake than to dissipate their energies on +Ireland.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it is a waste of time to attempt to destroy these foolish myths. +Let those that are sceptical about the effect of Home Rule in producing +friendlier feelings between Ireland and Great Britain consider in a +reasonable spirit the commonplace question of mutual interests. What is +the really practical significance of Ireland's proximity to England? +This, that their material interests are indissociably intertwined. If it +is "safe," as the phrase goes, to entrust Australia with Home Rule, +surely it is safer still to entrust Ireland with it. Has Ireland +anything to gain by separation? Clearly nothing. Has she anything to +lose? Much. Most of her trade is with Great Britain. British credit is +of enormous value to her. The Imperial forces are of less proportionate +value to her because her external trade is small; but she willingly +supplies a large and important part of their personnel; she shares in +their glorious traditions; and if it is a case of protection for her +trade, she will get no protection elsewhere.<a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" /></p> + +<p>How idle are these calculations of profit and loss! The truth is that +Ireland has taken her full share in winning and populating the Empire. +The result is hers as much as Britain's. Mr. Redmond spoke for his +countrymen last May<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39" /><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> in saying: "We, as Irishmen, are not prepared to +surrender our share in the heritage [that is, the British Empire] which +our fathers created." That is sound sentiment and sound sense. It is the +view taken by the Colonies, where Irishmen are known, respected, and +understood, and where the support for Home Rule, based on personal +experience of its blessings, has been, and remains, consistent and +strong. Indeed, we miss the significance of that support if we do not +realize that Irish Home Rule is an indispensable preliminary to the +closer union of the various parts of the Empire. Let us add the wider +generalization that it is an indispensable preliminary to the closer +union of all the English-speaking races. It may be fairly computed that +a fifth of the present white population of the United States is of Irish +blood.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40" /><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> American opinion, as a whole, so far as it is directed +towards Ireland and away from a host of absorbing domestic problems, is +favourable to Home Rule. Irish-American opinion has never swerved, +although it has become more sober, as the material condition of Ireland +has improved, and the interests of Irish-Americans themselves have +become more closely identified with those of their adopted country. +Fenianism is altogether extinct. The extreme claim for the total +separation of Ireland from Great Britain is now no more than a +sentimental survival among a handful of the older men, of the fierce +hatreds provoked by the miseries and <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" />horrors of an era which has passed +away.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41" /><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> Even Mr. Patrick Ford and the <i>Irish World</i> have moderated +their tone, and where that tone is still inflammatory it is not +representative of Irish-American opinion. I have studied with a good +deal of care the columns of that journal for some months back, smiling +over the imaginary terrors of the nervous people on this side of the +Atlantic who are taught by their party Press to believe that Mr. Patrick +Ford is going to dynamite them in their beds. Any liberal-minded student +of history and human nature would pronounce the whole propaganda +perfectly harmless. But the sane instinct that Ireland should have a +local autonomy of her own, an instinct common to the whole brotherhood +of nations which have sprung from these shores, lasts undiminished and +takes shape, quite rightly and naturally, as it takes shape in the +Colonies, in financial support of the Nationalist party in Ireland. +Anti-British sentiment in the United States, once a grave international +danger, is that no longer; but it does still represent an obstacle to +the complete realization of an ideal which all patriotic men should aim +at: the formation of indestructible bonds of friendship between Great +Britain and the United States. Nor must it be forgotten that the calm +and reasonable character of Irish-American opinion is due in a large +degree to confidence in the ultimate success of the constitutional +movement here for Home Rule. Every successive defeat of that policy +tends to embitter feeling in America.</p> + +<p>Oh, for an hour of intelligent politics! The old choice is before us—to +make the best or the worst of the state of opinion in America; to +disinter from ancient files of the <i>Irish World</i> sentences calculated to +inflame an ignorant British audience; or to say in sensible and manly +terms: "The situation is more favourable than it has been for a century +past for the settlement of just Irish claims."<a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX" />CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>IRELAND TO-DAY</h3> + + +<p>Why does present-day Ireland need Home Rule? I put the question in that +way because I am not going to question the fact that she wants Home +Rule. She has always said she wanted it: she says so still, and that is +enough. There is a powerful minority in Ireland against Home Rule. There +always have been minorities more or less powerful against Home Rule in +all ages and places. That does not alter the national character of the +claim. If once we go behind the voice of a people, constitutionally +expressed, we court endless risks. National leaders have always been +called "agitators," which, of course, they are, and non-representative +agitators, which they are not. To deny the genuineness of a claim which +is feared is an invariable feature of oppositions to measures of Home +Rule. The denial is generally irreconcilable with the case made for the +dangers of Home Rule, and that contradiction in its most glaring shape +characterizes the present opposition to the Irish claims. But Unionists +should elect to stand on one ground or the other, and for my part I +shall assume that the large majority of Irishmen, as shown by successive +electoral votes, want Home Rule. Precisely what form of Home Rule they +want is another and by no means so clear a matter, on which I shall +presently have a word to say. But they want, in the general sense, to +manage their own local affairs. Her best friends would despair of +Ireland if that was not her desire.</p> + +<p>What, in the Colonies, Ireland, and everywhere else, is the deep +spiritual impulse behind the desire for Home Rule? A craving for +self-expression, self-reliance. Home Rule is synonymous with the growth +of independent character. That is why Ireland instinctively and +passionately wants it, that <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />is why she needs it, and that is why Great +Britain, for her own sake, and Ireland's, should give it. If that is not +the reason, it is idle to talk about Home Rule; but it is the reason.</p> + +<p>Character is the very foundation of national prosperity and happiness, +and we are blind to the facts of history if we cannot discern the +profound effect of political institutions upon human character. +Self-government in the community corresponds to free will in the +individual. I am far from saying that self-government is everything. But +I do say that it is the master-key. It is fundamental. Give +responsibility and you will create responsibility. Through political +responsibility only can a society brace itself to organized effort, find +out its own opinions on its own needs, test its own capabilities, and +elicit the will, the brains, and the hands to solve its own problems.</p> + +<p>These are such commonplaces in every other part of the Empire, which has +an individual life of its own, that men smile if you suggest the +contrary. But ordinary reasoning is rarely applied to Ireland. There +"good government" has been held to be "a substitute for self-government" +and a régime of benevolent paternalism to be a full and sufficient +compensation for cruel coercion and crueller neglect. In this paternal +régime it is impossible to include those great measures of land reform +passed in 1870, 1881, and 1887, which revolutionized the agrarian +system, and converted the cottier tenant into a judicial tenant.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42" /><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> +Although these measures, which fall into an altogether different +category from the subsequent policy of State-aided Land Purchase,<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43" /><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> +were inspired by an earnest desire to mitigate frightful social evils, +they cannot be regarded as voluntary. They were extorted, shocking as +the reflection is, by crime and violence, by the spectacle of a whole +social order visibly collapsing, and by the desperate efforts of a +handful of Irishmen, determined at any cost, by whatever means, to save +the bodies and souls of their countrymen. The methods of these men were +destructive. They were constructive only in this, the highest sense of +all, that while battling against concrete economic evils, they sought to +obtain for Ireland the right to control her own affairs and cure her own +economic evils. It is often said that Parnell gave a tremendous impetus +to the Home Rule movement <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />by harnessing it to the land question. True; +but what a strange way of expressing a truth! Anywhere outside Ireland +men would say that self-government was the best road to the reform of a +bad land system.</p> + +<p>With the tranquillity which was slowly restored by the alterations in +agrarian tenure and the immense economic relief derived from the +lowering of rents, a change came over the spirit of British +statesmanship. With the exception of the short Liberal Government of +1892-1895, which failed for the second time to carry Home Rule, +Conservatives were responsible for Ireland from 1886 to 1905. They felt +that opposition to Home Rule could be justified only by a strenuous +policy of amelioration in Ireland, and the efforts of three Chief +Secretaries, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Gerald Balfour, and Mr. George +Wyndham—efforts often made in the teeth of bitter opposition from Irish +Unionists—to carry out this policy, were sincere and earnest. The Act +of 1891, with its grants for light railways, its additional facilities +for Land Purchase, and its establishment of the Congested Districts +Board to deal with the terrible poverty of certain districts in the +west, may be said to mark the beginning of the new era. The Land Act of +1896 was another step, and the establishment of a complete system of +Irish Local Government in 1898 another. In the following year came the +Act setting up the Department of Agriculture, and in 1903 Mr. Wyndham's +great Land Purchase Act. Then came the strange "devolutionist" episode, +arising from the appointment of Sir Antony (now Lord) MacDonnell to the +post of Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, the Government who selected +him being fully aware that he was in favour of some change in the +government of Ireland. He entered into relations with a group of +prominent Irishmen, headed by Lord Dunraven, who were thinking out a +scheme for a mild measure of devolution. When the fact became known, +there was an explosion of anger among Irish Unionists. Mr. Wyndham, who +had been a popular Chief Secretary, resigned office, and was succeeded +by Mr. Walter Long; perhaps the most dramatic and significant example in +modern times of the policy of governing Ireland in deliberate and direct +defiance of the wishes and sentiments of the vast majority of Irishmen.<a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" /></p> + +<p>The Liberal Government of 1906, coming into office under a pledge to +refrain from a full Home Rule measure, confined itself to the +introduction of the Irish Council Bill of 1907, which, rightly, in my +opinion, was repudiated by the Irish people, and accordingly dropped. +But the Government was in general sympathy with Nationalist Ireland, so +that a number of useful measures were added to the statute books; for +example, the Labourers (Ireland) Act of 1906, empowering Rural Councils, +with the aid of State credit, to acquire land for labourers' plots and +cottages; the Town Tenants Act, extending the principle of compensation +for improvements at the termination of a lease to the urban tenant; the +very important Irish Universities Act of 1908, which gave to Roman +Catholics facilities for higher education which they had lacked for +centuries, and, lastly, Mr. Birrell's Land Act of 1909, which was +designed partly to meet the imminent collapse of Land Purchase, owing to +the failure of the financial arrangements made under the Wyndham Act of +1903, and partly to extend the powers of the Congested Districts Board.</p> + +<p>To these measures must be added another which was not confined to +Ireland, but which has exercised a most potent influence, and by no +means a wholly beneficial influence, on Irish life and Irish finance, +the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, under which the enormous sum of two +and three-quarter millions is now allocated to Ireland.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44" /><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p> + +<p>The best that can be said of the legislation since 1881 is that it has +laid the foundations of a new social order. Agrarian crime has +disappeared and material prosperity has greatly increased. Government in +the interests of a small favoured class has almost vanished. It survives +to this extent, that civil administration and patronage, which are +still, be it remembered, removed from popular control, remain, in fact, +in Protestant and Unionist hands to an extent altogether +disproportionate to the distribution of creeds, classes, and opinions. +And, of course, in the major matter of Home Rule, the power of the +Unionist minority, as represented in the Commons by seventeen out of the +thirty-three Ulster representatives, and in <a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" />the House of Lords by an +overwhelming preponderance of Unionist peers, is still enormous. But +within Ireland itself, central administration apart, the exceptional +privileges and exceptional political power of Protestants and landlords, +which lasted almost intact until forty years ago, is now non-existent. +The Disestablishment Act of 1869, while immensely enhancing the moral +power and religious zeal of the Church of Ireland, and even +strengthening its financial position, took away its political monopoly, +and through the final abolition of tithes, its baneful and irritating +interference with economic life. The successive measures of land +legislation, culminating in the transfer of half the land of Ireland +from landlord to peasant proprietorship, and the Local Government Act of +1898, surrendering at a stroke the whole local administration of the +country into popular control, destroyed the exceptional political +privileges of the landlord class.</p> + +<p>Ascendancy, then, in the old sense, is a thing of the past. What has +taken its place? What is the ruling power within Ireland? Is it a public +opinion derived from the vital contact of ideas and interests, and +taking shape in a healthy and normal distribution of parties? Is thought +free? Has merit its reward? Is there any unity of national purpose, +transcending party divisions? If it were necessary to give a categorical +"Yes" or "No" to these questions, the answer would be "No." Sane +energizing politics, and the sovereign ascendancy of a sane public +opinion, are absolutely unattainable in Ireland or anywhere else without +Home Rule. It is all the more to the credit of Irishmen that, in the +face of stupendous difficulties, and in a marvellously short space of +time since the attainment, barely twenty years ago, of the elementary +conditions of social peace, they have gone so far as they have gone +towards the creation of a self-reliant, independently thinking, united +Ireland. The whole weight of Imperial authority has been thrown into the +scale against them. Whatever the mood and policy of British upholders of +the Union, whether sympathetic or hostile, wise or foolish, their +constant message to both parties in Ireland has been, "Look to us. Trust +in us. You are divided. We are umpires," and the reader will no doubt +remember that the theory of "umpirage" was used in exactly the same way +<a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />in the Colonies, notably in Upper Canada,<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45" /><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> to thwart the tendency +towards a reconciliation of creeds, races, and classes. Fortunately, +there have been Irishmen who have laboured to counteract the effects of +this enervating policy, and to reconstruct, by native effort from +within, a new Ireland on the ruins of the old. Whether or not they have +consciously aimed at Home Rule matters not a particle. Some have, some +have not; but the result of these efforts has been the same, to pull +Irishmen together and to begin the creation of a genuinely national +atmosphere.</p> + +<p>It is not part of my scheme to describe in detail the various movements, +agricultural, industrial, economic, literary, political, which in the +last twenty years have contributed to this national revival. Some have a +world-wide fame, all have been excellently described at one time or +another by writers of talent and insight.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46" /><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> My purpose is to note +their characteristics and progress, and to estimate their political +significance. In the first place it must be remembered that some of the +most important of the modern legislative measures have been initiated +and promoted by Home Rulers and Unionists, Roman Catholics and +Protestants, acting in friendly co-operation and throwing aside their +political and religious antagonisms. Such was the origin of the great +Land Purchase Act of 1903, which Mr. Wyndham drafted on the basis of an +agreement reached at a friendly conference of landlords and +representatives of tenants. But a far more interesting and hopeful +instance of co-operation had taken place seven years earlier. One of the +very few really constructive measures of the last twenty years, the Act +of 1899 for setting up the Department of Agriculture and Technical +Instruction, was the direct outcome of the recommendations of the Recess +Committee brought together in 1895 and 1896 by Sir Horace Plunkett; a +Committee containing Nationalist and Unionist Members of the House of +Commons, Tory and Liberal Unionist peers, Ulster captains of industry, +the Grand Master of the Belfast Orangemen, and an eminent Jesuit.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47" /><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> In +its reunion of men divided <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" />by bitter feuds, it was just the kind of +Conference that assembled in Durban in 1908, six years after a +devastating war, to discuss and to create the framework of South African +Union. That Conference was the natural outcome of the grant of Home Rule +to the defeated Boer States. The Irish Conference, succeeding a land-war +far more destructive and demoralizing, was brought together in spite of +the absence of Home Rule, and the prejudice it had to overcome,<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48" /><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> is a +measure of the fantastically abnormal conditions produced by the denial +of self-government. There lay Ireland, an island with a rich soil and a +clever population, yet terribly backward, far behind England, far behind +all the progressive nations of Europe in agriculture and industry, her +population declining, her land passing out of cultivation,<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49" /><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> her +strongest sons and daughters hurrying away to enrich with their wits and +sinews distant lands. There, in short, lay a country groaning for +intelligent development by the concentrated energies of her own people.</p> + +<p>"We have in Ireland," runs the first paragraph of the Report of the +Committee, "a poor country practically without manufactures—except for +the linen and shipbuilding of the north, and the brewing and distilling +of Dublin—dependent upon agriculture, with its soil imperfectly tilled, +its area under cultivation decreasing, and a diminishing population +without industrial habits or technical skill."</p> + +<p>The leeway to make up was enormous. To go no farther back than the +institution of the Penal Code and the deliberate destruction of the +woollen industry, two centuries of callous repression at the hands of an +external authority had maimed and exhausted the country whose condition +the Committee had met to consider. These facts the members of the +Com<a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" />mittee frankly recognized in that part of the Report which is +entitled with gentle irony "Past Action of the State." Here, then, was a +purely Irish problem, intimately concerning every Irishman, poor or +rich, Roman Catholic or Protestant, a problem of which Great Britain, +though responsible both for its existence and its solution, knew and +cared little. The really strange thing is, not that representative +Irishmen should have met together to consider and prescribe for the +deplorable economic condition of their country, but that they should not +also, like the South African Conference, have drafted a Constitution for +Ireland, on the sound ground that a system of government which had +promoted and sustained the evils they described could never, with the +best will in the world, become a good government for Ireland. Yet for a +brief space of time these men actually had Home Rule, and by virtue of +that privilege they did better work for Ireland in six months than had +been done in two centuries.</p> + +<p>What is more, they used the Home Rule principle in their recommendations +for the establishment of a Department of Agriculture and Technical +Instruction. "We think it essential," they reported on p. 101, "that the +new Department should be in touch with the public opinion of the classes +whom its work concerns, and should rely largely for its success upon +their active assistance and co-operation." Its chief, they added, should +be a Minister directly responsible to Parliament, and on p. 103 they +advocated a Consultative Council, whose functions should be—(1) To keep +the Department in direct touch with the public opinion of those classes +whom the work of the Ministry concerns; and (2) to distribute some of +the responsibility for administration amongst those classes. Now these, +in Ireland, were revolutionary proposals. The idea of any part of the +Government "being in touch with public opinion" was wholly new. The idea +of "distributing responsibility for administration" amongst the subjects +of administration was startlingly novel. Ireland, both before and after +the Union, had always been governed on a diametrically opposite +principle. Since the Union, when Irish departmental Ministers, never +responsible to the people, disappeared, not one of the host of nominated +Irish Boards was legally amenable to Irish public opinion. Not one had +<a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />a separate Minister responsible even to the Parliament at Westminster, +which was not an Irish Parliament. <i>A fortiori</i>, not one relied on the +co-operation and advice of the classes for whose benefit it was supposed +to exist.</p> + +<p>Proposed, nevertheless, by a group of representative Irishmen, the +scheme for a democratically constituted Department of Agriculture passed +smoothly into law as soon as the machinery for ascertaining public +opinion on the matters at issue had been brought into existence. Mr. +Gerald Balfour, the Chief Secretary, was engaged at the time upon his +measure for the extension of Local Government to Ireland. This measure +became law in 1898, and the Department Act in 1899. Under that Act, the +duty was laid upon each of the new County Councils of electing two +members to serve upon a Consultative Council of Agriculture, to which a +minority of nominated members was added, and this Council in its turn +elects two-thirds of the members of an Agricultural Board, and supplies +four representatives to a Board of Technical Instruction, which, like +the Council and the Agricultural Board, has a predominantly popular +character.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50" /><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p> + +<p>At the summit stands the Minister, or Vice-President, as he is called +(for in accordance with ancient custom, the Chief Secretary is nominally +in supreme control of this as of all other Irish Departments), and a +large and efficient staff of permanent officials. He and his staff have +a large centralized authority, but this authority is subject to a +constitutional check in the shape of a veto wielded by the Boards over +the expenditure of the Endowment Fund. What is more important, policy +tends to be shaped in accordance with popular views by the existence of +the Council and the Boards.</p> + +<p>Here, then, is the germ of responsible government. At first sight a +critic might exclaim: "Why, here is democracy pushed to a point unknown +even in Great Britain, where Government Departments are wholly +independent of Local Councils."<a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" /> That is in a limited sense true, and it +is quite arguable that British Departments would be the better for an +infusion of local control. But we must not be misled by a false analogy. +Great Britain reaches the Irish ideal by other means. Her departmental +Ministers are directly responsible to a predominantly British House of +Commons where a hostile vote can at any moment eject them from +office.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51" /><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> There is no Irish Parliament, nor any kind of predominantly +Irish body which is vested with the same power. The Vice-President of +the Irish Department of Agriculture, an institution concerned +exclusively with Irish affairs, whether he sits in the House of Commons +or not (and for two years Mr. T.W. Russell had not a seat at +Westminster), could not be ejected from office even by a unanimous vote +of Irish Members of the House, with the moral backing of a unanimous +Irish people.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52" /><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> That is one of the anomalous results of the Union, and +it was a recognition, though rather a confused one, of this anomaly, +that inspired the ingenious compromise invented by the Recess Committee +for introducing an element of popular control. But what a light the +compromise throws on the anomaly which evoked it! Is it common sense to +make these elaborate arrangements for promoting an Irish Department on +an Irish popular basis while recoiling in terror from the prospect of +crowning them with a Minister responsible to ah Irish Parliament? The +consequence is that even in this solitary example of an Irish<a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" /> +Department under semi-popular control we see the subtle taint of Crown +Colony Government. Popular opinion, acting indirectly, first through the +Council and then through the Boards, can legally paralyze the Department +by declining to appropriate money in the way it prescribes, while +possessing no legal power to enforce a different policy or change the +personnel of administration. This is only an object-lesson. I hasten to +add that such a paralysis has never taken place, though some acrimonious +controversy, natural enough under the anomalous state of things, has +arisen over the office of Vice-President. There is now only one means by +which Irish opinion can, if it be so disposed, displace the holder of +the office, and that is a thoroughly unreliable and unhealthy means, +namely, through pressure brought to bear by one or other of the Irish +Parliamentary parties upon a newly elected British Ministry.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53" /><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> But why +in the world should the British party pendulum determine an important +Irish matter like this? Why, <i>a fortiori</i>, should it determine the +appointment to the office of Chief Secretary, the irresponsible Prime +Minister, or, rather the autocrat of Ireland? It is the <i>reductio ad +absurdum</i> of the Union.</p> + +<p>The Department commands a large measure of confidence. It would command +far greater confidence if it were responsible to an Irish Parliament; +but Irishmen are sensible enough to perceive that as long as the Union +lasts, everyone is interested in making the existing system work +smoothly and well. The general policy as laid down in the first +instance, by the first Vice-President, Sir Horace Plunkett, has been +sound and wise;<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54" /><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> to proceed slowly, while building up a staff of +trained instructors, inspectors, organizers; to devote money and labour +mainly to education, both industrial and agricultural, and to evoke +self-reliance and initiative in the people by, so far as possible, +spending money locally only where a local contribution is raised and a +local scheme prepared. The last aim met with a fine response. Every +County Council in Ireland raises a rate, and has a scheme for +agricultural and technical instruction. I can only enumerate some of the +multifarious functions which the Department evolved for <a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" />itself or took +over from various other unrelated Boards and concentrated under single +control. It gives instruction in agriculture and rural domestic economy +(horticulture, butter-making, bee-keeping, poultry-keeping, etc.) +through schools, colleges, or agricultural stations under its own +direction, through private schools for both sexes, and through an +extensive system of itinerant courses conducted (in 1909) by 128 trained +instructors. It gives premiums for the breeding of horses, cattle, +asses, poultry, swine. It conducts original research, it experiments in +crops, and, among other things, is slowly resuscitating the depressed +industry of flax-growing, and starting a wholly new industry in the +southern counties, that of early potatoes. It sprays potatoes, +prescribes for the diseases of trees, crops, and stock, advises on +manures and feeding-stuffs, teaches forestry, and gives scholarships at +various colleges for proficiency in agricultural science. On the side of +Technical Instruction it teaches and encourages all manner of small +industries, such as lace-making. It superintends all technical +instruction in secondary schools, and organizes and subsidizes similar +instruction in a multitude of different subjects under schemes prepared +by local authorities, while at the same time carrying on an important +and extensive system of training teachers. It also superintends +sea-fisheries and improves harbours.</p> + +<p>The material results have been great; the moral results perhaps even +greater. Just as we should expect, wherever education goes, and wherever +men work together for economic improvement, unnatural antagonisms of +race and religion tend to disappear. This is not the result of any +direct influence wielded by the Department, which never finds it +necessary to lecture people on the duty of mutual tolerance; it is the +result of common sense and a small experience in Home Rule. High +officials of the Department have informed me that their work, for all +intents and purposes, is unhampered by local religious prejudices. A +spirit of keen and wholesome rivalry permeates the people. County and +Borough Committees in districts almost wholly Roman Catholic, with large +powers of patronage, almost invariably appoint the best men, regardless +of creed and local influence. Anyone who wishes to gain a glimpse of the +real Belfast of the present and the future, as <a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" />distinguished from the +ugly, bigoted caricature of a great city which some even of its own +citizens perversely insist on displaying to their English friends, a +Belfast as tolerant and generous as it is energetic and progressive, +should visit the magnificent Municipal Technical Institute, where 6,000 +boys and girls, Roman Catholic and Protestant, mix together on equal +terms, and derive the same benefit from an extraordinary variety of +educational courses in a building furnished with lecture-rooms, +laboratories, experimental plant, and gymnasia, of a perfection hardly +to be surpassed in any city of the United Kingdom.</p> + +<p>Here is something grand and fruitful accomplished in eleven years, and +it is the outcome, be it remembered, of original, constructive thought +devoted by Irishmen to the needs of their own country.</p> + +<p>Let us also remember that it represents the application of State-aid to +economic development. But with the utmost caution, and the utmost +efforts to elicit self-help, one may go too far in the direction of +State-aid, and even in this sphere it is by no means certain that +Ireland is free from danger. Let us pass to another movement whose +essence is self-help: I mean the movement for Agricultural Co-operation. +Here again Sir Horace Plunkett was the originator. Indeed, with him and +his able associates and advisers, of whom Lord Monteagle and Mr. R.A. +Anderson, the Secretary of the I.A.O.S., were the first, the twin aims +of self-help and State-aid were combined as they should be, in one big, +harmonious policy. Self-help must, indeed, they held, be antecedent to, +and preparatory for, State-aid. The position confronting them was that +half a million unorganized tenant farmers, for the most part cultivating +excessively small holdings, and just beginning to emerge after +generations of agrarian war from an economic serfdom, were face to face +with the competition of highly organized European countries, and of vast +and rapidly developing territories of North and South America. It was as +far back as 1889 that the first propaganda was begun, and in 1894, a +year before the Recess Committee met, the Irish Agricultural +Organization Society was formed. By unwearied pains and patience, +seemingly hopeless obstacles had been overcome, apathy, ignorance, and +often contemptuous opposition from <a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" />men of both political parties. For, +with that ruinous pessimism always endemic in countries not politically +free, and exactly paralleled in the Canada described by the Durham +Report of 1839, extremists were inclined to suspect any movement which +drew recruits from both political camps. Nevertheless, the island is now +covered with a network of 886 co-operative societies, creameries, +agricultural societies (for selling implements, foodstuffs, etc.), +credit banks, poultry societies, and other miscellaneous organizations. +The total membership is nearly 100,000, the total turnover nearly two +and a half millions.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55" /><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> Nearly half the butter exported from Ireland is +made in the 392 co-operative creameries, and at the other end of the +scale extraordinarily valuable work is done by the 237 agricultural +credit banks, which supply small loans, averaging only £4 apiece, for +strictly productive purposes on a system of mutual credit.</p> + +<p>Moral and material regeneration go together. The aim is to build up a +new rural civilization, to put life, heart, and hope into the monotony +of country life and unite all classes in the strong bonds of sympathy +and interest: a splendid ideal, applicable not to Ireland alone, but to +all countries, and Ireland may truly be said to be pointing the way to +many another country, Great Britain included.</p> + +<p>The Co-operative movement attracts the most intelligent <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" />and progressive +elements of the rural population. Strictly non-political itself, it +unites creeds and parties. It is as strong in predominantly Roman +Catholic districts as in predominantly Protestant districts, strongest +of all in Catholic Wexford. Probably two-thirds or more of the +co-operators are Home Rulers, but that only accidentally reflects the +distribution of Irish parties. On the local committees political animus +is unknown. The governing body contains members, lay and clerical, of +all shades of opinion. Step into Plunkett House, that hospitable +headquarters of the Organization Society, and if you have been nurtured +in legends about inextinguishable class and creed antipathies, which are +supposed to render Home Rule impossible and the eternal "umpirage" of +Great Britain inevitable, you will soon learn to marvel that anyone can +be found to propagate them. Here, just because men are working together +in a practical, self-contained, home-ruled organization for the good of +the whole country, you will find liberality, open-mindedness, +brotherhood, and keen, intelligent patriotism from Ulsterman and +Southerners alike. The atmosphere is not political. But you will come +away with a sense of the absurdity, of the insolence, of saying that a +country which can produce and conduct fine movements like this is +<i>unfit</i> for self-government. I should add a word about a new +organization which only came into being this year, and which also has +its home at Plunkett House, the United Irishwomen, whose aim, in their +own words, is to "unite Irishwomen for the social and economic advantage +of Ireland." "They intend to organize the women of all classes in every +rural district in Ireland for social service. These bodies will discuss, +and, if need be, take action upon any and every matter which concerns +the welfare of society in their several localities. So far as women's +knowledge and influence will avail, they will strive for a higher +standard of material comfort and physical well-being in the country +home, a more advanced agricultural economy, and a social existence a +little more in harmony with the intellect and temperament of our +people." Anyone who wants to understand something of the spirit of the +new self-reliant Ireland which is springing up to-day should read the +thrilling little pamphlet (I cannot describe it otherwise) from which I +quote these words, and which introduced the United<a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" /> Irish-women to the +world, with its preface by Father T.A. Finlay, and its essays by Mrs. +Ellice Pilkington, Sir Horace Plunkett, and Mr. George W. Russell, +better known as "Æ," poet, painter, and Editor of the Co-operative +weekly, the <i>Irish Homestead</i>. Nor can I leave this part of my subject +without referring to that amazing little journal. No other newspaper in +the world that I know of bears upon it so deep an impress of genius. +There are no "politics," in the Irish sense, in it. It would be +impossible to infer from its pages how the Editor voted. What fascinates +the reader is the shrewd and witty analysis of Irish problems, the high +range of vision which exposes the shortcomings and reveals the +illimitable possibilities of a regenerated Ireland and the ceaseless and +implacable war waged by the Editor upon all pettiness, melancholy, and +pessimism.</p> + +<p>What the Agricultural Organization Society is doing for agriculture the +Industrial Development Associations, formed only in quite recent years, +are doing, in a different way, for the encouragement of Irish +industries. The Associations of Belfast, Cork, and other cities work in +harmony, and meet in an annual All-Ireland Industrial Conference. Their +effort is to secure the concentration of Irish brains and capital on +Irish industrial questions, to promote the sale of Irish goods, both in +Ireland, Great Britain, and foreign countries, and to protect these +goods against piracy and illicit competition.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56" /><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> Here again +co-operation for Irish welfare brings together the creeds and races, and +tends to extinguish old bigotries and antipathies. Here again the truth +is recognized that Ireland is a distinct economic entity whose +conditions and needs demand special study from her citizens. In a +country of which that basal truth is recognized it would seem +inexplicable that Protestants and Catholics who meet in committee-rooms +and on platforms to promote, outside Parliament, the common interests of +Ireland, should not unite as one man to demand an Irish Legislature in +which to focus those interests and make them the subjects of direct +legislative enactment, free both <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" />from the paternal and the coercive +interference of a country differently situated, and absorbed in its own +affairs.</p> + +<p>I pass from the agricultural and industrial movements to another +powerful factor in the reconstruction of Ireland, namely, the Gaelic +League, founded in 1893, whose success under the Presidency of Dr. +Douglas Hyde in reviving the old national language, culture, and +amusements, is attracting the attention of the world. Fortunately the +League encountered some ridicule at the outset and prospered +proportionately. Some of its work is not above criticism, but few +persons—and none who have the least knowledge of such intellectual +revivals elsewhere—now care to laugh at it. The League is non-political +and non-sectarian. Strange, is it not, that such a movement should have +to emphasize the fact? Strange paradox that in a country which is being +re-born into a consciousness of its own individuality, which is +regaining its own pride and self-respect, recovering its lost literature +and culture, and vibrating to that "iron string, Trust thyself," the +conflict for self-government, that elementary symbol of self-trust, +should still retain enough intestinal bitterness to compel men to label +national movements as non-political and non-sectarian! It would be idle, +of course, to pretend that this national movement, like all others in +Ireland, does not strengthen, especially among the younger generation, +which grows increasingly Nationalist, the sentiment for Home Rule. If it +did not, we should indeed be in the presence of something miraculously +abnormal.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the Celtic revival does visible good. The language is no +longer a fad; it is an envied accomplishment, a mark of distinction and +education. Wherever it goes, North and South, it obliterates race and +creed distinctions, and all the terrible memories associated with them. +There are Ulstermen of Saxon or Scottish stock in whom the fascination +of Irish art and literature has extirpated every trace of Orangeism and +all implied in it. The language revivifies traditions, as beautiful as +they are glorious, of an Ireland full of high passions and stormy +domestic feuds, but united in sentiment, breeding warriors, poets, +lawgivers, saints, and fertilizing Europe with her missionary genius. +However far those times are, however grim and pitiful the havoc wrought +by the race war, it is <a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" />nevertheless a fact for thinkers and statesmen +to ponder over, not a phantasy to sneer at, that Celtic Ireland lives. +Anglicization has failed, not because Celts cannot appreciate the +noblest manifestations of English genius in art, letters, science, war, +colonization, but because to repress their own culture and nationality +is at the same time to repress their power of appreciation and +assimilation. Until comparatively recent times, it was only the worst of +English literature and music, the cheapest newspaper twaddle, the +inanest music-hall songs, which penetrated beyond a limited circle of +culture into the life of the country. The revolt against this +sterilizing and belittling side of anglicization is strong and healthy. +It affects all classes. Farmers, labourers, small tradesmen, who had +never conceived the idea of learning for learning's sake, and who had +grown up, thanks to the national system of education, in all but +complete ignorance of their own country's history and literature, spend +time on reading and study and in the practice of the old indigenous +dances and music, which was formerly wasted in idleness or dissipation. +Temperance and social harmony are irresistibly forwarded. Nor is it a +question of a few able men imposing their will on the many, or of an +artificial, State-aided process. Though the language has obtained a +footing in more than a third of the State schools and in the National +University,<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57" /><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> the motive force behind it comes from the people +themselves. In the country district, with which I am best acquainted, +boys and girls from very poor families are clubbing together to pay +instructors in the Irish language and dances, and the same thing is +going on all over Ireland.</p> + +<p>The brilliant modern school of poets and playwrights who, steeped in the +old Celtic thought and culture, have found for it such an exquisite +vehicle in the English tongue, speak for themselves and are winning +their own way to renown. The only criticism I venture to make is that +some of them are too much inclined to look backward instead of forward, +to idealize the far past rather than to illuminate the future, and to +de<a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" />lineate the deformities of national character produced by ages of +repression, rather than to aid in conjuring into being a virile, normal +nation.</p> + +<p>The name of the last movement to be referred to sums up all the others, +Sinn Fein. Unlike the others, it had a purely political origin, and for +that reason, probably, never made the same progress. Yet the explanation +is simple. In pursuance of the general purpose of inspiring Irishmen to +rely on themselves for their own salvation, economic and spiritual, Sinn +Feiners, like John Mitchel and others in the past, and like the +Hungarian patriots, attacked, with much point and satire, the whole +policy of constitutional and Parliamentary agitation for Home Rule. The +policy, they said, had failed for half a century; it was not only +negative and barren, but positively harmful. Nationalists should refuse +to send Members to Westminster and abide by the consequences. Sensibly +enough, most Irishmen, while recognizing that there was an element of +indisputable and valuable truth in this bold diagnosis, decided that it +was premature to adopt the prescription. Public opinion in Britain was +slowly changing, and confidence existed that this opinion would be +finally converted. If the Sinn Fein alternative meant anything at all, +it meant complete separation, which Ireland does not want, and a final +abandonment of constitutional methods. If another Home Rule Bill were to +fail, Sinn Fein would undoubtedly redouble its strength. Its ideas are +sane and sound. They are at bottom exactly the ideas which actuate every +progressive and spirited community, and which in Ireland animate the +Industrial Development Associations, the Co-operative movement, the +thirst for technical instruction, the Gaelic League, the literary +revival, and the work of the only truly Irish organ of government, the +Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.</p> + +<p>Now, where do we stand? Are the phenomena I have reviewed arguments for +Home Rule or against Home Rule? Do they tend to show that Ireland is +"fitter" now for Home Rule, or that she manages very well without Home +Rule? These are superfluous questions. They are never asked save of +countries obviously designed to govern themselves and obstinately denied +the right. Who would say now of Canada or Australia that they ought to +have solved their economic, <a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />agrarian, and religious problems and have +evolved an indigenous literature before they were declared fit for Home +Rule, or—still more unreasonable proposition—that their strenuous +efforts after self-help and internal harmony in the teeth of political +disabilities proved, in so far as they were successful, that external +government was a success?</p> + +<p>Yet these questions were, as a fact, asked of the Colonies, as they are +asked of Ireland. And misgovernment increased, and passions rose, and +blood flowed, while, in the guise of dispassionate psychologists, a +great many narrow, egotistical, and bullying people at home propounded +these arid conundrums. Where is our common sense? The Irish phenomena I +have described arise in spite of the absence of Home Rule, and the +denial of Home Rule sets an absolute and final bar to progress beyond a +certain point.</p> + +<p>That is certain; one cannot live in Ireland with one's eyes and ears +open without realizing it. All social and economic effort, successful as +it is up to a certain point, and strong as its tendency is to promote +nationalist feeling of the noblest kind, has to struggle desperately +against the benumbing influence of abstract "politics." Suspicion comes +from both sides. Both Unionists and Nationalists, for example, at one +time or another have looked askance on the Co-operative movement and on +the Department of Agriculture as being too Nationalist or too Unionist +in tendency. Unionists caused Sir Horace Plunkett to lose his seat in +Parliament in 1905; and Nationalists, though with some constitutional +justification, secured his removal from office in 1907. At this moment +there is friction and suspicion in this particular matter which seems to +the impartial observer to be artificial, and which would not exist, or +would be transmuted into something perfectly harmless, and probably +highly beneficial, were there any normal political life in Ireland and a +central organ of public opinion. As long as Great Britain insists, to +her own infinite inconvenience, upon deciding Irish questions by party +majorities fluctuating from Toryism to Radicalism, and thereby compels +Ireland to send parties to Westminster whose <i>raison d'être</i> is, not to +represent crystallized Irish opinion on Irish domestic questions—that +is at present wholly impossible—but to assert or deny the fundamental +right for Ireland to settle her own <a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" />domestic questions, so long will +these dislocations continue, to the grave prejudice of Ireland and the +deep discredit of Great Britain. Ireland, like Canada in 1838, has no +organic national life. Apart from the abstract but paramount question of +Home Rule, there are no formed political principles or parties. Such +parties as there are have no relation to the economic life of the +country, and all interests suffer daily in consequence. In a normal +country you would find urban and agricultural interests distinctly +represented, but not in Ireland. We should expect to rind clear-cut +opinions on Tariff Reform and Free Trade. No such opinions exist. On the +other hand, agreement on important industrial and agricultural questions +finds not the smallest reflection in Parliamentary representation. +Education, and other latent issues of burning importance, are not +political issues. A Budget may cause almost universal dissatisfaction, +but it goes through, and the amazing thing is that Unionists complain of +its going through! Most of the Parliamentary elections are uncontested, +though everybody knows that a dozen questions would set up a salutary +ferment of opinion if they were not stifled by the refusal of Home Rule. +The Protestant tenant-farmers of Ulster have identical interests with +those of other Provinces, and have profited largely by the legislation +extorted by Nationalists; but for the most part, though by no means +wholly, they vote Unionist. The two great towns, Dublin and Belfast, are +divided by the most irrational antagonism. Labourers, both rural and +urban, have distinct and important interests; the rural labourers have +no spokesman, the town-labourers only one. It was admitted to me by a +Unionist organizer in Belfast that that city, but for the Home Rule +issue, would probably return four labour members. Nor have parties any +close relation to the distribution of wealth. In the matter of incomes +the prosperous traders of Cork, Limerick, and Waterford are in the same +case as regards taxation with those of Londonderry and Belfast. +Publicans are Unionists in England, Nationalists in Ireland, both in +Ulster and elsewhere. Before the Home Rule issue was raised, Ulster was +largely Liberal. Ulster Liberalism is almost dead. Extreme Socialism may +almost be said to be non-existent in Ireland, yet Ireland is not only +administered on semi-collectivist principles, but <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" />continually runs the +risk of being involved in legislation of a Socialistic kind, which, +rightly or wrongly, she heartily dislikes.</p> + +<p>As for the landed aristocracy all over Ireland, their historic alliance +with the intensely democratic tenant-farmers of one small corner of +Ireland, North-East Ulster, against those of all the rest, presented +strange enough features in the past, and is now becoming artificial in +the highest degree. Thanks to Land Purchase, no landed aristocracy in +the world now has a better chance of throwing its wealth and +intelligence into public life for the good of the whole country, of +thinking out problems, of conciliating factions, and of ennobling public +life. The landlord who has sold his land is a free man, far freer than +the English landlord from misgivings caused by divergency of interest. +The opportunity is still there. Will they profit by it? One thing is +essential: they must become Nationalists, and in breathing that phrase, +one is conscious of all the misleading implications and the bitter +historical feuds it suggests. Yet a small but powerful group of +landlords is already leading the way. And the way, even before Home +Rule, in reality is so simple. I speak from close observation. If a man +is a good man, and worthy to represent a constituency, he has only to +declare his belief that he thinks that he and his own fellow-citizens +are fit to govern themselves. Irishmen, especially in Roman Catholic +districts, and, indeed, as an indirect result of Catholicism, have never +lost their belief in aristocracy. When a landlord, or any other +Protestant, comes forward as a Nationalist, he is welcomed. His +religion, whatever it may be, does not count. Parnell and Smith O'Brien +were Protestant landlords. Many of the most trusted popular leaders, +Tone, Robert Emmet, John Mitchel, Isaac Butt, and others in the past +have been Protestants. Ten Members of the present Nationalist party are +Protestants. The Home Rule issue would have lost some of its bitterness +if a Unionist electorate had ever elected a Catholic to Parliament.</p> + +<p>Still, it is unfortunately true that the great bulk of the landlords and +ex-landlords stand aloof from the Home Rule movement. The collateral +result is that far too many of them instinctively stand aloof even from +those purely economic and intellectual movements which tend to make a +living united<a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" /> Ireland out of chaos. The national loss is heavy; the +waste of talent and of driving-power, for Ireland needs driving-power +from her leisured and cultured classes, is melancholy to contemplate.</p> + +<p>Everywhere one sees waste of talent in Ireland. The land abounds in men +with ideas and potentialities waiting for those normal chances of +development which self-governed countries provide. Much of this good +material is crushed under unnatural political tyrannies caused by +ceaseless agitation for and against an abstract aim which should have +been satisfied long ago, so that the energies it absorbed might have +been diverted into practical channels. There is too much moral +cowardice, too little bold, independent thought and action. Nobody knows +what Ireland really is, and of what she is capable. Nobody can know +until she has responsibility for her own fate.</p> + +<p>Local government, where popular opinion is nominally free, suffers from +the absence of free central government. Is it not on the face of it +preposterous to give complete powers of local taxation and +administration to a country while withholding from it, as unsafe and +improper, central co-ordinating control? For any country but Ireland—at +any rate, in the British self-governing Colonies and the United +States—such a policy would be regarded as crazy. Still more +unreasonable is it to complain that local authorities under such a +system spend part of the energy which should be devoted wholly to local +affairs in abstract politics. I forbear from engaging in the statistical +war over the numbers of Catholics and Protestants employed and elected +by local bodies. One must remember, what Unionists sometimes forget, +that Ireland is, broadly speaking, a Roman Catholic country, and that +until thirteen years ago local administration and patronage were almost +exclusively in Protestant hands. We should naturally expect a marked +change; but, with that reminder, I prefer to appeal to the reader's +common sense. Deny national Home Rule, and give local Home Rule. What +would one expect to happen? What would have happened in any Colony? What +would Mr. Arthur Balfour himself have prophesied with certainty in the +case of any other country but Ireland? Why, this, that each little local +body would <a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" />become an outlet for suppressed agitation, and that national +or anti-national politics, not urgent local necessities, would enter +into local elections and influence the composition of local bodies. And +what would be the further consequence? That numbers of the best local +men would stand aloof or be rejected, and that favouritism would find a +congenial soil.</p> + +<p>In point of fact, Irish local authorities, under the circumstances, are +wonderfully free from these evils, only another proof of the resilience +and vitality of the country under persistent mismanagement. On the whole +they bear comparison with British local authorities in thrift, purity, +and efficiency. None of them has ever yet had a scandal like that of +Poplar. All of them have shown sense and spirit in forwarding sanitation +and technical education. They vary widely, of course, the lowest units +in the scale being the least efficient, as in England. County Councils, +for example, are better than Rural District Councils. On the other hand, +Dublin Corporation, though not so bad as it is sometimes painted, +occasionally sets a very bad example. The standard of efficiency is +higher in the Protestant north than in the Catholic south, the standard +of religious toleration lower. But at bottom it is not a question of +theology, as every well-informed person knows, but a question of +politics. The same causes that keep the landed gentry out of Parliament +keep them, although not to the same degree, out of local politics. +Sometimes this is their own fault, for declining to take part in them; +for many of the Protestant upper class in Nationalist districts obtain +election in spite of being Unionists. Tolerance is slowly growing in +Nationalist, though not, it is to be feared, in Unionist, districts; +again a quite intelligible fact.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58" /><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> But when all is said and done, it +is an undeniable fact that Irish local authorities, especially those in +the poverty-stricken west, where all social activities are more +retrograde than elsewhere, are capable of great improvement, and that +improvement can come only by allowing them to concentrate on local +affairs, and obtain the co-operation of all classes and religions. The +very existence of a central Government of which Irishmen were proud +<a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" />would influence the tone and standard of all minor authorities to the +bottom of the scale.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, obvious and urgent problems, which no Parliament but an Irish +Parliament can deal with, cry aloud for settlement. The Poor Law, +railways, arterial drainage, afforestation, are questions which I need +only refer to by name, confining myself to the greater issues. +Education, primary and intermediate, is perhaps the greatest. The +present system is almost universally condemned, and its bad results are +recognized. It has got to be reformed. By no possibility can it be +reformed so long as the Union lasts, not only because the Boards, +National and Intermediate, which control education, are composed of +unelected amateurs, but because there is no means of finding out what +the national opinion is as to the course reform is to take. Meanwhile +the children and the country suffer. The Intermediate Board is a purely +examining and prize-giving body, and its system by general agreement is +imperfect. In the National or Primary schools the percentage of average +daily attendance (71.1 per cent.), though slowly improving, is still +very bad.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59" /><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> Many of the school-houses are, in the words of the +Commissioners, "mere hovels," unsanitary, leaky, ill-ventilated. The +distribution of schools and funds is chaotic and wasteful. Out of 8,401 +schools (in 1909-10)<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60" /><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> nearly two hundred have an average daily +attendance of less than fifteen pupils. In 1730 the number is less than +thirty, and it is not only in sparsely inhabited country districts, but +in big towns, that the distribution is bad. The power of the +Commissioners to stop the creation of unduly small schools, and even +semi-bogus establishments which come into being in the great cities, is +imperfect. Another example of the curious mixture of anarchy and +despotism that the system of Irish government presents may be seen in +the Annual Report of the Commissioners. With a mutinous audacity which +would be laughable, if the case were one for laughing, the Commissioners +openly rail at the Treasury for the parsimony of its grants, and, in +order to stir its compassion, paint the condition of Irish education in +black colours. Imagine the various Departmental Ministers <a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" />in Great +Britain publicly attacking in their Annual Reports the Cabinet of which +they were members! The Treasury, needless to say, is not to blame. It +pays out of the common Imperial purse all but a negligible fraction of +the cost of primary education in Ireland. Nothing is raised by rates, +and only £141,096 (in 1909-10) from voluntary and local sources, as +compared with £1,688,547 from State grants. The Treasury has no +guarantee that this money is well spent; on the contrary, it knows from +the Reports of the Commissioners themselves that a great deal of it is +very badly spent. The business is a comic opera, but it has a tragic +significance for Ireland. Primary education is so bad that a great +number of the pupils are absolutely unfit to receive the expensive and +excellent technical instruction organized by the Department of +Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and contributed to by the +ratepayers. The Belfast Technical Institute, for example, has to go +outside its proper functions, and spend from its too small stock in +providing introductory courses in elementary subjects, so as to equip +children for the reception of higher knowledge.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61" /><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> All over the country +the complaint is the same. No machinery whatever exists for +co-ordinating primary, secondary, technical, and University education, +and opportioning funds in an economical and profitable manner.</p> + +<p>Religion is the immediate cause of the trouble; absence of popular +control the fundamental cause. The national system of primary education, +designed originally in 1831 to be undenominational, has become rigidly +denominational. Out of 8,401 primary schools, 2,461 only are attended by +both Protestants and Roman Catholics. The rest are of an exclusively +sectarian character. Even the Protestants do not combine. The Church of +Ireland, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and other smaller +denominations, frequently have small separate schools in the same +parish. The management (save in the model schools, which are attended +only by Protestants) is exclusively sectarian, the local clergyman, +Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland, or Nonconformist having almost +autocratic control over the school.</p> + +<p>This education question has got to be thrashed out by a<a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" /> Home Ruled +Ireland, and the sooner the better. After Home Rule the Treasury grant +will stop, and Ireland will have to raise and apportion the funds +herself, and set her house in order. At whatever sacrifice of religious +scruples, and, it is needless to add that to the Roman Catholic +hierarchy the sacrifice will be the greatest, the Irish people must +control and finance its schools, whether through a central department +alone, or through local authorities as well. There is no reason in the +world why a compromise should not be arrived at which would secure +vastly increased efficiency and leave the teaching of denominational +religion uninjured. Other countries, where the same religions exist side +by side, have attained that compromise. Ireland will be judged by her +success in attaining it.</p> + +<p>Another important question is the treatment of the Congested Districts. +More than a third of Ireland is now under the benevolent jurisdiction of +a despotic Board.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62" /><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> So long as its funds are raised from general +Imperial taxation, the inevitable tendency is to shirk the thorough +discussion of this grave subject, to lay the responsibility on Great +Britain, to acquiesce in a policy of extreme paternalism, and to appeal +for higher and higher doles from the Treasury. This cannot go on. +Whoever, in the eyes of Divine Justice, was originally responsible for +the condition of the submerged west, and for the ruin of the evicted +tenants, Ireland, if she wants Home Rule, must shoulder the +responsibility herself, and think out the whole question independently. +The Congested Districts Board has done, and continues to do, good work +in the purchase and resettlement of estates; but even in this sphere +there are wide differences of opinion as to the proper methods and +policy to be employed, especially with regard to the division of +grasslands and the migration of landless men. Its other remedial work +(part of which is now taken over by the Department of Agriculture under +the Land Act of 1909), in encouraging fisheries, industries, and farm +improvements out of State money, is open to criticism on the ground of +its tendency to pauperize and weaken character. I do not care to +pronounce on the controversy, though I think that there is much to be +said for the view that money is best spent <a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" />by encouraging agricultural +co-operation. Many able and distinguished men have devoted their minds +to the subject, but it is plain that Ireland as a whole has not thought, +and cannot think, the matter out in a responsible spirit, and that the +only way of reaching a truly Irish decision is through an Irish +Parliament, which both raises and votes money for the purpose.<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63" /><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> The +reinstatement of evicted tenants teems with practical difficulties which +can only be solved in the same way. As long as Great Britain remains +responsible, errors are liable to be made which one day may be deeply +regretted.</p> + +<p>The same observation applies to all future land legislation, not +excepting Land Purchase, which I deal with fully in a later chapter.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64" /><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> +That great department of administration must, for financial reasons, be +worked in harmonious consultation with the British Government; but it +ought to be controlled by Ireland, and a free and normal outlet given to +criticisms like those emanating from Mr. William O'Brien, whatever the +intrinsic value of these criticisms. Purchase itself settles nothing +beyond the bare ownership of the land. It leaves the distribution and +use of the land, except in the "resettled" districts, where it was, with +a third or a quarter of the holdings so small as to be classed as +"uneconomic." Ireland is not as yet awake to the possibilities of the +silent revolution proceeding from the erection of a small peasant +proprietorship. The sense of responsibility in these new proprietors +will be quickened and the interests of the whole country forwarded by a +National Parliament.</p> + +<p>Temperance will never be tackled thoroughly but by an Irish Parliament. +All Irishmen are ashamed in their hearts of the encouragement given to +drunkenness by the still grossly excessive number of licensed houses, +which in 1909 was 22,591, and of the National Drink Bill, which in the +same year was £13,310,469,<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65" /><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> or £3 11d. per head of a population not +rich in this world's goods. Temperance is not really a party or a +sectarian question. All the Churches make noble efforts to <a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" />forward +reform, and in a rationally governed Ireland reform would be considered +on its merits. At present it is inextricably mixed up with Nationalist +and anti-Nationalist politics, and with irrelevant questions of Imperial +taxation.</p> + +<p>The latest examples of the embarrassment into which Ireland without Home +Rule is liable to drift from the absence of a formed public opinion and +the means to give it effect, are the labour troubles and the National +Insurance scheme. There are signs that English labour is thrusting +forward Irish labour in advance of its own will and in advance of +general Irish opinion. In all labour questions Ireland's position as an +agricultural country is totally different from that of Great Britain. +The same legislation cannot be applicable to both. Ireland should frame +her own. Under present conditions it is impossible to know the +considered judgment of Ireland. There is certainly much opposition to +Insurance, and if all Irishmen thoroughly realized that the scheme might +complicate the finance of Home Rule and involve a greater financial +dependence on Great Britain than exists even at present, they would +study it with still more critical eyes,<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66" /><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> as they would certainly have +studied the Old Age Pensions scheme with more critical eyes.</p> + +<p>Here I am led naturally to the great and all-embracing questions of +Irish finance and expenditure, which lie behind all the topics already +discussed and many others. The subject is far too important and +interwoven with history to be dealt with otherwise than as an historical +whole, and that course I propose to take in a later part of the book. It +is enough to say that all the arguments for Home Rule are summed up in +the fiscal argument. Every Irishman worth his salt ought to be ashamed +and indignant at the present position.</p> + +<p>The whole machinery of Irish Government, and the whole fiscal system +under which Ireland lives, need to be thoroughly overhauled by Irishmen +in their own interests, and in the interests of Great Britain. Among +many other writers, Mr. Barry O'Brien, in his "Dublin Castle and the +Irish People," Lord Dunraven in "The Outlook in Ireland," and Mr. G.F.H. +Berkeley in a paper contributed to "Home Rule Problems," have lucidly +and wittily described the wonderful collection of <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" />sixty-seven +irresponsible and unrelated Boards nominated by the Chief Secretary, or +Lord-Lieutenant, which, with the official services beneath them, +constitute the colonial bureaucracy of Ireland; the extravagance of the +judicial and other salaries, and the total lack of any central control +worthy of the name. By omitting a number of insignificant little +bureaux, the figure 67, according to Mr. Berkeley's classification, may +be reduced to 42, of which 26 are directly under Castle influence, and +the rest either branches of British Departments or directly under the +Treasury. In 1906, out of 1,611 principal official posts, 626 were +obtained purely by nomination, and 766 by a qualifying examination only. +In an able-bodied male population, which we may estimate at a million, +there are reckoned to be about 60,000 persons employed by the State, or +1 in 18. If we add 180,000 Old Age Pensioners, we reach the figure of +nearly a quarter of a million persons, out of a total population of +under four and a half millions, dependent wholly or partially for their +living on the State, exclusive of Army and Navy pensioners; again about +1 in 18. Four millions of money are paid in salaries or pensions to +State employees, and two and three-quarter millions to Old Age +Pensioners.</p> + +<p>It is so easy to make fun about Irish administration that one has to be +cautious not to mistake the nature or exaggerate the dimensions of the +evil. The great defect is that the expenditure is not controlled by +Ireland and has no relation to the revenue derived from Ireland. The +Castle is not the odious institution that it was in the dark days of the +land war; but it is still a foreign, not an Irish institution, working, +like the Government of the most dependent of Crown Colonies, in a world +of its own, with autocratic powers, and immunity from all popular +influence. Beyond the criticism that one religious denomination, the +Church of Ireland, is rather unduly favoured in patronage, there is no +personal complaint against the officials. They are as able, kindly, +hard-working, and courteous as any other officials. Some of the +principal posts are held by men of the highest distinction, who will be +as necessary to the new Government as to the old. It is absolutely +essential, but it will not be easy, to make substantial administrative +economies at the outset, not only from the additional stress <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />of novel +work which will be thrown upon a Home Rule Government, but from the +widespread claims of vested interests. It will require courageous +statesmanship, backed by courageous public opinion, to overhaul a +bureaucracy so old and extensive. Take the police, for example, the +first and most urgent subject for reduction. Adding the Royal Irish +Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police together, we have a +force of no less than 12,000 officers and men, a force twice as numerous +in proportion to population as those of England and Wales, and costing +the huge sum of a million and a half; and this in a country which now is +unusually free from crime, and which at all times has been naturally +less disposed to crime than any part of Great Britain. It is the +forcible maintenance of bad economic conditions that has produced Irish +crime in the past. Irishmen hotly resent that symbol of coercion, the +swollen police force, which is as far removed from their own control as +a foreign army of occupation. On the other hand, the force itself is +composed of Irishmen, and is a considerable, though an unhealthy, +economic factor in the life of the country. It performs some minor +official duties outside the domain of justice; it is efficient, and its +individual members are not unpopular. Reduction will be difficult. But +drastic reduction, at least by a half, must eventually be brought about +if Ireland is to hold up her head in the face of the world.</p> + +<p>The difficulty will extend through all the ramifications of public +expenditure. Ireland, through no fault of her own, against her +persistent protests, has been retained in a position which is +destructive to thrifty instincts. A rain of officials has produced an +unhealthy thirst for the profits of officialdom. No one feels +responsibility for the money spent for national purposes, because no one +in Ireland <i>is</i>, in any real sense, responsible. There is no Irish +Budget or Irish Exchequer to make a separate Irish Government logically +defensible. The people are heavily taxed, but, rightly, they do not +connect their taxes with the expenditure going on around them. On the +contrary, their mental habit is to look to Great Britain as the source +of grants, salaries, pensions.</p> + +<p>And the worst of it is that they are now at the point of being +financially dependent on Great Britain. After more than a <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" />century of +Union finance, after contributing, all told, over three hundred and +twenty millions of money to the Imperial purse over and above +expenditure in Ireland, they have now ceased to contribute a penny, and +are a little in debt. As we shall see, when I come to a closer +examination of finance, the main factor in producing this result has +been the Old Age Pensions. The application of the British scale, +unmodified, to Ireland is the kind of blunder which the Union +encourages. Ireland, where wages and the standard of living are far +lower than in England, does not need pensions on so high a scale, and +already suffers too much from benevolent paternalism. It was an +unavoidable blunder, given a joint financial system, but it has gravely +compromised Home Rule finance.</p> + +<p>For acquiescing in this and similar grants, beyond the ascertained +taxable resources of the country; for the general deficiency of public +spirit and matured public opinion in Ireland; for the backwardness of +education, temperance legislation, and other important reforms, the +Irish Parliamentary parties cannot be held responsible. They are +abnormal in their composition and aims, and, beyond a certain limited +point, they are powerless, even if they had the will, to promote Irish +policies. That is the pernicious result of an unsatisfied claim for +self-government. It is the same everywhere else. While an agitation for +self-government lasts, a country is stagnant, retrograde, or, like +Ireland, progressive only by dint of extraordinary native exertions. +Read the Durham report on the condition of the Canadas during the long +agitation for Home Rule, and you will recognize the same state of +things. The leaders of the agitation have to concentrate on the abstract +and primary claim for Home Rule, and are reluctant to dissipate their +energies on minor ends. Yet they, too, are liable to irrational and +painful divisions, like that which divides Mr. O'Brien from Mr. Redmond; +symptoms of irritation in the body politic, not of political sanity. +They cannot prove their powers of constructive statesmanship, because +they are not given the power to construct or the responsibility which +evokes statesmanship. The anti-Home Rule partisans degenerate into +violent but equally sincere upholders of a pure negation.</p> + +<p>Many of the able men who belong to both the Irish parties <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" />will, it is +to be hoped, soon be finding a far more fruitful and practical field for +their abilities in a free Ireland. But the parties, as such, will +disappear, on condition that the measure of Home Rule given to Ireland +is adequate. On that point I shall have more to say later. If it is +adequate, and Irish politicians are absorbed in vital Irish politics, +the structure of the existing parties falls to pieces, to the immense +advantage both of Ireland—including the Protestant sections of +Ulster—and of Great Britain. At present both parties, divided normally +by a gulf of sentiment, do combine for certain limited purposes of Irish +legislation, but both are, in different degrees and ways, sterile. The +policy of the Nationalist party has been positive in the past, because +it wrung from Parliament the land legislation which saved a perishing +society. It is essentially positive still in that it seeks Home Rule, +which is the condition precedent to practical politics in Ireland. More, +the party is independent, in a sense which can be applied to no other +party in the United Kingdom. Its Members accept no offices or titles, +the ordinary prizes of political life. But they themselves could not +contend that they are truly representative of three-quarters of Ireland +in any other sense than that they are Home Rulers. Half of the wit, +brains, and eloquence of their best men runs to waste. Some of them are +merely nominated by the party machine, to represent, not local needs, +but a paramount principle which the electors insist rightly on setting +above immediate local needs.</p> + +<p>The purpose of the Irish Unionist party in the Commons is purely +negative, to defeat Home Rule. It does not represent North-East Ulster, +or any other fragment of Ireland, in any sense but that. It is +passionately sentimental and absolutely unrepresentative of the +practical, virile genius of Ulster industry. The Irish Unionist peers, +in addition to voicing the same negative, are for the most part the +spokesmen of a small minority of Irishmen in whom the long habit of +upholding landlord interests has begun to outlive the need.</p> + +<p>I have said little directly about the problem of modern Ulster, not +because I underrate its importance, which is very great, but because I +have some hope that my arguments up to this point may be perceived to +have a strong, though <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" />indirect, bearing upon it.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67" /><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> The religious +question I leave to others, with only these few observations. It is +impossible to make out a historical case for the religious intolerance +of Roman Catholics in Ireland, or a practical case for the likelihood of +a Roman Catholic tyranny in the future. No attempt which can be +described as even plausible has ever been made in either direction. The +late Mr. Lecky, a Unionist historian, and one of the most eminent +thinkers and writers of our time, has nobly vindicated Catholic Ireland, +banishing both the theory and the fear into the domain of myth.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68" /><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p> + +<p>He has shown, what, indeed, nobody denies, that, from the measures which +provoked the Rebellion of 1641, through the Penal Code, to the middle of +the nineteenth century, intolerance, inspired by supposed political +necessities, and of a ferocity almost unequalled in history, came from +the Protestant colonists. In that brilliant little essay of his +Nationalist youth, "Clerical Influences" (1861), he described the +sectarian animosity which was raging at that period as "the direct and +inevitable consequence of the Union," and wrote as follows: "Much has +been said of the terrific force with which it would rage were the Irish +Parliament restored. We maintain, on the other hand, that no truth is +more clearly stamped upon the page of history, and more distinctly +deducible from the constitution of the human mind, than that a national +feeling is the only check to sectarian passions." He was himself an +anti-Catholic extremist in the sense of holding (with many others) that +"the logical consequences of the doctrines of the Church of Rome would +be fatal to an independent and patriotic policy in any land." But he +insists in the same passage "that nothing is more clear than that in +every land where a healthy national feeling exists, Roman Catholic +politicians are both independent and patriotic."</p> + +<p>He never recanted these opinions (which are confirmed <a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" />by the subsequent +course of events) even after his conversion to Unionism, but derived his +opposition to Home Rule from a dread of all democratic tendencies,<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69" /><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> +the only ground on which, if men would be willing to confess the naked +truth, it can be opposed. There the matter ought to rest. If the +doctrines of the Church of Rome are, in fact, inconsistent with +political freedom—I myself pronounce no opinion on that point—it is +plain to the most superficial observer that the Church, as a factor in +politics, stands to lose rather than to gain by Home Rule. British +statesmen have often accepted that view, and have endeavoured to use the +Roman Catholic hierarchy against popular movements, just as they +enlisted its influence to secure the Union. The Roman Catholic laity +have often subsequently rejected what they have considered to be undue +political dictation from the seat of authority in Rome.</p> + +<p>If I may venture an opinion, I believe that both of these mutually +irreconcilable propositions—that Home Rule means Rome Rule, and that +Rome is the enemy to Home Rule—are wrong.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70" /><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> Such ludicrous +contradictions only help to destroy the case against trusting a free +Ireland to give religion its legitimate, and no more than legitimate, +position in the State. Ireland is intensely religious, and it would be a +disaster of the first magnitude if the Roman Catholic masses were to +lose faith in their Church. The preservation of that faith depends on +the political Liberalism of the Church.</p> + +<p>Corresponding tolerance will be demanded of Ulster Protestants. At +present passion, not reason, governs the religious side of their +opposition to Home Rule. It is futile to criticize Ulster Unionists for +making the religious argument the spear-head of their attack on Home +Rule. The argument is one which especially appeals to portions of the +British electorate, and the rules of political warfare permit free use +of it. It was pushed beyond the legitimate point, to actual violence, in +the Orange opposition to responsible government in Canada in 1849. And +it has more than once inflamed and embittered Australian politics, as it +inflames the politics of <a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />certain English constituencies. But it is +hardly to be conceived that Ulster Unionists really fear Roman Catholic +tyranny. The fear is unmanly and unworthy of them. To anyone who has +lived in an overwhelmingly Catholic district, and seen the complete +tranquillity and safety in which Protestants exercise their religion, it +seems painfully abnormal that a great city like Belfast, with a +population more than two-thirds Protestant, should become hysterical +over Catholic tyranny. It would be physically impossible to enforce any +tyrannical law in Ulster or anywhere else, even if such a law were +proposed, and many leading Protestants from all parts of Ireland have +stated publicly that they have no fear of any such result from Home +Rule.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71" /><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p> + +<p>"Loyalty" to the Crown is a false issue. Disloyalty to the Crown is a +negligible factor in all parts of Ireland. Loyalty or disloyalty to a +certain political system is the real matter at issue. At the present day +the really serious objections to Home Rule on the part of the leading +Ulster Unionists seem to be economic. They have built up thriving trades +under the Union. They have the closest business connections with Great +Britain, and a mutual fabric of credit. They cherish sincere and +profound apprehensions that their business prosperity will suffer by any +change in the form of government. To scoff at these apprehensions is +absurd and impolitic in the last degree. But to reason against them is +also an almost fruitless labour. Those who feel them vaguely picture an +Irish Parliament composed of Home Rulers and Unionists, in the same +proportion to population as at present, and divided by the same bitter +and demoralizing feuds. But there will be no Home Rulers after Home +Rule, that is to say, if the Home Rule conceded is sufficient. I believe +that Ulster Unionists do not realize either the beneficent +transformation which will follow a change from sentimental to practical +politics in Ireland, as it has followed a similar change in every other +country in the Empire, or the enormous weight which their own fine +qualities and strong economic position will give them in the settlement +of Irish questions.</p> + +<p>Nor do they realize, I venture to think, that any Irish<a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" /> Government, +however composed, will be a patriotic Government pledged and compelled +for its own credit and safety to do its best for the interests of +Ireland. I have never met an Irishman who was not proud of the northern +industries, and it is obvious that the industrial prosperity of the +north is vital to the fiscal and general interests of Ireland, just as +the far more wealthy mining interests of the Rand are vital to the +stability and prosperity of the Transvaal, and were regarded as such and +treated as such by the farmer majority of the Transvaal after the grant +of Home Rule. Those interests have prospered amazingly since, and in +that country, be it remembered, volunteer British corps raised on the +Rand had been the toughest of all the British foes which the peasant +commandos had to meet in a war ended only four years before.</p> + +<p>If the fears of Ulster took any concrete form, it would be easier to +combat them; but they are unformulated, nebulous. Meanwhile, it is hard +to imagine what measure of oppression could possibly be invented by the +most malignant Irish Government which would not recoil like a boomerang +upon those in whose supposed interests it was framed. I shall have to +deal with this point again in discussing taxation, and need here only +remind the reader that Ulster is not a Province, any part of which could +possibly be injured by any form of taxation which did not hit other +Provinces equally.</p> + +<p>It is the belief of Ulster Unionists that their prosperity depends on +the maintenance of the Union, but the belief rests on no sound +foundation. Rural emigration from Ulster, even from the Protestant +parts, has been as great as from the rest of Ireland.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72" /><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> It is easy to +point to a fall in stocks when the Home Rule issue is uppermost, but +such phenomena occur in the case of big changes of government in any +country. They merely reflect the fact that certain moneyed interests do, +in fact, fear a change of government, and whether those fears are +irrational or not, the effect is the same. It is an historical fact, on +the other hand, that political freedom in a white country, in the long +run invariably promotes <a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" />industrial expansion and financial confidence. +Canada is one remarkable example, Australia is another. The Balkan +States are others. Not that I wish to push the colonial example to +extremes. Vast undeveloped territories impair the analogy to Ireland; +but it is none the less true that when a country with a separate +economic life of its own obtains rulers of its own choice, and gains a +national pride and responsibility, it goes ahead, not backward.</p> + +<p>Intense, indeed, must be the racial prejudice which can cause Ulstermen +to forget the only really glorious memories of their past. Orange +memories are stirring, but they are not glorious beside the traditions +of the Volunteers. The Orange flag is the symbol of conquest, +confiscation, racial and religious ascendancy. It is not noble for +Irishmen to celebrate annually a battle in which Ireland was defeated, +or to taunt their Catholic compatriots with agrarian lawlessness to +which their own forefathers were forced to resort, in order to obtain a +privileged immunity from the same scandalous land laws. Ulstermen +reached spiritual greatness when, like true patriots, they stood for +tolerance, Parliamentary reform, and the unity of Ireland. They fell, +surely, when they consented to style themselves a "garrison" under the +shelter of an absentee Parliament, which, through the enslavement and +degradation of the old Irish Parliament, had driven tens of thousands of +their own race into exile and rebellion.</p> + +<p>They cherish the Imperial tradition, but let them love its sublime and +reject its ignoble side. It is sublime where it stands for liberty; +ignoble—and none knew this better than the Ulster-American +rebels—where it stands for government based on the dissensions of the +governed.</p> + +<p>The verdict of history is that for men in the position of the Ulster +Unionists, the path of honour and patriotism, and the path of true +self-interest, lies in co-operation with their fellow-citizens for the +attainment of political freedom under the Crown. It is not as if they +had to create a tradition. The tradition lives.<a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X" />CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE</h3> + + +<h4><a name="X_I" id="X_I" />I.</h4> + +<h5>THE ELEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM.</h5> + + +<p>It was not only to support the principle of Home Rule for Ireland that I +followed in some detail the growth of the Liberal principle of +government as applied to outlying portions of the British Empire. The +historical circumstances which moulded the form of each individual +Colonial Constitution, the Constitutions themselves, and the +modifications they have subsequently undergone, supply a mass of +material rich in interest and instruction for the makers of an Irish +Constitution. Nor is the analogy academical. Ireland is at this moment +under a form of government unique, so far as I know, in the whole world, +but resembling more closely than anything else that of a British Crown +Colony where the Executive is outside popular control, and the +Legislature is only partially within it; with this additional and +crowning inconvenience, that the Irish Crown Colony can obstruct the +business of the Mother Country. What we have to do is to liberate Great +Britain and to give Ireland a rational Constitution—not pedantically +adhering to any colonial model, but recognizing that, however closely +her past history resembles that of a Colony, Ireland, by her +geographical position, has a closer community of interest with Great +Britain than that of any Colony.</p> + +<p>Three main difficulties have to be contended with: first, that the +system to be overthrown is so ancient, and the prejudice against Home +Rule so inveterate; second, the Irish are not agreed upon any +constructive scheme; third, the confusion in the popular mind between +"Federal" and other systems of Home Rule.<a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" /></p> + + +<h5>A.</h5> + +<p>With regard to the first of these obstacles, we have got to make a big +national effort to take a sensible and dispassionate view of the whole +problem. We must cease to regard Ireland as an insubordinate captive, as +a "possession" to be exploited for profit, or as a child to be humoured +and spoiled. All this is <i>vieux jeu</i>. It belongs to an utterly +discredited form of so-called Imperialism, which might more fitly be +called Little Englandism, masquerading in the showy trappings of +Bismarckian philosophy. We have gone too far in the "dismemberment" of +our historic Empire, and near enough to the dismemberment of what +remains, to apply this worn-out metaphor to the process of making +Ireland politically free.</p> + +<p>In Ireland we must build on trust, or we build on sand.</p> + +<p>What is best for Ireland will be best for the Empire.</p> + +<p>Let us firmly grasp these principles, or we shall fail. They may be +carried to the extreme point. If it were for Ireland's moral and +material good to become an independent nation, it would be Great +Britain's interest to encourage her to secede and assume the position of +a small State like Belgium, whose independence in our own interests we +guarantee. Since nobody of sense, in or out of Ireland supposes that her +interest lies in that direction, we need not consider the point; but it +is just as well to bear in mind that a prosperous and friendly neighbour +on a footing of independence is better than a discontented and backward +neighbour on a footing of dependence. The corollary is this—that any +restrictions or limitations upon the subordinate Irish Government and +Parliament which are not scientifically designed to secure the easy +working of the whole Imperial machinery, but are the outcome of +suspicion and distrust, will serve only to aggravate existing evils. +When the supreme object of a Home Rule measure is to create a sense of +responsibility in the people to whom it is extended, what could be more +perversely unwise than to accompany the gift with a declaration of the +incompetence of the people to exercise responsibility, and with +restraints designed to prevent them from proving the contrary?</p> + +<p>Centuries of experience have not yet secured general acceptation for +this simple principle. In this domain of thought the <a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" />tenacity of error +is marvellous, even if we make full allowance for the disturbing effect +on men's minds of India and other coloured dependencies where despotic, +or semi-despotic, systems are in vogue. Since the expansion of England +began in the seventeenth century, it cannot be said that the principle +of trusting white races to manage their own affairs has ever received +the express and conscious sanction of a united British people. It has +been repeatedly repudiated by Governments in the most categorical terms, +and repudiated sometimes to the point of bloodshed. In other cases it +has met with lazy retrospective acquiescence on the discovery that +powers surreptitiously obtained or granted without formal legislation +had not been abused. The Australian Acts of 1850 and 1855 were the first +approach to a spontaneous application of the full principle; but even +then many statesmen were not fully alive to the consequences of their +action, while there was no public interest, and very little +Parliamentary interest, in the fate of these remote dependencies. The +fully developed modern doctrine of comradeship with the great +self-governing Dominions, a doctrine which we may date from the +accession of Mr. Chamberlain to Colonial Secretaryship in 1895, was not +the natural outcome of a belief in self-government, but a sudden and +effusive acceptation of its matured results in certain definite cases. +Irish Home Rule itself had, in the preceding decade, twice been rejected +by the nation. With the first opportunity, after 1895, of testing belief +in the principle, namely, in the Transvaal Constitution of 1905, the +Government failed. Finally, in 1906, when, to redeem that failure, for +the first time in the whole history of the Empire a Cabinet +spontaneously and unreservedly declared its full belief in the +principle, and translated that belief into law, the whole of the +Opposition, representing nearly half the electorate, washed their hands +of the policy, and, if the constitutional means had existed, would, +admittedly, have defeated it, as they had defeated the Home Rule Bills +of 1886 and 1893. The change of national opinion has, I believe, been +considerable; but the circumstances remain ominous for the dispassionate +discussion of the Irish Constitution. Patriotic people can only do their +best to ensure that the grant of Home Rule shall not be nullified by +restrictions and limitations which, if they are designed merely <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" />to +appease opposition, are destined to create friction and discontent.</p> + +<p>I am far from implying that restrictions are bad things in themselves. +All Constitutions, whether the sole work of the men who are to live +under them, like that of the United States, or the gift of a Sovereign +State to a dependency, or the joint work of a Sovereign and a dependent +State, contain restrictions designed for the common good. The criterion +of their value is the measure of consent they meet with from those who +have to live under and work the Constitution, and it is that +circumstance which makes it urgent that Irish opinion should be evoked +upon their future Constitution, and that the Irish Nationalist party +should think out its own scheme of Home Rule. The Constitution of the +United States contains many self-imposed restrictions upon the powers +both of the Central and the State Governments, in the interest of +minorities; and nobody accuses the Americans of having insulted +themselves.</p> + +<p>It will be no slur on Ireland, for example, if the most elaborate +safeguards against the oppression of the Protestant minority are +inserted in the Bill, provided that Nationalist Ireland, recognizing the +fears of the minority, spontaneously recommends, or, at any rate, freely +consents to their insertion—a consent which could not, of course, be +expected if their tendency was to derange the functions of Government or +cripple the Legislature.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, it would be a slur on Ireland which she would justly +resent, besides being a highly impolitic step, to deny to the Irish +Executive an important power, such, for example, as the control of its +own police.</p> + + +<h5>B.</h5> + +<p>It is a grave difficulty that there is no public opinion in Ireland as +to the form of the Irish Constitution. That is an almost inevitable +result of political conditions past and present. Violent intestinal +antagonisms are not favourable to constructive thought. The best men of +a country, working in harmony, are needed to devise a good Constitution, +and if any Irishman could succeed in convening a Conference like <a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" />that +which created the South African Union, he would be famous and honoured +for ever in the annals of the future Ireland. That Conference, we must +remember, was itself the result of the grants of Home Rule two years +previously, and these grants in their turn were greatly facilitated by +the co-operation of Britons and Dutchmen.<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73" /><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> Canada, in 1840, is a +warning of the errors made in constructing a Constitution without such +co-operation. Eventually it had to be torn up and refashioned. The best +way of avoiding any such error in Ireland's case is to expel the spirit +of distrust which animated the framers of the Canadian Union Act of +1840.</p> + + +<h5>C.</h5> + +<p>So much for the spirit in which we should approach the problem, and I +pass to the consideration of the problem itself. What is to be the +framework of Home Rule? I take it for granted that there must, in the +broad sense, be responsible government, that is to say, an Irish +Legislature, with an Irish Cabinet responsible to that Legislature, and, +through the Lord-Lieutenant, to the Crown. So much is common ground with +nearly all advocates of Home Rule, for I take it that there is no +question of reverting to anything in the nature of the abortive Irish +Council Bill of 1907.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74" /><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> But agreement upon responsible government does +not carry us far enough. What are to be the relations between the +subordinate Irish Parliament and Government, and the Imperial Parliament +and Government?</p> + +<p>We immediately feel the need of a scientific nomenclature. In popular +parlance, two possible types of Home Rule are recognized—"Federal" and +"Colonial." Both, of course, may be "Colonial," because there are +Colonial Federations as well as Colonial Unitary States. But, +nomenclature apart, the two possible types of Irish Home Rule correspond +to two <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />distinct types of subordinate Constitution. The "Colonial" type +is peculiar to the British Empire, the other is to be found in many +parts of the world—the United States, for example, and Germany, and +Switzerland.</p> + +<p>Let us examine these types a little more closely, confining ourselves as +far as possible to the British Empire, past and present, because within +it we can find nearly all the instruction we need. As I showed in my +sketch of the growth of Colonial Home Rule, all the Colonies now classed +as self-governing, together with the American Colonies before their +independence, were originally unitary States, subordinate to the Crown, +each looking directly to Great Britain, possessing no constitutional +relation with one another, and gradually obtaining their individual +local autonomies under the name of "Responsible Government." New Zealand +and Newfoundland alone have maintained their original individualities, +and their Constitutions, from an historical standpoint, are the best +examples of the first of the two types we are considering. Now for the +Federal type. Very early in the history of the American Colonies (in +1643) the New England group formed amongst themselves a loose +confederation, which was not formally recognized by the British +Government, and which perished in 1684. In the next century the War of +Independence produced the confederation of all the thirteen Colonies, +but this was little more in effect than a very badly contrived alliance +for military purposes, and it was a keen sense of the inadequacy of the +bond that stimulated the construction of the Great Constitution of 1787, +the first Federal Union ever devised by the English-speaking race. All +the States combined to confer certain defined powers upon a Federal +Parliament, to which each sent representatives, and upon a Federal +Executive whose head, the President, all shared in electing. At the same +time, each State preserved its own Constitution and the power to amend +it, with the one broad condition that it must be Republican, and subject +to any limitation upon its powers which the Federal Constitution +imposed.</p> + +<p>Eighty years elapsed before any similar Federal Union was formed by +Colonies within the British Empire. As we have seen, all the various +North American Colonies which received Constitutions in the last quarter +of the eighteenth century, and <a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />all the Australasian Colonies similarly +honoured in the nineteenth century, were placed in direct relation to +the British Crown and in isolation from one another. Upper Canada had no +political ties with Lower Canada, Nova Scotia none with New Brunswick, +Victoria none with Tasmania. Several abortive schemes were proposed at +one time or another for the Federation of the North American Colonies, +but the first measure of amalgamation, namely, the union of the two +Canadas in 1840, was a step in the wrong direction, and bore, as I have +shown, a marked resemblance, particularly in the motives which dictated +it, to the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. It was a compulsory +Union, imposed by the Mother Country, and founded on suspicion of the +French. So far from being Federal, it was a clumsy and unworkable +Legislative Union of the two Provinces, which lasted as long as it did +only because the principle of responsible government, established in +1847, covered a multitude of sins. The somewhat similar attempt in +Australia in 1843 to amalgamate the two settlements of Port Phillip, +afterwards Victoria, and New South Wales, at a time when each had +evolved a distinct individuality of its own, was defeated by the +strenuous opposition of the Port Phillip colonists, and revoked in 1850.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, all aspirations after Federation in the outlying parts of the +Empire were discouraged by the home authorities. The most practical plan +of all, Sir George Grey's great scheme of South African Federation in +1859, was nipped in the bud. Canada eventually led the way. The failure +of the Canadian Union brought about its dissolution in 1867 by the +Provinces concerned, under the sanction of Great Britain (an example of +really sensible "dismemberment"), and their voluntary Federation as +Ontario and Quebec, together with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, under +the collective title of the Dominion of Canada, and the subsequent +inclusion in this Federation of all the North American Provinces with +the exception of Newfoundland.</p> + +<p>Note, at the outset, that this Federation differed from that of the +United States in being founded on the recognition of an organic relation +with an external suzerain authority—an authority which the Americans +had abjured in framing their independent Republic. In the matter of +constitutional rela<a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" />tions with Great Britain, the Dominion of Canada now +assumed, in its collective capacity, the position formerly held by each +individual Province, and still held by Newfoundland. Direct relations +between the individual Provinces of the Federation and the Mother +Country practically ceased, and were replaced by a Federal relation with +the Dominion. Provincial Lieutenant-Governors are appointed by the +Dominion Government acting in the name of the Governor-General, not +directly by the British Government,<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75" /><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> and, although in constitutional +theory the Crown, as in every least fraction of the Empire, is the sole +and immediate source of executive authority, and an indispensable agent +in all legislation, not only in the Dominion, but in the Provinces,<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76" /><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> +in actual practice the only organic connection left between a Province +and Great Britain is the right of appeal directly to the King in +Council, that is, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, +without the intervention of the Supreme Court of Canada.</p> + +<p>So much for the external relations of the Dominion. In respect to the +domestic relations between the Provinces and the Dominion, the Federal +principle used in Canada is fundamentally the same as that which obtains +in the United States and in every true Federation in the world, whether +Monarchical or Republican, whether self-contained, like the United +States, Germany, and Switzerland, or linked, as in the British Empire, +to a supreme and sovereign Government centred in London. Each Province, +as in every genuine Federation, is an <i>imperium in imperio</i>, possessing +a Constitution of its own, and delegating central powers to a Federal +Government. The nature and extent of the powers thus delegated or +reserved, and the character of the Federal Constitution itself, vary +widely in different Federations, but we need not consider these +differences in any detail. Let us remark generally, however, that the +powers of <a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" />the Canadian Province are much smaller than those of the +American State, and that what lawyers call "the residuary powers"—that +is, all powers not specifically allotted—belong to the Dominion, +whereas in the United States and Switzerland they belong to the State or +Canton.</p> + +<p>The Australian Commonwealth of 1900 came into being in the same way as +the Dominion of Canada, by the voluntary act of the several Colonies +concerned—Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western +Australia, Queensland—under the sanction of the British Crown and +Parliament. New Zealand stood out, and remained, like Newfoundland, a +unitary State directly subordinate to Great Britain. Nor, in the matter +of relations with the Mother Country, were the federating Colonies +merged so completely in the Commonwealth as the Provinces of Canada in +the Dominion. The Canadians had not only to construct the Dominion +Constitution, but new Constitutions for two of the federating +Provinces—Ontario and Quebec—and it was natural, therefore, that they +should identify the Provinces more closely with the Dominion. The +Australians, having to deal with six ready-made State Constitutions, +left them as they were, subject only to the limitations imposed by the +Commonwealth Constitution. One of the results is that the State +Governors are still appointed directly by the British Government, not by +the Commonwealth. This constitutional arrangement, however, has no very +practical significance. The right of appeal direct from a State Court to +the King in Council, without the intervention of the High Court of +Australia, remains, as in Canada, the only direct link between the +individual States and the British Government.</p> + +<p>The Federal tie between the States and the Commonwealth, as defined in +the Act of 1900, is looser than that between the Provinces of Canada and +the Dominion, and bears more resemblance to the relation between a State +and the Federal Government of the United States. As in that country and +in Switzerland, residuary powers rest with the State or Canton +Governments, not with the Federal Government.</p> + +<p>The South African Union of 1909, comprising the Colonies of the Cape of +Good Hope, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony, had a +Federal origin, so to speak, in <a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" />that the old Colonies agreed to abandon +a great part of their autonomies to a central Government and +Legislature; but the spirit of unity carried them so far as almost to +annul State rights. The powers now retained by the provincial +Legislatures are so small, and the control of the Union Government is so +far-reaching, that the whole system is rightly described as a Union, not +as a Federation. The Provinces, which are really little more than +municipalities, have no longer any relation except in remotest +constitutional theory with the Mother Country, their Administrators are +appointed by the Union, and, unlike the Provinces of Canada and the +States of Australia, they have not even an internal system of +responsible government.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77" /><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> No direct appeal lies to the King in Council +from the provincial Courts, which are now, in fact, only "divisions" of +the Supreme Court of South Africa. The Provinces, in short, do not +possess "Constitutions" at all. Their powers can be extinguished without +their individual assent by an Act of the Union Parliament, whereas the +Canadian Dominion has no power to amend either the Dominion or the +Provincial Constitutions, and in Australia constitutional amendments +must be agreed to by the States separately as well as by the +Commonwealth Parliament. But these revolutionary changes in the status +of the old South African Colonies were brought about, let us remember, +by the free consent of the inhabitants of South Africa, after prolonged +deliberation.</p> + +<p>The United States, the Australian Commonwealth, and the Canadian +Dominion are, then, the three genuine Federations which the +English-speaking races have constructed. The two last are included in +the present British Empire, and they stand side by side with the three +unitary Colonies—South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland. The +constitutional relation of each of these five bodies to the Mother +Country is precisely the same, although they differ widely in internal +structure, as in wealth and population. Within each of the two +Federations, as we have seen, there exists a nexus of minor +Constitutions, State or Provincial, which have virtually no relations +with the Mother Country, but are integral parts of the major Federation.<a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" /></p> + + + +<h4><a name="X_II" id="X_II" />II.</h4> + +<h5>FEDERAL OR COLONIAL HOME RULE?</h5> + + +<p>We are now in a position to pose our main question, and the simplest +course is to pose it in an illustrative form. Broadly speaking, is the +relation between Ireland and Great Britain to resemble that between the +Province of Quebec and the Dominion of Canada, or that between the +Dominion of Canada and the United Kingdom? One might equally well +contrast the relation of Victoria to the Australian Commonwealth with +the relation of New Zealand or Newfoundland to the United Kingdom. I +choose the Canadian illustration because it is more compact and +striking, and because it corresponds more closely to the history and to +the realities of the case. Moreover, Quebec, although she had a no more +stormy domestic history, owing to lack of Home Rule, than Ontario, is +bi-racial, and on that account underwent in 1840 compulsory amalgamation +with her wholly British neighbour, just as Ireland, originally +bi-racial, was forcibly amalgamated with Great Britain in 1800. The +Canadian partners agreed to break this bond, to fashion a better one on +the Federal principle, in the manner vaguely adumbrated by advocates of +the "Federal" principle for Irish Home Rule, and, as regards their +relations with the Mother Country, to pool their interests and accept +representation by the Dominion alone.</p> + +<p>Quebec Home Rule or Dominion Home Rule? Needless to say, these are only +broad types chosen expressly to illustrate two possible types of +relation between Ireland and Great Britain, which I shall henceforth +refer to as "Federal" and "Colonial." There is no reason why we should +not profit in other respects by both examples, nor is there any +possibility of copying either faithfully.</p> + +<p>Both types fulfil the fundamental condition laid down at the beginning +of our discussion—both, that is to say, are consistent with responsible +government in Ireland. Quebec, in its inner working, is a microcosm of +the Dominion, and the Dominion system of responsible government is +almost an exact copy of the unwritten British Constitution. In Quebec +(as in all the Provinces and States of Canada and Australia) there is a<a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" /> +Cabinet, headed by a Prime Minister, composed of Members of the +Legislature, and responsible at once to that Legislature and to the +Lieutenant-Governor as representing the Crown. Ireland, under a similar +system (and, <i>a fortiori</i>, if she were put in the position of the +Dominion), would have a Cabinet responsible at once to the Irish +Legislature and to the Lord-Lieutenant representing the Crown. The +parallel is more apposite in the case of the Province of Quebec than in +the case of an Australian State, because, as I noted above, the +provincial Lieutenant-Governor is actually appointed by the Dominion +Government, and is in his turn responsible in the first instance to that +Government, just as the Irish Governor, or Lord-Lieutenant, who, under +Home Rule, will for the first time justify his existence, is, and will +still be, appointed by the British Government.</p> + +<p>But with the possibility of responsible government granted, it must be +confessed that the arguments against "Quebec Home Rule" as a measure of +practical politics at the present moment, are insuperable. In the first +place there is no question in the coming Bill of federalizing the United +Kingdom on the lines of the Dominion of Canada—that is, of constructing +a new Federal Parliament elected by the whole realm, together with new +local Legislatures elected by the various fractions of the realm. +Scottish and Welsh Home Rule are in the air, but they are not practical +issues. English Home Rule is not even in the air. I mean that +Englishmen, whatever their views on the congestion of Parliamentary +business owing to the pressure of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish affairs, +have not seriously considered the idea of a subordinate Legislature +exclusively English, which would be just as essential a feature of a +completely federalized kingdom as subordinate Legislatures exclusively +Irish, Scottish, and Welsh.</p> + +<p>Not that it is essential to the federalization of the United Kingdom +that Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales, should all have separate +Legislature. Any one of these fractions could coalesce with another or +others in a joint Legislature. It would be technically possible, though +highly unreasonable, to go to the extreme of giving Great Britain, +regarded as one Province, a separate Legislature; Ireland, regarded as +another Province, a separate Legislature; and, above these two +sub<a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" />ordinate bodies, a new Imperial Parliament representing the whole +realm. Such a dual Federation was nearly coming about in Canada, when +Ontario and Quebec dissolved their Union and resolved to federate. It +became a quadruple Federation, owing to the adhesion of Nova Scotia and +New Brunswick; but in a dual form it would have worked just as well. It +is scarcely necessary to say that the disparity in population, +resources, and power between Ireland and Great Britain render a dual +Federation, which, of course, involves three Legislatures, chimerical. +What I want to insist on is that, whatever subdivisions are adopted, it +is absolutely essential to every Federation that there should be a +division of powers between a central and at least two local +Legislatures—three altogether. That is the minimum. Other things are +also essential, but for the moment we can confine ourselves to the +outstanding requirement. Now, there is no question in the coming Bill of +any such Federation. Later years may see such a development, whether +from pressure of work on the Imperial Parliament or from irresistible +demand for Home Rule from Scotland or Wales, or both, but not next year. +The Bill will contemplate two Parliaments, not three, namely, the +existing Imperial Parliament and the Irish Legislature. There is, +therefore, no question of Federal Home Rule, and the term "Federal," as +applied to Irish Home Rule at the present time, is meaningless.</p> + +<p>Nor can the coming Bill for Ireland make any preparation, technically, +for a general Federation. Morally, as I shall show, it might have an +important effect in stimulating local sentiment, not only in England, +Scotland, and Wales, but in Ireland, towards a general Federation in the +future, but in its mechanical structure it must be not merely +non-Federal, but anti-Federal. One often hears it carelessly propounded +that Irish Home Rule, so devised as to be applicable in later years, if +they so desire, to Scotland, Wales, and England, will give us by smooth +mechanical means a General Federation. This is a fallacy. At one stage +or another, the earliest or the latest, we should have to create a +totally new central Parliament, still elected by the whole people, but +exclusively devoted to Imperial affairs, and wholly exempt from local +business, before we possessed anything in the nature of a Federation. +But, <a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" />whatever the future has in store, it would be a scandal if Irish +Home Rule were to be hampered or delayed by the existence of Scotch or +Welsh claims, and it is earnestly to be hoped that no action of that +kind will be taken. The case of Ireland is centuries old, and more +urgent than ever. It differs radically from any case that can possibly +be made for Scotland and Wales.</p> + +<p>The Bill, I repeat, must be anti-Federal, centrifugal. In the case of +Ireland we have first to dissolve an unnatural union, and then to revive +an old right to autonomy, before we can reach a healthy Federal Union. +Such, exactly, was the history of Canada. If, in that case, the +dissolution of the Legislative Union and the construction of the Federal +Union were consummated simultaneously in the British North America Act +of 1867, they were nevertheless two distinct phases, and of these two +phases the first, implying the revival of the old separate autonomies, +was the indispensable precursor of Federal Union. This antecedent +recognition of autonomy was not peculiar to Canada. Every Federation in +the world arose in the same way, by the voluntary act of States under +one Crown or suzerainty, but independent of one another, and it is of +the essence of Federalism that this psychological condition should +exist. Compulsory Federation would not last a year. It would indeed be +practicable to federalize the United Kingdom by one Legislative Act, but +the prior right to and fitness for complete Home Rule on the part of +each of the component parts would have to be implicitly recognized.</p> + +<p>It needs only a moment's consideration of Anglo-Irish history to see the +special applicability of the psychological rule to Ireland. The evils of +the Canadian Union, during the twenty-seven years of its duration, are +infinitesimal beside the mischief, moral and material, which have been +caused to both partners by the forcible amalgamation of Great Britain +and Ireland; the waste of indigenous talent, industrial and political; +the dispersion all over the globe of Irishmen; the conversion of friends +into enemies, of peaceable citizens into plotters of treason, of farmers +into criminals, of poets and statesmen into gaolbirds; the check to the +production of wealth and Anglo-Irish commerce; the dislocation and +demoralization of Parliamentary life; and, saddest results of all, the +reac<a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />tionary effect upon British statesmanship, domestic and Imperial, +and the deterioration of Irish character within Ireland. The voluntary +principle—at any rate, among the English-speaking races—is as +essential to a true Union, like that of the South African Colonies or +that of Scotland and England, as to a Federation. It is a sheer +impossibility to create a perfect, mechanical Union on a basis of hatred +and coercion; witness the strangely anomalous colonial features +surviving in Irish Government—the Lord-Lieutenancy, the separate +administration, and the standing army of police.</p> + +<p>Persons inclined to reckon the advantages, whether of Federation or of +Union, in pounds, shillings, and pence, may regard the psychological +requirement as fanciful. It is not fanciful; on the contrary, it is +related in the clearest way to the concrete facts of the situation. +Before there is any question of Federation Ireland needs to find +herself, to test her own potentialities, to prove independence of +character, thought, and action, and to discover what she can do by her +own unaided will with her own resources. As I endeavoured to show in the +last chapter, these are the true reasons for Home Rule.</p> + +<p>Home Rule is neither a luxury nor a plaything, but a tremendously +exacting duty which must be undertaken by every country conscious of +repression and valuing its self-respect, and which Ireland is praying to +be allowed to undertake. When a people has learnt to understand the +extent of its own powers and limitations, then it can safely and +honourably co-operate on a Federal basis with other peoples, and, in the +interests of efficiency and economy, can delegate to a central +Government, partly of its own choice, functions hitherto locally +exercised. Once more, that is the origin of all true Federations, +British and foreign, in all parts of the world.</p> + +<p>If, then, the Home Rule Bill cannot in legal form be a federating or +unifying measure, it must be one of a precisely opposite character, and +a measure of devolution. It is a proof of the need for a scientific +nomenclature that the word "devolution" has to Irish ears come to mean +something similar in kind to "Federal" Home Rule, but less in degree, +and something different in kind from "Colonial" Home Rule, and +infinitely less in degree. What a tangle of truth and <a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" />fallacy from the +misuse of a single word! It is associated rightly with the ill-starred +Irish Council Bill of 1907, and it has been universally but wrongly used +to indicate a small measure of local government in contradistinction to +the Home Rule Bills of Mr. Gladstone and, <i>a fortiori</i>, to any more +liberal schemes.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, the problem before us is one of devolution pure and +simple, and the question is, how far is devolution to go? It may go to +the full length of Colonial Home Rule, that is, Ireland may be vested +with the full freedom now enjoyed by a self-governing Colony (for the +grants of Colonial Home Rule were measures of devolution), or it might +at the other extreme take the form of a petty municipal government. By +hypothesis, however, we are precluded from considering any scheme which +does not admit of responsible government in Ireland. That condition +commits us to something in the nature of "Colonial" Home Rule, now +enjoyed by States widely varying in size, wealth, and population, from +the Dominion of Canada, with over seven million inhabitants, to +Newfoundland, with under a quarter of a million inhabitants and very +slender resources. It is worth notice also (to shift our analogy for the +moment) that little Newfoundland, which, owing to divergency of +interest, has declined both federation with the Dominion and union with +any of the constituent parts of the Dominion, subsists happily and +peacefully by the side of her powerful neighbour; and that New Zealand, +for the same reason, prefers to occupy the same independent position by +the side of Australia.</p> + + +<h4><a name="X_III" id="X_III" />III.</h4> + +<h5>THE EXCLUSION OR RETENTION OF IRISH MEMBERS AT WESTMINSTER.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78" /><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></h5> + + +<p>We have discarded the "Federal" solution as wholly impracticable, and +have arrived at the "Colonial" solution. And at this point I feel it +necessary to plead for the reader's patient, if reluctant, attention to +what follows. The solution I suggest is unpopular, mainly, I believe, +because prejudice has so beclouded the issue in the past, and because +for the <a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" />eighteen years since the last Home Rule Bill, while prejudice +has diminished, the subject of Irish Home Rule has ceased to be studied +with scientific care.</p> + +<p>Where is the crux of the problem? In what provision of the coming Bill +will the difference between Federal Home Rule and Colonial Home Rule +arise? The answer is clear: in the retention or exclusion of Irish +Members at Westminster. No Colony has representatives at Westminster. +The Federal solution, on the other hand, whether it be applied to the +whole Empire or to the United Kingdom alone, involves an exclusively +Federal Parliament unconcerned with State or provincial affairs. That we +have not got. What we have got is an absolutely supreme and sovereign +Parliament which has legal authority, not only over all Imperial affairs +within and without the United Kingdom, but over the minutest local +affairs. Unrepresented though the Colonies are, they can legally be +taxed, coerced, enslaved at any moment by an Act passed by a party +majority in this Parliament. Such measures, though legal, would be +unconstitutional; but, both by law and custom, and in actual daily +practice, Parliament passes and enforces certain Acts affecting the +self-governing Colonies, and wields potential and actual authority of +all-embracing extent over the Empire and over the local affairs of the +United Kingdom.</p> + +<p>When we set up an Irish Legislature, then, we have to contemplate four +different classes of affairs in a descending scale: (1) Affairs of +common interest to the whole Empire; (2) affairs of exclusive interest +to the United Kingdom; (3) affairs exclusively British; (4) affairs +exclusively Irish.</p> + +<p>With regard to (1), the prospects of Imperial Federation do not affect +the Irish issue. It is no doubt illogical and sometimes highly +inconvenient that the British Cabinet and Parliament, representing +British and Irish electors only, should decide matters which deeply +concern the whole Empire, including the self-governing Colonies, but it +is the fact. In the meantime we are securing very effective consultation +with the self-governing Colonies by the method of Imperial Conference. A +Federal Parliament for the whole Empire is a possible though a remote +alternative to that system. Colonial representation in the present +Imperial Parliament is an alto<a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" />gether impracticable alternative. The +suggestion had often been made for the American Colonies at the height +of their discontent, later for Canada as an alternative to the Act of +1791, and in recent times also. The same fallacious idea underlay the +Union of Ireland with Great Britain and her representation in +Parliament, while retaining colonial institutions. At present the +prospects of Imperial Federation seem to be indifferent. On the other +hand, the affection between all branches of our race which is the +indispensable groundwork of Federation becomes visibly stronger, and +will become stronger, provided that we do not revert to the ancient and +discredited policy either of dictating to the Colonies or taking sides +with one or another of the parties within them, provided also that the +Colonies in their growing strength do not dictate to us or take sides +with one or other of our parties.</p> + +<p>But, whatever the prospects of Imperial Federation, so long as the +present situation lasts, there is no reason for giving a self-governing +Ireland more control over Imperial matters affecting the self-governing +Colonies than the self-governing Colonies themselves possess. The +present position is illogical enough; that would be to render it doubly +illogical. Representation of Ireland, therefore, at Westminster, on the +ground that she should take part in settling matters of the widest +Imperial purport, is indefensible. The alternative and much more +effectual method, as with the Colonies, is Conference.</p> + +<p>(2-4) But it is when we come to regard the United Kingdom as a +self-contained entity that the difficulty of retaining Irish Members at +Westminster appears most formidable. If we discard the Federal solution +we must discard it wholeheartedly, not from a pedantic love of logic, +but to avoid real, practical anomalies which might cause the whole +political machine to work even worse than it does at present. From what +I have written, it will be seen at once that to retain the Irish Members +in the House of Commons, while giving Ireland responsible government, +would be to set up a kind of hybrid system, retaining the disadvantages +of the Union without gaining the advantages of Federalism. A Federal +system needs a Federal Parliament, which we have not got, and shall not +get for a long time yet. To introduce into it a quasi-Federal element is +to mix oil with water.<a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" /></p> + +<p>I state the proposition in this broad way at first in order to push home +the truth that Irish representation at Westminster will involve +anomalies and dangers which, beyond a certain very limited point, cannot +be mitigated. Methods of mitigation I will deal with in a moment. Let me +remark first upon the strange history of this question of Irish +representation at Westminster. Obviously it is the most fundamental +question of all in the matter of Home Rule. The whole structure of the +Bill hangs on it. It affects every provision, and particularly the +financial provisions. Yet Mr. Gladstone went no farther than to call it +an "organic detail," and in popular controversy it is still generally +regarded in that light, or even in a less serious light. As a matter of +history, however, it has proved to be a factor of importance in deciding +the fate of the Home Rule Bills. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone, in proposing to +exclude Irish Members altogether, roused a storm of purely sentimental +opposition. In 1893, in proposing to retain them—first with limited +functions, then on the old terms of complete equality with British +Members—he met with opposition even more formidable, because it was not +merely sentimental, but unanswerably practical. On both occasions Mr. +Chamberlain took a prominent part in the opposition: in 1886 because he +was then a Federalist, advocating "Quebec" Home Rule for Ireland, and +regarding the exclusion of Irish Members from Westminster as +contravening the Federal principle; in 1893 because, having ceased to be +a Home Ruler, he had no difficulty in showing that the retention of +Irish Members, either with full or limited functions, was neither +Federation nor Union, but an unworkable mixture of the two.</p> + +<p>These facts should be a warning to those who trifle thoughtlessly with +what they call "Federal" Home Rule. It was through a desperate desire to +conciliate that Mr. Gladstone caught at the Federal chimera in 1893, and +produced a scheme which he himself could not defend. And it was one of +the very statesmen that he sought to conciliate—a statesman, moreover, +possessing one of the keenest and strongest intellects of the time—who +snatched at the chimera in 1886, and argued it out of existence in 1893. +We Home Rulers do not want a repetition of those events. We want Home +Rule, and if we are to be defeated, let us be defeated on a simple +<a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" />straightforward issue, not on an indefensible complication of our own +devising.</p> + +<p>Now to details. There are five ways of dealing with the question, and of +these I will take first the four different ways of including Irish +Members in the House of Commons, leaving their total <i>exclusion</i> to the +last.</p> + +<p>1. Inclusion of Irish Members in their full numbers for all +purposes—that is, with a right to vote upon all questions—British, +Irish, and Imperial. [By "full numbers" I mean, not the existing figure +of 103, but numbers fully, and no more than fully, warrantable according +to the latest figures of population—say 70.]</p> + +<p>2. Inclusion in full numbers for limited purposes.</p> + +<p>3. Inclusion in reduced numbers for all purposes. [By "reduced numbers" +I mean in numbers less than population would warrant.]</p> + +<p>4. Inclusion in reduced numbers for limited purposes.</p> + +<p>Now (4) I only set out for symmetry. It has never been proposed by +anybody, and hardly needs notice.</p> + +<p>The three others are alike in two respects—that they leave untouched +the question of representation in the House of Lords, and that they +directly infringe both the Federal principle and the Union principle by +giving representation, both in a unitary and a subordinate Legislature, +to one portion of the realm.</p> + +<p>Let us look at No. 1—inclusion in full numbers for all purposes. This +was Mr. Gladstone's revised proposal of 1893, and it formed part of the +Bill thrown out by the Lords. The number of Irish Members was to have +been 80. But reduction, as Mr. Gladstone admitted, would scarcely affect +the inherent difficulties of inclusion. Nor must it be forgotten that +reduction from 103 to 70 can be justified only by the concession of a +large measure of Home Rule. It is one of the paradoxes of an unnatural +Union that, over-represented as Ireland is, she has not now power enough +to secure her own will. To reduce her numbers, while retaining large +powers over Irish affairs at Westminster, would be unjust. For the time +being I shall defer the consideration of those powers, and argue the +matter on broad principle, assuming that the powers retained in Imperial +hands are small enough to warrant a reduction from 103 to 70.<a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" /></p> + +<p>Now let us apply our touchstone to this question of inclusion in "full" +numbers. Will it be good for Ireland? Surely not.</p> + +<p>(<i>a</i>) It will be bad for Ireland, in the first place, to have her +energies weakened at the outset by having to find two complete sets of +representatives, when she will be in urgent need of all her best men to +do her own work. There is no analogy with Quebec, Victoria, +Massachusetts, or Würtemburg, which had all been accustomed to +self-government before they entered their respective Federations. +Ireland has to find her best men, create her domestic policies, +reconstruct her administration, and the larger the reservoir of talent +she has to draw from the better. When true Federation becomes practical +politics it will be another matter. By that time she will have men to +spare.</p> + +<p>(<i>b</i>) More serious objection still, retention in full numbers will, it +is to be feared, tend to counteract the benefits of Home Rule in Ireland +by keeping alive old dissensions and bad political habits. If, after +long and hot controversy, a system is set up under which Great Britain +can still be regarded as a pacificator—half umpire and half +policeman—of what Peel called the "warring sects" of Ireland, it is to +be feared that the Members sent to London may fall into the old +unnatural party divisions; a Protestant minority seeking to revoke or +curtail Home Rule, and a Nationalist majority—paradoxical survival of a +pre-national period—seeking to maintain or enlarge Home Rule. These +unhappy results would react in their turn upon the Irish Legislature, +impairing the value of Home Rule, and making Ireland, as of old, the +cockpit of sectarian and sentimental politics. The same results would +have happened if, simultaneously with the concession of Home Rule to +Canada, Australia and South Africa, these Colonies had been given +representation in the British Parliament.</p> + +<p>(<i>c</i>) Whatever the extent of the danger I have indicated, inclusion in +full numbers will tend to keep alive the habit of dependence on Great +Britain for financial aid, a habit so ingrained, through no fault of +Ireland's, that it will be difficult to break if the Parliamentary +leverage is left intact. If ever there was a country which needed, as +far as humanly possible, to be thrown for a time—not necessarily for a +long time—upon its own resources, it is Ireland. Every other +self-<a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />governing Colony in the Empire has gone through that bracing and +purifying ordeal, accepting from the Mother Country, without repayment, +only the loan of military and naval defence, and Ireland can imitate +them without dishonour.</p> + +<p>What is bad for Ireland is sure to be bad for Great Britain, too, and +the bad effect in this case is sufficiently apparent. Imagine the result +if Quebec, besides having her own Legislature and her own +representatives in the Dominion Parliament, were to be represented also +in the Ontario Legislature. Ireland, besides controlling her own +affairs, free from British interference, would have a voice in British +affairs, and sometimes a deciding voice. "If you keep the Irish in," +said Mr. John Morley in 1886—and he meant in their full numbers—"they +will be what they have ever been in the past—the arbitrators and +masters of English policy, of English legislative business, and of the +rise and fall of British administrations." That is a rather exaggerated +account of the past, for had it been literally true Ireland would have +had Home Rule long ago; and it was unduly pessimistic about the future, +for it hardly made sufficient allowance for a change in Irish spirit as +a result of Home Rule; but there is a truth in the words which everybody +recognizes and whose recognition is one of the great motive forces +behind Home Rule. Even a total change in Irish sentiments and parties +would not remove the danger, and might intensify it by producing at +Westminster a solid instead of, as at present, a divided, Irish vote. It +would be truer, perhaps, to say what I said above, that retention of +Members would tend to stereotype Irish parties and the mutual antipathy +of Ireland and Great Britain.</p> + +<p>2. Inclusion in full numbers (say 70) for limited purposes. This (with +the figure of 80) was Mr. Gladstone's original proposal of 1893, and it +took the form of a clause known as the "In and Out Clause," which +purported to divide all Parliamentary business into Imperial, Irish, and +non-Irish business, and to give Irish Members the right to vote only on +Imperial and Irish subjects. Mr. Gladstone never disguised his view that +a sound classification was impracticable, and put forward the clause, +frankly, as a tentative scheme for the discussion of the House. Like its +successor, the "Omnes omnia" Clause, it was riddled with criticism, and +it <a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" />was eventually withdrawn. Without investigating details, the reader +will perceive at once the hopeless confusion arising from an attempt to +inject a tincture of Federalism into a unitary Parliament, forming part +of an unwritten Constitution of great age and infinite delicacy. It is +not merely that it is absolutely impossible to distinguish rigidly +between Imperial, Irish, and British business. The great objection is +that there would be two alternating majorities in an Assembly which is, +and must be, absolutely governed by a party majority, and which, through +that majority, controls the Executive. It "passed the wit of man," said +Mr. Gladstone, to separate in practice the Legislative and Executive +functions in the British Constitution. At present a hostile vote in the +House of Commons overturns the Ministry of the day and changes the whole +British and Imperial administration. A hostile vote, therefore, +determined by the Irish Members, on a question affecting Ireland, such +as the application to Ireland of a British Bill, would seriously +embarrass the Ministry, if it did not overturn it. The log-rolling and +illicit pressure which this state of things would encourage may be +easily imagined. A Ministry might find itself after a General Election +in the position of having a majority for some purposes and not for +others. That was actually the case in 1893, when Mr. Gladstone, with a +majority, including the Irish Nationalists, of only 40, was carrying his +Bill through Parliament. It is actually the case now, in the sense that +if the Irish Nationalists voted with the Opposition, the Ministry would +be defeated. Any change for the better in Irish sentiment towards Great +Britain would <i>pro tanto</i> mitigate the difficulty, but would not remove +it, and might, as I suggested above, increase it, by the creation of a +solid Irish vote. If Great Britain resents the present system, she alone +is to blame. As long as she insists on keeping the Irish Members out of +Ireland, where they ought to be, she thoroughly deserves their tyranny, +and would be wise to get rid of it by the means they suggest. Until they +are given Home Rule, they are not only justified in using their power, +but are bound, in duty and honour, to use it. To reproduce in the Home +Rule Bill, albeit in a modified form, conditions which might lead to the +same results as before would surely be a gratuitous act of unwisdom.<a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" /></p> + +<p>3. Inclusion in reduced numbers for all purposes. By "reduced numbers" +is meant numbers less than the population of Ireland warrants. For the +sake of argument we may assume the number to be 35, that is, +approximately half the proper proportion; but directly we desert a +scientific principle of allocation, the exact figure we adopt is a +matter of arbitrary choice.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone appears to have contemplated this plan for a brief period +in 1889; but he dropped it. Clearly it cannot be defended on any logical +grounds, but only as a compromise designed, as it avowedly was, to +conciliate British opinion. It would minimize but not remove the +difficulties inherent in No. 1; and so far as it did lessen these +difficulties, the representation given would be impotent and +superfluous. That is why I have taken it last in order of the three +possible methods of inclusion. It raises in the sharpest and clearest +form the important question underlying the whole of the discussion we +have just been through—namely, what are to be the powers delegated to +the Irish Parliament and Executive, and what are to be the powers +reserved to the Imperial Parliament and Executive?</p> + +<p>If the powers reserved are small, it will be possible to justify not +merely a small Irish representation in the House of Commons, but even +under certain conditions the total exclusion of Irish members. Indeed, +if the figure 35 corresponded to the facts of the case, one might as +well abandon these painful efforts to "conciliate British opinion," +accept total exclusion, and substitute Conference for representation. If +the powers reserved are large, full representation in spite of all the +crushing objections to it, will be absolutely necessary, in order to +safeguard Irish interests. Here is the grand dilemma, and it says little +for our common sense as a nation that we should submit to be puzzled and +worried by it any longer. Half the worry arises from the old and +infinitely pernicious habit of regarding Ireland as outside the pale of +political science, of ignoring in her case what Lord Morley has called +the "fundamental probabilities of civil society." Let us break this +habit once and for all and take the logical and politic course of total +exclusion, with its logical and politic accompaniment, a measure of Home +Rule wide enough to justify the <a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" />absence of Irish representation at +Westminster. That will be found to be the path both of duty and of +safety.</p> + +<p>Let it be clearly understood that lapse of time has not diminished +appreciably the power of the arguments against the inclusion of Irish +Members in the House of Commons. On their merits, these arguments are +still unanswerable, and we had better recognize the fact. Mr. Balfour +said, in 1893, "Those questions" (of representation at Westminster) "are +not capable of solution, and the very fact that they are incapable of +solution affords, in our opinion, a conclusive argument against the +whole scheme, of which one or other of the plans in question must form a +part." Speaking as a Unionist, Mr. Balfour was right, and, as Home +Rulers, we should be wise to remember it.</p> + +<p>Lastly, even if the question of inclusion in the House of Commons were +"capable of solution," as it is not, there would remain the problem +raised by the House of Lords. It is idle to ignore the fact that the +bulk of the Irish peerage, and the Assembly of which it forms part, has +been for a century in consistent and resolute opposition to the views of +the vast majority of Irishmen. The recent curtailment of its powers, +whether a right or a wrong measure in itself, does not make it any the +more suitable as an Upper Chamber, under a Home Rule scheme, for the +decision of important Irish questions reserved for settlement at +Westminster; indeed, the bare proposal is the best imaginable example of +the extraordinary complications which would ensue from the introduction +of a quasi-Federal element into a unitary Constitution.</p> + +<p>Federal Upper Chambers, so far from being hostile to State rights, are +almost invariably framed on the principle of giving disproportionately +large representation to the smaller States. In the United States and +Australia, for example, every State, however small, has an equal number +of Senators.</p> + +<p>It will be clear now that there are two distinct ways of approaching the +question of the framework of Home Rule. One may begin with the nature +and extent of the powers reserved or delegated, and proceed from them to +the inclusion and exclusion of Irish representation at Westminster, or +one may begin with the topic of inclusion or exclusion and proceed from +it to the nature and extent of powers. While premising <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" />that we must +trust Ireland and evoke her sense of responsibility, I chose the latter +of the two courses, because I believe it to be on the whole the most +illuminating and trustworthy course. It is also the more logical course, +though I should not have adopted it for that reason alone; and I have +already given, I hope, some good reasons to show that in this matter +logic and policy coincide. Englishmen pride themselves on the lack of +logic which characterizes their slowly evolved institutions, but they +may easily carry that pride to preposterous extremes. Faced now with the +necessity of making a written Constitution which will stand the test of +daily use they would commit the last of innumerable errors in Irish +policy if, with full warning from experience elsewhere, they were to +frame a measure whose unprecedented and unworkable provisions were the +outcome of a distrust of Ireland which it was the ostensible object of +the measure itself to remove.</p> + + +<h4><a name="X_IV" id="X_IV" />IV.</h4> + +<h5>IRISH POWERS AND THEIR BEARING ON EXCLUSION.</h5> + + +<p>I pass to what I suggest to be the right solution: Total exclusion, as +proposed by Mr. Gladstone in 1886, though he shrank from recommending +what he knew to be its financial corollary. Mr. Bright regarded +exclusion as the "best clause" of a dangerous scheme, and Mr. +Chamberlain has admitted that he attacked it, as he attacked the +proposals for Land Purchase, which he knew to be right, in order to +"kill the Bill."<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79" /><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> I propose only to recapitulate the merits of +exclusion before dealing with the alleged difficulties of that form of +Home Rule, and in particular with the point on which the controversy +mainly turns—Finance.</p> + +<p>To give Ireland Colonial Home Rule, without representation in London, is +to follow the natural channel of historical development. Ireland was +virtually a Colony, and is treated still in many respects as an inferior +type of Colony, in other respects as a partner in a vicious type of +Union. We cannot improve the Union, and it is, admittedly, a failure. +Let us, then, in <a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" />broad outline, model her political system on that of a +self-governing Colony.</p> + +<p>History apart, circumstances demand this solution. It is the best +solution for Ireland, because she needs, precisely what the Colonies +needed—full play for her native faculties, full responsibility for the +adjustment of her internal dissensions, for the exploitation, unaided, +of her own resources, and for the settlement of neglected problems +peculiar to herself. As a member of the Imperial family she will gain, +not lose. And the Empire, here as everywhere else, will gain, not lose.</p> + +<p>These ends will be jeopardized if we continue to bind her to the British +Parliament, and restrict her own autonomy accordingly. Reciprocally, we +damage the British Parliament and gratuitously invite friction and +deadlock in the administration either of British or of Imperial affairs, +or both. Of the difficulties raised we can mitigate one only by bringing +another into existence. Endeavouring to minimize them all by reducing +the Irish representation to the lowest point, we either do a gross +injustice to Ireland, by diminishing her control over interests vital to +her, or, by conceding that control, remove the necessity for any +representation at all. Most Irish Unionists would, I believe, prefer +exclusion to retention. One gathers that from the debates of 1893, and +the view is in accordance with the traditional Ulster spirit, and the +spirit generally displayed by powerful minorities threatened with a Home +Rule to which they object on principle. It was the spirit displayed by +the Upper Canadian minority, in 1838-39 (<i>vide</i> p. 101), in threatening +to leave the Empire rather than submit to Home Rule, and by the +Transvaal minority in the lukewarm and divided support given to the +half-baked Constitution of 1905, and in the hearty welcome given to the +full autonomy of 1906. How the Colonists expressed themselves matters +nothing. We must make generous allowance for hot party feeling and old +prejudices. The Canadian minorities did not really mean to call in the +United States, nor does it signify a particle that some of the +Johannesburgers vowed that anything could be borne which freed them from +the interference of a Liberal Government. These opinions are transient +and negligible. The spirit is essentially healthy. Paradox as it may +seem, the uncompromising attitude of Ulster Unionists, as <a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />voiced by the +ablest representative they ever had, Colonel Saunderson,<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80" /><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> is hopeful +for the prospects of Home Rule. They fight doggedly for the Union, but I +believe they would prefer a real Home Rule to a half-measure, and in +making that choice they would show their virility and courage at its +true worth.</p> + +<p>Where are the dangers and difficulties of exclusion? The dangers first. +I believe, from a study of events in the last twenty-five years, that +the strongest opposition to it was founded, not so much upon a +reluctance to give Ireland powers full enough to render needless her +representation at Westminster, but on a jealous desire to keep Irish +Members under surveillance, as a dangerous and intractable body of men +who would hatch mischief against the Empire if they were allowed to +disappear from sight; the same kind of instinct which urged +revolutionary Paris to stop the flight of Louis and to keep him under +lock and key. In the case of Ireland it is possible to understand the +prevalence of this instinct in 1886, though even then it was irrational +enough. But in 1911 we should be ashamed to entertain it. Irish plots +against the Empire have passed into electoral scares, and if they had +not, representation in London would be no safeguard. We should also +dismiss the more rational but groundless view that Imperial co-operation +necessitates representation in a joint Assembly. Conference is a better +method. Anyone who studies the proceedings of the last Imperial +Conference and observes the number and variety of the subjects discussed +and the numerous and valuable decisions arrived at, will realize how +much can be done by mutual good-will and the pressure of mutual +interest.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81" /><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a></p> + +<p>It may be objected that, with one or two exceptions of quite recent +date, the Colonies have contributed nothing to the upkeep of the Empire, +except in the very indirect form of maintaining local military forces, +that their present tendency<a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" /> —unquestionably a sound tendency—is to +co-operate, not by way of direct money contribution to Imperial funds, +but by the construction of local Navies out of their own money, and, in +time of peace, under their own immediate control, and that Ireland +cannot be allowed to follow their example. The objection has no point. +Ireland, through no fault of her own, has reached a stage (if we are to +trust the Treasury figures) where she no longer pays any cash +contribution to Imperial expenses, nor is it possible to look back with +any satisfaction upon the enormous total of her cash contributions in +the past. They were not the voluntary offerings of a willing partner, +but the product of a joint financial system which, like all consequences +of a forced Union, was bad for Ireland. If we consider that a similar +attempt to extort an Imperial contribution from the American States led +to their secession; that the principle was definitely abandoned in the +case of the later Colonies; that, on the contrary, large annual sums +raised in these islands were, until quite recent times, spent for +purposes of defence within these Colonies; that in the South African War +two hundred and fifty million pounds were spent in order to assist +British subjects in the Transvaal to obtain the rights of freemen in a +self-governing Colony; and that to this day indirect colonial +contributions in the shape of local expenditure are small in proportion +to the immense benefit derived from the protection of the Imperial Navy, +Army, and Diplomacy, and from the assistance of British credit; if we +then reflect that before the Union Ireland was, in the matter of +contribution, somewhat in the same position as Canada or Australia +to-day—that is, paying no fixed cash tribute, but voluntarily assuming +the burden, very heavy in time of war, of certain Army establishments; +that for seventeen years after the Union contributions fixed on a scale +grossly inequitable drove her into bankruptcy; that from 1819 until two +years ago, she paid, by dint of excessive taxation and in spite of +terrible economic depression, a considerable share, and sometimes more +than her proportionate share, of Imperial expenditure;<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82" /><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> if, finally, +we remember that, cash payments apart, Irishmen for centuries past have +taken an important part in manning the Army and Navy, have fought <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" />and +died on innumerable battle-fields in the service of the Empire, and have +contributed some of its ablest military leaders; if we consider all +these facts soberly and reasonably, we shall, I believe, agree that it +would be fair and right to place a Home Ruled Ireland in the position of +a self-governing Colony, with a moral obligation to contribute, when her +means permit, and in proportion to her means, but without a statutory +and compulsory tribute.</p> + +<p>What form should that contribution eventually take? Does it necessarily +follow that Ireland should be given power to construct her own Navy, and +raise and control her own troops? Let us use our common sense, and use +it, let me add, fearlessly. If Ireland really <i>wanted</i> full colonial +powers, if, like Australia and Canada, she would be discontented and +resentful at their denial, we should be wise to grant them, and rely on +common interests and affections to secure friendly co-operation. Does it +not stand to reason that a friendly alliance even with a foreign power, +such as France, to say nothing of the far more intimate relations with a +consanguineous Colony, is better business than any arrangement for +common forces unwillingly or resentfully acceded to? But, as I pointed +out in Chapter VIII., all these uneasy speculations about independent +Irish armaments are superfluous. Ireland does not want separate +armaments. The sporadic attempts to discourage enlistment in the +Imperial forces are, as every sensible person should recognize, the +results of refusing Home Rule. They would have occurred in every Colony +under similar circumstances, and they do occur in one degree or another +wherever countries agitate vainly for Home Rule. If Russia misinterprets +such phenomena, we have, let us hope, more political enlightenment than +Russia.</p> + +<p>Ireland's strategical situation bears no analogy to that of Australia +and Canada, which, for geographical reasons, are compelled, as South +Africa will be compelled, to make a certain amount of independent +provision, not only for military, but for naval defence, and would be +wanting in patriotic feeling if they did otherwise. New Zealand, on the +other hand, is too small to be capable of creating a Navy, and rightly +contributes to ours. We have arrived at an interesting psychological +point when Australia and Canada both seem to be <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" />inclined to reserve, in +theory, a right to abstain from engaging their Navies in a war +undertaken by Great Britain, but nobody will be alarmed by this +theoretical reservation. It is an insignificant matter beside the Naval +Agreement reached at the last Conference (1911)—an agreement worth more +than volumes of unwritten statutes—to the effect that the personnel of +the colonial fleets is to be interchangeable with that of the Imperial +fleet and that in a joint war colonial ships are to form an integral +part of the British fleet under the control of the Admiralty. With such +an agreement in existence, it becomes superfluous to lay stress upon the +fact that without formal and complete separation from the Mother Country +in time of peace, the neutrality of a Colony would not be recognized by +a belligerent enemy of Great Britain in time of war. In any case these +developments have no concern for Ireland, which does not want, and need +not be given, power to raise a local Navy. Nor, with regard to the +regular land forces, will anything be changed. Troops quartered in +Ireland will be, as before, and as in the Colonies now, under complete +Imperial control. So will Imperial camps, magazines, arsenals, +dock-yards. On the other hand, arrangements should certainly be made to +permit the raising of Volunteer forces in Ireland. There are large +numbers of Irishmen in the British Territorial Army, and Ireland sent +five companies to the South African War. Though the poverty of the +country will for a long time check the growth of Volunteer forces, it is +the Union which presents the only serious obstacle to their +establishment. No surer proof of the need for Home Rule could be adduced +than the fact that it was held to be impossible to extend the +Territorial system to Ireland. One of the objects of Home Rule is to +remove this suspicious atmosphere. Whether local power to organize and +arm Volunteers in Ireland should be given to the Irish authority, or, as +in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, reserved to the Imperial +Government, is, if we trust Ireland, as we must, a secondary and not a +vital matter, which would not affect the question of representation at +Westminster.<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83" /><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> Probably it would be most convenient to <a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" />leave the +matters in the hands of the Irish Legislature. In any case, the +Command-in-Chief of all forces in Ireland, regular or volunteer, would, +as in the Colonies,<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84" /><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> be vested in the King.</p> + +<p>The control of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan +Police does not affect the question of representation at Westminster. +With or without representation, Ireland should be given the control of +all her own police forces from the first, without the restrictions +imposed by the Bills of 1886 and 1893 with regard to Imperial control of +the existing forces.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85" /><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a></p> + +<p>With the important exception of taxation, with which I shall deal last, +no other power which should properly be reserved to the Imperial +Parliament, or delegated to the Irish Parliament, has any appreciable +bearing upon the exclusion of Irish Members from the House of Commons. +Nor do any of them raise issues which are likely to be troublesome. +Common sense and mutual convenience should decide them. The Army, Navy, +and other military forces I have already dealt with. The Crown, the +Lord-Lieutenant, War and Peace, Prize and Booty of War, Foreign +Relations and Treaties (with the exception of commercial Treaties), +Titles, Extradition, Neutrality,<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86" /><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> and Treason, are subjects upon +which the Colonies have no power to legislate or act, and of which it +would be needless, strictly, to make any formal statutory exception in +the case of Ireland, though the exception no doubt will be made in the +Bill. Naturalization, Coinage, Copyright, Patents, Trademarks, are all +matters in which the Colonies have local powers, whose existence, and +the limitations attaching to them, are determined either solely by +constitutional custom or with the addition of an implied or express +statutory authority.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87" /><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> The two former would, I should think, be wholly +reserved to the Imperial Parliament.<a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" /> In the case of the latter three, +which were wholly reserved in the Bill of 1886 and 1893, Ireland might +be placed in the position of a self-governing Colony.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88" /><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a></p> + +<p>In Trade and Navigation it would be wise to take the same course. The +Home Rule Bill of 1886, without giving Ireland representation at +Westminster, denied her all powers over Trade and Navigation. The Bill +of 1893 gave her powers over Trade within Ireland and Inland Navigation, +and these powers at any rate should be given in the coming Bill, +together with the larger functions also; though Ireland would naturally +leave in operation the great bulk of the statutes concerned, since they +intimately affect the commercial and industrial relations of the two +countries. For the rest, Ireland no more than the Colonies can be freed +from a measure of Imperial control maintained by Acts like the Merchant +Shipping Act of 1894.</p> + +<p>The Postal Service in Ireland should, as in the Bill of 1886, come under +Irish control.</p> + +<p>In the Home Rule Bill of 1893 (Section 34) it was laid down that for +three years the Irish Legislature should not "pass an Act respecting the +relations of landlord or tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of +land generally." Such <a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" />a provision repeated in the coming Bill would be +inconsistent with the absence of Irish Members from Westminster. But I +take it for granted that there is no question of its repetition. At +first it might appear that Land Purchase should be distinguished from +other branches of land legislation and reserved to the Imperial +Government on the ground that it needs Imperial credit. I shall deal +with this point fully in Chapter XIV., and only need here to express the +view that Land Purchase cannot be separated from other branches of land +legislation, or from the Congested Districts Board, or even from the +control of the police, and that we are bound to give, and shall be +acting wisely in giving, all these powers to the Irish Legislature from +the first.</p> + +<p>It is necessary perhaps to add that non-representation at Westminster +does not in the smallest degree affect the complete legal supremacy of +the Imperial Parliament over the subordinate Irish Legislature. This +Legislature will in legal language be a "local and territorial" body, +like those of the Colonies. It will be the creature of Parliament, and +could be amended or even extinguished by it in a subsequent Act. The +Bill of 1886 (perhaps because it never reached the Committee stage) said +nothing explicit about the supremacy, though the Bill of 1893, while +providing for representation at Westminster, repeatedly (and sometimes +quite superfluously) affirmed it—in the Preamble, for example, and in a +rider to Clause 2. The King's authority, through the Lord-Lieutenant, +will be supreme in Ireland, as, through the Governors, it is supreme in +the Colonies. Every Irish Bill, like every Colonial Bill, will require +the Royal Assent, given through the Lord-Lieutenant, who will correspond +to the Colonial Governors. The Lord-Lieutenant, like his colonial +counterpart, will have to exercise both his Executive and Legislative +functions in a double capacity: in the first instance by the advice of +his Irish Cabinet, but subject to a veto by the British Cabinet. This +dual capacity has belonged to all Colonial Governors ever since the +principle of responsible government was established. As I showed in +earlier chapters, it was regarded even by Lord John Russell as +impossible and absurd as late as 1840; but it ought by now to be +understood by every educated man, and we may hope to be spared the +philosophical disquisitions and <a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" />hair-splitting criticisms which it +evoked from men who should have known better in the Home Rule debates of +1893.</p> + +<p>Laws framed at Westminster will be applicable to Ireland, as they are +frequently made applicable to the Colonies.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89" /><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> Conversely, only through +the express legislative authority of Westminster will an Irish, like a +Colonial Act,<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90" /><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> be held to operate outside the borders of Ireland.</p> + +<p>Apart from the strict legal omnipotence of Imperial sovereignty, it is, +of course, impossible to say now what the exact constitutional position +of Ireland will be under any form of Home Rule. No Bill can state it +fully in set terms. Time, custom, and judicial decisions will build up a +body of doctrine. It is so with the Colonies, whose exact constitutional +relations with the Mother Country are still a matter of juristic debate, +and are only to be deduced from the study of an immense number of +judicial decisions and of Imperial Acts passed subsequently to the grant +of the original Constitutions. Some of these Acts I have already +illustrated. The one Act of general application, namely, the Colonial +Laws Validity Act, cannot be read without the rest, though in form it +appears to contain a complete set of rules. While giving general power +to a self-governing Colony "to make laws for the peace, welfare, and +good government of the Colony" (words which will also necessarily appear +in the Home Rule Bill), the Act makes void all colonial laws or parts of +laws which are "repugnant to the provisions of any Act of Parliament +extending to the Colony to which such law shall relate," and this +provision will no doubt, be applied, <i>mutatis mutandis,</i> to Ireland, as +it was in Section 32 of the Home Rule Bill of 1893. The Irish +Legislature, that is, will be able "to repeal or alter any enactments in +force in Ireland except such as either relate to matters beyond the +power of the Irish Legislature, or, being enacted by Parliament after +the passing of this Act, may be expressly extended to Ireland."</p> + +<p>It will be noticed that the words "beyond the power of the Irish +Legislature" referred to the subjects expressly excepted <a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" />in the Bill +itself. This is one of the points in which the Irish Constitution will +bear at any rate a superficial resemblance to that of a Province or +State within a Federation rather than to that of a self-governing +Colony. The practice of expressly, and in the text of a Constitution, +forbidding a self-governing Colony to legislate upon certain subjects, +or of expressly reserving concurrent or exclusive powers of legislation +to the Mother Country, has fallen into disuse since the establishment of +the principle of responsible government. Such restrictions were inserted +in the Canadian Union Act of 1840, where the old right of the Mother +Country to impose customs duties in the Colonies for the regulation of +commerce was reaffirmed, and even in the Acts of 1855 for giving full +powers of self-government to the Australian Colonies, which were +forbidden to impose intercolonial customs, though they were expressly +granted the power of imposing any other customs duties they pleased,<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91" /><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> +but they do not appear in modern Constitutions, for example in the +Transvaal Constitution of 1906. As I have indicated, this implies no +change in the strict legal theory of Colonial subordination to the +Mother Country; for, although the tendency of modern juristic thought is +to ascribe "plenary" power to a Colony, restrictions nevertheless do +exist in practice, and are contained, express or implicit, in a number +of disjointed Acts.</p> + +<p>A Federating Colony, on the other hand, like a foreign Federation, has +in its own self-made, domestic Constitution to apportion powers with +some approach to precision between the federal and the provincial +authorities, and in this respect the Irish Bill, in reserving certain +powers to the Imperial Parliament, will resemble a federating Bill, and +it should follow the American and Australian precedents in leaving +residuary powers to the subordinate or Irish Legislature, not, in +accordance with the Canadian precedent, to the Parliament at +Westminster. That is an indispensable corollary of excluding Irish +Members from Westminster.</p> + +<p>In speaking of powers reserved or delegated, and of residuary or +unallocated powers, I have thus far referred only to powers which must +be exercised, or at any rate may need to be exercised, if not by the +subordinate legislature, then by the superior Parliament. Those +restrictions on the Irish Legislature which <a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" />are imposed in order to +protect the religious or economic interests of a minority within the +State, or as a recognition that there are certain kinds of laws which it +is morally wrong to pass, fall into an altogether different category. By +implication they morally bind the superior Parliament too, and are +irrelevant, therefore, to the question of representation. They will be +necessary, no doubt, in the coming Irish Bill, though they need not be +so extensive as those which are to be found in Clause 4 of the Bill of +1893, some of which are borrowed from the famous anti-slavery amendments +of 1865-1869 to the Constitution of the United States.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92" /><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> In inserting +them we shall again be following the "Federal" rather than the +"Colonial" model. No such restrictions have been imposed by the Mother +Country upon any self-governing Colony. The nearest approach, perhaps, +to such a tendency was the provision in the Transvaal Constitution of +1906 (Section 39), that "any law whereby persons not of European birth +or descent may be subjected or made liable to any disabilities or +restrictions to which persons of European birth or descent are not also +subjected or made liable" should be specially "reserved"—that is, sent +home by the Governor—for the signification of the Royal pleasure; but +no similar provision appeared in the Act of 1909 for constituting the +South African Union. In Federal systems, on the other hand, such +restrictions, taking the form of self-denying ordinances, are common, +whether appearing in the Federal Constitution itself or in the +subordinate State Constitutions. The Constitution of the United States, +for example, in addition to the anti-slavery provisions noted above, +enacts that the National Government cannot (by Amendment I.) establish +any religion or prohibit its free exercise, or (by Amendment V.) take +private property for public use without just compensation, or (by +Article 1, § 9) grant a title of nobility. Neither (by Amendment XIV. +and Article 1, § 10 respectively) can a State do these things. By +Article 1, § 10, a State cannot pass a law impairing the obligation of a +contract. Exactly similar restrictions appear in many of the individual +State Constitutions. Others forbid the establishment of any church or +sect; the introduction of armed <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" />men "for the suppression of domestic +violence"; "perpetuities or monopolies," and a variety of other things. +Analogous provisions are to be found in the British North America Act, +1867 (constituting the Dominion of Canada), where the provincial +Legislatures are forbidden to interfere with certain rights and +privileges of religious bodies in the matter of education. There are no +limitations of the kind in the Australian Commonwealth Act of 1900. +Australia, no doubt, correctly represents the tendency of modern thought +on this matter. Some of the American safeguards have produced great +inconvenience. Nor can it be denied that the most elaborately contrived +legal safeguards are of less value than the moral safeguard afforded by +the sense of honour, justice, and prudence in the community. The +existence of these qualities in Ireland, as in other white countries, is +the true foundation of Home Rule. Some day Irishmen will ask, as a +united country, for the repeal of these statutory safeguards.</p> + +<p>That brings me to the penultimate point of importance, which may be held +to affect the inclusion or exclusion of Irish Members at Westminster—I +mean the question of future constitutional amendment. Here the colonial +analogies are a little complicated. Since the Australian Colonies Act of +1850, in the new grant of a Constitution to a self-governing Colony, +power has invariably been given to amend its own Constitution, without, +of course, detracting from any powers specified in it for preserving the +sovereignty of the Mother Country. Canada, when federating in 1867, took +the somewhat singular course of making no provision in her Federal +Constitution for its subsequent amendment, though, by Section 92 of the +British North America Act, she gave her Provinces the exclusive right to +amend their own Constitutions, a right which three of them have used to +abolish their Upper Chambers. The Dominion Constitution, then, cannot be +amended otherwise than by an Imperial Act. Such amending Acts are +promoted by the Dominion Government without any specially devised +machinery for ascertaining the public opinion of Canadians. Australia, +on the other hand, when federating in 1900, made elaborate arrangements, +which have been put several times into operation, for the amendment of +the Federal Constitution by the Australian people itself, without an +Im<a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" />perial Act. Now, it will follow as a matter of course that Ireland +will be given powers, as in both the previous Bills,<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93" /><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> to amend her +own Constitution within certain defined limits, after a certain lapse of +time, and without encroaching upon Imperial authority. For my part I +would strongly urge that the powers now to be conferred should be much +wider; for I believe that Ireland alone can make a really perfect +Constitution for herself. But, that point apart, the question arises of +the further amendment, outside such permissive powers, of the Home Rule +Act itself, which will, of course, contain within its four corners the +whole of the Irish Constitution, so far as it can be written down. No +special arrangements were made for such a contingency in the Bill of +1893, presumably because Ireland was to be represented at Westminster +and would have a share in the making of any amending act. In the Bill of +1886, which excluded the Irish Members, Mr. Gladstone proposed (in +Clause 39) that no alteration of the Act should be made (apart, of +course, from points left for Irish alteration) except (1) by an Imperial +Act formally assented to by the Irish Legislature, or (2) by an Imperial +Act for the passing of which a stated number of Members of both branches +of the Irish Legislature should be summoned to sit at Westminster.</p> + +<p>It will be clear, I think, now, in 1911, that this latter proposal is +not worth revival. No substantial amendment of the Act should properly +be made without the formal consent of the Irish Legislature, +representing Irish public opinion, and the prior consultation with the +Irish Cabinet which such consent would imply. If the lamentable +necessity ever arose of amending the Act against the wishes of Ireland, +the sudden invasion of Westminster by a body of angry Irish Members, too +small to affect the result (for otherwise the attempt to amend would not +be made) and large enough to revive the old political dislocation and +passion, would not simplify the process of amendment or be of value to +anybody concerned. The proposal was probably only suggested by a vague +leaning towards the Federal principle, which, in the present case, we +should certainly reject. It serves indeed as one more illustra<a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" />tion of +the anomalies which might result from the inclusion of Irish Members at +Westminster. No more unhealthy position could be imagined than one which +would render it possible for an amendment of the Home Rule Act, whether +in the direction of greater latitude or of stricter limitation, to +depend solely upon the Irish vote in an Assembly predominately +non-Irish. That is not to the discredit of Ireland. The system would be +just as indefensible, whatever the subordinate State concerned. It would +be Federalism run mad, and would make Alexander Hamilton turn in his +grave. It is worth while to note that, even under a sane and normal +Federal system, the Irish Constitution would be less easily alterable in +either direction than under the plan of treating her as a self-governing +Colony. In the latter case action is direct and simple, while most +Federal Constitutions are extraordinarily difficult to amend. The +Dominion of Canada is only an apparent exception.</p> + +<p>I turn lastly to Finance, the point which most closely affects +representation at Westminster, and which distinguishes any form of +quasi-Federal Home Rule most sharply from its alternative, "Colonial" +Home Rule.</p> + +<p>All Federal systems necessarily involve a certain amount of joint +finance between the superior and the inferior Government. The +distribution of financial powers varies widely in different Federations, +but all have this feature in common—that the central or superior +Government controls Customs and Excise, and is to a large degree +financed by means of the revenue derived from those sources. The United +States Government, as distinguished from that of the individual States, +pays in this way for almost its entire expenditure.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94" /><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> So does the +Dominion of Canada;<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95" /><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> while in the Australian Commonwealth the +receipts from Customs and Excise alone more than cover the whole +Commonwealth expenditure.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96" /><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" /></p> + +<p>Finance makes or mars Federations. Some Federations or organic Unions of +independent States have come into being through a strong desire in the +separate States to have, among other things, a common system of Customs, +and in the case of the German Empire and the South African Union a +Customs Union or <i>Zollverein</i> has preceded Federation. These phenomena +are the most marked illustration of the general truth that a common +desire to federate, or unite, on the part of individual States is a +condition precedent to a sound Federation or Union. On the other hand, +finance, especially the question of joint Customs, has sometimes +presented obstacles to a Federation which, on other grounds, was +earnestly desired. The long delay in achieving the Australian Federation +was largely due to the desire of New South Wales to maintain her Free +Trade system, while the financial arrangements generally caused most of +the practical difficulties met with in arranging the Federation both of +Canada and Australia, and in their subsequent domestic relations. Nova +Scotia in the former case, and Western Australia in the latter, held out +to the last instant, and the former subsequently had to receive +exceptionally favourable treatment. In both Federations some measure of +friction is chronic, and in neither has a perfectly satisfactory system +been evolved. The Union of Ireland and Great Britain in 1800 was in this +respect, as in all others, a flagrant departure from sound principle. +The Customs Union which followed it was a forced Customs Union, and, +together with the other financial arrangements between the two +countries, has produced results incredibly absurd and mischievous. Some +of these results I briefly indicated in Chapter V. In the following +chapters I shall tell the whole story fully, and I hope to convince the +reader that we should follow, not only historically, but morally and +practically, the correct line of action if, in dissolving the +Legislative Union, we dissolve the Customs Union also. That would +involve a virtually independent system of finance for Ireland, and place +her fiscally in the position of a self-governing Colony. If and when a +real Federation of the United Kingdom becomes practical politics, she +would then have the choice of entering it in the spirit and on the terms +invariably associated with all true Federations or Unions. That is, she +would voluntarily relinquish, in her own <a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" />interest, financial and other +rights to a central Government solely concerned with central affairs.</p> + +<p>I need scarcely point out in this connection the vital importance of the +question of representation at Westminster. Ireland resembles the +self-governing Colonies, and differs from Great Britain, in that the +greater part of the revenue raised from her inhabitants is derived from +Customs and Excise—that is, from the indirect taxation of commodities +of common use. If she is denied control of these sources of revenue +under the coming Bill, it will be absolutely necessary, in spite of all +the concomitant difficulties, to give her a representation at +Westminster which is as effective as it can be made. But let it be +realized that we could not make her control over her own finance as +effective as that exercised by a small State within a Federation, +because such a State, however small, has equal, or at any rate +disproportionately large, representation in the Federal Upper Chamber, +and Federal Upper Chambers can reject Money Bills. The Upper Chamber in +Ireland's case would be the House of Lords, where she could scarcely be +given effective representation, and which, in any case, cannot reject +Money Bills.</p> + +<p>Let us now examine Ireland's claim for fiscal autonomy.<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI" />CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>UNION FINANCE</h3> + + +<p>I ask the reader to follow with particular care the following historical +summary of Anglo-Irish finance. None of it is irrelevant, I venture to +say. It is not possible to construct a financial scheme, or to criticize +it when framed, without a fairly accurate knowledge of the historical +facts.</p> + + +<h4><a name="XI_I" id="XI_I" />I.</h4> + +<h5>BEFORE THE UNION.<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97" /><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a></h5> + +<p>Before the Union Ireland had a fiscal system distinct from that of Great +Britain, a separate Exchequer, a separate Debt, a separate system of +taxation, a separate Budget. Yet she can never truly be said to have had +financial independence, because she was never a truly self-governing +country. Until 1779, when the Protestant Volunteers protested with arms +in their hands against the annihilation of Irish industries in the +interest of British merchants and growers, her external trade and, +consequently, her internal production, were absolutely at the mercy of +Great Britain. As I showed in Chapter I., Ireland was treated +considerably worse than the most oppressed Colony, with permanently +ruinous results. On the other hand, her internal taxation, never above a +million a year, and her Debt, never above two millions in amount, were +not heavy. But from 1779, through Grattan's Parliament to the Union, a +short period of twenty-one years, Ireland, though still governed on the +ascendancy system by an unrepresentative and corrupt Parliament of +exactly the same <a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" />composition as before, nevertheless had financial +independence in the sense that her Parliament had complete control of +Irish taxation, revenue, and trade. It was, moreover, in these financial +matters that the Parliament showed most genuine national patriotism, +together with a greatly enhanced measure of the Imperial patriotism +traditional with it. Internal taxation, except in time of war, was still +comparatively light; depressed home industries were judiciously +encouraged by bounties; no attempt was made at vindictive retaliation +upon British imports, though Irish exports to Great Britain were still +unmercifully penalized; and sums, growing to a relatively enormous size +during the French War, which began in 1793, were annually voted for the +Imperial forces. This voluntary contribution, which had averaged +£585,000 in the eleven years of peace, from 1783 to 1793, rose to +£3,401,760 in 1797,<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98" /><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> and in 1799, when Ireland was paying the bill +for British troops called in to suppress her own Rebellion, to +£4,596,762, out of a total Irish expenditure for the year on all +purposes, military and civil, of £6,854,804. Not more than half, on the +average, of these war expenses were met out of the annual taxes. Debt +was created to meet the balance; but neither the debt, heavy as it was, +nor the taxes, were intolerably burdensome—that is, if we regard +Ireland as financially responsible for Imperial wars and for the +suppression of a Rebellion which was provoked by scandalous +misgovernment. Tax revenue rose from £1,106,504 in 1783, when the free +Parliament first prepared a Budget, to £3,017,758 in 1800, and averaged +a million and a half. In the same period the total amount of the funded +and unfunded Irish Debt rose from £1,917,784 to £28,541,157, almost the +whole of this increase having taken place in the seven years of war +immediately preceding the Union. In Great Britain both Debt and taxation +had risen in a larger ratio, and were relatively far greater. For +example, in the six years, 1793-1798 inclusive, £186,000,000 had been +added to the British Debt, only £14,000,000 to the Irish Debt. In 1801 +the British Debt stood at £489,127,057; the Irish Debt at £32,215,223.<a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" /></p> + + +<h4><a name="XI_II" id="XI_II" />II.</h4> + +<h5>FROM THE UNION TO THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION OF 1894-1896.</h5> + + +<p>The Union of 1800, therefore, could not be justified on the ground that +a poor country would profit by fiscal amalgamation with a rich country, +and Pitt and Castlereagh, when framing the Union Act, recognized that +truth by leaving Ireland with a separate fiscal system, as before; +though the administration of this system was, of course, now to be +wholly in British hands. There were to be separate Exchequers, +Debts,<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99" /><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> taxes, and balance-sheets, with the following restrictions: +That prohibitions against imports and bounties on exports (corn +excepted), should cease reciprocally in both countries; that, with the +exception of 10 per cent. ad valorem duties on a variety of articles +named, there should be mutual free trade; and that no tax on any article +of consumption should be higher in Ireland than in Great Britain.</p> + +<p>But although Pitt and Castlereagh ostensibly carried out the principle +of separate fiscal systems, they laid the foundations for a fiscal +amalgamation which was disastrous to Ireland. Since his Commercial +Propositions of 1785, Pitt had never abandoned the idea of obtaining +from Ireland an obligatory annual contribution to Imperial services +based on some fixed principle. By Clause 7 of the Act of Union he +achieved his aim. It was settled that for twenty years Ireland should +contribute in the proportion of 1 to 7½ (or 2 to 15)—that is, that +Great Britain should pay 15/17, or 88.24 per cent., of common Imperial +expenses, including the charge for debt contracted for Imperial +services, and Ireland 2/17, or 11.76 per cent. Nobody now denies that +this ratio was grossly unjust to Ireland. It took no account of the +relative pre-Union Debts; it took no account of the tribute of nearly +four millions paid in rents to absentee English proprietors; it was +based on superficial deductions from inadequate and misleading data, and +the Act was hardly passed before its absurdity became manifest.<a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" /> Fifteen +years of almost incessant war followed the Union. Ireland, even by +raising taxation to the highest possible point, was unable to pay her +contribution without contracting a Debt colossal in proportion to her +resources. While Great Britain only doubled her Debt, and paid 71 per +cent. of her expenses out of current taxation, the Irish Debt +quadrupled, and in 1817 reached the portentous total of £112,634,773; +while only 49 per cent. of Irish expenditure was paid for out of +revenue. Here is a little table which shows the effect upon Ireland of +Clause 7 of the Act of Union:</p> + + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>Five Years.</td><td align='center'>Average Revenue.</td><td align='center'>Average Expenditure.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td> </td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>1785-1790</td><td align='right'>1,246,000</td><td align='right'>1,247,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Before Union</td><td align='right'> — 1790-1795</td><td align='right'>1,340,000</td><td align='right'>1,646,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>1795-1800</td><td align='right'>2,100,000</td><td align='right'>4,601,000</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>1801-1806</td><td align='right'>3,643,000</td><td align='right'>7,270,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>After Union</td><td align='right'>— 1806-1811</td><td align='right'>4,885,000</td><td align='right'>9,061,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>1811-1816</td><td align='right'>5,927,424</td><td align='right'>13,188,000</td></tr></table> + + + +<p>The scandal could no longer be overlooked. It was impossible to raise +the Irish taxes. Their yield was already showing signs of diminishing. +But the Act of Union had provided for the situation which had arisen. +One of the sections of the famous Clause 7 enacted that if and when the +separate Debts of the two countries should reach the proportion of their +respective Imperial contributions, Parliament might, if it thought fit, +declare that all future expenses of the United Kingdom should be +defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in +both countries, "<i>subject only to such exemptions and abatements in +favour of Ireland as circumstances may appear from time to time to +demand</i>." The framers of this section had anticipated that the English +Debt would sink to the level of the Irish Debt. Anglo-Irish finance +teems with grim jokes of this sort; but the section was useful in either +event. With its terms before them, a Committee sat to consider the state +of Ireland, with the result that, by an Act which came into operation on +January 5, 1817, the Exchequers, Debts, revenues, and expenditures, but +not as yet the taxes, of the two countries were amalgamated. In +Professor Oldham's <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />words,<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100" /><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> "the corpse of Ireland's insolvency was +huddled into the grave, and no questions were to be asked." The whole +expenditure, Imperial and local, of the United Kingdom, Ireland +included, was to be defrayed out of a Consolidated Fund, and the +arrangements, therefore, for a separate Irish contribution on a fixed +basis to Imperial services were cancelled. Henceforth her Imperial +contribution, for anyone who troubled to calculate it, was represented +by the excess of revenue raised within Ireland over the expenditure in +Ireland. A mutual free trade was also established, not instantaneously, +but in the course of a few years. By 1824 all duties, as between Ireland +and England, had ceased, and in 1826 the custom-houses ceased to record +the transit of goods between England and Ireland, except in articles +such as spirits, on which a different excise duty was charged. No +statistics were compiled, therefore, of Anglo-Irish trade until ninety +years later, when the Irish Department of Agriculture began to prepare +returns. Such was the origin of our Customs Union against the world +(for, needless to say, those were still the days of high Protection), +and it is instructive to compare it with the voluntary pacts of the +German States and South African Colonies, and with their political +results.</p> + +<p>In one important point unification was left incomplete. It was +impossible in 1817 to equalize internal taxation in the two countries, +though it was held desirable to do so, because Ireland could not have +borne the higher British scale, and suffered enough under her own. +Regard, too, was had at first to those important words in the Act of +Union which guaranteed to Ireland such "exemptions and abatements" as +might appear fair. But they were soon forgotten. Without any inquiry +into the taxable capacity of Ireland, the stamp, tea, and tobacco duties +were equalized early in the period, the enhancement in Ireland of the +last duty from 1s. to 3s. on raw tobacco, and from 1s. to 16s. on +manufactured tobacco, laying an exceptionally heavy burden on the Irish +poor. Meanwhile the abolition, after the close of the war, of taxes +representing about sixteen millions a year, and purely affecting Great +Britain, gave a relief to her which Ireland did not feel. But it was not +until 1853, when Mr. Gladstone <a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" />extended the income-tax to Ireland, and +raised the Irish spirit duty, that the principle of "exemptions and +abatements" was most seriously infringed. Mr. Disraeli followed in 1855 +with a further elevation of the spirit duty, which was finally equalized +with the British duty in 1858, at 8s. a gallon; while in 1860 both +duties were raised to 10s. In the seven years 1853-1860 the taxation of +Ireland was raised by no less than two and a half millions per annum. It +will be recalled that the great famine had taken place in 1846-47, and +that between the Census of 1841 and that of 1861 the population sank +from eight to six millions, while the British population rose from +eighteen and a half to twenty-three millions. The statistical result of +the increased taxes, therefore, was to show a rise in taxation per head +of the Irish people from 13s. 11d. in 1849 to £1 5s. 4d. in 1859, while +in Great Britain it rose only from £2 7s. 8d. to £2 10s. during the same +period. Equality of taxation has never been wholly established, for to +this day a few quite unimportant taxes are not levied, or are levied on +a lower scale in Ireland;<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101" /><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> but from 1858 onward we may regard the +taxation of the two countries as almost identically the same.</p> + +<p>In the meantime a great revolution, also beginning at the time of the +famine, had taken place in the fiscal system of the United Kingdom. Free +Trade with the outside world had been established, and whatever we may +conclude about its effect, it had been established, as we know, with a +special view to British industrial interests, and without the smallest +concern for Irish interests, which were predominantly agricultural. It +was certainly followed by an immense industrial expansion and prosperity +in Great Britain; it was certainly initiated at the lowest point of +Ireland's moral and physical wretchedness. Opinions differ as to the +precise economic effect upon Ireland. Miss Murray, in her thoughtful and +exhaustive study of the commercial relations between England and +Ireland, holds that, as agricultural producers, the Irish lost far more +than they have gained as consumers of foodstuffs, while a number of +small and struggling rural industries, whose powerful counterparts in +Great Britain could easily withstand foreign competition, did undeniably +succumb in Ireland.<a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" /></p> + +<p>My own opinion is that the past influence upon Ireland of free trade, in +the first instance with Great Britain, and later with the outside world, +though a highly interesting and important topic in itself, is commonly +exaggerated, to the neglect of the vastly more important question of the +tenure of land. Free trade did not cause the famine. On the contrary, +the presage of the famine was one of the minor causes which induced Peel +to take up Cobden's policy for the free importation of foodstuffs. The +effect of that policy upon Ireland sinks into insignificance beside an +agrarian system which had reduced the mass of the Irish peasants to +serfs, kept them near the borders of destitution, and in a state of +sporadic crime for a century and a half before, and for forty years +after the repeal of the Corn Laws, and, at the climax of a period of +high protection for agricultural products, rendered it possible for a +mere failure of the potato-crop to cause death to three-quarters of a +million persons. These things do not happen in properly governed, in +other words in self-governed, countries, whatever their fiscal system, +and they have never happened to Irishmen in any other part of the world +but in their own fertile island. Manufacturing industries stand on a +different footing. Most of the staple industries of Ireland, notably the +woollen industry, and the aptitudes which brought them into being, were +deliberately destroyed long ago by fiscal measures imposed by England, +and their destruction aggravated the misery and exhaustion produced by a +bad land system. How far their partial revival under the fiscal Home +Rule of Grattan's Parliament was genuine, and might, with a continuance +of fiscal Home Rule, have been permanent, it is impossible to say. The +retarding effect of the Rebellion, and the long start already obtained +by Great Britain in the industrial race, are factors beyond accurate +calculation. But one thing is certain, that the revival of industries +was, at that stage, of trivial importance beside the rural regeneration +of Ireland, and that Grattan's Parliament had not the remotest influence +for good upon the land question, which it neglected as heartlessly as +its predecessors for a century before and its successors for seventy +years afterwards.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102" /><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p> + +<p>Industries are valuable assets for any country; but countries <a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" />almost +wholly agricultural, like Denmark, can prosper remarkably, and without +Protection, provided that they possess or evolve a sound system of +agrarian tenure, in other words, a sound relation between tenant and +landlord, or, in default of that, peasant ownership. In every country in +the world that has been a <i>sine qua non</i> of prosperity. Suppose that +English labourers had built out of their own money and by their own +hands the factories, docks, and railways in which they worked, and that +the resulting profits, wages deducted, went solely to ground landlords. +That gives us some idea of the old Irish land system, whose overthrowal +began only in 1870; a system under which the landlord put no capital +into the land, though his rent represented the full profits of the +tenant's capital and labour, less an amount equivalent to a bare +subsistence wage, governed by competition.</p> + +<p>The present influence upon Ireland of the Imperial fiscal system, now +that peasant proprietorship has been half accomplished, is another +matter upon which I shall have to say more presently, when we have +completed our review of Anglo-Irish finance. Let us return to the point +we had reached: that free trade with the outside world and the +equalization of taxation between Great Britain and Ireland approximately +coincided in point of time, and were also contemporaneous with rapid and +continuous growth in the wealth and population of Great Britain, and a +steady and continuous decline in the Irish population. We know now, +moreover, though nobody knew it then, because the calculation was not +yet made, that Ireland was paying a large contribution to Imperial +services, over and above her local expenditure. In the half-century +between 1810 and 1860 she had paid an average yearly sum of nearly four +millions, and a total sum of nearly two hundred millions. In the year +1859-60, when the now equalized spirit duties were raised to 10s., she +paid £5,396,000; a sum considerably more than double the expenditure on +Irish services, and equivalent to no less than five-sevenths of the +revenue raised in Ireland.</p> + +<p>Parliament gave no serious attention to any of these phenomena from the +time of the fiscal union in 1817 until after the introduction of Mr. +Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill in 1893. No settled conclusions were +arrived at as to the relative <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" />wealth of the two countries, as to the +capacity of Ireland to bear the British scale of taxation, or even as to +the amount of revenue derived from and expended in the countries +respectively, with the consequent contributions made to common Imperial +services. A Committee sat in 1864-65, which compiled some interesting +information and heard some important witnesses, but ignored the main +questions at issue and produced what Sir Edward Hamilton described later +as an "impotent" Report. Sir Joseph MacKenna, an able Irish banker, +again and again, between 1867 and 1876, pleaded for an inquiry into +Anglo-Irish finance, alleging gross injustice in the incidence of Irish +taxation, and obtained nothing more than a rough return showing that +between 1841 and 1871 the gross tax revenue per head of the population +had risen in Ireland from 9s. 6.7d. to £1 6s. 2.2d. and had fallen in +Great Britain from £2 9s. 9.5d. to £2 4s. 1.6d. For the first time also +it was shown that the national beverages of England and Ireland, beer +and whisky, respectively, were taxed in a ratio unfair to Ireland. In +1886 Mr. Gladstone, in preparing his first Home Rule Bill, had to +re-open the question of the relative resources of Ireland and Great +Britain for the first time since the Union, because he proposed a fixed +annual contribution, unchangeable for thirty years, from Ireland towards +the Imperial services. He fixed the contribution at one-fifteenth or +approximately half that of two-seventeenths fixed by Pitt in 1800, and +the new figure was certainly not too low. In 1888 the question was again +incidentally raised by Mr. Goschen, who apportioned certain equivalent +grants towards local taxation in England, Scotland, and Ireland, in the +proportion of 80, 11, 9, apparently on the principle that those were the +proportions in which each country respectively contributed to Imperial +expenditure. Mr. Gladstone, in preparing the Home Rule Bill of 1893, +made investigations which threw additional light on the true amount of +revenue derived from Ireland, with allowance made for revenue from +dutiable goods taxed in Ireland but consumed in Great Britain, and <i>vice +versa</i>, but his financial scheme, as revised in the course of the +Session and passed by the House of Commons, evaded the crucial issue by +making Ireland's contribution to Imperial services a quota, one-third, +of her true annual revenue. This quota, <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" />moreover, was indirectly +reduced by temporary subsidies in aid of Irish charges (<i>e.g</i>., for +Police) and was estimated, with these deductions, not to exceed at the +outset one-fortieth.</p> + + +<h4><a name="XI_III" id="XI_III" />III.</h4> + +<h5>THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION OF 1894-1896.</h5> + + +<p>It was now apparent that, with or without Home Rule, the whole subject +needed serious investigation, and in 1894, after the defeat of Mr. +Gladstone's Bill, a Royal Commission under the Presidency of Mr. Hugh +Childers was appointed to consider the "Financial Relations between +Great Britain and Ireland." Their Report deserves careful study, because +it contains within it all the essential materials for forming a judgment +upon the financial problem of to-day. All that it lacks are the +complementary figures of the subsequent seventeen years, and these +figures, which I shall presently add, do not affect the conflict of +principles, though they throw into more vivid relief than ever the +outcome of conflicting principles.</p> + +<p>In composition it was a very strong Commission; it consulted the highest +financial authorities in the Kingdom; it made for two years an +exhaustive examination, historical and practical, of the questions +submitted to it, and although the members disagreed on some important +points, the conclusions upon which they were unanimous cannot be +impugned. The terms of reference were:</p> + +<p>"1. Upon what principles of comparison, and by the application of what +specific standards, the relative capacity of Great Britain and Ireland +to bear taxation may be most equitably determined.</p> + +<p>"2. What, so far as can be ascertained, is the true proportion, under +the principles and specific standards so determined, between the taxable +capacity of Great Britain and Ireland.</p> + +<p>"3. The history of the financial relations between Great Britain and +Ireland at and after the Legislative Union, the charge for Irish +purposes on the Imperial Exchequer during that period, and the amount of +Irish taxation remaining available for contribution to Imperial +expenditure; also <a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" />the Imperial expenditure to which it is considered +equitable that Ireland should contribute."</p> + +<p>It will be observed that Questions 1 and 2 deal with abstract points, +No. 3 (except the last clause) with concrete facts.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103" /><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p> + +<p>In their short unanimous Report the Commissioners began by stating that +"Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purposes of this inquiry, be +considered as separate entities."</p> + +<p>To Question 1 they made no unanimous answer. This was immaterial, +because, as a result of numerous tests (assessment to estate duties and +income-tax, consumption of commodities, population, etc.) all arrived +unanimously at an answer to the next question.</p> + +<p>Answer to Question 2 (and incidentally, as will be seen, to part of +Question 3): "That whilst the tax revenue of Ireland is about +<i>one-eleventh</i> of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity +of Ireland is very much smaller, <i>and is not estimated by any of us as +exceeding one-twentieth</i>."</p> + +<p>The wording of the answer needs to be explained by reference to the text +of the Report.</p> + +<p>(<i>a</i>) In saying "tax revenue" the Commissioners meant to exclude non-tax +revenue—<i>e.g</i>., Post Office receipts, etc.—but the Commissioners in +their various separate Reports generally employed the figures of total +revenue. Taking these as our basis, the Irish revenue then raised would +have been nearly one-twelfth instead of one-eleventh of the British +revenue. In other words, of the total revenue of the United Kingdom, +Ireland paid nearly <i>one-thirteenth</i>. (<i>b</i>) As to the true Irish taxable +capacity of "one-twentieth," some confusion arises owing to the use of +the phrase by different Commissioners in different senses. Mr. Childers +and Sir David Barbour appear to have meant one-twentieth of the United +Kingdom's taxable <a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" />capacity, the others one-twentieth of Great +Britain's. In order to be on the conservative side, I shall adopt the +former estimate. The discrepancy is not material to the conclusions of +the Commissioners, as, for reasons which I need not go into, they agreed +that the minimum amount of over-taxation was two millions and +three-quarters.</p> + +<p>This was the main outstanding conclusion of the Royal Commission. +Translated into figures, it showed the following facts: In 1893-94 the +total revenue of the United Kingdom from all sources was £96,855,627. Of +this sum the revenue contributed by Great Britain from all sources was +£89,286,978; by Ireland, £7,568,649—that is, between one-eleventh and +one-twelfth of the British revenue.</p> + +<p>If Ireland in 1893-94 had paid in proportion to her true taxable +capacity of one-twentieth, the maximum arrived at by any member of the +Commission, the revenue derived from her would have been £4,842,781.</p> + +<p>In other words, there was held to be an excess payment from Ireland of +£2,725,868.</p> + +<p>It was not suggested by any member of the Commission that Ireland, since +the Union, had grown richer at a more rapid rate than England, and was +therefore more capable of bearing taxation. On the contrary, it was +admitted that she had grown, relatively, much poorer. On the most +moderate estimate, therefore, the over-taxation of Ireland since the +Union, computed strictly on the principle laid down, could be +represented as amounting in 1894 to something like two hundred and fifty +millions, or, if we date from the fiscal union of 1817, two hundred +millions.</p> + +<p>The answer given by the Commissioners to Question 3, so far as it goes, +is explanatory of the previous answer.</p> + +<p>"That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events +showed, she was unable to bear.</p> + +<p>"That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 +was not justified by the then existing circumstances."</p> + +<p>And they added the opinion "that identity of rates of taxation does not +necessarily involve equality of burden."</p> + +<p>Their answers, so far as they were complete, to the other inquiries +contained in Question No. 3 about the tax revenue <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" />of Ireland and the +net contribution of Ireland in the past to Imperial services, are to be +found in figures included in the body of the Report, and these figures +formed, of course, the basis of their unanimous conclusion as to the +over-taxation of Ireland.</p> + +<p>These figures, to which I have often alluded in this volume, necessitate +a short digression, because they and subsequent Returns of the same sort +form the only official data upon which to estimate the present financial +position of Ireland.</p> + +<p>They were extracted partly from annual Returns originally issued by the +Treasury for the Home Rule Bill of 1893, and entitled "Financial +Relations (England, Scotland, and Ireland)," and partly from a new +document known as the "Pease" Return, No. 313 of 1894. These Returns, +taken together, represented the first serious attempt by the Treasury to +construct an account covering a period from 1819-20 to 1890-91, and +showing (<i>a</i>) the exact revenue derived from Ireland and Great Britain +respectively; (<i>b</i>) the local expenditure in Ireland and Great Britain +respectively, as distinguished from Imperial expenditure incurred for +the benefit of the whole United Kingdom; (<i>c</i>) the net contribution of +Ireland and Great Britain respectively to this latter expenditure for +Imperial services only.</p> + +<p>Since 1894 two regular annual Returns have been compiled, the one +showing the revenue, local expenditure, and net Imperial contribution of +Scotland, Ireland, and England (including Wales), the other giving an +historical summary of similar figures for Great Britain and Ireland +only, from 1819-20 to the current date.</p> + +<p>Two insoluble problems have had to be grappled with by the Treasury in +preparing these Returns: first, to differentiate Imperial expenditure +from local expenditure; second, to arrive at the "true" net revenue of +the partners as distinguished from the revenue collected within their +respective limits. Both these problems arise whenever an attempt is made +to look behind a system of unitary finance into the burdens and +contributions of different portions of a united realm, and the latter, +though not the former, of the two may arise in just as acute a form if +the realm consists of federated States with a common system of Customs +and Excise.<a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" /></p> + +<p>With regard to the first problem, it is, of course, easy, in the case of +a Federation, to distinguish between central, or Federal, expenditure +and local, or State, expenditure, because the functions of the Federal +Government and State Governments are delimited in the Constitution, and +the separate expenditures form the subject of separate balance-sheets. +But in a Union, and above all in a Union to which one part of the realm +is an unwilling party, like that of the British Isles, it is clear that +no absolutely accurate line can be drawn between Imperial and local +expenditure. The Army, the Navy, and a number of other things are +clearly enough Imperial, but there are many debatable items. For +example, Is the upkeep of the Lord-Lieutenant an Irish or an Imperial +charge? Is a loss on Post Office business in Ireland to be charged +against Ireland, or should Ireland be credited with a proportion of the +profits of the whole postal business of the United Kingdom? More +searching questions still: Is the enormous charge for the Irish Police, +which is under Imperial control, and exists avowedly for the purpose of +forcibly maintaining, in the Imperial interest, an unpopular form of +government in Ireland, to be charged against Ireland? Or, again, should +Ireland be debited with the cost of the machinery for carrying out Land +Purchase, a policy admittedly rendered necessary by the enforced +maintenance in the past of bad land laws? Obviously such questions can +never be answered so as to satisfy both Irishmen and Englishmen, because +they go to the root of the political relations between Ireland and Great +Britain. The Royal Commission, therefore, was naturally unable to give a +unanimous answer to the last clause of Question No. 3 of their Terms of +Reference—namely, "What is the Imperial expenditure to which Ireland +should equitably contribute?" Some members held that under the Union +even a theoretical classification was unjustifiable, while it was +obvious that under the Union no effect could be given to it. Still, the +classification had to be made, in order to arrive at a theoretical +estimate of the financial situations of Great Britain and Ireland +respectively, and the Treasury, charged with the preparation of this +estimate, took the only course open to it in reckoning as Irish +expenditure all expenditure which would not have to be incurred if +Ireland did not exist. It was the perfectly correct course for the<a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" /> +Treasury to take in dealing with the task set before them, and, as we +shall see, it provides the only basis on which to construct the +balance-sheet of a financially independent Ireland.</p> + +<p>The insolubility of the second problem—that of discovering the "true" +revenue of Ireland and Great Britain respectively—arises from the +difficulty of tracing the passage of dutiable articles from one part of +the kingdom to the other, and of tracing the incidence of direct imposts +such as income-tax and stamps. The great bulk of Irish revenue is +derived from indirect taxes on commodities, liquor, tobacco, tea, sugar, +etc. Since the consumer pays the tax, revenue is rightly credited to the +country of consumption. The tax, for example, on tobacco manufactured in +Ireland may be collected in Ireland, but the revenue from Irish-made +tobacco exported to and consumed in Great Britain is rightly credited to +Great Britain. The converse holds true. Half the tea consumed in Ireland +has paid duty in London, but the whole of the revenue from tea consumed +in Ireland must be credited to Ireland. Now, since 1826, no official +records had been kept by the Customs-houses of the transit of goods +between Ireland and England, except in the solitary case of spirits. The +data, therefore, did not exist, and do not exist now, except in the case +of spirits, for an accurate computation. This is frankly confessed by +the Treasury officials. They base their published figures on certain +arbitrary methods of calculation which have never been submitted to any +public inquiry, and which, as they admit, contain an element of +guesswork. The matter is an exceedingly important one to Ireland, +because ever since 1870 an increasingly heavy deduction has been made by +the Treasury from her "collected" revenue, and her "true" revenue has +proportionately diminished. Part of this deduction is no doubt due to +the fact that her exports of tobacco and liquor have, in recent times, +much exceeded her imports, but the margin for error is nevertheless +large. Mr. Gladstone, in framing his Home Rule Bill of 1886, was so +sensible of the inherent difficulties of the calculation that, while +retaining Customs and Excise under Imperial control, he credited to the +Irish Exchequer the whole of the revenue collected within Ireland. On +the balance of Anglo-Irish exchange in dutiable <a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" />articles, as roughly +estimated at that time, this provision meant an annual allowance to +Ireland of nearly a million and a half pounds, the principal reason +being that Ireland, which is a larger manufacturer of spirits and +tobacco, was exporting more than she consumed of these commodities. In +the Bill of 1893, as part of a wholly different financial scheme, Mr. +Gladstone abandoned the plan just described, and provided for the annual +calculation of "true" Irish revenue, as distinguished from "collected" +revenue; but it is a proof of the obscurity and intricacy of the whole +business that the Treasury officials made a mistake of £400,000 in the +initial calculation, with the result that Mr. Gladstone had to recast +his financial scheme from top to bottom.</p> + +<p>In the Return of 1894, as presented to the Royal Commission, this error +was eliminated, but the method of calculation remained imperfect. Nobody +knows now what the true figures are, and there is good reason to think +that Irish revenue has always been, and still is, substantially +underestimated.</p> + +<p>The same obscurity shrouded, and still shrouds, the "true" Irish revenue +from income-tax and stamps, whose proceeds it is exceedingly difficult +to trace under a system of unitary finance, and which are traced by the +Treasury in a fashion again admittedly unreliable.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104" /><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a></p> + +<p>In regard to taxes on consumption the same difficulty has been met with +in Australia since the federation of the Colonies and the delegation to +the Commonwealth Government of exclusive control over Customs and +Excise. The product of these duties makes up the bulk of Australian +revenue, and is far too large for the needs of the Commonwealth +Government. The Constitution of 1900 provided that the surplus should be +returned to the individual States in proportion to their "true" +contributions to the revenue, and for the calculation of these "true" +contributions an elaborate system of book-keeping was instituted, in +order to trace the ultimate place of consumption of dutiable articles. +Each State was then credited with its "true" revenue, and debited, among +other things, with a proportionate share of the expense of any +Department transferred by the Constitution from the State to the +Common<a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" />wealth. The system caused general dissatisfaction, owing, as the +Australian Official Year Book puts it, "to the practical impossibility +of ensuring that in every case a consuming State will be duly credited +with revenue collected on its behalf in a distributing State." That is +the well-founded complaint of Ireland in regard to the Treasury returns. +Hitherto in Australia efforts to change the system for another +allocating the surplus on a basis of population have not been +successful.<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105" /><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> The Canadian Federal Constitution uses the basis of +population for the distribution of small subsidies to the Provinces, but +complaints have arisen as to its fairness. British Columbia, for +example, for a long time complained that her subsidy was too small, one +of the grounds being that her consumption of dutiable goods was +unusually large. No means existed of verifying this complaint by +figures.<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106" /><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a></p> + +<p>With this explanatory digression about a very important feature of +Anglo-Irish finance, I return to the findings of the Royal Commission of +1894-1896. The figures supplied to them were as shown on the opposite +page.</p> + +<p>It will be noticed that the average "true" revenue of Ireland was +stationary at a little over five millions from 1820 to 1850, rose with a +bound to seven and a half millions with the equalization of taxes in the +decade 1850-1860, and remained stationary <a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" />at that figure for the +remaining thirty-four years. Expenditure in Ireland quadrupled in the +whole sixty-four years; and the net contribution to Imperial services, +after rising from three and a half millions (in round numbers) in 1820 +to five and a half millions in 1860, fell automatically, as the +expenditure rose, and had stood at two millions from 1890 afterwards. +Population had fallen by two millions, but the "true" revenue raised per +head of population rose from 15s. 5d. in 1819 to £1 13s. 5d. in 1894, +while the local expenditure rose from 4s. 7d. per head in 1820 to £1 5s. +in 1894.</p> + +<h5>STATEMENT SHOWING THE ESTIMATED LOCAL EXPENDITURE INCURRED IN IRELAND, +AND THE BALANCE OF TRUE REVENUE WHICH IS AVAILABLE FOR IMPERIAL SERVICES +AFTER SUCH EXPENDITURE HAS BEEN MET:</h5> + + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='center'>Revenue as Collected</td><td align='center'>Adjustment (+) or (-)</td><td align='center'>Estimated True Revenue</td><td align='center'>Estimated Local Expenditures</td><td align='center'>Balance available for Imperial Services</td><td align='center'>Population</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='center'></td><td align='center'></td><td align='center'></td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>Decadal figures.</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center'>1819-20</td><td align='center'>5,253,909</td><td align='center'>+ 2,655</td><td align='center'>5,256,564</td><td align='center'>1,564,880</td><td align='center'>3,691,684</td><td align='center'>6,801,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>1829-30</td><td align='center'>4,161,217</td><td align='center'>+1,040,908</td><td align='center'>5,502,125</td><td align='center'>1,345,579</td><td align='center'>4,156,576</td><td align='center'>7,767,401</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>1839-40</td><td align='center'>4,571,150</td><td align='center'>+ 841,739</td><td align='center'>5,412,889</td><td align='center'>1,789,567</td><td align='center'>3,626,322</td><td align='center'>8,175,124</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>1849-50</td><td align='center'>4,338,091</td><td align='center'>+ 523,374</td><td align='center'>4,861,465</td><td align='center'>2,247,687</td><td align='center'>2,613,778</td><td align='center'>6,574,278</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>1859-60</td><td align='center'>7,097,994</td><td align='center'>+ 602,430</td><td align='center'>7,700,334</td><td align='center'>2,304,334</td><td align='center'>5,396,000</td><td align='center'>5,798,967</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>1869-70</td><td align='center'>7,331,058</td><td align='center'>+ 95,274</td><td align='center'>7,426,332</td><td align='center'>2,938,122</td><td align='center'>4,488,210</td><td align='center'>5,412,377</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>1879-80</td><td align='center'>7,831,316</td><td align='center'>- 550,520</td><td align='center'>7,280,856</td><td align='center'>4,054,549</td><td align='center'>3,226,307</td><td align='center'>5,174,836</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>1889-90</td><td align='center'>9,005,932</td><td align='center'>-1,271,254</td><td align='center'>7,734,678</td><td align='center'>5,057,708</td><td align='center'>2,676,970</td><td align='center'>4,704,750</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center'>Annual figures.</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center'>1890-91</td><td align='center'>9,301,463</td><td align='center'>-1,506,988</td><td align='center'>7,734,475</td><td align='center'>5,723,399</td><td align='center'>2,071,076</td><td align='center'>—</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>1891-92</td><td align='center'>9,639,344</td><td align='center'>-1,671,226</td><td align='center'>7,968,105</td><td align='center'>6,021,810</td><td align='center'>1,946,295</td><td align='center'>—</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>1892-93</td><td align='center'>9,425,177</td><td align='center'>-1,986,780</td><td align='center'>7,438,397</td><td align='center'>5,540,508</td><td align='center'>1,897,880</td><td align='center'>—</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>1893-94</td><td align='center'>9,650,649</td><td align='center'>-2,082,000</td><td align='center'>7,568,649</td><td align='center'>5,602,555</td><td align='center'>1,966,094</td><td align='center'>1,638,000</td></tr></table> + + + +<p>In 1893-94, the last year under review, Ireland, in round figures, was +producing a net revenue of seven and a half millions, was costing five +and a half millions, and was, therefore, contributing to Imperial +services a surplus of two millions. In the same year, while contributing +her two millions, she was overtaxed, according to the lowest estimate of +the Commissioners, by two and three-quarter millions.</p> + +<p>But the significance of these figures cannot be discerned without an +examination of their counterparts on the British side of the account. In +the whole period Great Britain's "true" revenue had risen from +£51,445,764 to £89,286,978; her local expenditure from £4,439,333 to +£30,618,586, and her net contribution to Imperial services from +£47,006,431 to<a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" /> £58,668,392. Her population had increased from +13,765,000 in 1820 to 33,469,000 (estimated) in 1893, but her "true" +revenue had <i>fallen</i> per head of the population from £3 13s. to £2 13s. +4d. (approximately), although her local expenditure had risen from 4s. +7d. to £1 2s. (approximately). In other words, a great increase of +wealth had enabled the British taxpayer to pay far more while feeling +the burden far less. The converse was true of Ireland.</p> + +<p>The current state of the account in 1893-94 was as follows:</p> + + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='center'>Great Britain</td><td align='center'>Ireland</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>1893-94</td><td align='center'>(Population, 33,469,000).</td><td align='center'>(Population, 4,638,000).</td><td align='center'>Totals.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"True" Revenue</td><td align='center'>89,286,978</td><td align='center'>7,568,649</td><td align='center'>96,855,627</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>Local Expenditure</td><td align='center'>30,618,586</td><td align='center'>5,602,555</td><td align='center'>36,221,141</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>Net contribution to Imperial Services</td><td align='center'>58,668,392</td><td align='center'>1,966,094</td><td align='center'>60,634,486</td></tr></table> + + + +<p>Great Britain, though raising in "true" revenue between eleven and +twelve times as much as Ireland, was costing only between five and six +times as much to administer as Ireland, and was therefore contributing +to Imperial services twenty-eight times as much as Ireland.</p> + +<p>Now the Commissioners had stated that the taxable capacity of Ireland +was not one-eleventh, but, at the utmost, one-twentieth —in other +words, that she ought to contribute not more than one-twentieth of the +United Kingdom revenue. On that basis she should as we have seen, have +been showing a revenue in 1893-94 not of £7,568,649, but of £4,842,781.</p> + +<p>But, if her local expenditure had also been proportionate to her true +taxable capacity of one-twentieth, instead of standing at £5,602,555, it +would have stood at £1,811,057, or two-thirds less, while if her net +contribution to Imperial services had likewise been a twentieth, instead +of paying £1,966,094, she would have had to pay £3,031,724, or a million +more.</p> + +<p>The conclusion, therefore, might be extracted from the figures that, +although by hypothesis overtaxed, Ireland was drawing a balance of +profit, because, by having more spent on her—or, to put it in another +way, by costing more to <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" />govern, she paid a million less to the common +purse than if she had been taxed according to her capacity.</p> + +<p>This was precisely the conclusion drawn by one member of the Commission, +Sir David Barbour, and implicitly acquiesced in by one other member, Sir +Thomas Sutherland. All the other Commissioners agreed that there was +something seriously amiss, and declined to regard the disproportionately +high expenditure on Ireland as compensation for the over-high taxation. +The O'Conor Don, as successor in the chairmanship to Mr. Childers, and +four others contented themselves with setting forth the facts, but made +no recommendations, on the ground that the Commission had not been asked +to make any. Mr. Childers, who died before the completion of the +inquiry, left a Draft Report recommending that a special grant, +amounting to two millions a year, should for the future be allocated to +Ireland. The other six members, dividing into two groups of three, under +Lord Farrer and Mr. Sexton respectively, and stating their views in two +different Reports, all agreed that a form of Home Rule giving financial +independence to Ireland was the only solution of the difficulty.</p> + +<p>The questions at issue were not at all obscure. Any apparent obscurity +was caused by the terms of reference to the Commission, which assumed +the permanence of the Union, while it was absolutely impossible for the +Commission, divided though its members were in politics, to start work +at all without, as they said, considering Great Britain and Ireland as +"separate entities." The reader must be on his guard against +exaggerating the "over-taxation of Ireland" in its purely cash aspect. +The really important points were: (1) The suitability of the Irish taxes +and the responsibility for levying them; (2) the amount and suitability +of the expenditure in Ireland and the responsibility for its +distribution. In order to see conflicting principles stated in their +clearest form the reader should compare the terse and vigorous reports +of Sir David Barbour on the one hand, and of Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, +and Mr. Currie on the other.</p> + +<p>It was Sir David Barbour's great merit that he was not afraid of his own +conclusions. He frankly stated, like all the other Commissioners, that +Ireland's taxation, considered by itself, without regard to Irish +expenditure, was unsuitable and <a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" />unjust. He recognized that a system of +taxation which was suitable for a rich, industrial, and expanding +country like Great Britain was unsuitable for a poor, agricultural, and +economically stagnant country like Ireland. He had before him the +figures showing that two-thirds of the Irish population was rural, and +that between three and four-fifths of the English population was +urban.<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107" /><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> He laid special stress on the fact that five-sevenths of +Irish revenue, as compared with less than half the British revenue, was +derived from taxes on commodities of general consumption, pressing +heavily on the poor, and set forth the figures showing that the product +of these taxes represented a charge of £1 2s. 0.95d. per head of the +population in Ireland, and £1 1s. 0.05d. in Great Britain, although the +wealth per head of Great Britain, as he admitted, "was much greater than +the wealth of Ireland per head."<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108" /><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> His conclusion was that this state +of affairs, though regrettable, could not be helped, because, under the +Union, whose permanence he took for granted, a change of general +taxation to suit Ireland was simply impracticable. He did, it is true, +point out incidentally that the same hardship might be said to affect +poor localities in Great Britain and poor individuals in Great Britain, +but he recoiled from the absurd fallacy involved in saying that on that +account Ireland was not unjustly taxed. If he had gone to that length he +could never have signed the unanimous Report.</p> + +<p>I only mention this latter point because some outside critics have been +bold enough to assert the fallacy in its completeness, proving, as they +easily can, that the purchase of a pound of tea or a pint of beer is as +great an expense to a man with 10s. a week in Whitechapel as to a man +with 10s. a week in Connemara. Such reasoning nullifies the whole +science of taxation. It would be as sensible to say that our whole +fiscal system might wisely be transplanted in its entirety to any +foreign country or to any self-governing Colony absolutely irrespective +of their social and economic conditions and of their habits. Yet Ireland +in these respects has always differed from Great Britain at least as +much as any self-governing Colony and many European countries. The +tea-tax produces scarcely anything in France; it produces an enormous +amount <a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" />relatively in Ireland, and is a greater burden there than in +Great Britain. The wine-tax is not felt by Ireland; it is felt more by +England; it would cause a revolution in France. Beer is taxed lightly in +the United Kingdom, but the Irishman drinks only half as much beer as +the Englishman. Meat is untaxed, but the Irish poor eat no meat. Spirits +and tobacco are highly taxed, and they are consumed more largely in +Ireland than in England. And so on. The whole Commission recognized that +the circumstances of the two countries were different, and stated "that +identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of +burden."</p> + +<p>Nor could Sir David Barbour have dissociated himself from these +conclusions without destroying the rest of his argument. He pointed out +with truth that merely to reduce Irish taxation to its correct level, +and to leave Irish expenditure where it was, would be to wipe out +Ireland's contribution to Imperial purposes and leave her with a subsidy +from Great Britain of three-quarters of a million. On the other hand, he +held, as I have already indicated, that unduly heavy taxation in Ireland +was already compensated for by an excess of local expenditure in Ireland +as compared with Great Britain. But how, on its merits, and apart from +the question of taxation, could such an excess be justified? The Act of +Union had provided for indiscriminate expenditure in the event of a +fiscal union. Most of the other Commissioners, indeed, had objected to +the idea of distinguishing between "Imperial" expenditure and "local" +expenditure, and striking a balance called an "Imperial contribution," +without, at the same time, distinguishing politically between Ireland +and Great Britain. In other words, they took up the not very logical +position that Ireland must be considered as a separate entity for +purposes of finance owing to the phrase about "abatements and +exemptions," but not for purposes of expenditure. Whether this was a +correct interpretation of the Act of Union has always been a matter of +dispute, but the practical problem is little affected thereby. Sir David +Barbour thought it an incorrect interpretation, and reached the more +logical position that Ireland, both for revenue and expenditure, could +be regarded as a separate entity. This view enabled him to put forward +an argument which, while ostensibly palliating the over-taxation <a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" />of +Ireland, in reality condemned the whole of the political system +established by the Union. We can, he said, in effect, rightly +distinguish between Imperial and local expenditure, and it is +permissible to spend more on Ireland than on Great Britain. By so +spending more we not only cancel our debt to Ireland, but make her a +present of a million which would otherwise go to swell her contribution +to Imperial purposes. Now, to get at the pith of this argument, the +reader must bear in mind what Sir David Barbour thought it needless to +remark upon, that Ireland had, and has, a separate quasi-colonial system +of administration of her own, but outside her own control, a system of +which he approved. In other words, besides having to be considered in +finance as a "separate entity," she was to a large extent in actual +fact, politically, a "separate entity," though not a self-governing +entity, to which through the channel of the Irish Government Departments +a special large quota for local expenditure could be easily allocated. +As an economist, therefore, and as an upholder of the strangely +paradoxical system set up by the so-called "Union," Sir David Barbour +was absolutely consistent.</p> + +<p>So were Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, and Mr. Currie in coming to +diametrically opposite conclusions. The crux of the discussion, stripped +of academical reasoning, was simple. Everything turned, obviously, on +the nature, amount, and origin of Irish expenditure. Sir David Barbour +had passed lightly over these vital points, recommending only that any +future <i>saving</i> of expenditure in Ireland ought to be used for Irish +purposes—a further admission of Ireland's separate political +existence—and shutting his eyes to future <i>increases</i> of expenditure. +Lord Farrer and his colleagues, while agreeing that it was impossible to +alter the taxation of Ireland so long as the Union lasted, agreed that +additional local expenditure in Ireland could not be regarded as a +set-off to undue taxation, not only because such a doctrine was +inherently fallacious on economic grounds, and would hardly be listened +to in the case of any other country than Ireland, but because Irish +expenditure was subjected to no proper means of control. Both Irish +revenue and Irish services, the former being only theoretically, the +latter actually, distinct and separate, were outside the control of +Irishmen, who had therefore no motive for <a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" />economy. Nor was there any +proper measure of determining what expenditure was good for Ireland and +what was bad, though they held that there was reason to believe that +much of Irish administration was both bad and costly. With regard to the +extensive system of Imperial loans, whose charge swelled the Irish +expenditure, they quoted the unchallenged evidence of Mr. Murrough +O'Brien<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109" /><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> to the effect that the system of Imperial loans for +temporary emergencies and charity loans—"made to keep the people quiet +or to keep them alive"—tends to increase the poverty of Ireland, "does +not prevent the recurrence of famine, distress, and discontent," and +that "a great deal of the money nominally meant to be spent on +productive works has been misspent and wasted." They also dwelt, with +emphasis, on official figures showing the extravagance of Civil +Government in Ireland, the cost having risen from 1s. 10d. per head of +the population in 1820 to 19s. 7d. per head in 1893, whereas the cost of +Civil Government in Great Britain had only risen from 1s. 7d. to 11s. +5d. The charge for legal salaries and five principal Departments in +Ireland was double the right figure according to population, and +represented an excess cost of nearly £200,000. In wealthy and +progressive Belgium, Civil Government cost 10s. per head, or little more +than half as much per head as in Ireland.<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110" /><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> The absurdity of +representing such excess charges and the wasteful expenditure of a +blundering philanthropy, as a recompense for over-taxation, was +manifest.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, the rise in the cost of Irish Government, coupled with a +stagnant revenue, had decreased the annual contribution of Ireland to +Imperial services, which had fallen from five and a half millions in +1860 to two millions in 1894; unless, indeed, half the cost of Irish +police, virtually a branch of the Imperial Army, and costing double the +amount of Scottish and English police, were to be reckoned, not as an +Irish expense, on the principle adopted by the Treasury, but as a part +of Imperial expenditure. In any case both partners suffered from +excessive and unwise expenditure in Ireland.</p> + +<p>The gist of their conclusions was as follows:<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111" /><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a></p> + +<p>1. It is impossible, under the Union, to vary taxation for the benefit +of Ireland.<a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" /></p> + +<p>2. Additional benevolent expenditure in Ireland is not a remedy for +over-taxation.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112" /><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a></p> + +<p>"We entertain a profound distrust of benevolences, doles, grants-in-aid, +by whatever name they are called, ... or by whatever machinery it is +proposed to distribute them, convinced, as we are, that in some form or +other political influence or personal interest will creep in so as to +defeat, in part at any rate, the attainment of the objects for which the +expenditure is made."</p> + +<p>3. "We believe that the expenditure of public funds cannot be wisely and +economically controlled unless <i>those who have the disposal</i> of public +money are made <i>responsible</i> for raising it as well as spending it." +Grants of money "tend to weaken the spirit of independence and +self-reliance," the absence of which qualities "has been the main cause +of the backward condition" of Ireland.</p> + +<p>4. "One sure method of redressing the inequality which has been shown to +exist between Great Britain and Ireland will be to put upon the Irish +people the duty of levying their own taxes and of providing for their +own expenditure."</p> + +<p>5. "If it is objected that the course we suggest may lead to the +imposition of new Customs duties in Ireland, we might reply that in this +case, as in that of the Colonies, <i>freedom is a greater good than free +trade.</i> We doubt, however, whether Irishmen, if entrusted with their own +finance, would attempt to raise fiscal barriers between the two +countries; for we are satisfied that Ireland, and not Great Britain, +would be the loser by such a policy. The market of Great Britain is of +infinitely greater importance to Ireland than that of Ireland to Great +Britain." The only point on which the three Commissioners differed +concerned Ireland's contribution to Imperial services. Lord Farrer and +Mr. Currie, taking Home Rule as the foundation of their argument, and +prophesying, quite correctly, that under the Union, in a few years, +Ireland's contribution would disappear altogether, recommended that no +such contribution should be exacted by law until Ireland's taxable +capacity approximately reached that of Great Britain. Lord Welby, +<a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" />regarding Home Rule as an essential but a distant ideal, was for an +immediate reorganization of Anglo-Irish finances which should provide +for a large reduction of Irish Civil expenditure, the saving to be +devoted, on Sir David Barbour's principle, to Irish purposes, and for a +fixed contribution from Ireland to the Army, Navy, National Debt, etc. +How Lord Welby, consistently with his previous argument, could count +upon any reduction of expenditure in Ireland under the existing +political system it is difficult to see. At any rate, subsequent events +proved both him and Sir David Barbour signally wrong on this important +point.<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113" /><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a></p> + +<p>In every other point the wisdom of the three Commissioners has been +abundantly proved by lapse of time. Do not the conclusions set forth +above bear upon them the stamp of common sense? If it were not for the +inveterate prejudice against Home Rule on other than financial grounds, +no one would dream of disputing them; for they are based on principles +universally accepted in every part of the British Empire but Ireland, +and in most parts of the civilized world. They constitute, in fact, +financially, one of the strongest arguments possible for political Home +Rule.</p> + +<p>There, at any rate, lies a clear issue. Seventeen years have not altered +the essential principles involved. On the contrary, it will be seen that +every year of the seventeen has strengthened the argument of Lord Farrer +and his colleagues, and weakened the argument of Sir David Barbour. But, +before proceeding to this final demonstration, let me in general terms +describe what befell the Royal Commission's Report, which was published +in 1896. For a moment all Ireland, irrespective of class or creed, was +alight with patriotic excitement. Few listened to Sir David Barbour's +view, namely, that so long as Irish expenditure came near Irish revenue +there could be no Irish grievance. Home Rulers and Unionists met on +friendly platforms to denounce the over-taxation of Ireland and to +display figures showing the hundreds of millions of profit made by<a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" /> +Great Britain out of an unconscionable fiscal bargain. This criticism +missed the real point and the unanimity was short-lived. No change could +be made in the system without Home Rule, and the dissension about Home +Rule was strong enough to prevent Irishmen from uniting against a fiscal +system which was not only unjust but demoralizing to Ireland. A Unionist +Government was in power for nine more years after 1896, and a Liberal +Government, pledged temporarily not to give Home Rule, for four further +years. The natural result was that, in default of Home Rule, all parties +in Ireland embraced Sir David Barbour's insidiously attractive +reservation, and have ever since fallen into the habit of regarding +additional expenditure on Ireland, not only on its merits, but as a +set-off to excessive taxation and as something having no relation +whatever to the taxable resources of the country. Nobody took seriously +Sir David Barbour's counsel of perfection about the reduction of the +cost of Irish Civil Government and the allocation of the saving to +Ireland, because such a process was, humanly speaking, impossible. +Expenditure is never reduced except by those who raise the money for it. +On the other hand, in the face of the findings of the Royal Commission, +and in the face of Ireland's economic condition, no Government which +refused Home Rule could have refused large additional Irish expenditure. +Much of it, indeed, was merely an automatic reflection of the immense +growth of national expenditure in the wealthy and expanding +partner-country over the water, and took the form of "equivalent +grants," whether for the corresponding British head of expense or for +something totally different. No doubt some of the money was well spent, +but all of it came in a wrong form, through wrong channels, and was +regarded in Ireland in a false light. Lastly came Old Age Pensions +applied on the British scale to a far poorer population.</p> + +<p>Every word of Lord Welby's and Lord Farrer's condemnation was justified +by events; every prophecy they made has been fulfilled. And the worst of +it is that the delay has damaged the prospects of Home Rule. The habit +of dissociating income from revenue becomes inveterate. The habit of +nursing an old grievance and of expecting "restitution" for funds +unwarrantably levied in the past is hard to shake <a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" />off. Restitution has +gone too far already. Perpetuated, it would ruin Ireland. Home Rulers +worth their salt must leave this cry to those Unionists who descend to +use it; but it is surely amazing that any Irishman, least of all those +who claim to represent the wealth and intelligence of the country, +should tolerate a political system which inexorably involves a fiscal +system so humiliating to Ireland. Until three years ago it could easily +have been put an end to without affecting the independent solvency of +Ireland, even on the basis of an enormously swollen civil expenditure, +and with the inclusion of services strictly Imperial in origin and +character. Now it is a different matter, and we are faced with the +opposition of British statesmen who, by sustaining the Union, drove +Ireland to the verge of insolvency, and now use insolvency as an +argument against Home Rule.</p> + +<p>One respects the clean and honest side of Unionism, but there can be +nothing but reprobation for the meanness of this latter-day argument. +For generations Ireland herself has asked to be free both from coercion +and bribes, sanely conscious in her soul that both are equally +demoralizing. The aim—though in the past not generally the conscious +aim—of Unionism was to sap the moral fibre of Ireland now by one means, +now by the other. At last the aim is avowed, so that men who applauded +Mr. Chamberlain in 1893 for sneering at Irish patriotism as a "sickly +plant which needed to be watered by British gold" merely because her +contribution under the Home Rule Bill was to be small are now urging +Ireland to maintain the Union—in Mr. Walter Long's words—for its +"eleemosynary benefits."<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114" /><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> Ireland herself must and will rise to a +higher moral level than that, when she is fully awake to the gravity of +the situation. Those who love her most will not lose a minute in +explaining that situation. Too much time already has been lost.<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII" />CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>THE PRESENT FINANCIAL SITUATION</h3> + + +<h4><a name="XII_I" id="XII_I" />I.</h4> + +<h5>ANGLO-IRISH FINANCE TO-DAY.</h5> + + +<p>The finances of Ireland since the Union, when reviewed by the Royal +Commission in 1894-1896, exhibited five principal features:</p> + +<p>1. A declining population.</p> + +<p>2. An estimated true taxable capacity falling as compared with that of +Great Britain, and standing in 1893-94 at a maximum of 1 to 19.</p> + +<p>3. A revenue stationary for thirty-four years, and showing in 1893-94 a +ratio of 1 to 12 with that of Great Britain.</p> + +<p>4. A growing local expenditure (though stationary for the last four +years).</p> + +<p>5. A dwindling net contribution to Imperial services (though stationary +for the last four years).</p> + +<p>If we review the subsequent seventeen years, we find:</p> + +<p>1. A population still declining, though at a slower rate.</p> + +<p>2. An estimated true taxable capacity still falling as compared with +that of Great Britain, and now standing at a maximum of 1 to 24.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115" /><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> +That is, Ireland ought strictly to be paying no more than +one-twenty-fifth of the United Kingdom revenue.</p> + +<p>3. A revenue rising, but very slowly and inelastically as compared with +that of Great Britain, and now showing a ratio of 1 to 15; so that the +"over-taxation" of Ireland, as reckoned <a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" />on the Royal Commission's +principles, is still at least three millions.<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116" /><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a></p> + +<p>4. A local expenditure growing rapidly and disproportionately to Irish +revenue; now just double the expenditure of 1893-94.</p> + +<p>5. A net contribution to Imperial services automatically diminishing +with the growth of Irish expenditure, disappearing altogether in +1909-10, and now converted into an adverse balance against Ireland of +£1,312,500.</p> + +<p>In Great Britain during the same seventeen years, population, taxable +capacity, revenue, expenditure, and net contribution to Imperial +services have all grown steadily, and, what is more important, in +healthy proportions to one another.</p> + +<p>On the next page will be found the comparative figures for Ireland and +Great Britain of revenue, expenditure, and contribution for 1893-94 and +1910-11.</p> + +<p>Let me remark at the outset <i>(a)</i> that they and other official figures +given in this chapter are taken from the annual Treasury returns alluded +to at p. 242, "Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland, and Ireland)" +and "Imperial Revenue (Collection and Expenditure) (Great Britain and +Ireland)." For the current year 1910-11 the official numbers of these +Returns are 220 and 221, and the latter of the two is virtually a +continuation of the original return, No. 313 of 1894; <i>(b)</i> that the +non-collection of a large part of the revenue of 1909-10, owing to the +delay in passing the Budget, makes the revenue figures of the last two +years, regarded in isolation, misleading; those of the first year being +abnormally low, those of the last abnormally high. I therefore give the +mean figures of the two years. Expenditure is, of course, unaffected, +<i>(c)</i> That <a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" />the Irish revenue shown as "true" is reduced by heavy +deductions from the revenue as actually collected in Ireland. At p. 244 +I explained that this adjustment can be regarded only as approximately +correct, owing to the admittedly unreliable methods adopted by the +Treasury, <i>(d)</i> That the revenue shown includes non-tax as well as tax +revenue.</p> + + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='center' colspan='2'>Ireland.</td><td align='center' colspan='2'>Great Britain.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='center'>1893-94.</td><td align='center'>1910-11.</td><td align='center'>1893-94.</td><td align='center'>1910-11.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center'>Population</td><td align='center'>4,638,000</td><td align='center'> 4,381,951</td><td align='center'>33,469,000 (estimated)</td><td align='center'> 40,834,790</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center'>"Collected" revenue (including non-tax revenue)</td><td align='center'>£9,650,649 <br />(mean of two years, 1910-11, 1909-10)</td><td align='center'> £11,704,500</td><td align='center'>£88,728,428 </td><td align='center'>£156,574,250 <br />(mean of two years, 1910-11, 1909-10)</td></tr> +<tr><td align='center'>"True" revenue (including non-tax revenue)</td><td align='center'>£7,568,649 <br />(mean of two years, 1910-11, 1909-10)</td><td align='center'> £10,032,000</td><td align='center'>£89,286,978</td><td align='center'> £155,137,250 <br />(mean of two years, 1910-11, 1909-10)</td></tr> + + +<tr><td align='center'>Local Expenditure</td><td align='center'>£5,602,555</td><td align='center'>£11,344,500</td><td align='center'>£30,618,586</td><td align='center'>£60,544,000</td></tr> + + +<tr><td align='center'>Contribution to Imperial Services</td><td align='center'>£1,966,094</td><td align='center'>Nil<a name="FNanchor_A" id="FNanchor_A" /><a href="#Footnote_A" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></td><td align='center'>£58,668,392</td><td align='center'>£94,593,250</td></tr> +</table> + + + +<p>Irish expenditure has been rapidly overtaking Irish revenue during the +last three years. In 1907-08 there was a balance available for Imperial +services of £1,811,000; in 1908-09, of only £583,000; and in 1910-11, on +the basis of a mean of that and the previous year, the deficit shown +above of £1,312,500. The principal cause is the Old Age Pensions Vote, +which began in 1908.</p> + +<p>If all the elements of the problem be considered together, it will be +seen that the fiscal partnership is as ill-matched as ever, and has +produced results increasingly anomalous. Each of the partners and their +united interests suffer. Ireland is still more heavily taxed relatively +to Great Britain, yet Ireland's <a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" />contribution to Imperial services has +been converted into a minus quantity. Why? Because Irish expenditure, +paid out of the common purse, has doubled, while Irish revenue has +increased by less than a third.</p> + +<p>Let me give the final survey of Anglo-Irish finance since the Union, in +the tabular form shown by Professor Oldham at the meeting of the British +Association in September, 1911:</p> + + +<h5>NET BALANCES PAID BY IRELAND TO GREAT BRITAIN.</h5> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='center'>Single Year.</td><td align='center'>Irish "True" Revenue.</td><td align='center'>Expenditure in Ireland.</td><td align='center'>Balance One Year.</td><td align='center'>Decadal Balance.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td align='right'>£</td><td align='right'>£</td><td align='right'>£</td><td align='right'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>1819-20</td><td align='right'>5,256,564</td><td align='right'>1,564,880</td><td align='right'>3,691,684</td><td align='right'>36,916,840</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>1829-30</td><td align='right'>5,502,125</td><td align='right'>1,345,549</td><td align='right'>4,156,576</td><td align='right'>41,565,760</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>1839-40</td><td align='right'>5,415,889</td><td align='right'>1,789,567</td><td align='right'>3,626,322</td><td align='right'>36,263,220</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>1849-50</td><td align='right'>4,861,465</td><td align='right'>2,247,687</td><td align='right'>2,613,778</td><td align='right'>26,137,780</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>1859-60</td><td align='right'>7,700,334</td><td align='right'>2,304,334</td><td align='right'>5,396,000</td><td align='right'>53,960,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>1869-70</td><td align='right'>7,426,332</td><td align='right'>2,938,122</td><td align='right'>4,488,210</td><td align='right'>44,882,100</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>1879-80</td><td align='right'>7,280,856</td><td align='right'>4,054,549</td><td align='right'>3,226,307</td><td align='right'>32,263,070</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>1889-90</td><td align='right'>7,734,678</td><td align='right'>5,057,708</td><td align='right'>2,676,970</td><td align='right'>26,769,700</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>1899-1900</td><td align='right'>8,664,500</td><td align='right'>6,980,000</td><td align='right'>1,684,500</td><td align='right'>16,845,000</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' colspan='4'>Averaged Balances for 90 years</td><td align='right'>315,603,470</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' colspan='4'>Add, Actual Balances, 1900-09</td><td align='right' class="bb">16,214,000</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='4'>Net Payments, in 99 years</td><td align='right'>331,817,470</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' colspan='4'>Deduct Drawings, deficit of 1909-10</td><td align='right' class="bb">2,357,500</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='4'>Net Payments, in 100 years</td><td align='right'>329,459,970</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' colspan='4'>Add, Actual Balance, 1910-11</td><td align='right' class="bb">321,000</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='4'>Net Balances paid by Ireland to Great Britain, 1809-1911</td><td align='right'>329,780,970</td></tr></table> + + + +<p>What has become of Sir David Barbour's argument in favour of the +existing fiscal system? He admitted that Ireland was overtaxed by two +millions and three-quarters. But he showed, it will be remembered, that +if not only the revenue, but the expenditure and contribution to +Imperial services had all been in proportion to Ireland's real taxable +capacity of one-twentieth, she would have been a loser by a +million.<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117" /><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> Ireland, therefore, he argued, had certainly no grievance, +while Great Britain received the substantial, though not strictly +sufficient, sum of two millions as Ireland's contribution to Imperial +expenses.</p> + +<p>Let us apply the same reasoning to the present situation.<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" /> Ireland, by +hypothesis, is "overtaxed" by three millions,<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118" /><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> but if not only the +revenue, but the expenditure and contribution to Imperial services of +Ireland were all in proportion to her real taxable capacity, which we +may estimate now at one-twenty-fifth, we find that she would be a loser +by five millions. Her "true" revenue from all sources <i>ought</i> on this +supposition to be £6,605,900; it <i>is</i> £10,032,000. Her local expenditure +<i>ought</i> to be £2,875,540; it <i>is</i> £11,344,500. Her contribution to +Imperial services <i>ought</i> to be £3,730,360; it <i>is</i> a minus quantity of +£1,312,500. Sir David Barbour's reasoning, then, leads us to this +astounding paradox, that Ireland, while overtaxed by three millions, +gains five millions by the arrangement. Moreover, whether we accept Sir +David Barbour's reasoning or not, it is a fact that to-day Ireland, +which contributed to Imperial services five and a half millions in 1860, +and two millions in 1894, now, so far from contributing anything, costs +a million and a quarter more than she brings in. This, certainly, was +not a result he either anticipated or would have approved of. On the +contrary, he anticipated a reduction in Irish civil expenditure, to be +saved for Irish purposes, without prejudice to the Imperial +contribution. It makes the brain dizzy to compare his anticipation with +the reality.</p> + +<p>How, on the other hand, stands the argument of Lord Farrer and Mr. +Currie? They prophesied a great increase in Irish expenditure and the +disappearance of the contribution to Imperial services. That has come +true. Lord Welby (and indeed the majority of the Commission) was with +them in declining to regard excessive local expenditure as a set-off to +excessive and unsuitable taxation, and in condemning root and branch the +system of grants, aids, and doles as wasteful in itself and as sapping +the self-reliance of Irishmen. There again they were right. They were at +one with all their colleagues in holding that under the Union it was +impossible to differentiate between the taxation of Ireland and Great +Britain, and they prescribed, as the only sound remedy, Home Rule. Once +more they were right.</p> + +<p>The figures of to-day constitute the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of the +Union. For over a century in Ireland we have defied the laws of +political economy, but they have conquered us <a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" />at last. Sound finance +demands that revenue and expenditure should be co-related. Ireland's +economic circumstances are widely different from those of Great Britain, +but she has been included, without any regard to her needs and without +any reference to Irish expenditure, in a system of taxation designed +exclusively for the capacities and needs of Great Britain. Hence Irish +revenue is both excessive and inadequate.</p> + +<p>"Excessive"? "Inadequate"? What do these terms really mean? Let us once +and for all clear our minds of all obscurity and look the facts in the +face. No one knows what Irish revenue and expenditure ought to be, or +would be, if Irishmen had controlled their own destinies. It is useless +to parade immense sums as the cash equivalent of over-taxation; it is +idle to array against them rival figures of over-expenditure. Normal +Irish revenue and normal Irish expenditure are matters of speculation. +For all we know, Ireland, had she been permitted normal political +development, would be raising a larger revenue, and feeling it less; +while it is absolutely certain that she would be paying her own way and +contributing to Imperial services more, in proportion to her resources, +than she did before the Union. The political and therefore the economic +development of Ireland have been deliberately and forcibly arrested. I +do not say malignantly, because there was no malignant intention. But +the action, if mistaken, was deliberately and consistently sustained. +Much of Irish industrial talent was lost irrevocably before the old +industrial restrictions were removed. There remained the land, an +immense source of potential wealth, if properly developed under a +rational system of agrarian tenure. For the best part of a century after +the Union, the agrarian tenure, dating from the first genuine +colonization of Ireland, when the land was confiscated wholesale and the +peasantry enslaved, was maintained by force of arms. Thirty years ago +(if we date from the Land Act of 1881) we began to change this tenure +into another equally defective, though far more favourable to the +tenant. A little later, but only eight years ago, on a thorough and +systematic scale, we began the parallel policy of Land Purchase. Even +now, having transferred half the land to peasant ownership, and placed +the other half under judicial rents, many of our statesmen are unwilling +to give Ireland the control of its own <a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" />affairs. On the contrary, step +by step with the economic enfranchisement of the farmers, has gone the +policy of destroying their personal and political independence, and +forcing them to look outside their own country for financial aid, by +spending money upon Ireland which Irishmen have no direct responsibility +for raising. What a travesty of statesmanship! First, having assisted +the farmer to buy his own land, to clap him on the back with "Now, my +fine fellow, you are a free man." In the same breath to tell him that he +is not fit to have a direct voice in the management of his own country's +affairs, and to try and reconcile him to this insult by sapping that +very independence of character which the acquirement of a freehold has +begun to instil in him.</p> + +<p>I described in Chapter IX. how a number of patriotic Irishmen, working +both at industrial and agricultural development, have striven to +counteract this fatal tendency, and to persuade their countrymen to rely +on themselves alone. But I venture to repeat what I said then, that +without the bracing discipline of Home Rule, and, above all, of the +financial Home Rule, these efforts are doomed to comparative failure.</p> + +<p>It is absolutely necessary to produce an equilibrium between revenue and +expenditure in Ireland, as in every other country in the world. Whatever +the temporary strain upon Ireland, whatever the sacrifices involved, the +thing must be done, and done now or never. Great Britain's interest is +something, but it is trivial beside that of Ireland. The situation is +growing worse, not better, and Irishmen should unite to insist that the +whole system should stop.</p> + + +<h4><a name="XII_II" id="XII_II" />II.</h4> + +<h5>IRISH EXPENDITURE.</h5> + + +<p>Let us look a little more closely at Irish expenditure, as disclosed in +the Treasury returns.</p> + +<p>For purposes of comparison, I set out first the main heads of Civil +Expenditure for England, Scotland, and Ireland in the year 1910-11:<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119" /><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a></p> + +<p><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" /></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='center'>Population.</td><td align='right'>England, 36,075,269.</td><td align='right'>Scotland, 4,759,521.</td><td align='right'> Ireland, 4,381,951.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'></td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>Civil Government Charges, 1910-11:</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(<i>a</i>) On Consolidated Fund:</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>(1) Civil List, Salaries, Pensions, and Miscellaneous Charges</td><td align='right'>340,500</td><td align='right'>148,000</td><td align='right'>138,500</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>(2) Development and Road Improvement Funds</td><td align='center'>—</td><td align='center'>—</td><td align='center'>—</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>(3) Payments to Local TaxationAccounts, etc.</td><td align='right'>7,199,500</td><td align='right'> 1,204,500</td><td align='right'> 1,477,500</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(<i>b</i>) Voted</td><td align='right'>26,121,500</td><td align='right'> 4,180,500</td><td align='right'> 8,026,000</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>Total Civil Government Charges</td><td align='right'>33,661,500 </td><td align='right'>5,533,000</td><td align='right'> 9,642,000</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue</td><td align='right'> 3,157,000</td><td align='right'>464,000</td><td align='right'>298,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>Post Office Services</td><td align='right'>15,798,500</td><td align='right'> 1,930,000</td><td align='right'> 1,404,500</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>Total Expenditure</td><td align='right'>52,617,000</td><td align='right'> 7,927,000 </td><td align='right'>11,344,500</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'></td><td align='right'>£ s. d.</td><td align='right'>£ s. d.</td><td align='right'>£ s. d.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>Per head of population</td><td align='right'>1 9 2</td><td align='right'>1 13 3½</td><td align='right'>2 11 9</td></tr> + +</table> + + +<p>The totals, if we consider relative populations, appear startling.</p> + +<p>Look at the third, or Irish, column, and set aside the two last items, +"Customs, Excise, and Inland Revenue," and "Post-Office Services," which +represent the cost of collecting Irish Revenue and maintaining the Irish +postal, telegraph, and telephone services. We may note in passing, +however, that the Post-Office receipts in Ireland in 1910-11, according +to the Treasury estimate, were less than the outgoings by £249,000 +(receipts, £1,155,500; outgoings, £1,404,500).</p> + +<p>The Civil Government Charges are the most important heads of expense, +and these are divided into two main classes: (<i>a</i>) charged on +Consolidated Fund; (<i>b</i>) Voted.</p> + +<p>Class (<i>a</i>) consists of (1) Salaries, Pensions, etc.; (2) Development +and Road Improvement Funds; (3) Payments to Local Taxation Accounts.</p> + +<p>In other parts of Return No. 220 will be found the details of +expenditure in these various classes:</p> + +<p>(1) The Salaries and Pensions need not detain us long. The principal +item is judicial salaries, £102,000, as compared with<a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" /> £282,000 for +England, which has more than eight times the population of Ireland. +Another item, £20,000 for the Lord-Lieutenant, is double the sum +allotted to any Colonial Governor, even of the Dominion of Canada, which +has nearly twice the population of Ireland. But the extravagance lies, +not in the cash amount, but in the fact that the Irish Lord-Lieutenancy +is, under present conditions, an anomalous institution. No Irishman +would grudge a penny of the sum if the Lord-Lieutenant, like a Colonial +Governor, presided over a responsibly governed Ireland.</p> + +<p>(2) Road Improvement and Development Funds. This category is blank for +the year 1910-11. There will be payments for the current year which will +swell the Irish expenditure.</p> + +<p>(3) Payments to Local Taxation Accounts, £1,477,500. This raises an +intricate subject, into which I cannot enter in great detail. It is well +known that the whole system of relieving local taxation out of Imperial +taxation needs thorough revision. Meanwhile Ireland, like other parts of +Great Britain, has been allotted at various times a multitude of +different grants under various Acts, but principally under the Local +Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, and the Finance Acts of recent years.</p> + +<p>Local Government on the British pattern was, as I have already +described, extended to Ireland only in 1898. The money now raised in +Ireland by Local Taxation is about £4,800,000, exclusive of the Grants +in Aid which we are now considering, and which appear, rightly, on the +national balance-sheet because they come from the common purse.<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120" /><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> +They are based on different principles, and originated in many different +ways. Some are fixed annual sums, determined either by some arbitrary +standard or (as in the case of the Licence Duty grants and the Customs +and Excise grants<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121" /><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a>) on the Irish proceeds of certain duties in a +year taken as standard. The Estate Duty grants still vary with the total +product of duties in the United Kingdom, and are still allocated on the +proportion settled by Mr. Goschen in 1888—namely, 9 parts to Ireland, +11 to Scotland, and 80 to England.<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122" /><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> If the proportion were to be +revised now, and, on Mr. Goschen's method, made to <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" />correspond to the +respective estimated contributions to Imperial Services, Ireland, +instead of getting £418,000, would get nothing at all. The largest item +in the list—namely, the "Agricultural Grant," a fixed annual sum of +£728,000, dating from the Local Government Act of 1898—was designed +partly to reconcile Irish landlords to the passage of that Act. Nearly +half of it represented the remission of the landlord's half-share of the +poor-rate on agricultural land, as estimated in the standard year +1896-97. The English precedent for this was the Agricultural Rates Act +of 1896, which relieved the English owner of agricultural land in a +similar way. Irish conditions were so different, however, that it was +felt necessary in this case to balance the landlord's boon with an +equivalent boon to the tenant; so that half the tenant's share of the +county cess was also remitted. The result was a disproportionately large +grant as compared with those received by England and Scotland.<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123" /><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> We +must remark, as one of the minor intricacies of Irish finance, that all +these grants do not actually go in relief of Local Taxation. Some of +them are diverted to public Departments, such as the Board of +Intermediate Education, the Congested Districts Board, and the +Department of Agriculture.</p> + +<p>All these grants will cease, as such, after Home Rule, while their +amount must be reckoned as part of the cost of Irish Government. The +Irish Parliament will have to revise the whole system of relief to Local +Taxation and establish it on some simple and rational basis. Meanwhile, +it is important to remember that the Irish grants form the major part of +the Guarantee Fund set up by the Land Purchase Acts, and, until the last +amending Land Act of 1909, were chargeable—the Estate Duties Grant, hi +the first instance, the Agricultural Grant in the second instance—with +the increasingly heavy losses incurred in floating Land Stock below par. +In 1908-09 the sums so withdrawn amounted to £90,000. That liability was +removed by Mr. Birrell's Act, and they now remain chargeable only with +any arrears in the annuities paid by the purchasing tenants. This is a +negligible liability, and should properly be placed upon the Irish +Government as a whole, which, if it pleased, could recover the money +from localities.<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124" /><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" /></p> + +<p>We now reach the category <i>(b)</i> "Voted," and find in the Irish column +the truly enormous sum of £8,026,000—nearly double that of Scotland +(£4,180,500), which has a population slightly greater, and more than a +third of that of England (£26,121,500), which has a population eight +times as great.</p> + +<p>When we search the various tables of detailed expenditure, three +prominent items arrest our attention:</p> + + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'>Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125" /><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a></td><td align='left'>£1,464,500</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Old Age Pensions</td><td align='left'>£2,408,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Public (<i>i.e.</i>, Primary) Education</td><td align='left' class="bb">£1,632,000</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>£5,504,500</td></tr></table> + + + +<p>Those three items may be said to epitomize the history of Ireland under +the Union—coercion, pauperization, deficient education. The first two +are, of course, intimately connected. The existing cost of police, +surviving needlessly at the monstrous figure shown, represents the past +cost of enforcing laws economically hurtful to Ireland. The economic +hurt is reflected in the cost of Old Age Pensions paid to a +disproportionately large number of old people, below the official +standard of wealth, in a country drained by emigration for seventy years +past of its strongest sons and daughters. Police in Ireland costs twice +as much as in England and Scotland, where (with the exception of the +<i>London Metropolitan Police</i>) it is a local, not a national charge, +while Irish Old Age Pensions cost in 1910-11 more than twice as much as +Scottish Pensions, and amounted to two-fifths of English Pensions.<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126" /><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a> +With full allowance for excess payments owing to the lack of all birth +records prior to a certain date, the Irish figure is relatively +enormous. It is £100,000 greater than the whole cost of Irish Government +in 1860, and, with the addition made in the estimates of the present +year, it is just a million more than what, according to Sir David +Barbour's reasoning, would have been the whole cost of Irish Government +in 1893-94, had Irish expenditure, like Irish revenue, been in +proportion to the taxable capacity of Ireland.<a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" /></p> + +<p>I touched upon the Irish aspect of the policy of Old Age Pensions at p. +181. Whatever the pecuniary charge, I suggest that it is absolutely +necessary for Ireland in the future to control both payment and policy, +and she might find it in her best interest, with due notice and due +regard to present interests, to halve the scale of pensions. It is not a +question of the general policy of Old Age Pensions, but of the +applicability of a certain scale to Ireland, where agricultural wages +(for example) average only 11s. 3d. as compared with 18s. 4d. for +England, and 19s. 7d. for Scotland.<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127" /><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> Of all ways of remedying a +backward economic condition, that of excessive pensions is the worst.</p> + +<p>The cost of Irish Primary Education—£1,632,000, as I pointed out in +Chapter IX.—is at once too high and too low; too high in the sense that +much of it is wasted owing to the lack of popular control, too low in +the sense that it is a scandal to spend nearly as much on police as on +the education of children, and £800,000 more on Old Age Pensions than on +the education of children. If part or even the whole of the additional +expense eventually necessary is raised by rates, so much the better. +Accurate comparison is difficult with the English and Scottish +expenditure on elementary education, because the greater part of the +cost in those countries is borne by private endowments and local rates, +whereas in Ireland no local rate is raised for elementary education, +there are no endowments, and private subscriptions are very small.<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128" /><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> +It is certain, however, that far greater sums, in proportion to +population, are spent in England and Scotland than in Ireland. This is +little to be wondered at if we consider the painful history of education +in Ireland; but we cannot recall the past, and, as I urged in Chapter +IX., one of the first duties of a free Ireland will be to improve the +education of the children.<a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" /></p> + +<p>The Irish vote for Universities and Colleges, £166,000, has been swelled +by the recent establishment of the National University. No item in the +whole list represents money better spent.</p> + +<p>With regard to other Irish services, I shall make use, with Professor +Oldham's consent, of some interesting tables compiled by him, showing +the principal variations in Irish expenditure since the year +1891-92.<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129" /><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a></p> + +<p>They include certain expenses which I have already alluded to, and +others which I shall have to remark upon further, besides giving a +general view of the growth in the cost of Irish government. Neither of +lists A or B is exhaustive:</p> + + +<h5>A. INCREASES OF EXPENDITURE.</h5> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>1910-11.</td><td align='right'>1891-92.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1. Old Age Pensions</td><td align='right'>2,408,000</td><td align='center'>—</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>2. Primary Education</td><td align='right'>1,632,000</td><td align='right'>843,755</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>3. Universities and Colleges</td><td align='right'>166,000</td><td align='right'>26,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>4. Payments to Local Taxation Account</td><td align='right'>1,477,500</td><td align='right'>399,260</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>5. Ireland Development Grant</td><td align='right'>191,500</td><td align='center'>—</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>6. Post Office</td><td align='right'>1,404,500</td><td align='right'>749,046</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>7. Cost of collecting Irish Revenue</td><td align='right'>298,000</td><td align='right'>223,362</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>8. Surveys of the United Kingdom</td><td align='right'>81,000</td><td align='right'>47,603</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>9. Land Commission</td><td align='right'>414,500</td><td align='right'>91,826</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>10. Department of Agriculture</td><td align='right'>415,000</td><td align='right'>44,630</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>11. Other items (five<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130" /><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a>)</td><td align='right' class="bb">240,500 </td><td align='right' class="bb"> 172,918</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>8,728,500</td><td align='right'>2,598,400</td></tr> +</table> + + +<p>Nos. 1 to 4 I have already dealt with, but it is interesting to note the +contrasting figures of 1893-94.</p> + +<p>No. 5. The Ireland Development Grant of £191,500 is interesting as an +example of the haphazard methods of Anglo-Irish finance. It is an annual +sum voted for various develop<a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" />ment purposes, and was originally +established (at the figure of £185,000) in 1903 as an equivalent for the +capitation grants for school attendance in England, given under the +Education Act of 1902 in lieu of school fees. In allotting the Irish +equivalent, Mr. Goschen's proportion of 80, 11, 9 was for the first time +condemned by all parties. What the proportion ought to be was a matter +of dispute, but it was fixed in this case on the basis of population. +Since the English grant has now risen to £2,500,000, the Irish +proportion therefore is now, strictly speaking, inadequate.</p> + +<p>Nos. 6, 7, and 8 are examples of charges debited by the Treasury against +Ireland which are open to criticism as long as the Union lasts, and +which meet with much complaint in Ireland. Obviously, however, the first +two at any rate are charges which an Ireland financially independent +would have to bear.</p> + +<p>No. 9. The Land Commission vote of £414,500 is of course the direct +result of an abnormally bad system, necessitating abnormal and costly +remedial administration. Ireland herself is not morally responsible for +a penny of it, but if she is wise she will shoulder the cost as a +corollary of responsible government. Small administrative economies may +be made, and the cost will disappear altogether with the completion of +Land Purchase, say in fifteen years, but in the immediate future no +reduction can be counted on with certainty. The figure given includes +the cost of the Land Commission proper, which deals with Judicial Rents +and manages finance, as well as the cost of the Estates Commissioners +who conduct the machinery of Land Purchase. It also includes losses on +the flotation of Land Stock at a discount, and the interest and +sinking-fund on the Stock raised to pay the bonus to landlords.</p> + +<p>No. 10. The vote of £415,000 for the Department of Agriculture, whose +origin and functions I described in Chapter IX., does not accurately +show the actual cost of the Department, because it excludes the greater +part of an Endowment Income of £166,000 a year, derived partly from the +Irish Church Fund, partly from the Irish Local Taxation Account, and +partly from the interest on a capital endowment of £200,000, as well as +other small miscellaneous grants. But it includes a sum of about £44,000 +for some museums, colleges, gardens, etc., whose English counterparts +are subsidized under different votes, as <a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" />well as the sum of £144,000 +for the Congested Districts Board.<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131" /><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> Nor does this latter sum +represent the full cost of the Congested Districts Board, which has also +an Endowment Income from the Irish Church Fund of £41,250, a subsidy +from the Ireland Development Grant, and a fluctuating income from +various sources—rents, etc.</p> + +<p>Part of the expense of the Department itself must be regarded as +abnormal, in view of the extraordinarily backward economic condition of +the country when it was founded. Nor, valuable as the Department's work +is, can it be safely assumed that the cost is not extravagant. As long +as any Department relies on an Imperial vote there can be no certainty +that the expenditure will be economical. The whole cost of the Congested +Districts Board is abnormal. Its very existence is evidence of the +failure of external government in Ireland, and, as I urged in Chapter +IX., the whole question of the treatment of the congested districts +needs thorough investigation at the hands of a responsible Irish +Government.</p> + + +<h5>B. REDUCTIONS IN EXPENDITURE.</h5> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>1910-11.</td><td align='right'>1891-92.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1. Relief of Distress</td><td align='right'>5,000</td><td align='right'>183,675</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>2. Pauper Lunatics Grant</td><td align='right'>—</td><td align='right'>111,655</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>3. Teachers' Pensions Grant</td><td align='right'>—</td><td align='right'>90,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>4. Railways (Ireland) Grant</td><td align='right'>61,000</td><td align='right'>341,934</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>5. Local Government Board</td><td align='right'>92,500</td><td align='right'>132,748</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>6. Chief Secretary's Offices</td><td align='right'>27,500</td><td align='right'>39,681</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>7. Registrar-General's Office</td><td align='right'>13,000</td><td align='right'>29,926</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>8. Justice and Police</td><td align='right' class="bb">2,090,500</td><td align='right' class="bb">2,129,849</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>2,289,500</td><td align='right'>3,059,468</td></tr></table> + + + +<p>Most of these reductions are deceptive. No. 1 is the saving of an +abnormal grant, Nos. 2 and 5 signify mere transfers to Grants in Aid of +Local Taxation, No. 7 a transfer of duties to the Department of +Agriculture.<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" /></p> + +<p>The table shows a total reduction of £769,968, while Table A shows a +total increase of £6,130,000. Together they account for an increase +since 1891-92 of £5,360,032.</p> + +<p>Here is a similar table, confined to Justice and Police:</p> + + +<h5>C. EXPENDITURE ON JUSTICE AND POLICE.</h5> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>1910-11.</td><td align='right'>1891-92.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1. Judicial Salaries</td><td align='right'>102,000</td><td align='right'>110,244</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>2. Dublin Metropolitan Police</td><td align='right'>93,500</td><td align='right'>91,998</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>3. Royal Irish Constabulary</td><td align='right'>1,371,000</td><td align='right'>1,362,348</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>4. Judicial Pensions, etc.</td><td align='right'>15,000</td><td align='right'>18,656</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>5. Law Charges</td><td align='right'>65,500</td><td align='right'>71,977</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>6. Superior Courts Offices</td><td align='right'>110,500</td><td align='right'>116,851</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>7. County Courts Offices</td><td align='right'>109,000</td><td align='right'>112,895</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>8. Prisons, etc.</td><td align='right'>112,000</td><td align='right'>134,429</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>9. Reformatories, etc.</td><td align='right' class="bb">112,000</td><td align='right' class="bb">110,451</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>2,090,500</td><td align='right'>2,129,849</td></tr></table> + + + +<p>To Nos. 1, 2, and 3 I have already referred. The whole charge of two +millions, though it shows a slight decrease in twenty years, is grossly +out of proportion to the resources of Ireland. Under heads 6 and 7 are +included a number of posts which are notoriously little more than +sinecures.</p> + +<p>To sum up once more, the cost of the Irish Government as paid out of the +common purse in the last completed financial year was £11,344,500, or £2 +11s. 9d. per head of the population, as compared with a cost per head of +£1 9s. 2d. in England, and in Scotland of £1 13s. 3½d. But this is not +the minimum figure with which we have to reckon in considering the Home +Rule scheme; some items show a marked increase in the Estimates of the +current year: (1) The increase in Old Age Pensions, not certain yet, +will be at least £250,000. (2) The Land Commission is £544,000, as +compared with £414,500. (3) Universities and Colleges, £186,256, as +compared with £166,000. (4) Department of Agriculture, £426,609, as +compared with £415,000. (5) Registrar-General's Office, £29,020, as +compared with £13,000. (6) Valuation and Boundary Survey, £44,581, as +compared with £30,000. (7) Public Works and Buildings in Ireland, +£273,370, as compared with £215,000. Even with <a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" />allowance for +over-estimates, especially in the last of these items,<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132" /><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> we must +anticipate an increase of nearly half a million under the above heads, +to which we must add £150,000 recently allocated by the Road Board to +Ireland for the year 1911-12, and £34,750 already allocated by the +Development Commissioners. If Ireland comes prematurely into the +National Insurance scheme, and assumes eventual financial responsibility +for her share of the cost, that will be an additional source of expense; +but it is to be hoped that her leaders, in common prudence, will +henceforth endeavour to stem the rising flood of Irish expenditure, and +so facilitate the retrenchments imperatively necessary under Home Rule. +As it is, the total outgoings of the current year (1911-12), swelled by +the increases shown above, will probably amount to £12,000,000, while +this total will in its turn be added to by the office costs of the Irish +Legislature and the salaries of Ministers.</p> + +<p>The scheme framed cannot assume immediate economies, and a responsible +Ireland alone can decide the nature and extent of the drastic economies +which must be made in the future. Beyond the brief remarks and hints +made in the course of this chapter, I myself venture only to lay down +the broad proposition that, to the last farthing, Irish revenue must +govern and limit Irish expenditure. For any hardship entailed in +achieving that aim Ireland will find superabundant compensation in the +moral independence which is the foundation of national welfare. She will +be sorely tempted to sell part of her freedom for a price. At whatever +cost, she will be wise to resist.</p> + +<p>If Irish revenue is to be the measure of Irish expenditure, it follows +that it must be wholly, or at any rate predominately, under Irish +control. Let us look a little more closely, therefore, into its amount +and composition.</p> + + +<h4><a name="XII_III" id="XII_III" />III.</h4> + +<h5>IRISH REVENUE.</h5> + + +<p>As I have already pointed out, in order to arrive at the present revenue +of Ireland, our best course is to take the mean <a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" />tax revenue of the two +years 1909-10 and 1910-11, and to add to it the non-tax revenue of +1910-11, which was, of course, unaffected by the delay in passing the +Budget of 1909. For clearness, however, I first set out separately the +Irish figures of these two years, distinguishing between tax revenue and +non-tax revenue, and giving the "collected" revenue and the "true" +revenue in different columns:</p> + + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='center' colspan='2'>1909-10.</td><td align='center' colspan='2'>1910-11.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>Revenue as Collected.</td><td align='right'>"True."</td><td align='right'>Revenue as Collected.</td><td align='right'>"True"</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>TAX REVENUE.</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Customs</td><td align='right'>2,742,000</td><td align='right'>2,755,000</td><td align='right'>3,103,000</td><td align='right'>2,977,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Excise</td><td align='right'>4,487,000</td><td align='right'>2,898,000</td><td align='right'>5,826,000</td><td align='right'>3,734,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Estate, etc., Duties</td><td align='right'>684,000</td><td align='right'>684,000</td><td align='right'>1,144,000</td><td align='right'>1,144,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Stamps</td><td align='right'>293,000</td><td align='right'>315,000</td><td align='right'>326,000</td><td align='right'>351,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Income Tax</td><td align='right'>388,000</td><td align='right'>451,000</td><td align='right'>1,825,000</td><td align='right'>2,164,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Land Value Duties</td><td align='right'>—</td><td align='right'>—</td><td align='right'>1,000</td><td align='right'>1,000</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left' class="bt">Total Irish Revenue from Taxes</td><td align='right' class="bt">8,594,000</td><td align='right' class="bt">7,103,000</td><td align='right' class="bt">12,225,000</td><td align='right' class="bt">10,371,000</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left' class="bt">NON-TAX REVENUE.</td><td class="bt"></td><td class="bt"></td><td class="bt"></td><td class="bt"></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Postal Service</td><td align='right'>900,000</td><td align='right'>900,000</td><td align='right'>935,000</td><td align='right'>935,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Telegraph Service</td><td align='right'>180,000</td><td align='right'>180,000</td><td align='right'>185,500</td><td align='right'>185,500</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Telephone Service</td><td align='right'>30,000</td><td align='right'>30,000</td><td align='right'>35,000</td><td align='right'>35,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Crown Lands</td><td align='right'>26,000</td><td align='right'>26,000</td><td align='right'>24,500</td><td align='right'>24,500</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Miscellaneous</td><td align='right'>116,000</td><td align='right'>116,000</td><td align='right'>114,500</td><td align='right'>114,500</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left' class="bt">Total Irish Non-Tax Revenue</td><td align='right' class="bt">1,252,000</td><td align='right' class="bt">1,252,000</td><td align='right' class="bt">1,294,500</td><td align='right' class="bt">1,294,500</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left' class="bt">Aggregate Irish Revenue</td><td align='right' class="bt">9,846,000</td><td align='right' class="bt">8,355,000</td><td align='right' class="bt">13,519,500</td><td align='right' class="bt">11,665,500</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Percentage of the Aggregate Revenue of the United Kingdom</td><td align='right'>7.52</td><td align='right'>6.38</td><td align='right'>6.57</td><td align='right'>5.67</td></tr></table> + + + +<p>On p. 276 are the details of the mean tax revenue, "collected" and +"true," of the two years 1909-10, 1910-11, with the non-tax revenue of +the latest year, 1910-11, added to them.</p> + +<h5>PRESENT IRISH REVENUE (MEAN OF THE LAST TWO YEARS).</h5> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> + + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>Details of Revenue.</td><td align='right'>Mean Collected Tax Revenue of the Years 1909-10, 1910-11.</td> +<td align='right'>Mean "True" or "Contributed" Tax Revenue of the Years 1909-10, 1910-11.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>TAX REVENUE.</td><td align='right'>£</td><td align='right'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Indirect Taxation</td><td align='right'>Customs</td><td align='right'>2,922,500</td><td align='right'>2,866,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>Excise (incl. licences £284,500)</td><td align='right'>5,156,500</td><td align='right'>3,316,000</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2' class="bt">Total Indirect Taxation</td><td align='right' class="bt">8,079,000</td><td align='right' class="bt">6,182,000</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' class="bt"></td><td align='right' class="bt">Estate Duties</td><td align='right' class="bt">914,000</td><td align='right' class="bt">914,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Direct Taxation</td><td align='right'>Stamps</td><td align='right'>309,500</td><td align='right'>333,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>Income Tax</td><td align='right'>1,106,500</td><td align='right'>1,307,500</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>Land Value Duties</td><td align='right'>1,000</td><td align='right'>1,000</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2' class="bt">Total Direct Taxation</td><td align='right' class="bt">2,331,000</td><td align='right' class="bt">2,555,500</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2' class="bt">Total Tax Revenue</td><td align='right' class="bt">10,410,000</td><td align='right' class="bt">8,737,500</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2' class="bt">NON TAX REVENUE (1910-11).</td><td class="bt"> </td><td class="bt"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>Postal Service</td><td align='right'>935,000</td><td align='right'>935,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>Telegraph Service</td><td align='right'>185,500</td><td align='right'>185,500</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>Telephone Service</td><td align='right'>35,000</td><td align='right'>35,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>Crown Lands</td><td align='right'>24,000</td><td align='right'>24,500</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>Miscellaneous</td><td align='right'>114,500</td><td align='right'>114,500</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2' class="bt">Total Non Tax Revenue (1910-11)</td><td align='right' class="bt">1,294,500</td><td align='right' class="bt">1,294,500</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2' class="bt"></td><td align='right' class="bt">Collected Revenue at the Present Day.</td> +<td align='right' class="bt">"True" or "Contributed" Revenue at the Present Day.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>Aggregates</td><td align='right'>11,704,500</td><td align='right'>10,032,000</td></tr> +</table> + + +<p>The two aggregate figures at the bottom, £11,704,500 and £10,032,000, +approximately represent the Treasury estimate of the "collected" and the +"true" revenue of Ireland, respec<a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" />tively, at the present day. They are +confirmed by the figures of previous years; for the average revenue of +the five years, 1904-09, was as follows: "collected," £11,320,000; +"true" or "contributed," £9,612,400, the new taxation of 1909-10 having +added £500,000 to the "true" revenue. I must again remind the reader, +however, that the figures are open to the criticism that the adjustment +between the "collected" tax revenue and the "true" revenue is inaccurate +owing to the methods employed by the Treasury. It will be observed that +the resulting net deduction from the "collected" tax revenue of to-day, +a deduction attributable, on the balance of the various figures, almost +exclusively to Excise,<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133" /><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> and mainly to the<a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" /> Excise duty on spirits, +amounts to £1,672,500, and makes all the difference between the solvency +and insolvency of Ireland regarded as an independent financial unit. Her +expenditure, it will be remembered, was £11,344,500, her "collected" +revenue £11,704,500, leaving a surplus of £360,000, which becomes a +deficit of £1,312,500 if we reckon only the "true" or "contributed" +revenue of £10,032,000. On the other hand, the principle, as +distinguished from the methods of adjustment, is perfectly sound if we +wish to arrive at a correct idea of the financial position of Ireland. +The £1,672,500 virtually represents the duties on goods exported from +Ireland, and consumed in Great Britain, or rather the excess of these +duties over those levied on goods exported from Great Britain and +consumed in Ireland. The consumer pays the tax on dutiable commodities, +and a financially independent Ireland could not raise revenue twice over +from the same commodity. She would, for example, have to give a drawback +from the Excise duty on spirits exported to England, since a Customs +duty would be levied on its import into England. On the other hand, she +would be entitled to every penny of revenue derived from the tea and +sugar imported into and consumed within her borders, and to the full +income tax on property held by Irishmen.</p> + +<p>Now, for two reasons, I do not propose to make any exhaustive inquiry +into the accuracy of Treasury adjustments for "true" revenue. My first +reason is, that full material for calculation cannot be obtained by any +private individual, and could not be obtained and worked up even by the +Treasury without an enormous expenditure of time and trouble. The most +careful inquiry I have seen is embodied in an exceedingly <a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" />able pamphlet +by "an Irishman," entitled "The Financial Relations of Ireland with the +Imperial Exchequer," and I mention below a few of the criticisms made by +the writer. His and other investigations seem to prove that Irish +revenue is considerably underestimated, perhaps by half a million.<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134" /><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> +My second reason is that errors of adjustment in either direction cannot +affect in any substantial way the kind of financial scheme we are to +adopt in the Home Rule Bill.</p> + +<p>Let us fix our attention, then, on the second of the two columns in the +table on p. 276, showing the aggregate "true"<a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" /> revenue of Ireland at the +present day. Disregard the non-tax revenue from the various postal +services (which represents payment for services rendered, and is +swallowed up by an excess on the expenditure side of £249,000), and +examine the heads of tax revenue shown in the upper half of the column. +It will be seen that 70-75 per cent. of Irish "true" revenue is derived +from Customs and Excise duties, which, with the exception perhaps of +licence duties, may be classed as indirect taxation. The deduction for +"true" revenue, it will be observed, has considerably modified the +proportion, which for "collected" revenue works out at 77.61 per cent., +or nearly four-fifths.</p> + +<p>As the reader is aware, this is not a new feature in Irish finance. It +formed the basis of the Report of the Financial Relations Commission +with regard to the over-taxation of Ireland. Much the greater part of +Irish revenue, even since the abolition of protective duties and the +substitution of direct taxation, has always been derived from taxes on +articles of common consumption, the simple reason being that Ireland is +a country where there is little accumulated wealth from which to extract +direct taxation. In Great Britain, whose circumstances dictate the +finance of the United Kingdom, no less than 54.79 per cent. of the tax +revenue is derived from direct taxation, only 45.21 per cent. from +Customs and Excise.<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135" /><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a></p> + +<p>The Irish figures show that to retain in the hands of the Imperial +Parliament the control of Irish Customs and Excise will be to retain +almost paramount control over Irish revenue; to deny Ireland the main +lever she needs for co-ordinating her expenditure and her revenue, and +for making her taxation suitable to her economic conditions. It will be +to preserve the framework of a fiscal system which the highest financial +authorities have pronounced to be unfair to Ireland, and which +incontrovertible facts show to be uneconomical both for Ireland and +Great Britain.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile that system has at length produced a deficit, with which I +shall deal in the next chapter. Its amount, probably exaggerated, must +necessarily remain uncertain under the present fiscal Union. One thing +alone is certain, that it will grow as long as that Union lasts.<a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII" />CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE</h3> + + +<h4><a name="XIII_I" id="XIII_I" />I.</h4> + +<h5>THE ESSENCE OF HOME RULE.</h5> + + +<p>Let us now sum up this financial question, and give its place in the +general problem of Home Rule. In Chapter X. I argued that, on broad +grounds of political policy, Ireland, in her own interest, and in the +general interest of the United Kingdom, should have "Colonial" Home Rule +without representation in the Imperial Parliament. Leaving finance +temporarily aside, while observing that any substantial Imperial control +over Irish finance would defeat the "colonial" solution of the problem, +I endeavoured to show that there were no tenable grounds of a +non-financial character for retaining Irish Members at Westminster, nor +any dangers to be feared from excluding them. I have now reviewed the +history of Anglo-Irish finance up to the present day, and I hope in so +doing to have proved that, so far from presenting an obstacle to +"Colonial" Home Rule, the financial conditions demand such a solution. +Finance and policy are inseparably one. All the considerations which +render Home Rule desirable lead irresistibly to the financial +independence of Ireland, with complete control assigned to her over all +branches of taxation. Without financial independence it is impossible to +realize the objects of Home Rule. It would be a miracle were the case +otherwise. Ireland would, indeed, be abnormal if, after her history, she +could reach prosperity and stability without passing through a phase of +financial independence. No parallel, even in the most distant degree, +could be found for any such metamorphosis in the whole of the British +Empire.</p> + +<p>If we study Ireland's interest, we shall promote Imperial interests. The +main object of Home Rule is to make Ireland self-reliant. Lord Welby and +his colleagues were right in 1896 when they declared that ideal to be +impracticable without giving<a name="Page_281" id="Page_281" /> Ireland entire responsibility both for her +revenue and her expenditure. This declaration is as true as ever. The +situation has changed only in one respect: that financial independence +will now mean a financial sacrifice to Ireland, whereas in 1896 it would +have meant a financial gain to Ireland—that is, if Lord Welby's +recommendation in favour of remitting the Irish contribution to Imperial +services had been carried out. At that time Ireland contributed two +millions. Now Great Britain contributes over a million to Ireland. +Sooner or later that subsidy must stop, and the sooner it stops the +better.</p> + +<p>But it is of vital importance that Ireland should understand the +situation. The present position is dangerous, because the Irish people +at large are ignorant of the facts, and their leaders are taking no +steps to enlighten them. The reasons are intelligible, but they are not +sound reasons. Paced with the facts and the choice, Ireland would not +hesitate, but she must know the facts and understand the nature of the +choice.</p> + + +<h4><a name="XIII_II" id="XIII_II" />II.</h4> + +<h5>THE DEFICIT.</h5> + + +<p>Let us deal at once with the question of the deficit. It is +inconceivable surely that the existence of a deficit should be used as +an argument against financial independence, much less as an argument +against Home Rule in general. Will anyone be found to say that an island +with a fertile soil, several nourishing industries, and a clever +population of four and a half millions, is to be regarded, whatever its +past history, as incapable of supporting a Government of its own out of +its own resources? Let nobody be tempted by the fallacy that, given +time, Ireland will regain financial stability under the fiscal Union, +and at a later stage, perhaps, be more fitted to bear the burden of +fiscal independence. The supposition is chimerical. The present system, +besides being radically vicious in a purely scientific sense, undermines +the moral power of Ireland to secure her own regeneration.</p> + +<p>It is now 1911. The deficit, once a large surplus, came into being only +two years ago. It was the direct and inevitable result of a fiscal Union +against which Ireland has for generations <a name="Page_282" id="Page_282" />unceasingly protested, and it +was a result actually foretold in 1896 by Lord Welby and his two +colleagues. It could have been averted, as they pointed out, only by a +form of Home Rule giving financial independence to Ireland. But the +warning was older than the Report of the Financial Relations Commission. +Mr. Gladstone told the House of Commons in 1886, when introducing his +Home Rule Bill, that no limit could be set to Irish expenditure under +the Union; he and Sir William Harcourt repeated the warning in 1893, and +if the reader will study the debates on the financial clauses of the +Bill of 1893,<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136" /><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> he will find pages of bitter diatribe founded on the +small net contribution from Ireland to Imperial services for which the +revised financial scheme provided. Ireland, said the Opposition, was to +make money out of Great Britain, and escape her fair proportion of +Imperial charges. Mr. Chamberlain showed that, with allowance for +payment from the Imperial purse of part of the cost of Irish police, the +net initial contribution was about one-fortieth, and asked: "Is Irish +patriotism a plant of such sickly growth that it has to be watered with +British gold?" The taunt was as pointless as it was cruel, for although +the Union had kept Ireland poor, Irish leaders, in spite of that +poverty, had asked for a financial independence which Mr. Gladstone in +neither of his Bills felt disposed to give her. Mr. Chamberlain had his +way; the Union was maintained, and as a result Ireland's actual +contribution of two millions at that date has been replaced by a subsidy +from Great Britain. Are we to be told now by Unionists that the Union +must be maintained in order to maintain this subsidy? or by Home Rulers +that the Irish deficit is an argument for the perpetuation of the +financial dependence which caused it, and an insuperable bar to the +financial independence which alone can extinguish it?</p> + +<p>No; let us look the facts in the face. Here is a deficit officially +given as £1,312,000. It is probably less, owing to an underestimate of +Irish revenue. But it may grow to be more, even with allowance for an +automatic growth of revenue, owing to the increased votes of the present +year, and the expenses peculiar to the establishment of the new Irish +Legislature and Government. What her really healthy and normal <a name="Page_283" id="Page_283" />revenue +should be only Ireland herself can discover in the future. What her +right expenditure should be she alone can determine. We can only work +upon the data we have before us. Economy cannot be instantaneous, either +in Ireland or anywhere else. Assume, then, an initial deficit in the +Irish balance-sheet on the basis of present taxation. Its exact size +cannot affect the manner of dealing with it. How are we to deal with it?</p> + +<p>Let us dismiss at once the theory of "restitution" with the earnest hope +that we shall hear nothing of it in the coming controversy. No Irishman +will argue that a subsidy to the extent of, or exceeding the deficit, is +a good thing in itself, and should be large and lasting because it will +represent compensation for money unfairly exacted in the past. It is, +indeed, true that the Union impoverished Ireland, but the most grievous +wrong was moral, and for that wrong alone is reparation possible. Home +Rule is not worth fighting for if it has not as its end and aim a +self-reliant and self-supporting Ireland. Nor does it improve the +argument in the least to represent the subsidy as productive expenditure +for the purpose of raising Ireland's taxable capacity and improving her +economic position. No money raised outside of Ireland will have that +effect. Once admit the principle of restitution, and where are you to +stop? What rational or scientific limit can be set to it? More pertinent +question still, what are the conditions which will inevitably be imposed +in exchange? Ireland cannot have it both ways. She must either hold out +for financial independence or, for every financial boon, submit to a +corresponding deduction from her political liberty.</p> + +<p>If there were no alternative between financial independence without a +farthing of temporary aid, and permanent financial dependence with a +permanent loss of liberty, it would pay Ireland a thousandfold in the +future to choose the former scheme, remodel taxation promptly to meet +the initial deficit, and with equal promptitude set on foot such a +drastic reduction of expenditure as would ensure the rapid attainment of +a proper financial equilibrium. When once the Irish realized the issue, +they would accept the responsibility with all its attendant sacrifices, +which would no doubt be severe.<a name="Page_284" id="Page_284" /></p> + +<p>But there is an alternative, and that is to make good the initial +deficit, whatever the financial authorities finally pronounce it to be, +with an initial subsidy of equal size, or perhaps of somewhat greater +size so as to admit of a small initial surplus, <i>but destined to +diminish by stated amounts, and within a few years to terminate</i>. To +such assistance, given unconditionally, Ireland has an unanswerable +claim, and to such assistance she ought, in my opinion, to limit her +claim. Until two years ago she contributed uninterruptedly, and +sometimes excessively, to the support of the Empire. With men and money +she has made efforts for the common weal which no self-governing Colony +has made, though she has been treated, politically and financially, as +not even a Crown Colony has been treated. Just at the point where the +self-governing Colonies, thanks to the liberty allowed them, are +beginning to contribute indirectly to the defence of the Empire, +Ireland, as the ultimate result of a century of coercive government, +ceases to contribute. She can claim honourably, if she wills, to be +placed, by temporary financial aid from the authority which is +responsible for her undoing, in the financial position of a +self-governing Colony.</p> + +<p>From the British point of view it is difficult to see any valid +objection to the course suggested. There will be no stinginess in the +settlement. Even if there were any disposition in that direction, it +would be idle to grudge the initial subsidy, because an equivalent sum +is already being paid. The Union will infallibly continue to accentuate +the deficit and increase the resulting burden on the taxpayers of Great +Britain. The plan proposed would eventually remove that burden. But, +obviously, its success hinges on the concession of full financial powers +to an Ireland unrepresented at Westminster. In their own interests, if +not for very shame, Englishmen should decline to make use of the old +adage, that "he who pays the piper should call the tune." For more than +a century Ireland paid the piper and England called the tune—and what a +tune, and with what results! Representation has nothing to do with the +case. Precedents are needless, but there are, as a fact, many. Crown +Colonies have frequently received free grants for the relief of +distress—Jamaica and other West Indian islands, for example. The +Transvaal and Orange River Colony received several millions after the +war <a name="Page_285" id="Page_285" />to enable the ruined farmers to start business on a footing of +solvency. During the whole period of their adolescence, and, indeed, +until quite a recent date, all the self-governing Colonies were +virtually subsidized by the allocation of British forces for local +defence, maintained at the Imperial charge. And Ireland paid her share +of this charge. Similar garrisons were, are, and will be, maintained in +Ireland. Yes, but Ireland contributed to their cost, and in course of +time will, it is to be hoped, resume her contributions with a gladder +heart and a freer conscience than ever before.</p> + +<p>Canada was economically stagnant under coercion. If, in her case, we had +carried coercion as far as we carried it in Ireland, it would have been +necessary to give her a temporary subsidy in order to enable her to +assume the position of a self-governing Colony. Ireland's proximity does +not alter economic laws. "Facts are stubborn things," and these are the +Irish facts. Duty apart, no more profitable investment could possibly be +made by the British tax-payer than a subsidy designed to enable Ireland +to stand on her legs again. The present tribute to her is a dead loss.</p> + +<p>The subsidy, if given, ought, I submit, on no account to be earmarked, +on the bad precedent set by the Bills of 1886 and 1893,<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137" /><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> for any +particular head of expenditure in Ireland, as for Police, Pensions, Land +Commission, or Education. As I have shown previously, nothing is easier +than to pick out items of excessive expenditure, or of +under-expenditure, for which Ireland is not herself responsible. But to +allocate a grant specially to any of these purposes would be superfluous +unless the intention were to maintain Imperial control over the service +in question. As I urged in Chapter X., none of the services mentioned +above ought to be retained under Imperial control. Extravagance in the +first three will not be properly checked, save by a responsible Ireland. +Nor will extra money on Education be properly spent until it is raised +and spent by Ireland. There are no other services, with the possible +exception of Posts, to which a subsidy could possibly be applicable. +Even in that case an earmarked subsidy would be out of place. But Posts +are outside the point we are <a name="Page_286" id="Page_286" />discussing. If for mutual convenience they +were to be kept under Imperial control—a step which would not render +imperative Irish representation at Westminster—their finance would +remain, as at present, common to the whole United Kingdom. There is +officially held, on bad evidence, to be a loss on Irish Posts of +£249,000, and this loss is debited against Ireland, and goes to swell +the deficit we have been considering. With the Posts under Imperial +control, the initial deficit to be made good by subsidy would be reduced +by the amount of the loss. Should it, however, be decided that Ireland +is fairly entitled to a share of the large general profit earned by the +Postal Services of the United Kingdom, the annual profit so attributable +to Ireland would be set off against the annual subsidy as long as the +subsidy lasted, and after it was at an end would be a clear item of +revenue to Ireland. My own opinion, as I stated in Chapter X., is that +the Irish postal system, whether standing by itself it shows a profit or +a loss, ought to be under Irish control.</p> + + +<h4><a name="XIII_III" id="XIII_III" />III.</h4> + +<h5>FUTURE CONTRIBUTION TO IMPERIAL SERVICES.</h5> + + +<p>This must be left a voluntary matter for Ireland, as it is for the +self-governing Colonies. There is no contribution from Ireland at +present, and to fix a future date at which a fixed contribution, like +that from the Isle of Man, should begin, is a course hardly practicable +even if it were desirable.</p> + + +<h4><a name="XIII_IV" id="XIII_IV" />IV.</h4> + +<h5>IRELAND'S SHARE OF THE NATIONAL DEBT.</h5> + + +<p>Until two years ago Ireland, of course, contributed, <i>inter alia</i>, to +the annual interest and sinking fund, amounting in 1910-11 to +£24,554,000, on the National Debt of the United Kingdom. It is +impossible to estimate her share of the capital of the Debt, and I +scarcely think that anyone would seriously propose to encumber the new +Ireland with an old Debt, based on some arbitrary estimate. For the +great bulk <a name="Page_287" id="Page_287" />of Debt created in the past she has little moral +responsibility—no more, at any rate, than the self-governing Colonies. +In this respect she must begin, like them, with a clean sheet.</p> + + +<h4><a name="XIII_V" id="XIII_V" />V.</h4> + +<h5>IRELAND'S SHARE OF IMPERIAL MISCELLANEOUS REVENUE.</h5> + + +<p>On the other hand, Ireland, in consideration of the remissions +mentioned, must renounce the share to which she is technically entitled +of the Imperial Miscellaneous Revenue, derived mainly from Suez Canal +shares and the Mint, and amounting altogether in 1910-11 to +£2,769,500.<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138" /><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a></p> + + +<h4><a name="XIII_VI" id="XIII_VI" />VI.</h4> + +<h5>IRISH CONTROL OF CUSTOMS AND EXCISE.</h5> + + +<p>Let us now come to close quarters with this important issue. The grand +argument on the affirmative side is that the products of these duties +represent nearly four-fifths of the tax revenue collected in Ireland. +What are the objections?</p> + +<p>We need scarcely consider the general objection, sometimes made +ostensibly in the interests of Ireland, that her public men have little +financial experience. The fact is true, and it is not their fault. But +the financial scheme cannot reasonably be based on a recognition of a +temporary lack of experience.</p> + +<p>I place Customs and Excise together because I believe there is no +serious question of making a distinction between the two, and of +allowing Ireland to levy and collect her own Excise duties, while +denying her authority over Customs. It is true that until 1860 such a +distinction was made, and a lower Excise duty levied upon Irish than +upon British spirits;<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139" /><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> but the tendency in all modern States is to +make the authority over Customs the same as that over Excise, and any +departure from that principle, in the case of modern Ireland, is likely +to cause considerable inconvenience. License Duties, which are included +under the head of Excise, may, no doubt, without much inconvenience, be +differentiated from the rest, but their Irish proceeds (£284,000) are +too small to influence the question.<a name="Page_288" id="Page_288" /></p> + +<p>Excise, then, follows Customs. What are the objections to giving +Ireland, like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, control over her +own Customs? Without doubt, the establishment of a new Customs barrier +between Ireland and Great Britain is in itself a drawback. The +Custom-house machinery exists, of course, at present, because Ireland is +an island; nor would the additional function of checking British as well +as foreign imports into Ireland cause any great increase of expense; but +since the great bulk of Irish external trade is with Great Britain, +there will unquestionably be a certain amount of inconvenience and +expense both to Ireland and Great Britain in submitting merchandise on +both sides of the Irish Channel to the passage of a Customs barrier.</p> + +<p>That seems to be the limit to which criticism can justly go in the case +of Ireland and Great Britain. That is as far as it goes in the analogous +case of New Zealand and the Australian Commonwealth, where a small +island State has a separate Customs system from that of a large, +wealthy, and populous neighbour of the same race, and with many +identical interests. That is as far as it goes in the parallel case of +little Newfoundland and the great Dominion of Canada. Neither the +Dominion nor the Commonwealth claim that proximity, power, and racial +identity give them the right to control the trade and taxation of their +small independent neighbours, nor does the smallest friction result from +the mutual independence. On the contrary, both the Dominions and the +Commonwealth were founded on that vital principle of a pre-existent +State independence surrendered voluntarily for larger ends. The whole +Empire depends on the principle of local autonomy, and, above all, on +the principle of local financial autonomy. Endeavours in America to +sustain the opposite theory led to disaster. We have for generations +regarded it as perfectly natural that the self-governing Colonies should +have Customs systems of their own, even when they are used for the +purpose of imposing heavy duties on goods coming from the Mother +Country, and we know that that liberty has borne fruit a hundredfold in +affection and loyalty to the Imperial Government. Until the Union of +Great Britain and Ireland it was regarded as equally natural that +Ireland should have control of her own Customs, along with all other +branches of revenue. Even after <a name="Page_289" id="Page_289" />the Union, although there was no Irish +control over anything Irish, it was recognized, until the fiscal +unification of the two countries in 1817, that Irish conditions required +a separate Customs system, which, in fact, existed until 1826.<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140" /><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> How +fiscal unification and the subsequent abolition of separate Customs was +brought about I have told in Chapter XI. It is not a pleasant story. To +say the least, the conditions, moral and material, were not such as to +warrant the inference that there is any inherent necessity for joint +Customs between Ireland and Great Britain. The presumption raised by all +subsequent events is in the opposite direction.</p> + +<p>But the tradition of unified Customs, now nearly a century old, has +immense potency, and unless it is fearlessly scrutinized and challenged, +may be able, reinforced by the passions excited by the great controversy +over Free Trade and Protection, to defy the warnings writ large upon the +page of history. The tradition must be so challenged. Say what we will +about the proximity of Ireland and Great Britain, descant as we will in +law-books, pamphlets, leading articles, debates, on what ought +theoretically to be the fiscal relations of the two countries, we cannot +escape from the fact that, in this as in so many other respects, both +the human and economic problem before us is fundamentally a colonial +problem, and that its being so is not the fault of Ireland, but of Great +Britain.</p> + +<p>Belief in Home Rule seems to me necessarily to involve a willingness to +give Ireland her Customs. Great Britain has no moral right to lay it +down that her views about trade shall govern the course of Irish policy; +and if Great Britain believes sincerely in Home Rule, she should be +willing to trust Ireland, regardless of the economic consequences, and +regardless of the effect upon the great Tariff controversy.</p> + +<p>The effect upon that controversy I shall not discuss. It seems to me to +possess only a tactical and electioneering interest, and that side of +the Home Rule problem I have rigidly avoided, while expressing in +general terms my belief that sound policy and sound tactics in reality +coincide. The Home Rule Bill is far more likely to be wrecked by +timidity than by boldness, by precautions and compromises than by a +fearless accommodation of British policy to Irish facts and needs.</p> + +<p>As to the danger to Great Britain of separate Irish Customs, <a name="Page_290" id="Page_290" />it seems +to me to be greatly exaggerated. Ireland's own interests will primarily +dictate her action. What she will decide her interest to be, nobody can +foretell with certainty beyond a limited point, because Irish public +opinion is not formed. Ireland has taken little or no part in the fiscal +controversy, for the simple reason that she has been absorbed in the +task of getting Home Rule, and until she gets it she is precluded from +formulating a trustworthy national opinion on most of the great subjects +which agitate modern societies. There is, however, no tradition in +favour of high Protection, even from Grattan's commercially free +Parliament. The question of a low protective or purely revenue tariff on +imports has not received any serious investigation. Let us frankly admit +at the outset that no country in the world, economically situated as +Ireland is, dispenses with a general tariff of some sort, and +undoubtedly there are to-day a good many Irishmen outside political life +who advocate the encouragement of infant Irish manufacturing industries +by sufficient protective duties directed against Great Britain as well +as against the outside world. It would be strange if there were not, in +view of the distressing past history of Ireland's throttled industries, +and in view of the strenuous efforts now being made by the Development +Associations to push the manufacture and sale of Irish goods in all +parts of the world. There are many avowed Free Traders also; nor are the +Development Associations themselves officially protectionist. The +opinion is sometimes expressed that Ireland, which could easily be +self-supporting in the matter of food, occupies an unhealthy position in +exporting a large proportion of her own agricultural produce, butter, +bacon, meat, etc., and in importing for her own consumption inferior +British and foreign qualities of some of the principal foodstuffs; but, +so far as it is possible to ascertain it, the predominant opinion seems +to be that an agricultural tariff would not be a good remedy for this +weakness, if it be one, and that Ireland's future development, like that +of Denmark, lies in the increasingly scientific organization of her +agricultural industries, and in the better cultivation of her own soil. +"Better farming, better business, better living," to use the admirable +motto invented by Sir Horace Plunkett for the I.A.O.S. In the absence of +an Irish Legislature, no special <a name="Page_291" id="Page_291" />importance can be attached to +individual expressions of opinion. Yet a measure of prophecy is +permissible. The Irish Legislature will have to study the national +interest, and it is possible to say with certainty at least this—that +Ireland's interest lies in maintaining close and friendly trade +relations with Great Britain. Unfortunately, we have no means of +accurately ascertaining the amount of trade done by Ireland with Great +Britain and with foreign and colonial countries respectively. Irish +commerce takes, of course, three forms: <i>(a)</i> Direct trade with +countries outside Great Britain; <i>(b)</i> indirect trade with these +countries via Great Britain; <i>(c)</i> direct local trade with Great +Britain. The statisticians of the Irish Department of Agriculture make +only an imperfect attempt to distinguish between these classes, but +their figures, so far as they go, prove beyond question that the great +bulk of Irish external commerce belongs to Class <i>(c)</i>—local trade with +Great Britain. The total value of Irish trade in 1909 is estimated at +£125,675,847, of which £63,947,155 was for imports, £61,728,692 for +exports. Probably 80 per cent., at least, of this trade was strictly +local. Certainly Great Britain is the market for very nearly the whole +of Irish agricultural produce, and for most of her exports of linen, +ships, tobacco, liquor, etc. Any aggressive action likely to provoke a +tariff war would be ruinous to Ireland, while it would hurt Great +Britain far less in proportion. But, in fact, both countries would +suffer, Great Britain from the loss of an easily accessible food-supply +of extraordinary value, not only for economic, but for strategical +reasons; Ireland from the loss of an excellent and indispensable +customer.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, whatever Ireland's trade policy may be, she certainly +needs the power of fixing her own duties upon commodities like tea and +sugar, which are of foreign origin, and are now merely transported to +her through British ports. Taxation of this sort is a matter of the +deepest concern to a country where agricultural wages average only +eleven shillings a week, and which cannot reduce its exorbitant Old Age +Pensions Bill without giving some compensatory relief to the classes +concerned. Tobacco, of which in its manufactured forms Ireland is a +considerable producer as well as a large consumer, belongs to the same +category. Liquor is an important article <a name="Page_292" id="Page_292" />of production in Ireland, as +well as of consumption, and the Irish Legislature ought to be able to +form and carry out its own liquor policy. Ireland is just as able and +willing to promote temperance as Great Britain, and just as competent to +reconcile a temperance policy with due regard to producing and +distributing interests.</p> + +<p>The Customs tariff is an Irish question, not an Ulster question. The +interests of the Protestant farmers of North-East Ulster are identical +with those of the rest of Ireland, and obviously it will be a matter of +the profoundest importance for Ireland as a whole to safeguard the +interests of the shipbuilding and linen industries in the North in +whatever way may seem best. The Industrial Development Associations, +which are affiliated in a national organization, and are far above petty +sectarian jealousies, may be trusted to see that Ireland steers a safe +financial course in her trade policy.</p> + +<p>If there is little or no danger that a Home-Ruled Ireland will commit +tariff follies of her own, she has unquestionably a right to escape from +further entanglement in the tariff policy of Great Britain. What may be +the issue of Great Britain's great fiscal controversy nobody can +foretell. But as long as a protective tariff remains the cardinal point +in the constructive policy of one of the British parties, there is a +strong likelihood of such a tariff, which would be uniform for the whole +United Kingdom, being carried into law. Free Traders, like myself, may +deplore the possibility, but we cannot shut our eyes to it. That tariff, +if and when it is framed, will, like the Free Trade tariff of the past, +be framed without regard to Irish interests, which are predominantly +agricultural, and with exclusive regard to British interests, which are +mainly industrial. Whatever may have been the original ideal of the +Conservative Protectionists, however highly they may once have valued +the protection of agriculture, irresistible political forces have driven +them in the direction of a tariff framed mainly to secure the adhesion +of the great manufacturing towns. The electoral power of these towns, +the growing resentment of the working classes in most parts of the world +at the increasing cost of living, the fact that Great Britain cannot +under any conceivable circumstances feed her own population, have been +reflected in the definite abandonment by the party leaders of <a name="Page_293" id="Page_293" />the +proposed small duty against colonial imports, and in the admission by +Mr. Bonar Law at Manchester, during the last General Election, that the +proposed tariff would not benefit the farmers. Nor will the failure of +the Reciprocity Agreement between Canada and the United States +appreciably diminish the obstacles to food-taxes in the United Kingdom. +Any practicable protective tariff, therefore, on the ground of its +injustice to Ireland, would cause strong and legitimate resentment in +that country, which is subjected to the most formidable competition from +foreign and colonial foodstuffs, but whose great competition in +manufactured goods is Great Britain herself. The one Irish industry +which might favour it is the linen industry of the North. It would have +no attraction for the shipbuilding industry, which in no part of the +British Isles has anything to gain by Protection, as I believe all +parties to the controversy agree. Other small manufacturing industries +would complain that they gained nothing; while the agricultural +population would complain that, as consumers, they would be damaged by +higher prices for clothing and other manufactured articles, while as +producers they were ignored.</p> + +<p>The difficulty is only one further proof of the dissimilarity of +economic conditions between Great Britain and Ireland, and of the +artificial and unnatural character of the present fiscal union. Justice +to Ireland demands its dissolution. The dangers are imaginary. Liberals, +however firm their belief in Free Trade, should hold, with Lord Welby +and his Home Rule colleagues on the Financial Relations Commission, that +"even if Ireland initiates a protective policy, in this case, as in that +of the Colonies, freedom is a greater good than Free Trade." As for the +Protectionists, I have never seen an argument from that source, and I do +not see how any consistent or plausible argument could possibly be +framed, to show that a uniform tariff for the United Kingdom could be +fair to Ireland. Professor Hewins, the leading Tariff Reform economist, +virtually acknowledges the impossibility in his Introduction to Miss +Murray's "Commercial Relations between England and Ireland." There were +two sound lines of policy, he points out, which might have been adopted +towards Ireland in the period prior to the Union: (1)To have placed her +on a level <a name="Page_294" id="Page_294" />of equality with the Colonies, applying the mercantile +system indiscriminately and impartially to the Colonies and to her; or +(2) to have aimed from the first at the financial and commercial unity +of the British Isles. Neither of these courses was taken. Ireland, while +kept financially and commercially separate, "was in a less favourable +position than that of a Colony." With regard to the present, "Most of +the difficulties of an economic character," says the Professor, "in the +financial relations between England and Ireland, arise from the +differences of economic structure and organization between the two +countries. If Ireland were a highly organized, populous, manufacturing +country, the present fiscal system would probably work out no worse than +it does in the urban districts of Great Britain. But whatever be the +virtues or demerits of that system, it was certainly not framed with any +reference to the economic conditions which prevail in Ireland." We wait +for the seemingly unavoidable political inference, but in vain. +Professor Hewins is a Unionist. "A 'national' policy for Ireland ... is +never likely to be possible." Well, that is plain speaking, and the more +plainly these things are said the better. Let Unionists, if they will, +tell Ireland frankly that she must eternally suffer for the Union, but +let them not pretend, as they do pretend, that Ireland profits by the +Union.</p> + + +<h4><a name="XIII_VII" id="XIII_VII" />VII.</h4> + +<h5>FEDERAL FINANCE.</h5> + + +<p>Directly we leave the simple path of financial independence, and +endeavour to construct schemes which on the one hand disguise the +financial difficulties of Ireland, and on the other provide for Imperial +control of Irish Customs and Excise, we involve ourselves in a tangle of +difficulties. A brief examination of these schemes will throw into still +stronger relief the merits of the simpler solution.</p> + +<p>First of all, let us dispose finally of the Federal analogy. In Chapter +X. I showed that the framework of Home Rule cannot be Federal, because +the conditions of Federation do not exist in the United Kingdom. One of +the invariable features of a Federation is the Federal control of +Customs and<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295" /> Excise, but I pointed out that an equally invariable +condition precedent to Federation was the willingness on the part of a +self-supporting State, previously possessing complete financial +independence, to abandon its individual control over this realm of +taxation to a Federal Government of its own choosing,<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141" /><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> and that no +such condition existed in the case of Ireland. But some features of +Federal finance undoubtedly may be made to show a superficial analogy to +Anglo-Irish conditions, and may therefore have an attraction for those +who shrink from giving Ireland financial independence. In the first +place, it is possible to find Federal precedents for the payment out of +the common purse of certain large items of Irish expenditure. There is +no precedent for the payment of Police, but Old Age Pensions, for +example, are paid in Australia by the Commonwealth, not by the States. +The chief point of interest, however, is the mechanism of Federal +finance. The Australian and Canadian Federations are the only two which +suggest even a remote parallel. There the subordinate States are +actually "subsidized" by regular annual payments out of Federal +revenues, mainly derived from Customs and Excise, and in the case of +Australia, as I observed at p. 245, the process at present entails an +elaborate system of bookkeeping to distinguish between the "collected" +and "true" revenue of the several States, similar in kind to the +calculations now made by the Treasury for ascertaining the "collected" +and "true" revenue derived from Ireland, Scotland, and England.<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142" /><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a></p> + +<p>In Australia this system of bookkeeping is discredited, although the +recent attempt by a Commonwealth Referendum to abolish both it and the +financial system of which it forms a part just failed. It is to be hoped +that, whatever financial scheme is adopted for Ireland, this bad +colonial precedent, together with the precedent of the Home Rule Bill of +1893, will not be made pretexts for perpetuating a system whose defects +are so glaring, and which is a source of continual dissatisfaction to +Ireland. If Irish Customs and Excise are to <a name="Page_296" id="Page_296" />be outside Irish control, +while their proceeds are to be credited to Ireland, let her whole +collected revenue from those sources be credited to her, in spite of the +excessive allocation that step would involve.</p> + +<p>Apart from this point of similarity in mechanism, the Australian and +Canadian subsidies to the States and Provinces respectively are of no +value as models for a Home Rule Bill. Let us examine the case of +Australia. There the Commonwealth, besides having exclusive control of +Customs and Excise, has general powers of taxation concurrently with the +States, though in practice Commonwealth taxation is almost entirely +confined to Customs and Excise. All surplus Commonwealth revenue is, by +the present law, returnable to the States, and the total annual amount +so returned must not be less than three-fourths of the total proceeds of +Customs and Excise; so large are these proceeds, and so small, +relatively, the expenses of the Commonwealth Government.<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143" /><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> Here at +the outset is a feature which places Australian Federal Finance in an +altogether different category to that of the United Kingdom, where only +47.6 per cent, of the revenue is from Customs and Excise. Nor are the +distributions of surplus revenue to the States really "subsidies," even +in the case of the poorest States, but repayments, on a method laid down +in the Constitution, of that part of the State contribution to Federal +services which the Federal Government does not want. Here the system of +bookkeeping is of some service to us, because it reveals, approximately, +at any rate, both the contribution and the actual repayment, which is +based on a calculation of the amount saved to the State by the +transference of certain departments to the Federal Government, set off +by a <i>per capita</i> charge for new Federal expenditure, as, for example, +for Old Age Pensions (see Table on p. 297).</p> + +<p>The great bulk of the tax revenue shown comes, as I have said, from +Customs and Excise, and it is unnecessary to set out the respective +figures of revenue derived from these duties.<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144" /><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297" /> It will be seen, +after deducting repayments from contributions, that even the poorest +States make a substantial net contribution to Federal purposes. On the +other hand, the relative proportion of revenue contributed by Western +Australia and Tasmania is diminishing. In Western Australia it was 12-49 +per cent. of the whole in 1905, 8-13 per cent. of the whole in 1909. In +the same period, not only relatively, but actually, the gross +contribution of Western Australia has diminished from £1,431,624 in 1905 +to £1,166,126 in 1909, while the repayment to her has also diminished +from £1,031,223 in 1905 to £627,933. Tasmania's repayment is also +diminishing, though her gross contribution has increased. These +circumstances suggest a slight resemblance to the growing disproportion +between the resources of Ireland and Great Britain, but they do not +assist us towards a solution of the Irish problem. Each Australian +State, while contributing the whole of its Customs and Excise to the +Federal Government, receives back at least half, and in some cases +two-thirds,<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146" /><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a> and adds that sum to its own independent revenue for +the maintenance of the<a name="Page_298" id="Page_298" /> State Government. The sum refunded amounts on +the average to a little below a quarter of the total State revenue—to +be accurate, 23.01 per cent. Of the remaining 76.99 per cent., only 10 +per cent, on the average is derived from direct taxation; 10.10 per cent +from public lands, 4.15 per cent, from miscellaneous services, and no +less than 52.55 per cent, from Public Works—railways, tramways, +harbours, etc.</p> + +<h5>CONTRIBUTIONS OF, AND REPAYMENTS TO, THE STATES OF THE AUSTRALIAN +COMMONWEALTH, 1908-09.<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145" /><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a></h5> + + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>Contributions to Revenue.</td><td align='right'>Repayments from Commonwealth.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>New South Wales</td><td align='right'>5,621,958</td><td align='right'>3,326,276</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Victoria</td><td align='right'>3,750,161</td><td align='right'>1,987,435</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Queensland</td><td align='right'>1,989,540</td><td align='right'>1,027,047</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>South Australia</td><td align='right'>1,307,621</td><td align='right'>716,957</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Western Australia</td><td align='right'>1,166,126</td><td align='right'>627,938</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Tasmania</td><td align='right'>515,387</td><td align='right'>244,747</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>Total Commonwealth Revenue.</td><td align='right'>Total Repayments.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>14,350,793</td><td align='right'>7,930,395</td></tr></table> + + + + +<p>Here are the details of revenue for 1908-1909 in the richest and the +poorest State, respectively:</p> + + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='center'>Particulars.</td><td align='right'>New South Wales.</td><td align='right'>Tasmania.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='center'>£</td><td align='center'>£</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Refunded by the Commonwealth</td><td align='right'>3,377,213</td><td align='right'>232,342</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Taxation (direct)</td><td align='right'>907,249</td><td align='right'>250,835</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Public Works and Services</td><td align='right'>7,309,062</td><td align='right'>329,192</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Land</td><td align='right'>1,778,002</td><td align='right'>96,519</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Miscellaneous</td><td align='right'>274,600</td><td align='right'>25,017</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center'>Totals</td><td align='right'>13,646,126</td><td align='right'>934,405</td></tr></table> + + + +<p>Now, Ireland raises no public revenues at all from Public Works, only +£24,500 out of a total of ten millions from public lands; while 29.25 +per cent, of her "true" tax revenue comes from direct taxation and 70.75 +per cent, from Customs and Excise. To take away even a third of her +receipts from Customs and Excise would be to leave her with a deficit of +three millions and a half, which would have to be made up by additions +to a direct taxation, which is already vastly higher than in any part of +Australia. She needs every penny of her revenue from whatever source +derived, and there is no possibility of extracting from her a +contribution to Imperial services, unless it be an illusory contribution +based on faked figures.</p> + +<p>The real moral to be derived from the Australian comparison is that both +Australia and Ireland are countries where accumulated wealth is +comparatively small, and where the importance of indirect taxation is +very great. All the more reason for giving Ireland control of her own +indirect taxation. Canada, and, indeed, all the self-governing Colonies, +suggest the same moral. In Canada the Federal or Dominion Parliament has +an unlimited power of taxation, the Provinces being vested only with the +concurrent right of direct taxation within their <a name="Page_299" id="Page_299" />respective borders +(B.N. America Act, Clauses 91 and 92). In practice, nearly the whole +Federal tax revenue is derived from Customs and Excise. We have no +materials for a comparison of gross and net provincial contributions, +because no records are compiled. Under an Act of 1907, revising the +former arrangements, two small subsidies, forming a fixed charge on the +gross Federal revenue, and bearing no specific proportion to the income +from Customs and Excise, are given to each Province.</p> + +<p>1. A subsidy (from £20,000 to £40,000) based on the total provincial +population.</p> + +<p>2. A payment of 80 cents per head of the provincial population.</p> + +<p>Both together are very small by comparison with the Australian payments. +Neither is really a subsidy, though it is given that name, but the +return of a surplus indirectly contributed. It is, indeed, conceivable +that a new and poor Province might actually contribute less than she +received back. One Province, British Columbia, having long complained +that she contributed far more than her share, and received back too +little, obtained an exceptional grant of £20,000 under the Act of +1907.<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147" /><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> The sums raised independently in each Province for the +support of the provincial administration are, as in Australia, derived +to a very slight extent from direct taxation, and to a very large extent +from public property; not, as in Australia, from railways, tramways, +etc., but mainly from vast tracts of public land. In this respect the +Provinces resemble the Dominion, which derives a large revenue from the +same source.</p> + +<p>In three vital points, then, Anglo-Irish finance differs from that of +the Colonial Federations. Ireland's whole net income comes from taxes; +she needs it all; and her economic conditions are totally different from +those of Great Britain. So far from borrowing anything from Federal +finance, we should deduce from it the moral of financial independence +for Ireland. With all the powerful centripetal forces, moral and +material, which originally united, and now hold together, the federated +States of Australia and Canada, there is continual controversy, and +sometimes considerable friction, over finance, generally in connection +with the position of the poorer Provinces or<a name="Page_300" id="Page_300" /> States. Some problems are +still unsolved. Good authorities, among them Sir Arthur Bourinot, think +that the Canadian subsidies are unsound. Australia is dissatisfied with +her system. The American States, while giving up Customs and Excise, are +self-supporting entities; but that system has its drawback, in Federal +extravagance. We must remember, too, that even if these examples were of +any use to us, the weak States or Provinces in a Federation have a +greater control over Federal financial policy than Ireland could have +under any scheme which reserved Customs and Excise to the Imperial +Parliament; because the Federal principle, partially infringed only in +the case of Canada, is to give them disproportionately high +representation in the Upper Federal chamber, which can reject money +Bills.<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148" /><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a></p> + +<p>On all counts, Ireland's position is that of a country which +imperatively needs fiscal isolation similar to that enjoyed by States +prior to Federation, before it can dream of embarking on the perilous +sea of quasi-Federal finance. Trouble enough comes from the present +joint system. We should make a clean sweep of it, permit Ireland, with a +minimum of temporary assistance, to find her own financial equilibrium, +and so lay the foundation, perhaps, for a genuine Federation in the +future.</p> + + +<h4><a name="XIII_VIII" id="XIII_VIII" />VIII.</h4> + +<h5>ALTERNATIVE SCHEMES OF HOME RULE FINANCE<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149" /><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a></h5> + + +<p>Historically, these fall into two classes; though, as I shall show, they +are for all intents and purposes merged in one to-day.</p> + +<p>The two classes are—(1) The Gladstonian; (2) the "Contract."</p> + +<p>1. <i>Mr. Gladstone's Schemes</i>.—It is unnecessary to examine these in +close detail, though, if the reader cares to do so, he will find details +set forth in the Appendix. Four outstanding features were common to the +schemes both of 1886 and 1893: (<i>a</i>) Permanent Imperial control over the +imposition of Customs and Excise; (<i>b</i>) Irish control over all other +taxation;<a name="Page_301" id="Page_301" /> (<i>c</i>) an annual Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure; +(<i>d</i>) Imperial payment of part cost of the Irish Police.</p> + +<p>With regard to (<i>a</i>), the most important point of difference in the two +Bills was that under the first Ireland was credited with her whole +"collected" revenue from Customs and Excise, under the second (as +amended) with only her "true" revenue, which was less than the former by +£1,700,000. Another point in which the two Bills differed was the +permission to Ireland, under the Bill of 1893, after six years, to +collect her own Excise. Both imposition and collection were wholly +reserved under the Bill of 1886. I have already given grounds for the +impolicy of retaining control over Customs and Excise. Let me only ask +the reader, in conclusion, to figure the situation. How could Ireland +frame a financial policy? Three-quarters of the revenue, as at present +levied, of a country profoundly dissimilar economically from Great +Britain, and in need of drastic reforms of expenditure and marked +changes in taxation, would be permanently outside the reach of an Irish +Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, in spite of the representation at +Westminster which Imperial control would entail, would in the long-run +fluctuate according to British needs and notions. In the long-run, I +repeat; but incidentally there would be sharp and damaging conflicts. +Occasions might occur like that of 1909, when the majority of Irishmen, +rightly or wrongly, resented the form of new taxation, and would have +secured the rejection of the Budget had not that step been hurtful to +the prospects of Home Rule. It will be useless to blame either Ireland +or Great Britain. Every country is bound to study its own circumstances. +A similar crisis would have imperilled even the strongest Federation. We +are not in the least concerned at the moment with the goodness or +badness of that famous Budget. We are concerned with the effect on the +relations of the two countries, and with the indefeasible right of +Ireland and Great Britain to do what they consider best for their own +interests.</p> + +<p>With regard to (<i>b</i>), the Bill of 1893 differed from that of 1886 in the +provision of a suspensory period of six years, during which all existing +taxation in Ireland was to be under Imperial control, though Ireland +could impose additional taxes of her own. After six years—and, under +the Bill of 1886, from the outset—Ireland was to have control over all +taxation <a name="Page_302" id="Page_302" />other than Customs and Excise. Where is the wisdom in +selecting direct taxation as peculiarly suitable to Irish control? It is +already higher in Ireland than in any country economically situated as +Ireland is. Yet Ireland's power to reduce it will be very small and very +difficult to use, if she is rigidly excluded from changes in the +indirect taxation which presses mainly on the poor. Would she naturally +be inclined to increase direct taxation? Land Value Duties produce next +to nothing in Ireland, and their extension would be unpopular. The +existing rates of Income-Tax and Estate Duties cannot be raised, though +their incidence might be extended to cover poorer elements of the +population, as, for example, the small farmers. That is a kind of +measure which the farmers would, if necessary, willingly agree to, in +order to balance the accounts of a financially independent Ireland, but +it is not the kind of measure they would care about when their national +finance was dictated by Great Britain. If one cared to make a +dialectical point, one could add that a common argument against Home +Rule is a fear of oppressive taxation of the rich or oppressive taxation +of North-East Ulster, at the hands of an Irish Parliament, through high +direct imposts. The fear is one of those which scarcely need serious +discussion. If Irish statesmen were as black as their most industrious +traducers paint them, they could not by any ingenuity invent any new +direct tax which would not hit all the provinces equally, saving perhaps +a tax on pasture ranches, which would hit North-East Ulster least; while +super-taxes on the exceptionally rich, if they were worth the trouble of +collecting, would drive wealth out of a poor country at the very moment +when it was most urgently necessary to gain the confidence of investors +and the few wealthy residents.</p> + +<p>With regard to (c), Mr. Gladstone's various devices for obtaining from +Ireland a contribution to Imperial services possess now only a +melancholy and academical interest, because, without an elaborate +manipulation of the accounts, so as to disguise their true significance, +no such contribution can possibly be obtained. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone +provided for an annual payment from Ireland, fixed in amount for thirty +years; in 1893 for the contribution of a <i>quota</i>—namely, one-third—of +her "true" annual revenue from Imperial taxes, to run for six years, and +then to be revised. His calculations were <a name="Page_303" id="Page_303" />conditioned to some extent by +<i>(d),</i> the part payment from the Imperial purse of the cost of Irish +Police, coupled, of course, with continued Imperial control of that +Police, pending its replacement by a new civil force. It is easy enough +in ways like this to show a balance in Ireland's favour, and, at the +same time, to cripple the responsibility of the Irish Legislature by +transferring selected services from the Irish to the Imperial side of +the account. We can extend the process to Old Age Pensions, the Land +Commission, and what not. As I have repeatedly urged, this course is +radically unsound. As for the Police, there can be no responsible +government without control of the agents of law and order.</p> + +<p>By crediting Ireland with her whole "collected" revenue, we can give her +at once a balance of half a million. By freeing her from the payment of +Old Age Pensions, we can make the balance three millions. With the +elimination of the Land Commission and the Police, we can make it five +millions. Then we can postulate an imaginary taxable capacity, an ideal +contribution to Imperial services, and a hypothetical share of the +National Debt, and so arrive at a Budget which will look well on paper, +but which will deceive nobody, and be open to crushing criticism.</p> + +<p>2. "<i>Contract</i>" <i>Finance</i>.—It will be seen that both Mr. Gladstone's +schemes set up in Ireland—though under the Bill of 1893 only after six +years—a dual system of taxation, Imperial and Irish, after the Federal +model. The revenue, "collected" or "true," derived from Imperial taxes +levied in Ireland, was to be paid, after the deduction of sums due to +the Imperial Government on various accounts, into the Irish Exchequer. +And into the same Exchequer went the proceeds of taxes levied by Ireland +herself. The distinguishing feature of "Contract" finance is that it +maintains the fiscal unity of the British Isles. All taxation in Ireland +would be permanently levied and collected, as before, by the Imperial +Parliament, Ireland being allowed only the barren and illusory privilege +of levying new additional taxes of her own. Out of the Imperial +Exchequer a lump sum of fixed amount, or a sum equivalent to the revenue +<i>collected</i> in Ireland, would be handed over to Ireland, by contract, as +it were, for the maintenance of the Administration.</p> + +<p>The simplicity of this scheme seems to me to be its only <a name="Page_304" id="Page_304" />merit. It +disposes of all complicated bookkeeping, all heart-burnings over "true" +and "collected" revenue, and all controversies, for a long time at any +rate, over an Irish contribution to the Empire; while it involves and +immensely facilitates a subsidy based on the reservation of selected +Irish services for Imperial management and payment. On the other hand, +it is not Home Rule. It annihilates the responsibility of Ireland for +her own fortunes, and is, indeed, altogether incompatible with what we +know as responsible government. Its germ appeared in the Irish Council +Bill of 1907—a Bill which did not pretend to set up anything +approaching responsible government, and to which the scheme was +therefore in a sense appropriate, though it must, I think, have produced +mischievous results if it had been carried into law.<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150" /><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a></p> + +<p>I wish to speak with the utmost respect of Lord MacDonnell and the other +patriotic Irishmen who have advocated this kind of financial solution. +There was a time when it might have been good policy for Ireland to +obtain any—even the smallest—financial powers of her own as a lever, +though a very bad lever, for the attainment of more. But we ought now to +make a sound and final settlement, and I do earnestly urge upon all +those who have Irish interests at heart to reject schemes which merely +evade, if they do not actually aggravate, some of the pressing +difficulties of the Irish problem of to-day. The fact that Contract +finance works well in India is <i>prima facie</i> a reason why it should not +work well in Ireland. It does not exist, and it could not be made to +show good results, in any community of white men. If anyone is disposed +to trace a faint analogy—which in any case would be a false +analogy—with the lesser of the two small subsidies given by the +Dominion of Canada in aid of the Provincial administrations,<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151" /><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a> let +him imagine what the moral and practical consequences would be if, +instead of constituting a small fraction of the provincial income, this +subsidy were increased to a lump sum calculated by the Dominion +Government as correct and sufficient for the whole internal government +of the Province. And the pernicious results in a Canadian Province would +be <a name="Page_305" id="Page_305" />trivial beside the pernicious results in Ireland, where the whole +system of expenditure and revenue needs to be recast; where large +economies are needed, together with additional outlay on education; and +where above all, the sense of national responsibility, deliberately +stifled for centuries, needs to be evoked. Nothing could be more cruel +to Ireland than to give her a fictitious financial freedom, and then to +complain that she did not use it well. No nation could use freedom well +under the Contract system of finance, whether based on a fixed grant or +on revenue derived from Ireland. It is not in human nature to reduce +expenditure unless the reduction is reflected in reduced taxation. Every +official threatened with retrenchment, even in the services under Irish +control and, <i>a fortiori, </i> in the services outside Irish control, would +have a grievance in which the public would sympathize, while resentment +at an unequal fiscal union would be unabated. Irish statesmen, like any +other men in the same position, would be exposed unfairly to the +continual temptation of preserving institutions and payments as they +were, of making changes only of personnel, and of annually appealing to +Great Britain for more money for new expenditure. These appeals could +not possibly be refused. If Great Britain chooses to place Ireland in a +position of financial dependence, she must take the consequences and pay +the bill, as in the past, even if the bill exceeds the revenue derived +from Ireland. But, indeed, under Contract finance, attempts to make +Irish expenditure conform to Irish revenue would necessarily be +abandoned.</p> + +<p>Bad as the results must be, we are inexorably driven to some form of +Contract finance directly we relinquish its anti-type, financial +independence. There is very little practical difference between the +Gladstonian and later plans. We may be drawn along the downward path +either by considerations of revenue, or considerations of expenditure, +or by both combined. To retain Imperial control of Customs and Excise, +while crediting the Irish proceeds to Ireland, is in itself equivalent +to making three-quarters of Irish tax revenue take the form of an annual +money grant fixed by Great Britain. If Englishmen also want to retain +control over Irish Police, and Irishmen are short-sighted enough to +desire Imperial control, as a corollary of Imperial payment, of Old Age +Pen<a name="Page_306" id="Page_306" />sions, National Insurance, or Land Purchase, there at once are four +millions, or more than a third of present Irish expenditure, withheld +from Irish authority. To cover the remaining seven millions by a +Contract allowance, instead of going through the pretence of allotting +items of revenue and of deducting a contribution to Imperial services, +is a step which is only too likely to commend itself to harassed +statesmen. But it would not be Home Rule.</p> + +<p>This is not a matter of speculation, but of experience. As long ago as +1818, in the case of Canada, we discarded as vicious the old doctrine +that a dependency ought not to be allowed to provide for the whole cost +of government out of its own taxes, for fear that its Legislature would +control policy. If we are going to remove features which make Ireland +resemble a Crown Colony now, do not let us import others which recall +the ancient fallacies of a century ago.</p> + +<p>There remains to be considered the important question of loans, and to +that I shall devote a separate chapter.<a name="Page_307" id="Page_307" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV" />CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>LAND PURCHASE FINANCE<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152" /><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a></h3> + + +<h4><a name="XIV_I" id="XIV_I" />I.</h4> + +<h5>LAND PURCHASE LOANS.</h5> + + +<p>The data of the land problem are as follows:</p> + +<p>The superficial area of Ireland is 20,350,725 acres, and in 1909 it was +utilized as follows:<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153" /><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a></p> + + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='center'>Acres.</td><td align='center'>Percentage.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Area under tillage, hay and fruit</td><td align='center'>4,582,697</td><td align='center'>22.5</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Area under pasture</td><td align='center'>9,997,445</td><td align='center'>61.6</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Grazed mountain land</td><td align='center'>2,548,569</td><td align='center'>61.6</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Woods, etc.</td><td align='center'>301,444</td><td align='center'>1.5</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Bog, barren mountain, water, roads, townlands, etc.</td><td align='center'>2,925,570</td><td align='center'>14.4</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Total</td><td align='center'>20,350,725</td><td align='center'>100.0</td></tr></table> + + + +<p>The agricultural area, calculated by the exclusion of the last item in +the above column, works out at 17,425,155 acres, but since bog forms +part of a large number of farms, we may, for the purposes of Land +Purchase, place the agricultural area of Ireland at 18,739,644 acres, +the figure given in the Census of 1901, and its annual value for rating +purposes, as given in the same census, at £10,061,667.</p> + +<p>This area is divided into 603,827 agricultural holdings, which are in +the hands of 554,060 occupiers, and vary in size from vast pasture +ranches to the tiny plots of miserable rock-sown soil, which abound in +the congested districts of the west.</p> + +<p>But small holdings largely predominate. More than two-thirds do not +exceed 30 acres; 153,565 are between 5 and 15 acres, and 147,580 are +below 5 acres.<a name="Page_308" id="Page_308" /></p> + +<p>Size, however, is by itself an imperfect index to value. The effects of +the ancient confiscations and of the extraordinarily unequal +distribution of land which they and the bad Irish agrarian system +produced may be gauged by the valuation figures of the Census of 1901, +which showed that 335,491, or 68.5 per cent, of the total number of +holdings had an annual value (for rating purposes) not exceeding £15, +while they covered only a little more than a third of the total +agricultural area; 134,182 of these holdings were rated below £4, and +covered only 1,360,000 acres.</p> + +<p>All farms rated below £4, and a large number of those below £15, may be +regarded as "uneconomic"—that is, incapable by themselves of supplying +a decent living to the farmer and his family.</p> + +<p>I shall say no more here about the legislation beginning forty years +ago, which revolutionized the agrarian tenure derived directly from the +Penal Code, and converted the Irish tenant into a "judicial" tenant with +a rent fixed by the Land Commission, with security of tenure, and free +sale of the tenant-right.<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154" /><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> There are now in Ireland two distinct +classes of occupying tenants, "judicial" tenants, and purchasing +tenants, and it is upon the question of the State-aided transference of +the land from the landlord to the tenant that I wish to concentrate the +reader's attention.</p> + +<p>The principle of Land Purchase is this: The State advances money, raised +by a public loan, to the tenant, who pays off the landlord with it, and +becomes for a fixed period the tenant of the State. During this period +he pays, in lieu of rent, an annuity, which represents both interest and +sinking-fund on the capital sum advanced to him. At the end of the +period, which, of course, will vary with the fixed annual amount of the +sinking-fund, he becomes owner in fee-simple of his farm.</p> + +<p>There is no charity to the tenant. He borrows the money and pays it back +in a perfectly regular way, and the State has made a temporary +investment of a profitable character.</p> + +<p>And now, for the last time, I must trouble the reader with a little +indispensable history. There are four phases in the history of Irish +Land Purchase.</p> + +<p>1. John Bright was the first British statesman to maintain <a name="Page_309" id="Page_309" />that no +healthy and lasting readjustment of the relations between landlord and +tenant in Ireland could ever be made by law. He advocated State-aided +purchase; and in the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869 and the Land +Acts of 1870 and 1881, clauses were inserted allowing the State to +advance money for Land Purchase. The conditions, however, were so +onerous, both to landlord and tenant, that only 7,665 tenants out of +more than half a million were able to avail themselves of these purchase +clauses.</p> + +<p>2. The Ashbourne Act of 1885 was the first successful measure of the +kind. Five millions were advanced under it, and five millions more under +an extending Act of 1887. Next came the Act of 1891, empowering the loan +of thirty-three millions, followed by the amending and simplifying Act +of 1896. These Acts form a body of legislation by themselves, of which I +need refer only to a few salient characteristics. They were all alike in +settling the tenant's annuity (in lieu of rent) at 4 per cent, on the +purchase money, though the proportions allocated to interest and +sinking-fund varied. Under the first two Acts the period for final +redemption of his loan by the tenant was forty-nine years, under the +third forty-two years, though this period was extended to seventy years +if the tenant availed himself of decadal reductions in the annuity, +proportionate to the capital paid off by the sinking-fund.</p> + +<p>The average price of the holdings sold under these Acts represented +seventeen and a half years' purchase, and the tenant's great inducement +to buy was that, by the aid of cheap State credit, the annuity he paid, +even over so short a period as forty-nine years, represented a reduction +of more than 20 per cent, on his existing judicial rent.</p> + +<p>Under the first Act, that of 1885, the landlord received the purchase +money in cash, under the other two, in guaranteed 3 per cent, or 2| per +cent, stock, an arrangement which suited him very well as long as +Government stocks maintained the high level which they reached in the +period preceding the South African War. With the heavy fall in stocks +during and after the war, purchase came to a standstill. The net result +of the operations under the Acts of 1885 to 1896 was that close upon +twenty-four million pounds were advanced to 72,000 tenants, occupying +about two and a half million acres, <a name="Page_310" id="Page_310" />out of the total of 18,739,644 +acres which constitute the agricultural area of Ireland.</p> + +<p>3. Once begun, purchase had to be continued, if for no other reason than +that a purchasing tenant paid in annuity a substantially lower sum than +the non-purchasing judicial tenant paid in rent, with the additional, if +distant, prospect of an absolute fee-simple in the future.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wyndham, acting on the recommendation of a friendly Conference +between landlords and tenants, took the bull by the horns in 1903, and +carried the great Land Act of that year. Under the Wyndham Act the +system of cash payment to the landlord, dropped since 1891, was resumed, +on a basis calculated to give a selling landlord a sum which, invested +in gilt-edged 3 or 3¼ per cent. stocks, would yield him as much as the +second term judicial rents on the holdings sold, less 10 per cent., +representing his former cost of collection; while the annuity payable by +the tenant in lieu of rent was reduced from 4 to 3¼ per cent., of which +2½ per cent, was interest on the purchase money advanced, and ½ per +cent, was sinking-fund. This reduction involved an extension of the +period of redemption from forty-nine to sixty-eight and a half years. +The annuity was calculated to represent an average reduction of from 15 +to 25 per cent, on second-term judicial rents. Since the gross income of +the landlord was to be reduced only by 10 per cent. on a basis of 3 per +cent. investments, while the annual payment by the tenant was to be +reduced by an average of 20 per cent., clearly there was a gap to be +filled up, and this gap was filled by a State bonus to the selling +landlord of 12 per cent, on the purchase money, a bonus which went +wholly to him personally, clear of all reversionary rights under +settlements. A sum of twelve millions altogether was to be expended on +the bonus.</p> + +<p>In addition to direct sales between landlord and tenant through the +Estates Commissioners, large powers were also given both to the Land +Commission and the Congested Districts Board for the purchase and resale +of certain classes of estates—land in congested districts, untenanted +land, etc.</p> + +<p>The Act was enormously popular. The landlord, in view of the manifold +insecurities of land tenure in Ireland, made an excellent bargain, and +the tenant, tempted by the imme<a name="Page_311" id="Page_311" />diate transformation of his rent into an +annuity of reduced amount, ignored the extension by twenty years of the +period of redemption, and was willing to agree at high prices for the +purchase of his land. The average price of land sold rose from the +seventeen and a half years' purchase under the old Acts to over twenty +years' purchase, and the soil of Ireland rapidly began to change hands. +But the Act broke down on finance, as adapted to what were then +estimated as the requirements of the purchase operation. The estimate +for the total sum required was one hundred millions, and the purchase +money was to be raised by successive issues of 2¾ per cent. +Guaranteed Land Stock. Sums needed from time to time for payment of the +landlord's bonus were also raised by stock, and were placed to an +account known as the Land Purchase Aid Fund.</p> + +<p>Now, any loss on flotation, due to stock being issued at a discount, was +to be borne, in the first instance, by the Ireland Development +Grant,<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155" /><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> and, if and when that was exhausted, by the ratepayers of +Ireland through deduction from the grants in aid of Local Taxation.<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156" /><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a> +The stock, like all Government stocks at that period, fell heavily from +the first, and in 1908 the point was reached when further issues would +have entailed a heavy loss payable out of Irish rates, growing +ultimately, as it was calculated, to an annual charge of more than half +a million. The infliction of such a burden upon the ratepayers of +Ireland was felt to be inequitable. Ireland was not responsible for the +evils which necessitated purchase, and even if she were, the ratepayers +were not the right persons to be mulcted. Meanwhile, purchase was at a +complete standstill.</p> + +<p>4. This serious situation led to Mr. Birrell's Land Act of 1909, which +was based upon the Report of a Treasury Committee which sat in the +previous year.<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157" /><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> The problem was twofold: (a) how to deal with future +agreements to purchase, between landlord and tenant;(6) how to deal with +agreements to purchase pending under the Act of 1903, but as yet +uncompleted.</p> + +<p>(a) With regard to future agreements, there are four main points:(1) The +old policy of payment in stock, instead of in cash, is reverted to, and +the stock is a 3 per cent. stock.<a name="Page_312" id="Page_312" /></p> + +<p>(2) The tenant's annuity is raised from 3¼ to 3½ per cent.</p> + +<p>(3) The period of redemption is reduced from sixty-eight and a half +years to sixty-five and a half years. (4) The landlord's bonus is +allocated on a graduated scale, under which the higher the price the +land is sold at, the less is the bonus conferred. These changes, though +no doubt somewhat prejudicial to the prospects of Land Purchase, were +absolutely necessary, owing to a cause beyond human control—the +condition of the money-market.</p> + +<p>(b) In regard to pending purchase agreements arrived at under the old +Act, no alteration is made in the terms of the bargains already +concluded between landlord and tenant; but changes are made in the +method of financing these agreed sales. Briefly, parties can obtain +priority in treatment among the enormous mass of cases awaiting the +decision of the Land Commission by agreeing to accept 2¾ per cent. +stock at a price not lower than 92 per cent, (which means, at present +prices, that the loss on flotation is split between the landlord and the +State), or, by waiting their turn, they can obtain half the price in +stock at 92, and half in cash. Payments elected to be made wholly in +cash come last of all. Bonus to be paid in cash as before.</p> + +<p>Losses caused by the flotation of stock at a discount no longer fall +upon the Irish rates. Any loss not capable of being borne by the Ireland +Development Grant is to be borne by the Imperial Exchequer.</p> + +<p>Other important clauses gave compulsory powers of purchase to the +Congested Districts Board, and, in the case of "congested estates" and +untenanted land outside the jurisdiction of the Board, to the Estates +Commissioners. Otherwise Purchase and Sale remained voluntary.</p> + +<p>So much for the history of Land Purchase. How exactly do we stand at the +present moment?</p> + +<p>In round numbers, nearly 24 millions have actually been advanced under +the old Acts prior to 1903, and up to March of this year (1911) a +further sum of 42¼ millions had actually been advanced under the Wyndham +Act of 1903 and the Birrell Act of 1909.<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158" /><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313" /></p> + +<p>That makes a total of 66½ millions actually advanced to 165,133 tenants +up to March of 1911, covering the purchase of nearly 6 million acres of +land, or nearly a third of the total agricultural area of Ireland. The +tenants of the land are now quasi-freeholders, and will eventually be +complete freeholders. In addition, agreements for the purchase of +properties by 150,490 tenants, under the Wyndham and Birrell Acts, at a +total price of 46½ millions, for 4½ million acres, were pending in +March, 1911, though the sale and vesting were not yet completed. The +properties represented by these agreements will be duly transferred in +the course of the next few years, though the congestion of business is +very great.</p> + +<p>That will make a total of 113 millions advanced to 315,623 tenants for +the purchase of 11 million acres under all Acts up to and including that +of 1909. Now, how much more will be required? We have only one recent +official estimate—that made by the Land Commission in 1908 for the +Treasury Committee which sat to consider the crisis in Land Purchase. It +did not pretend to give an accurate forecast, but only to estimate the +maximum amount which would be needed, on the assumption that all unsold +land would eventually be sold at the average price reached under the Act +of 1903.<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159" /><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a> It is certain that the amount so calculated, covering as +it does all classes and descriptions of agricultural land, and including +land farmed by the landlord himself, as well as short-term pasture +tenancies,<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160" /><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a> will considerably exceed the actual requirements. Some +of the unsold land, especially of the pasture land, will never need to +be sold; nor is the average purchase price likely to remain permanently +as high as that obtained under the Act of 1903.</p> + +<p>Still, this speculative estimate gives us an outside figure which is +useful. The conclusion from it is that 95 millions <a name="Page_314" id="Page_314" />may be required to +finance all future sales initiated under the Act of 1909.</p> + +<p>But if we want to know how much cash may be wanted, dating from March, +1911, onwards, to finance Land Purchase, we must add the 46½ millions +needed for sales now agreed upon, and waiting to be carried through, but +not yet completed. That brings the total to 141½ millions.</p> + +<p>For the reasons given above, I think we might very well strike off 20 +from the 95 millions of future sales, and so reduce the total to 121½ +millions.</p> + +<p>Two further questions remain to be considered: (1) Can we assume that in +the future purchase will proceed smoothly? (2) Who pays for the +machinery of Land Purchase, and what is the security for the money +advanced?</p> + +<p>1. The Act of 1909 is still young. At the end of March, 1911, +applications had been lodged for the direct sale of 5,477 holdings at a +price of £1,623,526, representing an average of 20-8 years' purchase, +and negotiations were in progress for the purchase by the Congested +Districts Board of estates worth another 1½ millions. Total, a little +over 3 millions—a substantial amount of business in view of the +artificial acceleration caused by events in 1907 and 1908, the +subsequent reaction, and the enormous arrears of business still +remaining to be cleared up.</p> + +<p>We should naturally expect a slight check to purchase under the Act of +1909, since the inducement both to landlord and tenant is less. The +tenant would be inclined to hold out for a lower price because his +annuity is higher (though signs of this check are not yet apparent), and +the landlord is paid in a stock whose market price seems to be slowly +but steadily falling. It is now (November, 1911) at 86¼. On the other +hand, the wise change in the allocation of the bonus places a +much-needed premium on sales of poor land at low prices, and reverses +the process by which a wealthy landlord of good land sometimes obtained +the largest reward for submission to sale.<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161" /><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a> Moreover, there is +constant pressure towards purchase owing to the better financial +position of the purchasing tenant over the non-purchasing or judicial +tenant, while the fear in the <a name="Page_315" id="Page_315" />landlord's mind of further periodical +reductions in the judicial rents tends to induce him to meet this +pressure halfway.</p> + +<p>Still, there is a point beyond which such pressure might not be strong +enough to carry on voluntary Purchase, especially if the 3 per cent, +stock continued to fall. Wide powers of compulsion,<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162" /><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a> covering +considerably more than a third of Ireland, and including the poorest +areas, where purchase is most needed, already exist under the Act of +1909. Some think that general compulsion will be needed. Other +well-informed men count with confidence on completing all the necessary +part of the purchase of Irish land in from twelve to fifteen years under +the existing system. On the other hand, it is necessary to contemplate +the possible need for universal compulsion.</p> + +<p>2. Cost of the working of Land Purchase, and security for the money +advanced. It is just as well to make these points perfectly clear, in +view of the legends which obtain circulation about the "giving" of +British money for the purchase of Irish land.</p> + +<p>The cost of the Land Purchase machinery falls at present on the +taxpayers of the whole United Kingdom, including, of course, those of +Ireland. It amounted in 1909-10, as I showed in the last chapter, to +£414,500, and for 1911 the estimate is £544,395. This sum includes the +administrative cost of the Land Commission and Estates Commissioners, +the temporary losses on flotation caused in financing, under the Act of +1909, the balance of agreements made under the Act of 1903, and the +bonus to landlords.</p> + +<p>The Treasury, in their returns estimating the revenue and expenditure of +various parts of the United Kingdom, debit the whole of this sum against +Ireland, and, moral responsibility apart, I regard it as necessary that, +under Home Rule, Ireland should assume both the cost and the management +of Purchase.</p> + +<p>Apart from the annual vote I have mentioned, Land Purchase pays for +itself. The security for the individual holders of the Guaranteed Land +Stock by means of which the purchase money is raised is the Consolidated +Fund of the United Kingdom, but the Consolidated Fund has never been +called upon for a penny, either for interest or capital, and never will +be.<a name="Page_316" id="Page_316" /></p> + +<p>At present the initial security of the Government which controls the +Consolidated Fund—in other words, the initial security of the United +Kingdom taxpayers—is the Irish rates; for the grants in aid of Irish +local taxation still form a guarantee fund chargeable with the unpaid +annuities of defaulting tenants, though they have escaped the liability +for losses on the notation of stock at a discount. The ultimate security +is the purchased land itself; for, in the last resort, a defaulting +tenant who, it must be remembered, is a State tenant, can be sold up. +But the really important security is the tenant himself. The Irish +tenants, treated properly, pay their debts as honestly and punctually as +any other class of men in the world. Annuities in arrear are negligible. +The last Report of the Land Commission shows that out of two million +pounds of annuities due from 165,133 purchasing tenants, and close upon +another two millions of interest (in lieu of rent) upon holdings agreed +to be purchased by 150,490 tenants—a total of nearly four million +pounds—only £28,084 were uncollected on March 31 last. The cases of +hopeless default, leading to a sale of the land, were only fifty-four. +Not a penny has actually been lost.</p> + +<p>The State, then, or, if we choose so to put it, the United Kingdom +taxpayers, are safe from loss, and make a good investment. There has +never been the faintest symptom of a strike against annuities, and the +only cause which could conceivably ever suggest such a strike would be +the irritation provoked by a persistent refusal to grant Home Rule. Even +that possibility I regard as out of the question, because there is a +sanctity attaching to annuities which it would be hard to impair. Still, +to speak broadly, it is true that Home Rule will improve a security +already good, and that Home Rule, with financial independence, will make +it absolutely impregnable.</p> + +<p>Let me sum up.</p> + +<p>More than half the agricultural land of Ireland is sold to the tenants, +or agreed to be sold. Eleven million acres out of 18¾ million acres have +changed hands, or will soon change hands; 315,623 out of 554,060 +occupiers now pay annuities or interest in lieu of rent, to the amount +of nearly 4 million pounds. In regard to value, out of a total value of +208 millions for the whole agricultural land of Ireland, 66½ millions +have <a name="Page_317" id="Page_317" />actually been advanced for purchase, 46½ millions are due to be +advanced under signed agreements; and, on the extreme estimate of the +Land Commission, based on the supposition that all the remaining land +will ultimately be sold, 95 millions more will have to be advanced. +Total future liability on the extreme estimate, 141½ millions; or, if we +take the more moderate and reasonable figure I suggested, 121½ millions.</p> + +<p>Now, two conditions must be laid down—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>1. Purchase ought to continue.</p> + +<p> 2. Cheap Imperial credit is necessary for it.</p></div> + +<p>These conditions ought not to entail, beyond a strictly limited point, +the continued control of Purchase by the Imperial Government. That step, +as I suggested at p. 221, might involve Imperial control over (1) the +Congested Districts Board; (2) the whole work of the Land Commission, +outside Purchase, and all Irish land legislation; (3) the Irish police; +because the power of distraint for annuities, the last resource of the +creditor Government, rests, of course, with the arm of the law.</p> + +<p>Any one of these consequences, as I have urged, would be inconsistent +with responsible government in Ireland.</p> + +<p>What are the objections to Irish control over Purchase, with its +corollary, Irish payment of the running costs of Purchase? Two distinct +interests have to be considered: (1) That of the British taxpayer; (2) +that of the landlord.</p> + +<p>1. If we carry out the plan I have advocated, the British taxpayer, as +soon as he ceases to contribute to the diminishing subsidy suggested at +p. 284 in order to meet the initial deficit in the national Irish +balance-sheet, will cease to contribute anything towards the running +costs, landlord's bonus, and flotation losses of a Purchase operation +for the necessity of which Great Britain, in the past, was in reality +responsible. Great Britain is under a moral obligation to continue to +support Land Purchase with her national credit, which is indispensable. +She is also entitled to demand whatever reasonable conditions she thinks +fit, for example, a share in the nomination of Land and Estates +Commissioners; while any new legislation will, in the ordinary course, +need her assent. The security, as I said above, will be impregnable. The +pur<a name="Page_318" id="Page_318" />chasing tenant would become the tenant of the Irish State. The Irish +Government, as a whole, instead of the individual annuitants, would, of +course, be responsible to the Imperial Government, would collect the +annuities itself, and bear any contingent loss by their non-payment. To +repudiate a public obligation of that sort would be as ruinous to +Ireland as the repudiation of a public debt is to any State in the +world.</p> + +<p>In point of fact, the Irish Government would find it good policy to +popularize Irish Land Stock in Ireland. At present prices the 3 per +cent, stock is among the cheapest and safest in the world, and would +return to the farmer thrice as much interest as the average bank deposit +which he now favours.</p> + +<p>Mercifully, there is no exact historical precedent for such a case as +Ireland, though, on a small scale, Prince Edward Island is an +instructive parallel.<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163" /><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a> But if precedents, in the shape of guaranteed +loans to self-governing Colonies, are needed, they exist. The most +relevant and recent is the Imperial guaranteed loan of 35 millions made +to the Transvaal by Mr. Balfour's Government in 1903 after the great +war. Why it should be a heresy to do for Ireland what we did for the +Transvaal, I am at a loss to conceive. The loan became, of course, an +obligation of the Colony when it received Home Rule, and in 1907 a +further guaranteed loan of 5 millions was authorized, of which 4 +millions has been issued. Like Irish Land Stock, these loans are secured +on the Consolidated Fund; but I do not think a fear is now suggested +that the Consolidated Fund is in danger on that account. Prophecies of +that sort were common enough in the mouths of those who opposed +Transvaal Home Rule, but they did not long survive its enactment.</p> + +<p>Another precedent is a guaranteed railway loan to Canada in 1873 of +£3,600,000, which is just now becoming redeemable, while the Crown +Colony of Mauritius received a guaranteed loan of £600,000 in 1892. The +British and Irish taxpayers have also made themselves responsible for +£9,424,000 on ac<a name="Page_319" id="Page_319" />count of Egypt; £6,023,700 on account of Greece; and +£5,000,000 on account of Turkey. The total nominal amount of the +guaranteed loans to countries, colonial or foreign, outside the United +Kingdom is £63,647,700. The total amount outstanding on March 31, 1911, +was £59,474,200, and the Government holds securities only to the value +of £4,800,556 against these liabilities, leaving the net liability of +the taxpayer at £54,673,644.</p> + +<p>The net liability of the taxpayer at the same date on account of Irish +Guaranteed Land Stocks of all descriptions was £65,764,054.<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164" /><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a> Ireland +has a claim to Imperial credit far superior to any of the Colonies, +dependencies, or foreign Powers mentioned, and the credit should not +entail control, or the representation of Ireland at Westminster.</p> + +<p>Incidentally, it goes without saying that Ireland, in common with the +Colonies, should receive the very valuable privilege of having +independent loans raised by herself inscribed at the Bank of England, +and made trustee securities.</p> + +<p>2. It may be argued that the Congested Districts Board and the Land +Commission, and through them Irish statesmen, may be subjected to local +pressure hostile to the landlord's interests, and that the Irish +Government would feel itself more free for social and other reforms if +the land question were placed legally outside their purview. My answer +is, in the first place, that Great Britain would cease to lend if her +conditions were unfulfilled; in the second place, that in this, as in +all matters, we are bound to place faith in the self-respect and sense +of justice of a free Ireland—in its common prudence, too; for it would +be a disaster whose magnitude is universally recognized in Ireland if +any course were to be taken which prevented the landlord class from +joining in the great work of making a new Ireland. Fair treatment of the +landlords by a free Ireland, as distinguished from fair treatment at the +hands of an external authority, would do more than anything else to +bring about a reconciliation. That is human nature all the world over.</p> + + +<h4><a name="XIV_II" id="XIV_II" />II.</h4> + +<h5>MINOR LOANS TO IRELAND.</h5> + + +<p>It remains only to refer briefly to two other cases where Ireland +benefits from Imperial credit.</p> + +<p>(1) The Labourers (Ireland) Act of 1906 sanctioned the <a name="Page_320" id="Page_320" />advance of money +through the Land Commission to Rural Councils for building labourers' +cottages—a class of loans previously made by the Public Works +Commissioners of Ireland. £3,111,816 had been advanced under this head +on March 31, 1911, and £1,138,184 had been applied for. The money is +raised by guaranteed 2¾ per cent, stock in the same way as the money for +Land Purchase.</p> + +<p>(2) In addition, there are the loans granted by the Irish Commissioners +of Public Works. In their capacity as lenders, which is only one of a +multitude of capacities, the Commissioners are really a subordinate +branch of the Treasury, and fulfil the same function as the Public Works +Loans Commissioners in Great Britain. They lend principally to local +authorities for all manner of public works and public health +requirements, also to private individuals, mainly for the improvement of +land, and, to a small extent, to Arterial Drainage Boards and to +railways. They get their money from the National Debt Commissioners, and +in 1909-10 issued loans to the amount of £293,233—a figure which shows +a considerable reduction on that of the previous two years.<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165" /><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a> The +total amount of 35,000 outstanding loans on March 31, 1910, was +£9,608,110, of which between two-thirds and three-quarters were due from +local authorities. The interest varies, as in Great Britain, from 2¾ to +5 per cent., according to the nature of the security, and in 1909-10 +averaged £3 10s. 6d. Most of the loans are secured on local rates, where +the interest payable is either 3½ or 3¾ per cent., according to the +period of the loan; others on undertakings such as harbours; and others +on the land for the improvement of which the money is borrowed.</p> + +<p>Here, then, are two small and secondary problems. Under Home Rule +Ireland will have no claim to further Imperial credit for loans of +either of the above classes. On the other hand, there is no reason why +the Treasury, if it pleases, and on its own terms, should not lend as +before, though not directly, as it virtually does now, but indirectly, +by loan to the Irish Government. The security will be just as good, and +probably better. If a negligent<a name="Page_321" id="Page_321" /> Local Government Board under Irish +control sanctions reckless loans by local authorities, and a negligent +Irish Government advances for such loans money borrowed from Great +Britain, the Irish Treasury will suffer. Such eventualities need not +seriously be considered. The analogy with the Transvaal and Canada +loans, which were mainly for public works, is very close.<a name="Page_322" id="Page_322" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV" />CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<h3>THE IRISH CONSTITUTION<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166" /><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a></h3> + + +<p>I have dealt with the major issues of Home Rule. The exclusion or +retention of Irish Members at Westminster, and the powers—above all, +the financial powers—of the Irish State, are the two points of cardinal +importance. As I have shown, they are inseparably connected, and form, +in reality, one great question.</p> + +<p>I have endeavoured to prove that from whatever angle we approach that +central issue, whether we argue from representation to powers, or from +powers to representation, and whether the particular powers we argue +from be financial, legislative, or executive; whether we place Irish, +British, or Imperial interests in the forefront of our exposition—we +are led irresistibly to the colonial solution—that is, to the cessation +of Irish representation at Westminster, coupled with a concession to +Ireland of the full legislative and executive authority appropriate to +that measure of independence, and, above all, with fiscal autonomy.</p> + +<p>All the other provisions of the Bill are secondary. They may be divided +into two categories, which necessarily overlap:</p> + +<p>1. Provisions concerning Ireland only.</p> + +<p>2. Provisions defining the Imperial authority over Ireland.</p> + +<p>The structure of the Irish Legislature, the position of the Irish +Judiciary, the safeguards for minorities, the provision made for +existing servants of the State, the statutory arrangements, if any, for +the future reorganization of the Irish Police—these and other questions +are of great intrinsic importance, and need the most careful discussion; +but they are altogether subordinate to those we have already considered. +If it be over-sanguine to hope, in Ireland's interest, that they will be +discussed in a calm and dispassionate way, we can at least <a name="Page_323" id="Page_323" />demand that +those provisions belonging to the second category, which present no +appreciable difficulty, will not excite bitter and barren disputes like +those of 1893.</p> + +<p>It is not within the scope of this volume to discuss exhaustively the +secondary provisions of the Bill, or to suggest the exact statutory form +which those provisions, major or minor, should take. In this chapter I +shall deal briefly with matters which I have hitherto left aside, and +incidentally give more precision to the points upon which I have already +suggested a conclusion, in both cases indicating, so far as possible, +the most useful precedents and parallels from other Constitutions. The +result will be the rough sketch of a Home Rule Bill.</p> + + +<h4>PREAMBLE.</h4> + +<p>"Whereas it is expedient that <i>without impairing or restricting the +supreme authority of Parliament</i>, an Irish Legislature should be +created, etc." So ran the opening sentence of the Home Rule Bill of +1893. The words I have italicized are harmless but superfluous. They +have never appeared in the Constitutions granted to Colonies, even at +periods when the Colonies were most distrusted. Nothing can impair the +supreme authority of Parliament.</p> + + +<h4>EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY.</h4> + +<p>In all parts of the Empire, power emanates from the Sovereign, and is +wielded locally in his name.</p> + +<p>Section 9 of the British North America Act of 1867 runs as follows: "The +Executive Government and authority of and over Canada is hereby declared +to continue and be vested in the Queen." Similar words are used in the +South Africa Act of 1909, and in the Commonwealth of Australia +Constitution Act of 1900. Curiously enough, these were Acts to legalize +the Federation, or Union, of separate Colonies, and were passed at a +time when the principle embodied needed no affirmation. In earlier Acts +for granting Colonial Constitutions, the principle was taken for +granted, and implied in numerous provisions, but not stated explicitly. +The most recent unitary Constitution, that of the Transvaal (Section +47), <a name="Page_324" id="Page_324" />was even more reticent, though the principle was none the less +clear. The point is unimportant, and the words used in the Home Rule +Bills of 1886 and 1893 (Clauses 5 and 7 respectively), modified to meet +a change of Sovereign, will serve very well: "The Executive power in +Ireland (or the Executive Government of Ireland) shall continue vested +in His Majesty...."</p> + +<p>Thereon follow the provisions for delegation of the Royal authority, +first to the Sovereign's personal Representative in Ireland, and then +through him to the members of the Irish Executive. The simpler these +provisions are, the better. What we know as responsible government has +never been defined in any Act of Parliament. The phrase "responsible +government" has only once appeared in any Constitution—namely, in the +preamble of the Transvaal Constitution granted in 1906, and even then no +attempt was made at definition, though certain sections, like certain +sections in the Australian Constitutions of 1855 and in the later +Federal Acts, inferentially suggested features of responsible +government.</p> + +<p>The system is two-sided. Ministers are responsible on the one hand to +the King direct, as in Great Britain, or to the King's Representative, +as in the Colonies, and, on the other hand, to the elected Legislature. +Ireland will resemble a Colony in being a dependent State under a +Representative of the King—namely, the Lord-Lieutenant. This personage, +corresponding to the Colonial Governor, will also have to act in a dual +capacity. On the one hand he will be responsible to the King, or, +virtually, to the British Cabinet, and, on the other hand, he will be +bound by an unwritten law to nominate for the Government of Ireland +persons acceptable to the elected Legislature, and in Irish matters to +act by their advice in all normal circumstances.</p> + +<p>Let us dispose first of the relation of the Ministers and of other +public officials to the Legislature. There will be no question, +presumably, of giving statutory power to this relation. It is an +unwritten custom—(1) that Ministers must be members of one branch of +the Legislature; (2) that they must hold the confidence of the elected +branch; (3) that, as a Cabinet, they stand or fall together; and, +lastly, (4) that all non-political officials are excluded from the +Legislature. The first and the <a name="Page_325" id="Page_325" />last of these conventions have taken +legal form in some isolated cases;<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167" /><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a> the other two appear in no +statute that has yet been framed.<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168" /><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a></p> + +<p>Neither have the functions in practice exercised by the Ministry or +Cabinet, nor the relations which in practice exist between it and the +King's Representative, ever had statutory definition. Whatever form the +Home Rule Bill takes, it cannot give legal precision to these things. +The King's Representative always nominates an Executive Council—that +is, a Cabinet to "advise" him in the Government, and whether, as in the +Bill of 1893, that Council is called an Executive Committee of the Privy +Council of Ireland by analogy with the Dominion of Canada, where it is +the "King's Privy Council for Canada," or whether it is merely an +Executive Council is immaterial. That it is, nominally, the +constitutional duty of the King's Representative (like that of the King +himself) to perform executive acts on the advice of his Ministers is +never stated expressly. He is always, and generally in the text of the +Constitution, vested with the power of summoning, proroguing, and +dissolving the Legislature, and of giving or withholding the Royal +Assent to Bills. He also, by unwritten law, wields the prerogative of +Pardon, and appoints all public servants; and in all these cases, except +in the case of appointing non-political officials, he occasionally has +to act on his own personal responsibility.</p> + +<p>This personal responsibility cannot be distinguished in practice from +his responsibility to the Crown, which appoints and can remove him. +Cases have arisen where the Governor of a self-governing Colony has +written home for special guidance on some specific point, and where the +answer given has been that he must act on his own responsibility, or +follow the advice of his Ministers. All Colonial Governors, however, +whether or not their powers are defined in the Constitution, <a name="Page_326" id="Page_326" />are +appointed by Commission from the Crown with powers defined in Letters +Patent and Instructions as to their exercise. These Letters Patent and +Instructions are not of much importance in the case of a self-governing +Colony where responsible advice so largely controls the action of the +Governor. Sometimes the executive powers given by Instructions to the +Governor are indirectly alluded to in the Constitution, as in the South +Africa Act of 1909, where, by Clause 9, under the head of "Executive +Government," the Governor-General is "to exercise such powers and +functions of the King as His Majesty may be pleased to assign to him." +In the Australian and Canadian Acts of 1900 and 1867 respectively, the +words do not appear. I name this point because in Clause 5 of the Home +Rule Bill of 1893, and Clause 7 of the Bill of 1886, a similar course +was taken in providing that the Lord-Lieutenant should "exercise any +prerogatives, or other executive power of the Queen, the exercise of +which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty." The words are not +strictly necessary. The Lord-Lieutenant will, of course, have his +Letters Patent and Instructions, but the powers of the Crown are +theoretically absolute. If the Crown, acting under responsible British +advice, should wish to defy the Irish Legislature, it could do so +whatever the terms of the Bill.</p> + +<p>Naturally, there will be certain Imperial and non-Irish matters in which +the Lord-Lieutenant will act primarily under the orders of the British +Cabinet, and the Departmental British Minister primarily responsible for +Irish-Imperial matters would be the Home Secretary.<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169" /><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a></p> + +<p>The question may be raised, as in 1893 (July 3, Hansard), whether a +staff of Imperial officials ought not to be set up to conduct any +Imperial business which has to be done in Ireland, on the analogy of the +Federal staff in the United States. I hope Mr. Gladstone's answer will +still hold good—that no such staff is needed; that the Irish officials +will be responsible, and ought, on the Home Rule principle, to be +trusted, as they are trusted in the Colonies.</p> + +<p>The Royal Assent to Bills is always a matter for express enactment in +the Constitution, but here the "instructions" of the Governor, and even +his personal "discretion," have <a name="Page_327" id="Page_327" />generally been alluded to in recent +Constitutions, whether conferred by Act or Letters Patent. The typical +form of words is that the Governor "shall declare his Assent according +to his discretion, but subject to His Majesty's instructions."<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170" /><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a> The +Home Rule Bill of 1893 left out reference to "discretion," and, on the +other hand, is, I think, the only document of the kind in which the +"advice of the Executive Council" has ever been expressly alluded to, +although the practice, of course, is that the Assent, normally, is given +or withheld on that advice. The Transvaal Constitution of 1906 (Section +39) was unique in prescribing that special instructions must be received +by the Governor in the case of each proposed law, before the Assent is +given. I hope that will not be made a precedent for Ireland. Such +precautions only irritate the law-makers, and serve no useful purpose.</p> + +<p>Colonial Governors, besides the power of Assent and Veto, may "reserve" +Bills for the Royal pleasure, which is to be signified within two years. +Moreover, Bills which have received the Governor's Assent may be +disallowed within one or two years.<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171" /><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> Neither of these provisions +appeared in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, and neither appear to +be strictly necessary, owing to the proximity of Ireland. Whatever is +done, we may hope that the practice now established in Canada, where the +Federal Government never disallows a provincial law on any other ground +than that it is <i>ultra vires</i>, and, <i>a fortiori</i>, the similar practice +as between Great Britain and the Dominions, may be imitated in the case +of Ireland.</p> + +<p>To sum up, the terse and simple words of the Bill of 1886 really +enunciate all that is necessary:</p> + +<div class="sidenote">Constitution of the Executive Authority.</div> + +<p>"<b>7.</b>—(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> + +<div class="blockquot"><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)<a name="Page_328" id="Page_328" /> 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></div> + +<h4>LORD-LIEUTENANT AND CIVIL LIST.</h4> + +<p>The restriction as to the religion of the Lord-Lieutenant will, of +course, be removed. There is no reason why his term of office should be +limited by law. His salary, payable by Ireland, should perhaps be stated +in the Act, as in the case of Canada and South Africa, though not in +that of Australia. Australia, on the other hand, has a statutory Civil +List, and a fixed Civil List was an invariable feature of the old +Constitutions given to self-governing Colonies. Canada and South Africa +are under no such restrictions, and it would be very inexpedient to +impose them upon Ireland.</p> + + +<h4>LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY.</h4> + +<p>The Irish Legislature will be given power, according to the historic +phrase, "to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of +Ireland," subject to restrictions afterwards named. That the laws should +be only "in respect of matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some +part thereof" goes without saying, and need not be copied from the Bill +of 1893 (Clause 2). Nor need the superfluous proviso in the same clause +be reproduced, asserting the "supreme power and authority of the +Parliament of the United Kingdom." The supreme power becomes none the +more supreme for such assertions. Clause 2 of the Bill of 1886 is simple +and decisive:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"2. With the exceptions of and subject to the restrictions in this + Act mentioned, it shall be lawful for (Her) Majesty (the Queen), by + and with the advice of the Irish Legislative Body, to make laws for + the peace, order, and good government of Ireland, and by any such + law to alter and repeal any law in Ireland."</p></div> + +<p>With the restrictions on the powers of the Legislature I dealt fully +enough in Chapter X.,<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172" /><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a> and I need only summarize my conclusions:</p> + +<p><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329" />1. <i>Reservations of Imperial Authority.</i>—The Irish Legislature should +<i>not</i> have power to make laws upon—</p> + +<ul> +<li>The Crown or a Regency.</li> +<li>Making of War or Peace.</li> +<li>Prize and Booty of War.</li> +<li>Army or Navy.</li> +<li>Foreign Relations and Treaties (excepting Commercial Treaties).</li> +<li>Conduct as Neutrals.</li> +<li>Titles and Dignities.</li> +<li>Extradition.</li> +<li>Treason.</li> +<li>Coinage.</li> +<li>Naturalization and Alienage.</li> +</ul> + + +<p>Reservation of the nine subjects included in the bracket is implied, +without enactment, in all colonial Constitutions, but in the Irish Bill +it is no doubt necessary that all reserved powers should be formally +specified.</p> + +<p>All powers not specifically reserved will belong to the Irish +Legislature, subject to those restrictions, constitutional or statutory, +which in matters like Trade and Navigation, Copyright, Patents, etc., +bind the whole Empire.</p> + +<p>Section 32 of the Bill of 1893, borrowed from the Colonial Laws Validity +Act, will no doubt be applied.</p> + +<p>2. <i>Minority Safeguards</i>.—This point, too, I dealt with in Chapter +X.<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173" /><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a> Let the Nationalist Members come forward and frankly accept any +prohibitory clauses which the fears of the minority may suggest, +provided that they do not impair the ordinary legislative power which +every efficient Legislature must enjoy. Almost every conceivable +safeguard for the protection of religion, denominational education, and +civil rights was inserted in the Bill of 1893, including even some of +the "slavery" Amendments to the United States Constitution. The list may +require revision—(<i>a</i>) in view of the recent establishment of the +National University, and the disappearances of all apprehension about +the status of Trinity College, Dublin; (<i>b</i>) in regard to an +extraordinarily wide Sub-clause (No. 9) about interference with +Corporations; (<i>c</i>) in regard to the <a name="Page_330" id="Page_330" />words, "in accordance with settled +principles and precedents," which appeared in Sub-clause (No. 8) +(Legislature to make no law "Whereby any person may be deprived of life, +liberty, or property without due process of law<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174" /><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> <i>in accordance with +settled principles and precedents</i>," etc.). A debate on this question +may be found in Hansard, May 30, 1893. The words italicized were added +in Committee on the motion of Mr. Gerald Balfour, though the +Attorney-General declared that they gave no additional strength to the +phrase "due process of law," while they certainly appear calculated to +provoke litigation. Sir Henry James appeared to think that they made the +suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act <i>ultra vires.</i> If that is their +effect, there is no reason why they should be inserted. Even a Canadian +Province, whose powers are more limited than those of the subordinate +States in any other Federation, has "exclusive" powers within its own +borders over "property and civil rights,"<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175" /><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> and can, beyond any +doubt, suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, if it pleases.</p> + +<p>The same superfluous words appeared in Sub-clause (No. 9) about +Corporations.</p> + + +<h4>THE IRISH LEGISLATURE.<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176" /><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a></h4> + +<p>As I urged in Chapter X., this is a subject in which large powers of +constitutional revision—much larger than those contained in either of +the Home Rule Bills—should be given to the Irish Legislature itself, +corresponding to the powers given by statute to the self-governing +Colonies, and to the powers always held by the constituent States of a +Federation. In the Bill itself it would be wisest to follow beaten +tracks as far as possible, and not to embark on experiments. Present +conditions are, unhappily, very unfavourable for the elaboration of any +scheme ideally fit for Ireland.<a name="Page_331" id="Page_331" /></p> + +<p><i>A Bi-Cameral Legislature.</i>—Working on this principle, we must affirm +that Ireland's position, without representation in the Imperial +Parliament, would certainly make a Second Chamber requisite. Three of +the Provinces within the Federation of Canada (Manitoba, British +Columbia, and Ontario) prefer to do without Second Chambers—so do most +of the Swiss Cantons—but all the Federal Legislatures of the world are +bi-cameral, and all the unitary Constitutions of self-governing Colonies +have been, or are, bi-cameral.</p> + +<p><i>The Upper Chamber.</i>—One simple course would be to constitute the Upper +Chamber of a limited number of Irish Peers, chosen by the whole of their +number, as they are chosen at present for representation in the House of +Lords. Historical and practical considerations render this course out of +the question, though some people would be fairly sanguine about the +success of such a body in commanding confidence, on the indispensable +condition that all representation at Westminster were to cease. It has +been membership, before the Union of an ascendency Parliament, and after +the Union of an absentee Parliament, which has kept the bulk of the +Irish peerage in violent hostility to the bulk of the Irish people. +Those Peers who seek and obtain a career in an Irish popular +Legislature—to both branches of which they will, of course, be +eligible—will be able to do valuable service to their country. The same +applies to all landlords. Now that land reform is converting Ireland +itself into a nation of small landholders, who, in most countries, are +very Conservative in tendency, the ancient cleavage is likely to +disappear. Indeed, an ideal Second Chamber ought perhaps to give special +weight to urban and industrial interests, while aiming, not at an +obstructive, but at a revising body of steady, moderate, highly-educated +business men.</p> + +<p>We have to choose one of two alternatives: a nominated or an elective +chamber. The choice is difficult, for second chambers all over the world +may be said to be on their trial. On the other hand, nothing vital +depends upon the choice, for experience proves that countries can +flourish equally under every imaginable variety of second chamber, +provided that means exist for enabling popular wishes, in the long-run, +to prevail. The European and American examples <a name="Page_332" id="Page_332" />are of little use to us, +and the widely varied types within the Empire admit of no sure +inferences. Allowance must be made for the effect of the Referendum +wherever it exists (as in Australia and Switzerland), as a force tending +to weaken both Chambers, but especially the Upper Chamber of a +Legislature. It does, indeed, seem to be generally admitted, even by +Canadians, that the nominated Senate of the Dominion of Canada, which is +added to on strict party principles by successive Governments, is not a +success, and it was so regarded by the Australian Colonies when they +entered upon Federation, and set up an elective Senate. The South +African statesmen, who had to reckon with racial divisions similar to +those in Ireland, compromised with a Senate partly nominated, partly +elected, but made the whole arrangement revisable in ten years.<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177" /><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a></p> + +<p>It would be desirable, perhaps, on similar grounds of immediate policy, +to let those who now represent the minority in Ireland have a deciding +voice in the matter. No arrangement made otherwise than by a free +Ireland herself can be regarded as final, and I suggest only that a +nominated Chamber would be the best expedient at the outset, or in the +alternative a partly nominated, partly elected Chamber.</p> + +<p>If and in so far as the Upper Chamber is elective, should election be +direct or indirect? There is a somewhat attractive Irish precedent for +indirect election, namely, the present highly successful Department of +Agriculture, whose Council and Boards the County Councils have a share +in constituting,<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178" /><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a> and I have seen and admired a most ingenious +scheme of Irish manufacture for constructing the whole Irish Legislature +and Ministry on this principle. But the objections appear to be +considerable. Local bodies in the future should not be mixed up in +national politics. That has been their bane in the past. Besides, the +principle of indirect election is under a cloud everywhere, most of all +in the United States. Australia rejected it in 1900, and the South +Africans, while giving it partial recognition in the Senate, made the +expedient provisional.</p> + +<p><i>The Lower House</i>.—The Lower House might very well be elected on the +same franchise and from the same constituencies as at present, subject +to any small redistributional modifica<a name="Page_333" id="Page_333" />tions necessitated by changes of +population. This is certainly a matter which Ireland should have full +power to settle for itself subsequently.</p> + +<p>Lord Courtney's proposals for Proportional Representation<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179" /><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> merit +close consideration and possess great attractions, especially in view of +their very favourable reception from Nationalists in Ireland. My own +feeling is that such novel proposals may overload a Bill which, however +simply it be framed, will provoke very long and very warm discussion. If +the system were to be regarded by the present minority as a real +safeguard for their interests, its establishment, on tactical grounds +alone, would be worth any expenditure of time and trouble; but, if they +accept the assumption that existing parties in Ireland are going to be +stereotyped under Home Rule, and then point to the paucity of Unionists +in all parts of Ireland but the north-east of Ulster, they can +demonstrate that no <i>practicable</i> enlargement of constituencies could +seriously influence the results of an election. My own view, already +expressed, is that, provided we give Ireland sufficient freedom, wholly +new parties must, within a short time, inevitably be formed in Ireland, +and the old barriers of race and religion be broken down, and, +therefore, that all expedients devised on the contrary hypothesis will +eventually prove to be needless and might even prove unpopular and +inconvenient. On the other hand, merits are claimed, with a great show +of reason, for Proportional Representation, which are altogether +independent of the protection of minorities from oppression. It is +claimed that the system brings forward moderate men of all shades of +opinion, checks party animus, and steadies the policy of the State. But +I think that a free Ireland should be the judge of these merits. At +present the bulk of the people do not understand the subject, and need +much education before they can appreciate the issue.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, the conventional party system, based on conventional +constituencies, will, to say the least, do no more harm to Ireland than +to any other State in the Empire. Any minor defects will be +infinitesimal beside the vast and beneficial change wrought by +responsible government.<a name="Page_334" id="Page_334" /></p> + + +<h4>DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN THE TWO HOUSES.</h4> + +<p>It is essential to provide for this, and it would be difficult to better +the proposal in the Bill of 1893: that after two years, or an +intervening dissolution, the question should be decided by a joint vote +in joint session.</p> + + +<h4>MONEY BILLS AND RESOLUTIONS.</h4> + +<p>To originate in the Lower House on the motion of a Minister.</p> + + +<h4>POLICE.</h4> + +<p>The Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police should be +under Irish control from the first. The former force will undoubtedly +have to be reconstituted, and its reconstitution, as an ordinary Civil +Police, ought to be undertaken by the Irish Government, but the +financial interests of "retrenched" officers and men should be +safeguarded in the Bill itself.</p> + + +<h4>JUDGES.</h4> + +<p>All future appointments should be made by the Irish Government, without +the suspensory period of six years named in the Bill of 1893. Present +Irish Judges should retain their appointments, as in both previous +Bills. The precedent of Canada, where provincial Judges, unlike the +State Judges of Australia, are appointed and paid by the Federal +Government, is certainly not relevant.</p> + + +<h4>LAW COURTS.</h4> + +<p>The Federal analogy, except in one particular noticed under the next +heading, has no application to Ireland. Only one provision of any +importance is needed, namely, that Appeals, in the last resort, should +be to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council instead of to the +House of Lords. The Judicial<a name="Page_335" id="Page_335" /> Committee is the final Court of Appeal for +the whole Empire, and, strengthened by one or more Irish Judges, should +hear Irish Appeals. It is true that the tribunal has been subjected to +some criticism lately, especially from Australia. Federal States +naturally wish to secure pre-eminent authority for their own Supreme +Courts. But the tribunal is, on the whole, popular with the colonial +democracies, and the argument from distance and expense does not apply +to Ireland. At the end of an interesting discussion at the last Imperial +Conference, in which suggestions were put forward for strengthening the +Judicial Committee by Colonial Judges, it was agreed that new proposals +should be made by the Imperial Government for an Imperial Final Court of +Appeal in two divisions, one for the United Kingdom, another for the +Colonies. If that step is taken, the position of Ireland will need fresh +consideration.<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180" /><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a></p> + + +<h4>DECISION OF CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS.<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181" /><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a></h4> + +<p>The validity of an Irish Act which has received the Royal Assent will, +like that of a Colonial Act which has received the Royal Assent, be +determined in the ordinary course by the Irish Courts, with an ultimate +appeal to the Judicial Committee, which should be strengthened for the +occasion by one or more Irish Judges. But both the previous Home Rule +Bills made the convenient provision that the Lord-Lieutenant should have +the power of referring questions of validity arising on a Bill, before +its enactment, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for final +decision. There is a useful Canadian precedent for this provision, in +the Imperial Act passed in 1891, for giving the Governor-General in +Council power, in the widest terms, to refer, <i>inter alia</i>, questions +touching provincial legislation to the Supreme Court of Canada, with an +appeal from it to the Judicial Committee.<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182" /><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a> To follow this precedent +would not involve any Federal complications.<a name="Page_336" id="Page_336" /></p> + + +<h4>EXCHEQUER JUDGES.</h4> + +<p>If Ireland controls her own Customs and Excise, no provision for this +tribunal appears to be necessary, unless it be that some counterpart is +needed for the Colonial Courts of Admiralty.<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183" /><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a> The Bill of 1886 +(Clause 20) limited the jurisdiction to revenue questions. The Bill of +1893 (Clause 19) widened it to include "any matter not within the power +of the Irish Legislature," or "any matter affected by a law which the +Irish Legislature have not power to repeal or alter." The minds of the +authors of this clause were evidently affected by the Federal principle +which involves two judicial authorities—one for Federal, one for +provincial matters. There seems to be no reason for embarking on any +such complications in the case of Ireland.</p> + + +<h4>SAFEGUARDS FOR EXISTING PUBLIC SERVANTS IN IRELAND.<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184" /><a href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a></h4> + +<p>Retrenchment, and in some departments drastic retrenchment, will be +needed in the Irish public service, just as it was needed in the +Transvaal after the grant of Home Rule to that Colony. It is highly +desirable that statutory provision should be made safeguarding existing +interests. No such provision was made in the case of the Transvaal, and +some bad feeling resulted. The past responsibility for excessive Civil +expenditure lies, of course, on Great Britain, as it lay in the case of +the Transvaal, and on grounds of abstract justice it would have been +fair in that case for Great Britain to have assumed a limited part of +the expense of compensating retrenched public servants. The practical +objections to such a policy are, however, very great. In this, as in all +matters, Ireland will gain more by independence than by financial aid, +however strongly justified. All payments should be a direct charge upon +the Irish Exchequer, not, as in some cases under the Bill of 1893, upon +the Imperial Exchequer in the first instance, with provision for +repayment from Ireland.<a name="Page_337" id="Page_337" /></p> + + +<h4>FINANCE.</h4> + +<p>I summarize the conclusions already indicated in previous chapters:</p> + +<p>1. Fiscal independence, with complete control over all Irish taxation +and expenditure.</p> + +<p>2. Initial deficit to be supplied by a grant-in-aid, diminishing +annually and terminable in a short period, say, seven years.</p> + +<p>3. Future contribution to Imperial services to be voluntary.</p> + +<p>4. Remission to Ireland of her share of the National Debt, and +relinquishment by Ireland of her share of the Imperial Miscellaneous +Revenue.</p> + +<p>5. Imperial credit for Land Purchase to be extended as before, by loans +guaranteed on the Consolidated Fund, under any conditions now or +hereafter to be made by the Imperial authorities.</p> + +<p>Loans to the Public Works Commissioners to be optional.</p> + + +<h4>REPRESENTATION AT WESTMINSTER.</h4> + +<p>To cease.</p> + + +<h4>CONFERENCE BETWEEN THE IRISH AND IMPERIAL AUTHORITIES.</h4> + +<p>This is a very important point, because friendly consultation, as at +present with the Colonies, will take the place of Irish representation +in the Imperial Parliament, and will prove a far more satisfactory means +of securing harmony and co-operation. Arrangements similar to those of +the Imperial Conference, only more precise and efficient, and of a +permanent character, should be made for consultation between the Irish +and British authorities on all subjects where the interests of the two +countries touch one another. The need for more frequent consultation +with the Colonies is being felt with increasing force, and although no +permanent consultation body has yet been created, special <i>ad hoc</i> +conferences have recently been held—for Defence in 1909, and for +Copyright in 1910—in addition to the quadrennial meetings, where a vast +amount of varied topics are discussed, and the most valuable decisions +arrived at.<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185" /><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338" /></p> + +<p>What the precise machinery should be in the case of Anglo-Irish +relations I do not venture to say. The Ministers of the respective +countries will be so easily accessible to one another that there would +seem to be no need for the frequent attendance of a powerful personnel +at joint meetings. But a Standing Committee, with a small official +staff, would be necessary.</p> + + +<h4>CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186" /><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a></h4> + +<p>For amendment of the Home Rule Act itself it is not possible to make any +statutory provision. Like all Constitutional Acts, it will only be +alterable by another Imperial statute, which, if it were needed, should +be promoted by Ireland. But one of the most important clauses in the Act +itself will be that defining Ireland's power to amend her own +Constitution without coming to Parliament. I venture to repeat the view +that this power should be as wide as possible, consistently with the +maintenance of the Imperial authority, and subject, of course, to +provisions prescribing—(1) a time-limit for the initial arrangements; +(2) the method of ascertaining Irish opinion; and (3) the majority in +the Legislature, or in the electorate, or in both, necessary to sanction +a constitutional change.<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187" /><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> If a Home Rule Constitution, passed into +law in the heat of a party fight at Westminster, proves to be perfect, a +miracle will have been performed unparalleled in the history of the +Empire. At this moment a Committee of Ireland's ablest men of all +parties should be at work upon it, with an instructed public opinion +behind them. So only are good Constitutions made, and even the very best +need subsequent amendment.<a name="Page_339" id="Page_339" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CONCLUSION" id="CONCLUSION" />CONCLUSION</h2> + + +<p>Is it altogether idle to hope that some such body will yet come into +existence, if not in time to influence the drafting of the Bill, at any +rate to bring to bear upon its provisions the sober wisdom, not of one +party only in the State, but of all; and so, if it were possible, to +give to the charter of Ireland in her "new birth of freedom" the +sanction of a united people?</p> + +<p>Home Rule will eventually come. Within the Empire, the utmost achieved +by the government of white men without their own consent is to weaken +their capacity to assume the sacred responsibility of self-government. +It is impossible to kill the idea of Home Rule, though it is possible, +by retarding its realization, to pervert some of its strength and +beauty, and to diminish the vital energy on which its fruition depends. +And it is possible in the case of Ireland, up to and in the very hour of +her emancipation, after a struggle more bitter and exhausting than any +in the Empire, to heap obstacles in the path of the men who have carried +her to the goal, and on whom in the first instance must fall the +extraordinarily difficult and delicate task of political reconstruction. +They will be on their mettle in the eyes of the world to prove that the +prophets of evil were wrong, to show sympathy and inspire confidence in +the very quarters where they have been most savagely traduced and least +trusted, and they will have to exhibit dauntless courage in attacking +old abuses and promoting new reforms. They will need their hands +strengthened in every possible way.</p> + +<p>The help must come—and it cannot come too soon—from the working +optimists of Ireland, from the hundreds of men and women, of both +parties and creeds, who are labouring outside politics to extirpate that +stifling undergrowth of pessimism which runs riot in countries denied +the light and air of freedom. All these people agree on the axiom that +Ireland has a distinct individual existence, and that her future depends +<a name="Page_340" id="Page_340" />upon herself. No one should dare to stop there. Let him who feels +impelled to stop there at any rate act with open eyes. In expecting to +realize social reconstruction without political reconstruction—however +divergent the aims may now seem to be—he expects to achieve what has +never been achieved in any country in the Empire, and to achieve this +miracle in the very country which has suffered most from political +repression, and possesses the most fantastic system of government to be +found in the King's dominions. The thing is impossible, and if at bottom +he feels it to be so, and inclines sadly to the view that political +servitude is but the least of two evils, I would only venture to suggest +this: Is it not a finer course to stake something on a risk run in every +white community but Ireland rather than to face the certainty of half +achievement? And is it not, after all, a sound risk to trust the very +men who now respond to the appeal for self-reliance, mutual tolerance, +and united effort in their private affairs, not to renounce these +qualities and abuse the rights of citizenship when the public affairs of +their country are under their own control?</p> + +<p>As for the risk to Great Britain, I have only this last word to say: Let +her people, not for the first time, show that they can rise superior to +the philosophy, as fallacious in effect as it is base and cowardly in +purpose, which sets the safety of a great nation above the happiness and +prosperity of a small one. Within the last few weeks the wheel has +turned full circle, and the almost inexplicable contradiction which has +existed for so long between Unionism and Imperialism has been +illuminated with a frank cynicism rare in our public life. It is being +said that the freedom given to Canada cannot be given to Ireland, +because the separation from the Empire theoretically rendered possible +by such a step would be immaterial in the case of Canada, which is +distant, but perilous in the case of Ireland, which is near. If this be +Imperialism, it should stink in the nostrils of every decent citizen at +home and abroad.</p> + +<p>It is true, to our shame, that, by little more than an accident, Canada +obtained the freedom which gave her people harmony, energy, and wealth +in the teeth of this mean and selfish doctrine. But Lord Durham took a +higher view. Let me recall the memorable words which he added to his +long and <a name="Page_341" id="Page_341" />brilliant argument for liberty as a source, not only of +domestic regeneration, but of affection and loyalty to the Motherland: +"<i>But at any rate our first duty is to secure the well-being of our +colonial countrymen;</i> and if, in the hidden decrees of that wisdom by +which this world is ruled, it is written that these countries are not +for ever to remain portions of the Empire, we owe it to our honour to +take good care that, when they separate from us, they should not be the +only countries on the American continent in which the Anglo-Saxon race +shall be found unfit to govern itself."</p> + +<p>Lord Durham was doubly right; in his prophecy of the closer union +liberty would promote, and in elementary law which he laid down, of +moral obligation which, whatever the result, he held superior to +dynastic calculations. It is a fact of ominous significance that the +intellectual successors of the men who most hotly repudiated both these +doctrines in 1838 are being driven by pressure of their Irish views to +revive that repudiation in 1911, and to revive it in the midst of the +most effusive protestations of the need for still closer union with a +Colony which would either have undergone the fate of Ireland or have +ceased to be a member of the Empire if their philosophy had triumphed. I +do not believe there is any conscious cant in that flagrant +contradiction, but I do firmly believe that so long as their error about +Ireland poisons in them the springs of Imperial thought, some element of +fallacy lies in any Imperial policy they undertake. In common prudence, +at any rate, they should avoid telling Canada, while beckoning her +nearer to the heart of the Empire, that they only gave her freedom +because she was so far.</p> + +<p>But I rely still on an awakening, on a fundamental change of spirit. The +Empire owes everything to those who have disputed, sometimes at the cost +of their lives, illegitimate authority. Some day the politicians who now +spend sleepless nights with paste and scissors in ransacking the ancient +files of the world's Press for proofs that Mr. Redmond once used words +signifying that he aimed at "separation"—whatever that phrase may +mean—will regret that they ever demeaned themselves by such petty +labour, and will place Mr. Redmond among the number of those who have +saved the Empire from the consequences of its own errors.<a name="Page_342" id="Page_342" /></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX" />APPENDIX</h2> + + +<h3>COMPARATIVE TABLE, SHOWING THE PRINCIPAL PROVISIONS OF THE HOME RULE +BILLS OF 1886 AND 1893</h3> + +<table border='0' cellpadding='4' summary=""> +<tr><td align='center'><b>HOME RULE BILL OF 1886.</b></td> <td align='center'><b>HOME RULE BILL OF 1893.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td colspan='2' align='center'><b>THE IRISH LEGISLATURE.</b></td></tr> + + +<tr><td>To consist of the Crown and <i>Two Orders</i>, sitting together, and unless +either Order demands a separate vote, voting together.</td> + +<td>To consist of the Crown and <i>Two Houses</i>, sitting separately.</td></tr> + +<tr><td>1. <i>First Order</i>, to consist of <i>(a)</i> 75 members elected on a £25 +franchise from a new set of constituencies. Term of office, ten years. +<i>(b)</i> 28 Peerage members, to give place by degrees to elective members +as in <i>(a)</i>.</td> + +<td>1. <i>Council</i>, of 48 Councillors elected on a £20 franchise from a new +set of constituencies. Term of office, eight years.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><i>2. Second Order</i>, 204 members elected as at present. Two from each +constituency (with an alteration in the case of Cork).</td> + +<td>2. <i>Assembly</i> of 103 members elected as at present.</td></tr> + +<tr><td>Dissolution at least every five years.</td> + +<td>Dissolution at least every five years.</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td><i>Money Bills</i> and votes to originate in the Assembly.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN ORDERS OR HOUSES.</b></td></tr> + + +<tr><td>After three years or a dissolution question to be decided by joint vote.</td> + +<td>After two years or a dissolution question to be decided by joint vote in +joint session.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>RESTRICTIONS ON IRISH LEGISLATURE.</b></td></tr> + + + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>1. <i>Imperial Matters</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><i>No power to make laws about</i>—</td></tr> + +<tr><td>The Crown, War or Peace, Army or Navy, Volunteers or Militia, Prize or +Booty of War, Treaties, Titles, Treason, Naturalization, Trade or +Navigation, Lighthouses, etc., Coinage, Copyright, Patents, Post Office +(except within Ireland).</td> + +<td><i>Nor</i> with: the Lord-Lieutenant, conduct as Neutrals, Extradition, +Trade-marks, nor (for six years) Post Office in or out of Ireland.</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td>But Trade <i>within Ireland</i>and <i>inland</i> Navigation conceded to Ireland.<a name="Page_343" id="Page_343" /></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>2. <i>Irish Matters.</i></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><i>No power to make laws for the purpose of</i>—</td></tr> + +<tr><td>(1) <i>Establishing or endowing any religion</i> or imposing disabilities or +conferring privileges on account of <i>religion</i>, or affecting the +undenominational constitution of National schools, etc.</td> + +<td>(1) Ditto, ditto, but more explicit and far-reaching.</td></tr> + +<tr><td>(2) Impairing rights or property of corporations, without address for +both Orders and consent of Crown.</td> + +<td>(2) Ditto, ditto, or "without due process of law" and compensation.</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td>(3) Depriving anyone of <i>life, liberty, or property</i> without due process +of law in accordance with settled precedents, or denying <i>equal +protection of laws</i>, or taking property without <i>just compensation</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td>(4) Imposing disabilities or conferring privileges on account of <i>birth, +parentage, or place of business</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td>(5) (<i>For three years</i>) respecting relations of <i>landlord and tenant</i> or +the purchase and letting of <i>land</i> generally.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>IRISH REPRESENTATION IN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td>To cease altogether (except in the case of a proposed alteration of the +Home Rule Act).</td> + + +<td>Ireland to send 80 members to Westminster (instead of 103). Peers as +before.</td></tr> + + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>The Crown, as represented by the Lord-Lieutenant, acting in Irish +affairs with the advice of an Irish Cabinet responsible to the Irish +Legislature.</td></tr> + + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>POWER OF VETO ON IRISH LEGISLATION.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td>To be held by Lord-Lieutenant (acting normally on the advice of Irish +Cabinet?), but subject to instructions from Imperial Government.</td> + + +<td>To be held by Lord-Lieutenant, <i>acting on advice of Irish Cabinet</i>, but +subject to instructions from Imperial Government.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344" /><b>FINANCE.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>1. <i>Taxation</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><i>Customs and Excise</i> still to be levied by Imperial Parliament and +collected by Imperial officers. All other taxes to be under Irish +control.</td> + + +<td>(1) <i>For six years</i> all existing taxes to continue to be imposed by +Imperial Parliament and collected by Imperial officers.</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td>Ireland to have power to impose additional taxes of her own.</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td>(2) <i>After six years</i>, Customs and Excise to remain Imperial taxes; all +others to be under Irish control. But Excise to be collected, though not +levied, by Ireland.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>2. <i>Ireland's Revenue</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td><i>Gross</i> revenue collected in Ireland from Imperial and Irish taxes and +Crown Lands, etc.; <i>plus</i> an Imperial grant towards the cost of Irish +Police. (Total cost at that time £1,500,000: Ireland to pay £1,000,000, +Treasury any surplus over £1,000,000, until cost reduced to that point.)</td> + + +<td>(1) <i>True</i> Irish revenue from Imperial taxes (<i>i.e.</i>, with allowance +made for duties collected in Ireland on articles consumed in Great +Britain, and <i>vice versa</i>).</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td>(2) Revenue from Irish taxes and Crown Lands.</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td>(3) Imperial grant of one-third of annual cost of Irish Police (equal in +first year to £486,000).</td></tr> + + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>3. <i>Ireland's Contribution to Imperial Exchequer</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td>(1) <i>For thirty years</i> Ireland to pay fixed annual maximum sums, +representing Ireland's share of (a) Army, Navy, Civil List, etc.; <i>(b)</i> +National Debt. Payments not to be increased, but might be diminished. +Share for Army, Navy, etc., never to exceed one-fifteenth of total cost. +Total payments under these heads for first year, £3,242,000.</td> + +<td>(1) <i>For six years</i> Ireland to pay <i>one-third of the "true" revenue +raised in Ireland from Imperial taxes and Crown Lands</i>. (Estimated share +for first year, £2,276,000, or about one-twenty-eighth of total Imperial +expenditure.)</td></tr> + +<tr><td>(2) <i>After thirty years</i>, contribution <i>to be revisable</i>.</td> + +<td>(2) <i>After six years</i>, both method and amount of Ireland's contribution +to be revised and settled afresh.<a name="Page_345" id="Page_345" /></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>4. <i>Contribution to Special War Taxes</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td>Optional to Ireland.</td> + +<td>For six years compulsory on Ireland to pay her proportional share of any +such tax levied.</td></tr> + + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><i>5. Post Office</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td>To be taken over by Ireland under Irish Act.</td> + +<td>For six years to remain under Imperial control. Profit or loss on Irish +posts to be credited to or debited <i>against</i> Ireland.</td></tr> + + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>POLICE.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Dublin Police to be under Imperial control for two years. Constabulary, +"while that force subsists," to be under Imperial control, but Ireland +to have power to create a new force under control of local authorities.</td> + + +<td>Both Dublin Police and Constabulary, as long as they should exist, to be +under Imperial control.</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td>Meanwhile an ordinary locally controlled civil police to be gradually +established by Irish Government, and to take the place of the old +forces.</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td>But <i>for six years</i>, Imperial Government to have the power to maintain +in existence the old forces, if considered expedient.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>JUDGES.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><i>Present Irish Judges to Remain</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td>All future Irish Judges to be appointed by Irish Government.</td> + +<td>For six years future Irish Supreme Court Judges (not County Court +Judges, etc.) to be appointed by Imperial Government. After six years by +Irish Government.</td></tr> + + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>LAW COURTS.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><i>Constitution to Remain the Same</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td></td><td>But appeals to the House of Lords to cease; instead, to the Judicial +Committee of the Privy Council.</td></tr> + + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><i>(As to Validity of Irish Laws, etc.)</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>To be decided by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (including +one or more Irish Judges).</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346" /><b>EXCHEQUER JUDGES.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Legal proceedings in Ireland or against Imperial revenue land +authorities to be referred, if either party wishes, to the Exchequer +Division Judges of the United Kingdom.</td> + + +<td>All legal proceedings in Ireland <i>which touch any matter</i> (financial or +otherwise) <i>not within the power of the Irish Legislature</i> to be +referred, if either party wishes, to two Exchequer Judges appointed and +paid by the Imperial Government. Appeal to be to the Judicial Committee +of the Privy Council.</td></tr> + + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>LORD-LIEUTENANT.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><i>Might be of any Religion</i>.</td></tr> + +<tr><td>Term of office indefinite.</td> + +<td>Term of office six years.</td></tr> + + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.</b></td></tr> + +<tr><td>After the first dissolution, Legislature to have power reconstitute +Second Order.</td> + +<td>After six years, Legislature to have power to reconstitute Assembly.</td></tr> +</table> + +<h3>REMARKS ON THE FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS.</h3> + +<p>The arrangements differed widely in the two Bills.</p> + +<p>The main points of likeness were: (1) That from the first there was to +be a <i>separate Irish Exchequer</i>; (2) that for all time Ireland was to be +<i>denied control over the imposition of Customs and Excise</i>—that is to +say, over about <i>three-quarters of her revenue</i> as then raised; (3) that +about <i>a third of the cost of the Irish Police</i> was to be paid by the +Imperial Government; (4) that payments due from Ireland to the Imperial +Government were to be made a first charge on proceeds of Imperial taxes +in Ireland.</p> + +<p>The principal points of difference were:</p> + +<p>1. Under the Bill of 1886, apart from the very important restriction of +Customs and Excise, Ireland was at once to have freedom to control her +own taxation.</p> + +<p>Under the Bill of 1893 (as amended) there was to be a suspensory period +of six years during which all existing taxes were to continue to be +imposed by the Imperial Government; but with power to Ireland to add +taxes of her own. <i>Amounts</i> of Imperial taxes might be varied, but <i>no +new ones</i> imposed, except specially for war. After six years, financial +freedom, except in Customs and Excise. Excise, however, was to be +<i>collected</i>, though not levied, by Ireland.<a name="Page_347" id="Page_347" /></p> + +<p>2. "<i>Collected" and "True" Revenue</i>.—In 1886, Ireland was credited with +all the revenue <i>collected in Ireland</i> from Customs and Excise <i>(i.e.,</i> +the "gross" revenue from those taxes), but she had to pay the cost of +collection herself.</p> + +<p>In 1893 allowance was made for duties collected in Ireland on articles +consumed in Great Britain, and <i>vice versa,</i> Ireland being credited only +with her "true" revenue—that is, revenue from dutiable articles +<i>consumed in Ireland.</i> Similar allowances made in the Income Tax +account. A joint Anglo-Irish Committee was to settle these adjustments. +This system involved a deduction from the first year's gross Irish +revenue of nearly two millions. (In 1886 the corresponding sum, credited +to Ireland, was £1,400,000.) On the other hand, in 1893 the greater part +of the cost of collection (£235,000) was not to be borne by Ireland.</p> + +<p>3. <i>Imperial Contribution by Ireland.</i>—In 1886, a fixed annual maximum, +which might be diminished, but could not be exceeded, revisable in +thirty years.</p> + +<p>In 1893 (for six years) an annually ascertained <i>quota</i>—namely, a third +of Ireland's "true" revenue (exclusive of taxes imposed by herself).</p> + +<p>4. <i>Ireland's Budget.</i>—Note the important point that under both Bills +three-quarters of Irish revenue was derived from Customs and Excise, +over which, in 1886, Ireland could exercise no control; in 1903 only the +control given by the presence of eighty members in the House of Commons. +In both cases Ireland was to be wholly responsible for her own civil +expenditure (except for the existing Police). Under both Bills Ireland +was intended to start with a surplus of about half a million, which may +be regarded roughly as the equivalent, in both cases, of the Imperial +share of the cost of the Irish Police. But note that, in 1886, Ireland +being pledged to pay a fixed million of the cost of Police, would obtain +no relief until the cost was reduced below a million; while in 1893, +paying two-thirds of the annually ascertained cost, she would obtain +relief from any annual reduction. The Police referred to was, of course, +the then existing Police, imperially organized and controlled. The new +civil Police eventually set up in substitution would be financed and +controlled by the Irish Government. The charges, therefore, on the +British taxpayer would, it was expected, be a rapidly diminishing one.</p> + +<p>The loss on Irish posts in 1893, debited against Ireland, was estimated +at £52,000.</p> + +<p>5. <i>Special War Taxes.</i>—Ireland's contribution optional in 1886; in +1893, compulsory (at any rate, for six years, which would have included +the beginning of the South African War).<a name="Page_348" id="Page_348" /></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX" />INDEX</h2> + + +<ul><li>Abercromby, Sir R., <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a></li> +<li>Absentee taxes, in Ireland, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>-<a href='#Page_30'>30</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> in Australasia, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Absenteeism,</li> +<li><ul><li> in Ireland, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>;</li> +<li> in Prince Edward Island, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>-<a href='#Page_76'>76</a>;</li> +<li> in Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>;</li> +<li> in Lower Canada, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>;</li> +<li> in Australia, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Acadia. See Maritime Provinces</li> +<li>Act of Union, 1800, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>-<a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>-<a href='#Page_233'>233</a></li> +<li>Administrators, in South Africa, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a></li> +<li>Agricultural Co-operation. See Irish Agricultural Organization Society, also <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a></li> +<li>Agricultural Grant, Ireland, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a></li> +<li>Agricultural Rates Act, 1896, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a></li> +<li>Agricultural Statistics, Ireland, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>-<a href='#Page_308'>308</a></li> +<li>Amendment of Constitution,</li> +<li><ul><li> Ireland, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>-<a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>;</li> +<li> Colonies, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>-<a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>American Colonies,</li> +<li><ul><li> colonization of, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>-<a href='#Page_9'>9</a>;</li> +<li> land tenure in (see Land Tenure);</li> +<li> mercantile system, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>-<a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>;</li> +<li> government of, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>-<a href='#Page_23'>23</a>, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>;</li> +<li> Revolution in, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>-<a href='#Page_35'>35</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>.</li> +<li> See also United States</li></ul></li> + +<li>Anglo-Normans, in Ireland, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>-<a href='#Page_7'>7</a></li> +<li>Annuities, tenant's. See Land Purchase</li> +<li>Armagh, Peep o' Day Boys in, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a></li> +<li>Army Act, 1881, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Army and Navy, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>-<a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li> +<li>Arnold, Benedict, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a></li> +<li>Ashbourne Act, 1885, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>.</li> +<li><ul><li> See also Land Acts</li></ul></li> + +<li>Australian Colonies Act, 1850, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a></li> +<li>Australian Colonies Customs Duties Act, 1873, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, footnote</li> +<li>Australian Colonies, history of,</li> +<li><ul><li> See Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a>, and under names of the various States;</li> +<li> federation of, as Commonwealth of Australia, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>;</li> +<li> finance in, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>-<a href='#Page_228'>228</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>-<a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>-<a href='#Page_298'>298</a>.</li> +<li> See also Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, Constitutions, Federal Systems, Customs and Excise, Subsidies</li></ul> +</li></ul> + + +<ul><li>Baldwin, Robert, in Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a></li> +<li>Balfour, Arthur,<a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a></li> +<li>Balfour, Gerald, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a></li> +<li>Baltimore, Lord, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a></li> +<li>Barbour, Sir David, on Anglo-Irish Finance, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>-<a href='#Page_257'>257</a></li> +<li>Barry, Sir Redmond, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li> +<li>Belfast, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a></li> +<li>Belgium, cost of Government in, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a></li> +<li>Berkeley, G.F.H., <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></li> +<li>Bidwell, B., in Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a></li> +<li>Birrell, Augustine, his Land Act of 1909. See Land Acts, Land Tenure, Land Purchase</li> +<li>Bloemfontein, Convention of, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a></li> +<li>Boer War of 1880-1881, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> of 1899-1902, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>-<a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Bonus to landlords, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>-<a href='#Page_312'>312</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>.</li> +<li><ul><li> See also Land Purchase</li></ul></li> + +<li>Boomplatz, battle of, 1848, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a></li> +<li>Botha, General, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a></li> +<li>Brand, President, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a></li> +<li>Bright, John, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></li> +<li>British Columbia, finances of, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> Upper Chamber in, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>British North America Act,</li> +<li><ul><li> 1867, citations from, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a> (footnote), <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a> (footnote), <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a> (footnote);</li> +<li> 1891, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>.</li> +<li> See also Canada</li></ul></li> + +<li>Buller, Charles, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>-<a href='#Page_95'>95</a></li> +<li>Burgh, Hussey, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a></li> +<li>Burke, Edmund, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>-<a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a></li> +<li>Burke, Robert O'Hara, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li> +<li>Butt, Isaac, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a></li></ul> + + +<ul><li>Canada, Upper and Lower,</li> +<li><ul><li> history of, (see Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a> and <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_viii">viii</a>, <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>-<a href='#Page_341'>341</a>);</li> +<li> relations of, with American Colonies, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>;</li> +<li> with United States, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>;</li> +<li> Union of the two Provinces proposed, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>-<a href='#Page_78'>78</a>,</li> +<li><ul><li> carried out, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>-<a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>-<a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>, and <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_viii">viii</a>;</li></ul></li> + +<li> comparison of history with that of Transvaal, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>-<a href='#Page_135'>135</a>;</li> +<li> confederation of, as the Dominion of Canada, proposed, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>,</li> +<li><ul><li> carried out (1867), <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>-<a href='#Page_196'>196</a>;</li></ul></li> + +<li> finance in, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>-<a href='#Page_228'>228</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>-<a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>.</li> +<li> See also Constitutions, Federal Systems, Customs and Excise, Subsidies, Guaranteed Loans, British North America Acts, 1867, 1891</li></ul></li> + +<li>Carleton, Sir Guy, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a></li> +<li>Carnarvon, Lord, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>-<a href='#Page_124'>124</a></li> +<li>Carolina, plantation of, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a></li> +<li>Carson, Sir Edward, <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_x">x</a></li> +<li>Casey, Judge, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a></li> +<li>Castlereagh, Lord, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a></li> +<li>Catholic Relief Act,</li> +<li><ul><li> 1778, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>;</li> +<li> 1793, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>-<a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Chamberlain, Joseph, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>-<a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a></li> +<li>Channel Islands, finance, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a></li> +<li>Charlemont, Lord, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>-<a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a></li> +<li>Charles II., King, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a></li> +<li>Chartist movement, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a></li> +<li>Chatham, Lord, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>-<a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a></li> +<li>Chief Secretary, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>,<a href='#Page_160'>160</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> compared with Canadian Governor, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Childers, Hugh,</li> +<li><ul><li> in Prince Edward Island, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a> (footnote);</li> +<li> as Chairman of Royal Commission on finance, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>-<a href='#Page_257'>257</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Church Funds, Irish, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>-<a href='#Page_272'>272</a></li> +<li>Civil List, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a></li> +<li>Civil servants,</li> +<li><ul><li> Ireland, <a href='#Page_336'>336</a>;</li> +<li> Transvaal, <a href='#Page_336'>336</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Clare, Earl of, See Fitzgibbon</li> +<li>Clergy Reserves,</li> +<li><ul><li> Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>;</li> +<li> Lower Canada, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>-<a href='#Page_85'>85</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Cockburn, Sir John, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a></li> +<li>Coinage,</li> +<li><ul><li> colonial and Irish powers over, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a> (footnote);</li> +<li> Act of 1853, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a> (footnote)</li></ul></li> + +<li>Collins, Francis, in Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a></li> +<li>Colonial Attorneys Relief Act, 1857, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Colonial Courts of Admiralty Act, 1890, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a> (footnote), <a href='#Page_336'>336</a> (and footnote)</li> +<li>Colonial Defence forces, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>-<a href='#Page_219'>219</a> (and footnote)</li> +<li>Colonial Laws Validity Act, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a></li> +<li>Colonial Marriages Act, 1866, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Colonial Naval Defence Act, 1865, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Colonial Office, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a></li> +<li>Colonial Prisoners' Removal Act, 1869, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Colonial Probates Act, 1892, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Commercial Propositions of 1785, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a></li> +<li>Commercial Restrictions,</li> +<li><ul><li> Ireland, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>-<a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>;</li> +<li> American Colonies, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>-<a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>;</li> +<li> Canada, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, citations from, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a> (footnote), <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>-<a href='#Page_325'>325</a> (footnote), <a href='#Page_338'>338</a> (footnote), <a href='#Page_332'>332</a></li> +<li>Conferences, Imperial, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> suggestions for, with Ireland under Home Rule, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Congested Districts Board, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>-<a href='#Page_167'>167</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> in Land Purchase, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a>;</li> +<li> under Home Rule, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>-<a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Connecticut, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>-<a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a></li> +<li>Constitutional Act, 1791, Canada, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>-<a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a></li> +<li>Constitutional Doubts, settlement of, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a></li> +<li>Constitution, Irish, summary of proposed, Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></li> +<li>Constitutions:</li> +<li><ul><li> Transvaal,</li> +<li><ul><li> of 1905, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a>-<a href='#Page_137'>137</a>;</li> +<li> of 1906, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>-<a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>-<a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>-<a href='#Page_324'>324</a>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a> (footnote);</li></ul></li> + +<li> United States, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>-<a href='#Page_197'>197</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>-<a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>;</li> +<li> Dominion of Canada, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>;</li> +<li> Australian States, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>-<a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a> (footnote);</li> +<li> Commonwealth of Australia, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>;</li> +<li> South African Union, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>.</li> +<li> See also Federal Systems and individual Colonies</li></ul></li> + +<li>Continental Congress. 1774, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a></li> +<li>"Contract" finance, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>-<a href='#Page_306'>306</a></li> +<li>Contribution of Ireland to Imperial services;</li> +<li><ul><li> in the eighteenth century, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a>;</li> +<li> during the Union, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>-<a href='#Page_239'>239</a>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>-<a href='#Page_254'>254</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>;</li> +<li> under Home Rule, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>-<a href='#Page_287'>287</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>-<a href='#Page_303'>303</a>,<a href='#Page_33'>33</a>7</li></ul></li> + +<li>Convict system, Australia, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a></li> +<li>Copyright, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>-<a href='#Page_220'>220</a> (footnote);</li> +<li><ul><li> Imperial Conference on, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Corn Laws, Repeal of, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a></li> +<li>Cornwallis, Lord, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a></li> +<li>Courtney, Lord, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a></li> +<li>Cromwell, Oliver, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a></li> +<li>Crown Colony, features of, in Irish Government, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>-<a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a></li> +<li>Crown Lands, revenue from, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a></li> +<li>Currie, B.W., <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a></li> +<li>Customs and Excise,</li> +<li><ul><li> Ireland, control of, under Home Rule, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>-<a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a>-<a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>-<a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a>-<a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>-<a href='#Page_301'>301</a>;</li> +<li> Australia, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>-<a href='#Page_228'>228</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>-<a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>-<a href='#Page_299'>299</a>;</li> +<li> Canada, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>-<a href='#Page_228'>228</a>;</li> +<li> United States, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>-<a href='#Page_228'>228</a>;</li> +<li> in Colonies generally, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a>.</li> +<li> See also Finance, Federal Systems</li></ul></li></ul> + + +<ul><li>Debt, Irish public, until 1816, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>-<a href='#Page_233'>233</a></li> +<li>Danish invasions, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a></li> +<li>Declaration of Independence,</li> +<li><ul><li> Irish, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>;</li> +<li> American, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Declaratory Acts for America and Ireland, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>-<a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a></li> +<li>Defender Society, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>-<a href='#Page_56'>56</a></li> +<li>Deficit, in Irish Revenue,</li> +<li><ul><li> amount of, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>-<a href='#Page_260'>260</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>;</li> +<li> method of dealing with, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>-<a href='#Page_286'>286</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Denmark, agricultural policy in, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a></li> +<li>Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> founding of, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>-<a href='#Page_162'>162</a>;</li> +<li> allusions to, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Derby, Lord, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a></li> +<li>Derry, Bishop of, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a></li> +<li>Development Commissioners, grants to Ireland, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a></li> +<li>Devolution movement, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a></li> +<li>Devon Commission, 1845, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a></li> +<li>Dillon, John, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a></li> +<li>Disagreement between two Chambers of Irish Legislature, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a></li> +<li>Disestablishment of Irish Church, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a></li> +<li>Disraeli, Benjamin, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a></li> +<li>Dissenters, in Ireland, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>-<a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> in American Colonies, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>;</li> +<li> in Canada, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>-<a href='#Page_82'>82</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Dublin, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a></li> +<li>Duffy, Sir C. Gavan, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>-<a href='#Page_116'>116</a></li> +<li>Dunraven, Lord, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></li> +<li>Durban, Conference at, for Closer Union, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>-<a href='#Page_157'>157</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a></li> +<li>Durham, Lord, <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_viii">viii</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>-<a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>-<a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a></li> +<li>Durham Report, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>-<a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a></li> +<li>Dutch East India Company, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a></li></ul> + +<ul><li>Education, Ireland, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a>-<a href='#Page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> finance of, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>-<a href='#Page_269'>269</a>;</li> +<li> England, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>;</li> +<li> Scotland, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Egerton, H.E., <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li> +<li>Elgin, Lord, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>-<a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a></li> +<li>Emancipation, Catholic, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>-<a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>-<a href='#Page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a></li> +<li>Emigration, from Ireland, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>-<a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a></li> +<li>Emmett, Robert, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a></li> +<li>Encumbered Estates Act, 1849, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a></li> +<li>Equalization of taxes, in Ireland and Great Britain, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>-<a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a></li> +<li>Estate duties, assessment to,</li> +<li><ul><li> as test of taxable capacity, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>;</li> +<li> yield of, in Ireland, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>-<a href='#Page_276'>276</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Estates Commissioners. See Land Purchase</li> +<li>Eureka Stockade, 1854, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>-<a href='#Page_113'>113</a></li> +<li>Evicted tenants, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a></li> +<li>Executive authority,</li> +<li><ul><li> in Colonies, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>-<a href='#Page_222'>222</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>-<a href='#Page_328'>328</a>;</li> +<li> in Ireland, under Home Rule, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>-<a href='#Page_222'>222</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>-<a href='#Page_328'>328</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Executive Council,</li> +<li><ul><li> in Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>;</li> +<li> in Lower Canada, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Extradition,</li> +<li><ul><li> Colonial powers over, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a> (and footnote);</li> +<li> Irish powers over, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li></ul></li></ul> + +<ul><li>"Family Compact,"</li> +<li><ul><li> in Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>;</li> +<li> in the Maritime Provinces, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Famine, Irish, 1847, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a></li> +<li>Farrer, Lord, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>-<a href='#Page_256'>256</a></li> +<li>"Federal" Home Rule, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>-<a href='#Page_206'>206</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>-<a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>-<a href='#Page_300'>300</a></li> +<li>Federal systems, in general, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>-<a href='#Page_197'>197</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> Upper Chamber in, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a>-<a href='#Page_213'>213</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>-<a href='#Page_332'>332</a>;</li> +<li> division of powers, as in Home Rule Bill, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>;</li> +<li> Amendment of Constitution, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>-<a href='#Page_227'>227</a>;</li> +<li> finance, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>-<a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>-<a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>-<a href='#Page_300'>300</a>;</li> +<li> judiciary, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>-<a href='#Page_336'>336</a>;</li> +<li> settlement of constitutional questions, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>.</li> +<li> See also Canada, Australian Colonies, South Africa, United States, Switzerland, Germany, Constitutions</li></ul></li> + +<li>Fenianism, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a></li> +<li>Financial relations of Ireland and Great Britain (see Chapters <a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a>, <a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a>, <a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a>);</li> +<li><ul><li> before the Union, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>-<a href='#Page_231'>231</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>;</li> +<li> from the Union to 1896, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>-<a href='#Page_257'>257</a>;</li> +<li> Royal Commission on, 1894-1896, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>-<a href='#Page_257'>257</a>;</li> +<li> present situation, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>-<a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, and Chapters <a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a> and <a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Finance, of the Home Rule Bill, Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a>, and summary, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a></li> +<li>Finance, Colonial. See Federal Systems, and under names of Colonies</li> +<li>Finance Act, 1894, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Finance Act, 1909, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a></li> +<li>Finlay, Father T.A., <a href='#Page_165'>165</a></li> +<li>Fiscal amalgamation, 1817, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>, <a href='#Page_289'>289</a></li> +<li>Fisher, J., author of "The End of the Irish Parliament," <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a></li> +<li>Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, and <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>-<a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a></li> +<li>Fitzgibbon, James, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a></li> +<li>Fitzwilliam, Lord, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>-<a href='#Page_54'>54</a></li> +<li>Flood, Henry, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>-<a href='#Page_47'>47</a></li> +<li>Ford, Patrick, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a></li> +<li>Fortescue, Hon. J.W., <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>-<a href='#Page_40'>40</a></li> +<li>Foster's Corn Law, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Fox, Charles James,</li> +<li><ul><li> on Canada, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>-<a href='#Page_79'>79</a>;</li> +<li> on Ireland, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>France, Seven Years' War with, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> in Canada, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>-<a href='#Page_73'>73</a>;</li> +<li> in American War of Independence, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>;</li> +<li> effect of, on Ireland, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>;</li> +<li> effect of French Revolution on Ireland, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>-<a href='#Page_55'>55</a>;</li> +<li> invasions of Ireland, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Franklin, Benjamin, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>-<a href='#Page_34'>34</a></li> +<li>Free Trade, opinion in Ireland on, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> influence of, on Ireland, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>-<a href='#Page_237'>237</a>.</li> +<li> See also Tariff Reform, Customs and Excise</li></ul></li> + +<li>French-Canadians. See Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a>, especially pages <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>-<a href='#Page_78'>78</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>-<a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>-<a href='#Page_97'>97</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> also <a href='#Page_121'>121</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Frere, Sir Bartle, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a></li></ul> + +<ul><li>Gaelic League, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>-<a href='#Page_168'>168</a></li> +<li>Geelong, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li> +<li>Georgia, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a></li> +<li>Germany, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> Federal Constitution of, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_228'>228</a> (Zollverein)</li></ul></li> + +<li>Gladstone, W.E.,</li> +<li><ul><li> Irish land reform, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>;</li> +<li> on colonial liberty, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>-<a href='#Page_111'>111</a>;</li> +<li> his Transvaal and Irish policies, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>;</li> +<li> on representation of Ireland at Westminster, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>-<a href='#Page_211'>211</a>;</li> +<li> taxation of Ireland, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>-<a href='#Page_235'>235</a>;</li> +<li> on Irish expenditure, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>;</li> +<li> financial schemes in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>-<a href='#Page_303'>303</a>, and <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>;</li> +<li> for details of the Bills generally, see <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a> and in the text <i>passim</i></li></ul></li> + +<li>Gourlay, William, in Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a></li> +<li>Governors,</li> +<li><ul><li> in American Colonies, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>;</li> +<li> in the Canadas, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>;</li> +<li> in the Dominion of Canada, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>;</li> +<li> in the Commonwealth of Australia, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a> (footnote), <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Grattan, Henry, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a></li> +<li>Grattan's Parliament, Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></li> +<li>Greene, General, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a></li> +<li>Greville's "Memoirs," <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a></li> +<li>Grey, Sir George, in Australasia, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>-<a href='#Page_117'>117</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> in South Africa, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>-<a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Grote, George, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a></li> +<li>Guarantee Fund, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>. See also Land Purchase</li> +<li>Guaranteed Loans,</li> +<li><ul><li> to Ireland (see Land Purchase);</li> +<li> to the Transvaal and Canada, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>;</li> +<li> to Crown Colonies and Foreign Powers, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>-<a href='#Page_319'>319</a></li></ul></li></ul> + +<ul><li>Habeas Corpus Act, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li> +<li>Hamilton, Sir Edward, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a></li> +<li>Hancock, John, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a></li> +<li>Henderson, Professor G.C., <a href='#Page_116'>116</a></li> +<li>Henry VIII., Ireland in the reign of, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a></li> +<li>Hewins, Professor W.A.S., <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>-<a href='#Page_294'>294</a></li> +<li>Holland, Bernard, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a></li> +<li>Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, For details, see <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>, allusions in text <i>passim</i></li> +<li>"Home Rule Problems," edited by</li> +<li><ul><li> Basil Williams, <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, and pp. <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>House of Lords: under the Union, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> after Home Rule, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Howe, Joseph, in Nova Scotia, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a></li> +<li>Hume, philosophy of, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a></li> +<li>Hume, Joseph, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a></li> +<li>Hyde, Dr. Douglas, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a></li></ul> + + +<ul><li>Imperial Federation, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>-<a href='#Page_205'>205</a></li> +<li>"In and Out" Clause, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a></li> +<li>Income Tax,</li> +<li><ul><li> first imposition of, in Ireland, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>-<a href='#Page_235'>235</a>;</li> +<li> assessment to, as test of taxable capacity, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a>;</li> +<li> yield of, in Ireland, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>-<a href='#Page_276'>276</a>;</li> +<li> errors in computing Irish yield, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a> (footnote)</li></ul></li> + +<li>India, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a></li> +<li>Indians, in America, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a></li> +<li>Industrial Development Associations, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a></li> +<li>Insurance, National, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a></li> +<li>International Copyright Act, 1886, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Ireland Development Grant, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a></li> +<li>Irish Agricultural Organization Society, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>-<a href='#Page_165'>165</a></li> +<li>Irish Council Bill, 1907, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a></li> +<li><i>Irish Homestead</i>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a></li> +<li>Irish Members at Westminster. See Representation at Westminster</li> +<li>Irish Universities Act, 1908, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a></li> +<li>Isle of Man, finance of, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a></li></ul> + + + +<ul><li>Jamaica, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a></li> +<li>James, Sir Henry, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li> +<li>Jebb, Richard, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>-<a href='#Page_118'>118</a></li> +<li>Johannesburg, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a></li> +<li>Judges, Irish, under Home Rule, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>-<a href='#Page_335'>335</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> Exchequer Judges, <a href='#Page_336'>336</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Judicial salaries, Ireland, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a></li></ul> + +<ul><li>Kilmore, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li> +<li>Kitchener, Lord, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a></li> +<li>Kruger, President Paul, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a></li> +<li>Kyte, Ambrose, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li></ul> + + +<ul><li>Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1906, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a></li> +<li>Labour questions, in Ireland, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></li> +<li>Lafontaine, Sir Louis, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a></li> +<li>Laing's Nek, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a></li> +<li>Lalor, Peter, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>-<a href='#Page_113'>113</a></li> +<li>Land Acts, Irish, of 1870, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>-<a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>-<a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> 1881, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>-<a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>;</li> +<li> 1885, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>;</li> +<li> 1887, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>;</li> +<li> 1891, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>-<a href='#Page_310'>310</a>;</li> +<li> 1896, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>;</li> +<li> 1903, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>-<a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>-<a href='#Page_321'>321</a>;</li> +<li> 1909, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>-<a href='#Page_321'>321</a>.</li> +<li> See also Land Tenure, Land Purchase</li></ul></li> + +<li>Land Commission, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> cost and control of, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>-<a href='#Page_319'>319</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Land League, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a></li> +<li>Land Purchase in Ireland, Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>-<a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> in Prince Edward Island, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Land Tenure, in Ireland, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>-<a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>-<a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>-<a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>-<a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>-<a href='#Page_237'>237</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> in America, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>;</li> +<li> in Prince Edward Island, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>-<a href='#Page_76'>76</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a>;</li> +<li> in Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>;</li> +<li> in Lower Canada, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>-<a href='#Page_85'>85</a>;</li> +<li> in Australia, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>-<a href='#Page_116'>116</a>;</li> +<li> in New Zealand, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>.</li> +<li> See also Land Acts, Land Purchase</li></ul></li> + +<li>Lanyon, Sir Owen, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a></li> +<li>Law, Bonar, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a></li> +<li>Law Courts, Ireland, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>-<a href='#Page_335'>335</a></li> +<li>Lecky, Professor W.H., <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_vii">vii</a> and <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, and <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a></li> +<li>Legislative Councils, in America, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> in Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>-<a href='#Page_102'>102</a>;</li> +<li> in Lower Canada, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Legislature, Irish, powers of, general, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>-<a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>-<a href='#Page_330'>330</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> financial powers, Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a>, and <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>-<a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>;</li> +<li> composition of, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>-<a href='#Page_334'>334</a>.</li> +<li> For restrictions on, see also Safeguards for Minorities</li></ul></li> + +<li>Legislatures, Colonial, powers and limitations of, general, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>-<a href='#Page_229'>229</a>.</li> +<li><ul><li> See also Constitutions, Federal Systems, and under names of Colonies</li></ul></li> + +<li>Leinster, plantations in, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a></li> +<li>Lieutenant-Governors, in Dominion of Canada, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a></li> +<li>Limerick, Treaty of, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a></li> +<li>Local Government Board, cost of, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a></li> +<li>Local Government, working of, in Ireland, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>-<a href='#Page_174'>174</a></li> +<li>Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a></li> +<li>Local taxation, Ireland, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> grants in aid of, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>-<a href='#Page_267'>267</a>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Locker-Lampson, G., <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_vii">vii</a>, and <a href='#Page_65'>65</a></li> +<li>Londonderry, Lord, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a></li> +<li>Long, Walter, <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, and <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a></li> +<li>Lord-Lieutenant,</li> +<li><ul><li> before the Union, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>-<a href='#Page_23'>23</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>-<a href='#Page_33'>33</a>;</li> +<li> under the Union, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>;</li> +<li> under Home Rule, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>-<a href='#Page_327'>327</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Louisburg, capture of, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a></li> +<li>Lyttelton, Mr. Alfred, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>-<a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a></li></ul> + + +<ul><li>MacDonnell, Lord, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a></li> +<li>Mackenzie, W.L., in Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>-<a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a></li> +<li>McKenna, Sir J., <a href='#Page_238'>238</a></li> +<li>McManus, T.B., <a href='#Page_115'>115</a></li> +<li>Maine, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a></li> +<li>Majuba, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a></li> +<li>Malta, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a></li> +<li>Manitoba, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a></li> +<li>Maritime Provinces, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, and Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></li> +<li><ul><li> See also Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island</li></ul></li> + +<li>Maryland, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>-<a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a></li> +<li>Massachusetts, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>-<a href='#Page_23'>23</a> (and footnote), <a href='#Page_35'>35</a></li> +<li>Meagher, T.F., <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>-<a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li> +<li>Melbourne, Lord, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a></li> +<li>Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a></li> +<li>Mill, John Stuart, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a></li> +<li>Milner, Lord, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>-<a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a></li> +<li>Miscellaneous revenue, Imperial, Ireland's share of, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>-<a href='#Page_287'>287</a></li> +<li>Mitchel, John, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>-<a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li> +<li>Molesworth, Sir William, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>-<a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a></li> +<li>Molyneux, on Irish liberty, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a></li> +<li>Montreal, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>-<a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a></li> +<li>Montgomery, General, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a></li> +<li>Moore, W. Harrison, author of "The Commonwealth of Australia," <a href='#Page_219'>219</a></li> +<li>Morgan's Riflemen, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a></li> +<li>Morley, Lord, his "Life of Gladstone," <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, and <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> on Irish Members at Westminster, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>;</li> +<li> on Clause 7 of the Bill of 1886, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Municipal Technical Institute, Belfast, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a></li> +<li>Municipal Reform Act, 1840, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a></li> +<li>Munster, plantations in, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a></li> +<li>Murray, Miss A.E., <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a></li></ul> + + + +<ul><li>Natal, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a></li> +<li>National Debt, Ireland's contribution to, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>-<a href='#Page_287'>287</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a></li> +<li>Naturalization, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a> (footnote), <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li> +<li>Naval Agreement, 1911, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a></li> +<li>Navigation Acts, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>-<a href='#Page_18'>18</a></li> +<li>Navies, Colonial. See Colonial Defence Forces</li> +<li>Neilson, John, in Lower Canada, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a></li> +<li>Nelson, Wilfred, in Lower Canada, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a></li> +<li>Netherlands Government, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a></li> +<li>Neutrality, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li> +<li>New Brunswick, Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a>, and <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>-<a href='#Page_76'>76</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a></li> +<li>New England, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a></li> +<li>Newfoundland, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>-<a href='#Page_197'>197</a>, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a></li> +<li>New Haven, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a></li> +<li>New Netherlands, plantation of, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a></li> +<li>New South Wales, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>-<a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> finance in, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>-<a href='#Page_298'>298</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>New Zealand, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>-<a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a></li> +<li>Ninety-two Resolutions, Lower Canada, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a></li> +<li>Nixon, Captain John, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a></li> +<li>North Carolina, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Nova Scotia, Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a>, and <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a></li></ul> + + + +<ul><li>Oakboys, in Ulster, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a></li> +<li>O'Brien, Barry, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a></li> +<li>O'Brien, Murrough, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a></li> +<li>O'Brien, Smith, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a></li> +<li>O'Brien, William, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a></li> +<li>O'Callaghan, Dr., in Lower Canada, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a></li> +<li>O'Connell, Daniel, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>-<a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a></li> +<li>O'Conor Don, the, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a></li> +<li>Octennial Act, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>, 357 [Transcriber's note: This appears to be an error in the original.</li> +<li>O'Hara, James, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a></li> +<li>Old Age Pensions, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>-<a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a></li> +<li>Oldham, Professor C.H., on Irish finance, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a></li> +<li>O'Loughlen, Sir Brian, in Victoria, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li> +<li>"Omnes Omnia" Clause, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a></li> +<li>Ontario, Province of,</li> +<li><ul><li> prior to 1867, See Canada;</li> +<li> after 1867, see Canada, Confederation of, and <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Orange Free State, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>-<a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a></li> +<li>Orange Society,</li> +<li><ul><li> in Ireland, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>;</li> +<li> in Canada, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>;</li> +<li> in Australia, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>O'Shanassy, Sir John, in Victoria, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li></ul> + + +<ul><li>Paley, Dr., Philosophy of, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a></li> +<li>Papineau, Louis, in Lower Canada, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>-<a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a></li> +<li>Parliamentary parties, Irish, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>-<a href='#Page_182'>182</a></li> +<li>Parliament, Irish (pre-Union), <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>-<a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> finance under, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>-<a href='#Page_231'>231</a>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Parnell, Charles Stewart, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a></li> +<li>Patents, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a></li> +<li>Peace of Paris, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a></li> +<li>Peel, Sir Robert, on the Repeal of the Union, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>-<a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a></li> +<li>Peep o' Day Boys, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a></li> +<li>Penal Code, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>-<a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></li> +<li>Penn, William, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a></li> +<li>Pennsylvania, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a></li> +<li>Pilkington, Mrs., <a href='#Page_165'>165</a></li> +<li>Pitt, William, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a></li> +<li>Plantations, of Ireland and America, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>-<a href='#Page_9'>9</a></li> +<li>Plunkett House, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a></li> +<li>Plunkett, Sir Horace, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a> (footnote), <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a></li> +<li>Police, Irish,</li> +<li><ul><li> present position and cost of, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>;</li> +<li> under Home Rule, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Poor Law (Ireland), <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a></li> +<li>Port Phillip. See Victoria</li> +<li>Postal Services, Irish, powers over, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> loss on, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Poynings' Act, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a></li> +<li>Preamble, Home Rule Bill, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a></li> +<li>Prince Edward Island, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>.</li> +<li><ul><li> See also Land Tenure, Land Purchase</li></ul></li> + +<li>Prize and Booty of War, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li> +<li>Proportional Representation, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a></li> +<li>Proprietary Colonies of America, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a></li> +<li>Public Works, Commissioners of, Ireland, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>-<a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul><li>Quakers, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a></li> +<li><i>Quarterly Review</i>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a></li> +<li>Quebec, town of, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a></li> +<li>Quebec, Province of, prior to 1791, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>-<a href='#Page_78'>78</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> from 1791 to 1867, see under names of Lower Canada and Canada;</li> +<li> after 1867, see Canada, Confederation of, and <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>-<a href='#Page_200'>200</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>;</li> +<li> present Constitution of, compared with Irish Home Rule, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>-<a href='#Page_200'>200</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Quebec Act, 1774, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>-<a href='#Page_74'>74</a></li> +<li>Queensland, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> finance in, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a></li></ul></li></ul> + + +<ul><li>Railways, Ireland, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a></li> +<li>Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a></li> +<li>Rebellions, Irish,</li> +<li><ul><li> of 1798, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>;</li> +<li> of 1848, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Recess Committee, action and report of, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>-<a href='#Page_162'>162</a></li> +<li>Reciprocity Agreement, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a></li> +<li>Redmond, John, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a></li> +<li>Reform, Parliamentary (Ireland), <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>-<a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>-<a href='#Page_58'>58</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> Great Britain, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Repeal of the Union, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a></li> +<li>Representation at Westminster, of Ireland, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>-<a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> of American Colonies (proposals for), <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>;</li> +<li> of Canada (proposals for), <a href='#Page_77'>77</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Residuary powers, under Home Rule, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>.</li> +<li><ul><li> See also Federal Systems</li></ul></li> + +<li>Retief, Piet, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a></li> +<li>Revenue, from Ireland. See Financial Relations, Estate Duties, Income Tax, Customs and Excise</li> +<li>Revenue, "true" and "collected,"</li> +<li><ul><li> method of estimating in United Kingdom, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>-<a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>-<a href='#Page_278'>278</a> (and footnotes);</li> +<li> in Australia, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>-<a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Revolution, Irish, 1780-2, Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> American, 1775, Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_II">II</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Rhode Island, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Road Board, grants to Ireland, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a></li> +<li>Roebuck, J.A., <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a></li> +<li>Rose, Holland, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a></li> +<li>Royal Assent, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a>-<a href='#Page_327'>327</a></li> +<li>Ruskin, John, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a></li> +<li>Russell, George W., <a href='#Page_165'>165</a></li> +<li>Russell, Lord John, on Canada, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> on Australia, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>-<a href='#Page_110'>110</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Russell, T.W., <a href='#Page_159'>159</a> (and footnote)</li> +<li>Rutland, Lord, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a></li></ul> + + + +<ul><li>Safeguards for Minorities, Ireland, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>-<a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>-<a href='#Page_330'>330</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> United States, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>-<a href='#Page_330'>330</a>;</li> +<li> Canada, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>;</li> +<li> Australia, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>St. Lawrence, River, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a></li> +<li>Salaberry, Colonel, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a></li> +<li>Sand River Convention, 1852, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a></li> +<li>Saunderson, Colonel, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a> (footnote), <a href='#Page_215'>215</a> (and footnote)</li> +<li>Scotland, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a> (footnote);</li> +<li><ul><li> Home Rule for, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>-<a href='#Page_203'>203</a>;</li> +<li> revenue from, and expenditure on, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>;</li> +<li> police in, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>;</li> +<li> education in, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Selborne, Lord, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a></li> +<li>Seventh Report of Grievances (Upper Canada), <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a></li> +<li>Seven Years' War, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a></li> +<li>Sexton, T., <a href='#Page_249'>249</a></li> +<li>Shepstone, Sir T., <a href='#Page_124'>124</a></li> +<li>Sinn Fein, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a></li> +<li>Smith, Adam, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a></li> +<li>Smith, Sir Harry, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a></li> +<li>Socialism, in Ireland, <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a></li> +<li>South Africa Act, 1909, citations from, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>-<a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a></li> +<li>South African Colonies,</li> +<li><ul><li> history of, see Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a>, and under Cape of Good Hope, Transvaal, Orange Free State, Natal;</li> +<li> Federal Union, proposed (1859), <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>;</li> +<li> Conference for Closer Union (1908), <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>-<a href='#Page_157'>157</a>;</li> +<li> Union of 1909, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>-<a href='#Page_143'>143</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>-<a href='#Page_197'>197</a>;</li> +<li> see also South Africa Act, 1900, Constitutions, Federal Systems</li></ul></li> + +<li>South Australia, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>-<a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> finance in, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Spanish Colonies, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a></li> +<li>Spirit duty, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>-<a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>-<a href='#Page_238'>238</a>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a></li> +<li>Stamp Act (1765), and Revenue Duties (America), <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>-<a href='#Page_35'>35</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a></li> +<li>Stanley, Lord, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>-<a href='#Page_92'>92</a></li> +<li>Steelboys, in Ulster, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a></li> +<li>Subsidies,</li> +<li><ul><li> to Ireland, under Home Rule, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>-<a href='#Page_286'>286</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>;</li> +<li> to Colonies, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>-<a href='#Page_285'>285</a>;</li> +<li> by Federal Governments to subordinate States or Provinces, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>-<a href='#Page_300'>300</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Suez Canal shares, revenue from, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a></li> +<li>Supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>-<a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a></li> +<li>Supreme Court,</li> +<li><ul><li> of Australia, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>-<a href='#Page_335'>335</a>;</li> +<li> of South Africa, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>-<a href='#Page_335'>335</a>;</li> +<li> of Canada, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>-<a href='#Page_335'>335</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Sutherland, Sir T., <a href='#Page_249'>249</a></li> +<li>Swift, Dean, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a></li> +<li>Switzerland, Federal Constitution of, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a></li> +<li><i>Sydney Bulletin</i>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a></li></ul> + + +<ul><li>Tariff Reform, opinion in Ireland on, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> effect of, on Ireland, <a href='#Page_289'>289</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>-<a href='#Page_293'>293</a>;</li> +<li> opinion of Professor Hewins on, for Ireland, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>-<a href='#Page_294'>294</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Tariffs. See Customs and Excise, Free Trade, Tariff Reform</li> +<li>Tasmania, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>-<a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> finance in, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a>-<a href='#Page_298'>298</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Taxable capacity of Ireland: in 1800, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> in 1894, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>-<a href='#Page_257'>257</a>;</li> +<li> in 1911, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a>-<a href='#Page_260'>260</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Technical Instruction, Ireland, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a></li> +<li>Temperance Reform, Ireland, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>-<a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a></li> +<li>Tenant League, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a></li> +<li>Ten Resolutions (1837), <a href='#Page_87'>87</a></li> +<li>Territorials, Ireland, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a></li> +<li>Thompson, Poulett, Lord Sydenham, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a></li> +<li>Titles, power of conferring, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li> +<li>Tone, Wolfe, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a></li> +<li>Toronto, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a></li> +<li>Townshend, Lord, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a></li> +<li>Townshend, Charles, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a></li> +<li>Town Tenants Act, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a></li> +<li>Trade, external, of Ireland, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>-<a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a></li> +<li>Trade and Navigation, Colonial and Irish powers over, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li> +<li>Trade-mark,</li> +<li><ul><li> Irish, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>;</li> +<li> Colonial and Irish powers over, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Transvaal, <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>-<a href='#Page_143'>143</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_336'>336</a>, and whole of Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></li> +<li><ul><li> See also South African Colonies, Constitutions</li></ul></li> + +<li>Treason, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li> +<li>Treasury, Committee on Land Purchase, 1908, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> Returns (Financial Relations), <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>-<a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>-<a href='#Page_260'>260</a>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>-<a href='#Page_279'>279</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Treaties, power of making, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li> +<li>Trek, the Great, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>-<a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a></li> +<li>Trimleston, Lord, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a></li></ul> + + +<ul><li>Ulster, plantation of, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> land tenure in, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>-<a href='#Page_57'>57</a>;</li> +<li> emigration from, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>-<a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>;</li> +<li> Orange Society in (see Orange Society);</li> +<li> comparison with Canadian minorities, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>-<a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>-<a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>;</li> +<li> with Transvaal minority, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>;</li> +<li> views of, with regard to representation at Westminster, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>-<a href='#Page_215'>215</a>;</li> +<li> under Home Rule, <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>-<a href='#Page_187'>187</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Ulster Custom. See Ulster, Land Tenure in</li> +<li>"Umpirage," of Great Britain,</li> +<li><ul><li> in Canada, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>;</li> +<li> in Ireland, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>"Undertakers," <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a></li> +<li>Union,</li> +<li><ul><li> of Ireland and Great Britain, Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> compared with that of the two Canadas, <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_viii">viii</a>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>-<a href='#Page_78'>78</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>-<a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>-<a href='#Page_201'>201</a>;</li></ul></li> + +<li> of the Canadas (see Canada)</li></ul></li> + +<li>United Empire Loyalists, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>-<a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a></li> +<li>United Irishmen, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a></li> +<li>United States, relations with Canada, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> emigration to, from Ireland, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>;</li> +<li> feeling towards Ireland, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>-<a href='#Page_149'>149</a>;</li> +<li> Constitution of, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>-<a href='#Page_195'>195</a>.</li> +<li> See also Federal Systems, Constitutions, Safeguards for Minorities, Customs, and Excise</li></ul></li> + +<li>Universities, Irish, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li> +<li>Upper Chamber, Irish, under Home Rule, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>-<a href='#Page_332'>332</a>.</li> +<li><ul><li> See also Federal Systems</li></ul></li></ul> + + + +<ul><li>Van Diemen's Land. See Tasmania</li> +<li>Vereeniging, Peace of, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a></li> +<li>Victoria, Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a>, and <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>-<a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>-<a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> finance in, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Virginia, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a></li> +<li>Volksraad, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a></li> +<li>Volunteers, Ireland (1778-1783), <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>-<a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>-<a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>.</li> +<li><ul><li> See also Territorials</li></ul></li></ul> + + + +<ul><li>Wakefield, Edward Gibbon,</li> +<li><ul><li> in Canada, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>-<a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>;</li> +<li> in Australia, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>-<a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Wakefield, Vicar of, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a></li> +<li>Wales, Home Rule for, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>-<a href='#Page_200'>200</a></li> +<li>War and Peace, power of making, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li> +<li>Washington, General George, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a></li> +<li>Welby, Lord, on Anglo-Irish finance, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>-<a href='#Page_256'>256</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>-<a href='#Page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a></li> +<li>Wellington, Duke of, on Ireland and Canada, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a></li> +<li>Wentworth, William, in Australia, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a></li> +<li>Western Australia, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>-<a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, and Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></li> +<li>West Indies, banishment of Irish to, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> grants-in-aid to, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Whiteboys, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a></li> +<li>Willcocks, Stephen, in Upper Canada, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a></li> +<li>William IV., on Canada, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a></li> +<li>Williams, Basil, Editor of "Home Rule Problems," <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a></li> +<li>Wills Act, 1861, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a> (footnote)</li> +<li>Wilmot, Samuel, in New Brunswick, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a></li> +<li>Wyndham, George, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>;</li> +<li><ul><li> his Land Act of 1903, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, etc.</li></ul></li></ul> + + + +<ul><li>Young, Arthur, on Ireland, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a></li> +<li>Young Ireland movement, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a></li></ul> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<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> The two latter works were written by Mr. Lecky in his +Nationalist youth the first and greater work after he had become a +Unionist. They form a connected whole, however, and are not inconsistent +with one another.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See "Democracy and Liberty."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> "Did the people of Ireland understand that the destruction +of the Union, so lightly advocated by Lord Haldane, must result in the +cessation of those largely eleemosynary benefits to which the progress +of Ireland is due, her 'dissatisfaction' would be unmistakably directed +towards her false advisers?"—Letter to the <i>Belfast Telegraph</i>, October +7, 1911, criticizing Lord Haldane's preface to "Home Rule Problems."</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> Class C. in Sir William Anson's classification, "Law and +Custom of the Constitution," p. 253.</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> J. Fisher, "End of the Irish Parliament" cited.</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> MS. Autobiography cited by Lecky, vol. ii., p. 35.</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> The best modern account of the commercial relations of +Great Britain Mid Ireland is Miss Murray's "Commercial Relations between +England and Ireland."</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> The origin of North Carolina is, perhaps, debatable. Nearly +all historians have represented it as settled by Dissenting refugees; +but Mr. S.B. Weeks, a Carolina historian, has written an essay to prove +that this was not the case ("Religious Development in the Province of +North Carolina," Baltimore, 1892). The Charter contained a clause for +liberty of conscience on the instructive ground that, "by reason of the +remote distance of those places, toleration would be no breach of the +unity and conformity established in this realm."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9" /><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> "Church and State in Maryland," George Petrie. Lord +Baltimore, the Catholic founder and Proprietary, enforced complete +tolerance from the first (1634), and secured the passage of an Act in +1649 giving legal force to the policy, with heavy penalties against +interference with any sect. In 1654 Puritans gained control of the +Assembly, and passed an Act against Popery. A counter-revolution +repealed this Act, but finally in 1689 the Church of England was +established by law.</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> Lecky, "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," +vol. i., pp. 408-410.</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> Until 1692 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, +elected their own Governors. Massachusetts continued to have Colonial +Governors, and sometimes New Jersey and New Hampshire. Proprietary +Governments were gradually abolished and converted into "Royal" +Governments like the rest. At the period of the Declaration of +Independence two only were left—Pennsylvania and Maryland (see "Origin +and Growth of the English Colonies," H.E. Egerton).</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> Lecky, "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," +vol. ii., pp. 124-126.</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> Trevelyan, "The American Revolution," vol. i., p. 16.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14" /><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> See "The Irish Race in America," by Captain Ed. O'Meagher +Condore.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15" /><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> "History of the British Army," vol. iii.</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> Pitt's original scheme was accepted in Ireland, but +defeated in England, owing to the angry opposition of British commercial +interests. The scheme, as amended to conciliate these interests, was +deservedly rejected in Ireland.</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> J. Fisher, "The End of the Irish Parliament." The author +is much indebted to this brilliant study, which appeared only this year +(1911).</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> See Fitzgibbon's Speeches in the Irish House of Lords, on +the Catholic Franchise Bill, March 13, 1793, and on the Union, February +10, 1800.</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> "Principles of Political Economy," vol. ii., p. 392.</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> "The Irishman in Canada" (N.F. Davin), a book to which the +author is indebted for much information of the same character.</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> "William Pitt and the National Revival."</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> Canadian Archives, 1905; "History of Prince Edward +Island," D. Campbell; "History of Canada," C.D.G. Roberts. In 1875, +after a long period of agitation and discontent, the Land Purchase Act +was passed, and the Dominion Government asked Mr. Hugh Childers to +adjudicate on the land-sale expressly on the ground that he had been +associated with the Irish Land Act of 1870 ("Life of Mr. Childers," by +Lieut.-Col. Spencer Childers, vol. i., p. 232).</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> Canadian Archives, 1900. Note B. Emigration (1831-1834). +Irish immigrants in 1829, 9,614; in 1830, 18,300; in 1831, 34,155; in +1832, 28,024; in 1833, 12,013; in 1834, 19,206: about double the +immigration of English and Scottish together in the same period.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24" /><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 96 <i>et seq</i>.</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> "Durham Report," p. 130.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26" /><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Hansard, January 23.</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> "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 17.</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> "Letters of Queen Victoria," vol. i., November 22, 1838.</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> Letter to Lord Malmesbury, August 13, 1852 ("Memoirs of an +Ex-Minister," by the Earl of Malmesbury, vol. i., p. 344).</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> "Life of Gladstone," vol. i., p. 363.</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> Annual Treasury Returns ["Imperial Revenue (Collection and +Expenditure)"]. According to these returns, Ireland's Imperial +contribution in 1839, before the famine, was £3,626,322; in 1849, after +the famine, £2,613,778, and in 1859-60 no less than £5,396,000. At the +latter date the Colonies were estimated to cost three and a half +millions a year, of which nine-tenths were contributed by the taxpayers +at home, British and Irish.</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> Full information may be found in "The Irish in Australia," +by J.F. Hogan.</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> For an excellent historical description of the various +Australian land systems, see the official "Year-Book of the +Commonwealth," 1909.</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> "Life of Sir George Grey," Professor G.C. Henderson.</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> Cd. 2479, 1905.</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> Cd. 2400, 1905.</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> "It is true that in the case of Canada full responsible +government was conceded, a few years after a troublous period +culminating in a brief armed rising, to a population composed of races +then not very friendly to each other, though now long since happily +reconciled. But the Canadas had by that time enjoyed representative +institutions for over fifty years, the French-Canadians had since the +year 1763 been continuously British subjects, and the disorders which +preceded Lord Durham's Mission and the subsequent grant of +self-government could not compare in any way with a war like that of +1899-1902. It is also the fact that in the United Colony of Upper and +Lower Canada, during the period of 1840-1867, parties were formed mainly +upon the lines of races, and that, as the representatives of the races +were in number nearly balanced, stability of Government was not +attained, a difficulty which was not overcome until the Federation of +1867, accompanied by the relegation of provincial affairs to provincial +Legislatures, placed the whole political Constitution of Canada upon a +wider basis." +</p><p> +Few would gather from the first sentence that the races were "not very +friendly to each other" precisely because they lived under a coercive +political system; and that, in the long-run, they were "happily +reconciled" because they received responsible government. Nor could it +be deduced from the obscure reference lower down to the union of the two +Provinces that the Union was the one blot upon Durham's scheme, the one +point in which, fearing the predominance of a French majority in Lower +Canada, he shrank from his own principles and recommended an unworkable +Union which tended to encourage the formation "of parties on the lines +of races." From the further allusion to the Federal Union of 1867, no +one would imagine that that great scheme was founded on a cessation of +racial antipathy inside the Quebec Province, and on a voluntary +recognition among all races and parties that it was best for that +Province to have a local autonomy of its own, parallel with that of the +Ontario Province and under the supreme central authority of the +Dominion.</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> February 26, March 27, 1906.</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> At Woodford, May 27, 1911.</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> This is a very general statement. No figures exist for an +accurate computation. The Census of 1910 gives the total population of +the United States, white and coloured, as 91,272,266, of whom nearly +9,000,000 are negroes. The figures about countries of origin are not yet +available. The statistical abstract of the United States (1908) gives +the total number of immigrants from Ireland from 1821 to 1908 as +4,168,747 (the large majority of whom must have been of marriageable +age), but does not estimate the subsequent increase by marriage, and +takes no account of the immigration prior to 1821, which was very large, +especially in the period preceding the Revolutionary War of 1775-1782. +At the Census of 1900 Irishmen actually <i>born in Ireland</i> and then +resident in the United States are stated to have been 1,618,567, as +compared with 93,682 from Wales, 233,977 from Scotland, and 842,078 from +England.</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 am especially indebted for information to Mr. Hugh +Sutherland, of the <i>North American</i> (Philadelphia), to Mr. Rodman +Wanamaker, of the same city, to Mr. Frank Sanborn, of Concord, and to +Mr. John O'Callaghan, of Boston.</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> See pp. <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>-<a href="#Page_17">17</a> and <a href="#Page_66">66</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</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> Dealt with fully in Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></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> In 1910-11, £2,408,000 (Treasury Return No. 220, 1911); +plus £225,000 estimated increase owing to removal of Poor Law +disqualification (Answer to Question in House of Commons, February 15, +1911).</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> See p. <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>.</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> See particularly "Ireland in the New Century," Sir Horace +Plunkett; "Contemporary Ireland," E. Paul-Dubois; "The New Ireland," +Sydney Brooks.</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> "Report of the Recess Committee," New Edition (Fisher +Unwin).</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> Colonel Saunderson, for example, the leader of the Irish +Unionists in the Commons, refused publicly to be a member of a committee +on which Mr. Redmond sat. Mr. John Redmond himself wrote that he could +not take a very sanguine view of the Conference, but that he was +"unwilling to take the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort +to promote useful legislation in Ireland."</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> Area under cultivation in 1875, 5,332,813 acres; in 1894, +4,931,011 acres (in 1899, 4,627,545 acres; in 1900, on a system of +classification dividing arable land more accurately from pasture, there +were only 3,100,397 acres arable, and in 1905 the figures were 2,999,082 +acres) (Official Returns). Population in 1841, 8,175,124; in 1851, +6,552,385; in 1861, 5,798,976; in 1871, 5,412,377; in 1881, 5,174,836; +in 1891, 4,704,750; in 1892, 4,633,808; in 1893, 4,607,462; in 1894, +4,589,260; in 1895, 4,559,936 (in 1901, 4,458,775; in 1905, +4,391,543).—Census Returns and <i>Thoms' Directory</i>.</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>Council of Agriculture</i>: 68 members elected by County +Councils; 84 appointed by the Department from the various provinces. +Total 102. +</p><p> +<i>Board of Agriculture</i>: 8 members elected by Council of Agriculture; 4 +appointed by the Department. Total 12. +</p><p> +<i>Board of Technical Instruction</i>: 10 members appointed by County +Boroughs; 4 elected by Council of Agriculture; 6 appointed by the +various Government Departments; 1 by a joint Committee of Dublin +District Councils. Total 21.</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 am not forgetting Scotland. Her few local departments +are theoretically, but not practically, at the mercy of English votes +and influence. Scotch opinion, broadly speaking, governs Scotch affairs. +Precisely to the extent to which it does not so govern them, is a demand +for Home Rule likely to grow.</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> Even the Recess Committee (and we cannot wonder) but dimly +grasped the constitutional position when they laid stress on the +necessity for an Agricultural Minister "directly responsible to +Parliament." Logically, they should have first recommended the +establishment of an Irish Parliament to which the Minister should be +responsible. To make him responsible to the House of Commons was absurd; +and a Departmental Committee of 1907 has, in fact, recommended that the +Vice-President should not have a seat in Parliament, but should remain +in his proper place, Ireland. Meanwhile, the original mistake has caused +friction and controversy. Soon after the Liberal Ministry took office in +1906, Sir Horace Plunkett, the first Vice-President, as a Unionist, was +replaced by Mr. T.W. Russell, a Home Ruler. On the assumption that such +an Office was Parliamentary, its holder standing or falling with the +British Ministry of the day, the step was quite justifiable, and even +necessary. On the opposite assumption, confirmed by the Departmental +Committee, the step was unjustifiable, that is, on the theory of the +Union. An Irish Parliament alone should have the power of displacing +Irish Ministers.</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> See footnote, p. 159.</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> "Organization and Policy of the Department," Official +Pamphlet.</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> +</p> +<h4> +STATISTICS OF THE IRISH AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT TO DECEMBER +31, 1909, WITH NUMBER OF SOCIETIES IN EXISTENCE ON DECEMBER 31, 1910 +(SUPPLIED BY THE I.A.O.S.): +</h4> + + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='right'>Description.</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>Number of Societies.</td><td align='right'>Membership.</td><td align='right'>Paid-up Shares.</td><td align='right'>Loan Capital.</td><td align='right'>Turnover.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>1910.</td><td align='right'>1909.</td><td align='right'></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Creameries</td><td align='right'>392</td><td align='right'>380</td><td align='right'>44,213</td><td align='right'>138,354</td><td align='right'>111,365</td><td align='right'>1,841,400</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Agricultural</td><td align='right'>169</td><td align='right'>155</td><td align='right'>16,050</td><td align='right'>6,253</td><td align='right'>40,326</td><td align='right'>112,222</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Credit</td><td align='right'>237</td><td align='right'>234</td><td align='right'>18,422</td><td align='right'>—</td><td align='right'>56,469</td><td align='right'>57,641</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Poultry</td><td align='right'>18</td><td align='right'>18</td><td align='right'>6,152</td><td align='right'>2,292</td><td align='right'>4,026</td><td align='right'>64,342</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Industries</td><td align='right'>21</td><td align='right'>21</td><td align='right'>1,375</td><td align='right'>1,267</td><td align='right'>1,450</td><td align='right'>7,666</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Miscellaneous</td><td align='right'>37</td><td align='right'>15</td><td align='right'>4,633</td><td align='right'>15,015</td><td align='right'>2,864</td><td align='right'>48,987</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Flax</td><td align='right'>9</td><td align='right'>9</td><td align='right'>589</td><td align='right'>482</td><td align='right'>5,796</td><td align='right'>2,286</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Federations</td><td align='right'>3</td><td align='right'>3</td><td align='right'>227</td><td align='right'>6,753</td><td align='right'>6,360</td><td align='right'>259,925</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right' class="bt"></td><td align='right' class="bt">886</td><td align='right' class="bt">835</td><td align='right' class="bt">91,661</td><td align='right' class="bt">170,416</td><td align='right' class="bt">228,656</td><td align='right' class="bt">2,394,469</td></tr></table> + + + +</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> An Irish Trademark has been secured, and has proved of +great value "Irish Weeks," for the furtherance of the sale of Irish +products, are held. The organ of the Association is the <i>Irish +Industrial Journal</i>, published weekly in Dublin.</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> On December 31, 1909, Irish was taught as an "extra +subject" in 3,006 primary schools out of 8,401, and in 161 schools in +Irish-speaking districts in the West a bi-lingual programme of +instruction was in force (Report of Committee of National Education, +1910). Forty-six thousand pupils passed the test of the inspectors. +Irish in 1910 was made a compulsory subject for matriculation at the +National University.</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> The election by Nationalist votes of Lord Ashtown, a +militant Unionist peer of the most uncompromising type, in the spring of +1911 to one of the Galway District Councils is a good recent example of +this tendency.</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> Permissive powers exist for County Councils to enforce +compulsory attendance.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60" /><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Including 342 convent, 54 monastery, 125 workhouse, and 71 +model schools.</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> See "Prospectus of the Municipal Technical Institute, +Belfast," 1910-11, pp. 55 and 57-58. Reading, Grammar, and Simple +Arithmetic are taught.</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> See Report of the Congested Districts Board, 1909-11.</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 Report of Royal Commission on Congestion in Ireland +(Cd. 4097); especially a Memorandum by Sir Horace Plunkett, published as +a separate pamphlet by the Department of Agriculture and Technical +Instruction.</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> See Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></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> Annual Report (1910) of the "Irish Association for the +Prevention of Intemperance." The estimate is that of Dr. Dawson Burns. +By the Licensing (Ireland) Act of 1902, the issue of any new licenses +was prohibited.</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 write before the scheme has been fully discussed in +Parliament.</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> It is scarcely necessary for me to remind the reader that +the word "Ulster," as used in current political dialectics, is +misleading. Part of Ulster is overwhelmingly Catholic; in part the +population is divided between the two creeds, and in two counties it is +overwhelmingly Protestant. In the whole province the Protestants are in +a majority of 150,000, but since a number of Protestants vote +Nationalist, the representation of the province is almost equal, the +Unionists holding seventeen seats out of thirty-three.</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> "Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," "Leaders of Public +Opinion in Ireland," "Clerical Influences."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69" /><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> See "Democracy and Liberty."</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> Many Unionists are to be found in the same breath +prophesying Catholic tyranny under Home Rule and averring without any +evidence that clerical influence caused the repudiation in 1907 of the +Council Bill, because it placed education under a semi-popular body.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71" /><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> "Religious Intolerance under Home Rule: Some Opinions of +Leading Irish Protestants," pamphlet (1911) compiled by J. McVeagh, +M.P.</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 Census of 1911 shows that the population of Ireland is +still falling. The province of Leinster, mainly Catholic, alone shows a +small increase, derived from the counties of Dublin (including Dublin +City) and Kildare. In Ulster, Down and Antrim, which include the city of +Belfast, alone show an increase, but not so great as that of County +Dublin.</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73" /><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> See p. <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>.</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> The Bill set up a Council of eighty-two elected and +twenty-four nominated members, with the Under-Secretary as an +<i>ex-officio</i> member. So far it resembled the abortive Transvaal +Constitution of 1905 (see p. <a href='#Page_130'>130</a>), but the Irish Council was only to be +given control of certain specified Departments, and was financed by a +fixed Imperial grant. It was to have no power of legislation or +taxation, and was under the complete control of the Lord-Lieutenant.</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> This arrangement, which is peculiar to the Canadian +Federation, is regarded by some authorities as a somewhat serious +infraction of the Federal principle, since it seems to imply executive +control of the Province by the central Government. The Governors of the +States in the Australian Federation are appointed by the Home +Government.</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> The Judicial Committee has ruled "that the relation +between the Crown and the Provinces is the same as that between the +Crown and Dominion in respect of such powers, executive and legislative, +as are vested in them respectively." (Maritime Bank of Canada <i>v.</i> +Receiver-General of New Brunswick, 1892).</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> They are governed by Executive Committees, the members of +which need not be members of the Councils.</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> In writing upon this subject, I am indebted to an able +paper by Mr. Basil Williams, which is to be found in "Home Rule +Problems."</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> "Life of Parnell," R. Barry O'Brien, pp. 149 and 139-141.</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> <i>E.g.</i>, in 1893, on Clause I. of the Home Rule Bill +(Hansard, p. 490): "The Irish minority were willing to be treated on the +footing of a Colony, but they protested against a supremacy which would +enable the honourable gentleman who formed the Irish Government to +appeal to the Imperial Parliament for the assistance of the Army and +Navy to compel the Irish minority to obey their behests."</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> Cd. 5741, 1911. Some of the subjects discussed were +Commercial Relations and Shipping, Navigation Law, Labour Exchanges, +Uniformity in Copyright, etc., Emigration, Naturalization, Compensation +for Accidents, etc.</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> I am summarizing facts fully narrated in Chapters <a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a> and +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></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> In the Federal Constitutions of Australia and Canada the +central Federal Parliament is responsible for the colonial defences, but +the Provinces or States are, of course, represented in the Federal +Parliament.</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> Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, Sec. 58, +and British North America Act, 1867, Sec. 15. Until quite recently it +was the custom always to give the command of the Canadian Militia to a +British officer lent to Canada. The present Commander, however, is a +Canadian.</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> See <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>.</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> A Colony may make local regulations to carry out an +Imperial Law about extradition and neutrality, but may not touch the +law.</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> For the constitutional position of self-governing +Colonies, the author owes much to Mr. Moore's "Commonwealth of +Australia."</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> The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, and +the British North America Act, 1867, in order to delimit the respective +powers of the Federal and Provincial Legislatures, set out a list of +subjects on which the Federal Parliament has exclusive or collateral +power to legislate. There is implied, of course, a pre-existing right on +the part of the Colony, as a whole, <i>qua</i> Colony, to legislate on the +matters referred to in the list. But the pre-existing right is subject +to any pre-existing constitutional or statutory limitations. <i>E.g.,</i> +"Naturalization and Aliens" is in the list of Commonwealth powers (Sec. +51, xix.), and of the Canadian powers (Sec. 91, xxv.), but the power of +any Colony is limited by Acts of 1847 and 1879 to giving naturalization +within its own borders. (At the Imperial Conference of 1911 a scheme was +foreshadowed for standardizing naturalization throughout the Empire.) +</p><p> +"Copyright" is also in both lists, but the colonial power is limited by +the International Copyright Act of 1886, which, by Sec. 8, implies that +a "British possession" may only make laws "respecting the Copyright +within the limits of such possession of works produced in that +possession." This Copyright Act is an example of implied limitation and +sanction together. The Coinage Act of 1853 is an example of implied +sanction only, in empowering a Colony to legislate as if the Act had not +been passed. Another class of Imperial Acts confers <i>direct</i> powers to +legislate on certain subjects—<i>e.g.,</i> the Australian Colonies Custom +Duties Act of 1873 (removing the restrictions imposed upon intercolonial +duties in 1850). The Naturalization Acts are partly of this character, +and other examples are the Colonial Naval Defence Act of 1865, and +certain provisions of the Army Act of 1881, and the Colonial Courts of +Admiralty Act of 1890.</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> <i>E.g.,</i> Colonial Attorneys Belief Act, 1857; Colonial +Probates Act, 1892; parts of the Finance Act, 1894; and Wills Act, +1861.</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> <i>E.g.,</i> Colonial Laws made under sanction of the following +Imperial Acts: Colonial Prisoners Removal, 1869; Merchant Shipping, +1894; Sections 478 and 736, Colonial Marriages, 1866.</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> <i>E.g.,</i> 18 Vict. Ch. 55, Sections 42 and 43.</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> See <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>, under the head of restrictions on "Irish +Matters." For convenience, land legislation is included in the list, +though it clearly belongs to a different category, and I have so dealt +with it above.</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> In the Bill of 1886 (Clause 11, Subsec. 7) and in the Bill +of 1893 (Clause 8, Subsec. 3) power was given to alter the +qualifications of the franchise, etc., for the Lower House—in the +former Bill after the first dissolution, in the latter after six years.</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> In 1910, of the total Federal revenue of 675,511,715 +dollars, 623,616,963 dollars were raised in this way, or +twelve-thirteenths. (Postal revenue, which balances Postal receipts, is +excluded.)</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> In 1909-10 Dominion revenue from Customs and Excise was +75,409,487 dollars. Total ordinary expenditure (excluding capital +accounts), 79,411,747 dollars.</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> Estimate for 1910-11. Total Federal revenue, £16,841,629; +revenue from Customs and Excise, £111,700,000. Total Federal expenditure +£11,122,297. £5,267,500 will be available for return to the State +exchequers (see pp. <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_246">246</a>).</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> The Treasury Returns of 1869, "Public Income and +Expenditure," in two volumes, are the basis of all information up to +that date.</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> Mr. Secretary Pelham in this year estimated that Ireland, +though contributing nothing in money to the Navy, had furnished no less +than 38,000 men to the Navy since the beginning of the war.</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> Pre-Union Debts were to be separate. Post-Union Debt +<i>contracted for Imperial services</i> was to be regarded as joint, and its +charge was to be borne by the two countries in the proportions of their +respective contributions (see below); but post-Union Debt contracted by +Ireland for domestic services was to be kept separate.</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> Eight lectures delivered in the National University, +Dublin, in 1911.</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> Inhabited house duty, railway passenger tax, carriages, +armorial bearings, etc. The license for dogs is half the English scale.</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> On Foster's Corn Law of 1784, see p. <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>.</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> The text of the unanimous conclusions was as follows: +</p><p> +1. That Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purpose of this inquiry, +be considered as separate entities. +</p><p> +2. That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events +showed, she was unable to bear. +</p><p> +3. That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 +was not justified by the then existing circumstances. +</p><p> +4. That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve +equality of burden. +</p><p> +5. That, whilst the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventh +of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is +very much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding +one-twentieth.</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> Detailed criticism of the current Treasury accounts under +this head will be found on pp. <a href="#Page_276">276</a>-<a href="#Page_278">278</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105" /><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> A referendum taken on April 13, 1910, defeated the new +proposals. See "Report of Premiers' Conference held at Brisbane, May, +1907" (Commonwealth Parliamentary Sessional Paper, No. 13, 1907), and +for a clear statement of the whole subject, the "Year-Book (1911) of the +Commonwealth of Australia." (The relevant clauses of the Constitutional +Act are Nos. 88 to 93.) The reasons for the failure of the system were +summarized as follows: +</p><p> +"1. The trouble and expense which the necessary record entails. +</p><p> +"2. The practical impossibility of ensuring that in every case a +consuming State will be duly credited with revenue collected on its +behalf in a distributing State. +</p><p> +"3. The difficulty involved in equitably determining the amount to be +debited to the several States in respect of general Commonwealth +expenses. +</p><p> +"4. The uncertainty on the part of the State Governments as to the +amount which will become available. +</p><p> +"5. The impossibility of securing independent State and Commonwealth +finance." +</p><p> +See also pp. <a href="#Page_295">295</a>-<a href="#Page_299">299</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106" /><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> See Proceedings of the Conference of Provincial Premiers, +1906, at Ottawa (Canadian Sessional Papers, vol. xl.), especially +McBride's Memorandum for British Columbia. Numerous other grounds for +special treatment were alleged—<i>e.g.,</i> abnormal cost of civil +government, due to vast extent of Province.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107" /><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> Final Report, p. 24 (Census figures of 1891).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108" /><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> Final Report, p. 122.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109" /><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> Final Report, p. 50.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110" /><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> Ibid., pp. 48, 49.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111" /><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Ibid., pp. 51-54.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112" /><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> They were at issue here with Mr. Childers, who, in his +Draft Report, proposed halving the rates on Irish railways and further +endowing the Congested Districts Board. But Mr. Childers, though a Home +Ruler, felt himself bound by the Terms of Reference not to suggest a +Home Rule solution.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113" /><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> Lord Welby (Final Report, p. 54) compared his proposal +for Ireland with the system in the Isle of Man, where the proceeds of a +tariff distinct from that of Great Britain were devoted in the first +instance to the payment of a fixed Imperial contribution and the surplus +to local needs. But in the Isle of Man the whole point was that the +tariff was a local tariff, chosen by Manxmen to suit themselves, while +the administration was under Manx control.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114" /><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> Letter to the <i>Belfast Telegraph</i>, October 7, 1911.</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115" /><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> <i>I.e.</i>, on the generally accepted basis of (1) assessment +to death duties, (2) assessment to income-tax. With regard to (1), in +the last report of the Inland Revenue Commissioners, the figure for the +United Kingdom was £371,808,534; for Ireland, £15,872,302, or 1/234. +With regard to (2), the figure for the United Kingdom was 1009.9 +millions; for Ireland, 39.7 millions, or 1/254. Deduct a small allowance +for the difference between resources and taxable capacity, and the +result approximately is one-twenty-fifth.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116" /><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> +</p> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'>Total revenue (including non-tax revenue) of United</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Kingdom (mean of two years. 1909-10, 1910-11)</td><td align='right'>£165,147,500</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>One-twenty-fifth</td><td align='right'>£6,605,900</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Actual "true" revenue contributed by Ireland +(mean</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> of two years, 1909-10, 1910-11)</td><td align='right'>£10,032,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>"Over-taxation"</td><td align='right'>£3,426,100</td></tr></table> + + +<p> +If only the tax-revenue be taken, the over-taxation amounts to +£3,109,800 (total revenue for United Kingdom, £140,680,000; +one-twenty-fifth=£5,627,200; actual Irish revenue, £8,737,000). Some +members of the Royal Commission made certain allowances for education +grants, etc., which it would be useless to parallel now.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117" /><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> See pp. <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>-<a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118" /><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> See p. <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>, footnote.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119" /><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> Treasury Return, No. 220, 1911.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120" /><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> A list is given at p. 10 of Return 220 (1911), and an +admirable exposition of the whole subject from the Irish standpoint will +be found in Professor Oldham's seventh published lecture on the "Public +Finances of Ireland" (1911).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121" /><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> The "Whisky Money" was so treated under the Finance Act +of 1910.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122" /><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> See p. <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123" /><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> Between 1896 and 1898 the equivalent grants to Scotland +and Ireland were based on the Goschen proportion, 80, 11, 9, the English +grant being taken as standard. Scotch grants are now determined by +special legislation.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124" /><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> See Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125" /><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> Only part of the Dublin Metropolitan Police is paid out +of State Funds, the rest by the City of Dublin.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126" /><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> The relative figures were: Ireland, £2,408,000; Scotland, +£1,064,000; England, £6,325,500. The recent removal of the +disqualification for Poor Law Relief adds considerably to these +amounts.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127" /><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> In the poorest parts of Ireland they range as low as 9s.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128" /><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> See pp. <a href='#Page_174'>174</a>-<a href="#Page_176">176</a>. In 1908, England and Wales spent +£21,987,004 on elementary education, and raised £10,467,804 for it in +rates. Of the rest, £11,104,305 came from Parliamentary grants. Fees and +endowment incomes of voluntary schools are not included (Statistical +Abstract of United Kingdom, 1910). +</p><p> +The actual Parliamentary Votes, as they appear in the accounts for +1910-11, are: England (Class IV.), "Board of Education," £14,166,500; +Scotland, "Public Education," £2,250,000; Ireland, "Public Education," +£1,632,000. But the English Votes include sums devoted to technical +education, museums, etc., whose counterparts in Ireland come under other +departments.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129" /><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> Two years earlier than the date I have chiefly used for +the purposes of comparison, but the difference is not material. In point +of fact, the expenditure was £300,000 less in the later than in the +earlier year.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130" /><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> (1) Rates on Government Buildings; (2) Superannuation; +(3) Government Printing; (4) Board of Works; (5) Home Office.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131" /><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> Department of Agriculture, Endowment Fund: +</p> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'>(1) Local Taxation Account</td><td align='right'>£78,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Income from —</td><td align='left'>(2) Irish Church Fund</td><td align='right'>£70,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'>(3) Interest on Capital sum of</td><td align='right'>£200,000.</td></tr></table> + + + <p>Also (in 1909-10):</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'>From Ireland Development Fund</td><td align='right'>£7,000</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Under an Act of 1902</td><td align='right'>£5,000</td></tr></table> + + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132" /><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> The amount <i>voted</i> for Public Works in 1910-11 was +£259,848 [see "Civil Service Estimates" for 1911-12 (No. 63—1911)]; the +amount <i>spent</i>, according to Return No. 220, £215,000.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133" /><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> Under the heads of Excise, the principal deduction is in +Spirits (£1,793,000 in 1910-11) and Beer (£309,000 in 1910-11). +</p><p> +The items of Irish tax revenue in which the Treasury make <i>no</i> +adjustment are: Excise Licenses (£356,000 in 1910-11); Club Duty (£2,000 +in 1910-11); "other items" (£10,000 in 1910-11); Cards and Patent +Medicines (£10,000 in 1910-11); "Estate, etc., Duties" (£1,144,000 in +1910-11); Income Tax (Schedules A and B) (£694,000 in +1910-11—abnormally large figure owing to non-collection in previous +year); Land Value Duties (£1,000 in 1910-11). +</p><p> +All the heads of Customs revenue are subject to adjustment, though the +total result is only a small deduction from Ireland (£126,000 in +1910-11). In all but two the adjustment is in favour of Ireland. The two +exceptions are "Foreign Spirits," where a deduction of £25,000 is made +in 1910-11, and Tobacco, where a deduction of £620,000 is made in +1910-11.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134" /><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> <i>Income Tax</i>, Schedules C and D (dividends from +Government Stocks, public companies, foreign dividends, etc.). The +Treasury estimate (as stated in a side-note to the Return) is based on +statistics of <i>Estate Duty</i> for the five years ending 1908. But what +light can Estate Duty throw on (for example) the dividends collected at +the source from British or foreign securities held by Irish banks? +Schedule C deals with "Government Stocks, etc.," Schedule D with "Public +Companies, Foreign Dividends, etc.," but in the adjustment for "true" +revenue no distinction is made between them. Now the Banking Statistics +(Ireland) of 1910 show that dividends were payable at the Bank of +Ireland on £38,732,000 of Government securities, and that, in addition, +a debt bearing interest was due to the Bank from the Government of 2½ +millions. Income Tax on these items alone would be £65,000, less +rebates; but the whole of Schedule C, which includes Foreign and +Colonial Government Stocks, is given in 1909-10 as only £30,000. +</p><p> +No attempt is made to credit Ireland with a share of the profits made by +English and Scottish companies through business done in Ireland. +</p><p> +The only reliable items in Income Tax are those of A and B (Land, +Houses, and Occupation of Land), where in 1908-09 Ireland contributed +about 6 per cent. of the total; under other heads, according to the +Treasury, only 3.5 per cent. The writer estimates the true contribution +as several hundred thousand pounds more. +</p><p> +<i>Post Office</i>.—The Treasury give no clue as to how they calculate the +profit and loss on Postal Services. Figures of letters, telegrams, +parcels, etc., delivered in Ireland are known from the +Postmaster-General's report, but the report does not distinguish Irish +from English postal orders, of which 121½ millions were issued in the +United Kingdom in 1909-10. There is good reason to believe that a part +of the postal profit now wholly credited to England should in reality be +credited to Ireland. +</p><p> +<i>Stamps</i>.—Far too little allowance is made by the Treasury for stamps +on transfers executed through English and Scottish exchanges for shares +bought or sold by Irishmen, and for bonds, deeds, insurances, issues of +capital, etc. +</p><p> +<i>Tea and Sugar</i>.—The Treasury base their calculation "on quantities +inter-changed between Great Britain and Ireland in 1903-04," and I learn +from the Inland Revenue Department that by this means the consumption +per head of the population was arrived at, and that the present official +figures are based on the assumption that the relation of consumption per +head in Ireland to consumption per head in the United Kingdom as a whole +has not altered since 1903-04. The unreliability of this assumption is +manifest. It is probable that the heavy additional duty on spirits has +raised the consumption of tea in Ireland more than in Great Britain, and +the figures of Imports compiled by the Department of Agriculture seem to +confirm this view.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135" /><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> On the basis of the mean revenue of 1909-10 and 1910-11.</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136" /><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> Hansard, July 21 and 25, 1893.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137" /><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> Both Bills provided for part payment of the cost of Irish +Police from Imperial funds.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138" /><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> Return No. 220.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139" /><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> See p. <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140" /><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> See p. <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141" /><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> I need scarcely point out that the newly-created +Provinces of the Dominion of Canada are exceptions to this rule. But +there is no analogy with Ireland. Such Provinces are carved out of newly +settled public territory and given local government.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142" /><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> See pp. <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>-<a href="#Page_245">245</a>, and <a href="#Page_277">277</a>-<a href="#Page_278">278</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143" /><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> Until two years ago even the remaining one-fourth, added +to other small items of Commonwealth revenue, was too large for the +expenditure, and a part of it was returned annually to the States.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144" /><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> The other principal source of revenue is from Posts, but +that is almost exactly balanced by expenditure, so that it barely +affects the amount of the repayment to the States.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145" /><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> These figures are taken from the Official Year-Book of +the Commonwealth of Australia, No. 3, 1901-1909.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146" /><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> It must be understood that the law requiring +three-quarters of the Commonwealth revenue from Customs and Excise to be +returned to the States does not imply that each State should have +three-quarters of its contribution returned, but that the total amount +returned should be at least three-quarters.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147" /><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> See p. <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148" /><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> Except perhaps in the case of Canada.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149" /><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> The Author is indebted, here and elsewhere, to papers by +Messrs. C.R. Buxton, P. MacDermot, and R.C. Phillimore, in "Home Rule +Problems."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150" /><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> By Clause 5 the following sums were allocated to the +Irish Council for five years: (1) £3,750,000 for the maintenance of +eight Government Departments; (2) £300,000 for public works; (3) +£114,000 supplemental.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151" /><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> See p. <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>. Under the Act of 1867, No. 2 was earmarked +for this purpose.</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152" /><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> Parts of this chapter have appeared in a paper by the +Author in "Home Rule Problems."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153" /><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> Agricultural Statistics of Ireland, 1909.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154" /><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> See pp. <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>-<a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155" /><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> See pp. <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>-<a href="#Page_271">271</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156" /><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> See p. <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157" /><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> Cd. 4005, 1908.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158" /><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> This and subsequent figures are taken from an answer to +question in the House of Commons, July 25, 1911, and from the current +Exports of the Land Commission and Estates Commissioners.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159" /><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> Cd. 4412, 1908. The basis taken was the Poor Law +valuation of the lands unsold, multiplied by the number of years +purchase of the lands sold under the Act of 1903. On this basis the +value of the land neither sold nor agreed to be sold in 1908 was +£103,931,848. On the basis of acreage, the estimate worked out at +£102,078,448, and on the basis of holdings (regarded as unreliable by +the Commissioners) at £92,660,694. The total sum required from first to +last, including sums already advanced under all the various Acts, was +£208,366,175.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160" /><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> Pasture land let on eleven months' tenancies (a common +form of tenure) counts as untenanted land, and is subject to purchase by +the Land Commissioners, compulsorily, if necessary.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161" /><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> But not always. Heavily mortgaged landlords profited +most, perhaps, under the Act of 1903.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162" /><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> Only once exercised up to October, 1911: over Lord +Inchiquin's estate in Clare, to be acquired for the relief of +congestion.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163" /><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> See p. <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>. There the loan for compulsory Land Purchase +was ultimately raised by the Dominion of Canada, as one of the +conditions upon which Prince Edward Island entered the Federation in +1873. Under the Land Purchase Act, passed in 1875 by the Island +Legislature, with the assent of the Dominion, three Commissioners +adjudicated upon the sales; representing the Island Government, the +Landlords, and the Dominion Government respectively.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164" /><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> Finance accounts of the United Kingdom, 1911.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165" /><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> Report of the Commissioners of Public Works, 1910. The +amount in 1907-08 was £434,796; in 1908-09, £361,282. The Commissioners +have been lending since 1819, and have lent since that date +£48,792,319.</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166" /><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> For details of prior Home Rule Bills, see the <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167" /><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> The Victorian and South Australian Constitutions of 1855 +state in clear terms that the Ministry must be members of the +Legislature, and all the Australian Constitutions of the same date, +except that of Tasmania, formally exclude all other officials from the +Legislature. The Transvaal Constitution of 1906 made no reference to +either point; nor do the Federating Acts of 1867, 1900, and 1909 for +Canada, Australia, and South Africa.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168" /><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a> A fifth custom, very common, of compelling new Ministers +to seek re-election is incorporated in most of the Australian +Constitutions, but was expressly ruled out in Section 47 of the +Transvaal Constitution of 1906.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169" /><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> See Hansard, July 3, 1893, Speech of Mr. John Morley.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170" /><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> The words "subject to this Constitution" or "subject to +this Act" are sometimes added, but have no special significance. The +Australian Commonwealth Constitution Act does not mention the Governor's +"instructions," but only his "discretion."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171" /><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> British North America Act, 1867, Sects. 55-57; +Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, Sects. 58-60.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172" /><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> See especially pp. <a href="#Page_213">213</a>-<a href="#Page_229">229</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173" /><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> See pp. <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>-<a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174" /><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> Taken from Amendment XIV. to the United States +Constitution, passed July 28, 1866.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175" /><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> British North America Act, 1867, Sect. 92 (13). But the +Province may not encroach on powers reserved to the Dominion—e.g., in +bankruptcy (Gushing v. Depuy [before Jud. Comm. of Privy Council]). See +the "Constitution of Canada," J.E.C. Munro, pp. 247-253. There has been +much litigation over points where Dominion and Federal powers +overlapped. (See "Federations and Unions of the British Empire," H.E. +Egerton, pp. 151-153).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176" /><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> For the proposals of the Bills of 1886 and 1893, see +<a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177" /><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a> South Africa Act, 1909, Sects. 24 and 25.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178" /><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> See pp. <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>-<a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179" /><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> See Pamphlet No. 17, published by Proportional +Representation Society, and an excellent paper by Mr. J.F. Williams in +"Home Rule Problems."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180" /><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> Cd. 5741, 1911, pp. 46-51.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181" /><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> See <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a> and the Bill of 1886, Clause 25; Bill of +1893, Clause 22.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182" /><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> 54 and 55 Vict., Ch. 25, Sect. 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183" /><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> Courts of Admiralty in the Colonies are regulated by +Imperial Acts, though by an Act of 1890 large powers were conferred on +the Colonies of declaring ordinary Courts to be Courts of Admiralty (see +Moore's "Commonwealth of Australia," pp. 11 and 251).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184" /><a href="#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> See Clauses 27-30 of the Bill of 1886, and Clauses 25-28 +of the Bill of 1893.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185" /><a href="#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> See the Precis of Proceedings, Cd. 5741, 1911.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186" /><a href="#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> See pp. <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>-<a href="#Page_227">227</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187" /><a href="#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> See Section 128 of the Australia Constitution Act, 1900, +and Section 152 of the South Africa Act, 1909.</p></div> + + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A" id="Footnote_A" /><a href="#FNanchor_A"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Local Expenditure in excess of "true" revenue (as averaged for +years, 1910-11, 1909-10): £1,312,500.</p></div> +</div> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Framework of Home Rule, by Erskine Childers + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE *** + +***** This file should be named 15086-h.htm or 15086-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/0/8/15086/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: The Framework of Home Rule + +Author: Erskine Childers + +Release Date: February 17, 2005 [EBook #15086] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + +THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE + +BY + +ERSKINE CHILDERS + +AUTHOR OF + +"THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS," "WAR AND THE ARME BLANCHE," "GERMAN INFLUENCE +ON BRITISH CAVALRY"; EDITOR OF VOL. V. OF THE _TIMES_ "HISTORY OF THE +WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA," ETC. + +LONDON + +EDWARD ARNOLD + +1911 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER PAGES + + INTRODUCTION vii-xvi + +I. THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA 1-20 + +II. REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND 21-41 + +III. GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT 42-59 + +IV. THE UNION 60-71 + +V. CANADA AND IRELAND 72-104 + +VI. AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND 105-119 + +VII. SOUTH AFRICA AND IRELAND 120-143 + +VIII. THE ANALOGY 144-149 + +IX. IRELAND TO-DAY 150-187 + +X. THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE 188-229 + + I. The Elements of the Problem 188-197 + + II. Federal or Colonial Home Rule 198-203 + + III. The Exclusion or Retention of Irish Members + at Westminster 203-213 + + IV. Irish Powers and their Bearing on Exclusion 213-229 + +XI. UNION FINANCE 230-257 + + I. Before the Union 230-231 + + II. From the Union to the Financial Relations + Commission of 1894-1896 232-239 + + III. The Financial Relations Commission of 1894-1896 239-257 + +XII. THE PRESENT FINANCIAL SITUATION 258-279 + + I. Anglo-Irish Finance To-day 258-264 + + II. Irish Expenditure 264-274 + + III. Irish Revenue 274-279 + +XIII. FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE 280-306 + + I. The Essence of Home Rule 280-281 + + II. The Deficit 281-286 + + III. Further Contribution to Imperial Services 286 + + IV. Ireland's Share of the National Debt 286 + + V. Ireland's Share of Imperial Miscellaneous Revenue 287 + + VI. Irish Control of Customs and Excise 287-294 + + VII. Federal Finance 294-300 + + VIII. Alternative Schemes of Home Rule Finance 300-306 + +XIV. LAND PURCHASE FINANCE 307-321 + + I. Land Purchase Loans 307-319 + + II. Minor Loans to Ireland 319-321 + +XV. THE IRISH CONSTITUTION 322-338 + + CONCLUSION 339-341 + + APPENDIX 342-347 + + INDEX 348-354 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +My purpose in this volume is to advocate a definite scheme of +self-government for Ireland. That task necessarily involves an +historical as well as a constructive argument. It would be truer, +perhaps, to say that the greater part of the constructive case for Home +Rule must necessarily be historical. To postulate a vague acceptance of +the principle of Home Rule, and to proceed at once to the details of the +Irish Constitution, would be a waste of time and labour. It is +impossible even to attempt to plan the framework of a Home Rule Bill +without a tolerably close knowledge not only of Anglo-Irish relations, +but of the Imperial history of which they form a part. The Act will +succeed exactly in so far as it gives effect to the lessons of +experience. It will fail at every point where those lessons are +neglected. Constitutions which do not faithfully reflect the experience +of the sovereign power which accords them, and of the peoples which have +to live under them, are at the best perilous experiments liable to +defeat the end of their framers. + +I shall enter into history only so far as it is relevant to the +constitutional problem, using the comparative method, and confining +myself almost exclusively to the British Empire past and present. For +the purposes of the Irish controversy it is unnecessary to travel +farther. In one degree or another every one of the vexed questions which +make up the Irish problem has arisen again and again within the circle +of the English-speaking races. As a nation we have a body of experience +applicable to the case of Ireland incomparably greater than that +possessed by any other race in the world. If, from timidity, prejudice, +or sheer neglect, we fail to use it, we shall earn the heavy censure +reserved for those who sin against the light. + +For the comparative sketch I shall attempt, materials in the shape of +facts established beyond all controversy are abundant. Colonial history, +thanks to colonial freedom, is almost wholly free from the distorting +influence of political passion. South African history alone will need +revision in the light of recent events. When, under the alchemy of free +national institutions, Ireland has undergone the same transformation as +South Africa, her unhappy history will be chronicled afresh with a +juster sense of perspective and a juster apportionment of responsibility +for the calamities which have befallen her. And yet, if we consider the +field for partisan bias which Irish history presents, the amount of +ground common to writers of all shades of political opinion is now +astonishingly large. The result, I think, is due mainly to the good +influence of that eminent historian and Unionist politician, the late +Professor Lecky. Indeed, an advocate of Home Rule, nervously suspicious +of tainted material, could afford to rely solely on his "History of +Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," "Leaders of Public Opinion in +Ireland," and "Clerical Influences,"[1] which are Nationalist textbooks, +and, for quite recent events, on "A Consideration of Ireland in the +Nineteenth Century," by Mr. G. Locker-Lampson, the present Unionist +Member for Salisbury. A strange circumstance; but Ireland, like all +countries where political development has been forcibly arrested from +without, is a land of unending paradox. It is only one of innumerable +anomalies that Irish Nationalists should use Unionist histories as +propaganda for Nationalism; that the majority of Irish Unionists should +insist on ignoring all historical traditions save those which in any +normal country would long ago have been consigned by general consent to +oblivion and the institutions they embody overthrown; and that Unionist +writers such as those I have mentioned should be able to reconcile their +history and their politics only by a pessimism with regard to the +tendencies of human nature in general, or of Irish nature in particular, +with which their own historical teaching, founded on a true perception +of cause and effect, appears to be in direct contradiction. + +The truth is that the question is one of the construction, not of the +verification, of facts; of prophecy for the future, rather than of bare +affirmation or negation. No one can presume to determine such a question +without a knowledge of how human beings have been accustomed to act +under similar circumstances. Illumination of that sort Irish history and +the contemporary Irish problem incontestably need. The modern case for +the Union rests mainly on the abnormality of Ireland, and that is +precisely why it is such a formidable case to meet. For Ireland in many +ways is painfully abnormal. The most cursory study of her institutions +and social, economic, and political life demonstrate that fact. The +Unionist, fixing his eyes on some of the secondary peculiarities, and +ignoring their fundamental cause, demonstrates it with ease, and by a +habit of mind which yields only with infinite slowness to the growth of +political enlightenment, passes instinctively to the deduction that +Irish abnormalities render Ireland unfit for self-government. In other +words, he prescribes for the disease a persistent application of the +very treatment which has engendered it. Whatever the result, there is a +plausible answer. If Ireland is disorderly and retrograde, how can she +deserve freedom? If she is peaceful, and shows symptoms of economic +recuperation, clearly she does not need or even want it. In other words, +if all that is healthy in the patient battles desperately and not in +vain, first against irritant poison, and then against soporific drugs, +this healthy struggle for self-preservation is attributed not to native +vitality, but to the bracing regimen of coercive government. + +This train of argument, so far from being confined to Ireland, is as old +as the human race itself. Of all human passions, that for political +domination is the last to yield to reason. Men are naturally inclined to +attribute admitted social evils to every cause--religion, climate, race, +congenital defects of character, the inscrutable decrees of Divine +Providence--rather than to the form of political institutions; in other +words, to the organic structure of the community, and to rest the +security of an Empire on any other foundation than that of the liberty +of its component parts. If, in one case, their own experience proves +them wrong, they will go to the strangest lengths of perversity in +misreading their own experience, and they will seek every imaginable +pretext for distinguishing the case from its predecessor. Underlying all +is a nervous terror of the abuse of freedom founded on the assumption +that men will continue to act when free exactly as they acted under the +demoralizing influence of coercion. The British Empire has grown, and +continues to grow, in spite of this deeply rooted political doctrine. +Ireland is peculiar only in that her proximity to the seat of power has +exposed her for centuries to an application of the doctrine in its most +extreme form and without any hope of escape through the merciful +accidents to which more fortunate communities owe their emancipation. +Canada owes her position in the Empire, and the Empire itself exists in +its present form to-day, owing to the accident that the transcendantly +important principle of responsible government advocated by Lord Durham +as a remedy for the anarchy and stagnation in which he found both the +British and the French Provinces of Canada in 1838, did not require +Imperial legislation, and was established without the Parliamentary or +electoral sanction of Great Britain. Lord Durham was derided as a +visionary, and abused as unpatriotic for the assertion of this simple +principle. Far in advance of his time as he was, he himself shrank from +the full application of his own lofty ideal, and consequently made one +great, though under the circumstances not a capital, mistake in his +diagnosis, and it was to that mistake only that Parliament gave +legislative effect in 1840. By one of the most melancholy ironies in all +history Ireland was the source of his error, so that the Union of the +Canadas, dissolved as a failure by the Canadians themselves in 1867, was +actually based on the success of the Anglo-Irish Union in repressing a +dangerous nationality. Did the proof of the error in Canada induce +Englishmen to question the soundness of the precedent on which the error +was based? On the contrary, the lesson passed unnoticed, and the Irish +precedent has survived to darken thought, to retard democratic progress, +and to pervert domestic and Imperial policy to this very day. It even +had the truly extraordinary retrospective effect of obliterating from +the minds of many eminent statesmen the significance of the Canadian +parallel; for it is only six years ago that a Secretary of State for the +Colonies penned a despatch recommending for the Transvaal a form of +government similar to that which actually produced the Canadian +disorders of 1837, and supporting it by an argument whose effect was not +merely to resuscitate what time had proved to be false in Durham's +doctrine, but to discard what time had proved to be true. As for +Ireland herself, I know no more curious illustration of the strong +tendency, even on the part of the most fair-minded men, to place that +country outside the pale of social or political science, and of the +extreme reluctance to judge its inhabitants by the elementary standards +of human conduct, than the book to which I referred above--Mr. +Locker-Lampson's "A Consideration of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century." +For what he admits to be the ruinous results of British Government in +the past, the author in the last few pages of a lengthy volume has no +better cure to suggest than a continuance of British government, and he +defends this course by a terse enumeration of the very phenomena which +in Durham's opinion rendered the grant of Home Rule to Canada +imperative, concluding with a paragraph which, with the substitution of +"Canada" for "Ireland," constitutes an admirably condensed epitome of +the arguments used both by politicians at home, and the minorities in +Canada, in favour of Durham's error and against the truth he +established. + +Mr. Lecky represents a somewhat different school of thought, and reached +his Unionism by reasoning more profound and consistent, but, on the +other hand, wholly destructive of the Imperial theory as held by the +modern school of Imperialists. His fear and distrust of democracy in all +its forms and in all lands[2] was such that he naturally dreaded Irish +Nationalism, which is a form of democratic revolt suppressed so long and +by such harsh methods as to exhibit features easily open to criticism. +But the gist of his argument would have applied just as well to the +political evolution of the self-governing Colonies. Indeed, if he had +lived to see the last Imperial Conference, the pessimism of so clear a +thinker would assuredly have given way before the astounding contrast +between those countries in which his political philosophy had been +abjured, and the only white country in the Empire where by sheer force +it had been maintained intact. + +If my only object in writing were to contribute something toward the +dissipation of the fears and doubts which render it so hard to carry any +measure, however small, of Home Rule for Ireland, I should hope for +little success. Practical men, with a practical decision to make, rarely +look outside the immediate facts before them. Extremists, in a case like +that of Ireland, are reluctant to take account of what Lord Morley +calls "the fundamental probabilities of civil society." Sir Edward +Carson would be more than human if he were to be influenced by a +demonstration that the case he makes against Home Rule is the same as +that made by the minority leaders, not only in the French, but in the +British Province of Canada. Most of the minority to which he appeals +would now regard as an ill-timed paradox the view that the very vigour +of their opposition to Home Rule is a better omen for the success of +Home Rule than that kind of sapless Nationalism, astonishingly rare in +Ireland under the circumstances, which is inclined to yield to the +insidious temptation of setting the "eleemosynary benefits"--to use Mr. +Walter Long's phrase[3]--derived from the British connection above the +need for self-help and self-reliance. The real paradox is that any +Irishmen, Unionist or Nationalist, should tolerate advisers who, however +sincere and patriotic, avowedly regard Ireland as the parasite of Great +Britain; who appeal to the lower nature of her people; to the fears of +one section and the cupidity of both; advising Unionists to rely on +British power and all Irishmen on British alms. A day will come when the +humiliation will be seen in its true light. Even now, I do venture to +appeal to that small but powerful group of moderate Irish Unionists who, +so far from fearing revenge or soliciting charity, spend their whole +lives in the noble aim of uniting Irishmen of all creeds on a basis of +common endeavour for their own economic and spiritual salvation; who +find their work checked in a thousand ways by the perpetual maintenance +of a seemingly barren and sentimental agitation; who distrust both the +parties to this agitation; but who are reluctant to accept the view +that, without the satisfaction of the national claim, and without the +national responsibility thereby conferred, their own aims can never be +fully attained. I should be happy indeed if I could do even a little +towards persuading some of these men that they mistake cause and effect; +misinterpret what they resent; misjudge where they distrust, and in +standing aloof from the battle for legislative autonomy, unconsciously +concede a point--disinterested, constructive optimists as they are--to +the interested and destructive pessimism which, from Clare's savage +insults to Mr. Walter Long's contemptuous patronage, has always lain at +the root of British policy towards Ireland. + +In the meantime, for those who like or dislike it, Home Rule is +imminent. We are face to face no longer with a highly speculative, but +with a vividly practical problem, raising legislative and administrative +questions of enormous practical importance, and next year we shall be +dealing with this problem in an atmosphere of genuine reality totally +unlike that of 1886, when Home Rule was a startling novelty to the +British electorate, or of 1893, when the shadow of impending defeat +clouded debate and weakened counsel. It would be pleasant to think that +the time which has elapsed, besides greatly mitigating anti-Irish +prejudice, had been used for scientific study and dispassionate +discussion of the problem of Home Rule. Unfortunately, after eighteen +years the problem remains almost exactly where it was. There are no +detailed proposals of an authoritative character in existence. No +concrete scheme was submitted to the country in the recent elections. +None is before the country now. The reason, of course, is that the Irish +question is still an acute party question, not merely in Ireland, but in +Great Britain. Party passion invariably discourages patient constructive +thought, and all legislation associated with it suffers in consequence. +Tactical considerations, sometimes altogether irrelevant to the special +issue, have to be considered. In the case of Home Rule, when the balance +of parties is positively determined by the Irish vote, the difficulty +reaches its climax. It is idle to blame individuals. We should blame the +Union. So long as one island democracy claims to determine the destinies +of another island democracy, of whose special needs and circumstances it +is admittedly ignorant, so long will both islands suffer. + +This ignorance is not disputed. No Irish Unionist claims that Great +Britain should govern Ireland on the ground that the British electorate, +or even British statesmen, understand Irish questions. On the contrary, +in Ireland, at any rate, their ignorance is a matter for satirical +comment with all parties. What he complains of is, that the British +electorate is beginning to carry its ignorance to the point of believing +that the Irish electorate is competent to decide Irish questions, and +in educating the British electorate he has hitherto devoted himself +exclusively to the eradication of this error. The financial results of +the Union are such that he is now being cajoled into adding, "It is your +money, not your wisdom, that we want." Once more, an odd state of +affairs, and some day we shall all marvel in retrospect that the Union +was so long sustained by a separatist argument, reinforced in latter +days by such an inconsistent and unconscionable claim. + +In the meantime, if only the present situation can be turned to +advantage, this crowning paradox is the most hopeful element in the +whole of a tangled question. It is not only that the British elector is +likely to revolt at once against the slur upon his intelligence and the +drain upon his purse, but that Irish Unionism, once convinced of the +tenacity and sincerity of that revolt, is likely to undergo a dramatic +and beneficent transformation. If they are to have Home Rule, Irish +Unionists--even those who now most heartily detest it--will want the +best possible scheme of Home Rule, and the best possible scheme is not +likely to be the half measure which, from no fault of the statesman +responsible for it, tactical difficulties may make inevitable. If the +vital energy now poured into sheer uncompromising opposition to the +principles of Home Rule could be transmuted into intellectual and moral +effort after the best form of Home Rule, I believe that the result would +be a drastic scheme. + +Compromise enters more or less into the settlement of all burning +political questions. That is inevitable under the party system; but of +all questions under the sun, Home Rule questions are the least +susceptible of compromise so engendered. The subject, in reality, is not +suitable for settlement at Westminster. This is a matter of experience, +not of assertion. Within the present bounds of the Empire no lasting +Constitution has ever been framed for a subordinate State to the +moulding of which Parliament, in the character of a party assembly, +contributed an active share. Constitutions which promote prosperity and +loyalty have actually or virtually been framed by those who were to live +under them. If circumstances make it impossible to adopt this course for +Ireland, let us nevertheless remember that all the friction and enmity +between the Mother Country and subordinate States have arisen, not from +the absence, but from the inadequacy of self-governing powers. Checks +and restrictions, so far from benefiting Great Britain or the Colonies, +have damaged both in different degrees, the Colonies suffering most +because these checks and restrictions produce in the country submitted +to them peculiar mischiefs which exist neither under a despotic regime +nor an unnatural Legislative Union, fruitful of evil as both those +systems are. The damage is not evanescent, but is apt to bite deep into +national character and to survive the abolition of the institutions +which caused it. The Anglo-Irish Union was created and has ever since +been justified by a systematic defamation of Irish character. If it is +at length resolved to bury the slander and trust Ireland, in the name of +justice and reason let the trust be complete and the institutions given +her such as to permit full play to her best instincts and tendencies, +not such as to deflect them into wrong paths. Let us be scrupulously +careful to avoid mistakes which might lead to a fresh campaign of +defamation like that waged against Canada, as well as Ireland, between +1830 and 1840. + +The position, I take it, is that most Irish Unionists still count, +rightly or wrongly, on defeating Home Rule, not only in the first +Parliamentary battle, but by exciting public opinion during the long +period of subsequent delay which the Parliament Bill permits. Not until +Home Rule is a moral certainty, and perhaps not even then, do the +extremists intend to consider the Irish Constitution in a practical +spirit. Surely this is a perilous policy. Surely it must be so regarded +by the moderate men--and there are many--who, if Home Rule comes, intend +to throw their abilities into making it a success, and who will be +indispensable to Ireland at a moment of supreme national importance. +Irretrievable mistakes may be made by too long a gamble with the chances +of political warfare. Whatever the scheme produced, the extremists will +have to oppose it tooth and nail. If the measure is big, sound, and +generous, it will be necessary to attack its best features with the +greatest vigour; to rely on beating up vague, anti-separatist sentiment +in Great Britain; to represent Irish Protestants as a timid race forced +to shelter behind British bayonets; in short, to use all the arguments +which, if Irish Unionists were compelled to frame a Constitution +themselves, they would scorn to employ, and which, if grafted on the Act +in the form of amendments, they themselves in after-years might +bitterly regret. Conversely, if the measure is a limited one, it will be +necessary to commend its worst features; to extol its eleemosynary side +and all the infractions of liberty which in actual practice they would +find intolerably irksome. Whatever happens, things will be said which +are not meant, and passions aroused which will be difficult to allay on +the eve of a crisis when Ireland will need the harmonious co-operation +of all her ablest sons. + +If, behind the calculation of a victory within the next two years, there +lies the presentiment of an eventual defeat, let not the thought be +encouraged that a better form of Home Rule is likely to come from a Tory +than from a Liberal Government. Many Irish Unionists regard the prospect +of continued submission to a Liberal, or what they consider a +semi-Socialist, Government as the one consideration which would +reconcile them to Home Rule. No one can complain of that. But they make +a fatal mistake in denying Liberals credit for understanding questions +of Home Rule better than Tories. That, again, is a matter of proved +experience. Compare the abortive Transvaal Constitution of 1905 with the +reality of 1906, and measure the probable consequences of the former by +the actual results of the latter. Let them remember, too, that every +year which passes aggravates the financial difficulties which imperil +the future of Ireland. + +The best hope of securing a final settlement of the Irish question in +the immediate future lies in promoting open discussion on the details of +the Home Rule scheme, and of drawing into that discussion all Irishmen +and Englishmen who realize the profound importance of the issue. This +book is offered as a small contribution to the controversy. + +For help in writing it I am deeply indebted to many friends on both +sides of the Irish Channel, in Ireland to officials and private persons, +who have generously placed their experience at my disposal; while in +England I owe particular thanks to the Committee of which I had the +honour to be a member, which sat during the summer of this year under +the chairmanship of Mr. Basil Williams, and which published the series +of essays called "Home Rule Problems." + +E.C. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] The two latter works were written by Mr. Lecky in his Nationalist +youth the first and greater work after he had become a Unionist. They +form a connected whole, however, and are not inconsistent with one +another. + +[2] See "Democracy and Liberty." + +[3] "Did the people of Ireland understand that the destruction of the +Union, so lightly advocated by Lord Haldane, must result in the +cessation of those largely eleemosynary benefits to which the progress +of Ireland is due, her 'dissatisfaction' would be unmistakably directed +towards her false advisers?"--Letter to the _Belfast Telegraph_, October +7, 1911, criticizing Lord Haldane's preface to "Home Rule Problems." + + + + +ERRATA + + +Since this book went to press the Treasury has issued a revised version +of Return No. 220, 1911 [Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland, and +Ireland)], cancelling the Return issued in July, and correcting an error +made in it. It now appears that the "true" Excise revenue attributable +to Ireland from _spirits_ in 1910-11 (with deductions made by the +Treasury from the sum actually collected in Ireland) should be +L3,575,000, instead of L3,734,000, and that the total "true" Irish +revenue in that year was, therefore, L11,506,500, instead of +L11,665,500. In other words, Irish revenue for 1910-11 was +over-estimated in the Return now cancelled by L159,000. + +The error does not affect the Author's argument as expounded in Chapters +XII. and XIII.; but it necessitates the correction of a number of +figures given by him, especially in Chapter XII., the principal change +being that the deficit in Irish revenue, as calculated on the mean of +the two years 1909-10 and 1910-11, should actually be L1,392,000, +instead of L1,312,500. + +The full list of corrections is as follows: + +Page 259, line 9, _for_ "L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000." + +Page 260, table, third column, line 6, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_ +"L9,952 500"; last line, _for_ "L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000." + +Page 261, table, last column, last line but one, _for_ "L321,000," +_read_ "L162,000"; last line (total), _for_ "L329,780,970," _read_ +"L329,621,970." + +Page 262, line 7, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_ "L9,952,500"; line 10, +_for_ "L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000." + +Page 275. table, last column, line 2, _for_ "L3,734,000," _read_ +"L3,575,000"; line 7, _for_ "L10,371,000," _read_ "L10,212,000"; line +14, _for_ "L11,665,500," _read_, "L11,506,500"; in text, last line but +one of page, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_ "L9,952,500." + +Page 276, line 5, _for_ "L500,000," _read_, "L340,000"; table, last +column, line 2, _for_ "L3,316,000," _read_ "L3,236,500"; line 3, _for_ +"L6,182,000," _read_ "L6,102,500"; line 9, _for_ "L8,737,500," _read_ +"L8,658,000"; last line, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_ "L9,952,500." + +Page 277, line 2, _for_ "L1,672,500," _read_ "L1,752,000"; line 7, _for_ +"L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000"; line 8, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_ +"L9,952,500"; line 12, _for_ "L1,672,500," _read_ "L1,752,000"; +footnote, line 1, _for_ "L1,793,000," _read_ "L1,952,000." + +Page 279, line 8, _for_ "70.75," _read_ "70.48." + +Page 282, sixth line from bottom, _for_ "L1,312,500," _read_ +"L1,392,000." + + * * * * * + +Page 246, line 8 and footnote, and page 295, lines 21-31: A temporary +measure has been passed (Surplus Revenue Act, 1910), under which the +Surplus Commonwealth Revenue is returned to the States on a basis of L1 +5s. per head of the population of each State. + + * * * * * + +Page 288, line 2, _omit_ "like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands." +These islands have distinct local tariffs, but they cannot be said to be +wholly under local control. + + + + +THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA + + + +I. + + +Ireland was the oldest and the nearest of the Colonies. We are apt to +forget that she was ever colonized, and that for a long period, although +styled a Kingdom, she was kept in a position of commercial and political +dependence inferior to that of any Colony. Constitutional theory still +blinds a number of people to the fact that in actual practice Ireland is +still governed in many respects as a Colony, but on principles which in +all other white communities of the British Empire are extinct. Like all +Colonies, she has a Governor or Lord-Lieutenant of her own, an Executive +of her own, and a complete system of separate Government Departments, +but her people, unlike the inhabitants of a self-governing Colony, +exercise no control over the administration. She possesses no +Legislature of her own, although in theory she is supposed to possess +sufficient legislative control over Irish affairs through representation +in the Imperial Parliament. In practice, however, this control has +always been, and still remains, illusory, just as it would certainly +have proved illusory if conferred upon any Colony. It can be exercised +only by cumbrous, circuitous, and often profoundly unhealthy methods; +and over a wide range of matters it cannot by any method whatsoever be +exercised at all. + +To look behind mere technicalities to the spirit of government, Ireland +resembles one of that class of Crown Colonies of which Jamaica and Malta +are examples, where the inhabitants exercise no control over +administration, and only partial control over legislation.[4] + +Why is this? + +Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, always frank and fearless in his political +judgments, gave the best answer in 1893, when opposing the first reading +of the second of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills. "Does anybody doubt," +he said, "that if Ireland were a thousand miles away from England she +would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" Now this +was not a barren geographical truism, which might by way of hypothesis +be applied in identical terms to any fraction of the United +Kingdom--say, for example, to that part of England lying south of the +Thames. Mr. Chamberlain never made any attempt to deny--no one with the +smallest knowledge of history could have denied--that Ireland, though +only sixty miles away from England, was less like England than any of +the self-governing Colonies then attached to the Crown, possessing +distinct national characteristics which entitled her, in theory at any +rate, to demand, not merely colonial, but national autonomy. On the +contrary, Mr. Chamberlain went out of his way to argue, with all the +force and fire of an accomplished debater, that the Bill was a highly +dangerous measure precisely because, while granting Ireland a measure of +autonomy, it denied her some of the elementary powers, not only of +colonial, but of national States; for instance, the full control over +taxation, which all self-governing Colonies possessed, and the control +over foreign policy, which is a national attribute. The complementary +step in his argument was that, although nominally withheld by statute, +these fuller powers would be forcibly usurped by the future Irish +Government through the leverage offered by a subordinate Legislature and +Executive, and that, once grasped, they would be used to the injury of +Great Britain and the minority in Ireland. Ireland ("a fearful danger") +might arm, ally herself with France, and, while submitting the +Protestant minority to cruel persecution, would retain enough national +unity to smite Britain hip and thigh, and so avenge the wrong of ages. + +Even to the most ardent Unionist the case thus presented must, in the +year 1911, present a doubtful aspect. The British _entente_ with France, +and the absence of the smallest ascertainable sympathy between Ireland +and Germany, he will dismiss, perhaps, as points of minor importance, +but he will detect at once in the argument an antagonism, natural enough +in 1893, between national and colonial attributes, and he will remember, +with inner misgivings, that his own party has taken an especially active +part during the last ten years in furthering the claim of the +self-governing Colonies to the status of nationhood as an essential step +in the furtherance of Imperial unity. The word "nation," therefore, as +applied to Ireland, has lost some of its virtue as a deterrent to Home +Rule. Even the word "Colony" is becoming harmless; for every year that +has passed since 1893 has made it more abundantly clear that colonial +freedom means colonial friendship; and, after all, friendship is more +important than legal ties. In one remarkable case, that of the conquered +Dutch Republic in South Africa, a flood of searching light has been +thrown on the significance of those phrases "nation" and "Colony." +There, as in Ireland, and originally in Canada, "national" included +racial characteristics, and colonial autonomy signified national +autonomy in a more accurate sense than in Australia or Newfoundland. But +we know now that it does not signify either a racial tyranny within +those nations, or a racial antipathy to the Mother Country; but, on the +contrary, a reconciliation of races within and friendship without. + +Would Mr. Chamberlain recast his argument now? Unhappily, we shall not +know. But it does seem to me that recent history and his own temperament +would force him to do so. As in his abandonment of Free Trade, it was a +strong and sincere Imperialist instinct that eventually transformed him +from the advocate of provincial Home Rule into the relentless enemy of +Home Rule in any shape. Take the Imperial argument, shaken to its +foundations by subsequent events, from the case he stated in 1893, and +what remains? Two pleas only--first, the abnormality of Irishmen; +second, Ireland's proximity to England. The first expresses the old +traditional view that Ireland is outside the pale of all human analogy; +the exception to all rules; her innate depravity and perversity such +that she would abuse power where others respect it, derive enmity where +others derive friendship, and willingly ruin herself by internal +dissension and extravagant ambitions in order, if possible, at the same +time to ruin England. Unconnected, however loosely, with the high +Imperial argument, I do not believe that this plea could have been used +with sincerity by Mr. Chamberlain even in 1893. He was a democrat, +devoted to the cause of enfranchising and trusting the people; and this +plea was, after all, only the same anti-democratic argument applied to +Ireland, and tipped with racial venom, which had been used for +generations by most Tories and many Whigs against any extension of +popular power. Lord Randolph Churchill, the Tory democrat, in his +dispassionate moments, always scouted it, resting his case against Home +Rule on different grounds. It was strange enough to see the argument +used by the Radical author of all the classic denunciations of class +ascendancy and the classic eulogies of the sense, forbearance and +generosity of free electorates. It was all the stranger in that Mr. +Chamberlain himself a few years before had committed himself to a scheme +of restricted self-government for Ireland, and in the debates on Mr. +Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill of 1886, when the condition of Ireland +was far worse than in 1893, had declared himself ready to give that +country a Constitution similar to that enjoyed by Quebec or Ontario +within the Dominion of Canada. But politics are politics. Under the +inexorable laws of the party game, politicians are advocates and swell +their indictments with every count which will bear the light. The system +works well enough in every case but one--the indictment of a +fellow-nation for incapacity to rule itself. There, both in Ireland and +everywhere else, as I shall show, it works incalculable mischief. Once +committed irrevocably to the opposition of Mr. Gladstone's Bills, Mr. +Chamberlain, standing on Imperial ground, which seemed to him and his +followers firm enough then, used his unrivalled debating powers to +traduce and exasperate the Irish people and their leaders by every +device in his power. + +One other point survives in its integrity from the case made by Mr. +Chamberlain in 1893, and that is the argument about distance. Clearly +this is a quite distinct contention from the last; for distance from any +given point does not by itself radically alter human nature. Australians +are not twice as good or twice as bad as South Africans because they +are twice as far from the Mother Country. "Does anybody doubt"--let me +repeat his words--"that if Ireland were a thousand miles from England +she would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" The +whole tragedy of Ireland lies in that "if"; but the condition is, +without doubt, still unsatisfied. Ireland is still only sixty miles away +from the English shores, and the argument from proximity, for what it is +worth, is still plausible. To a vast number of minds it still seems +conclusive. Put the South African parallel to the average moderate +Unionist, half disposed to admit the force of this analogy, he would +nevertheless answer: "Ah, but Ireland is so near." Well, let us join +issue on the two grounds I have indicated--the ground of Irish +abnormality, and the ground of Ireland's proximity. It will be found, I +think, that neither contention is tenable by itself; that a supporter of +one unconsciously or consciously reinforces it by reference to the +other, and that to refute one is to refute both. It will be found, too, +that, apart from mechanical and unessential difficulties, the whole case +against Home Rule is included and summed up in these two contentions, +and that the mechanical problem itself will be greatly eased and +illuminated by their refutation. + + +II. + +Those sixty miles of salt water which we know as the Irish Channel--if +only every Englishman could realize their tremendous significance in +Anglo-Irish history--what an ineffectual barrier "in the long result of +time" to colonization and conquest; what an impassable barrier--through +the ignorance and perversity of British statesmanship--to sympathy and +racial fusion! + +For eight hundred years after the Christian era her distance from Europe +gave Ireland immunity from external shocks, and freedom to work out her +own destiny. She never, for good or ill, underwent Roman occupation or +Teutonic invasion. She was secure enough to construct and maintain +unimpaired a civilization of her own, warlike, prosperous, and +marvellously rich, for that age, in scholarship and culture. She +produced heroic warriors, peaceful merchants, and gentle scholars and +divines; poets, musicians, craftsmen, architects, theologians. She had a +passion for diffusing knowledge, and for more than a thousand years sent +her missionaries of piety, learning, art, and commerce, far and wide +over Europe. For two hundred years she resisted her first foreign +invaders, the Danes, with desperate tenacity, and seems to have absorbed +into her own civilization and polity those who ultimately retained a +footing on her eastern shores. + +With the coming of the Anglo-Normans at the end of the twelfth century +the dark shadow begins to fall, and for the first time the Irish Channel +assumes its tragic significance. England, compounded of Britons, +Teutons, Danes, Scandinavians, Normans, with the indelible impress of +Rome upon the whole, had emerged, under Nature's mysterious alchemy, a +strong State. Ireland had preserved her Gaelic purity, her tribal +organization, her national culture, but at the cost of falling behind in +the march of political and military organization. Sixty miles divided +her from the nearest part of the outlying dominions of feudal England, +150 miles from the dynamic centre of English power. The degree of +distance seems to have been calculated with fatal exactitude, in +correspondence with the degrees of national vitality in the two +countries respectively, to produce for ages to come the worst possible +effects on both. The process was slow. Ireland was near enough to +attract the Anglo-Norman adventurers and colonists, but strong enough +and fair enough for three hundred years to transform them into patriots +"more Irish than the Irish"; always, however, too near and too weak, +even with their aid, to expel the direct representatives of English rule +from the foothold they had obtained on her shores, while at the same +time too far and too formidable to enable that rule to expand into the +complete conquest and subjugation of the realm. + +"The English rule," says Mr. Lecky, "as a living reality, was confined +and concentrated within the limits of the Pale. The hostile power +planted in the heart of the nation destroyed all possibility of central +government, while it was itself incapable of fulfilling that function. +Like a spear-point embedded in a living body, it inflamed all around it +and deranged every vital function. It prevented the gradual reduction +of the island by some native Clovis, which would necessarily have taken +place if the Anglo-Normans had not arrived, and instead of that peaceful +and almost silent amalgamation of races, customs, laws, and languages, +which took place in England, and which is the source of many of the best +elements in English life and character, the two nations remained in +Ireland for centuries in hostility." + +From this period dates that intense national antipathy felt by the +English for the Irish race which has darkened all subsequent history. It +was not originally a temperamental antipathy, or it would be impossible +to explain the powerful attraction of Irish character, manners, and laws +for the great bulk of the Anglo-Norman colonists. Nor within Ireland, +even after the Reformation, was it a religious antipathy between a +Protestant race and a race exclusively and immovably Catholic. It was in +origin a political antipathy between a small official minority, backed +by the support of a powerful Mother Country struggling for ascendancy +over a large native and naturalized majority, divided itself by tribal +feuds, but on the whole united in loathing and combating that +ascendancy. Universal experience, as I shall afterwards show, proves +that an enmity so engendered takes a more monstrous and degrading shape +than any other. Religion becomes its pretext. Ignorance makes it easy, +and interest makes it necessary, to represent the native race as savages +outside the pale of law and morals, against whom any violence and +treachery is justifiable. The legend grows and becomes a permanent +political axiom, distorting and abasing the character of those who act +on it and those who, suffering from it, and retaliating against its +consequences, construct their counter-legend of the inherent wickedness +of the dominant race. If left to themselves, white races, of diverse +nationalities, thrown together in one country, eventually coalesce, or +at least learn to live together peaceably. But if an external power too +remote to feel genuine responsibility for the welfare of the +inhabitants, while near enough to exert its military power on them, +takes sides in favour of the minority, and employs them as its permanent +and privileged garrison, the results are fatal to the peace and +prosperity of the country it seeks to dominate, and exceedingly +harmful, though in a degree less easy to gauge, to itself. So it was +with Ireland; and yet it cannot fail to strike any student of history +what an extraordinary resilience she showed again and again under any +transient phase of wise and tolerant government. + +Such a phase occurred in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII., +when, after the defeat of the Geraldines, for the first time some +semblance of royal authority was established over the whole realm; and +when an effort was also made, not through theft or violence, but by +conciliatory statecraft, to replace the native Brehon system of law and +land tenure by English institutions, and to anglicize the Irish chiefs. +The process stopped abruptly and for ever with the accession of Mary, to +be replaced by the forcible confiscation of Irish land, and the +"planting" of English and Scotch settlers. + +Ireland, for four hundred years the only British Colony, is now drawn +into the mighty stream of British colonial expansion. Adventurous and +ambitious Englishmen began to regard her fertile acres as Raleigh +regarded America, and, in point of time, the systematic and State-aided +colonization of Ireland is approximately contemporaneous with that of +America. It is true that until the first years of the sixteenth century +no permanent British settlement had been made in America, while in +Ireland the plantation of King's and Queen's Counties was begun as early +as 1556, and under Elizabeth further vast confiscations were carried out +in Munster within the same century. But from the reign of James I. +onward, the two processes advance _pari passu_. Virginia, first founded +by Raleigh in 1585, is firmly settled in 1607, just before the +confiscation of Ulster and its plantation by 30,000 Scots; and in 1620, +just after that huge measure of expropriation, the Pilgrim Fathers +landed in New Plymouth. Puritan Massachusetts--with its offshoots, +Connecticut, New Haven and Rhode Island--as well as Catholic Maryland, +were formally established between 1629 and 1638, and Maine in 1639, at a +period when the politically inspired proscription of the Catholic +religion, succeeding the robbery of the soil, was goading the unhappy +Irish to the rebellion of 1641. While that rebellion, with its fierce +excesses and pitiless reprisals, was convulsing Ireland, the united +Colonies of New England banded themselves together for mutual defence. + +A few years later Cromwell, aiming, through massacre and rapine, at the +extermination of the Irish race, with the savage watchword "To Hell or +Connaught," planted Ulster, Munster, and Leinster with men of the same +stock, stamp, and ideas as the colonists of New England, and in the +first years of the Restoration Charles II. confirmed these +confiscations, at the same time that he granted Carolina to Lord +Clarendon, New Netherlands to the Duke of York, and New Jersey to Lord +Berkeley, and issued fresh Charters for Connecticut and Maryland. +Finally, Quaker Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1682, and in 1691 William +III., after the hopeless Jacobite insurrections in favour of the last of +the Stuarts, wrung the last million acres of good Irish land from the +old Catholic proprietors, planted them with Protestant Englishmen, and +completed the colonization of Ireland. Forty years passed (1733) before +Georgia, the last of the "Old Thirteen Colonies," was planted, as Ulster +had been planted, mainly by Scotch Presbyterians. + +During the greater part of this period we must remember that conquered +Ireland herself was contributing to the colonization of America. Every +successive act of spoliation drove Catholic Irishmen across the Atlantic +as well as into Europe, and gave every Colony an infusion of Irish +blood. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century this class of +emigration was for the most part involuntary. Cromwell, for example, +shipped off thousands of families indiscriminately to the West Indies +and America for sale, as "servants" to the colonists. The only organized +and voluntary expedition in which Irish Catholics took part was that to +Maryland under Lord Baltimore. The distinction in course of time became +immaterial. In the free American air English, Scotch, and Irish became +one people, with a common political and social tradition. + +It is interesting, and for a proper understanding of the Irish question, +indispensable, briefly to contrast the characteristics and progress of +the American and Irish settlements, and in doing so to observe the +profound effects of geographical position and political institutions on +human character. I shall afterwards ask the reader to include in the +comparison the later British Colonies formed in Canada and South Africa +by conquest, and in Australia by peaceful settlement. + +Let us note, first, that both in America and Ireland the Colonies were +bi-racial, with this all-important distinction, that in America the +native race was coloured, savage, heathen, nomadic, incapable of fusion +with the whites, and, in relation to the almost illimitable territory +colonized, not numerous; while in Ireland the native race was white, +civilized, Christian, numerous, and confined within the limits of a +small island to which it was passionately attached by treasured national +traditions, and whose soil it cultivated under an ancient and revered +system of tribal tenure. The parallel, then, in this respect, is slight, +and becomes insignificant, except in regard to the similarity of the +mental attitude of the colonists towards Indians and Irish respectively. +In natural humanity the colonists of Ireland and the colonists of +America differed in no appreciable degree. They were the same men, with +the same inherent virtues and defects, acting according to the pressure +of environment. Danger, in proportionate degree, made both classes +brutal and perfidious; but in America, though there were moments of +sharp crisis, as in 1675 on the borders of Massachusetts, the degree was +comparatively small, and through the defeat and extrusion of the Indians +diminished steadily. In Ireland, because complete expulsion and +extermination were impossible, the degree was originally great, and, +long after it had actually disappeared, haunted the imagination and +distorted the policy of the invading nation. + +In America there was no land question. Freeholds were plentiful for the +meanest settlers and the title was sound and indisputable. In the +"proprietary" Colonies, it is true, vast tracts of country were +originally vested by royal grants in a single nobleman or a group of +capitalists, just as vast estates were granted in Ireland to peers, +London companies, and syndicates of "undertakers"; but by the nature of +things, the extent of territory, its distance, and the absence of a +white subject race, no agrarian harm resulted in America, and a healthy +system of tenure, almost exclusively freehold, was naturally evolved. + +In Ireland the land question was the whole question from the first. If +the natives had been exterminated, or their remnants wholly confined, +as Cromwell planned, to the barren lands of Connaught, all might have +been well for the conquerors. Or if Ireland had been, in Mr. +Chamberlain's phrase, a thousand miles away, all might have come right +under the compulsion of circumstances and the healing influence of time. +That the Celtic race still possessed its strong powers of assimilation +was shown by the almost complete denationalization and absorption of a +large number of Cromwell's soldier-colonists in the south and south-east +under what Mr. Lecky calls the "invincible Catholicism" of the Irish +women. But the Irish were not only numerous, but fatally near the seat +of Empire. The natives--Irish or Anglo-Irish--were still more than twice +as numerous as the colonists; they were scattered over the whole +country, barren or fertile, and that country was within a day's sail of +England. The titles of the colonists to the land rested on sheer +violence, sometimes aggravated by the grossest meanness and treachery, +and these titles were not recognized by the plundered race. Even with +their gradual recognition it would have been difficult to introduce the +English system of tenure, which was radically different and repellent to +the Irish mind. The bare idea of one man absolutely owning land and +transmitting it entire to his heirs was incomprehensible to them. + +The solution for all these difficulties was unfortunately only too easy +and obvious. England was near, strong, and thoroughly imbued with the +policy of governing Ireland on the principle of antagonizing the races +within her. It was possible, therefore, by English help, under laws made +in England, to constitute the Irish outlaws from the land, labourers on +it, no doubt, that was an economic necessity, precarious occupiers of +plots just sufficient to support life; but, in the eyes of the law, +serfs. The planters of the southern American Colonies imported African +negroes for the same purpose, with irretrievably mischievous results to +their own descendants. Nor is it an exaggeration to compare the use made +of the Irish for a certain period to the use made of these negroes, for +great numbers of the Irish were actually exported as slaves to +Barbadoes, Jamaica, and even to Carolina. + +The outlawed multitude in Ireland were deprived, not only of all rights +to the land, but, as a corollary, of all social privileges whatsoever. +"The law," said an Irish Lord Chancellor, "does not suppose any such +person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." The instrument of ostracism +was the famous Penal Code, begun in William's reign in direct and +immediate defiance of a solemn pledge given in the Treaty of Limerick, +guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Catholics, and perfected in +the reign of Anne. This Code, ostensibly framed to extirpate +Catholicism, was primarily designed to confirm and perpetuate the +gigantic dislocation of property caused by the transference of Irish and +Anglo-Irish land into English and Scotch ownership. Since the rightful +owners were Catholic, and the wrongful owners Protestants, the laws +against the Catholic religion--a religion feared everywhere by +Englishmen at this period--were the simplest means of legalizing and +buttressing the new regime. I shall not linger over the details of the +Code. Burke's description of it remains classic and unquestioned: "A +complete system full of coherence and consistency, well digested and +composed 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." + +The aim was to reduce the Catholics to poverty, ignorance, and +impotence, and the aim was successful. Of the laws against priests, +worship, education, and of the bars to commerce and the professions, I +need not speak. In the matter of property, the fundamental enactments +concerned the land, namely, that no Catholic could own land, or lease it +for more than thirty years, and even then on conditions which made +profitable tenure practically impossible. This law created and sustained +the serfdom I have described, and is the direct cause of the modern land +problem. It remained unaltered in the smallest respect for seventy +years, that is, until 1761, when a Catholic was permitted to lease for +sixty-one years as much as fifty acres of bog not less than four feet +deep. Long before this the distribution of landed property and the +system of land tenure had become stereotyped. + +This system of tenure was one of the worst that ever existed on the face +of the globe. It has been matched in portions of India, but nowhere +else in this Empire save in little Prince Edward Island, where we shall +meet with it again. In Ireland, where it assumed its worst form, violent +conquest by a neighbouring power not only made it politic to outlaw the +old owners, but precluded the introduction of the traditional English +tenures, even into the relations between the British superior landlord +and the British occupying colonist. The bulk of the confiscated Irish +land, as I have mentioned, had been granted in fee to English noblemen, +gentlemen, or speculators, who planted it with middle or lower-class +tenants. A number of Cromwell's private soldiers settled in Leinster and +Munster, and, holding small farms in fee, formed an exception to this +rule. But the greater part of Ireland, in ownership, as distinguished +from occupation, consisted of big estates, and a large number of the +English owners, being only a day's sail from England, became, by natural +instinct, habitual absentees. Others lived in Dublin and neglected their +estates. Absenteeism, non-existent in America, assumed in Ireland the +proportions of an enormous economic evil. In England the landlord was, +and remains, a capitalist, providing a house and a fully equipped farm +to the tenant. In Ireland he was a rent receiver pure and simple, +unconnected with the occupier by any healthy bond, moral or economic. +The rent-receiving absentee involved a resident middleman, who +contracted to pay a stipulated rent to the absentee, and had to extract +that rent, plus a profit for himself, out of the occupiers, whether +Catholic serfs, Protestant tenants, or both, and usually did so by +subdivision of holdings and disproportionate elevation of rents. Over +three of the four Provinces of Ireland--for a small part of Ulster was +differently situated--the middleman himself frequently became an +absentee and farmed his agency to another middleman, who by further +subdivisions and extortions made an additional private profit, and who, +in his turn, would create a subsidiary agency, until the land in many +cases was "subset six deep."[5] The ultimate occupier and sole creator +of agricultural wealth lived perpetually on the verge of starvation, +beggared not only by extortionate rents, partly worked out in virtually +forced labour, but by extortionate tithes paid to the alien Anglican +Church, in addition to the scanty dues willingly contributed to the +hunted priests of his own prescribed religion. His resident upper +class--though we must allow for many honourable exceptions--was the +Squirearchy, satirized by Arthur Young as petty despots with the vices +of despots; idle, tyrannical, profligate, boorish, fit founders of the +worst social system the modern civilized world has ever known. The +slave-owning planters of Carolina were by no means devoid of similar +faults, which are the invariable products of arbitrary control over +human beings, but there the physiological gulf between the dominant and +subject race was too broad and deep to permit of substantial +deterioration in the former. In Ireland the ethnological difference was +small; the artificial cleavage and deterioration great in inverse +proportion. + +For the greater part of a century, in every part of Ireland, tenancies +of land, whether held by Catholic or Protestant, by lease or at will, +were alike in certain fundamental characteristics. The tenant had +neither security of tenure nor right to the value of the improvements +which were invariably made by his own capital and labour. Even a +leaseholder, when his lease expired, had no prescriptive claim to +renewal, but must take his chance at a rent-auction with strangers, the +farm going to the highest bidder. If he lost, he was homeless and +penniless, while the fruits of his labour and capital passed into other +hands. The miserable Catholic cottier was, of course, in a similar case, +though relatively his hardship was less, since his condition, being the +lowest possible in all circumstances, could scarcely be worse. +Obviously, in a case where the landlord was neither the capitalist nor +the protector and friend of the tenant, the possession of those +elementary rights, security of tenure and compensation for improvements, +was the condition precedent to the growth of a sound agrarian system. +Their denial was incompatible with social order. Yet they were denied, +and for one hundred and eighty years an intermittent struggle to obtain +them by violence and criminal conspiracy degraded and retarded Ireland. + +But a marked distinction grew up between a small portion of Ireland and +the rest. James I.'s plantation of Ulster had been far more drastic and +thorough than any operation of the kind before or since. Later +immigrants had flowed in, and at the beginning of the eighteenth +century in the north-eastern portion--the predominantly Protestant +Ulster of to-day--Scotch Protestant tenants, mainly Presbyterian, were +thickly settled, and formed an industrious community of strong and +tenacious temper. In the original leases granted by the concessionaires +in the seventeenth century, fixity of tenure was implied, and a nominal +rent levied, somewhat after the American model; but under the example of +other Provinces, and the economic pressure exerted by the growth in the +Catholic population, these privileges seem to have been almost wholly +obliterated. The absentee landlords, reckless of social welfare, exacted +the rack or competitive rent. As in the south and west, tithes to the +Established Church and oppressive and corrupt local taxation for roads +and other purposes, aggravated the discontent. For agrarian reasons +only--and there were others which I shall mention--many thousands of +Protestants left Ireland for ever. It required a long period of outrage +and conspiracy, attaining in 1770 the proportions of a small civil war, +and at the end of the century, by the anti-Catholic passions it +inspired, wrecking new hopes of racial unity, to establish what came to +be known as the Ulster Custom of Tenant Right. If Protestant freemen had +to resort to these demoralizing methods to obtain, and then only after +irreparable damage to Ireland, the first condition of social stability, +a tolerable land system, the effect of the agrarian system on Catholic +Ireland, prostrate under the Penal Code, may be easily imagined. + +In addition to excessive subdivision of holdings and excessive tithes, +rents, and local burdens, another agrarian evil, unknown in the vast and +thinly populated tracts of America intensified the misery of the Irish +peasantry of the eighteenth century. This was the conversion of the best +land from tillage into pasture, with the resulting clearances and +migrations, and the ultimate congestion on the worst land. Lecky quotes +a contemporary pamphlet, which speaks of the "best arable land in the +kingdom in immense tracts wantonly enjoyed by the cattle of a few +individuals, and at the same time the junctions of our highways and +streets crowded with shoals of mendicant fellow-creatures." This change +from arable to pasture has been a common and often in the long run a +healthy, economic tendency in many countries, England and Scotland +included, though temporarily a fruitful source of misery. Under normal +conditions the immediate evils right themselves in course of time. +Nothing was normal in Ireland, and any breath of economic change in the +outside world reacted cruelly on the wretched subject class, which +produced, though it did not enjoy, the greater part of the wealth of the +kingdom. Under an accumulation of hardships famine was periodic, and +from 1760, when the first Whiteboys appeared, disorder in one degree or +another was chronic. The motive, it is universally agreed now, was +material, not religious. The Whiteboys of the south and west were the +counterparts of the Protestant Steelboys and Oakboys of the north, and +even in the south and west there were Protestant as well as Catholic +Whiteboys. Lord Charlemont, the Protestant Irish statesman, denying this +now well-ascertained fact, was nevertheless explicit enough about the +cause of the disorders. "The real causes," he said, "were ... exorbitant +rents, low wages, want of employment, farms of enormous extent let by +their rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing land-jobbers, +by whom small portions of them were again let and relet to intermediate +oppressors, and by them subdivided for five times their value among the +wretched starvers upon potatoes and water; taxes yearly increasing, and +still more tithes, which the Catholic, without any possible benefit, +unwillingly pays in addition to his priest's money ... misery, +oppression, and famine."[6] + +Agrarian crime, operating through an endless succession of secret +societies, Whiteboys and Rightboys in the eighteenth century; Terry +Alts, Rockites, Caravats, Ribbonmen, Moonlighters, in the nineteenth, +was rampant for nearly two centuries, long surviving the repeal of the +Penal Code; and its last echoes may be heard at this moment. In the +absence of all wholesome law, violence and terror were the only means of +self-defence. The remedy applied was retaliatory violence under forms of +law. Nothing whatsoever was done to remove the essential vices of +agrarian tenure during the eighteenth century; nothing tentative even +during the nineteenth century until the year 1870; nothing effective and +permanent until 1881, when, as far as humanly possible, it was sought +to give direct statutory expression to the Ulster Custom, with the +addition of the principle of a fair judicial rent. Englishmen should +realize this when they discuss Irish character. It is a very old story, +but nine out of ten Englishmen, when talking vaguely of Irish +discontent, disloyalty, and turbulence, forget, or have never learnt, +this and other fundamental facts. As for the Irish landlords, we must +remember that the founders of that class differed in no respect from +other English landlords, or from the aristocratic American +concessionaires, just as their compatriot tenants and lessees were +identical in stock with the American colonists. Their descendants and +successors have been the victims of circumstance. Each generation has +inherited the vested interests of the last, and it is not in human +nature to look far behind vested interests into the wrongful acts which +created them and the bad laws that perpetuate them. Doubly victimized +have been those resident landlords who at all periods, from the earliest +era of colonization, in spite of temptation and bad examples around +them, have acted towards their tenantry as humane and patriotic +citizens. A bad agrarian system infects the whole body politic. Good +landlords and contented tenants inevitably suffered with the rest. + +In commerce and industry, as in land, the Irish Colony stood at a heavy +disadvantage by comparison with America. From the Restoration onward, +English statesmen took the same view of both dependencies, namely, that +their commercial interests should be wholly subordinate to those of the +Mother Country, and the same Department, the Board of Trade and +Plantations, made the fiscal regulations for Ireland and America. The +old idea that for trade purposes Ireland counted as an integral part of +the United Kingdom did not last longer than 1663. But it was not wholly +abrogated by the great Navigation Act of that year, which, though it +placed harsh restrictions on the Irish cattle trade with England, did +not expressly exclude Irish ships from the monopoly of the colonial +trade conferred upon English vessels, so that for seven years longer a +tolerably prosperous business was carried on direct between Ireland and +the American Colonies.[7] An Act of 1670, prohibiting, with a few +negligible exceptions, all direct imports from the Colonies into +Ireland, gave a heavy check to this business, arrested the growth of +Irish shipping, and, in conjunction with subsequent measures of +navigational, fiscal, and industrial repression, converted Ireland for a +century into a kind of trade helot. She was treated either as a foreign +country, as a Colony, or as something inferior to either, according to +the dictation of English interests, while possessing neither the +commercial independence of a foreign country nor the natural and +indefeasible immunity which distance, climate, variety of soil, and +unlimited room for expansion continued to confer, in spite of all +coercive restraints, upon the American Colonies. Though the British +trade monopoly was certainly a contributory cause in promoting the +American revolution, it was never, any more than the British claim to +tax, a severe practical grievance. The prohibition of the export of +manufactures, and the compulsory reciprocal exchange of colonial natural +products for British manufactured goods and the chartered merchandise of +the Orient, were not very onerous restrictions for young communities +settled in virgin soil; nor, with a few exceptions like raw wool, whose +export was forbidden, were the American natural products of a kind which +could compete with those of the Mother Country. The real damage +inflicted upon the Colonies by the mercantile system--one which its +modern defenders are apt to forget--was moral. To practise and condone +smuggling was habitual in America, and some of the English Governors set +the worst example of all by making a profit out of connivance at the +illicit traffic. "Graft" was their creation. The moral mischief done was +permanent, and it resembled in a lesser degree the mischief done in +Ireland both by bad agrarian and bad commercial laws. Ireland, owing to +her proximity, was in the unhappy position of being a competitor in the +great staples of trade, both raw and manufactured, and she was near +enough and weak enough to render it easy to stamp out this competition +so far as it was thought to be inimical to English interests. The cattle +and provision trade with England had been damaged as far back as 1663, +and was killed in 1666, though the export of provisions to foreign +countries survived, and became almost the sole source of Irish trade +during the eighteenth century. The policy with raw wool was to admit +just as much as would satisfy the English weavers without arousing the +determined opposition of the competitive English graziers. The Irish +manufactured wool trade, a flourishing business, for which Irishmen +showed exceptionally high aptitude, and which in the normal course of +things would probably have become her staple industry, was destroyed +altogether, avowedly in the interests of the English staple industry, by +prohibitory export duties imposed in 1698. Subsidiary +industries--cotton, glass, brewing, sugar-refining, sail-cloth, hempen +rope, and salt--were successively strangled. One manufacture alone, that +of linen, centred in the Protestant North, was spared, and for a short +period was even encouraged, not because it was a Protestant industry, +but because at first it aroused no trade jealousy in England, and was in +some respects serviceable to her. In 1708, when it was proposed to +extend the industry to Leinster, considerations of foreign trade +provoked an outburst of hostility, and harassing restrictions were +imposed on this industry also. On the whole, however, it suffered less +than the rest, and lived to become one of the two important +manufacturing industries of present-day Ireland. + +English policy was as fatuous as it was cruel. Numbers of the Irish +manufacturers and artisans, both Catholic and Protestant, emigrated to +Europe, and devoted their skill and energy to strengthening industries +which competed with those of England. Within Ireland, since industry and +commerce formed the one outlet left by the Penal Code for Catholic +brains and capital--though even here the Code imposed harassing +disabilities--the commercial restrictions completed the ruin of the +proscribed sect. But at this period the main source of weakness to +Ireland, of strength to America, and of danger to the Empire as a whole, +was the Protestant emigration. Lecky estimates that 12,000 Protestant +families in Dublin and 30,000 in the rest of the country were ruined by +the suppression of the wool trade. The great majority of these +Protestants were Presbyterians belonging to North-East Ulster, and +descendants of the men who had defended that Province with such +desperate gallantry against the Irish insurgents under the deposed James +II. Political power in Ireland was wielded in the interests of a small +territorial and Episcopalian aristocracy, largely absentee. The +Dissenters belonged to the middle and lower classes, and were for the +most part tenants or artisans. Creed and caste antipathies were combined +against them. Their value as citizens was ignored. Though their right to +worship was legally recognized by an Act of 1719, they remained from +1704 to 1778 subject to the Test, were incapacitated for all public +employment, and were forbidden to open schools. Under an accumulation of +agrarian, economic, and religious disabilities, they naturally left +Ireland to find freedom in America. And it is beyond question that they +turned the scale against the British arms in the great War of +Independence. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[4] Class C. in Sir William Anson's classification, "Law and Custom of +the Constitution," p. 253. + +[5] J. Fisher, "End of the Irish Parliament" cited. + +[6] MS. Autobiography cited by Lecky, vol. ii., p. 35. + +[7] The best modern account of the commercial relations of Great Britain +Mid Ireland is Miss Murray's "Commercial Relations between England and +Ireland." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND + + +In the Old World and in the New, therefore, two societies, composed of +human beings similar in all essential respects, were growing up under +the protection of the British Crown; the one servile, the other free; +the one stagnant where it was not retrograde, the other prosperous, +progressive, and, by the magnetism of its own freedom, progress, and +prosperity, steadily draining its Irish fellow of talent, energy, and +industrial skill. + +What was the ultimate cause of this glaring divergency? Religion, as a +spiritual force, was not the root cause. The American Colonies, with +three exceptions--the earliest Virginia, the latest Georgia, and the +Catholic community of Maryland--were formed by Dissenters,[8] exiles +themselves from persecution, but not necessarily forbearing to others, +and, in the case of the New England Puritans, bitterly intolerant. It is +interesting to observe that the Quakers and the Catholics, men standing +at the opposite poles of theology, set the highest example of tolerance. +Quaker Pennsylvania enforced absolute liberty of conscience, and Quakers +in all the Provinces worked for religious harmony and freedom. Catholic +Maryland, as long as its government remained in Catholic hands, and +under the guidance of the wise and liberal Proprietary, Lord Baltimore, +pursued the same policy, and attracted members of sects persecuted in +New England.[9] The parallel with Ireland is significant. At the end of +the seventeenth century, when a quarrel was raging between the Crown and +Massachusetts over the persecution of Quakers in that Colony, and for a +further period in the eighteenth century, Quaker missionaries and +settlers were conducting a campaign of revivalism in Ireland with no +molestation from the Catholics, though with intermittent obstruction +from magistrates and Protestant clergy. Wesleyans received the same +sympathetic treatment.[10] The tolerance shown by Irish Catholics, in +spite of terrible provocation, is acknowledged by all reputable +historians. Nor was Protestant intolerance, whether Anglican or +Nonconformist, of a deeper dogmatic shade than anywhere else in the +King's dominions. But in Ireland it was political, economic, and social, +while in America it was purely theological, and, moreover, purely +American. The Episcopalian ascendancy in Ireland represented foreign +interests, and therefore struck against Dissent as well as against +Popery, and estranged both. The root of the American trouble, leading to +the separation of the Colonies, was political and wholly unconnected +with religion. The root of the Irish trouble, adventitiously connected +with religion, lay, and lies still, in the Irish political system. Other +evils were transient and curable; this was permanent. The Penal Code was +eventually relaxed; the disabilities of the Dissenters were eventually +removed; the commercial servitude was abolished, but the political +system _in essentials_ has never been changed. Let us see what it was +and how it worked at the period we are considering, again by comparison +with America. + +Though the word "plantation" was applied alike to the colonization of +Ireland and America, Ireland was never called a Colony, but a Kingdom. +The distinction was not scientific, and operated, like all other +distinctions, to the injury of Ireland. Neither country was represented +in the British Parliament. In both countries the representatives of the +Crown were appointed by England, and controlled, in America almost +completely, in Ireland absolutely, the Executive and Judges. In Ireland +the Viceroy was always an Englishman; in America, the Governors of a few +of the non-proprietary Colonies were colonials, but most Governors were +English, and some of the proprietary class were absentees.[11] In the +case both of Ireland and America the English Government claimed a +superior right of control over legislation and taxation, and in both +cases it was found necessary to remove all doubts as to this right by +passing Declaratory Acts, for Ireland in 1719, for America in 1766. The +great difference lay in the Legislature, and was the result of different +degrees of remoteness from the seat of power. America was profoundly +democratic from the beginning, outpacing the Mother Country by fully two +centuries. There was no aristocracy, and in most Colonies little +distinction between upper and middle classes. The popular Assemblies, +elected on the broadest possible franchise, were truly representative. +Some of the Legislative Councils, or Upper Chambers, were elective also. +Most of them, although nominated, and therefore inclined to be hostile +to the popular body, were nevertheless of identical social composition; +so that there was often an official, but never a caste, ascendancy. From +very early times there was occasional friction between the Home +Government, represented by the Governors, and the colonial democracies, +over such matters as taxation, official salaries, quartering of troops, +and navigation laws. Writs of _quo warranto_ were issued against +Connecticut, Carolina, New York, and Maryland, in the latter part of the +seventeenth century, and the Charter of Massachusetts, after long +wrangles with the Crown, was forfeited in 1684, and not restored until +1692, after a period of despotic government under Sir Edmund Andros. But +for a century or more the system worked well enough upon the whole. +Under the powerful lever of the representative Assembly, neutralized by +the ever-present need for military protection from the Mother Country, +and with the wholesome check to undue coercion set by the broad +Atlantic, civic freedom grew and flourished to a degree unknown in any +other part of the civilized world. + +In Ireland civic freedom was unknown. There was no popular Assembly. A +wealthy aristocracy of English extraction and of Anglican faith, partly +resident, partly absentee, and wholly subservient to the English +Government, constituted the Upper House of that strange institution +known as Parliament, and to a great extent nominated and controlled the +Lower House through means frankly corrupt. Representation was almost +nominal; close pocket-boroughs predominated, and seats were bought and +sold in the open market. In the year 1790 more than a third of the +Members of the House of Commons were placemen, 216 Members out of 300 +were elected by boroughs and manors, and, of these, 176 were elected by +individual patrons. Fifty-three of these patrons, nominating 123 +Members, sat as Peers in the Upper House. Cash, places, and peerages, +were the usual considerations paid for maintaining a Government +majority. The Catholics, from three-quarters to five-sixths of the +population, had neither votes nor members; the Dissenters scarcely any +members and an almost powerless vote. The Irish Legislature, by an Act +as old as 1495, the famous Poynings' Law, could neither initiate nor +pass a measure without the consent of the English Privy Council, and the +Declaratory Act of 1719 confirmed the power of making English Acts +applicable to Ireland. Government in England itself was, no doubt, +unrepresentative and corrupt at that period, and the people paid the +penalty in full; but it was a national government, under the aegis of +the national faith, and resting, however remotely, on the ultimate +sanction of the people, just as American opinion, more democratically +ascertained, continued to control the major part of American affairs. In +Ireland the Government was systematically anti-Irish. There was no +career for Irishmen in Ireland. Both Catholics and Dissenters were +excluded from all civil and military offices; the highest posts were +generally given to Englishmen born and bred, and the country, +Episcopalian only to a fractional extent, was ruled by a narrow +Episcopalian oligarchy of wealthy landowners and prelates, who bartered +Irish freedom for the place and power of their own families and +dependents. The conditions of this sordid exchange were the ground of +the first important Anglo-Irish political struggle in the eighteenth +century, when the English Viceroy, Townshend, succeeded in 1770-71, at +the cost of half a million, in transferring the bribing power, and +therefore the controlling power, from the "Undertakers," as they were +known, direct to the Crown. + +There seems to have been no continuous English policy beyond that of +making Ireland completely subservient to English interests and purposes, +and often to purposes of the most humiliating and degrading kind. The +Irish Pension List has earned immortal infamy. Jobs too scandalous to +pass muster in England were systematically foisted upon the Irish +establishment. Royal mistresses, a host of needy Germans, a Danish Queen +banished for adultery, lived in England or abroad upon incomes drawn +from the impoverished Irish Exchequer. Nor was it only a question of +pensions. Quantities of valuable sinecure offices were habitually given +to Englishmen who never came near the shores of Ireland. In short, the +English policy towards Ireland was similar to Spain's policy towards her +South American Colonies, minus the grosser forms of physical cruelty and +oppression. Yet Ireland, like the American Colonies until the verge of +the revolutionary struggle, was consistently loyal to the Crown both in +peace and war. The loyalty of Catholic Ireland, poverty-stricken, +inarticulate, almost leaderless, and shamefully misgoverned, does not, +from the human standpoint, appear worthy of admiration, but it was a +fact. The few Catholic noblemen outdid the Protestants in expressions of +devotion; the Whiteboy risings were as little disloyal as religious. Not +a hand stirred for James or his heirs when Jacobite plots and risings +were causing grave public danger in England and Scotland. Catholic Lord +Trimleston offered exclusively Catholic regiments with Catholic officers +to George III. for foreign service in 1762, though they were vetoed by +what his Viceroy Halifax called the "ill-bred bigotry" of the Irish +Parliament. Nor was it till thirty years after that date that Protestant +discontent, under intolerable provocation, assumed an anti-dynastic and +Republican form. To compare the Imperial spirit displayed by America and +Ireland in their views and action is difficult, partly because the +various American Colonies differed widely, partly because there existed +in Ireland no organ of government which could express popular feeling. +Neither country, of course, paid any cash contribution to Imperial +expenses, though both could fairly claim that the English monopoly of +trade imposed an indirect tribute of indefinite size, while Ireland, in +pensions, rents to absentees, and sinecure appointments, was drained of +many millions more. American patronage was an element of substantial +value to England, but it was not on the Irish scale. America on the +whole, perhaps, showed less patriotic feeling than Ireland. With full +allowance for the lack of sympathy and understanding shown by the +British regulars to the American volunteers in their co-operation in the +French wars, it can scarcely be denied that the colonists, together with +much heroism and public spirit, showed occasional slackness and +parsimony in resisting the penetration of a foreign Power which +threatened to hem in their settlements from the St. Lawrence to the +mouth of the Mississippi. Ireland during the Seven Years' War, and until +the Peace of Paris in 1763, maintained a war establishment of 24,000 +troops. She maintained a peace establishment of 12,000 troops, and from +1767 onwards of 15,000 troops. There never seems to have been a whisper +of protest from the Catholic population against these measures, nor, +except in the matter of the American War, to which we shall come +presently, from the Protestants. It may be added that, after 1767, +Catholics in considerable numbers were surreptitiously enlisted in the +ranks, in spite of the Penal Code, and from then until the present day +have fought for the Flag as staunchly as any other class of the King's +subjects. + +It never occurred to responsible English statesmen that here was ground, +firm as a rock in America, and firm enough in Ireland, on which, if only +they obeyed the instincts and maxims upon which England herself had +risen to greatness, they might build a mighty and durable Imperial +structure. That loyalty, to be genuine and lasting, must spring from +liberty was a truth they did not appreciate, and to this truth, +strangely enough, in spite of the lessons of nearly a century and a +half, a numerous school of English statesmen is still blind. It was no +doubt a fatality that the smouldering discontent both of America and +Ireland burst into flame in the reign of a monarch who endeavoured, even +within the limits of Britain, to regain the arbitrary power which had +cost their throne to the Stuarts; it was an additional fatality that the +standard of public morals among the class through which he ruled during +the period of crisis had fallen to lower depths than ever before or +since. Even incorruptible men were either weak and selfish or subject to +some cardinal defect of temper or intellect which, at times of crisis, +neutralized their genius. Chatham and Burke were the noblest figures of +the time, yet Chatham, in his highest mood a nobler and truer champion +of American liberty than Burke, was Minister--nominally, at any +rate--when the Revenue Duties imposed upon the American Colonies in 1867 +destroyed in a moment the reconciliation brought about by the repeal of +the Stamp Act. Burke was surely false to his political philosophy in +founding his American argument on expedience rather than on principle. +Chatham was a thorough democrat, trusting the people, poor or rich, rude +or cultured, common or noble, American or British. Burke, at a time when +the reflection of the genuine opinion of the nation in a pure and free +Parliament might have saved us, as his splendid orations could not save +us, from a disastrous war, scouted Parliamentary reform, and took his +unconscious share in playing the game of the most narrow coercionist +Tories like Charles Townshend and George III. + +Of the interminable chain of fatalities which sicken the mind in +following every phase of Ireland's history, Burke's rigid temperamental +conservatism always seems to me the most fatal and the most melancholy. +It is not that he, the greatest intellect Ireland has ever produced, +made his career in England. By the time one reaches the period in which +he lived one gets used to the expatriation of Irish brains and vigour, +not only to England and America, but to Spain, France, Russia, and +Germany. It is that his intellect was so constituted as in the long run +to be useless, and on some occasions absolutely harmful, to Ireland, +sincerely as he loved her, and often as he supported measures for her +temporary benefit, and rejoiced in their temporary success. An incident +occurred in 1773 which tested his worth to Ireland, and incidentally +threw into strong light English views of Ireland and America at the +period immediately preceding the revolutionary epoch. The Irish +Government, not with any high social aim, but in desperation at the +growing Treasury deficit, proposed a tax upon the rents of absentee +landlords, and the fate of the measure, like all Irish measures, had to +be decided in the first instance in England. North's Tory Ministry +actually consented to it. Chatham, far from the active world, and too +broken in health to influence policy either way, wrote a powerful plea +for it; but a strong group of Whig magnates, themselves wealthy absentee +proprietors of Irish land, signed a vehement remonstrance which carried +the day against it, and the author of this remonstrance, of all men in +the world, was the Irishman Burke, who, owning not an acre of Irish land +himself, devoted all his transcendent talents, all the subtlety and +variety of his reasoning, to clothing the selfish greed of others with +the garb of an enlightened patriotism. + +He was wrong fundamentally about Ireland, and only superficially right +about America. In the terms of this celebrated remonstrance, as +illuminated by his own private correspondence, his consistency is +revealed. By the very nature of things, he maintained, the central +Parliament of a great heterogeneous Empire must exercise a supreme +superintending power and regulate the polity and economy of the several +parts as they relate to one another, a principle which, of course, would +have justified the taxation of America, and which, save on the ground of +expediency alone, he would certainly have applied to America. The +proximity of Ireland helped his logic, and surely logic was never +distorted to stranger ends. The "ordinary residence" of the threatened +Irish landowners was in England, "to which country they were attached, +not only by the ties of birth and early habit, but also by those of +indisputable public duties," as though these facts did not constitute in +themselves a damning satire on the system of Irish Government. They were +to be "fined" for living in England, as though that fine were not the +most just and politic which could be conceived, if it went even an inch +towards establishing the principle that Ireland's affairs were the +business of responsible resident Irishmen, or towards the further +principle, enshrined in Drummond's celebrated phrase of seventy years +later in regard to the agrarian system which these Whig noblemen shared +in founding, that "property has its duties as well as its rights." +Finally, argued Burke, heaping irony upon irony, the tax would lead +directly to the "separation" of the two Kingdoms both in interest and +affection. The Colonies would follow the Irish example, and thus a +principle of disunion and separation would pervade the whole Empire; the +bonds of common interest, knowledge, and sympathy which now knit it +together would everywhere be loosened, and a narrow, insulated, local +feeling and policy would be proportionately increased.[12] Such was +Burke's Imperialism, as evoked by an Irish measure which struck at the +root of a frightful social evil and of a vicious political system. But +the idea expressed by Burke--the spirit of his whole argument--went far +beyond this particular absentee tax or any similar tax proposed, as +happened in one instance, by a Colony. It was the superbly grandiose +expression, and all the more insidiously seductive in that it was so +grandiose, of a principle which all thinking men now know, or ought to +know, is the negation of Empire, which lost us America, which came +within an ace of losing us Canada, which might well have lost us South +Africa, and which has in very fact lost us, though not yet irrevocably, +the "affection," to use Burke's word, of Ireland. We may call local +patriotism "narrow and insulated," if we please, but we recognize now, +in every case save that of Ireland, that it is the only foundation for, +and the only stimulant to, Imperial patriotism. + +Chatham, an Englishman of the English, was nevertheless a better +Irishman than Burke, and therefore a better Imperialist. "The tax," he +wrote, "was founded on strong Irish policy. England, it is evident, +profits by draining Ireland of the vast incomes spent here from that +country. But I could not, as a Peer of England, advise the King, on +principles of indirect, accidental English policy, to reject a tax on +absentees sent over here as the genuine desire of the Commons of Ireland +acting in their proper and peculiar sphere, and exercising their +inherent exclusive right by raising supplies in the manner they judge +best." Chatham, in short, applied precisely the same argument to Ireland +as, in his memorable speeches of the next year (1774), he applied to +America, and in both cases he was right. The only mistake he made was in +his estimate of that travesty of a representative assembly, the Irish +House of Commons, which, at the secret instigation of the Viceroy, +though without actual coercion, eventually threw out a tax so +distasteful to its English patrons. But the argument for financial +independence remained unassailable, and eventually the Irish Parliament +itself summoned up the courage to adopt and act upon it. + +It may seem almost impossible that in a body so corrupt and exclusive a +national sentiment should have arisen. But every elective assembly, +however badly constituted, contains the seeds of its own regeneration, +and, under even moderately favourable circumstances, moves irresistibly +towards freedom. The pity was that circumstances, save for one brief and +invigorating interlude, were persistently unfavourable to Ireland. The +task was enormous, demanding infinitely more self-sacrifice than even +the ablest and most prescient of her Parliamentarians realized. Until it +was too late, in fact, they never awoke to the true nature of the task, +dazzled by illusory victories. Rotten to the core as the Irish +Parliament was, they sought, strengthened by popular influences, to make +it the instrument for freeing Ireland from a paralyzing servitude; and +up to a point they succeeded, but they did not see that the only +security for real and permanent success was to reform the Parliament +itself. There the inveterate spirit of creed and class ascendancy, +resting in the last resort on English military power, survived long +enough to nullify their efforts. + +The American Revolution and the Irish revolutionary renaissance--the one +achieved by a long and bitter war, the other without +bloodshed--originated and culminated together, were derived from the +same sources, and ran their course in close connection. In Ireland the +movement was exclusively Protestant, in America unsectarian; but in both +cases finance was the lever of emancipation. America, resenting the +commercial restrictions imposed by the Mother Country, but not, until +passion had obscured all landmarks, contesting their abstract justice, +and suffering no great material harm from their incidence, fought for +the principle of self-taxation--a principle which did, of course, +logically include, as the Americans instinctively felt, that of +commercial freedom. Ireland, harassed by commercial restrictions far +more onerous, naturally regarded their abolition as vital, and the +control of internal taxation as subsidiary. Apart from concrete +grievances, both countries had to fear an unlimited extension of British +claims founded on the all-embracing Declaratory Acts of 1719 and 1766. + +Unfortunately for herself, Ireland for seventy years or more had been +steadily supplying America with the human elements of resistance in +their most energetic and independent form, and robbing herself +proportionately Approximately, how many Protestants belonging mainly to +Ulster, whether through eviction from the land, industrial unemployment, +or disgust at social and political ostracism, left Ireland for America +in the course of the eighteenth century, it is impossible to say; but +the number, both relatively to population and relatively to the total +emigration, Catholic and Protestant, to all parts of the world, was +undoubtedly very large. Mr. Egerton, in his "Origin and Growth of the +English Colonies," reckons that in 1775 a sixth part of the thirteen +insurrectionary Colonies was composed of Scots-Irish exiles from Ulster, +and that half the Protestant population of that Province emigrated to +those Colonies between 1730 and 1770. As the crisis approached, +emigration became an exodus. Thirty thousand of the farming class are +said to have been driven west by the wholesale evictions of the early +seventies, and ten thousand weavers followed them during the disastrous +depression in the linen trade caused by interruption of commerce with +America. The majority went to the northern Colonies, especially +Pennsylvania, took from the first a vehement stand against the Royal +claims, and supplied some of Washington's best soldiers. A minority went +to the backwoods of Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina, and were little +heard of until as late in the war as 1780, when Tarleton began his +anti-guerilla campaign in the South. Then they woke up, and became, like +their compatriots of the North, formidable and implacable foes. + +Ireland and America, therefore, embarked on their struggle with the +English Parliament in close sympathy. The treatise of Molyneux on Irish +liberty was read with wide approval in America. Franklin visited and +encouraged the Irish patriots, and the Americans in 1775 issued a +special address to them, asserting an identity of interest. Chatham, on +the eve of war, dwelt strongly in the House of Lords upon the same +identity of interest, and in doing so expressly coupled together Irish +Catholics and Protestants. + +Although united by interest and sentiment, Ireland and America entered +on the struggle under widely varying conditions. The American Colonies +were thirteen separate units, with only a rude organization for common +action, and in each of these units there existed a cleavage of opinion, +based neither on class nor creed, between rebels and loyalists. In spite +of this weakness, the revolt was thoroughly national in the sense that +it was organized and maintained through the State Assemblies, resting on +a broad popular franchise. In Ireland, unbought and unofficial opinion +was united against England. On the other hand, there was no national +Legislature; only an enslaved and unrepresentative Legislature, tempered +by a band of exceptionally brilliant and upright men, and continually +thrust forward in spite of itself into bold and independent action by +unconstitutional pressure from the unrepresented elements outside. +Success so won, as we shall see, was delusive. + +We may note two important additional circumstances: first, the dense +mist of ignorance in which, and largely in consequence of which, England +began her quarrel both with America and Ireland. The average Englishman +was probably even more ignorant of Ireland, which was sixty miles away, +than of America, which was three thousand miles away. I am not at all +sure that that fact is not true still. At any rate, it was true then. +Yet knowledge of Ireland was more necessary, because her condition was +bad in ways unknown in America. In all the essentials of material +well-being, America was supremely fortunate, while Ireland was in the +depths of misery. It is not that this misery went undescribed or +unlamented, or that it was not realized by a small number of Englishmen. +Some of the most famous writings of the time, from the mordant satire of +Swift to the learned and elaborate diagnosis of Arthur Young, laid bare +the hideous ravages wrought by misrule in Ireland; but they had little +or no effect upon English statesmen, and were unread by the only classes +from which, if they had had knowledge, proper practical sympathy might +have come. Until Townshend's Viceroyalty (1767-1772) most of the Irish +Viceroys were absentees for the greater part of their term of office, +leaving the conduct of Irish affairs to English Bishops and Judges, the +wisest and most humane of whom could make little or no impression on +English official indifference. American Governors were at any rate +resident, or mainly resident, and a few were good and popular +administrators, though the information which most of them supplied to +the Home Government showed a blindness to what was going on under their +very eyes which would be incomprehensible if we did not know by +experience that it is the invariable result of irresponsible rule over +white men, whether at home or abroad. If, without the presence of race +distinctions, it needed Parliamentary reform in England itself to force +the ruling class to study with real sympathy the needs, character, and +desires of their own people, naturally the same ruling class, sending +out its own members or dependents to America, obtained the most +grotesquely distorted notions of what Americans were and what they +wanted or resented. "Their office," wrote Franklin of the Governors,[13] +"makes them indolent, their indolence makes them odious, and, being +conscious that they are hated, they become malicious. Their malice urges +them to continual abuse of the inhabitants in their letters to +Administration, representing them as disaffected and rebellious, and (to +encourage the use of severity) as weak, divided, timid, and cowardly. +Government believes all, thinks it necessary to support and countenance +its officers," etc. The same spirit pervades the official correspondence +of even the best Irish Viceroys of the eighteenth century, and +ultimately had a far more disastrous effect in that there were at all +times in Ireland ancient elements of social dissension which needed only +skilful fomentation by her English rulers to ruin all hopes of +reconciliation and unity. That phase was to come after the first Irish +victories. For the present the system--for it can scarcely be called a +policy--was to irritate all Irishmen and all Americans alike, +irrespective of creed, class, or sentiment, and thus to create on each +side of the Atlantic that dangerous phenomenon, an united people. + +The other noticeable point, admirably described by Mr. Holland in his +"Imperium et Libertas," is the confusion of political ideas in regard to +the status of white dependencies--a confusion greatly augmented by +loose and misleading analogies with India and the tropical Colonies. +Even a genius like Burke, as I have already pointed out, was misled. +Chatham came nearest to the truth, but, naturally, the actual outbreak +of war with America checked his political thinking, and threw him back +on the bare doctrine of supremacy, right or wrong. It was not fully +understood that there must be a radical difference between the +government of places settled and populated by white colonists and of +places merely exploited by white traders. All the prerogatives of the +Crown and Parliament were theoretically valid over both classes of +dependency, and to abandon any of them seemed to most men of that day to +be inconsistent with Imperial supremacy. Honest and fair-minded +politicians and thinkers tried in vain to reconcile local freedom with +Imperial unity. We have the key now, though we have made no use of it in +Ireland; but most of our forefathers not only had no glimmering of the +truth when the fratricidal war began, but learnt nothing from the war +itself, and remained unenlightened for sixty years more. If the +renunciation in 1778 of the right to tax the Colonies, and the +negotiations founded thereon, had led to a peace, it is quite certain +that friction would have subsequently arisen on other points. The idea +of what we now know as "responsible government" was unknown. Short of +coercive war, there seemed to be only two altogether logical +alternatives--complete separation and legislative Union. America +obtained the one, Ireland was eventually to undergo the other; but it is +interesting to remember that suggestions, rejected by Franklin as +useless, were made for the representation of the American Colonies in +the English Parliament, just as suggestions for a legislative Union +between Ireland and England appeared intermittently all through the +eighteenth century, long before such a Union was a question of practical +politics. + +I need only briefly summarize the incidents which ended in the year 1782 +with the final loss of the American Colonies, and the simultaneous +achievement by Ireland of an apparent legislative independence. To take +America first, the Stamp Act was passed in 1765, and, thanks to the +tumult it created, repealed by the Whigs in 1766, though the Declaratory +Act which accompanied the repeal neutralized its good results. The new +Revenue Duties on glass, paper, painters' colours, and tea were imposed +in 1767, reviving the old irritation, and all but that on tea were +removed, after a period of growing friction, in 1770. Another +comparative lull was succeeded by fresh disorder when in 1773 the East +India Company was permitted to send tea direct to America, and Boston +celebrated its historic "tea-party." The coercion of Massachusetts +followed, with Gage as despotic Military Governor, and, as a result, all +the Colonies were galvanized into unity. In September, 1774, the +Continental Congress met, framed a Declaration of Rights, and obtained a +general agreement to cease from all commerce with Britain until +grievances were redressed. Fresh coercion having been applied, war broke +out in 1775. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, +by John Hancock, President of Congress and the descendant of an Ulster +exile, and was first read aloud in Philadelphia by Captain John Nixon, +the son of an evicted Wexford farmer. Another Irishman, General +Montgomery, led the invasion of Canada.[14] The war, with manifold +vicissitudes, dragged on for eight years; but the surrender of +Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, virtually ended the physical +struggle, while the resolution of the House of Commons on February 27, +1782, against the further prosecution of hostilities, ended the contest +of principle. + +The turning-point had been the intervention of the French in 1778, and +the same event was to turn the scale in Ireland. There, for many years +past, the public finances had been sinking into a more and more +scandalous condition. Taxation was by no means heavy, but pensions and +sinecures multiplied, and the debt swelled. Inevitably there grew up +within Parliament a small independent opposition which would not be +bribed into conniving at the ruin of Ireland, while even bought placemen +were stung into throwing their votes into the Irish rather than the +English scale. Frequent efforts were made to use the insufficiency of +the hereditary revenue as a lever for gaining control of finance and for +obtaining domestic reform. An Octennial Act, passed in 1768, went a +little way towards transforming Parliament from a permanent privileged +Committee, under the control of the Executive, into the semblance at +least of a free Assembly, and the first dissolution under this Act, in +1776, produced the famous Parliament which, though elected on the same +narrow and corrupt basis as before, in the space of six years first +admitted the principle of toleration for all creeds, and wrested from +English hands commercial and legislative autonomy. It came too late to +avert--if, indeed, it could ever have averted--the implication of +Ireland in the American War, its predecessor of 1775 having, in defiance +of Irish opinion, subscribed an Address to the Crown, expressing +"abhorrence" of the American revolt and "inviolable attachment to the +just rights" of the King's Government, and having obediently voted four +thousand Irish troops for the war. + +Nor, for all the impassioned eloquence of Grattan and Hussey Burgh, did +the real driving-power of the new Parliament come from within its own +ranks, but from the unrepresented multitude outside. A clause removing +the test from Dissenters was struck out of the Catholic Relief Act of +1778, mainly owing to dictation from England, but partly from resentment +against Presbyterian sympathy with the American cause. It was only in +1780, when the Presbyterians were enrolled in that formidable +revolutionary organization known as the Volunteers, that a test which +had excluded them from all share in the government of their adopted +country for seventy-four years was repealed. As for the Catholics, the +small measure of legal relief granted to them excited no opposition +anywhere. Parts of the Penal Code, especially the laws against worship +and the clergy, had become inoperative with time and the sheer +impossibility of enforcement. The religion, naturally, had thriven under +persecution, so that in spite of the Code's manifold temptations to +recant, only four thousand converts had been registered in the last +fifty years. The laws designed to safeguard the wholesale confiscations +of the previous century had long ago achieved their purpose, and men +were beginning to perceive the fatal economic effects of keeping the +great mass of the people poor and ignorant. The real spirit of +toleration shown in the enactments of 1778, the most important of which +enabled Catholics to obtain land on a lease of 999 years, was small +enough if we consider the quiescence of the Catholics for generations +past, the absence of all tendency in them towards counter-persecution, +or even towards intolerance of Protestantism in any of its forms, +Quaker, Huguenot, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Methodist, in spite of +their own overwhelming numbers and of the burning grievance of the +tithes. Politically they were a source of great strength to the +Government. When the Presbyterians condemned the American War, the +Catholic leaders memorialized the Government in favour of it as warmly +as the tame majority in Parliament. + +Conservatives by religion, their devotion to authority annulled all +instincts of revenge for the hideous wrongs of the past. The Government, +now on the verge of a war with the two great Catholic Powers of Europe, +began to realize this, and to feel the wisdom of some degree of +conciliation. After all, only four years before they had not merely +tolerated, but established, the Catholic Church in the conquered +province of Quebec, with the result that the French Canadians remained +loyal during the American War. But neither the Government nor the finest +independent men in Parliament--not even Grattan--entertained the +remotest idea of admitting Irish Catholics to any really effective share +in the Government which their loyalty made stable. That noble but +hopeless conception originated later, as the dynamic impulse for +commercial freedom and legislative independence was originating now, +outside the walls of Parliament. + +The rupture with France in 1778 denuded Ireland of troops, and called +into being the Protestant Volunteers; a disciplined, armed body, headed +by leaders as weighty and respectable as Lord Charlemont. This body, +formed originally for home defence, by a natural and legitimate +transition assumed a political aspect, and demanded from a dismayed and +terrorized Government commercial freedom for Ireland. For once in her +life Ireland was too strong to be coerced. Punishment like that applied +to Massachusetts was physically impossible. The bitter protests of +English merchants passed unheeded, and the fiscal claims of the +Volunteers, with their cannon labelled "Free Trade or this," were +granted in full early in 1780. The moral was to persist. From 40,000 the +numbers of the Volunteers rose in the two succeeding years to 80,000, +and they stood firm for further concessions. The national movement grew +like a river in spate; it swept forward the lethargic Catholics and +engulfed Parliament. In a tempest of enthusiasm Grattan's Declaration of +Independence was carried unanimously in the Irish House of Commons on +April 16, 1782, and a month later received legal confirmation in England +at the hands of the same Whig Government and Parliament which broke off +hostilities with America, and in the same session. + +America took her own road and worked out her own magnificent destiny. +Most of us now honour Washington and the citizen troops he led. We say +they fought, as Hampden and their English forefathers fought, for a +sublime ideal, freedom, and that they were chips of the old block. But +let not distance delude us into supposing that they were without the +full measure of human weakness, or that they did not suffer +considerable, perhaps permanent, harm from the ten years of smothered +revolt and lawless agitation, followed by the seven years of open war +which preceded their victory. Washington's genius carried them safely +through the ordeal of the war, and the still more exacting ordeal of +political reconstruction after the war, but it is well known how nearly +he and his staunchest supporters failed. The Revolution, like all +revolutions, brought out all the bad as well as all the good in human +nature. Bad laws always deteriorate a people; they breed a contempt for +law which coercion only aggravates, and which survives the establishment +of good laws. As I have already indicated, the dislike and the +systematic evasion by smuggling of the trade laws during the long period +when the revolt was incubating harmed American character, and probably +sowed the seed of future corruption and dissension. However true that +may be, it is certainly true that the American rebels showed no more +heroism or self-sacrifice than the average Englishman or Irishman in any +other part of the world might have been expected to show under similar +conditions. Historians and politicians, to whom legal authority always +seems sacrosanct and agitation against it a popular vice, who mistake +cause and effect so far as to derive freedom from character, instead of +character from freedom, can make, and have made, the conventional case +against Home Rule for the Americans as plausibly as the same case has, +at various times, been made against Home Rule for Canada, South Africa, +and Ireland. Since all white men are fundamentally alike in their +faults as well as in their virtues, there is always abundant material +for an indictment on the ground of bad character. The Americans of the +revolutionary war, together with much fortitude, integrity, and public +spirit, showed without doubt a good deal of levity, self-seeking, +vindictiveness, and incompetence; and whoever chooses to amass, magnify, +and isolate evidences of their guilt can demonstrate their unfitness for +self-government just as well as he can demonstrate the same proposition +in the case of Ireland. Mr. J.W. Fortescue, the learned and entertaining +historian of the British Army, has done the former task as well as it +can be done. He denounces the whole Colony of Massachusetts--men of his +own national stock--as the pestilent offspring of an "irreconcilable +faction," which had originally left England deeply imbued with the +doctrines of Republicanism. Having gained, and by lying and subterfuge +retained, some measure of independence, they sank from depth to depth of +meanness and turpitude. They struggled for no high principle, and +refused to be taxed from England, simply because they were too +contemptibly stingy and unpatriotic to pay a shilling a head towards the +maintenance of the Imperial Army. It is always the "mob," the +"ruffians," the "rabble," of Boston who carry out the reprisals against +the royal coercion, and, like the Irish peasants of the nineteenth +century, they are always the half-blind, half-criminal tools of +unscrupulous "agitators." It has been, and remains, an obsession with +the partisans of law over liberty all the world over that the fettered +community, wherever it may be and however composed, does not really want +liberty, but that the majority of its sober citizens are dragged into an +artificial agitation by mercenary scribes and sham patriots--a view +which is always somewhat difficult to reconcile, as students of American +and Irish history are aware, not only with the facts of prolonged and +tenacious resistance, but with the other view, equally necessary to the +argument for law, that the whole community is sinfully unfit for +liberty; and Mr. Fortescue falls into the usual maze of +self-contradiction and obscurity when he tries to give an intelligible +account of a war which lasted seven long and weary years, and yet was +"factitious," initiated by an hysterical rabble, stimulated and +sustained by the basest and pettiest motives, and which, he contends, +was "the work of a small but energetic and well-organized minority +towards which the mass of the people, when not directly hostile, was +mainly indifferent." Happily, Mr. Fortescue's candour as an historian of +facts gives us the clue to this strange tangle. We find no evidence that +the sober loyalist majority who sustain one side of his argument, and +whom we should expect to find crushing the revolt with ease in +co-operation with the British regular troops, were, in fact, a majority, +nor that they were either better or worse men, or more or less ardent +patriots, than the mutinous minority, or the British regular soldiers +themselves. Their loyalty, like the disloyalty of the other side, is +sometimes interested and evanescent, more often sincere and tenacious; +they are given to desertion, like Washington's troops, like Lee's and +Grant's troops nearly a century later, like the Boer troops and like all +Volunteer levies, which have somehow to combine war with the duty of +keeping their homes and business afloat. We find, too, that a +counter-current of desertion flows from the British, and still more from +the German, regulars, also a natural enough phenomenon in what was +virtually a civil war for liberty; so that "General Greene was often +heard to say that at the close of the war he fought the enemy with +British soldiers, and that the British fought him with those of +America." And then Mr. Fortescue, ignoring the British side of the case, +exultingly quotes against the Americans "the cynical Benedict Arnold, +who knew his countrymen," and who said: "Money will go farther than arms +in America." Yet Arnold, whose opinion of his countrymen Mr. Fortescue +accepts as correct and conclusive, was himself, not a plain deserter, +but a perjured military traitor of the most despicable kind. We may +conclude, perhaps, after taking a broad view of the whole Revolution, +that Washington not only knew his countrymen, who were Mr. Fortescue's +countrymen, better than Arnold, but was a better representative of their +dominant characteristics.[15] + +Mr. Fortescue is peculiar in the violence of his prepossession, and we +know the source of that prepossession, a passionate love of the British +Army, which does him great honour, while it distorts his political +vision. I should not refer at such length to his view of the American +War were it not that, whenever a concrete case of Home Rule comes up for +discussion, his philosophy is apt to become the typical and predominant +philosophy. Historical sense seems to vanish, and the same savage racial +bias supervenes, whether the unruly people concerned are absolutely +consanguineous, closely related, or of foreign nationality. Instead of a +general acceptance of the ascertained truth that men thrive and coalesce +under self-government and sink into deterioration and division under +coercion, we get the same pharisaical assumption of superiority in the +dominant people, the same attribution of sordid and ugly motives to the +leaders of an unruly people, the same vague idealization of the loyalist +minority, the same fixed hallucination that the majority does not want +what by all the constitutional means in its power it says it wants, and +the correspondingly fatal tendency to gauge the intensity of a +conviction solely by the amount of physical violence it evokes, while +making that very violence an argument for the depravity of those who use +it, and a pretext for denying them self-government. + +All this is terribly true in the case of Ireland, and when I next revert +to the American continent, the reader will observe that the same ideas +were entertained towards Canada, the only white Colony left to the +British Empire after the loss of the thirteen States. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[8] The origin of North Carolina is, perhaps, debatable. Nearly all +historians have represented it as settled by Dissenting refugees; but +Mr. S.B. Weeks, a Carolina historian, has written an essay to prove that +this was not the case ("Religious Development in the Province of North +Carolina," Baltimore, 1892). The Charter contained a clause for liberty +of conscience on the instructive ground that, "by reason of the remote +distance of those places, toleration would be no breach of the unity and +conformity established in this realm." + +[9] "Church and State in Maryland," George Petrie. Lord Baltimore, the +Catholic founder and Proprietary, enforced complete tolerance from the +first (1634), and secured the passage of an Act in 1649 giving legal +force to the policy, with heavy penalties against interference with any +sect. In 1654 Puritans gained control of the Assembly, and passed an Act +against Popery. A counter-revolution repealed this Act, but finally in +1689 the Church of England was established by law. + +[10] Lecky, "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," vol. i., pp. +408-410. + +[11] Until 1692 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, elected +their own Governors. Massachusetts continued to have Colonial Governors, +and sometimes New Jersey and New Hampshire. Proprietary Governments were +gradually abolished and converted into "Royal" Governments like the +rest. At the period of the Declaration of Independence two only were +left--Pennsylvania and Maryland (see "Origin and Growth of the English +Colonies," H.E. Egerton). + +[12] Lecky, "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," vol. ii., +pp. 124-126. + +[13] Trevelyan, "The American Revolution," vol. i., p. 16. + +[14] See "The Irish Race in America," by Captain Ed. O'Meagher Condore. + +[15] "History of the British Army," vol. iii. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT + + +We left Ireland in 1782 apparently in possession of a triumph as great +as that of America, though won without bloodshed and without the least +tincture of sedition; for the Volunteers of 1782 were as loyal to the +Crown as the most ardent American royalists. In the light of political +ideas developed at a much later period, we know that the American +Colonies might have remained within the Empire, even if their utmost +claims had been granted. Had the idea of responsible government been +understood, it would have been realized that their exclusive control of +taxation and legislation was not inconsistent with Imperial Union, but +essential to it. Grattan and his Irish friends, ignorant of the true +solution, honestly thought, in the intoxication of the moment, that they +had solved the problem so disastrously bungled for America. The facts of +ethnology and geography seemed to have been recognized. Ireland and +England, united by a Crown which both reverenced, stood together, like +Britain and the Dominions of to-day, as sister nations, with the old +irritating servitude swept away, and the bonds of natural affection and +natural interest substituted. That the close proximity of the two +nations, however marked the contrast between their natural +characteristics, made these bonds far more necessary and valuable than +in the case of America, stood to reason, and, again, the fact was +recognized in Anglo-Irish relations. America had fought rather than +submit to a forced contribution to Imperial funds. Nobody in Ireland, in +or out of Parliament, had ever objected in principle to an indirect +voluntary contribution in troops, and now that the American War was +ended, non-Parliamentary objections to one particular application of the +principle had no further substance. Nor, as was shortly to be shown in +the reception given in Ireland to Pitt's abortive Commercial +Propositions of 1785, was there any objection to a direct contribution +in money on a fixed annual scale in return for a mutual free trade.[16] +The sun had surely risen over a free yet loyal Ireland. + +Never was there a more complete delusion. It would have been far better +for Ireland if she had never had a Parliament at all, but had had to +seek her own salvation in the healthy rough-and-tumble of domestic +revolution. The mere name of "Parliament" seems perpetually to have +hypnotized even its best members, and the illusion was at its highest +now. Nothing essential had been changed. Commercial freedom was the most +real gain, because it involved the definite repeal of certain trade-laws +and the permission to Ireland to make what she liked and send it where +she liked; but it was a small gain without some means of finding out +what Ireland really liked, and translating that will, without external +pressure, into law. The Parliament was neither an organ of public +opinion nor a free agent. It was even more corrupt and less +representative than before. It was as completely under the control of +the English Government as before. The modern conception of a Colonial +Ministry serving under a constitutional Governor selected by the Crown, +but acting with the advice of his Ministry, was unknown. The English +Government, through its Lord-Lieutenant, still appointed English +Ministers in Ireland, and in the hands of these Ministers lay not only +that large portion of the national income known as the hereditary +revenue, but the whole machinery of patronage and corruption. Even the +legislative independence was unreal; for majorities still had to be +bought, Irish Bills had still to receive the Royal Assent, that is, +English ministerial assent; so that powerful English pressure could be, +and was, brought to bear upon their policy and construction. And the +worst of it was that English pressure here and elsewhere meant then what +it meant in the next century, and what it too often means now, English +party pressure exercised spasmodically and ignorantly, in order to serve +sectional English ends. In short, Ireland, so far from being a nation, +was still virtually a Colony, subjected to the worst conceivable form of +colonial Government, groaning under economic evils unknown in the least +fortunate of the Colonies, and without the numerous mitigating +circumstances and the hope of ultimate cure due to remoteness from the +seat of Empire. On the contrary, nearness to England, and, above all, +nearness to France, where the misrule and miseries of ages were about to +culminate in a fearful upheaval of social order, complicated immensely +the problem of regeneration in Ireland. + +What was the remedy? Parliamentary reform. The Volunteers saw this +instantly. Parliament itself scouted the idea of reform, because it +threatened the Protestant ascendancy. Any weakening of the Protestant +ascendancy was unthinkable to Irish statesmen, even to Grattan, who in +1778 had coined the grandiose phrase that "the Irish Protestant could +never be free until the Irish Catholic had ceased to be a slave," and +who afterwards explained what he meant by saying that the liberty of the +Catholic was to be only such as was "entirely consistent with the +Protestant ascendancy," and that "the Protestant interest was his first +object." Ascendancy, then, in the mind of the ruling class in Ireland +was fundamental. What was its corollary? Dependence on England. +Ascendancies, whether based on creed or property, or, as in Ireland, on +both, cannot last in any white community without external support, and +the external support for ascendancy in Ireland was English force without +and English bribes within. There was the chain of causation, the vicious +circle rather; and yet Grattan, who never touched a bribe, thought he +had freed his beloved Ireland from the English influences which were +throttling her. He could not see that the more he wrestled for the +independence of a sham Parliament, while resisting its transformation +into a real Parliament, the more he strengthened those influences, +because he inevitably widened the gulf between Parliament and the Irish +people. The glamour his brilliant gifts had thrown over the Irish +Parliament only served to divert his own mind and the minds of other +talented and high-minded men from the seat of disease in Ireland. Time +and talent were wasted from the first over points of pride, trivialities +which seemed portentous to over-sensitive minds; metaphysical puzzles as +to the exact nature of the relations now existing between Ireland and +England; whether the repeal of the Poynings' Act and the Declaratory Act +were sufficient guarantees of freedom; whether Ireland herself should +nominate a Regent or accept the nomination from England. Meanwhile, the +sands were running out, and Ireland was a slave to a minute but powerful +minority of her sons and, only through them, to England. + +Yet the heart of Ireland was sound. All the materials for regeneration +were there. The Catholics, whom by an old inherited instinct Grattan +professed to dread, were the most Conservative part of the population, +so Conservative as to be unaware of the source of their miseries, +without the smallest leaning towards a counter-ascendancy, and without a +notion of sedition or rebellion. Paradox as it seems, if they leaned in +any political direction, it was dimly towards the constituted authority +of the day, the Irish Parliament. But the truth is that they were +without political consciousness, behind the times, unappreciative of the +new forces operating round them. In sore need of courageous and +enlightened guidance from men of their own faith, they were almost +leaderless. The leeway to be made up after the destructive action of the +penal laws was so enormous that Catholic philanthropists had no time or +will for high politics, and devoted their whole energy to the further +relaxation of those laws, to the education of their backward +co-religionists, and to the mitigation of poverty. For relief they +instinctively looked towards the only legal source of relief, though the +source of secular oppression, Parliament. But this was habit. The +Catholics at this time were like clay in the hands of the potter, open +to any curative and ennobling impulse. That impulse came, as was right +and natural, from the Protestant side. The only healthy political +organization in Ireland in 1782 was that of the Volunteers of the North, +with their headquarters at Belfast. They represented all that was best +in the Protestant population. They had won the practical victory, such +as it was, Parliament, with all its flaming rhetoric, only the titular +victory. They grasped the essential truth that Parliament was rotten, +and that Ireland's future depended on its reform. Numbering some 80,000 +or 100,000, they at once began to press for reform, and, since they had +no constitutional resources, to overawe Parliament. Parliament at once +stood on its dignity and on its civil rights against the "Pretorian +bands." "And now," said Grattan in his magnificent way, "having given a +Parliament to the people, the Volunteers will, I doubt not, leave the +people to Parliament, and thus close specifically and majestically a +great work." + +But the work was not begun. Parliament was the enemy of the people, and +the Volunteers knew it. Now, what was the "people" in the minds of the +Volunteers? Undoubtedly they did not, after a century of racial +ascendancy, perform the miracle of accepting at once in its entirety the +principle of absolute political equality for all Irishmen, Catholic and +Protestant alike. Such mental revulsions rarely occur among men, and +when they do occur are apt to produce reactionary cataclysms. But they +did from the first give a real meaning to Grattan's vague rhetoric about +Catholic slaves; from the first they made overtures towards the +Catholics, and ventilated proposals for the Catholic franchise as a part +of their scheme of reform ten years before that enfranchisement, without +Parliamentary reform and therefore valueless, became a practical issue. +For the present these proposals were outvoted, and the effective demand +of the Volunteers, as framed in the great Convention held at Dublin in +November, 1783, was for a purification and reconstruction of Parliament +on a democratic Protestant basis. The Catholic franchise had been +strongly supported, but by the influence of Charlemont and Flood +rejected. It is, of course, easy to maintain in theory that a democratic +Protestant ascendancy so designed was as incompatible with Irish freedom +as an aristocratic and corrupt ascendancy; but nobody with faith in +human nature or any knowledge of history, will care to affirm that the +process of reform would have ended with the enactment of the Volunteer +Bill. No present-day Protestant Ulsterman should entertain such a +dishonouring doubt. Mercifully, men are so made that, if left to +themselves, they go forward, not backward. A pure Assembly, formed on +the Volunteer plan, stimulated by the enlightened conscience which such +an Assembly invariably develops, by the discovery of the fundamental +identity of interests between the great bulk of Catholics and +Protestants, and by the manly instinct of self-preservation against +undue English encroachment, would have moved rapidly towards tolerance +and equality. + +But the Assembly which might have saved Ireland never came into being. +The Volunteers were in weak and incompetent hands. The metamorphosis +they had undergone from a body formed for home defence into a militant +political organization found them at the critical moment unprovided with +the right stamp of leader. Flood, who helped to draft their Bill, was a +brilliant but unscrupulous and discredited Parliamentarian, and a +fanatical advocate of an unimpaired Protestant ascendancy. Lord +Charlemont, one of the most influential founders of the movement, and a +man of the highest integrity, was lukewarm for reform, an aristocrat and +an ascendancy man to the finger-tips, dreading the mysterious forces he +had helped to call into being, and desirous to keep them, as he said, +"respectable." Was it respectable for armed men to dictate to a +Parliament, however just their cause? As often happens in the ferment of +popular movements, the one leader who spoke undiluted truth and sense +spoke it in florid and unmeasured language and was himself of a figure +and behaviour little likely to inspire permanent confidence. This was +the famous Bishop of Derry, called by Charlemont a blasphemous Deist, by +Wesley an exemplary Divine, by Fox a dishonest madman, and by Jeremy +Bentham "a most excellent companion, pleasant, intelligent, well-bred, +and liberal-minded to the last degree." He was certainly vain and +ostentatious, certainly a democratic free-thinker, but a full knowledge +of his character is not of much concern to us. The point is that he was +right about Ireland's needs, though the wrong man at the moment to drive +home her claims. Many finer agitators than he have failed in causes just +as good. Many without half his merits have succeeded. We shall find his +Canadian counterparts later in the figures of Mackenzie and Papineau. + +The crisis came on November 29, 1783, when the Reform Bill reached +Parliament, and was introduced by Flood, wearing the Volunteer dress. It +was rejected on the first vote. No doubt the circumstances were +humiliating, and if there had been any serious inclination in Parliament +towards self-reform and the relinquishment of an odious and mischievous +monopoly, we should freely forgive rejection. But there was little or +none, as after-events proved, and the real humiliation lay, not in the +dictation of the Irish Volunteers, but in the fact that the Volunteers +themselves were overawed by a strong body of British regular troops, +mustered for the occasion under General Burgoyne. The vicious circle was +complete. Forced to choose between reform and dependence on England, +Parliament chose the latter. And only a year and a half before Grattan +had dazzled his hears with the words: "Ireland is now a nation ... _esto +perpetua_." + +There are very few critical dates in Irish history, and of those few the +night of November 29, 1783, was the most critical of all. It marked the +climax of a brief and bright renaissance from the long stagnation of the +eighteenth, and heralded a decline into the long agony of the nineteenth +century, a decline concealed by the fictitious lustre which still hangs +over the first decade of Grattan's unreformed Parliament, but none the +less already present. The Volunteers, their grand opportunity lost, +slowly broke up. Should they have used force, even under the threat of +Burgoyne's guns? It would have been infinitely better both for England +and Ireland if they had. Nothing but force could avail. Never would +force have been better justified, for the very soul of a people "rang +zwischen Tod und Leben." + +It is hard, nevertheless, to blame the Volunteers for not appreciating +the full magnitude of the crisis and acting accordingly. They were ahead +of their time as it was in the political instinct which taught them the +vital importance of a reformed Parliament. They were far ahead of +England, where the younger Pitt had failed to carry Reform a few months +before, and was to fail again two years later when he urged reform for +Ireland. They were even ahead of their time in religious +tolerance--witness the Gordon riots in London two years before. Their +Parliament wore the crown and spoke the regal language of a patriot +Assembly. For five years they themselves had glorified justifiably in +the perfect discipline and sobriety with which they had used their +irregular power. Their most trusted leaders suggested that they would +yet achieve their ends without violence, while the large majority of the +Volunteers themselves were still as loyal to the Crown as the +Catholics, and were inclined, therefore, to shrink from action which, +although in itself not in the remotest degree connected with dynastic +questions, involved a theoretical conflict with the Crown, and perhaps +an actual collision with Royal troops. One of the last acts of the +Volunteer Convention, before its dissolution, was to pass an address to +the King expressing fervent zeal for the Crown, reminding him of their +quiet and dignified behaviour in the past, and praying that "their +humble wish to have certain manifest perversions of the Parliamentary +representation of this kingdom remedied by the Legislature in some +reasonable degree, might not be imputed to any spirit of innovation in +them, but to a sober and laudable desire to uphold the Constitution, to +confirm the satisfaction of their fellow-subjects, and to perpetuate the +cordial union of the two kingdoms." This document might have been copied +_mutatis mutandis_ from the American petitions prior to the war, and was +to be reproduced almost word for word in Canadian petitions dealing with +less serious grievances whose neglect at the hands of the Government did +actually lead to armed rebellion. It must be taken, as Mr. Lecky truly +says, as the "defence of the Convention before the bar of history." +Drawn up by the most moderate and least prescient leaders, it was a +vindication of the past, not a pledge for the future; for "from that +time," as Mr. Lecky writes, "the conviction sank deep into the minds of +many that reform in Ireland could only be effected by revolution, and +the rebellion of 1798 might be already foreseen." + +The story of that transition, with all its disastrous consequences in +the denationalization of Ireland, in the arrest of healing forces, in +the reawakening of slumbering bigotries and hatreds, in the artificial +transformation of Catholics into anti-English rebels, and Protestants +into anti-Irish Loyalists, in the long agony of the land war, the tithe +war, the Church war, and the loathsome savageries of the rebellion +itself, is one of the most repulsive in history. It is repulsive because +you can watch, as it were, upon a dissecting-table the moral fibre of a +people, from no inherent germ of decay, against reason, against nature, +visibly wasting under a corrosive acid. Typical figures stand out: the +strong figure of Fitzgibbon, voicing ascendancy in its crudest and +ugliest form; at the other extreme the ardent but inadequate figure of +Wolfe Tone, affirming in words which expressed the literal truth of the +case that "to subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break +the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our +political evils, and to assert the independence of my country--these +were my objects." Midway stands Grattan, the defeated and disillusioned +"Girondin," as Mr. Fisher aptly calls him,[17] blind until it was too +late to the errors which plunged his country into anarchy, and retiring +in despair when he saw that anarchy coming. And on the other side of the +water, Pitt, dispassionately prescribing for Ireland in 1784, while +there was yet time, the radical remedy, Reform, patiently turning, when +that was refused, to palliatives like mutual free trade in 1785 and the +Catholic franchise in 1793; and meanwhile, with an undercurrent of cool +scepticism, preparing the ground for the only alternative to Reform, +short of a revolutionary separation of the two countries, legislative +Union, and remorselessly pushing that Union through by the only +available means, bribery. + +In this wretched story we seek in vain for individual scapegoats. +Tracing events to their source, we strike against two obstructions, +proximity and ignorance, and we may as well make them our scapegoats. If +proximity had implied knowledge and forbearance, all would have been +well, but it implied just the reverse, and prohibited the kind of +solution which, after very much the same sort of crisis, and in the +teeth of ignorance and error, was afterwards reached in the case of +Canada and South Africa. + +The immediate cause is clear. The failure of Reform is the key to the +Rebellion and the Union. In a patriotic anxiety to idealize Grattan's +Parliament, with a view to justifying later claims for autonomy, +Irishmen have generally shut their eyes to this cardinal fact, and have +preferred to dwell with exaggerated emphasis on the little good that +Parliament did rather than on the enormous evils which it not only left +untouched, but scarcely observed. We must remember that it was not only +a Protestant body, but a close body of landlords, with an infusion of +lawyers and others devoted to the interest of landlords. In that +capacity it was incapable of diagnosing, much less of remedying, the +gravest material ills of Ireland. In the very narrow domain where the +landlord interest was not concerned, as in industrial and commercial +matters, Parliament seems to have acted on the whole with wisdom. It +endeavoured to encourage industries, while refusing to squander its +newly won commercial powers in waging tariff wars with Great Britain, +where prohibitive duties against Irish goods still continued to be +imposed. But Ireland was no longer an industrial country. All the +encouragement in the world could not replace lost aptitudes or bring +back the exiled craftsmen who, during a century past, had left Ireland +to enrich European countries with their skill. The favoured linen +industry alone survived to reach its present flourishing condition. The +revival in other manufactures, even in that of wool, which was +remarkably rapid and strong, seems to have been artificial and +transient. No wonder; for, while Ireland had been stagnant for a +century, her great competitor, England, had been steadily building up +that capacity for organized industry which, under the inventive genius +of Arkwright, Hargreaves, and Watt, and the economic genius of Adam +Smith, made the last twenty years of the eighteenth century such a +marvellous period of industrial expansion, and eventually converted +England from an agricultural into a manufacturing nation. Ireland was +hopelessly late in the race. On the other hand, the fertile land of +Ireland remained as the indestructible source of wealth and the prime +means of subsistence for the great bulk of the four and a half million +souls who inhabited the country. Parliament seems to have been almost +indifferent to the miseries of the agricultural population, wholly +indifferent, certainly, to their source, the vicious agrarian system +which it was the interest of its own members to sustain. Foster's famous +Corn Law without doubt increased tillage, and, in conjunction with the +inflated prices for produce caused by the French War, gave a powerful +though a somewhat unhealthy impulse to the trade in corn. But it +enriched only the landlords, and left untouched the real abuses, +absenteeism, middlemanism, insecurity of tenure, rack-rents, and tithes. +The Whiteboy risings of the sixties and seventies recurred, and were met +with Coercion Acts as stupid and cruel as those of the nineteenth +century. The tithe grievance, which festered and grew into civil war in +the nineteenth century, was never touched. While tenants in North-East +Ulster were painfully and forcibly establishing their custom of tenant +right in the teeth of the law, the inhuman system of cottier tenancy, +which was to last until 1881, became more and more firmly rooted in +other parts of Ireland. + +None but a democratic Assembly could possibly have grappled with these +evils; nor is there any reason to suppose that in the existing condition +of Ireland a Protestant democratic Assembly, even if temporarily it +retained its sectarian character, would have grappled with them less +boldly and drastically than an Assembly composed of Catholics and +Protestants. The material interests of nineteen-twentieths of the people +were the same, while the education and intelligence belonged mainly to +the Protestants. Ulster tenants had as much need of good land laws as +other tenants. Tithes were as much disliked in the north as in the +south. The Established Church was the Church of a very small minority, +and its clergy, numbers of whom were absentees, were as unpopular as the +absentee landlords and the absentee office-holders and pensioners. + +But with no redress, and, what is more important, no prospect of redress +for the primary ills of Ireland, the centrifugal forces of religion and +race had full scope for their baneful influence. And it was at the very +moment when tolerance was steadily gaining ground among all classes that +these spectres of ancient wrong were summoned up to destroy the good +work. + +How did this come about? Let us remember once more that everything +hinged on Reform. Reform gained a little, but suffered far more, by its +association with the question of Catholic franchise, which was useless +without Reform, while it was the corollary of Reform. Nothing is more +remarkable than the growth of academic tolerance during this period, +doubtful and suspect as the motives sometimes were. It is true that the +great Relief Act of 1793, giving Catholics the vote and removing a +quantity of other disqualifications, would scarcely have been sanctioned +by the Parliamentary managers without the stern dictation of Pitt, whose +mind was strongly influenced by the violent anti-Catholic turn just +taken by the French Revolution; but, once sanctioned, it passed +rapidly, and was received with universal satisfaction in the country at +large. Without "Emancipation," that is, the permission to elect +Catholics to sit in Parliament and hold office, the franchise was +illusory and even harmful. In the counties the forty-shilling "freehold" +vote ("freehold" was an ironical misnomer) encouraged Protestant +landlords for another generation, before and after the Union, still +further to subdivide already excessively small holdings, while the +benefits to be derived from the admission to power of propertied +Catholics, with all their intensely Conservative instincts, were thrown +away. Emancipation apart, the franchise without Reform was a complete +farce, for the boroughs, which controlled the Parliamentary balance, +were the personal property of Protestant landlords, and the 110 +Parliamentary placemen were indirectly their tools. As usual, the men of +light and leading contributed unconsciously to the strength of a system +which, in their hearts, as honest men, they condemned. Each of them had +some fatal defect of understanding. Grattan became a strong Emancipator, +but remained an academic and ineffectual reformer striving in vain to +reconcile Reform with a passionate abhorrence of democracy and a +determination to keep power in the hands of landed property. In England, +which was Protestant in the Established sense, he would have done no +more harm than Burke, who for the same reason fought Reform as strongly +as Pitt and his father Chatham had advocated it. But in Ireland, which +was Catholic and Nonconformist, landed property signified Episcopalian +landed property, that is, the narrowest form of ascendancy. Charlemont +was an even stranger paradox. He was an academic Reformer before +Grattan, but not an Emancipator, arriving at the same sterility as +Grattan through a religious bias which Grattan ceased to feel, a bias +inspired, not by a fanatical fear of democracy in itself, but by a fear +of Catholic revenge for past wrongs. These men and their like, admirable +and lovable as in many respects they were, were useless to Ireland in +those terrible times. Whether Emancipation, unaccompanied by Reform, had +any real chance of passing Parliament in 1795, when the Whig Viceroy +Fitzwilliam, the one Viceroy in the eighteenth century who ever +conceived the idea of governing Ireland according to Irish ideas, came +over from England with the avowed intention of proposing it, is a matter +of conjecture. Fitzwilliam was snuffed out by Pitt, and recalled under +circumstances which still remain a matter of controversy. All we can say +with certainty is that the opinion of Ireland at large was absolutely +ignored, and that English party intrigues and English claims on Irish +patronage had much to do with the result. On the whole, however, I agree +with Mr. Fisher that too much importance has been given to this episode, +especially by Mr. Lecky, who devotes nearly a volume to it. + +The anti-national Irish Parliament was past praying for. Long before +1795 the Irish aristocracy had lost whatever power for good it ever +possessed, and most of the resolute reformers of Wolfe Tone's +middle-class Protestant school had turned, under the enthralling +fascination of the French Revolution, into revolutionaries. Reform had +been refused in 1782; again, and without coercion from the Volunteers, +in 1783. It was refused again in 1784, against the advice of Pitt and at +the instigation of Pitt's own Viceroy, Rutland, whom Pitt had +urged--what a grim irony it seems!--to give "unanswerable proofs that +the cases of Ireland and England are different," and who answered with +truth that the ascendancy of a minority could only be maintained "by +force or corruption." Every succeeding year showed the same results. +Wolfe Tone was more than justified, he was compelled, to convert his +Society of United Irishmen, founded in 1791, into a revolutionary +organization and to seek by forcible means to overthrow the Executive +which controlled Parliament and, through it, Ireland. Since the symbol +of the Irish Executive was the British Crown, he, of course, abjured the +Crown, though he had no more quarrel with the Crown as such than had the +American or Canadian patriots. He simply loved his country, and from the +first saw with clear eyes the only way to save her. Tolerance to him was +not an isolated virtue, but an integral part of democracy. He took +little interest in the Parliamentary side of Catholic relief, realizing +its hollow unreality, and, in the case of the Bill of 1793, actually +ridiculing the absurd spectacle of the Catholic cottiers being herded to +the poll by their Protestant landlords. Nor was he even an extreme +Democrat, for he advocated a ten-pound, instead of a forty shilling +franchise. His original pamphlet of 1791 contains nothing but the most +sober political common sense. + +His aim was to unite Irishmen of all creeds to overthrow a Government +which did not emanate from or represent them, and which was ruinous to +them. It is not surprising that he failed. Ireland was very near +England. French intervention had been decisive in distant America, and +the French Revolution in its turn had been hastened by the American +example. But the intervention in Ireland of Republican France, for +purely selfish and strategic reasons, without effective command of the +sea, and with the stain of the Terror upon her, was of little material +value and a grave moral handicap to the Irish Revolutionists. It is the +manner of Tone's failure and the consequences of his failure that have +such a tragic interest. A united Ireland could have dispensed with the +aid of France. What prevented unity? Tone laboured to bring both creeds +together, and to a certain degree was successful. Until the very last it +was the Catholics, not the Protestants, who shrank most from revolution. +Yet, in the Rebellion of 1798, the North never moved, while Catholic +Wexford and Wicklow rose. + +The root cause is to be found in those agrarian abuses whose long +neglect by the Irish Parliament constituted the strongest justification +for Reform. The Orange Society, founded under that name in 1795, +originated in the "Peep o' Day Boys," a local association formed in +Armagh in 1784 for the purpose of bullying Catholics. There is no doubt +that the underlying incentive was economic. Even when the Penal Code had +lost in efficacy, its results survived in the low standard of living of +the persecuted Catholics. As I pointed out in a former chapter, the +reckless cupidity of the landlords in terminating leases and fixing new +rents by auction, with the alternative of eviction, threw those +Protestant tenants who did not emigrate into direct competition with +Catholic peasants of a lower economic stamp, who because they lived on +little could afford to offer fancy rents. Hence much bitter friction, +leading to sordid village rows and eventually to the organized +ruffianism of the Peep o' Day Boys. The Catholic Franchise Act of 1793, +unaccompanied by Emancipation, actually intensified the trouble by +removing the landlord's motive to prefer a Protestant tenant on account +of his vote. Under ill-treatment, the Catholics naturally retaliated +with a society known as the "Defenders," and in some districts were +themselves the aggressors. Defenderism, in its purely agrarian aspect, +spread to other parts of Ireland, where Protestants were few, and became +merged in Whiteboyism. This had always been an agrarian movement, +directed against abuses which the law refused to touch, and without +religious animus, although the overwhelming numbers of the Catholics in +the regions where it flourished would have placed the Protestants at +their mercy. In Ulster both the contending organizations necessarily +acquired a religious form and necessarily retained it. But at bottom bad +laws, not bigotry, were the cause. There was nothing incurable, or even +unique, about the disorders. Analogous phenomena have appeared +elsewhere, for example, in Australia, between the original squatters on +large ranches and new and more energetic colonists in search of land for +closer settlement. Under a rational system of tenure and distribution +there was plenty of good land in Ireland for an even larger population. +Tone, who was a middle-class lawyer, seems never to have appreciated +what was going on. So far from healing the schism, he appears to have +widened it by throwing the United Irish Committee of Ulster into the +scale of the Catholics against the Orangemen. But, in truth, he was +helpless. Good administration only could unite these distracted +elements, and without the Reform for which he battled, good +administration was impossible. The dissension, widening and acquiring an +increasingly religious and racial character, paralyzed Ulster, which +originally was the seat of the Revolution. The forces normally at work +to favour law and order--loyalty to the Crown, dislike of the French +Revolution, and resentment at Franco-Irish conspiracies--gathered +proportionately greater strength. + +The Southern Rebellion of 1798--a mad, pitiful thing at the best, the +work of half-starved peasants into whose stunted minds the splendid +ideal of Tone had scarcely begun to penetrate--was a totally different +sort of rebellion from any he had contemplated. It was neither national +nor Republican. The French invasions had met with little support; the +first with positive reprobation. Nor was it in origin sectarian, +although, once aflame, it inevitably took a sectarian turn. Several of +the prominent leaders were Protestants. Priests naturally joined in it +because they were the only friends the people had had in the dark ages +of oppression. In so far as it can be regarded as spontaneous, it was of +Whiteboy origin, anti-tithe and anti-rack-rent. But it was not even +spontaneous; that is another dreadful and indisputable fact which +emerges. The barbarous measures taken to repress and disarm, prior to +the outbreak, together with the skilfully propagated reports of a coming +massacre by Orangemen, would have goaded any peasantry in the world to +revolt, and the only astonishing thing is that the revolt was so local +and sporadic. General Sir Ralph Abercromby retired, sickened with the +horrors he was forbidden to avert. "Within these twelve months," he +wrote of the conduct of the soldiery at the time of his resignation, +"every crime, every cruelty that could be committed by Cossacks or +Calmucks has been transacted here.... The struggle has been, in the +first place, whether I was to have the command of the Army really or +nominally, and then whether the character and discipline of it were to +be degraded and ruined in the mode of using it, either from the facility +of one man or from the violence and oppression of a set of men who have +for more than twelve months employed it in measures which they durst not +avow or sanction." + +Abercromby's resignation, in Mr. Lecky's opinion, "took away the last +faint chance of averting a rebellion." Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare, was now +supreme in the Government, and henceforth represents incarnate the +forces which provoked the Rebellion and founded upon it the Union. He +had bided his time for a decade, watching the trend of events, +foreseeing their outcome, and smiling sardonically at the ineffectual +writhings of the men of compromise. He stands out like a block of black +granite over against the slender figure of Wolfe Tone, who was his +anti-type in ideas and aims, his inferior in intellect, his superior in +morals, but no more than his rival in sincerity, clarity, and +consistency of ideas. Clare was a product of the Penal Code, the son of +a Catholic Irishman who, to obtain a legal career, had become a +Protestant. He himself was not a bigot, but a very able cynic, with a +definite theory of government. Tolerance, Emancipation, Reform, were so +much noxious, sentimental rubbish to him, and he had never scrupled to +say so. Ireland was a Colony, English colonists were robbers in Ireland, +and robbers must be tyrants, or the robbed will come by their own again; +that was his whole philosophy,[18] his frigid and final estimate of the +tendencies of human nature, and his considered cure for them. Racial +fusion was a crazy conception not worth argument. Wrong on one side, +revenge on the other; policy, coercion. As he put it in his famous +speech on the Union, the settlers to the third and fourth generation +"were at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island." "Laws must be +framed to meet the vicious propensities of human nature," and laws of +this sort for the case of Ireland should, he held with unanswerable +logic, properly be made in England, not by the travesty of a Parliament +in Ireland, which, in so far as it was in any degree Irish, had shown +faint but ominous tendencies towards tolerance and the reunion of +Irishmen. He never took the trouble to demonstrate the truth of his +theory of revenge by a reasoned analysis of Irish symptoms. He took it +for granted as part of a universal axiomatic truth, and, like all +philosophers of his school, pointed to the results of misgovernment and +coercion as proofs of the innate depravity of the governed and of their +need for more coercion. Anticipating a certain limited class of Irishmen +of to-day, often brilliant lawyers like himself, he used to bewail +English ignorance of Ireland, meaning ignorance of the incurable +criminality of his own kith and kin. He was just as immovably cynical +about the vast majority of his own co-religionists as about the +conquered race. If, as was obvious, so far from fearing the revenge of +the Catholics, their unimpeded instinct was to take sides with them to +secure good government, they were not only traitors, but imbeciles who +could not see the doom awaiting them. Yet Fitzgibbon's admirers must +admit that his consistency was not complete. He was perfectly cognizant +of the real causes of Irish discontent. He was aware of the grievances +of Ulster, and his description of the conditions of the Munster +peasantry in the Whiteboy debates of 1787 is classical. If pressed, he +would have answered, we may suppose, that it was impolitic to cure +evils which were at once the consequence of ascendancy and the +condition of its maintenance. That other strange lapse in 1798, when he +described the unparalleled prosperity of Ireland since 1782 under a +Constitution which, in the Union debates of 1800, he afterwards covered +with deserved ridicule as having led to anarchy, destitution, and +bankruptcy, must be attributed to the exigencies of debate; for he was +an advocate as well as a statesman, and occasionally gave way to the +temptation of making showy but unsubstantial points. + +These slips were rare, and do not detract from the massive coherence of +his doctrine. He remains the frankest, the most vivid, and the most +powerful exponent of a theory of government which has waged eternal +conflict with its polar rival, the Liberal theory, in the evolution of +the Empire. The theory, of course, extends much farther than the +bi-racial Irish case, to which Fitzgibbon applied it. It was used, as we +shall see, to meet the bi-racial circumstances of Canada and South +Africa, and it was also used in a modified form to meet the uni-racial +circumstances of Australia and of Great Britain itself. Anyone who reads +the debates on the Reform Bill of 1831 will notice that the opposition +rested at bottom on a profoundly pessimistic distrust of the people, and +on the alleged necessity of an oligarchy vested with the power and duty +of "framing laws to meet the vicious propensities of human nature." In a +word, the theory is in essence not so much anti-racial as +anti-democratic, while finding its easiest application where those +distinctions of race and creed exist which it is its effect, though not +its purpose, to intensify and envenom. Fitzgibbon is a repulsive figure. +Yet it would be unjust to single him out for criticism. Like him, the +philosophers Hume and Paley believed in oligarchy, and accepted force or +corruption as its two alternative props. Burke thought the same, though +the Pitts thought otherwise. Fitzgibbon's brutal pessimism was only the +political philosophy of Paley, Hume, and Burke pushed relentlessly in an +exceptional case to its extreme logical conclusion. But we can justly +criticize statesmen of the present day who, after a century's experience +of the refutation of the doctrine in every part of the world, still +adhere to it. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[16] Pitt's original scheme was accepted in Ireland, but defeated in +England, owing to the angry opposition of British commercial interests. +The scheme, as amended to conciliate these interests, was deservedly +rejected in Ireland. + +[17] J. Fisher, "The End of the Irish Parliament." The author is much +indebted to this brilliant study, which appeared only this year (1911). + +[18] See Fitzgibbon's Speeches in the Irish House of Lords, on the +Catholic Franchise Bill, March 13, 1793, and on the Union, February 10, +1800. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE UNION + + +The worst feature of Fitzgibbonism is that it has the power artificially +to produce in the human beings subject to it some of the very phenomena +which originally existed only in the perverted imagination of its +professors. Some only of the phenomena; not all; for human nature +triumphs even over Fitzgibbonism. There has never been a moment since +the Union when a representative Irish Parliament, if statesmen had been +wise and generous enough, to set such a body up, would have acted on the +principle of revenge or persecution. Nor, in spite of all evidences to +the contrary, has there ever been a moment when Protestant Ulstermen, +heirs of the noble Volunteer spirit, once represented in such a +Parliament, would have acted on the assumption that they had to meet a +policy of revenge. Nevertheless, Fitzgibbonism did succeed, as it was to +succeed in Canada, in making pessimism at least plausible and in +achieving an immense amount of direct ascertainable mischief. + +The rift between the creeds and races, just beginning to heal three +generations after the era of confiscation, but reopened under the +operations of economic forces connected with race and religion, yet +perfectly capable of adjustment by a wise and instructed Government, +yawned wide from 1798 onwards, when Government had become a soulless +policeman, and scenes of frenzy and slaughter had occurred which could +not be forgotten. Swept asunder by a power outside their control, +Protestants and Catholics stood henceforth in opposite political camps, +and it became a fixed article of British policy to govern Ireland by +playing upon this antagonism. The flame of the Volunteer spirit never +perished, but it dwindled to a spark under the irresistible weight of a +manufactured reaction. Dissenters and Anglicans united, not to lead the +way in securing better conditions for their Catholic fellow-countrymen, +not for the interests of Ireland as a whole, but under the ignoble +colours of religious fanaticism. Hence that strangely artificial +alliance between the landlords of the South and West and the democratic +tenantry, artisans, and merchants of the North; an alliance formed to +meet an imaginary danger, and kept in being with the most mischievous +results to the social and economic development of Ireland. Since the +Protestant minority had made up its mind to depend once more on the +English power it had defied in 1782, the old machine of Ascendancy, +which had showed certain manifest signs of decrepitude under Grattan's +Parliament, was reconstructed on a firmer, less corrupt, and more +lasting basis. + +The Legislative Union is not a landmark or a turning-point in Irish +history. It reproduced "under less assailable forms" the Government +which existed prior to 1782. The real crisis, as I have said, came at +the end of 1783, when the Volunteers tried, by reforming Parliament, to +give Irish Government an Irish character. It is essential to +remember--now as much as ever before--that Ireland has never had a +national Parliament. She has never been given a chance of +self-expression and self-development. It is useless, though Home Rulers +frequently give way to the temptation, to advocate Home Rule by arguing +from Grattan's Parliament. O'Connell, in the Repeal debate of 1834, +devoted hours to praising that Parliament, and had his own argument +turned against him with crushing force by the Secretary to the Treasury, +who easily proved that it was the most corrupt and absurd body that ever +existed. The same game of cross-purposes went on in the Home Rule +debates of 1886 and 1893, and reappeared but this year in a debate of +the House of Lords (July 4, 1911), when the Roman Catholic Home Ruler, +Lord MacDonnell, eulogized Grattan's Parliament in answer to Lord +Londonderry, the Protestant Unionist landlord, who painted it in its +true colours. Yet Lord Londonderry springs from the class and school of +Charlemont, who, by refusing to act as an Irishman, hastened the ruin of +the Parliament which Lord Londonderry satirizes, and Lord MacDonnell +from the race which was betrayed by that Parliament. The anomaly need +not surprise us. It is not stranger than the fact that the Union would +never have been carried without Catholic support in Ireland. + +The point we have to grasp is that Ireland was a victim to the crudity +and falsity of the political ideas current at the time of the Union, +persistent all over the Empire for long afterwards, and not extinct yet. +Between Separation, personified by Tone, and Union, personified by +Fitzgibbon, and carried by those milder statesmen, Castlereagh and Pitt, +there seemed to be no alternative. Actually there was and is an +alternative: a responsible Irish Parliament and Government united to +England by sympathy and interest. + +The Parliamentary history of the Union does not much concern us. +Bribery, whether by titles, offices, or cash, had always been the normal +means of securing a Government majority in the Irish House of Commons. +Corruption was the only means of carrying the vote for the Union, and +the time and labour needed for securing that vote are a measure of the +rewards gained by those who formed the majority. Disgusting business as +it was, we have to admit that a Parliament which refused to reform +itself at the bidding of all that was best and healthiest in Ireland +did, on its own account, deserve extinction. The sad thing is that the +true Ireland was sacrificed. + +Pitt and Castlereagh, though they plunged their hands deep in the mire +to obtain the Union, quite honestly believed in the policy of the Union. +They were wrong. They merely reestablished the old ascendancy in a form, +morally perhaps more defensible, but just as damaging to the interests +of Ireland. In addition to absentee landlords, an alien and a largely +absentee Church, there was now an absentee Parliament, remote from all +possibility of pressure from Irish public opinion, utterly ignorant of +Ireland, containing within it, for twenty-nine years, at any rate, +representatives of only one creed, and that the creed of the small +minority. Pitt had virtually pledged himself to make Catholic +Emancipation an immediate consequence of the Union, and his Viceroy, +Cornwallis, had thereby obtained the invaluable support of the Catholic +hierarchy and of many of the Catholic gentry. The King, half mad at the +time, refused to sanction the redemption of the pledge, and Pitt, to his +deep dishonour, accepted the insult and dropped the scheme. +Fitzgibbonism in its extreme form had triumphed. It was a repetition of +the perfidy over the Treaty of Limerick a century before. Indeed, at +every turn of Irish history, until quite recent times, there seems to +have been perpetrated some superfluity of folly or turpitude which shut +the last outlet for natural improvement. It cannot be held, however, +that the refusal of Emancipation for another generation seriously +damaged the prospects of the Union as a system of government. After it +was granted, the system worked just as badly as before, and in all +essentials continues to work just as badly now. Inequalities in the +Irish franchise were only an aggravation. In order to cripple Catholic +power, Emancipation itself was accompanied in 1829 by an Act which +disfranchised at a stroke between seven and eight tenths of the Irish +county electorate, nor was it until the latest extension of the United +Kingdom franchise, that is, eighty-five years after the Union, that the +Irish representation was a true numerical reflection of the Irish +democracy. But these were not vital matters. In the Home Rule campaigns +of 1886 and 1893, Irish opinion, constitutionally expressed, was +impotent. The vital matter was that the Union killed all wholesome +political life in Ireland, destroyed the last chance of promoting +harmony among Irishmen, and transferred the settlement of Irish +questions to an ignorant and prejudiced tribunal, incapable of +comprehending these questions, much less of adjudicating upon them with +any semblance of impartiality. + +The Legislative Union was unnatural. The two islands, near as they were +to each other, were on different planes of civilization, wealth, and +economic development, without a common tradition, a common literature, +or a common religion. Each had a temperament and genius of its own, and +each needed a different channel of expression. Laws applicable to one +island were meaningless or noxious in the other; taxation applicable to +a rich industrial island was inappropriate and oppressive for a poor +agricultural island. And upon a system comprising all these +incompatibilities there was grafted the ruinous principle of ascendancy. + +There is nothing inherently strange about the difference between England +and Ireland. Artificial land-frontiers often denote much sharper +cleavages of sentiment, character, physique, language, history. A +sea-frontier sometimes makes a less, sometimes a more, effective line of +delimitation. Denmark and Sweden, France and England, are examples. +Nor, on the other hand, did the profound differences between Ireland and +England preclude the possibility of their incorporation in a political +system under one Crown. We know, by a mass of experience from Federal +and other systems, that elements the most diverse in language, religion, +wealth, and tradition may be welded together for common action, provided +that the union be voluntary and the freedom of the separate parts be +preserved. The first conditions of a true union were lacking in the case +of Ireland. The arrangement was not voluntary. It was accompanied by +gross breach of faith, and it signified enslavement, not liberty. + +A true Union was not even attempted. The Government of Ireland, in +effect, and for the most part in form, was still that of a conquered +Colonial Dependency. It was no more representative in any practical +sense after the Union than before the Union. The popular vote was +submerged in a hostile assembly far away. The Irish peerage was regarded +rightly by the Irish people as the very symbol of their own degradation, +the Union having been purchased with titles, and titles having been for +a century past the price paid for the servility of Anglo-Irish +statesmen. But the peerage, in the persons of the twenty-eight +representatives sent to Westminster, still remained a powerful nucleus +of anti-Irish opinion, infecting the House of Lords with anti-Irish +prejudice, and often opposing a last barrier to reform when the +opposition of the British House of Commons had been painfully overcome. +In truth the cardinal reforms of the nineteenth century were obtained, +not by persuasion, but by unconstitutional violence in Ireland itself. +There was still a separate Executive in Ireland, a separate system of +local administration, and until 1817 a separate financial system, all of +them wholly outside Irish control. The only change of constitutional +importance was that the Viceroy gradually became a figure-head, and his +autocratic powers, similar to those of the Governor of a Crown Colony, +were transferred to the Chief Secretary, who was a member of the British +Ministry. Gradually, as the activity of Government increased, there grew +up that grotesque system of nominated and irresponsible Boards which at +the present day is the laughing-stock of the civilized world. The whole +patronage remained as before, either directly or indirectly, in English +hands. If it was no longer manipulated in ways frankly corrupt, it was +manipulated in a fashion just as deleterious to Ireland. Before, as +after, the Union there was no public career in Ireland for an Irishman +who was in sympathy with the great majority of his countrymen. To win +the prizes of public life, judgeships, official posts, and the rest, it +was not absolutely necessary to be a Protestant, though for a long time +all important offices were held exclusively, and are still held mainly, +by Protestants; but it was absolutely necessary to be a thoroughgoing +supporter of the Ascendancy, and in thoroughgoing hostility to Irish +public opinion as a whole. In other words, the unwritten Penal Code was +preserved after the abolition of the written enactments, and was used +for precisely the same pernicious purpose. It was a subtle and sustained +attempt "to debauch the intellect of Ireland," as Mr. Locker-Lampson +puts it, to denationalize her, and to make her own hands the instrument +of her humiliation. The Bar was the principal sufferer, because now, as +before, it was the principal road to humiliation. Fitzgibbons +multiplied, so that for generations after the Union some of the ablest +Irish lawyers were engaged in the hateful business of holding up their +own people to execration in the eyes of the world, of combating +legislation imperatively needed for Ireland, and of framing and carrying +into execution laws which increased the maladies they were intended to +allay. + +Let nobody think these phenomena are peculiar to Ireland. In many parts +of the world where Ascendancies have existed, or exist, the same methods +are employed, and always with a certain measure of success. Irish moral +fibre was at least as tough as that of any other nationality in +resisting the poison. + +But the results were as calamitous in Ireland as in other countries. No +country can progress under such circumstances. The test of government is +the condition of the people governed. Judged by this criterion, it is no +exaggeration to say that Ireland as a whole went backward for at least +seventy years after the Union. Even Protestant North-East Ulster, with +its saving custom of tenant-right, its linen industry, and all the +special advantages derived from a century of privilege, though it +escaped the worst effects of the depression, suffered by emigration +almost as heavily as the rest of Ireland, and built up its industries +with proportionate difficulty. Over the rest of Ireland the main +features of the story are continuous from a period long antecedent to +the Union. A student of the condition of the Irish peasantry in the +eighteenth and in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth centuries +can ignore changes in the form or personnel of government. He would +scarcely be aware, unless he travelled outside his subject, that +Grattan's Parliament ever existed, or that subsequently a long +succession of Whig and Tory Ministers, differing profoundly in their +political principles, had alternately sent over to Ireland Chief +Secretaries with theoretically despotic powers for good or evil. These +"transient and embarrassed phantoms" came and went, leaving their +reputations behind them, and the country they were responsible for in +much the same condition. + +It is not my purpose to enter in detail into the history of Ireland in +the nineteenth century, but only to note a few salient points which will +help us to a comparison with the progress of other parts of the Empire. +It is necessary to repeat that the basis upon which the whole economic +structure of Ireland rested, the Irish agrarian system, was inconsistent +with social peace and an absolute bar to progress. I described in +Chapter I. how it came into being and the collateral mischiefs attending +it. During the nineteenth century, by accident or design, these +mischiefs were greatly aggravated. Until 1815 high war prices and the +low Catholic franchise stimulated subdivision of holdings, already +excessively small, and the growth of population. With the peace came +evictions, conversions into pasture, and consolidation of farms. The +disfranchisement of the mass of the peasantry which accompanied +Emancipation in 1829 inspired fresh clearances on a large scale and +caused unspeakable misery, with further congestion on the worst +agricultural land. "Cottier" tenancy, at a competitive rent, and +terminable without compensation for the improvements which were made +exclusively by the tenant, was general over the greater part of Ireland. +Generally it was tenancy-at-will, with perpetual liability to eviction. +Leaseholders, however, were under conditions almost as onerous. The +labourer, who was allowed a small plot, which he paid for in labour, +was in the worst plight of all. In addition, burdensome tithes were +collected by an alien Church and rents were largely spent abroad. If +Irish manufactures had not been destroyed, and there had been an outlet +from agriculture into industry, the evil effects of the agrarian system +would have been mitigated. As it was, in one of the richest and most +fertile countries in the world the congestion and poverty were +appalling. Competition for land meant the struggle for bare life. Rent +had no relation to value, but was the price fixed by the frantic bidding +of hungry peasants for the bare right to live. The tenant had no +interest in improving the land, because the penalty for improvement was +a higher rent, fixed after another bout of frantic competition. + +"Almost alone amongst mankind," wrote John Stuart Mill,[19] "the cottier +is in this condition, that he can scarcely be either better or worse off +by any act of his own. If he were industrious or prudent, nobody but his +landlord would gain; if he is lazy or intemperate, it is at his +landlord's expense. A situation more devoid of motives to either labour +or self-command, imagination itself cannot conceive. The inducements of +free human beings are taken away, _and those of a slave not +substituted_. He has nothing to hope, and nothing to fear, except being +dispossessed of his holding, and against this he protects himself by the +_ultima ratio_ of a defensive civil war. Rockism and Whiteboyism were +the determination of a people, who had nothing that could be called +theirs but a daily meal of the lowest description of food, not to submit +to being deprived of that for other people's convenience. + +"Is it not, then, a bitter satire on the mode in which opinions are +formed on the most important problems of human nature and life, to find +public instructors of the greatest pretension imputing the backwardness +of Irish industry, and the want of energy of the Irish people in +improving their condition, to a peculiar indolence and insouciance in +the Celtic race? Of all vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration +of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most +vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character +to inherent natural differences." + +The "civil war" referred to by Mill as the _ultima ratio_ of the +cottier tenant went on intermittently for ninety years of the nineteenth +century, as it had gone on during the eighteenth century, and was met by +coercive laws of the same general stamp. Until Mr. Gladstone took the +question in hand in 1870, no reformer could get a hearing in Parliament. +Bill after Bill, privately introduced, met with contemptuous rejection +in favour of some senseless measure of semi-military coercion. There +can, I believe, be no doubt that responsible Irish opinion, made +effective, would have grappled with the evil firmly and conscientiously. +Until the peasant class was driven to the last pitch of desperation, +their leaders did not conceive, and, indeed, never wholly succeeded in +implanting, the idea of a complete overthrowal of landlordism. The +peasant was not unwilling to pay rent. He had, and still has, a deep, +instinctive respect for a landed aristocracy, and was ready, and is +still ready, to repay good treatment with an intensity of devotion +difficult to parallel in other parts of the United Kingdom. In that +veritably cataclysmic dispersion of the Irish race which ensued upon the +great famine, rent continued to be paid at home out of sums remitted +from relatives in America. No less than nineteen millions of money were +thus remitted, according to the Emigration Commissioners of 1863, +between 1847 and that date. The Roman Catholic Church, as in every part +of the world, was strongly on the side of law and order, and, indeed, on +many occasions stepped in to condemn disorder legitimately provoked by +intolerable suffering. The wealthy and educated landlord class, face to +face in a free Parliament with the tenant class, including, be it +remembered, the Ulster Protestant tenants, with grievances less acute in +degree, but similar in kind, would have consented to meet reform halfway +under the stimulus of patriotism and an enlightened self-interest. +Against the great majority of Irish landlords there was no personal +charge. They came into incomes derived from a certain source under +ancient laws for which they were not responsible. But, acting through +the ascendancy Parliament far away in London, they remained, as an +organized class--for we must always make allowance for an enlightened +and public-spirited minority--blind to their own genuine interests and +to the demands of humane policy. Their responsibility was transferred to +English statesmen, who were not fitted, by temperament or training, to +undertake it, and who always looked at the Irish land question, which +had no counterpart in England, through English spectacles. We cannot +attribute their failure to lack of information. At every stage there was +plenty of unbiassed and instructed testimony, Whig and Tory, Protestant +and Catholic, independent and official, as to the nature and origin of +the trouble. Mill and Bright, in 1862, only emphasized what Arthur Young +had said in 1772, and what Edward Wakefield, Sharman Crawford, Michael +Sadler, Poulett Scrope, and many other writers, thinkers, and +politicians had confirmed in the intervening period, and what every +fair-minded man admits now to be the truth. Commission after Commission +reported the main facts correctly, if the remedies they proposed were +inadequate. The Devon Commission, reporting in 1845, on the eve of the +great famine, condemned the prevalent agrarian tenure, and recommended +the statutory establishment of the Ulster custom of tenant right. A very +mild and cautious Bill was introduced and dropped. + +Next year came the famine, revealing in an instant the rottenness of the +economic foundations upon which the welfare of Ireland depended. The +population had swollen from four millions in 1788 to nearly eight and a +half millions in 1846, an unhealthy expansion, due to the well-known law +of propagation in inverse ratio to the adequacy of subsistence. What +happened was merely the failure of the potato-crop, not a serious matter +in most countries, but in Ireland the cause of starvation to +three-quarters of a million persons, and the starting-point of that vast +exodus which in the last half of the nineteenth century drained Ireland +of nearly four million souls. The famine passed, and with it all +recollection of the report of the Devon Commission. Hitherto most of the +land legislation had been designed to facilitate evictions. Now came the +Encumbered Estates Act of 1849, whose purpose was to facilitate the +buying out of bankrupt Irish landlords, and whose effect was to +perpetuate the old agrarian system under a new set of more mercenary +landlords, pursuing the old policy of rack-rents and evictions. In the +three years 1849-1852, 58,423 families were evicted, or 306,120 souls. +Aroused from the stupor of the famine, the peasants had to retaliate +with the same old defensive policy of outrage. Peaceful agitation was +of no use. The Tenant League of North and South, formed in 1852, claimed +in vain the simplest of the rights granted under pressure of violence in +1870 and 1881. + +Violence, indeed, was the only efficient lever in Ireland for any but +secondary reforms until the last fifteen years of the century, when a +remedial policy was spontaneously adopted, with the general consent of +British statesmen and parties. Fear inspired the Emancipation Act of +1829, which was recommended to Parliament by the Duke of Wellington as a +measure wrong in itself, but necessary to avert an organized rebellion +in Ireland. Tithes, the unjust burden of a century and a half, were only +commuted in 1838, after a Seven Years' War revolting in its incidents. +Mr. Gladstone admitted, and no one who studies the course of events can +deny, that without the Fenianism of the sixties, and the light thrown +thereby on the condition of Ireland, it would have been impossible to +carry the Act--again overdue by a century--for the disestablishment of +the Irish Church in 1869, or the Land Act, timid and ineffectual as it +was, of 1870. Without the organized lawlessness of the Land League it +would have been equally impossible to bring about those more drastic +changes in Irish land tenure which, amidst storms of protest from vested +interests affected, were initiated under the great Land Act of 1881, +and, after another miserable decade of crime and secret conspiracy, +extended by the Acts of 1887, 1891, and 1896. + +Briefly, the effect of these Acts was to establish three principles: a +fair rent, fixed by a judicial tribunal, the Land Commission, and +revisable every fifteen years; fixity of tenure as long as the rent is +paid; and free sale of the tenant-right. + +The remedy eventually brought widespread relief, but, from a social and +economic standpoint, it was not the right remedy. There is no security +for good legislation unless it be framed by those who are to live under +it. Constructive thought in Ireland for the solution of her own +difficulties and the harmonizing of her own discordant elements had been +systematically dammed, or diverted into revolutionary excesses, which, +in the traditional spirit of Fitzgibbonism, were made the pretext for +more stupid torture. Thus, O'Connell, whose attachment to law was so +strong that in 1843, when the Repeal agitation had reached seemingly +irresistible proportions, he deliberately restrained it, was tried for +sedition. So, too, were dissipated the brilliant talents of the Young +Ireland group and the grave statesmanship of Isaac Butt. Fits intervened +of a penitent and bungling philanthropy which has left its traces on +nearly all Irish institutions. For example, it was decided in 1830 that +the Irish must be educated, and a system was set up which was +deliberately designed to anglicize Ireland and extirpate Roman +Catholicism. Four years later, in defiance of Irish opinion, a Poor Law +pedantically copied from the English model was applied to Ireland. The +railway system also was grossly mismanaged. And so with the land. When +reform eventually came, the evil had gone too far, and it was beyond the +art of the ablest and noblest Englishmen, inheriting English conceptions +of the rights of landed property, to devise any means of placing the +relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland, inhuman and absurd as +they were, on a sound and durable basis. The dual ownership set up by +the Land Acts was more humane, but in some respects no less absurd and +mischievous. It exasperated the landlord, while, by placing before the +tenant the continual temptation of further reductions in rent, it tended +to check good cultivation. + +Men came to realize at last that the complete expropriation of the +landlords through the State-aided purchase of the land was the only +logical resource, and this process, begun tentatively and on a very +small scale as far back as 1870, under the inspiration of John Bright, +and extended under a series of other Acts, was eventually set in motion +on a vast scale by the Wyndham Act of 1903. + +I leave a final review of Purchase and of other quite recent remedial +legislation, as well as the far more important movements for +regeneration from within, to later chapters. Meanwhile, let us pause for +a moment and pronounce upon the political system which made such havoc +in Ireland. All this havoc, all this incalculable waste of life, energy, +brains, and loyalty, was preventable and unnecessary. Ethics and honour +apart, where was the common sense of the legislative Union? Would it +have been possible to design a system better calculated to embitter, +impoverish, and demoralize a valuable portion of the Empire? + +Let us now turn our eyes across the Atlantic, and observe the effects of +an Imperial policy founded on the same root idea. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[19] "Principles of Political Economy," vol. ii., p. 392. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +CANADA AND IRELAND + + +In comparing the history of Canada with the closely allied history of +Ireland, we must bear in mind that in the last half of the eighteenth +century the present British North America consisted of three distinct +portions: Acadia, or the Maritime Provinces, which we now know as +Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, +colonized originally by a few Frenchmen and later by Scotch and Irish; +Lower Canada, extensively colonized by the French, which we now know as +the Province of Quebec; and Upper Canada, which we now know as Ontario, +colonized last of all by Americans under circumstances to be described. + +In 1763, before the repeal of any part of the Penal Code against Irish +Roman Catholics, the French Catholic Colony of Lower Canada, with a +population of about seventy thousand souls and the two small towns of +Quebec and Montreal, passed definitely into British possession under the +Treaty of Paris, which brought to a conclusion the Seven Years' War. +Fortunately, there was no question, as in Ireland, of expropriating the +owners of the soil in favour of State-aided British planters, and hence +no question of a Penal Code, even on the moderate scale current in Great +Britain at the same period. On the contrary, it became a matter of +urgent practical expediency to conciliate the conquered Province in view +of the growing disaffection of the American Colonies bordering it on the +South. This disaffection, assuming ominous proportions on the enactment +of the Stamp Act in 1765, was itself an indirect result of the conquest +of Canada a few years before; for the claim to tax the Americans for +Imperial purposes arose from the enormous expense of the war of conquest +and of the subsequent charges for defence and upkeep. It was forgotten +that American volunteers had captured Louisburg in 1745, and had borne +a distinguished part in later operations, and that to lay a compulsory +tax upon them would banish glorious memories common to America and +Britain. Henceforward, conquered French Canada was made a political +bulwark against rebellious America. The French colonists, a peaceable, +primitive folk, as attached to their religion as the Irish, and devoted +mainly to agriculture, retained, as long as they desired it, the old +French system of law known as the Custom of Paris and the free exercise +of their religion. Like the Irish, they were strongly monarchical and +strongly conservative in feeling, and as impervious to the Republican +propaganda emanating from their American neighbours as the Catholic +Irish always at heart remained to the revolutionary principles of Wolfe +Tone's school. Unmolested in their habits and possessions, they +philosophically accepted the transference from the Bourbon to the +Hanoverian dynasty, and became an indispensable source of strength to +George III. when that monarch was using his German troops to coerce his +American subjects and his British troops to overawe the Ulster +Volunteers. + +In 1774, immediately before the outbreak of a war against which Ireland +was protesting, and in which, with the soundest justification, the +Irish-Americans, Catholic and Protestant, took such a prominent part +against the British arms, the Quebec Act was passed giving formal +statutory sanction to the Catholic religion, and setting up a nominated +legislative Council, whose members were subject to no religious test. In +Ireland it was not till six years later, and, as we have seen, by means +of precisely the same pressure--British fear of America--that the Irish +Protestant Volunteers obtained the abolition of the test for Dissenters, +while Catholics in Ireland were still little more than outlaws, and had +to wait for nearly sixty years for complete emancipation. The result of +the Quebec Act, together with the sympathetic administration of that +great Irishman, Sir Guy Carleton, was the firm allegiance of the French +Province in spite of an exceedingly formidable invasion, during the +whole of the American War, and even after the intervention of European +France. It is part of the dramatic irony of these occurrences that some +of the invading army was composed of Morgan's Irish-American riflemen, +and that one of the two joint leaders of the invasion was the +Irish-American, General Richard Montgomery, who fell at the unsuccessful +assault of Quebec on December 31, 1775. + +In spite of Burke's noble appeal in the House of Commons, toleration in +the abstract had nothing to do with the treatment of the French +Catholics. British Catholics in the neighbouring Prince Edward Island +were denied all civil rights in 1770, and only gained them in 1830. In +England, the Quebec Act with difficulty survived a storm of indignation, +in which even Chatham joined. The small minority of British settled in +Quebec and Montreal made vehement protests, while the American Congress +itself in 1774 committed the irreparable blunder of making the +establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Canada one of its +formally published grievances against Great Britain. When war broke out, +and the magnitude of the mistake was seen, efforts were made to seduce +the Canadians by hints of a coming British tyranny, but the Canadians +very naturally abode by their first impressions. + +The peace of 1783 and the final recognition of American Independence led +to results of far-reaching importance for the further development of the +British Empire. Out of the loss of the American Colonies came the +foundation of Australia and of British Canada. Before the war it had +been the custom to send convicts from the United Kingdom to penal +settlements in the American Colonies. The United States stopped this +traffic. Pitt's Government decided, after several years of doubt and +delay, to divert the stream of convicts to the newly acquired and still +unpopulated territory of New South Wales, made known by the voyages of +Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks. At the same period a very different +class of men, seeking a new home, were thrown upon the charity of the +British Government. These were the "United Empire Loyalists," as they +styled themselves, some 40,000 Americans, with a sprinkling of Irishmen +among them, such as Luke Carscallion, Peter Daly, Willet Casey, and John +Canniff,[20] who had fought on the Royalist side throughout the war, and +at the end of it found their fortunes ruined and themselves the objects +of keen resentment. Pitt, with a "total lack of Imperial imagination," +as Mr. Holland Rose puts it,[21] does not seem to have considered the +plan of colonizing Australia with a part of these men, 433 of whom were +reported to be living in destitution in London three years after the +war. No more alacrity was shown in relieving the distress of those still +in America. In 1788, however, a million and a quarter pounds were voted +by Parliament for relief, and large grants of land were made in Canada, +whither most of the Loyalists had already begun to emigrate. Some went +to the Maritime Provinces, notably to the region now known as New +Brunswick; a few went to the towns of the Quebec Province, for the +country lands on the lower reaches of the St. Lawrence were already +monopolized by the French "habitants"; the rest, estimated at 10,000, to +the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence and along the shores of the Lakes +Ontario and Erie, in short, to what we now know as the Province of +Ontario, and to what then became known as Upper Canada. + +From this moment the three Canadas gain sharp definition. To the west +Upper Canada, exclusively American or, as we must now say, British in +character; next to the east, and cutting off its neighbour from the sea, +the ancient Province of Lower Canada, predominantly French, with a +minority of British traders in the two towns Quebec and Montreal; last +of all the Maritime Provinces, small communities with an almost +independent history of their own, although, like Upper and Lower Canada, +they eventually presented a problem similar fundamentally to the Irish +problem on the other side of the Atlantic. Prince Edward Island is the +closest parallel, for, besides the Catholic disabilities of 1770, in +1767 the whole of its land had been granted away by ballot in a single +day to a handful of absentee English proprietors, who sublet to +occupiers without security of tenure, with the result that a land +question similar to that of Ireland arose, which inflamed society and +retarded the development of the island for a whole century. Ultimately, +moreover, statesmen were driven to an even more drastic +solution--compulsory and universal State-aided land purchase.[22] Before +the period we have now reached, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, +which was carved out of it, had been given rude systems of +representative Government, and New Brunswick, also at one time a part of +Nova Scotia, received a Constitution in 1784. + +The great question after the American War was how to govern the two +contiguous Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, the one newly settled by +men of British race and Protestant faith, the other also under the +British flag, but overwhelmingly French and Catholic, both, in the +critical half-century to come, to be reinforced by immigrants from the +Old World, and to a large extent from misgoverned Ireland. But let the +reader once and for all grasp this point, that, once out of Ireland, +there ceases, not immediately, but in course of time, to be any racial +or political distinction between the different classes of Irishmen, +whose antagonism at home, artificially provoked and fomented by the bad +form of government under which they lived, so often made Ireland itself +a very hell on earth. I want to dwell on this point in order to avoid +confusion when I speak of the bi-racial conditions of Lower Canada and +Ireland respectively. + +To return to the question of Government. The American Colonies were +lost. Here in Canada was an opportunity for a new Imperial policy, +better calculated to retain the affections of the colonists. Three +distinct problems were involved: + +1. Was French or Lower Canada, with its small minority of British, to be +given representative Government at all? + +2. If so, was it to be left as a separate unit, or was it to be +amalgamated in a Union with its neighbour, Upper Canada? + +3. Whichever course was taken, what was to be the relation between the +Home Government and Canada? + +All these questions arise in the case of Ireland itself, and the +parallel in each case is interesting. In Canada they were determined for +the space of half a century by the Constitutional Act of 1791, passed at +the period when Grattan's unreformed Parliament was hastening to its +fall, and Wolfe Tone was founding his Society of United Irishmen. Let us +take in turn the three questions posed above. + +1. The British minority in Lower Canada, supported by a corresponding +school in England, were strong for an undisguised British ascendancy, +without any recognition of the French. They urged, what was true, that +the French were unaccustomed to representative government, and implied, +what was neither true nor politic, that they could not, and ought not +to, be educated to it. If there was to be an Assembly at all, it should, +they claimed, be wholly British and Protestant, or, in the alternative, +the Protestant minority only should be represented at Westminster. In +other words, they wished either for the pre-Union Irish system or for +the post-Union Irish system, both of them, as time was just beginning to +prove, equally disastrous to the interests of Ireland. We are not +surprised to find these ideas supported by the Irishman Burke, in whom +horror of the French Revolution had destroyed the last particle of +Liberalism. If Pitt lacked "Imperial imagination," he knew more than +most of his contemporaries about the elementary principles of governing +white men. It was only a few years before that he had urged upon his +Irish Viceroy, Rutland, a reform of the Irish Parliament which might +have united the races and averted all the disasters to come, and in this +very year (1791) he was pressing forward the Catholic franchise in +Ireland. The French in Canada must, he said, be represented in a popular +Assembly equally with the British, and on the broadest possible +franchise, and they were. + +2. The next question was that of the union or separation of Upper and +Lower Canada. Here, and from the same underlying motive, the British +minority in Lower Canada were for the Union, partly on commercial +grounds, but mainly as a step in the direction of overcoming French +influence. Upper Canada, wholly British, was, on the whole, neutral. +Pitt, on high principle, again took correct ground. He did not, indeed, +foresee that separation, for geographical reasons, would cause certain +inconveniences; but he did understand--and experience in both Provinces +ultimately proved him right--that it was absolutely hopeless to try and +avert social and racial discord by artificially swamping the French +element. He declared, then, for the separation of the two Canadas into +two distinct Provinces. Note the beginnings of another, though a +distant, analogy with the relations of Ireland and Great Britain, +distant because the French at this time largely outnumbered the British +of both Provinces, and in after-years maintained something very near a +numerical equality. But the same underlying principle was involved. +Pitt, in the Legislative Union of Ireland and Great Britain nine years +later, constructed without geographical necessity, indeed, in defiance +of geography and humanity, the very system which, in a form by +comparison almost innocuous, he had condemned for Canada; but not, we +must in fairness remember, before doing his part at an earlier date to +arrive at a solution which, given a fair chance, would have rendered the +Union of Ireland and England unnecessary. + +3. So far, good. But there still remained a further question far +transcending the other in importance--What was to be the relation +between the Home Government and the new Colonies? Here all British +intellects, that of Fox alone excepted, were as much at a loss as ever. +One simple deduction was made from what had happened in America, namely, +that the new Colonies must not be forced to contribute to Imperial funds +by taxes levied from London. That claim had already been abandoned in +1778 by the Colonial Tax Repeal Act, which nevertheless expressly +reserved the King's right to levy "such duties as it may be expedient to +impose for the regulation of commerce," the sum so raised to be retained +for the use of the Colony. No one made the more comprehensive deduction, +even in the case of wholly British Upper Canada, that Colonial affairs +should be controlled by Colonial opinion, constitutionally ascertained, +and that the British Governor should act primarily through advisers +chosen by the majority of the people under his rule. We must bear in +mind that, had Grattan's Parliament been reformed, and the warring races +in Ireland been brought into harmony, it would still have had to pass +through the crucial phase of establishing its right to choose Ministers +by whose advice the Lord-Lieutenant should be guided, that is, if it +were to become a true Home Rule Parliament of the kind we aim at to-day. + +From the date of the Constitutional Act passed for Canada in 1791, it +took fifty-six troubled years and an armed rebellion in each Province to +establish the principle of what we call "responsible Government" for +Canada, and, through Canada, for the rest of the white Colonies of the +Empire. During these fifty-six years, which correspond in Irish history +to a period dating from the middle of Grattan's Parliament down to the +great Famine, ascendancies, with the symptoms of disease which always +attended ascendancies, grew up in Canada, as they had in Ireland, in +spite of conditions which were far more favourable in Canada to healthy +political growth. Canada started with this great advantage over Ireland, +that instead of a corrupt parody of a Parliament, each of her Provinces, +under the Constitutional Act of 1791, had a real popular Assembly, +elected without regard to race or religion. It was the Upper House or +Legislative Council, as it was called, that interposed the first +obstacle to the free working of popular institutions. In both Provinces +this Council was nominated by the Governor, and could be used, and was +naturally used, to represent minority interests and obstruct the popular +assembly. Fox had correctly prophesied that it would soon come "to +inspire hatred and contempt." But he did not mean that such a chamber +was in itself an insuperable bar to harmony. Nominated or hereditary +second chambers are not necessarily inconsistent with popular +government, provided that the Executive Government itself possesses the +confidence of the representative Assembly. Under that lever, obstruction +eventually gives way. But this idea of a tie of confidence between the +Governors and the governed was exactly what was lacking. + +The Executive Council in each Province was also chosen by the British +Governor or Lieutenant-Governor, generally a military man, from persons +representing either his own purely British policy or the ideas of a +privileged colonial minority, and without regard to the wishes or +opinions of the Colonial Assembly, just as the Executive officers in +Ireland, both before and after the Union, were chosen out of +corresponding elements by the Lord-Lieutenant or Chief Secretary, acting +under the orders of the British Government, and without any regard to +the wishes or opinions of the majority of Irishmen. Behind all, in +remote Downing Street stood the British Government, in the shape of the +Colonial Office for Canada and the Irish Office for Ireland, both +working in dense ignorance of the real needs of the countries for which +they were responsible, and permeated with prejudice and pedantry. To +complete the parallel, there was now a foreign Power in the close +neighbourhood of each dependency, the United States in the case of +Canada, France in the case of Ireland, both of them Republican Powers, +and both able and willing to take advantage of disaffection in the +dependencies in order to further a quarrel with the Mother Country. We +have seen the results in Ireland. Let us now observe the results in +Canada, taking especial care to notice that an ascendancy Government +gives rise to the same type of evil in a uni-racial as in a bi-racial +community. + +Let us glance first at what happened in Upper Canada, which was +uni-racial, that is, composed of settlers from the United Kingdom +(including Ireland) and America. Here the original settlers, the "United +Empire Loyalists" from America, formed from the first, and maintained +for half a century, an ascendancy of wealth and religion over the +incoming settlers, who soon constituted the majority of the population. +As in Ireland, though in a degree small by comparison, there was a land +question and a religious question, closely related to one another. +Happily, it was not a case of robbery, but of simple monopoly. +Excessively large grants of land, nine-tenths of which remained +uncultivated, were obtained by the original settlers, most of whom were +Episcopalian in faith, and, under the Act of 1791, further tracts of +enormous extent, which for the most part lay waste and idle, were set +apart in each township, under the name of "Clergy Reserves" for the +Episcopalian Church. Since the majority of the incoming settlers were +Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, or Roman Catholics, many of them +from the Protestant and Catholic parts of Ireland, some from America, +some even from Germany, these conditions caused intense irritation, +checking both the development of the country and the growth of solid +character among the colonists. Absentee ownership was a grave economic +evil, though happily it was not complicated and embittered by a vicious +system of tenure. Education suffered severely through the diversion of +the income from public lands to private purposes. + +The ascendancy was maintained on lines familiar in Ireland--through the +mutual dependence of the colonial minority and the Home Government +acting through its Governor. A few leading Episcopalian families from +among the United Empire Loyalists, installed at Toronto, with the +support of a succession of High Tory Lieutenant-Governors, monopolized +the Executive Council, the Legislative Council, the Bench, the Bar, and +all offices of profit, denying a Canadian career to the vast majority of +Upper Canadians, just as Irishmen were excluded from an Irish career. +For a long time the Assembly itself, which retained its original +Constitution long after the influx of immigrants had rendered necessary +its enlargement on a new electoral basis, was a subject of monopoly +also. Even when enlarged in 1821 it was helpless against the nominated +Council and Executive, backed by Downing Street. The oligarchy came to +be known by the name of the "family compact," and, as the reader will +observe, it bore a close resemblance in form to the "undertaker" system +in Ireland before the Union, and to the monopoly of patronage obtained +by certain families, notably the Beresfords. + +While the Colony was still small, the system worked tolerably well; but +from the second decade of the nineteenth century onwards, when the +population grew from 150,000 to 250,000 in 1832, and to 500,000 a few +years later, and the Episcopalians sank into a numerical minority as low +as a quarter, troubles of the Irish type became proportionately acute. +The Colony was in reality perfectly content with its position under the +Crown, and in the war with America in 1812 all classes and creeds united +to repel invasion with enthusiasm. One of the prominent leaders was an +Irishman, James Fitzgibbon, and a poor Irish private, James O'Hara, won +fame by refusing to surrender at the capture of Toronto Fort. As usual, +however, a fictitious standard of "loyalty," which, in fact, meant +privilege, was set up, obscuring those questions of good government +which were the only real matters at issue in Canada, as in Ireland. +There were Republican immigrants of many denominations from America, +Radicals of Cobbett's school from England and Scotland, tenants of a +democratic turn from Ulster, and a growing stream of Catholic cottiers +flying from the "clearances" and tithe war in other Irish Provinces. All +these classes of men made excellent settlers, and only wanted fair and +equal treatment to make them perfectly peaceable citizens. To the +official oligarchy, however, even their moderate leaders came to be +viewed as rebels, and were often subjected to imprisonment or to +banishment. + +Among others William Gourlay, a Scotsman, Stephen Willcocks and Francis +Collins, Irishmen, all three perfectly respectable reformers, suffered +in this way. Bidwell, the great Robert Baldwin, and other good men were +rendered powerless for good. As invariably happens in any part of the +world where a course is pursued which estranges moderate men and +embitters extreme men, agitators came to the front lacking that +self-control and sense of responsibility which the sobering education of +office alone can give, and generally ruining themselves while they +benefit humanity at large. Chief of these was W.L. Mackenzie, a +Presbyterian Scot from Dundee. All this man really wanted was what +exists to-day as a matter of course in all self-governing +countries--responsible government. He even conceived that great idea of +the Confederation of British North America, which came to birth in 1867. +Thwarted in his attacks on the oligarchy, he degenerated into violent +courses, and ultimately organized, or rather was provoked into +organizing, the rebellion of 1837. The grievances which led to this +outbreak were genuine and severe, and were all in course of time +admitted and redressed. One, the powerlessness of the Assembly, owing to +the control by the Executive of annual sums sufficient to pay the +official expenses of Government, corresponded to a pre-Union Irish +grievance, and was remedied by an Act of 1831. Most of the other +grievances were incurable by constitutional effort. They may be found +summarized in the "Seventh Report of Grievances," a temperate and +truthful document drawn up by a Committee of the Assembly in 1835. The +huge unsettled Clergy Reserves and Crown Lands were the worst concrete +abuse, and matters had just then been aggravated by the sudden +establishment of scores of sinecure rectories. Jobbery, +maladministration, and the dependence of the judges on the Executive +were other complaints; but the main assault was made quite rightly on +the form of the Colonial Government, which rendered peaceful reform of +any abuse as impossible as in Ireland, and the cardinal claim was that +the Executive should act, not under the dictation of Downing Street, of +an irresponsible Governor, or of a narrow colonial oligarchy, but in +accordance with popular opinion. Mackenzie's rebellion of 1837 was a no +more formidable affair than the similar efforts in Ireland made under +incomparably greater provocation by Emmett in 1803 and Smith O'Brien in +1848, and was as easily suppressed; but, unlike the Irish outbreaks, and +in conjunction with a revolt arising in the same year and from similar +causes in the adjoining Province of Lower Canada, it led to a complete +change of system. + +In Lower Canada the same preposterous system of government was +aggravated by the presence of the two races, French and English. Yet +there was nothing inherently dangerous or unwholesome about this +situation. The French, like the Catholics in Ireland, never showed the +smallest tendency towards religious intolerance, nor were they less +loyal at heart than the Radicals of Upper Canada or the Tories of either +Province. They took the same energetic part in repelling the American +invasion of 1812, and produced at least one remarkable leader in the +person of Colonel Salaberry, who commanded the French-Canadian +Voltigeurs. Like their co-religionists in Ireland, they were +temperamentally averse to Republicanism in any shape, whether on the +American model over the border or on the model of revolutionary France, +where Republicanism since 1793 was anti-Catholic and the result of +miseries and oppressions as bad as those in Ireland; whence, moreover, +many priests and nobles fled from persecution to Lower Canada. As in +eighteenth-century Ireland, we find that the Roman Catholic clergy, the +_seigneurs_ or aristocrats, and the _habitants_ or peasants, were of a +Conservative cast, throwing their weight, often even against their own +interests, into the scale of the established Government, while the +lawyers and journalists alone produced determined agitators. The racial +cleavage, moreover, as in Ireland, was artificially accentuated by the +political system. There was in reality a strong community of interest +between the British lower class and the French lower class against the +tyranny of an official clique, and to the end a substantial number of +Englishmen worked with the French for reform; but with the failure of +their efforts came that inevitable tightening of the bonds of race, even +against interest, which we have seen operating with such lamentable +effect in Ireland. And, as in Ireland, we find the best instincts of +the people withered and perverted into rebellion by "Fitzgibbonism," the +policy of distrust and coercion. + +The British official ascendancy, supreme from the first, became +extraordinarily rigid. The Executive Council and Legislative Council +were almost entirely British, the Assembly overwhelmingly French. There +were no regular heads of departments, so that the Governor had no +skilled advice, much less responsible advice. The Councils blocked all +legislation they disliked, and for more than forty years, by means of +unrestricted control over a large part of the provincial revenues, were +able to defy the Assembly. It will be observed that, although Ireland +never had anything worth calling an Assembly, her structure both before +and after the Union was essentially the same, in that Irish public +opinion, whether voiced by the Volunteers against the unreformed +Parliament or after the Union by the Nationalist party at Westminster, +was powerless. The existence of a popular Assembly in Canada only made +the anomalies more obvious. + +There were, of course, marked divergencies of character and less marked +divergencies of interest between the French majority and the British +minority in Canada. The French, by comparison, were a backward and +conservative race, less well educated and less progressive and energetic +both in agriculture and commerce than the British. On the other hand, +subsequent experience showed that, under free constitutional government, +British intelligence, wealth, and energy would, here as elsewhere, have +preserved their full legitimate influence. Under a system which +throttled French ideas and aspirations, and treated the most harmless +popular movements as treasonable machinations, deadlock and anarchy were +in the long run inevitable. + +The popular demands were much the same as those in Upper Canada: control +of the purse, the independence of the judges, an elective Legislative +Council, and a curtailment of the arbitrary powers and privileges of the +Executive, which led to gross jobbery, favouritism, and extravagance. As +in Upper Canada, the greatest practical grievance, though it assumed a +somewhat different form, was the disposal of the public lands. Here, +too, there were extensive and undeveloped Clergy Reserves for the +Episcopalian Church, as well as free grants on a large scale to +speculators. The estates of the Jesuit Order had been confiscated, so +that disputes about their disposal were tinged with religious +bitterness. But most of the friction over the land question came from +the operations of a chartered land company, which, under the protection +of the Government, and with financial and political support from +England, dealt with the unsettled land in a manner very unfair and often +corrupt, and promoted here, as in Upper Canada and Ireland, absentee +ownership. + +The popular agitation ran the same course as in Upper Canada, reached +its crisis at the same moment, threw into prominence the same types of +men, moderate and extreme, and produced the same waste of good human +material and distortion of human character, both in the ascendant and +the subject classes. As Sir John Cockburn tells us in his "Political +Annals of Canada" (p. 177), some of the most incendiary speakers and +writers (in 1836) were "most able and worthy men, who in the subsequent +days of tranquillity occupied most prominent and distinguished positions +in the public service, revered as loyal, true, and able statesmen by all +classes." The popular movement was by no means wholly French. A Scot, +John Neilson; an Englishman, Wilfred Nelson; and an Irish journalist, +Dr. O'Callaghan, were prominent members of a kind of Radical party; but +the ablest and most influential among the agitators, and in every +respect more admirable than Mackenzie, was the Frenchman, Louis +Papineau, who first became Speaker of the Assembly in 1817, and retained +that high position until the verge of the rebellion of 1837. By no means +devoid of superficial faults, but eloquent, honest, accomplished and +adored by his compatriots, here was a man who, if he had been given +reasonable scope for his talents, and steadied by official +responsibility, would have been a tower of strength to the Colony and +the British connection. He corresponds in position and aims, and to a +certain extent in character and gifts, to his great Irish contemporary, +O'Connell. But O'Connell was too conservative to produce great results. +Papineau, dashing himself in vain for twenty years against the +entrenched camp of the ascendancy, finally degenerated, like Mackenzie, +into a commonplace rebel. + +The phases through which the agitation passed before it reached this +disastrous point need only a brief review. Naturally enough, owing to +the bi-racial conditions, friction had arisen earlier in Lower than in +Upper Canada, yet the first recognition of the flagrant defects of the +Constitution was not made till 1828, when a Committee of the British +House of Commons published a Report which, though its recommendations +were mild and inadequate, was in effect a censure of the whole political +system of the Province and an admission of the justice of the agitation. +There was no result for four years, while matters went from bad to worse +in the Colony. At last, in 1832, under an Act similar to that passed for +Upper Canada, all the provincial revenues were placed under the control +of the Assembly in return for the voting of a fixed Civil List. This +well-meant half-measure made matters worse, because it left the Assembly +just as powerless as before over the details of legislation and +administration, while giving it the power to paralyze the Government by +refusing all, instead of only part, of the supplies. This it proceeded +to do, and in the next five years large deficits were piled up, and the +Colony became insolvent. + +Meanwhile, in February, 1834, a year before the publication of the +"Seventh Report of Grievances" in Upper Canada, and three months before +O'Connell's celebrated motion in the House of Commons for the Repeal of +the Union between England and Ireland, the Assembly of Lower Canada, at +Papineau's instance, passed the equally celebrated "Ninety-two +Resolutions." Bombastic and diffuse, like parts of O'Connell's speech, +this historic document nevertheless was as true in all really essential +respects as Mackenzie's manifesto and as O'Connell's tremendous +indictment of the system of Government in Ireland. All three men, +O'Connell with far the most justification, demanded the same thing, good +government for their respective countries under a responsible Parliament +and Ministry. They all occasionally used wild language, O'Connell the +least wild. O'Connell, who nine years later deliberately quenched a +popular revolt he could have headed, failed in his aim as completely as +Tone, Emmett, and Smith O'Brien, who pressed their efforts to the point +of violence. Mackenzie and Papineau, who took to arms, succeeded in +their aim. + +The crisis in Lower Canada was precipitated, and, indeed, provoked, by a +challenge thrown out in March, 1837, from the British House of Commons, +where, at Lord John Russell's instance, the Ten Resolutions were agreed +to, which amounted in effect to a denial of all the colonial claims and +a declaration of war upon those who made them. Papineau had to eat his +words or make them good, and he chose the latter course. His +insurrection was arranged in concert with that of the Upper Province, +broke out simultaneously in the winter of 1837, and was extinguished +with little difficulty. The men who made it suffered. Canada and the +Empire profited. Both Papineau and Mackenzie, following the precedent of +Wolfe Tone with France, endeavoured with little success to engage +American sympathy and the aid of her army, though Canada had as little +desire for American rule as Ireland had for French rule. + +Let us remark, as an interesting fact for those who imagine that +Irishmen are always instinctively on the side of turbulence and +disorder, that the Irish immigrants who poured into Canada at the +average annual rate of 20,000 in the years--terrible years in +Ireland--preceding the rebellions,[23] acted much as we might expect. In +the Lower Province, following the lead of the French Catholic hierarchy, +they declared in November, 1837, against Papineau's party, and thus +strengthened the hands of the Government when the crisis approached.[24] +In the Upper Province Catholics were strongly on the side of reform, but +took no part in the rebellion. Orangemen in both Provinces, as we might +guess, sided as strongly with the ascendancy parties, but colonial air +seems to have taken some of the theological venom out of Orangeism. If +Charles Buller is to be trusted, some Catholics joined the societies in +Upper Canada, which were more Tory than religious, and the healths of +William of Orange and the Catholic Bishop Macdonnell were drunk in +impartial amity.[25] + +In the meantime, three of the four outlying Provinces of North +America--Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island--where the +same form of Constitution prevailed as in Upper and Lower Canada, had +been passing through a similar phase of misgovernment and agitation +during the previous thirty years. Each suffered under a little +monopolist ascendancy, called by the same name, "the family compact," +and sustained, against the prevailing sentiment and interest, by the +British Governor, and in each had arisen, or was arising, the same loud +demand for responsible government. Samuel Wilmot in New Brunswick, +Joseph Howe in Nova Scotia, were the best-known spokesmen. There was no +violence, but a growing dislocation. In five Provinces of North America, +therefore, the Colonial Government had broken down or was tottering, and +from exactly the same cause as in Ireland, though under provocation +infinitely less grave. For the moment, however, attention was +concentrated upon the Canadas, where, as a result of the rebellion, the +Constitution of Lower Canada was suspended early in 1838. In the summer +of 1838 Lord Durham, the Radical peer, was sent out by Melbourne's +Ministry as Governor-General, with provisionally despotic powers, and +with instructions to advise upon a new form of government. + +Before we come to Durham's proposals, let us pause and examine the state +of home opinion on the Irish and Colonial questions. The people of Great +Britain at large had no opinion at all. They were ignorant both of +Canada and Ireland, and had been engaged, and, indeed, were still +engaged, in a political struggle of their own which absorbed all their +energies. The Chartist movement in 1838 was assuming grave proportions. +The Reform, won in 1832 under the menace of revolution and in the midst +of shocking disorders, was in reality a first step toward the domestic +Home Rule that Ireland and the five Provinces of North America were +clamouring for. Tory statesmen were quite alive to this political fact, +and condemned all the political movements, British, Irish, and Colonial, +indiscriminately and on the same broad anti-democratic grounds. The Duke +of Wellington, who was not a friend of the Reform Act, and had only +adopted Catholic Emancipation in order to avoid civil war in Ireland, +speaking about Canada in the House of Lords on January 18, 1838, coupled +together the United States, British North America, and Ireland as +dismal examples of the folly of concession to popular demands. Pointing +to the results of the Canada Act of 1831, to which I have already +alluded, and which gave the Assemblies control of the provincial +revenue, and with an eye, no doubt, on the tithe war barely at an end in +Ireland, he said: "Let noble lords learn from Canada and our other +dominions in North America what it is to hold forth what are called +popular rights, but which are not popular rights here or elsewhere, and +what occasion is given thereby to perpetuate a system of agitation which +ends in insurrection and rebellion." + +The Whig statesmen who, if we except Peel's short Administration of +1834-35, were in power from 1830 to 1841, though by no means democratic +men, were clear enough about Reform for Great Britain, but nearly as +ignorant and quite as wrong about Ireland and Canada as the Tories. The +only prominent Parliamentarian who, as after events proved, correctly +diagnosed and prescribed for the disease in both countries was +O'Connell. Not fully alive to the Irish analogy, but correct from first +to last about Canada, was a small group of independent Radicals, of whom +Roebuck, Hume, Grote, Molesworth, and Leader were the principal +representatives. After the insurrections in Canada came John Stuart +Mill, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Charles Buller, and with them Lord Durham +himself. + +No one can understand either Irish or Colonial history without reading +the debates of this period in the Lords and Commons on Canada and +Ireland. Alternating with one another with monotonous regularity, they +nevertheless leave an impression of an extraordinary lack of +earnestness, sympathy, and knowledge, and an extraordinary degree of +prejudice and of bigotry in the Parliament to whose care for better or +worse the welfare of nearly ten millions of British citizens outside +Great Britain was entrusted. Save for an occasional full-dress debate at +some peculiarly critical juncture, the debates were ill-attended. The +prevailing sentiment seems to have been that Ireland and Canada, +leavened by a few respectable "loyalists" and officials, on the whole, +were two exceedingly mutinous and embarrassing possessions, which, +nevertheless, it was the duty of every self-respecting Briton to dragoon +into obedience. Both dependencies were assumed to be equally expensive, +though, in fact, Ireland, as we know now, was showing a handsome profit +at the time, whereas Canada was costing a quarter of a million a year. +For the rest, the pride of power tempered a sort of fatalistic apathy. +In the case of Ireland the element of pure selfishness was stronger, +because the immense vested interests, lay and clerical, in Irish land +were strongly represented. The proximity of Ireland, too, rendered +coercion more obvious and easy. Otherwise, her case was the same as that +of Canada. "The Canadas are endeavouring to escape from us, America has +escaped us, but Ireland shall not escape us," said an English member to +O'Connell just before the Repeal debate of 1834. Such was the current +view. + +Yet, as in the case of Ireland and of the lost American Colonies, the +materials for knowledge of Canada were considerable. Petitions poured +in; Committees and Commissions were appointed, and made reports which +were consigned to oblivion. Roebuck, one of the small Radical group, was +himself a Lower Canadian by birth, and acted as agent at Westminster for +the popular party in that Province. He was as impotent as O'Connell, the +spokesman of the Irish popular party. If the Colonial Office was not +quite the "den of peculation and plunder" which Hume called it in +1838,[26] it was an obscure and irresponsible department, where jobbery +was as rife as in Dublin Castle. In the ten years of colonial crisis +(1828-1838), there were eight different Colonial Secretaries and six +Irish Chief Secretaries. + +Over and above all this apathy and arrogance was the perfectly genuine +incapacity to comprehend that idea of responsible government which even +the most hot-headed and erratic of the colonial agitators did +instinctively comprehend. Until Durham had at last opened Lord John +Russell's eyes, the great Whig statesman was as positive and explicit as +the Tories, Wellington and Stanley, in declaring that it was utterly +impossible for the Monarch's Representative overseas to govern otherwise +than by instructions from home and through Ministers appointed by +himself in the name of the King. One constitutional King ruled over +Great Britain, Canada, and Ireland. He could not be advised by two sets +of Ministers. The thing was not only an unthinkably absurd nullification +of the whole Imperial theory, but, in practice, would destroy and +dissolve the Empire. William IV. himself told Lord Melbourne that it was +his "fixed resolution never to permit any despatch to be sent ... that +can for a moment hold out the most distant idea of the King ever +permitting the question even to be entertained by His Majesty's +confidential servants of a most remote bearing relative to any change of +the appointment of the King's Councils in the numerous Colonies." Lord +Stanley said, in 1837, that the "double responsibility" was impossible, +that there must either be separation or no responsible government, and +that it was "no longer a question of expediency but of Empire." Lord +John Russell, polished, sober, scorning to descend to the mere vulgar +abuse of the colonials which disfigured the utterances of many of his +opponents, struggling visibly to reconcile Liberalism with Empire, +nevertheless arrived at the same conclusion. In a debate of March 6, for +example, in the same year, in proposing the defiant Resolutions which +provoked the rebellion in Canada, he argued at length that a responsible +Colonial Ministry was "incompatible with the relations of a Mother +Country and a Colony," and would be "subversive of the power of the +British Crown," and again, on December 22, that it meant "independence." +O'Connell rightly replied to the former speech that Russell and his +followers were supporting "principles that had been the fruitful source +of civil war, dissension, and distractions in Ireland for centuries." +The Radical group pushed home the Irish parallel. Hume quoted, as +applicable to Canada, Fox's saying: "I would have the whole Irish +Government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices, and I firmly +believe ... that the more she is under Irish Government the more she +will be bound to English interests." Molesworth declared, what was +perfectly true at that moment of passion and folly, that his extreme +political opponents wanted to make the reconquest of Ireland a precedent +for the reconquest of Canada. + +It would repay the reader to turn back from this debate to the Irish +Repeal Debate of three years earlier, and listen to Sir Robert Peel +stating as one of the "truths which be too deep for argument," that the +Repeal of the Union "must lead to the dismemberment of this great +Empire, must make Great Britain a fourth-rate Power, and Ireland a +savage wilderness," which, as a matter of fact, it was at the very time +he was speaking, after thirty years of the Legislative Union, and seven +hundred years of irresponsible government. We must listen to him +claiming that the beneficent and impartial British Government was +"saving Ireland from civil war" between its own "warring sects," +whereas, in fact, it was that Government which had brought those warring +sects into being, which had fomented and exploited their dissensions, +which had provoked the rebellion of 1798, and by its shameful neglect +and partiality in the succeeding generation had flung Ireland into a +social condition hardly distinguishable from "civil war." And we must +realize that closely similar arguments, with special stress on the right +of taxation, had been used for the coercion of the American Colonies, +and that exactly the same arguments, founded on the same inversion of +cause and effect, were used to defend the coercion of Canada. There, +also, the Fitzgibbonist doctrine of revenge and oppression by a majority +vested with power was freely used, even by Lord John Russell, in his +speech of March 6, 1837, and of December 22 in the same year, when he +spoke of the "deadly animosity" of the French and "of the wickedness of +abandoning the British to proscription, loss of property, and probably +of lives." He ignored the fact that the same state of anarchy had been +reached in uni-racial Upper Canada as in bi-racial Canada, and that the +"loyalists" in both cases were not only in the same state of unreasoning +alarm for their vested rights, but, in the spirit of the Ulstermen of +that day and ever since, were threatening to "cut the painter," and +declare for annexation to the United States if their ascendancy were not +sustained by the Home Government. Then, as to-day, the ascendant +minority were supported in their threats by a section of British +politicians. Lord Stanley's speech of March 8, 1837, where he boasted +that the "loyal minority of wealth, education, and enterprise" would +protect themselves, and, if necessary, call in the United States, is +being matched in speeches of to-day. In all the debates of the period it +is interesting to see the ignorance which prevailed about the troubles +in Upper Canada. The racial question in Lower Canada, owing to the +analogy with Ireland, was seized on to the exclusion of the underlying +and far more important political question in both Provinces. + +Against the policy of the two great political parties in England the +little group of Radicals struggled manfully, and in the long run not in +vain, although for years they had to submit to insult and contumely in +their patriotic efforts to expose the vices of the colonial +administration and to avert the rebellion they foresaw in the Canadas. +What they feared, with only too good cause, was that the American and +Irish precedents would be followed, and war made for the coercion of the +Canadas, to be followed, if successful, by a still more despotic form of +government, which would in its turn provoke a new revolt. Rather than +that such a catastrophe should take place, they went, rightly, to the +extreme point of saying that an "amicable separation" should be +arranged, maintaining, what is indisputable, that the claims of humanity +should supersede the claims of possession. With Russell himself +declaring till the eleventh hour that responsible government was out of +the question because it meant "separation," they were quite justified in +demanding that separation, if indeed inevitable, should come about by +agreement, not as the possible result of a fratricidal war. For such a +war, though Russell could not see it until Durham made him see it, was +the only alternative to the grant of responsible government. But the +Radicals never used this argument unless circumstances forced them to. +Molesworth, in a debate of March 6, 1838, denounced the prevailing view +of the Colonies, insisted that we should be proud of them and study +their interests, that reform, not separation, should be our aim. The +Radicals were fully aware of the alternatives, and were unwearied in +pointing out the justice and policy, in the Imperial interests, of +acceding to the colonial popular demands. Grote had expressed the truth +in the December debate of 1837, when he implored the House "not to use a +tone of triumph at the superior power of England," but to remember that +the colonists, "though freemen, like ourselves," desired to remain, "if +they could do so with honour, in connection with England as the Mother +Country." He was followed by a gentleman named Inglis, who said that "it +was in Canada as in Ireland," a faction called itself Canada, and that +we must bring "back the colonists," like the Irish, "to subordination." + +Roebuck, who led the Radicals in Canadian matters, had some of the +faults of Papineau and Mackenzie; yet posterity should give him and his +comrades credit for a constructive Imperialism which the great men of +his day lacked. It is now known that he and Sir William Molesworth +powerfully influenced Durham's policy. In a paper he drew up at Durham's +request on the eve of that nobleman's departure for Canada he sketched a +plan, imperfect in some details, but wise in broad conception, for +pacifying the Canadas, and went further in elaborating a scheme, also +defective, for the Confederation of British North America under the +Crown on the lines conceived by the despised demagogue, Mackenzie.[27] +But the two men who, by influencing Durham, probably did most to save +Canada for the Empire and to lay the foundations of the present Imperial +structure, were Charles Buller, the Radical M.P., and Edward Gibbon +Wakefield, both of whom accompanied the new Governor-General to Canada, +and who are generally believed to have inspired, if they did not +actually write, the greater part of the celebrated Report which became +the Magna Charta of the self-governing Colonies of the Empire. + +A word about the events which ended in the publication of this Report. +Durham reached Canada at the end of May, 1838, and in November was +recalled in disgrace for exceeding--strange as it seems!--the almost +absolute powers temporarily entrusted to him. He was an extraordinary +mixture of a despot and a democrat, an extreme Radical in politics, an +autocrat in manners, as vain and tactless as he was generous and +sincere, making bitter enemies and warm friends in turn. He began by +winning and ended by estranging almost every class in both Provinces of +Canada, and returned to England to all appearances a spent and +extinguished meteor. There is some truth, perhaps, in Greville's +observation that, had he been "plain John Lambton," he would never have +been chosen for Canada. It is certain that those who sent him there +little dreamed of the consequences of their action. Lord Melbourne, the +Prime Minister, in a letter to the Queen, charged him with magnifying +the Canadian troubles "in order to give greater _eclat_ to his own +departure."[28] Still, he did his work of investigation faithfully, and +formed his conclusions sanely, and there were plain men of greater +ability at his elbow in the persons of Wakefield and Buller, by whose +advice he was wise enough to be guided. All opinion was against him when +news came of his recall, and even Roebuck was denouncing him in the +_Spectator_ for his autocratic excesses; but a brilliant article by John +Stuart Mill in the _Westminster Review_, pleading for time and +confidence, arrested the tide of obloquy. + +Durham's long Report, and the events which followed it, ought to be +studied carefully by every voter, however lowly, who has a voice in +deciding the fate of Irish Home Rule. After an exhaustive discussion of +the causes of disorder in Canada, Durham made two recommendations, the +first of incalculable importance, and proved by subsequent experience to +be right; the second of minor consequence, and proved by subsequent +experience to be wrong. + +The first was that responsible government should be inaugurated both in +Canada and in the Maritime Provinces of North America, whose +constitutional troubles Durham also discussed. His proposal was that the +Governor should govern in accordance with advice given by Colonial +Ministers in whom the popular Assembly reposed confidence, and who, +through that Assembly, were in touch with popular opinion; for it was to +the strangulation of popular opinion that Durham attributed all the +disorders and disasters of the past. This recommendation was eventually +adopted, not in the Act subsequently passed, but by instructions to the +Governors concerned; instructions which were first interpreted in the +full liberal spirit by Lord Elgin in 1847. The Maritime Provinces at +various dates and under various Governors received full responsible +government by 1854. Responsible government proved the salvation of +Canada and the Empire, as it would have proved, if given the chance, the +salvation of Ireland and a source of immensely enhanced strength to the +Empire. + +The second and less important recommendation, afterwards embodied in the +Act of 1840, was the Union of the two Provinces of Upper and Lower +Canada. Here Lord Durham, misled unhappily by the Irish precedent, fell +into an error. During his visit to Canada he came near to accepting +that higher conception of a Federal Union with local Home Rule for each +Province, outlined by Roebuck and Mackenzie, and eventually consummated +thirty years later. When he came home to London he made a _volte face_, +rejecting the Federal idea and accepting its antitype, that Legislative +and Administrative Union of the two Provinces which had been rejected by +Pitt in 1791. There were, of course, economic arguments for Union apart +from the racial factor; but they do not seem to have been decisive with +Durham. At the last moment he gave way to a dread of predominant French +influence in Lower Canada, similar at bottom to his dread of the +unchecked influence of the British minority. While he feared that the +latter, if let alone, would inaugurate a reign of terror, he added also: +"Never again will the present generation of French-Canadians yield a +loyal submission to a British Government." The argument is inconsistent +with the whole spirit of the Report, which attributes the friction in +both Provinces to bad political institutions. It is probable that Durham +was really more influenced by the quite reasonable recognition that the +French were relatively backward in civilization and ideas. He sought, +therefore, both to disarm them politically and to anglicize them +socially, by amalgamating their political system with that of wholly +British Upper Canada. His calculation was that in a joint assembly the +British would have a small but sufficient majority. The estimated +population of Lower Canada was 550,000, of whom 450,000 were French, and +100,000 British and Irish; that of Upper Canada 400,000, all British and +Irish. That is to say, that in both Provinces together there was a +British and Irish majority of 100,000. The calculation over-estimated +the British element, but in the event this mistake proved to be +immaterial. Though Durham himself appears to have intended +representation to be in strict accordance with population, the Union +Act, passed in 1840, allotted an equal number of representatives in the +Joint Assembly to each of the old Provinces. The assumption here was +that the British Members from Upper Canada would unite with those of old +Lower Canada to vote down the French, just as the Ulster Protestants +voted with English members to vote down the Irish majority. + +In practice the Union, after lasting twenty-six years, eventually broke +down. Durham's fear of French disloyalty proved to be as groundless as +his ideal of complete anglicization was futile. It was neither +necessary, sensible, nor possible to extinguish French sentiment, and +human nature triumphed over this half-hearted effort to apply in +dilution the medicine of Fitzgibbonism to the Colonies. Little harm was +done, because the introduction of responsible government, far +transcending the Union in importance, worked irresistibly for good. +Parties did not run wholly on racial lines, but racialism was encouraged +by the equal representation of the two Provinces in the Assembly, in +spite of the greater growth of population in the Upper Province. The +system was unhealthy, and at last produced a state of deadlock, in which +two exactly equal parties were balanced, and a stable Government +impossible. When that point was reached, men began to observe the strong +and supple Constitution of the adjacent United States, and to recognize +that a politically feeble Canada was courting an absorption from that +quarter which all Canadians disliked. The Legislative Union was +dissolved by the mutual consent of the Provinces with the approval of +the Mother Country, and in 1867, under the British North America Act, +the Federal Union was formed which exists in such strength and stability +to-day. Fear of French disloyalty or tyranny was a night-mare of the +past, even with the British minority in Lower Canada. It was realized +that French national sentiment was perfectly consistent with racial +harmony under the British flag. Upper Canada became Ontario, Lower +Canada Quebec. Each Province reserved a local autonomy for itself, and +each at the same moment voluntarily surrendered certain high powers to a +supreme centralized Government, in which both had confidence. Such a +political system is capable of indefinite expansion. Nova Scotia and New +Brunswick joined the Federation at the outset, Prince Edward Island and +British Columbia a little later, and were followed in turn by the +successively developed Provinces which now form the united and powerful +Dominion of Canada. + +Turn back to Ireland and weigh well the analogy. _Mutatis mutandis_, +almost every paragraph of the Durham Report applied with greater force +to the Ireland of his day. The ascendancy of a caste and creed minority +in Upper Canada; of a race minority in Lower Canada; "the conflict of +races, not of principles"; the consequent obliteration of natural +political divisions, and the substitution of unnatural and vindictive +antagonisms demoralizing both sides to every quarrel; the universal +disgust with and distrust of the British Government, though for reasons +diametrically opposite; the hopelessness of true reforms; the +perpetuation of abuses; the stagnation of trade and agriculture; the +re-emigration to America, and the abuses of a Church Establishment with +endowments from sources by right public--all these phenomena and many +others had their counterpart in Ireland. Some have disappeared. The +Church is disestablished. The land question is on the way to settlement. +The old ascendancy is mitigated. But many of the political, and all the +psychological, features of the situation which Durham described do, +alas! exist to-day in Ireland. Ireland, like the Canada of 1838, is a +land of bewildering paradox. There is a similarly unwholesome arrest of +free political life, the same unnatural division of parties, the same +suppression of moderate opinion, and the same inevitable maintenance of +a Home Rule agitation, harmful in itself, because it retards the country +and accentuates for the time being the very divisions it seeks to cure, +but absolutely necessary for the final salvation of Ireland. Durham, in +the case of Canada, saw the truth, and swept into the limbo of +discredited bogies the old figments of the coercionists. In a singularly +noble and profound passage (p. 229), revealing the ethical basis on +which his philosophy rested, he declared that even if the political +freedom of the Colony were to lead in the distant future to her +separation from the Empire, she nevertheless had an indefeasible moral +right to the blessings of freedom; but he prophesied correctly that the +connection with the Empire "would only become more durable and +advantageous by having more of equality, of freedom, and of local +administration." + +If only Irish and British Unionists would realize that these words came +from a profound knowledge of human nature in the mass, and are +applicable to Irishmen in Ireland just as much as to Irish, British, +French, and Dutch in the Colonies! + +The tenacity of the old superstition is extraordinary, and we can see it +in the case of Canada. It remains a wonder to this day how responsible +government was ever introduced. There can be no question that the Act of +1840 only secured a smooth passage because, in providing for the Union +of the French and British Provinces, it represented a superficial +analogy to that Union of Britain and Ireland which had paralyzed Irish +aspirations. Durham himself had actually quoted both the Irish and +Scotch Unions as successful expedients for "compelling the obedience of +a refractory population," and thus arrived at the outstanding and +solitary defect of his otherwise noble scheme. And O'Connell, in a +debate upon the Report on June 3, 1839, opposed the Canadian Union for +Irish reasons, and in language which after-experience proved to be +perfectly correct. Happily, as we have seen, the defect was small and +curable, because the analogy with Ireland, where there was no +responsible, but, on the contrary, a separate and wholly irresponsible +Executive Government, and whose interests were upheld by only 100 +Members in a House of 670, was exceedingly remote. On responsible +government itself the Canadian Act of 1840 was entirely silent. We may +thank Providence for the fact. Durham's cardinal proposals had received +unbridled vituperation as sentimental rubbish where they were not +treasonable poison, the whole controversy taking precisely the same form +as in 1886 and 1893 over Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills for Ireland. +The _Quarterly Review_ spoke of "this rank and infectious Report," +though it is fair to say that Peel and Wellington did not join in such +wild language. Five months after the issue of Lord Durham's Report, Lord +John Russell, in the debate of June 3, was denying, with the approval of +all but the Radicals, the possibility of responsible government as +emphatically as ever. Durham seems to have partially converted him in +the summer, for in introducing the Act itself in 1840 he cautiously +committed himself to the plan of instructing the Canadian Governor to +include in his Executive Council, or Cabinet, men expressly chosen +because they possessed the confidence of the Assembly. But the Act as it +stood, ignoring this vital change, was impeccably Conservative, and on +that account went through. In some points it seemed, without good +reason, to be even reactionary, and was regarded in that light with +displeasure by the Radicals, with satisfaction by Whigs and Tories. +While confirming the control of revenue by the Assembly, in return for a +fixed civil list, it took away from the Assembly, and vested in the +Executive, the power of recommending money votes, and it also retained +the Legislative Council or Upper Chamber as a nominated, not as an +elective, body. Provided that the Executive had the confidence of the +representative Assembly or Lower House, the first point was perfectly +sound, and the second was not vital; but there was no security for the +condition precedent other than Russell's vague outline of subsequent +policy. While the supreme power of the King, acting with or without the +Governor, was reaffirmed in the most vigorous terms, there was not a +word in the Act about the composition of the Executive Council or its +relation to the Assembly. + +In Canada much the same misconceptions prevailed, and promoted the +acceptance of the Act by the supporters of the old ascendancies. The +question of the Union and the question of responsible government, both +raised by Lord Durham's Report, became inextricably confused, and the +various petitions and resolutions of the time reflect this confusion. +The French opposed the Union and supported responsible government on the +same grounds, and in almost identical terms, as the Irish opposed, and +still oppose, their Union with Great Britain, and ask for responsible +government in Ireland. Moderate Britishers supported both proposals, but +the extremists of the old ascendancy bitterly denounced the whole theory +of responsible government, Union or no Union. Their views are ably and +incisively set forth by a Committee of the old Legislative Council of +Upper Canada, that is, by the members of the "family compact," in a +protest signed and transmitted to London, where it was quoted with +approval by Lord John Russell. It may be found, together with other +petitions of the time, in the "Canadian Constitutional Development" of +Messrs. Grant and Egerton. With a few unessential changes and +modifications, the whole document might be signed to-day by a Committee +of Ulster Unionists, and I heartily wish that every Ulsterman would read +it in a spirit of reason and generosity, and observe how every line of +it was falsified by history, before he declares that the situation of +Ulster is peculiar, and sets his hand or gives his adhesion to a +similar document. The signatories, who, it must be remembered, were a +small ruling minority of the colonists, whose power was artificially +sustained by the British Governor, claim that they alone, in glorifying +and in battling for "colonial dependence," are the true Imperialists. +They hold dear the "unity of the Empire." Responsible government within +their own Colony would lead to the "overthrowal" of that Empire, and the +reduction of Britain to a "second-rate Power." A colonial Cabinet is +absurd; the local and sectional interests are too strong; the British +Government must remain as "umpire" to keep the parties from flying at +one another's throats. The majority, who are themselves a prey to +divisions (and one thinks of Nationalist splits), are seeking only for +illegitimate power; the minority are for "justice and protection, and +impartial government." Yet in the same breath we are told that all is +happy and peaceable as it is. Why subject the Colony to the dissensions +of party? Why foster a spirit of undying enmity among a people disposed +to dwell together in harmony? The signatories argue from the history of +Ireland and Scotland, "which never had responsible government, yet +government became impracticable the moment it approached to equal +rights." Hence a Union, because "government must be conducted with a +view to some supreme ruling power, which is not practicable with several +independent Legislatures." Finally, Loyalists and Imperialists as they +are, they are not going to stand an attempt to "force independence" on +them. They will take the matter into their own hands, and, if necessary, +call in the United States to "replace the British influence needlessly +overthrown." + +I do not quote this sort of thing in order to add any tinge of +bitterness to present controversies. The signatories lived to see their +errors and to be ashamed of what they wrote. They, like the Irish +Unionist leaders of to-day, were able and sincere men, unconscious, we +may assume, that their pessimism about the tendencies of their +fellow-citizens was really due to the defective institutions which they +themselves were upholding, and to the forcible suppression of the finer +attributes of human nature; unconscious, we may also assume, of +identifying loyalty with privilege, and "the supreme ruling power" with +their own ruling power; unconscious that what they called "Imperial +Unity" was in reality on the verge of producing Imperial disruption; and +wholly unconscious, certainly, of the ghastly irony of their analogy +drawn from the brutally misgoverned, job-ridden, tithe-ridden, +rack-rented Ireland of their day, living, for no fault of its own, under +a condition of intermittent martial law, and hurrying at that moment +towards the agony of the famine years. Less severe in degree, analogous +abuses perpetuated in their own interest existed in their own Colony, +and were only abolished under the new regime which they attacked with +such vehemence before it came, and which, because it transformed and +elevated their own character and that of their fellow-citizens, while +drawing them closer to the old country, they afterwards learned to +regard with pride and thankfulness. + +As an effective contrast to the mistaken views of the Upper Canadian +statesmen, the reader cannot do better than study the letters of Joseph +Howe, the brilliant Nova Scotia "agitator," to Lord John Russell, in +answer to that statesman's speech of June 3, 1839, when he argued +against responsible government, and quoted the Upper Canadian manifesto +as his text. These letters make a wonderful piece of sustained and +humorous satire, of which every word was true and every word applicable +to Ireland. Howe's portrait, for example, of the average Colonial +Governor applies line for line to the average Chief Secretary, coming at +an hour's notice to a country he has never seen, and knows nothing of, +vested with absolute powers of patronage, and often pledged to carry out +a policy in direct conflict with the wishes of the vast majority of the +people whose interests he is supposed to guard. + +The Act of 1840 went through, but it had little to do with the +regeneration and reconciliation of Canada. Poulett Thompson, the first +Governor, peremptorily declined to admit the principle of Ministerial +responsibility. Some good reforms were, indeed, made in the early years, +but the Act was on the verge of breaking down when Lord Elgin, Durham's +son-in-law, came to Canada as Governor-General in 1847. After many party +changes and combinations, French influence was temporarily in the +ascendant, and in 1849 a Bill was on the stocks for compensating French +as well as British subjects for losses in the rebellion of 1837. Elgin, +following the advice of his Ministers, of whom Baldwin was one, +Lafontaine another, gave the Royal Assent to the Bill. The British, with +the old cry of "loyalism," and with Orangemen in the van, rioted, mobbed +the Governor, and burnt down the Parliament House at Montreal. Elgin, +expostulating with Lord John Russell, who was as pessimistic as ever, +and threatened with recall, stuck to his guns under fierce obloquy, and +the principle of responsible government was definitely established. It +was applied at about the same period to the other British Provinces of +North America, with the ulterior results I have described, and in a few +years to Australia. + +The great year, then, was 1847, the year of the Irish famine, and the +year before the pitiful rebellion of Smith O'Brien, surrendering in the +historic cabbage-garden. Our thoughts go back sixty-four years to 1783, +when the American War of Independence ended; when, as a result of that +war, British Canada and Australia were founded, and when, at the +crisis--premature, alas!--of Ireland's fortunes, the Volunteers in vain +demanded the Reform which might have saved their country. Look into +historical details, read contemporary debates, and watch the contrast. +Within five years of responsible government Canada solved all the great +questions which had been convulsing society for so long, and turned her +liberated energies towards economic development. In Ireland the abuses +of ages lingered to a point which seems incredible. The Church was not +disestablished, amid outcries of imminent ruin and threats of a +Protestant rebellion, till 1869, when Canada had already become a +Federated Dominion. The Irish land question, dating from the seventeenth +century, was not seriously tackled until 1881, not drastically and on +the right lines till 1903. Education languishes at the present day. +Canada started an excellent system of municipal and local government in +the forties. In Ireland, while the minority, in Greville's words, were +"bellowing spoliation and revolution," an Act was passed in 1840 with +the utmost difficulty, removing an infinitesimal part of the gross +abuses of municipal government under the ascendancy system, and it was +not till 1898 that the people at large are admitted to a full share in +county and town government. Even this step inverted the natural order of +things, for the new authorities are hampered in their work by the +incessant political agitation for the Home Rule which should have +preceded their establishment, as it preceded it in Great Britain and +Canada. Home Rule, the tried specific, was resisted, as those who read +the debates of 1886 and 1893 will recognize, on the same grounds as +Canadian Home Rule, in the same spirit, and often in terms absolutely +identical. + +Was it because Ireland, unlike Canada, was "so near"? Let us reflect. +Did Durham advocate Canadian Home Rule because Canada was "so far"? On +the contrary, it was a superficial inference, drawn not merely from +Ireland, but from Scotland, and since proved to be false both in Canada +and South Africa, that made him shrink from the full application of a +philosophy which was already far in advance of the political thought and +morality of his day. Is it to be conceived that if he had lived to see +the Canadian Federation, the domestic and Imperial results of South +African Home Rule, and the consequences of seventy more years of +coercive government in Ireland, he would still have regarded the United +Kingdom in the light of a successful expedient for "compelling the +obedience of refractory populations"? In truth, Durham, like ninety-nine +out of a hundred Englishmen of his day, knew nothing of Ireland, not +even that her political system differed, as it still differs, _toto +coelo_ from that of Scotland, and came into being under circumstances +which had not the smallest analogy in Scotland. So far as his knowledge +went, he was a student of human nature as affected by political +institutions. Wakefield, who advised him, was a doctrinaire theorist who +put his preconceived principles into highly successful practice both in +Australia and Canada. They said: "Your coercive system degrades and +estranges your own fellow-citizens. Change it, and you will make them +friendly, manly, and prosperous." They were right, and one reflects once +more on the terrible significance of Mr. Chamberlain's admission in +1893, that "if Ireland had been a thousand miles away, she would have +what Canada had had for fifty years." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[20] "The Irishman in Canada" (N.F. Davin), a book to which the author +is indebted for much information of the same character. + +[21] "William Pitt and the National Revival." + +[22] Canadian Archives, 1905; "History of Prince Edward Island," D. +Campbell; "History of Canada," C.D.G. Roberts. In 1875, after a long +period of agitation and discontent, the Land Purchase Act was passed, +and the Dominion Government asked Mr. Hugh Childers to adjudicate on the +land-sale expressly on the ground that he had been associated with the +Irish Land Act of 1870 ("Life of Mr. Childers," by Lieut.-Col. Spencer +Childers, vol. i., p. 232). + +[23] Canadian Archives, 1900. Note B. Emigration (1831-1834). Irish +immigrants in 1829, 9,614; in 1830, 18,300; in 1831, 34,155; in 1832, +28,024; in 1833, 12,013; in 1834, 19,206: about double the immigration +of English and Scottish together in the same period. + +[24] "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 96 _et seq_. + +[25] "Durham Report," p. 130. + +[26] Hansard, January 23. + +[27] "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 17. + +[28] "Letters of Queen Victoria," vol. i., November 22, 1838. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND + + +I have described the Canadian crisis at considerable length because it +was the turning-point in Imperial policy. Yet policy is scarcely the +right word. The Colonists themselves wrenched the right to +self-government from a reluctant Mother Country, and the Mother Country +herself was hardly conscious of the loss of her prerogatives until it +was too late to regret or recall them. The men who on principle believed +in and laboured for Home Rule for Canada were a mere unconsidered +handful in the country, while most of those who voted for the Act of +1840 thought that it killed Home Rule. No general election was held to +obtain the "verdict of the predominant partner" on the real question at +issue, with the cry of "American dollars" (which had, in fact, been +paid); with lurid portraits of Papineau and Mackenzie levying black-mail +on the Prime Minister, and quotations from their old speeches to show +that they were traitors to the Empire; with jeremiads about the terrors +of Rome, the abandonment of the loyal minority, and the dismemberment of +the Empire, to shake the nerves and stimulate the slothful conscience of +an ignorant electorate. Had there been any such opportunity we know it +would have been used, and we can guess what the result would have been; +for nothing is easier, alas! than to spur on a democracy with such cries +as these to the exercise of the one function it should refrain +from--interference with another democracy, be it in Ireland or anywhere +else. As it was, a merciful veil fell over Canada; Lord Elgin's action +in 1849 passed with little notice, and a mood of weary indifference to +colonial affairs, for which, in default of any Imperial idealism, we +cannot be too thankful, took possession of Parliament and the nation. + +It was in this mood that the measures conferring self-government on the +Australasian Colonies, 12,000 miles away from the Mother Country, and +exciting proportionately less concern than Canada, were passed a few +years later. + +From the landing of the first batch of convicts at Botany Bay in 1788, +New South Wales, the Mother Colony, was a penal settlement pure and +simple, under military Government, for some thirty years. The island +Colony, Tasmania, founded under the name of Van Diemen's Land in 1803, +was used for the same purpose. Victoria, originally Port Phillip, just +escaped a like fate in 1803, and remained uncolonized till 1835, when +the free settlers set their faces against the penal system, and in 1845, +acting like the Bostonians of 1774 with the famous cargo of tea, refused +to allow a cargo of convicts to land. South Australia, first settled in +1829, also escaped; so did New Zealand, which was annexed to the Crown +in 1839. Western Australia, dating from 1826, proceeded on the opposite +principle to that of Victoria. Free from convicts until 1849, when +transportation to other Colonies was checked at their own repeated +request, and came to an end in 1852, this Colony, owing to a chronic +shortage of labour, actually petitioned the Home Government to divert +the stream of criminals to its shores, with the result that in ten +years' time nearly half the male adults in the Colony, and more than +half in the towns, were, or had been, convicts. It was not until 1865, +under strong pressure from the other Colonies, that the system was +finally abolished which threw Western Australia forty years behind its +sister Colonies in the attainment of Home Rule. + +The transportation policy has been unmercifully criticized, and with all +the more justice in that Pitt, when the American war closed the +traditional dumping-ground for criminals, had the chance of employing +the exiled loyalists of America, many of whom were starving in London, +as pioneers of the new lands in the Antipodes. "The outcasts of an old +society cannot form the foundations of a new one," said a Parliamentary +Report of July 28, 1785. But they could do so, and did do so. Ruskin's +saying, _a propos_ of Australia, that "under fit conditions the human +race does not degenerate, but wins its way to higher levels," comes +nearer the truth. In an amazingly short time after the transportation +policy was reversed the taint disappeared. We must remember, however, +that, sheer refuse as some of the convicts were, especially in the later +period, a large number of the earlier convicts were the product of that +"stupid severity of our laws" which the Vicar of Wakefield deplored, and +to this category belonged many an unhappy Irish peasant, sound in +character, but driven into Whiteboyism, or into the rebellions of 1798 +and 1803 by some of the worst laws the human brain ever conceived. +Hundreds of these men survived the barbarous and brutalizing ordeal of a +penal imprisonment to become prosperous and industrious citizens. + +It was not until 1825, or thereabouts, that free white settlers, many +Irishmen among them, came in any substantial number to the Mother Colony +of New South Wales, and not until 1832 that these men began to press +claims for the management of their own affairs, under the inspiration of +an Irish surgeon's son, William Wentworth, the Hampden of Australia. The +later Colonies rapidly came into line, Western Australia, for the reason +given above, remaining stationary. The first representative institutions +were granted in 1842 to New South Wales, and in 1850 to Victoria, South +Australia, and Tasmania. At that date, therefore, these settlements +stood in much the same constitutional position as the Canadas had stood +in 1791 (although technically their Constitutions were of a different +kind), but with this important difference, that the Act of 1850, "for +the better Government of Her Majesty's Australian Colonies," gave power +to those Colonies to frame new Constitutions for themselves. This they +soon proceeded to do, each constructing its own, but all keeping in view +the same model, the British Constitution itself, and aiming at the same +ideal, responsible Government by a Colonial Cabinet under a Government +representing the Crown. Since responsible Government in Great Britain +itself was not a matter of legal enactment, but the product of slowly +evolved conventions and precedents, to which political scientists had +not yet given a scientific form, it is no wonder that the colonial +Constitution-makers found great difficulty in expressing exactly what +they wanted in legal terms, and, indeed, none of them came near +succeeding; but time, their own political instinct, a succession of +sensible Governors, and the forbearance of the Home Government solved +the problem, and evolved home-ruled States legally subordinate to the +Crown, but with a Constitution closely resembling our own. The +Constitutions became law by Acts of the Imperial Parliament passed by a +Liberal Ministry in 1855. They are of unusual interest because they +represent the first rude attempt to put into legal language a small part +of the theory of the British Constitution as applied to dependencies of +the Crown. + +In the most vital point of all, the relation of the dependency to the +Home Government (as distinguished from questions of internal political +structure), they are almost as reserved as the Canadian Act of 1840, +which, as we have seen, did not recognize by a word the duty of the +Governor to govern through a Colonial Cabinet. In certain clauses they +hint, by distant implication, at the existence of such a Cabinet, +responsible to the colonial popular Legislature--the Canadian Act did +not assume even that--but they do not anywhere imply that the Governor +is bound normally to place himself in the hands of that Cabinet, while +they expressly and rightly reaffirm the supreme power of the Crown, +whether acting through the Governor or not, over colonial legislation. + +How far this reticence about responsible Government facilitated the +passage of the Australian Acts in the British Parliament, as it +certainly facilitated the Canadian Act of 1840, it is difficult to +decide. It was probably a factor of some importance. At any rate, it is +true to say that Home Rule, as in Canada, was mainly a result of +practice rather than of statutory enactment. The case of New Zealand is +a striking example of this. In 1852 New Zealand obtained from a Tory +Government a Constitutional Act, which resembles the Canadian Act of +1840 in abstaining from any expression, direct or indirect which implies +the existence of a Colonial Cabinet, and it is probable that the framers +of the Act intended no such development, but on the contrary +contemplated a permanent, irremovable Executive. But the Act was no +sooner passed than an agitation began for responsible government, under +the leadership of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, part-author of the Durham +Report, and at that time a member of the New Zealand Assembly. By 1855, +when the Australian Acts were passed, New Zealand, without further +legislation, had obtained what she wanted. + +To complete the story, Queensland, carved out of New South Wales in +1859, entered upon full responsible government at once, and Western +Australia, retarded for so long by the servile system of convict-labour, +gained the same rights in 1890. + +Reading the debates of the middle of the nineteenth century, one is left +with the impression that the Australasian Colonies obtained Home Rule by +virtue of their distance, and because most politicians at home could not +be bothered to fight hard against a principle which at bottom they +disliked as heartily for the Colonies as for Ireland. The views of the +various parties were not much changed since the days of the crisis in +Canada. There were some able Colonial Secretaries who thoroughly +understood and believed in the principle of responsible government. On +the other hand, some Liberals were not yet converted, though Liberal +Governments fathered the Constitutional Acts of 1850 and 1855. +Disraeli's well-known saying in 1852 that "these wretched Colonies will +all be independent, too, in a few years, and are a mill-stone round our +necks," was typical of the Tory attitude.[29] Lord John Russell, in the +same year, 1852, was complaining, as Lord Morley tells us,[30] that we +were "throwing the shields of our authority away," and leaving "the +monarchy exposed in the Colonies to the assaults of democracy." A group +of Radicals, headed by Sir William Molesworth and Hume in Parliament, +and by Wakefield from outside, still pushed the policy of emancipation +energetically and persistently on the principle which they had urged in +the case of Canada, that freedom was better both for the Colonies and +the Mother Country. + +But Molesworth and Wakefield gained one illustrious convert and +coadjutor in the person of Mr. Gladstone, whose speeches on the Colonies +at this period, 1849 to 1855, placed him, in regard to that topic, in +the Radical ranks, and in veiled opposition to the Whig leaders. Lord +Morley quotes a minute from his hand, written in 1852 in answer to the +view of Lord John Russell, referred to above, where he says "that the +nominated Council and independent Executive were not 'shields of +authority,' but sources of weakness, disorder, disunion, and +disloyalty." His Parliamentary and platform speeches, passing with +little notice at the time, nevertheless remain the most eloquent and +exalted expression of wise colonial policy that is to be found in our +language. If it was not till a generation later that he applied the same +arguments to the case of Ireland, the arguments nevertheless did apply +to Ireland almost word for word. Proximity to the Mother Country does +not affect them. Mr. Gladstone attacks the problem on its human side, +showing that coercive government is always and everywhere bad for those +who administer it, and bad for those who live under it, expensive, +inefficient, demoralizing, and that the longer it is maintained the more +difficult it is to remove. He condemns the fallacy of preparing men by +slow degrees for freedom, and the "miserable jargon about fitting them +for the privileges thus conferred, while in point of fact every year and +every month during which they are retained under the administration of a +despotic Government renders them less fit for free institutions." As to +cost, "no consideration of money ought to induce Parliament to sever the +connection between any one of the Colonies and the Mother Country," but +the greater part of the cost, he urged, was due to the despotic system +itself. His words are more applicable to the Ireland of to-day than the +Ireland of the middle of the nineteenth century, for it is one of the +many painful anomalies of Irish history that that country, at the lowest +point of its economic misery, was paying a relatively enormous +contribution to Imperial funds, and, incidentally, to the colonial vote, +while the Colonies were maintained at a loss correspondingly large, and +at times even larger.[31] But cost is, after all, a very small matter. +The first consideration is the character and happiness of human beings, +and here Gladstone's words, like Durham's, have a universal application. +If the reader cannot study them at length in Hansard, he should read +the great speech on the New Zealand Bill in 1852, and Lord Morley's +masterly summary of others. I conclude with a passage quoted by him from +a platform speech at Chester in 1855, the year when the Australian +Constitutions were sanctioned. "Experience has proved that if you want +to strengthen the connection between the Colonies and this country, if +you want to see British law held in respect, and British institutions +adopted and beloved in the Colonies, never associate with them the hated +name of force and coercion exercised by us at a distance over their +rising fortunes. Govern them upon a principle of freedom." At that +moment, after half a century of coercion and neglect under what was +called the "Union," Ireland was bleeding, as it seemed, to death. +Scarcely recovered from the stunning blow of the famine, she was +undergoing in a fresh dose of clearances and evictions the result of +that masterpiece of legislative unwisdom, the Encumbered Estates Act. +Her people were leaving her by hundreds of thousands, cursing the name +of England as bitterly as the evicted Ulster farmers and the ruined +weavers of the eighteenth century had cursed it, and bearing their +wrongs and hatred to the same friendly shore, America. For the main +stream of emigration, which before the Union had set towards the +American States, and from the Union until the famine towards Canada, +reverted after the famine towards the United States, impregnating that +nation with an hostility to Great Britain which in subsequent years +became a grave international danger, and which, though greatly +diminished, still remains an obstacle to the closer union of the +English-speaking races. On the other hand, it is interesting to observe +that among the Irish emigrants to countries within the Empire, and a +very important part of this emigration was to Australasia, the +anti-British sentiment was far less tenacious, though the affection for +their own native country was no less passionate. + +Whatever we may conclude about the motives behind the concession of Home +Rule to Australia and New Zealand, we may regard it as fortunate that +they lay too far away for any close criticism from statesmen at home, +whether before or after the attainment of self-government. Most of these +statesmen would have been scandalized by the manner in which these +vigorous young democracies, destitute of the patrician element, shaped +their own political destiny by the light of nature and in the teeth of +great difficulties. Almost to a man their leaders in this great work +would have been regarded as "turbulent demagogues and dangerous +agitators," and often were so regarded, when the rumour of their +activities penetrated to far-off London. The old catchwords of +revolution, spoliation and treason, consecrated to the case of Ireland, +would have been applied here with equal vehemence, and were in fact +applied by the official classes in the Colonies themselves, round whom +small anti-democratic groups, calling themselves "loyal," crystallized, +as in the Provinces of Upper Canada and in Ireland, and with whom the +ruling classes at home were in instinctive sympathy. There were stormy, +agitated times, there were illegal movements against the reception of +convicts, struggles over land questions, religious questions, financial +questions, the emancipation of ex-convicts, and the many difficult +problems raised by the discovery of gold and the mushroom growth of +digger communities in remote places. There was in the air more genuine +lawlessness--irrespective, I mean, of revolt against bad laws--than ever +existed in Ireland, though there was never at any time any practical +grievance approaching in magnitude to the practical grievances of +Ireland at the same period. But, could the spirit of English +statesmanship towards analogous problems in Ireland have been maintained +in Australasia, systematically translated into law and enforced with the +help of coercion acts by soldiers and police, communities would have +been artificially produced presenting all the lawless and retrograde +features of Ireland. + +The famous affair of the Eureka Stockade in 1854 is an interesting +illustration. A great mass of diggers collected in the newly discovered +Ballarat goldfields had petitioned repeatedly against the Government +regulations about mining licences, for which extortionate fees were +levied. This was before responsible government. The goldfields were not +represented in the Legislature, and there was no constitutional method +of redress. The authorities held obstinately to their obsolete and +irritating regulations, and eventually the miners revolted under the +leadership of an Irishman, Peter Lalor, and with the watchword "Vinegar +Hill." There was a pitched battle with the military forces of the +Crown, ending after much bloodshed in the victory of the soldiers. Lalor +was wounded, and carried into hiding by his friends. Other captured +rioters were tried for "high treason" before juries of townsmen picked +by the Crown on the lines long familiar in Ireland; but even these +juries refused to convict, as they so often refused to convict in cases +of agrarian crime in Ireland. The State trials were then abandoned, a +Royal Commission reported against the licence system, and Parliamentary +representation was given to the goldfields. It came to be universally +acknowledged that the talk of "treason" was nonsense, that the outbreak +had been provoked by laws which could not be constitutionally changed, +and that the moral was to change them, not to expatriate and persecute +those who had suffered under them. Lalor reappeared, entered political +life, became Speaker of the reformed Assembly of 1856, and lived and +died respected by everyone. He now appears as a prominent figure in a +little book entitled "Australian Heroes," and it is admitted that the +whole episode powerfully assisted the movement for responsible +government in the Colony. Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Mitchell, and others +concerned in the Irish rebellion of 1848 were at that moment languishing +in the penal settlement of Tasmania for sedition provoked by laws fifty +times worse; laws, too, that a Royal Commission three years earlier had +shown to be inconsistent with social peace, and which others +subsequently condemned in still stronger terms. From their first +establishment far back in the seventeenth century it took two centuries +to abolish these laws. In the Australian case it took one year. + +As for the Irishmen of all creeds and classes who took such an important +part in the splendid work of building up these new communities, and who +are still estimated to constitute a quarter of the population, one can +only marvel at the intensity of the prejudice which declared these men +"unfit" for self-government at home, and which is not yet dissipated by +the discovery that they were welcomed under the Southern Cross, not only +as good workaday citizens in town, bush, or diggings, but as barristers, +judges, bankers, stock-owners, mine-owners, as honoured leaders in +municipal and political life, as Speakers of the Representative +Assemblies, and as Ministers and Prime Ministers of the Crown.[32] is +true, and the fact cannot surprise us, that the intestinal divisions of +race and creed in Ireland itself, stereotyped there by ages of bad +government, were at first to a certain extent reproduced in Australia, +as in Canada. Aggressive Orangeism was to be found sowing discord where +no cause for discord existed. But the common sense of the community and +the pure air of freedom tended to sterilize, though they have not to +this day wholly killed, these germs of disease. A career was opened to +every deserving Irishman, whether Catholic or Protestant. Hungry, +hopeless, listless cottiers from Munster and Connaught built up +nourishing towns like Geelong and Kilmore. Two Irishmen, Dunne and +Connor, were the first discoverers of the Ballarat goldfields. An +Irishman, Robert O'Hara Burke, led the first transcontinental +expedition, and another Irishman, Ambrose Kyte, financed it; Wentworth +was the father of Australian liberties. An Irish Roman Catholic, Sir +Redmond Barry, founded the Public Library, Museum, and University of +Melbourne. In the political annals of Victoria and New South Wales the +names of Irish Catholics, men to whom no worthy political career was +open in their own country, were prominent. Sir John O'Shanassy, for +example, was three times Prime Minister of Victoria, Sir Brian +O'Loughlen once. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, a member of O'Shanassy's +Cabinets, and at last Prime Minister himself, is the colonial statesman +whose career and personality are the best proof of what Ireland has lost +in high-minded, tolerant, constructive statesmanship, through a system +which silenced or drove from her shores the men who loved her most, who +saw her faults and needs with the clearest eyes, and who sought to unite +her people on a footing of self-reliance and mutual confidence. One of +the ablest of O'Connell's young adjutants, editor and founder of the +_Nation_, part-organizer of the Young Ireland Movement which united men +of opposite creeds in one of the finest national movements ever +organized in any country, Duffy's central aim had been to give Ireland a +native Parliament, where Irishmen could solve their own problems for +themselves. He saw the rebellion of 1848 fail, and Mitchell, Smith +O'Brien, Meagher, McManus, and O'Donoghue transported to Tasmania; he +laboured on himself in Ireland for seven years at land reform and other +objects, and in 1855 gave up the struggle against such hopeless odds, +and reached Melbourne early in 1856 in time to sit in the first +Victorian Parliament returned under the constitutional Act of 1855. From +the beginning to the end of an honourable political career which lasted +thirty years, he made it his dominant purpose to ensure that Australia +should be saved from the evils which cursed Ireland; from government by +a favoured class, from land monopoly, and from religious inequality and +the venomous bigotries it engenders, and he took a large share in +bringing about their exclusion. His Land Act of 1862, for example, where +he had another Roman Catholic Irishman, Judge Casey, as an auxiliary, +put an end in those districts where it was fairly worked to the grave +abuses caused by the speculative acquisition of immense tracts of land +by absentee owners, and promoted the closer settlement of the country by +yeoman farmers. + +In Australia, as in Canada, we see the vital importance of good land +laws, and can measure the misery which resulted in Ireland from an +agrarian system incalculably more absurd and unjust than anything known +in any other part of the Empire. The stagnation of Western Australia was +originally due to the cession of huge unworkable estates to a handful of +men. South Australia was retarded for some little time from the same +cause, and Victoria and New South Wales were all hampered in the same +way. It was not a question, as in Ireland, and to a less degree in +Prince Edward Island, of the legal relations between the landlord and +tenant of lands originally confiscated, but of the grant and sale of +Crown lands. Yet the after-results, especially in the check to tillage +and the creation of vast pasture ranches, were often very similar.[33] + +Duffy was not the only colonial statesman to apply Irish experience to +the problems of newly settled countries. An Englishman who became one of +the greatest of colonial statesmen and administrators, the Radical +Imperialist, Sir George Grey, began life as a Lieutenant on military +service in Ireland in the year 1829, and came away sick with the scenes +he had witnessed at the evictions and forced collections of tithes +where his troops were employed to strengthen the arm of the law. +"Ireland," his biographer, Professor Henderson, tells us,[34] "was to +him a tragedy of unrealized possibilities." The people had "good +capacities for self-government," but Englishmen "showed a vicious +tendency to confuse cause and effect," and attributed to inherent +lawlessness what was a revolt against bad economic conditions. "All that +they or their children could hope for was to obtain, after the keenest +competition, the temporary use of a spot of land on which to exercise +their industry"; "for the tenant's very improvements went to swell the +accumulations of the heirs of an absentee, not of his own." "Haunted by +the Irish problem," Grey made it his effort first in South Australia, +and afterwards in New Zealand, where he was both Governor and Premier at +various times, to secure the utmost possible measure of Home Rule for +the colonists, and, in pursuance of a policy already inaugurated by +Edward Gibbon Wakefield, to establish a land system based, not on +extravagant free grants, or on private tenure, but on sales by the State +to occupiers at fair prices. The aim was to counteract that excessive +accumulation of people in the large cities which, thanks to imperfect +legislation, still exists in most of the Australian States. Subsequent +New Zealand land policy has been generally in the right direction, and +is acknowledged to be highly successful. In the Australian mainland +States the absentee and the squatter caused constant difficulties and +occasional disorder. The Commonwealth at the present day is suffering +for past neglect, and has found itself within the last year compelled to +imitate New Zealand in placing taxes on undeveloped land, with a higher +percentage against absentees. + +Let us add that Grey, like Duffy and most of the strongest advocates of +Home Rule for the Colonies, was a Federalist long before Federation +became practical politics, seeing in that policy the best means of +achieving the threefold aim of giving each Colony in a group ample local +freedom, of binding the whole group together into a compact, coherent +State, and of strengthening the connection between that State and the +Mother Country. As Governor at the Cape from 1854 to 1861 he vainly +urged the Home Government to promote a Federal Union of the various +South African States, Dutch and British, in order, as he said, to create +"an United South Africa under the British flag," a scheme which, it is +generally agreed, could then have been carried out, and which would have +saved South Africa from terrible disasters. And he wished to apply the +same Federal principle to the Australian Colonies, and to the case of +Ireland and Great Britain. + +He realized earlier than most men that the talk of "separation" and +"disloyalty" was, in his own words already quoted, the result of a +"vicious tendency to confuse cause and effect," and that to govern men +by their own consent, to let them work out their own ideals in their own +way, to encourage, not to repress, their sense of nationality, is the +best way to gain their affection, or, if we choose to use that very +misleading word, their loyalty. + +Australia and New Zealand present remarkable examples of this beneficent +process, Australia in particular, because there, for a long time even +after the introduction of responsible government and, indeed, until a +dozen years ago, there was a large party of so-called "disloyalists" who +were never weary of decrying British influences and upholding Australian +nationality. Mr. Jebb, in his "Colonial Nationalism," gives an +interesting account of this movement and of its organ, the widely +circulated _Sydney Bulletin_, with its furiously anti-British views, its +Radicalism, its Republicanism, and what not. He shows amusingly how +entirely harmless the propaganda really was, and what a healthy effect +it actually had in promoting an independence of feeling and national +self-respect among Australians, to such a degree that when the South +African War broke out, there was a universal outburst of patriotism and +a universal desire, which was realized, to share to the full as a nation +in the expense, danger, and hardships of the war. Mr. Jebb adds the +interesting suggestion that the reluctance of New Zealand to enter the +Australian Federation may be partly due to the strong individual +sentiment of nationality evoked within her by the war and the +exceptional exertions she made to aid the Imperial troops. + +His book is a psychological study of men in the mass. What he sets out +to prove, and what he does successfully prove, is that the encouragement +of minor nationalities is not merely consistent with, but essential to, +the unity of the Empire. Yet he never mentions Ireland, not even for the +purpose of proving her an exception to the rule, and I do not think I +ever gauged the full extent of the prejudice against that country until +I realized that in such a book such a topic did not receive even a line +of notice; yet one would naturally suppose that it was as important to +the Empire, morally and strategically, to possess the affection and +respect of four and a half million citizens within 60 miles of the +British coast as of the same number of citizens at the Antipodes. + +Mr. Jebb is a Unionist. How he reaches his conclusion I do not know. It +would seem to be beyond human power to construct a case against Home +Rule for Ireland, with its strongly marked individuality of character +and sentiment, which did not textually stultify his case for the more +distant dependencies. His party generally is in sympathy with the views +expressed in his book, and has done much to further them. How do they +reconcile them with opposition to Home Rule for Ireland? How do they +explain away the support for that policy in the Dominions? It seems to +me that their only resource would be to say: "We are bound to maintain, +and we have the necessary physical force to maintain, the present +political system in Ireland, because to alter it would impair the formal +legislative 'unity' of the United Kingdom; but let us frankly admit that +as long as we take this view there can be no 'Union' in the highest +sense of the word. Ireland must be retarded and estranged. We cannot +raise Territorial Volunteers within her borders; on the contrary, we +must keep and pay for a standing army of police to preserve our +authority there. Her population must diminish, her vital energy ebb away +to other lands; as a market for our goods and as a source of revenue for +Imperial purposes she must remain undeveloped and unprogressive. She +will continue rightly to agitate for Home Rule, and this agitation will +always be baneful both to her and to us. It will distract her energies +from her own economic and social problems. It will embitter and degrade +our politics, and dislocate our Parliamentary institutions. She must +suffer, we must suffer, the Empire must suffer. It is sad, but +inevitable." + +Morality aside, is that common sense? Is it strange that the Colonies +themselves regard such logic, when applied to Ireland, as perverted and +absurd? + +Before leaving Australia we have only to recall the fact that at the +close of the last century, after a generation of controversy and +negotiation, the Canadian example of 1867 was at length imitated, and +the Federal Union formed which amalgamated all the mainland States, +together with Tasmania, in the Commonwealth of Australia, and that the +Union was sanctioned and legalized by the Imperial Act of 1900. New +Zealand preferred to remain a distinct State. The Australians departed +in some important respects from the Canadian model, the main difference +being that a greater measure of independence was retained by the +individual States, and smaller powers delegated to the central +Government. This was a matter of voluntary arrangement as between the +States themselves, the Home Government standing wholly aside on the +sound principle that Australia knew its own interests best, and that +what was best for Australia was best for the Empire. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[29] Letter to Lord Malmesbury, August 13, 1852 ("Memoirs of an +Ex-Minister," by the Earl of Malmesbury, vol. i., p. 344). + +[30] "Life of Gladstone," vol. i., p. 363. + +[31] Annual Treasury Returns ["Imperial Revenue (Collection and +Expenditure)"]. According to these returns, Ireland's Imperial +contribution in 1839, before the famine, was L3,626,322; in 1849, after +the famine, L2,613,778, and in 1859-60 no less than L5,396,000. At the +latter date the Colonies were estimated to cost three and a half +millions a year, of which nine-tenths were contributed by the taxpayers +at home, British and Irish. + +[32] Full information may be found in "The Irish in Australia," by J.F. +Hogan. + +[33] For an excellent historical description of the various Australian +land systems, see the official "Year-Book of the Commonwealth," 1909. + +[34] "Life of Sir George Grey," Professor G.C. Henderson. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +SOUTH AFRICA AND IRELAND + + +In the years 1836-37, when Wentworth was agitating for self-government +in New South Wales, and when Canada was in rebellion for the lack of it, +thousands of waggons, driven by men smarting under the same sort of +grievance, were jolting northward across the South African veld bearing +Dutch families from the British Colony of the Cape of Good Hope to the +new realms we now know as the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal. The +"Great Trek" was a form of protest against bad government to which we +have no parallel in the Empire save in the wholesale emigrations from +Ireland at various periods of her history--after the Treaty of Limerick, +again after the destruction of the wool trade, again in 1770-1777, after +the Ulster evictions, and lastly after the great famine. The trekkers, +like the Irish emigrants, nursed a resentment against the British +Government which was a source of untold expense and suffering in the +future. Indeed, the whole history of South Africa bears a close +resemblance to the history of Ireland. In no other part of the Empire, +save in Ireland, was the policy of the Home Government so persistently +misguided, in spite of constantly recurring opportunities for the repair +of past errors. Fatality seems from first to last to have dogged the +footsteps of those who tried to govern there. Before the British +conquest the Dutch East India Company and the Netherlands Government +were as unsuccessful as their British successors, whose legal claim to +the Cape, established for the second time by conquest in 1806, was +definitely confirmed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The Dutch +colonists were a fine race of men, whose ancestors, like the Puritan +founders of New England, had fled in 1652 from religious persecution, +and who retained the virile qualities of their race. Though in many +respects they resembled the backward and intensely conservative +French-Canadian inhabitants, they differed from them, and resembled +their closer relatives in race, the New Englanders, in an innate passion +for free representative government. They had rebelled repeatedly against +their Dutch oppressors, and had gone through a brief Republican phase. +It is an example, therefore, of the thoughtless inconsequence of our old +colonial policy that we gave the French-Canadians, who were the least +desirous of it, the form, without the spirit, of representative +institutions, while we denied, until it was too late to avert racial +discord, even the form to the Cape Dutch. In truth, the Colony seems to +have been regarded purely in the light of a naval station, while the +British and Irish inflow of settlers, dating from about the year 1820, +contemporaneously with the advent of free settlers in Australia, +suggested the possibility of racial oppression by the Dutch majority. +Yet if there was little real reason to fear oppression by the French in +Canada, there was still less reason to fear such oppression in the Cape, +where Dutch ideals and civilization were far more similar to those of +the British. In America the absorption of the Dutch Colonies in the +seventeenth century had led to the peaceful fusion of both races, nor +was there any reason why, under wise rule, the same fusion should not +have occurred in South Africa. Until 1834 authority was purely military +and despotic. In that year was established a small Legislative Council +of officials and nominated members, with no representative element. In +1837 came the Great Trek. + +No one disputes that the Dutch colonists had grievances, without the +means of redress. As usual, we find a land question in the shape of +enhanced rents charged by Government after the British occupation; the +Dutch language was excluded from official use, and English local +institutions were introduced with unnecessary abruptness; but the +principal grievance concerned the native tribes. Slavery existed in the +Colony, and its borders were continually threatened by these tribes. The +Dutch colonists were often terribly brutal to the natives; nevertheless +there is little doubt that a tactful and sympathetic policy could easily +have secured for them a more humane treatment, and the abolition of +slavery without economic dislocation. But a strong humanitarian +sentiment was sweeping over England at the time, including in its range +the negro slaves of Jamaica and the unconquered Kaffirs of South Africa, +but absolutely ignoring, let us note in passing, the economic serfdom of +the half-starved Irish peasantry at our very doors. Members of this +school took too little account of the tremendous difficulties faced in +South Africa by small handfuls of white colonists in contact with hordes +of savages. The Colonial Government, with a knowledge of the conditions +gained only from well-meaning but somewhat prejudiced missionaries, +endeavoured from 1815 onwards to enforce an impracticable equality +between white and coloured men, and abolished slavery at one sudden +stroke in 1833 without reasonable compensation. A large number of the +Dutch, unable to tolerate this treatment, deserted the British flag. +Those that remained were under suspicion for more than thirty years, so +that political progress was very slow. It was not till 1854 that the +Colony received a Representative Assembly, and not until 1872, eighteen +years later than in Australia, and twenty-five years later than in +Canada, that full responsible government was established. + +Piet Retief, one of the leaders of the voluntary exiles, had published a +proclamation in the following terms before he joined the trek: "We quit +this Colony under the full assurance that the English Government has +nothing more to require of us, and will allow us to govern ourselves +without its interference in the future. We are now leaving the fruitful +land of our birth, in which we have suffered enormous losses and +continual vexation, and are about to enter a strange and dangerous +territory; but we go with a firm reliance on an all-seeing, just, and +merciful God, whom we shall always fear and humbly endeavour to obey." +This was high language, yet after-events proved that a steady, +consistently fair treatment on our part would even then have reconciled +these men to a permanent continuance of British sovereignty. +Unfortunately, our policy oscillated painfully between irritating +interference and excessive timidity. First of all attempts were made to +stop the trek by force, then to compel the trekkers to return by cutting +off their supplies and ammunition, then to throttle their development of +the new lands north of the Orange and Vaal Rivers by calling into being +fictitious native States on a huge scale in the midst of and around +them, then tardily to repair the disastrous effects of this policy; but +not before it had led to open hostilities (1845). Hostilities, however, +had this temporarily good result, in that it brought to the front one of +the ablest and wisest of the Cape Governors, Sir Harry Smith, who +defeated the Boers at Boomplatz in 1848, established what went by the +name of the Orange River Sovereignty, and in a year or two secured such +good and peaceful government within its borders as to attract +considerable numbers of English and Scotch colonists. The malcontents +retired across the Vaal. Then came an abrupt change of policy in the +Home Government, a sudden desire actuated mainly by fear of more native +wars, to cancel all that was possible of our commitments in South +Africa. The Transvaal, by the Sand River Convention, was declared +independent in 1852, the Orange Free State, by the Convention of +Bloemfontein, in 1854. This was to rush from one extreme to the other. +It was as though in 1847 we had erected Quebec into a sovereign State +instead of giving it responsible government under the Crown, or as if in +1843 we had been so deeply convinced by O'Connell's second agitation for +repeal that we had leapt straight from coercive government to the +foundation of an independent Republic in Ireland, instead of giving her +the kind of Home Rule which she was asking for. + +It was not yet too late to mend. In 1854, when the cession of the Free +State had just been carried out, Sir George Grey, whom we have met with +in Australia and New Zealand, came as High Commissioner to the Cape. In +1859 he made the proposal I alluded to in the last chapter for +federating all the South African States, including the two new +Republics. There is little doubt that the scheme was feasible then. The +Orange Free State was willing to join, and, indeed, had initiated +proposals for Federation. Its adhesion would have compelled the +Transvaal, always more hostile to British rule, to come in eventually, +if not at once; for the relations of the two Republics were friendly +enough at the time to permit one man, Pretorius, to be President of both +States. + +The scheme was rejected by Lord Derby's Tory Cabinet, and Grey, a +"dangerous man," as Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, dubbed him, +was recalled. + +Sixteen years later, in 1875, Lord Carnarvon himself, as a member of the +Disraeli Ministry, revived the project. Converted in his views of the +Colonies, like many of his Tory colleagues at this period, he had +carried through Parliament the Federation of Canada in 1867, and hoped +to do the same with South Africa. But it was too late. The Cape +Parliament, now in possession of a responsible Ministry, was hostile, +while twenty years of self-government, for the most part under the great +President Brand, had changed the sentiments of the Free State. +Federation, then, was impossible. On the other hand, the Transvaal was +in a state of political unrest and of danger from native aggression, +which gave a pretext for reversion to the long-abandoned policy of +annexation, and to that extreme Carnarvon promptly went in April, 1877. +He took this dangerous course without ascertaining the considered wishes +of the majority of the Boers, acting through his emissary, Sir T. +Shepstone, on the informal application of a minority of townsmen who +honestly wished to come under British rule. + +Rash as the measure was, lasting good might have come of it had the +essential step been taken of preserving representative government. The +promise was given and broken. For three years the Assembly, or +Volksraad, was not summoned. Once more home statesmanship was blind, and +local administration blunderingly oppressive. Shepstone was the wrong +man for the post of Administrator. Sir Owen Lanyon, his successor, was +an arrogant martinet of the stamp familiar in Canada before 1840, and +painfully familiar in Ireland. The refusal of an Assembly naturally +strengthened the popular demand for a reversal of the annexation, and +this demand, twice pressed in London through a deputation headed by Paul +Kruger, obscured the whole issue, and raised a question of British +national pride, with all its inevitable consequences, where none need +have been raised. There was a moment of hope when Sir Bartle Frere, who +stands, perhaps, next to Sir George Grey on the roll of eminent High +Commissioners, endeavoured to pacify the Boer malcontents, and drafted +the scheme of a liberal Constitution for the Transvaal. But one of the +last acts of the Tory Government, at the end of 1879, was to recall +Frere for an alleged transgression of his powers in regard to the Zulu +War, and to pigeon-hole his scheme. Mr. Gladstone, who in opposition +had denounced the annexation with good enough justification, though in +terms which under the circumstances were immoderate, found himself +compelled to confirm it when he took office in April, 1880. But he, too, +allowed the liberal Constitution to sleep in its pigeon-hole. He was +assured by the officials on the spot that there was no danger, that the +majority were loyal, and only a minority of turbulent demagogues +disloyal; and in December, 1880, the rebellion duly broke out, and the +Transvaal Republic was proclaimed. What followed we know, war, Laing's +Nek, Majuba, and one more violent oscillation of policy in the +concession of a virtual independence to the Transvaal. + +Whatever we may think of the policy of this concession, and Lord Morley +has made the best case that can be made for Mr. Gladstone's action, it +is certain that it was only a link in a long chain of blunders for which +both great political parties had been equally responsible, and of which +the end had not yet come. The nation at large, scarcely alive until now +to the existence of the Colonies, was stung into Imperial consciousness +by a national humiliation, for so it was not unnaturally regarded, +coming from an obscure pastoral community confusedly identified as +something between a Colony, a foreign power, and a troublesome native +tribe. The history of the previous seventy years in South Africa was +either unknown or forgotten, and Mr. Gladstone, who in past years had +preached to indifferent hearers the soundest and sanest doctrine of +enlightened Imperialism, suddenly appeared, and for ever after remained +in the eyes of a great body of his countrymen, as a betrayer of the +nation's honour. Resentment was all the greater in that it was +universally believed that Laing's Nek and Majuba were unlucky little +accidents, and that another month or two of hostilities would have +humbled the Boers to the dust. + +This illusion, which is not yet eradicated, and which has coloured all +subsequent discussion of the subject, lasted unmodified until the first +months of the war in 1899, when events took place exactly similar to +Laing's Nek and Majuba, and were followed by a campaign lasting nearly +three years, requiring nearly 500,000 men for its completion, and the +co-operation of the whole Empire. It is impossible to estimate the +course events would have taken in 1881 had the war been prolonged. If +the Free State had joined the Transvaal, it may be reasonably +conjectured that we should have been weaker, relatively, than in 1899. +Though the Boers were less numerous, less well organized, and less +united as a nation in 1881, they were even better shots and stalkers +than in 1899, because they had had more recent practice against game and +natives; nor was there a large British population in the Transvaal to +counteract their efforts and supply magnificent corps like the Imperial +Light Horse for service in arms against them. Our army, just as brave, +was in every other respect, especially in the matter of mounted men and +marksmanship, less fitted for such a peculiar campaign, and could have +counted with far less certainty upon that assistance from mounted +colonial troops without which the war of 1899-1902 could never have been +finished at all. Our command of the sea was less secure; the Egyptian +War of 1882 was brewing, and Ireland, where the Great Land Act of 1881 +was not yet law, was seething with crime and disorder little +distinguishable from war itself, and demanding large bodies of troops. + +If the further course of a war in 1881 is a matter of speculation, what +we all know for certain is, first, that the conditions which led to war +were produced by seventy years of vacillating policy, and, second, that +war itself would have been a useless waste of life and treasure, unless +success in it had been followed, as in 1906, by the grant of that +responsible Government which all along had been the key to the whole +difficulty, the condition precedent to a Federal Union of the South +African States, and to their closer incorporation in the Empire. + +Few persons realized this at the time. The whole situation changed +disastrously for the worse. Arrogance and mutual contempt embittered the +relations of the races. Then came a crucial test for the Boer capacity +for enlightened and generous statesmanship. Gold was discovered in the +Transvaal, and a large British population flocked in. The same problem, +with local modifications, faced the Boers as had been faced in Upper and +Lower Canada, and for centuries past in Ireland. Were they to trust or +suspect, to admit or to exclude from full political rights, the +new-comers? Was it to be the policy of the Duke of Wellington or of the +Earl of Durham, of Fitzgibbon or the Volunteers? They chose the wrong +course, and set up an oligarchical ascendancy like the "family compact" +of Upper Canada and Nova Scotia. Can we be surprised that they, a rude, +backward race, failed under the test where we ourselves, with far less +justification, had failed so often? Their experience of our methods had +been bad from first to last. Their latest taste of our rule had been the +coercive system of Lanyon, and they feared, with only too good reason, +as events after the second war proved, that any concession would lead to +a counter-ascendancy of British interests in a country which was legally +their own, not a portion of the British dominions. We had suffered +nothing, and had no reason to fear anything, from the Irish and +French-Canadian Catholics, nor from the Nonconformist Radicals of Upper +Canada. It would have been well if a small fraction of the abuse +lavished on the tyrannical Boer oligarchy six thousand miles away had +been diverted into criticism of the government of a country within sixty +miles of our shores, where a large majority of the inhabitants had been +for generations asking for the same thing as the Uitlander minority in +the Transvaal--Home Rule--and were stimulated to make that demand by +grievances of a kind unknown in the Transvaal. + +But the British blood was up; the Boer blood was up. Such an atmosphere +is not favourable to far-seeing statesmanship, and it would have taken +statesmanship on both sides little short of superhuman to avert another +war. The silly raid of 1895 and its condonation by public opinion in +England hastened the explosion. Can anyone wonder that public opinion in +Ireland was instinctively against that war? Only a pedant will seize on +the supposed paradox that a war for equal rights for white men should +have met with reprobation from an Ireland clamouring for Home Rule. +Irish experience amply justified Irishmen in suspecting precisely what +the Boers suspected, a counter-ascendancy in the gold interest, and in +seeing in a war for the conquest of a small independent country by a +mighty foreign power an analogy to the original conquest of Ireland by +the same power. It is hard to speak with restraint of the educated +men--men with books and time to read them, with brains and the wealth +and leisure to develop them--who to this very day abuse their talents in +encouraging among the ignorant multitude the belief that the Irish +leaders of that day were, to use the old hackneyed phrase, "traitors to +the Empire." If we look at the whole of these events in just +perspective, if we search coolly and patiently for abiding principles +beneath the sordid din and confusion of racial strife, we shall agree +that in some respects Irishmen were better friends to the Empire than +the politicians who denounced them, and sounder judges of its needs. Yet +there can be no doubt that the Transvaal complications, followed +unhappily by the Gordon episode in the Soudan, reacted fatally on +Ireland, and that the Irish problem in its turn reacted with bad effect +on the Transvaal. When the statesman who refused to avenge Majuba in +1881 proposed his Irish Home Rule Bills in 1886 and 1893, it was easy +for prejudiced minds to associate the two policies as harmonious parts +of one great scheme of national dismemberment and betrayal. Boers, +Irish, and Soudanese savages, all were confusedly lumped together as +dangerous people whom it was England's duty to conquer and coerce. + +The South African War of 1899-1902 came and passed. People will discuss +to the end of time whether or not it could have been avoided. Parties +will differ to the end of time about its moral justification. For my own +part, I think it is pleasanter to dwell on the splendid qualities it +evoked in both races, and above all on the mutual respect which replaced +the mutual contempt of earlier days. I myself am disposed to think that +at the pass matters had reached in 1896 nothing but open war could have +set the relations of the two races on a healthy footing. + +But bold and generous statesmanship was needed if the fruits of this +mutual respect were to be reaped. The defeated Republics were now +British Colonies, their inhabitants British subjects. After many +vicissitudes we were back once more in the old political situation of +1836 before the Great Trek, and the policy which was right then was +right now. Bitter awakening as it was to our proud people after a war +involving such colossal sacrifices, it was still just as true as of old +that in Ireland, Canada, Australia, South Africa, or anywhere else, it +is utterly impossible for one white democracy to rule another properly +on the principle of ascendancy. It was physically possible, thanks to +Ireland's proximity, to deny that country Home Rule, but it would not +have been even physically possible in the Transvaal and Orange River +Colony. Yet the idea was conceived and the policy strongly backed which +could only have had the disastrous effect of bringing into being two +Irelands in the midst of our South African dominions. It is not yet +generally recognized that we owe the defeat of this policy in the first +instance to Lord Kitchener. From the moment he took the supreme military +command in South Africa at the end of 1900, while prosecuting the war +with iron severity and sleepless energy, he insisted on and worked for a +settlement by consent, with a formal promise of future self-government +to the Boers. In this he was in sharp opposition to Lord Milner, who +desired to extort an unconditional surrender. Of these two strong, able, +high-minded men, the soldier, curiously enough, was the better +statesman. In temperament he recalls the General Abercromby of 1797 on +the eve of the Irish rebellion, still more perhaps General Carleton, who +administered French Canada in the critical period after its conquest and +during the American War. Lord Milner, in political theory, not in +personality, corresponds to Fitzgibbon. His view was that British +prestige and authority could only be maintained in the future by thus +humbling the national pride of our adversaries, who, moreover, by the +formal annexations of 1900, carried into effect when the war was still +young, were by a legal fiction rebels, not belligerents. Lord Kitchener, +besides seeing, as the responsible soldier in the field, the sheer +physical impossibility of lowering the Boer national pride by any +military operations he had the power to undertake, from the beginning of +the guerilla war onwards, was a truer judge of human nature and a better +Imperialist at heart in realizing that the self-respect of the Boers was +a precious asset, not a dangerous menace to the Empire, and that the +whole fate of South Africa depended on a racial reconciliation on the +basis of equal political rights, which would be for ever precluded by +compelling the Boers to pass under the Caudine Forks. + +Fortunately Lord Kitchener was supported by the Home Government, and the +Peace of Vereeniging took the form of a surrender on terms, or, +virtually, of a treaty, formally guaranteeing, among other things, the +concession "when circumstances should permit" of "representative +institutions leading up to self-government." The next ordeal of British +statesmanship came when the time arrived in 1905 to redeem this promise. +There were two distinctly defined alternatives: one, to profit by +experience and to give responsible government at once; the other, for +the time being, to copy one of the constitutional models which had long +been obsolete curiosities in the history of all the white Colonies, +which had never failed to produce mischievous results, whether in a +bi-racial or a uni-racial community, and which were in reality suited +only to groups of officials and traders living in the midst of +uneducated coloured races in tropical lands. The Government, and we +cannot doubt that their traditional policy toward Ireland warped their +views, declared for the latter alternative, and issued under Letters +Patent a Constitution which happily never came into force. Like the Act +of Union with Ireland, it gave the shadow of freedom without the +substance. It set up a single Legislative Chamber, four-fifths elective, +but containing, as _ex-officio_ members, the whole of the Executive +Council as nominated by the Crown. Executive power, therefore, together +with the last word in all legislation, was to remain wholly in the hands +of the Crown, acting through a Ministry not responsible to the people's +representatives. It would have been difficult to design a plan more +certain to promote friction, racialism, and an eventual deadlock, +necessitating either a humiliating surrender by the Government under +pressure of the refusal of supplies, or a reversion to despotic +government which would have produced another war. With wide differences +of detail and with the added risk of financial deadlock, it was sought +to establish the kind of political situation prevalent in Ireland after +the Act of Union. The executive power in that country, and, with the +exception of the Department of Agriculture, the policy and personnel of +the host of nominated Boards through which its affairs are administered, +still stand wholly outside popular control, while legislation in +accordance with Irish views is only possible when, in the fluctuation of +the British party balance, a British Ministry happens to be in sympathy +with these views, and only too often not even then. + +Statesmen who looked with complacency on the history of a century in +Ireland under such a system naturally took a similar view of the +Transvaal, deriving it from the same low estimate of human tendencies. +The literature, despatches, and speeches of the period carry us straight +back to the Canadian controversies of 1837-1840, and beyond them to the +Union controversy of 1800. In one respect the parallel with the Irish +Union is closer, because, while British opinion in Lower Canada was +predominantly against responsible government, there was in Ireland a +strong current of unbribed Protestant opinion against the Union. +Similarly, in the Transvaal, there was a strong feeling among a section +of the British population, coinciding with the general wishes of the +Dutch population, in favour of full responsible government. In other +words, the mere prospect of self-government lessened racial cleavage, +brought men of the two races together, and began the evolution of a new +party cleavage on the normal lines natural to modern communities. The +whole question was keenly canvassed at public meetings and in the Press +from November, 1904, to February 5, 1905, and in Johannesburg a British +party of considerable strength took the lead in demanding the fuller +political rights, and formed the Responsible Government Association. The +controversy was embodied in a Blue-Book laid before Parliament,[35] and +at every stage of its progress the facts were cabled home by Lord Milner +to the Government, who thus had the whole situation before them when +they came to their decision. + +It would be worth the reader's while to study with some care the terms +of the despatch announcing that decision.[36] He will feel himself in +contact with fundamental principles, undisturbed by individual bias; for +no one could suspect Mr. Lyttelton, the genial and popular Secretary of +State who penned the despatch, of any violent prejudices. Yet the spirit +of the whole despatch, though gentle and persuasive in its terms, is the +spirit of Fitzgibbon's brutally outspoken argument for the extinction of +the Irish Parliament, and the complete exclusion of Irish Roman +Catholics from influence over their country's affairs. The despatch +begins, it is true, by explaining that the proposed Constitution is only +intended to be temporary; that it had been the invariable custom to +grant freedom to the Colonies by degrees, and that the custom must be +followed; but the reasons adduced for following it, if we consider that +they were adduced in the year 1905, instead of a century and a half +back, constitute one of the strangest of all the strange inversions of +historical cause and effect which a Home Rule controversy has ever +suggested to the human brain. Instead of inferring from our bitter +experiences in Upper and Lower Canada, which are mentioned in the +despatch, and in Ireland, which is not, that race distinctions increase +instead of lessening the necessity for responsible government, Mr. +Lyttelton complacently quotes bi-racial Lower Canada as a precedent for +his Transvaal Constitution. Quite frankly, though in curiously +misleading terms,[37] he records the fact that a similar Constitution +there led to deadlock and rebellion. Without intention to deceive, he +ignores the fact that wholly British Upper Canada reached the same pass +for the same reasons; and he appears to look forward with equanimity to +the passage of the unfortunate Transvaal through an identically painful +phase of history toward the same sanguinary climax. The radical error +in the official version of events in Canada appears in the comparison +between the rebellions of 1837 and the South African War of 1899-1902. +To contrast the "brief armed rising" in Canada with the three years' war +in South Africa, and to argue that a degree of freedom could safely be +given after the former, which would involve great danger after the +latter, was to show ignorance of the chain of historical events and +blindness to their true moral. The underlying idea is the one applied to +the old American Colonies and for centuries to Ireland, namely, that the +more mutinous a dependency is, the less reason for giving it Home Rule, +with the paradoxical corollary applied even to this day in Ireland, that +if it is not disorderly it does not need Home Rule. So from age to age +statesmen run their heads against facts, perpetuate the errors of their +forefathers, and do their unconscious best to intensify the evils they +deplore. It was erroneous to regard either the Canadian Rebellions or +the Boer War as events which rendered responsible government more or +less dangerous. Each of these events was itself the climax of a long +period of irresponsible misgovernment dating from about the same period, +the second decade of the nineteenth century, and demanding the same +remedy. In the Boer case, continuity was twice broken by grants of +independence, and the climax proportionally delayed, but the origin of +the trouble was the same. If the Boers had not trekked _en masse_ from +Cape Colony in order to escape from misgovernment, both movements--in +the Cape and Canada--might have come to a head in exactly the same year, +1837. + +In sober, weighty, tactful phrases, carefully chosen to avoid giving +needless offence to the Dutch, the despatch laboriously overthrows the +Liberal theory of government, and works out the negation of all Imperial +experience. It deplores the "bitter memories" of war, which free +institutions, by tending to "emphasize and stereotype the racial line," +will make more, not less bitter, and which can be effaced only by the +"healing effect of time." We think of the Durham Report, of Ireland, and +marvel. We recollect the bulky Blue-Book at Mr. Lyttelton's elbow as he +wrote, full of speeches and articles by Englishmen, showing quite +correctly, as has since been proved, that the "racial line" in +Johannesburg was growing fainter daily with the mere prospect of +responsible government. These men were not afraid of the Dutch, and said +so. The answer was that they ought to be, or, in the persuasive language +of diplomacy, as follows: + +"His Majesty's Government trust that those of British origin in the +Transvaal who, with honest conviction, have advocated the immediate +concession of full responsible government, will recognize the soundness +and cogency of the reasons, both in their own interests and in those of +the Empire, for proceeding more cautiously and slowly, and that under a +political system which admittedly has its difficulties they will, +notwithstanding a temporary disappointment, do their best to promote the +welfare of the country and the smooth working of its institutions." + +Then came a chivalrous compliment to the Dutch for their "gallant +struggle" in the war, coupled with a reminder that they are not to be +trusted with political power, a reminder so courteously worded that it, +too, becomes a compliment: + +"The inhabitants of Dutch origin have recently witnessed, after their +gallant struggle against superior power, the fall of the Republic +founded by the valour and sufferings of their ancestors, and cannot be +expected, until time has done more to heal the wound, to entertain the +most cordial feelings towards the Government of the Transvaal. But from +them also, as from a people of practical genius, who have learned by +long experience to make the best of circumstances, His Majesty's +Government expect co-operation in the task of making their race, no +longer in isolated independence, a strong pillar in the fabric of a +world-wide Empire. That this should be the result, and that a complete +reconciliation between men of two great and kindred races should, under +the leading of Divine Providence, speedily come to pass, is the ardent +desire of His Majesty the King and of His Majesty's Government." + +The tone recalls the tone of Pitt and Castlereagh in proposing the +Union. But Fitzgibbon went more directly to the point in saying outright +that, Ireland having been conquered and confiscated, the colonists "were +at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island," and that laws must +be framed by an external power to "meet the vicious propensities of +human nature." Let us recognize unreservedly that the words of the +Transvaal despatch were the outcome of deep and sincere conviction. That +is the worst of it. From age to age Ireland has to suffer for the depth +and sincerity of these convictions. There, too, the cleavage of race and +religion, never complete, always defying the official efforts to +"stereotype and emphasize it," to quote the despatch of 1905, grows +fainter with time, and will grow fainter as long as the national +movement lives to draw men together in the common interest of Ireland. +The Volunteers, Wolfe Tone, Emmet, many of the Young Irelanders, Isaac +Butt, Parnell, were Protestants. And there is a strong band of +Protestant Home Rulers to-day in Ulster and out of it, landlords, +tenants, capitalists, labourers, Members of Parliament, and clergymen, +who declare that they are not afraid of Catholic oppression, and who are +told by Unionists that they ought to be. And in Ireland, too, the Roman +Catholic majority are told, rarely, it is true, in the courteous phrases +of Mr. Lyttelton's despatch, that they "cannot be expected to entertain +the most cordial feelings towards the Government." In Ireland, also, is +a "political system which admittedly has its difficulties," ironical +euphemism for a system whose analogue in the Transvaal could have been +used by the subject race, had they so willed, to bring civil government +to a standstill, without the means of furnishing anything better, and +which under the Act of Union can be, and has been, used to dislocate the +Parliamentary life of the United Kingdom. The Boers were asked "as a +people of practical genius" to assist the "smooth working" of an +unworkable Constitution, so as to promote the "reconciliation of two +great and kindred races." The Irish are pursued with invective for +legitimately using the constitutional power given them in order, while +freeing Parliament from an intolerable incubus, to gain the right to +elicit character and responsibility in themselves by shouldering their +own burdens and saving their own souls. + +If the official view of the Transvaal was mistaken, the summit of error +was reached in the view taken of the Orange River Colony. In that +Colony, which was almost wholly pastoral and Dutch, and which until the +war had enjoyed free institutions uninterruptedly for half a century, +and had made remarkably good vise of them, representative government, +even of the illusory kind designed for the Transvaal, was to be +indefinitely postponed, postponed at any rate until the results of the +"experiment" in the Transvaal had been observed. + +The Government "recognize that there are industrial and economic +conditions peculiar to the Transvaal, which make it very desirable in +that Colony to have at the earliest possible date some better means of +ascertaining the views of the different sections of the population than +the present system affords. The question as regards the Orange River +Colony being a less urgent one, it appears to them that there will be +advantage in allowing a short period to intervene before elective +representative institutions are granted to the last-named Colony, +because this will permit His Majesty's Government to observe the +experiment, and, if need be, to profit by the experience so gained." + +What is the train of reasoning in this strange specimen of political +argument? It was important to "ascertain the views" of the bi-racial +Transvaal, but needless to ascertain the views of the practically +homogeneous Orange River Colony. The "question" there is a "less urgent +one." What question? Why less urgent? Is it that the British minority, +being so very small, is more liable to oppression by the Dutch? That is +a tenable point, though by parity of reasoning it would seem to make the +question more, not less, urgent, and the importance of "ascertaining the +views" of the different sections of the population, greater, not less. +Or is it the diametrically opposite train of thought, namely, that an +assumed improbability of disorder owing to the homogeneity of the +population is a reason, not for giving Home Rule, but for withholding +it? These contradictions and confusions are painfully familiar in +anti-Home Rule dialectics all over the world. A quiet Ireland does not +want Home Rule; a turbulent Ireland is not fit for it. If the Unionist +element in Ireland is strong, that is clearly an argument for +withholding Home Rule in deference to the wishes of a strong minority. +If the minority, on the other hand, is proved to be small, all the +greater reason for withholding it, because oppression by the majority +will be easier. So the sterile argument swings back and forth, and men +still talk of "experiments" and "profiting by experience," while the +demonstration of their errors is written in the blood and tears of +centuries, and while masses of facts accumulate, demonstrating the great +truth that free democratic government, whatever its disadvantages and +dangers--and it has both--is the best resource for uniting, +strengthening, and enriching a community of white men. + +The Transvaal Constitution of 1905 was cancelled on the incoming of the +Liberal Ministry at the end of that year, and in the following year full +responsible government was granted both to the Transvaal and Orange +River Colony, with the results that we know. Instantaneously there +permeated the bi-racial urban society in the Transvaal a new sense of +brotherhood. Men of different race, as far apart in spirit as the +members of the Kildare Street Club, the Orange Societies, and the +Ancient Order of Hibernians, met and made friends because it was not +only natural but necessary to make friends, since on all alike lay the +burden of doing their best for their country on a basis of equal +citizenship. Nobody out there called the new system an "experiment." The +wrench once over, the thing once done, there was general unanimity that +whatever the difficulties--and there were great difficulties--it was the +right thing to be done under the circumstances, and if this unanimity +was combined, rightly or wrongly, with a good deal of resentment against +the Liberal attitude at home towards Chinese labour, nobody is any the +worse for that. The day will come when even that burning question will +be seen in its true perspective as an infinitesimally small point beside +the great principle of responsible government, which includes the +decision of labour questions, together with all other branches of +domestic policy. + +Conservative opinion at home has been slower to change than British +opinion in the Transvaal. But, again, this was natural. Parties had long +been divided on the South African question. The abrupt reversal of +policy was felt as a humiliation, and the ingrained mental habits +engendered by the traditional policy towards Ireland yielded slowly, +grudgingly, and fearfully to the proof of error in South Africa. It is +not for the sake of opening an old wound, but solely because it is +absolutely necessary for the completion of my argument, that I have to +recall the angry and violent speeches which followed the announcement of +the new policy; the dogmatic prognostications of Imperial disruption, of +financial collapse, and of a cruel Boer tyranny in the emancipated +Colonies; the charges of wanton betrayal of loyalists, of disgraceful +surrender to "the enemy." Some of the leading actors in these scenes, +notably Mr. Balfour and Mr. Lyttelton, have since acknowledged that they +were wrong, while apparently feeling it their duty as honourable and +loyal men to give a somewhat misleading turn to an old controversy in +their praise of Lord Milner's services to South Africa. That Lord +Milner, in his administration during and after the war, did, indeed, do +a vast amount of sound and lasting work for South Africa is perfectly +true, and he deserves all honour for it. Probably no public servant of +the Empire ever laboured in its service with more unstinted devotion and +a higher sense of duty. But good administration is not an adequate +substitute for knowledge of men, and that knowledge Lord Milner lacked. +He did no service to the British colonists of South Africa in telling +them that they had been shamefully betrayed by the Home Government in +1906. It would have been wiser to advise them to rely on themselves and +on the justice and wisdom of their Dutch fellow-citizens. His violent +speeches in 1906-1908 about the calamitous results of permitting Dutch +influences free play in South Africa--speeches breathing the essential +spirit of Fitzgibbonism--would have wrought incalculable mischief had +they coincided with effective British policy; while his view, as +expressed in the House of Lords,[38] that a preparatory regime of +benevolent despotism, showing "the obvious solicitude of the Government +for the welfare of the people," and taking shape "in a hundred and one +works of material advancement," would "win us friends and diminish our +enemies," evinces an ignorance of the ordinary motives influencing the +conduct of white men, which would be incredible if we had not Irish +experience before us. "Twenty years of resolute government," said Lord +Salisbury. "Home Rule will be killed by kindness," said many of his +successors. In later chapters I shall have to show what well-meant +kindness and resolute government have done for Ireland. If even at this +late hour Lord Milner would frankly acknowledge his error, I believe he +would enormously enhance his reputation in the eyes of the whole Empire. + +As practical men, let us remember that the Constitutions of 1906 would +not have become law if, instead of being issued under Letters Patent, +they had had to pass through Parliament in the form of a Bill. The whole +Conservative party, following Lord Milner, was vehemently against the +Letters Patent. Those who witnessed the debate upon them in the House of +Commons will not forget the scene. I recall this fact without any desire +to entangle myself in the current controversy about the Upper House, but +with the strictly practical object of showing that because a Home Rule +Bill is defeated in Parliament, as the Irish Bills of 1886 and 1893 were +defeated, it does not necessarily follow that its policy is wrong. Nor +does it follow that its policy is wrong if that defeat in Parliament is +confirmed by a General Election. Home Rule for Canada never had to pass, +and would not have passed even the Parliamentary test. Skilful and +determined organization could have wrecked even the Australian +Constitutions. No one, certainly, could have guaranteed a favourable +result of a General Election taken expressly upon the Transvaal and +Orange River Constitutions of 1906, with the whole machinery of one of +the great parties thrown into the scale against them. We know the case +made against Ireland on such occasions, and the case against the +conquered Republics was made in Parliament with ten times greater force. +If anyone doubts this, let him compare the speeches on Ireland in 1886 +and 1893 with the speeches on South Africa in 1905-06. With the +alteration of a name or two, with the substitution, for example, of +Johannesburg for Ulster, the speeches against South African and Irish +Home Rule might be almost interchangeable. For electioneering purposes, +evidences, in word and act, of Boer treason, rapacity, and +vindictiveness, could have been made by skilful orators to seem damning +and unanswerable. All the arts for inflaming popular passion under the +pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that +patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises. The material would have +been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient +numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped +by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the +speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the +Peace Conference, would have been ready for the hoardings and the +fly-sheets, and they would have had an appreciable effect. + +Am I weakening the case for democracy itself in pressing this view? +Surely not. One democracy is incapable of understanding the domestic +needs and problems of another. Whenever, therefore, a democracy finds +itself responsible for the adjudication of a claim for Home Rule from +white men, it should limit itself to ascertaining whether the claim is +genuine and sincere. If it is, the claim should be granted, and a +Constitution constructed in friendly concert with the men who are to +live under it. That way lies safety and honour, and, happily, the +democracy is being educated to that truth. If this be a counsel of +perfection; if the difficult and delicate task of settling the details +of Irish Home Rule is to be hampered and complicated by the +resuscitation of those time-honoured discussions over abstract +principles which ought long ago to have been buried and forgotten, let +every patriotic and enlightened man at any rate do his best to sweeten +and mollify the controversy, to extirpate its grosser manifestations, +and to substitute reason for passion. + +The grant of responsible government to the Transvaal and Orange River +Colony reacted with amazing rapidity on South African politics as a +whole. It took the Canadian Provinces twenty-seven years (if we reckon +from 1840), and the Australian States forty-five years (if we reckon +from 1855), to reach a Federal Union. Hardly a minute was wasted in +South Africa. Under very able guidance, the scheme was canvassed almost +from the first, and in two years trusted leaders of both races, +representing Natal, Cape Colony, and two newly emancipated +Colonies--men, some of whom had been shooting at one another only five +years before--were sitting at a table together hammering out the details +of a South African Union. Here, indeed, was shown the "practical genius" +which the Government of 1905 had piously invoked for their abortive +Constitution. In the spirit of forbearance, of sympathy, of wise +compromise, which governed the proceedings of this famous Conference, +was to be found the measure of the longing of all parties to extinguish +racialism and make South Africa truly a nation. The Imperial Act +legalizing the arrangements ultimately arrived at by the agreement of +the colonists was passed in 1909. The political system constructed +cannot be called Federal. The framers rejected the Australian model, and +went much beyond the Canadian model in centralizing authority and +diminishing local autonomy; nor can there be any doubt that the +strongest motive behind that policy was that of securing the harmony of +the two white races. + +All this was the result of trusting the Dutch in 1906. "We cannot expect +you to trust us, and we shall not trust you," said the despatch of 1905. +We know what the consequences of that policy would have been. It is not +a question of imagination or hypothesis. It is a question of the +operation of certain unchanging laws in the conduct of all white men. +Good or bad, our government would have been detested. We should have +manufactured sedition, lawlessness, and discord. Then the tendency would +have been strong to follow the old Irish precedent, and make the evil +symptoms we had ourselves educed the pretext for tightening the screw of +anti-popular government. It would have been said that we must sustain +our prestige to the end and at all costs, a phrase which often cloaks +the obstinacy of moral cowardice. Or, too late to escape the contempt of +the Boers, we might have abruptly surrendered to clamour. It would have +taken a long time to reach union then. Contempt is a bad foundation. + +It brings one near despair to see the Union of South Africa used by men +who should know better as an argument against Irish Home Rule. The chain +of causation is so clear, one would think, as to be incapable of +misconstruction. But there seems to be no limit in certain minds to the +prejudice against the principle of Home Rule. If it is seen to work +well, the phenomenon is hurriedly swept into oblivion, and its results +attributed with feverish ingenuity to any cause but the true one. The +very speed with which the antidote pervades the body politic and expels +the old poison helps these untiring propagators of error to suppress the +history of recuperation, and to ascribe the cure of the patient to a +treatment which, if applied long enough, would have killed him. The +Conservative party appear to have now reached this amazing conclusion: +that they and Lord Milner were the authors of the South African Union, +and that that Union is a weapon sent them by Providence for combating +the Irish claims. This is what Ireland has to pay for being the sport of +British parties. Individual statesmen may point at past mistakes; but a +party, as a party, can never admit error: it is against the rules. To +make things easier, there is that question-begging phrase, the "Union." +If South Africa, like Australia, had been federalized, this windfall +would have been lost, because the word "Federal" might have suggested +some form of Federal Home Rule for Ireland. Labels mean an enormous +amount in politics. + +There is not the slightest doubt that Mr. Walter Long, and even Lord +Selborne, who, as High Commissioner, actually witnessed the whole +evolution from responsible government in the two conquered States to the +Union of South Africa, are perfectly sincere in their opposition to +Irish Home Rule. But, I would respectfully suggest, it is their duty to +use their knowledge and convictions in the right and fair way. Let them +say, if they will, ignoring the intermediate and indispensable phase of +Home Rule in South Africa: "Here are two Unions; never mind how they +arose. Both are good: all Unions are good. The modern tendency to unify +is sound; do not let us react to devolution." Let them, in other words, +confine their argument to the domain of political science. What, I +submit, they should refrain from, is the imputation of sordid motives to +Nationalist leaders, the prognostications of religious and racial +tyranny in Ireland, and all those inflammatory arguments against the +principle of Home Rule which have been used all the world over, from +time immemorial, for the maintenance of Unions based on legal, not on +moral, ties, which were used against responsible government for the +Transvaal, and which, I venture to affirm, degrade our public life. + +I am assuming for the moment that most Conservatives will elect to use +the South African parallel in the way that Mr. Long and Lord Selborne +have used it, that is, while tacitly approving in retrospect of the Home +Rule of 1906, to argue from Union to Union. But it is of no use to blink +the fact that there are pessimists who will put forward an antithetical +case, boldly declaring that we were wrong ever to trust the Boers, that +racialism is as bad as ever, that General Botha's loyalty is cant, the +Cullinan diamond an insult, and that South Africa will go from bad to +worse under a Dutch tyranny. Party propaganda is quite elastic enough to +permit the two opposite views to be used to convince the same electorate +at the same election. Pessimists are always active in these affairs, and +they can always produce something in the nature of a plausible case, +because it stands to reason that the evils of generations cannot be +swept away in a moment, either in South Africa or Ireland. Miracles do +not happen, and the pessimists, who are the curse of Ireland to-day, +will be able to demonstrate with ease that the free Ireland of to-morrow +will not enter instantaneously upon a millennium. It is useless to +attempt to convert these extremists. For a century back, Hansard and the +columns of daily papers have been full of their unfulfilled jeremiads +about Canada, about Australia, and about the very smallest and most +tardy attempts to give a little responsibility to the majority of +citizens in Ireland. The vocabulary of impending ruin has been exhausted +long ago; there is nothing new to be said. But those who care to study +in a cool temper the course of recent South African politics in the +columns of the _Times_, or, better still, in those of that excellent +magazine for the discussion of Imperial affairs, the _Round Table_, will +conclude that extraordinary progress has been made towards racial +reunion, and that in this respect no serious peril threatens South +Africa. The settlement, by friendly compromise at the end of the last +session, of the very thorny question of language in the education of +children, is a good example of what good-will can accomplish under free +institutions. By a laboured construction of fragments of speeches culled +from the utterances of exceptionally vehement partisans, it would be +still possible to make up a theory of the "disloyalty" of the South +African Dutch. It would have been equally possible for a painstaking +British student of the _Sydney Bulletin_ within recent memory to start a +panic over the imminent "loss" of Australia. Some people think that +Canada is as good as "lost" now. Yet the Empire has never been so strong +or so united as to-day. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[35] Cd. 2479, 1905. + +[36] Cd. 2400, 1905. + +[37] "It is true that in the case of Canada full responsible government +was conceded, a few years after a troublous period culminating in a +brief armed rising, to a population composed of races then not very +friendly to each other, though now long since happily reconciled. But +the Canadas had by that time enjoyed representative institutions for +over fifty years, the French-Canadians had since the year 1763 been +continuously British subjects, and the disorders which preceded Lord +Durham's Mission and the subsequent grant of self-government could not +compare in any way with a war like that of 1899-1902. It is also the +fact that in the United Colony of Upper and Lower Canada, during the +period of 1840-1867, parties were formed mainly upon the lines of races, +and that, as the representatives of the races were in number nearly +balanced, stability of Government was not attained, a difficulty which +was not overcome until the Federation of 1867, accompanied by the +relegation of provincial affairs to provincial Legislatures, placed the +whole political Constitution of Canada upon a wider basis." + +Few would gather from the first sentence that the races were "not very +friendly to each other" precisely because they lived under a coercive +political system; and that, in the long-run, they were "happily +reconciled" because they received responsible government. Nor could it +be deduced from the obscure reference lower down to the union of the two +Provinces that the Union was the one blot upon Durham's scheme, the one +point in which, fearing the predominance of a French majority in Lower +Canada, he shrank from his own principles and recommended an unworkable +Union which tended to encourage the formation "of parties on the lines +of races." From the further allusion to the Federal Union of 1867, no +one would imagine that that great scheme was founded on a cessation of +racial antipathy inside the Quebec Province, and on a voluntary +recognition among all races and parties that it was best for that +Province to have a local autonomy of its own, parallel with that of the +Ontario Province and under the supreme central authority of the +Dominion. + +[38] February 26, March 27, 1906. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE ANALOGY + + +Let the reader endeavour to see the closely related stories of Ireland +and of these more distant communities as a whole, undistracted by the +varying degrees of their proximity to the Mother Country, making his +study one of men and laws, and remembering that Ireland was the first +and nearest of the British Colonies. Does not she become a convex +mirror, in which, swollen to unnatural proportions, the mistakes of two +centuries are reflected? Principles of government universal in their +nature, transcending geography, and painfully evolved in more distant +parts of the Empire, we have thrown to the winds in Ireland. Economic +evils, resembling, in however distant a degree, those of Ireland, have +irritated and retarded every community in which they have been allowed +to take root. A sound agrarian system has been the primary need of every +country. To take the closest parallel, if absentee proprietorship and +insecurity of tenure kept little Prince Edward Island, peacefully and +legally settled, backward and disturbed for a century, it is not +surprising that Ireland, submitted to confiscation, the Penal Code, and +commercial rum, did not flourish under a land system beside which that +of Prince Edward Island was a paradise. Tardy redress of the worst Irish +abuses is no defence of the system which created them and sustained them +with such ruinous results. No white community of pride and spirit would +willingly tolerate the grotesque form of Crown Colony administration, +founded on force, and now tempered by a kind of paternal State +Socialism, under which Ireland lives to-day. Unionism for Ireland is +anti-Imperialist. Its upholders strenuously opposed colonial autonomy, +and but yesterday were passionately opposing South African autonomy. +To-day colonial autonomy is an axiom. But Ireland is a measure of the +depth of these convictions. There would be no Empire to idealize if +their Irish principles had been applied just a little longer to any of +the oversea States which constitute the self-governing Colonies of +to-day. As it is, these principles have wrought great and perhaps +lasting mischief which, in the righteous glow of self-congratulation +upon what we are accustomed to call our constructive political genius, +we are too apt to overlook. It was bad for America to pass through that +phase of agitation and discord which preceded the revolutionary war. It +was demoralizing for the Canadas to be driven into rebellion by the +vices of ascendancy government. Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Australian +autonomy, was right in satirizing the "miserable jargon" about fitting +men for political privileges, and in demonstrating the harm done by +withholding those privileges. And the Irish race all over the world, +fine race as it is, would be finer still if Ireland had been free. + +The political habits formed in dealing with Ireland have disastrously +influenced Imperial policy in the past. Cannot we, by a supreme national +effort, reverse the mental process, and, if we have always failed in the +past to learn from Irish lessons how not to treat the Colonies, at any +rate learn, even at the eleventh hour, from our colonial lessons how to +treat Ireland? Must we for ever sound the old alarms about "disloyalty" +and "dismemberment" and "abandonment of the loyal minority to the tender +mercies of their foes"; phrases as old as the Stamp Act of 1765? Must we +carry the "gentle art of making enemies," practised to the last point of +danger in the Colonies, to the preposterous pitch of estranging men at +our very doors, while pluming ourselves on the friendship of peoples +12,000 miles away? These are anxious times. We have a mighty rival in +Europe, and we need the co-operation of all our hands and brains. On a +basis of mere profit and loss, is it sensible to maintain a system in +Ireland which weakens both Ireland and the whole United Kingdom, clogs +the delicate machinery of Parliamentary government, and, worked out in +hard figures of pounds, shillings, and pence, has ceased even to show a +pecuniary advantage? + +Have Unionists really no better prescription for the constitutional +difficulties caused by the Union than to reduce the representation of +Ireland in Parliament so as to give Ireland still less control than at +present over her own affairs? Is that seriously their last word in +statesmanship, to exasperate Nationalist Ireland without even providing +in any appreciable degree a mechanical remedy for disordered political +functions? The idea has only to be stated to be dismissed. It is not +even practical politics. Some things are sheer impossibilities; and to +leave the Union system as it is, while reducing representation, is one +of them. + +We revert, then, to a contemplation of the well-tried expedient, "Trust, +and you will be trusted." But then we have to meet pessimists of two +descriptions, the honest and the merely cynical. The honest pessimist +(often, unhappily, an educated Irishman) says: "The Irish in Ireland are +an incurably criminal race. They differ from Irishmen elsewhere and from +Anglo-Saxons everywhere. Air and soil are unaccountable. The Union +policy has been, and remains, a painful but a quite inevitable +necessity. It is sound, now and for all time." The cynical pessimist, on +the other hand, admits the errors of past policy, but says frankly that +it is too late to change. "We have gone too far, raised passions we +cannot allay." I shall not try further to confute the honest pessimist. +The preceding chapters have been written in vain if they do not shatter +the theory of original sin. And to the cynical pessimist, who is a +reincarnation of our old friend Fitzgibbon (for that clear-headed +statesman frankly imputed original sin to the conquerors of Ireland, as +well as to the conquered), I would only say: "Use your common sense." +These panics over the vagaries and excesses of an Irish Parliament, +always groundless, are beginning to look highly ridiculous. In 1893, +when the last Home Rule Bill was being discussed, a Franco-Irish +alliance was the fear. Now it is the other way, and the _Spectator_ has +been writing solemn articles to warn its readers that Mr. Dillon, in a +speech on foreign policy, has shown ominous signs of hostility to +France. In the election of January, 1910, an ex-Cabinet Minister +informed the public that Home Rule meant the presence of a German fleet +in Belfast Lough--at whose invitation he did not explain, though he +probably did not intend to insult Ulster. This wild talk has not even +the merit of a strategical foundation. It belongs to another age. +Ireland has neither a fleet nor the will or money to build one. Our +fleet, in which large numbers of Irishmen serve, guarantees the security +of New Zealand, and if it cannot maintain the command of home waters, +including St. George's Channel, our situation is desperate, whether +Ireland is friendly or hostile. We guarantee the independent existence +of the kingdom of Belgium, which is as near as Ireland, with military +liabilities vastly more serious than any which Ireland could conceivably +entail; but we do not claim, as a consequence, to control the Executive +of Belgium and remove her Parliament to Westminster, in order to be +quite sure that the Belgians are not intriguing against us with Germany. +Germany, our alarmists fear, is to invade Ireland, and Ireland is to +greet the invaders with open arms. The same prophecy was being made not +more than three years ago of the South African Dutch. After asking for a +century and a half to manage her own affairs, the Irish are not likely +to ask to be ruled by Germans. The German strategists are men of common +sense. If they were fortunate enough to gain the command of the sea, +they could make no worse mistake than to dissipate their energies on +Ireland. + +Perhaps it is a waste of time to attempt to destroy these foolish myths. +Let those that are sceptical about the effect of Home Rule in producing +friendlier feelings between Ireland and Great Britain consider in a +reasonable spirit the commonplace question of mutual interests. What is +the really practical significance of Ireland's proximity to England? +This, that their material interests are indissociably intertwined. If it +is "safe," as the phrase goes, to entrust Australia with Home Rule, +surely it is safer still to entrust Ireland with it. Has Ireland +anything to gain by separation? Clearly nothing. Has she anything to +lose? Much. Most of her trade is with Great Britain. British credit is +of enormous value to her. The Imperial forces are of less proportionate +value to her because her external trade is small; but she willingly +supplies a large and important part of their personnel; she shares in +their glorious traditions; and if it is a case of protection for her +trade, she will get no protection elsewhere. + +How idle are these calculations of profit and loss! The truth is that +Ireland has taken her full share in winning and populating the Empire. +The result is hers as much as Britain's. Mr. Redmond spoke for his +countrymen last May[39] in saying: "We, as Irishmen, are not prepared to +surrender our share in the heritage [that is, the British Empire] which +our fathers created." That is sound sentiment and sound sense. It is the +view taken by the Colonies, where Irishmen are known, respected, and +understood, and where the support for Home Rule, based on personal +experience of its blessings, has been, and remains, consistent and +strong. Indeed, we miss the significance of that support if we do not +realize that Irish Home Rule is an indispensable preliminary to the +closer union of the various parts of the Empire. Let us add the wider +generalization that it is an indispensable preliminary to the closer +union of all the English-speaking races. It may be fairly computed that +a fifth of the present white population of the United States is of Irish +blood.[40] American opinion, as a whole, so far as it is directed +towards Ireland and away from a host of absorbing domestic problems, is +favourable to Home Rule. Irish-American opinion has never swerved, +although it has become more sober, as the material condition of Ireland +has improved, and the interests of Irish-Americans themselves have +become more closely identified with those of their adopted country. +Fenianism is altogether extinct. The extreme claim for the total +separation of Ireland from Great Britain is now no more than a +sentimental survival among a handful of the older men, of the fierce +hatreds provoked by the miseries and horrors of an era which has passed +away.[41] Even Mr. Patrick Ford and the _Irish World_ have moderated +their tone, and where that tone is still inflammatory it is not +representative of Irish-American opinion. I have studied with a good +deal of care the columns of that journal for some months back, smiling +over the imaginary terrors of the nervous people on this side of the +Atlantic who are taught by their party Press to believe that Mr. Patrick +Ford is going to dynamite them in their beds. Any liberal-minded student +of history and human nature would pronounce the whole propaganda +perfectly harmless. But the sane instinct that Ireland should have a +local autonomy of her own, an instinct common to the whole brotherhood +of nations which have sprung from these shores, lasts undiminished and +takes shape, quite rightly and naturally, as it takes shape in the +Colonies, in financial support of the Nationalist party in Ireland. +Anti-British sentiment in the United States, once a grave international +danger, is that no longer; but it does still represent an obstacle to +the complete realization of an ideal which all patriotic men should aim +at: the formation of indestructible bonds of friendship between Great +Britain and the United States. Nor must it be forgotten that the calm +and reasonable character of Irish-American opinion is due in a large +degree to confidence in the ultimate success of the constitutional +movement here for Home Rule. Every successive defeat of that policy +tends to embitter feeling in America. + +Oh, for an hour of intelligent politics! The old choice is before us--to +make the best or the worst of the state of opinion in America; to +disinter from ancient files of the _Irish World_ sentences calculated to +inflame an ignorant British audience; or to say in sensible and manly +terms: "The situation is more favourable than it has been for a century +past for the settlement of just Irish claims." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[39] At Woodford, May 27, 1911. + +[40] This is a very general statement. No figures exist for an accurate +computation. The Census of 1910 gives the total population of the United +States, white and coloured, as 91,272,266, of whom nearly 9,000,000 are +negroes. The figures about countries of origin are not yet available. +The statistical abstract of the United States (1908) gives the total +number of immigrants from Ireland from 1821 to 1908 as 4,168,747 (the +large majority of whom must have been of marriageable age), but does not +estimate the subsequent increase by marriage, and takes no account of +the immigration prior to 1821, which was very large, especially in the +period preceding the Revolutionary War of 1775-1782. At the Census of +1900 Irishmen actually _born in Ireland_ and then resident in the United +States are stated to have been 1,618,567, as compared with 93,682 from +Wales, 233,977 from Scotland, and 842,078 from England. + +[41] I am especially indebted for information to Mr. Hugh Sutherland, of +the _North American_ (Philadelphia), to Mr. Rodman Wanamaker, of the +same city, to Mr. Frank Sanborn, of Concord, and to Mr. John +O'Callaghan, of Boston. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +IRELAND TO-DAY + + +Why does present-day Ireland need Home Rule? I put the question in that +way because I am not going to question the fact that she wants Home +Rule. She has always said she wanted it: she says so still, and that is +enough. There is a powerful minority in Ireland against Home Rule. There +always have been minorities more or less powerful against Home Rule in +all ages and places. That does not alter the national character of the +claim. If once we go behind the voice of a people, constitutionally +expressed, we court endless risks. National leaders have always been +called "agitators," which, of course, they are, and non-representative +agitators, which they are not. To deny the genuineness of a claim which +is feared is an invariable feature of oppositions to measures of Home +Rule. The denial is generally irreconcilable with the case made for the +dangers of Home Rule, and that contradiction in its most glaring shape +characterizes the present opposition to the Irish claims. But Unionists +should elect to stand on one ground or the other, and for my part I +shall assume that the large majority of Irishmen, as shown by successive +electoral votes, want Home Rule. Precisely what form of Home Rule they +want is another and by no means so clear a matter, on which I shall +presently have a word to say. But they want, in the general sense, to +manage their own local affairs. Her best friends would despair of +Ireland if that was not her desire. + +What, in the Colonies, Ireland, and everywhere else, is the deep +spiritual impulse behind the desire for Home Rule? A craving for +self-expression, self-reliance. Home Rule is synonymous with the growth +of independent character. That is why Ireland instinctively and +passionately wants it, that is why she needs it, and that is why Great +Britain, for her own sake, and Ireland's, should give it. If that is not +the reason, it is idle to talk about Home Rule; but it is the reason. + +Character is the very foundation of national prosperity and happiness, +and we are blind to the facts of history if we cannot discern the +profound effect of political institutions upon human character. +Self-government in the community corresponds to free will in the +individual. I am far from saying that self-government is everything. But +I do say that it is the master-key. It is fundamental. Give +responsibility and you will create responsibility. Through political +responsibility only can a society brace itself to organized effort, find +out its own opinions on its own needs, test its own capabilities, and +elicit the will, the brains, and the hands to solve its own problems. + +These are such commonplaces in every other part of the Empire, which has +an individual life of its own, that men smile if you suggest the +contrary. But ordinary reasoning is rarely applied to Ireland. There +"good government" has been held to be "a substitute for self-government" +and a regime of benevolent paternalism to be a full and sufficient +compensation for cruel coercion and crueller neglect. In this paternal +regime it is impossible to include those great measures of land reform +passed in 1870, 1881, and 1887, which revolutionized the agrarian +system, and converted the cottier tenant into a judicial tenant.[42] +Although these measures, which fall into an altogether different +category from the subsequent policy of State-aided Land Purchase,[43] +were inspired by an earnest desire to mitigate frightful social evils, +they cannot be regarded as voluntary. They were extorted, shocking as +the reflection is, by crime and violence, by the spectacle of a whole +social order visibly collapsing, and by the desperate efforts of a +handful of Irishmen, determined at any cost, by whatever means, to save +the bodies and souls of their countrymen. The methods of these men were +destructive. They were constructive only in this, the highest sense of +all, that while battling against concrete economic evils, they sought to +obtain for Ireland the right to control her own affairs and cure her own +economic evils. It is often said that Parnell gave a tremendous impetus +to the Home Rule movement by harnessing it to the land question. True; +but what a strange way of expressing a truth! Anywhere outside Ireland +men would say that self-government was the best road to the reform of a +bad land system. + +With the tranquillity which was slowly restored by the alterations in +agrarian tenure and the immense economic relief derived from the +lowering of rents, a change came over the spirit of British +statesmanship. With the exception of the short Liberal Government of +1892-1895, which failed for the second time to carry Home Rule, +Conservatives were responsible for Ireland from 1886 to 1905. They felt +that opposition to Home Rule could be justified only by a strenuous +policy of amelioration in Ireland, and the efforts of three Chief +Secretaries, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Gerald Balfour, and Mr. George +Wyndham--efforts often made in the teeth of bitter opposition from Irish +Unionists--to carry out this policy, were sincere and earnest. The Act +of 1891, with its grants for light railways, its additional facilities +for Land Purchase, and its establishment of the Congested Districts +Board to deal with the terrible poverty of certain districts in the +west, may be said to mark the beginning of the new era. The Land Act of +1896 was another step, and the establishment of a complete system of +Irish Local Government in 1898 another. In the following year came the +Act setting up the Department of Agriculture, and in 1903 Mr. Wyndham's +great Land Purchase Act. Then came the strange "devolutionist" episode, +arising from the appointment of Sir Antony (now Lord) MacDonnell to the +post of Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, the Government who selected +him being fully aware that he was in favour of some change in the +government of Ireland. He entered into relations with a group of +prominent Irishmen, headed by Lord Dunraven, who were thinking out a +scheme for a mild measure of devolution. When the fact became known, +there was an explosion of anger among Irish Unionists. Mr. Wyndham, who +had been a popular Chief Secretary, resigned office, and was succeeded +by Mr. Walter Long; perhaps the most dramatic and significant example in +modern times of the policy of governing Ireland in deliberate and direct +defiance of the wishes and sentiments of the vast majority of Irishmen. + +The Liberal Government of 1906, coming into office under a pledge to +refrain from a full Home Rule measure, confined itself to the +introduction of the Irish Council Bill of 1907, which, rightly, in my +opinion, was repudiated by the Irish people, and accordingly dropped. +But the Government was in general sympathy with Nationalist Ireland, so +that a number of useful measures were added to the statute books; for +example, the Labourers (Ireland) Act of 1906, empowering Rural Councils, +with the aid of State credit, to acquire land for labourers' plots and +cottages; the Town Tenants Act, extending the principle of compensation +for improvements at the termination of a lease to the urban tenant; the +very important Irish Universities Act of 1908, which gave to Roman +Catholics facilities for higher education which they had lacked for +centuries, and, lastly, Mr. Birrell's Land Act of 1909, which was +designed partly to meet the imminent collapse of Land Purchase, owing to +the failure of the financial arrangements made under the Wyndham Act of +1903, and partly to extend the powers of the Congested Districts Board. + +To these measures must be added another which was not confined to +Ireland, but which has exercised a most potent influence, and by no +means a wholly beneficial influence, on Irish life and Irish finance, +the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, under which the enormous sum of two +and three-quarter millions is now allocated to Ireland.[44] + +The best that can be said of the legislation since 1881 is that it has +laid the foundations of a new social order. Agrarian crime has +disappeared and material prosperity has greatly increased. Government in +the interests of a small favoured class has almost vanished. It survives +to this extent, that civil administration and patronage, which are +still, be it remembered, removed from popular control, remain, in fact, +in Protestant and Unionist hands to an extent altogether +disproportionate to the distribution of creeds, classes, and opinions. +And, of course, in the major matter of Home Rule, the power of the +Unionist minority, as represented in the Commons by seventeen out of the +thirty-three Ulster representatives, and in the House of Lords by an +overwhelming preponderance of Unionist peers, is still enormous. But +within Ireland itself, central administration apart, the exceptional +privileges and exceptional political power of Protestants and landlords, +which lasted almost intact until forty years ago, is now non-existent. +The Disestablishment Act of 1869, while immensely enhancing the moral +power and religious zeal of the Church of Ireland, and even +strengthening its financial position, took away its political monopoly, +and through the final abolition of tithes, its baneful and irritating +interference with economic life. The successive measures of land +legislation, culminating in the transfer of half the land of Ireland +from landlord to peasant proprietorship, and the Local Government Act of +1898, surrendering at a stroke the whole local administration of the +country into popular control, destroyed the exceptional political +privileges of the landlord class. + +Ascendancy, then, in the old sense, is a thing of the past. What has +taken its place? What is the ruling power within Ireland? Is it a public +opinion derived from the vital contact of ideas and interests, and +taking shape in a healthy and normal distribution of parties? Is thought +free? Has merit its reward? Is there any unity of national purpose, +transcending party divisions? If it were necessary to give a categorical +"Yes" or "No" to these questions, the answer would be "No." Sane +energizing politics, and the sovereign ascendancy of a sane public +opinion, are absolutely unattainable in Ireland or anywhere else without +Home Rule. It is all the more to the credit of Irishmen that, in the +face of stupendous difficulties, and in a marvellously short space of +time since the attainment, barely twenty years ago, of the elementary +conditions of social peace, they have gone so far as they have gone +towards the creation of a self-reliant, independently thinking, united +Ireland. The whole weight of Imperial authority has been thrown into the +scale against them. Whatever the mood and policy of British upholders of +the Union, whether sympathetic or hostile, wise or foolish, their +constant message to both parties in Ireland has been, "Look to us. Trust +in us. You are divided. We are umpires," and the reader will no doubt +remember that the theory of "umpirage" was used in exactly the same way +in the Colonies, notably in Upper Canada,[45] to thwart the tendency +towards a reconciliation of creeds, races, and classes. Fortunately, +there have been Irishmen who have laboured to counteract the effects of +this enervating policy, and to reconstruct, by native effort from +within, a new Ireland on the ruins of the old. Whether or not they have +consciously aimed at Home Rule matters not a particle. Some have, some +have not; but the result of these efforts has been the same, to pull +Irishmen together and to begin the creation of a genuinely national +atmosphere. + +It is not part of my scheme to describe in detail the various movements, +agricultural, industrial, economic, literary, political, which in the +last twenty years have contributed to this national revival. Some have a +world-wide fame, all have been excellently described at one time or +another by writers of talent and insight.[46] My purpose is to note +their characteristics and progress, and to estimate their political +significance. In the first place it must be remembered that some of the +most important of the modern legislative measures have been initiated +and promoted by Home Rulers and Unionists, Roman Catholics and +Protestants, acting in friendly co-operation and throwing aside their +political and religious antagonisms. Such was the origin of the great +Land Purchase Act of 1903, which Mr. Wyndham drafted on the basis of an +agreement reached at a friendly conference of landlords and +representatives of tenants. But a far more interesting and hopeful +instance of co-operation had taken place seven years earlier. One of the +very few really constructive measures of the last twenty years, the Act +of 1899 for setting up the Department of Agriculture and Technical +Instruction, was the direct outcome of the recommendations of the Recess +Committee brought together in 1895 and 1896 by Sir Horace Plunkett; a +Committee containing Nationalist and Unionist Members of the House of +Commons, Tory and Liberal Unionist peers, Ulster captains of industry, +the Grand Master of the Belfast Orangemen, and an eminent Jesuit.[47] In +its reunion of men divided by bitter feuds, it was just the kind of +Conference that assembled in Durban in 1908, six years after a +devastating war, to discuss and to create the framework of South African +Union. That Conference was the natural outcome of the grant of Home Rule +to the defeated Boer States. The Irish Conference, succeeding a land-war +far more destructive and demoralizing, was brought together in spite of +the absence of Home Rule, and the prejudice it had to overcome,[48] is a +measure of the fantastically abnormal conditions produced by the denial +of self-government. There lay Ireland, an island with a rich soil and a +clever population, yet terribly backward, far behind England, far behind +all the progressive nations of Europe in agriculture and industry, her +population declining, her land passing out of cultivation,[49] her +strongest sons and daughters hurrying away to enrich with their wits and +sinews distant lands. There, in short, lay a country groaning for +intelligent development by the concentrated energies of her own people. + +"We have in Ireland," runs the first paragraph of the Report of the +Committee, "a poor country practically without manufactures--except for +the linen and shipbuilding of the north, and the brewing and distilling +of Dublin--dependent upon agriculture, with its soil imperfectly tilled, +its area under cultivation decreasing, and a diminishing population +without industrial habits or technical skill." + +The leeway to make up was enormous. To go no farther back than the +institution of the Penal Code and the deliberate destruction of the +woollen industry, two centuries of callous repression at the hands of an +external authority had maimed and exhausted the country whose condition +the Committee had met to consider. These facts the members of the +Committee frankly recognized in that part of the Report which is +entitled with gentle irony "Past Action of the State." Here, then, was a +purely Irish problem, intimately concerning every Irishman, poor or +rich, Roman Catholic or Protestant, a problem of which Great Britain, +though responsible both for its existence and its solution, knew and +cared little. The really strange thing is, not that representative +Irishmen should have met together to consider and prescribe for the +deplorable economic condition of their country, but that they should not +also, like the South African Conference, have drafted a Constitution for +Ireland, on the sound ground that a system of government which had +promoted and sustained the evils they described could never, with the +best will in the world, become a good government for Ireland. Yet for a +brief space of time these men actually had Home Rule, and by virtue of +that privilege they did better work for Ireland in six months than had +been done in two centuries. + +What is more, they used the Home Rule principle in their recommendations +for the establishment of a Department of Agriculture and Technical +Instruction. "We think it essential," they reported on p. 101, "that the +new Department should be in touch with the public opinion of the classes +whom its work concerns, and should rely largely for its success upon +their active assistance and co-operation." Its chief, they added, should +be a Minister directly responsible to Parliament, and on p. 103 they +advocated a Consultative Council, whose functions should be--(1) To keep +the Department in direct touch with the public opinion of those classes +whom the work of the Ministry concerns; and (2) to distribute some of +the responsibility for administration amongst those classes. Now these, +in Ireland, were revolutionary proposals. The idea of any part of the +Government "being in touch with public opinion" was wholly new. The idea +of "distributing responsibility for administration" amongst the subjects +of administration was startlingly novel. Ireland, both before and after +the Union, had always been governed on a diametrically opposite +principle. Since the Union, when Irish departmental Ministers, never +responsible to the people, disappeared, not one of the host of nominated +Irish Boards was legally amenable to Irish public opinion. Not one had +a separate Minister responsible even to the Parliament at Westminster, +which was not an Irish Parliament. _A fortiori_, not one relied on the +co-operation and advice of the classes for whose benefit it was supposed +to exist. + +Proposed, nevertheless, by a group of representative Irishmen, the +scheme for a democratically constituted Department of Agriculture passed +smoothly into law as soon as the machinery for ascertaining public +opinion on the matters at issue had been brought into existence. Mr. +Gerald Balfour, the Chief Secretary, was engaged at the time upon his +measure for the extension of Local Government to Ireland. This measure +became law in 1898, and the Department Act in 1899. Under that Act, the +duty was laid upon each of the new County Councils of electing two +members to serve upon a Consultative Council of Agriculture, to which a +minority of nominated members was added, and this Council in its turn +elects two-thirds of the members of an Agricultural Board, and supplies +four representatives to a Board of Technical Instruction, which, like +the Council and the Agricultural Board, has a predominantly popular +character.[50] + +At the summit stands the Minister, or Vice-President, as he is called +(for in accordance with ancient custom, the Chief Secretary is nominally +in supreme control of this as of all other Irish Departments), and a +large and efficient staff of permanent officials. He and his staff have +a large centralized authority, but this authority is subject to a +constitutional check in the shape of a veto wielded by the Boards over +the expenditure of the Endowment Fund. What is more important, policy +tends to be shaped in accordance with popular views by the existence of +the Council and the Boards. + +Here, then, is the germ of responsible government. At first sight a +critic might exclaim: "Why, here is democracy pushed to a point unknown +even in Great Britain, where Government Departments are wholly +independent of Local Councils." That is in a limited sense true, and it +is quite arguable that British Departments would be the better for an +infusion of local control. But we must not be misled by a false analogy. +Great Britain reaches the Irish ideal by other means. Her departmental +Ministers are directly responsible to a predominantly British House of +Commons where a hostile vote can at any moment eject them from +office.[51] There is no Irish Parliament, nor any kind of predominantly +Irish body which is vested with the same power. The Vice-President of +the Irish Department of Agriculture, an institution concerned +exclusively with Irish affairs, whether he sits in the House of Commons +or not (and for two years Mr. T.W. Russell had not a seat at +Westminster), could not be ejected from office even by a unanimous vote +of Irish Members of the House, with the moral backing of a unanimous +Irish people.[52] That is one of the anomalous results of the Union, and +it was a recognition, though rather a confused one, of this anomaly, +that inspired the ingenious compromise invented by the Recess Committee +for introducing an element of popular control. But what a light the +compromise throws on the anomaly which evoked it! Is it common sense to +make these elaborate arrangements for promoting an Irish Department on +an Irish popular basis while recoiling in terror from the prospect of +crowning them with a Minister responsible to ah Irish Parliament? The +consequence is that even in this solitary example of an Irish +Department under semi-popular control we see the subtle taint of Crown +Colony Government. Popular opinion, acting indirectly, first through the +Council and then through the Boards, can legally paralyze the Department +by declining to appropriate money in the way it prescribes, while +possessing no legal power to enforce a different policy or change the +personnel of administration. This is only an object-lesson. I hasten to +add that such a paralysis has never taken place, though some acrimonious +controversy, natural enough under the anomalous state of things, has +arisen over the office of Vice-President. There is now only one means by +which Irish opinion can, if it be so disposed, displace the holder of +the office, and that is a thoroughly unreliable and unhealthy means, +namely, through pressure brought to bear by one or other of the Irish +Parliamentary parties upon a newly elected British Ministry.[53] But why +in the world should the British party pendulum determine an important +Irish matter like this? Why, _a fortiori_, should it determine the +appointment to the office of Chief Secretary, the irresponsible Prime +Minister, or, rather the autocrat of Ireland? It is the _reductio ad +absurdum_ of the Union. + +The Department commands a large measure of confidence. It would command +far greater confidence if it were responsible to an Irish Parliament; +but Irishmen are sensible enough to perceive that as long as the Union +lasts, everyone is interested in making the existing system work +smoothly and well. The general policy as laid down in the first +instance, by the first Vice-President, Sir Horace Plunkett, has been +sound and wise;[54] to proceed slowly, while building up a staff of +trained instructors, inspectors, organizers; to devote money and labour +mainly to education, both industrial and agricultural, and to evoke +self-reliance and initiative in the people by, so far as possible, +spending money locally only where a local contribution is raised and a +local scheme prepared. The last aim met with a fine response. Every +County Council in Ireland raises a rate, and has a scheme for +agricultural and technical instruction. I can only enumerate some of the +multifarious functions which the Department evolved for itself or took +over from various other unrelated Boards and concentrated under single +control. It gives instruction in agriculture and rural domestic economy +(horticulture, butter-making, bee-keeping, poultry-keeping, etc.) +through schools, colleges, or agricultural stations under its own +direction, through private schools for both sexes, and through an +extensive system of itinerant courses conducted (in 1909) by 128 trained +instructors. It gives premiums for the breeding of horses, cattle, +asses, poultry, swine. It conducts original research, it experiments in +crops, and, among other things, is slowly resuscitating the depressed +industry of flax-growing, and starting a wholly new industry in the +southern counties, that of early potatoes. It sprays potatoes, +prescribes for the diseases of trees, crops, and stock, advises on +manures and feeding-stuffs, teaches forestry, and gives scholarships at +various colleges for proficiency in agricultural science. On the side of +Technical Instruction it teaches and encourages all manner of small +industries, such as lace-making. It superintends all technical +instruction in secondary schools, and organizes and subsidizes similar +instruction in a multitude of different subjects under schemes prepared +by local authorities, while at the same time carrying on an important +and extensive system of training teachers. It also superintends +sea-fisheries and improves harbours. + +The material results have been great; the moral results perhaps even +greater. Just as we should expect, wherever education goes, and wherever +men work together for economic improvement, unnatural antagonisms of +race and religion tend to disappear. This is not the result of any +direct influence wielded by the Department, which never finds it +necessary to lecture people on the duty of mutual tolerance; it is the +result of common sense and a small experience in Home Rule. High +officials of the Department have informed me that their work, for all +intents and purposes, is unhampered by local religious prejudices. A +spirit of keen and wholesome rivalry permeates the people. County and +Borough Committees in districts almost wholly Roman Catholic, with large +powers of patronage, almost invariably appoint the best men, regardless +of creed and local influence. Anyone who wishes to gain a glimpse of the +real Belfast of the present and the future, as distinguished from the +ugly, bigoted caricature of a great city which some even of its own +citizens perversely insist on displaying to their English friends, a +Belfast as tolerant and generous as it is energetic and progressive, +should visit the magnificent Municipal Technical Institute, where 6,000 +boys and girls, Roman Catholic and Protestant, mix together on equal +terms, and derive the same benefit from an extraordinary variety of +educational courses in a building furnished with lecture-rooms, +laboratories, experimental plant, and gymnasia, of a perfection hardly +to be surpassed in any city of the United Kingdom. + +Here is something grand and fruitful accomplished in eleven years, and +it is the outcome, be it remembered, of original, constructive thought +devoted by Irishmen to the needs of their own country. + +Let us also remember that it represents the application of State-aid to +economic development. But with the utmost caution, and the utmost +efforts to elicit self-help, one may go too far in the direction of +State-aid, and even in this sphere it is by no means certain that +Ireland is free from danger. Let us pass to another movement whose +essence is self-help: I mean the movement for Agricultural Co-operation. +Here again Sir Horace Plunkett was the originator. Indeed, with him and +his able associates and advisers, of whom Lord Monteagle and Mr. R.A. +Anderson, the Secretary of the I.A.O.S., were the first, the twin aims +of self-help and State-aid were combined as they should be, in one big, +harmonious policy. Self-help must, indeed, they held, be antecedent to, +and preparatory for, State-aid. The position confronting them was that +half a million unorganized tenant farmers, for the most part cultivating +excessively small holdings, and just beginning to emerge after +generations of agrarian war from an economic serfdom, were face to face +with the competition of highly organized European countries, and of vast +and rapidly developing territories of North and South America. It was as +far back as 1889 that the first propaganda was begun, and in 1894, a +year before the Recess Committee met, the Irish Agricultural +Organization Society was formed. By unwearied pains and patience, +seemingly hopeless obstacles had been overcome, apathy, ignorance, and +often contemptuous opposition from men of both political parties. For, +with that ruinous pessimism always endemic in countries not politically +free, and exactly paralleled in the Canada described by the Durham +Report of 1839, extremists were inclined to suspect any movement which +drew recruits from both political camps. Nevertheless, the island is now +covered with a network of 886 co-operative societies, creameries, +agricultural societies (for selling implements, foodstuffs, etc.), +credit banks, poultry societies, and other miscellaneous organizations. +The total membership is nearly 100,000, the total turnover nearly two +and a half millions.[55] Nearly half the butter exported from Ireland is +made in the 392 co-operative creameries, and at the other end of the +scale extraordinarily valuable work is done by the 237 agricultural +credit banks, which supply small loans, averaging only L4 apiece, for +strictly productive purposes on a system of mutual credit. + +Moral and material regeneration go together. The aim is to build up a +new rural civilization, to put life, heart, and hope into the monotony +of country life and unite all classes in the strong bonds of sympathy +and interest: a splendid ideal, applicable not to Ireland alone, but to +all countries, and Ireland may truly be said to be pointing the way to +many another country, Great Britain included. + +The Co-operative movement attracts the most intelligent and progressive +elements of the rural population. Strictly non-political itself, it +unites creeds and parties. It is as strong in predominantly Roman +Catholic districts as in predominantly Protestant districts, strongest +of all in Catholic Wexford. Probably two-thirds or more of the +co-operators are Home Rulers, but that only accidentally reflects the +distribution of Irish parties. On the local committees political animus +is unknown. The governing body contains members, lay and clerical, of +all shades of opinion. Step into Plunkett House, that hospitable +headquarters of the Organization Society, and if you have been nurtured +in legends about inextinguishable class and creed antipathies, which are +supposed to render Home Rule impossible and the eternal "umpirage" of +Great Britain inevitable, you will soon learn to marvel that anyone can +be found to propagate them. Here, just because men are working together +in a practical, self-contained, home-ruled organization for the good of +the whole country, you will find liberality, open-mindedness, +brotherhood, and keen, intelligent patriotism from Ulsterman and +Southerners alike. The atmosphere is not political. But you will come +away with a sense of the absurdity, of the insolence, of saying that a +country which can produce and conduct fine movements like this is +_unfit_ for self-government. I should add a word about a new +organization which only came into being this year, and which also has +its home at Plunkett House, the United Irishwomen, whose aim, in their +own words, is to "unite Irishwomen for the social and economic advantage +of Ireland." "They intend to organize the women of all classes in every +rural district in Ireland for social service. These bodies will discuss, +and, if need be, take action upon any and every matter which concerns +the welfare of society in their several localities. So far as women's +knowledge and influence will avail, they will strive for a higher +standard of material comfort and physical well-being in the country +home, a more advanced agricultural economy, and a social existence a +little more in harmony with the intellect and temperament of our +people." Anyone who wants to understand something of the spirit of the +new self-reliant Ireland which is springing up to-day should read the +thrilling little pamphlet (I cannot describe it otherwise) from which I +quote these words, and which introduced the United Irish-women to the +world, with its preface by Father T.A. Finlay, and its essays by Mrs. +Ellice Pilkington, Sir Horace Plunkett, and Mr. George W. Russell, +better known as "AE," poet, painter, and Editor of the Co-operative +weekly, the _Irish Homestead_. Nor can I leave this part of my subject +without referring to that amazing little journal. No other newspaper in +the world that I know of bears upon it so deep an impress of genius. +There are no "politics," in the Irish sense, in it. It would be +impossible to infer from its pages how the Editor voted. What fascinates +the reader is the shrewd and witty analysis of Irish problems, the high +range of vision which exposes the shortcomings and reveals the +illimitable possibilities of a regenerated Ireland and the ceaseless and +implacable war waged by the Editor upon all pettiness, melancholy, and +pessimism. + +What the Agricultural Organization Society is doing for agriculture the +Industrial Development Associations, formed only in quite recent years, +are doing, in a different way, for the encouragement of Irish +industries. The Associations of Belfast, Cork, and other cities work in +harmony, and meet in an annual All-Ireland Industrial Conference. Their +effort is to secure the concentration of Irish brains and capital on +Irish industrial questions, to promote the sale of Irish goods, both in +Ireland, Great Britain, and foreign countries, and to protect these +goods against piracy and illicit competition.[56] Here again +co-operation for Irish welfare brings together the creeds and races, and +tends to extinguish old bigotries and antipathies. Here again the truth +is recognized that Ireland is a distinct economic entity whose +conditions and needs demand special study from her citizens. In a +country of which that basal truth is recognized it would seem +inexplicable that Protestants and Catholics who meet in committee-rooms +and on platforms to promote, outside Parliament, the common interests of +Ireland, should not unite as one man to demand an Irish Legislature in +which to focus those interests and make them the subjects of direct +legislative enactment, free both from the paternal and the coercive +interference of a country differently situated, and absorbed in its own +affairs. + +I pass from the agricultural and industrial movements to another +powerful factor in the reconstruction of Ireland, namely, the Gaelic +League, founded in 1893, whose success under the Presidency of Dr. +Douglas Hyde in reviving the old national language, culture, and +amusements, is attracting the attention of the world. Fortunately the +League encountered some ridicule at the outset and prospered +proportionately. Some of its work is not above criticism, but few +persons--and none who have the least knowledge of such intellectual +revivals elsewhere--now care to laugh at it. The League is non-political +and non-sectarian. Strange, is it not, that such a movement should have +to emphasize the fact? Strange paradox that in a country which is being +re-born into a consciousness of its own individuality, which is +regaining its own pride and self-respect, recovering its lost literature +and culture, and vibrating to that "iron string, Trust thyself," the +conflict for self-government, that elementary symbol of self-trust, +should still retain enough intestinal bitterness to compel men to label +national movements as non-political and non-sectarian! It would be idle, +of course, to pretend that this national movement, like all others in +Ireland, does not strengthen, especially among the younger generation, +which grows increasingly Nationalist, the sentiment for Home Rule. If it +did not, we should indeed be in the presence of something miraculously +abnormal. + +Meanwhile the Celtic revival does visible good. The language is no +longer a fad; it is an envied accomplishment, a mark of distinction and +education. Wherever it goes, North and South, it obliterates race and +creed distinctions, and all the terrible memories associated with them. +There are Ulstermen of Saxon or Scottish stock in whom the fascination +of Irish art and literature has extirpated every trace of Orangeism and +all implied in it. The language revivifies traditions, as beautiful as +they are glorious, of an Ireland full of high passions and stormy +domestic feuds, but united in sentiment, breeding warriors, poets, +lawgivers, saints, and fertilizing Europe with her missionary genius. +However far those times are, however grim and pitiful the havoc wrought +by the race war, it is nevertheless a fact for thinkers and statesmen +to ponder over, not a phantasy to sneer at, that Celtic Ireland lives. +Anglicization has failed, not because Celts cannot appreciate the +noblest manifestations of English genius in art, letters, science, war, +colonization, but because to repress their own culture and nationality +is at the same time to repress their power of appreciation and +assimilation. Until comparatively recent times, it was only the worst of +English literature and music, the cheapest newspaper twaddle, the +inanest music-hall songs, which penetrated beyond a limited circle of +culture into the life of the country. The revolt against this +sterilizing and belittling side of anglicization is strong and healthy. +It affects all classes. Farmers, labourers, small tradesmen, who had +never conceived the idea of learning for learning's sake, and who had +grown up, thanks to the national system of education, in all but +complete ignorance of their own country's history and literature, spend +time on reading and study and in the practice of the old indigenous +dances and music, which was formerly wasted in idleness or dissipation. +Temperance and social harmony are irresistibly forwarded. Nor is it a +question of a few able men imposing their will on the many, or of an +artificial, State-aided process. Though the language has obtained a +footing in more than a third of the State schools and in the National +University,[57] the motive force behind it comes from the people +themselves. In the country district, with which I am best acquainted, +boys and girls from very poor families are clubbing together to pay +instructors in the Irish language and dances, and the same thing is +going on all over Ireland. + +The brilliant modern school of poets and playwrights who, steeped in the +old Celtic thought and culture, have found for it such an exquisite +vehicle in the English tongue, speak for themselves and are winning +their own way to renown. The only criticism I venture to make is that +some of them are too much inclined to look backward instead of forward, +to idealize the far past rather than to illuminate the future, and to +delineate the deformities of national character produced by ages of +repression, rather than to aid in conjuring into being a virile, normal +nation. + +The name of the last movement to be referred to sums up all the others, +Sinn Fein. Unlike the others, it had a purely political origin, and for +that reason, probably, never made the same progress. Yet the explanation +is simple. In pursuance of the general purpose of inspiring Irishmen to +rely on themselves for their own salvation, economic and spiritual, Sinn +Feiners, like John Mitchel and others in the past, and like the +Hungarian patriots, attacked, with much point and satire, the whole +policy of constitutional and Parliamentary agitation for Home Rule. The +policy, they said, had failed for half a century; it was not only +negative and barren, but positively harmful. Nationalists should refuse +to send Members to Westminster and abide by the consequences. Sensibly +enough, most Irishmen, while recognizing that there was an element of +indisputable and valuable truth in this bold diagnosis, decided that it +was premature to adopt the prescription. Public opinion in Britain was +slowly changing, and confidence existed that this opinion would be +finally converted. If the Sinn Fein alternative meant anything at all, +it meant complete separation, which Ireland does not want, and a final +abandonment of constitutional methods. If another Home Rule Bill were to +fail, Sinn Fein would undoubtedly redouble its strength. Its ideas are +sane and sound. They are at bottom exactly the ideas which actuate every +progressive and spirited community, and which in Ireland animate the +Industrial Development Associations, the Co-operative movement, the +thirst for technical instruction, the Gaelic League, the literary +revival, and the work of the only truly Irish organ of government, the +Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. + +Now, where do we stand? Are the phenomena I have reviewed arguments for +Home Rule or against Home Rule? Do they tend to show that Ireland is +"fitter" now for Home Rule, or that she manages very well without Home +Rule? These are superfluous questions. They are never asked save of +countries obviously designed to govern themselves and obstinately denied +the right. Who would say now of Canada or Australia that they ought to +have solved their economic, agrarian, and religious problems and have +evolved an indigenous literature before they were declared fit for Home +Rule, or--still more unreasonable proposition--that their strenuous +efforts after self-help and internal harmony in the teeth of political +disabilities proved, in so far as they were successful, that external +government was a success? + +Yet these questions were, as a fact, asked of the Colonies, as they are +asked of Ireland. And misgovernment increased, and passions rose, and +blood flowed, while, in the guise of dispassionate psychologists, a +great many narrow, egotistical, and bullying people at home propounded +these arid conundrums. Where is our common sense? The Irish phenomena I +have described arise in spite of the absence of Home Rule, and the +denial of Home Rule sets an absolute and final bar to progress beyond a +certain point. + +That is certain; one cannot live in Ireland with one's eyes and ears +open without realizing it. All social and economic effort, successful as +it is up to a certain point, and strong as its tendency is to promote +nationalist feeling of the noblest kind, has to struggle desperately +against the benumbing influence of abstract "politics." Suspicion comes +from both sides. Both Unionists and Nationalists, for example, at one +time or another have looked askance on the Co-operative movement and on +the Department of Agriculture as being too Nationalist or too Unionist +in tendency. Unionists caused Sir Horace Plunkett to lose his seat in +Parliament in 1905; and Nationalists, though with some constitutional +justification, secured his removal from office in 1907. At this moment +there is friction and suspicion in this particular matter which seems to +the impartial observer to be artificial, and which would not exist, or +would be transmuted into something perfectly harmless, and probably +highly beneficial, were there any normal political life in Ireland and a +central organ of public opinion. As long as Great Britain insists, to +her own infinite inconvenience, upon deciding Irish questions by party +majorities fluctuating from Toryism to Radicalism, and thereby compels +Ireland to send parties to Westminster whose _raison d'etre_ is, not to +represent crystallized Irish opinion on Irish domestic questions--that +is at present wholly impossible--but to assert or deny the fundamental +right for Ireland to settle her own domestic questions, so long will +these dislocations continue, to the grave prejudice of Ireland and the +deep discredit of Great Britain. Ireland, like Canada in 1838, has no +organic national life. Apart from the abstract but paramount question of +Home Rule, there are no formed political principles or parties. Such +parties as there are have no relation to the economic life of the +country, and all interests suffer daily in consequence. In a normal +country you would find urban and agricultural interests distinctly +represented, but not in Ireland. We should expect to rind clear-cut +opinions on Tariff Reform and Free Trade. No such opinions exist. On the +other hand, agreement on important industrial and agricultural questions +finds not the smallest reflection in Parliamentary representation. +Education, and other latent issues of burning importance, are not +political issues. A Budget may cause almost universal dissatisfaction, +but it goes through, and the amazing thing is that Unionists complain of +its going through! Most of the Parliamentary elections are uncontested, +though everybody knows that a dozen questions would set up a salutary +ferment of opinion if they were not stifled by the refusal of Home Rule. +The Protestant tenant-farmers of Ulster have identical interests with +those of other Provinces, and have profited largely by the legislation +extorted by Nationalists; but for the most part, though by no means +wholly, they vote Unionist. The two great towns, Dublin and Belfast, are +divided by the most irrational antagonism. Labourers, both rural and +urban, have distinct and important interests; the rural labourers have +no spokesman, the town-labourers only one. It was admitted to me by a +Unionist organizer in Belfast that that city, but for the Home Rule +issue, would probably return four labour members. Nor have parties any +close relation to the distribution of wealth. In the matter of incomes +the prosperous traders of Cork, Limerick, and Waterford are in the same +case as regards taxation with those of Londonderry and Belfast. +Publicans are Unionists in England, Nationalists in Ireland, both in +Ulster and elsewhere. Before the Home Rule issue was raised, Ulster was +largely Liberal. Ulster Liberalism is almost dead. Extreme Socialism may +almost be said to be non-existent in Ireland, yet Ireland is not only +administered on semi-collectivist principles, but continually runs the +risk of being involved in legislation of a Socialistic kind, which, +rightly or wrongly, she heartily dislikes. + +As for the landed aristocracy all over Ireland, their historic alliance +with the intensely democratic tenant-farmers of one small corner of +Ireland, North-East Ulster, against those of all the rest, presented +strange enough features in the past, and is now becoming artificial in +the highest degree. Thanks to Land Purchase, no landed aristocracy in +the world now has a better chance of throwing its wealth and +intelligence into public life for the good of the whole country, of +thinking out problems, of conciliating factions, and of ennobling public +life. The landlord who has sold his land is a free man, far freer than +the English landlord from misgivings caused by divergency of interest. +The opportunity is still there. Will they profit by it? One thing is +essential: they must become Nationalists, and in breathing that phrase, +one is conscious of all the misleading implications and the bitter +historical feuds it suggests. Yet a small but powerful group of +landlords is already leading the way. And the way, even before Home +Rule, in reality is so simple. I speak from close observation. If a man +is a good man, and worthy to represent a constituency, he has only to +declare his belief that he thinks that he and his own fellow-citizens +are fit to govern themselves. Irishmen, especially in Roman Catholic +districts, and, indeed, as an indirect result of Catholicism, have never +lost their belief in aristocracy. When a landlord, or any other +Protestant, comes forward as a Nationalist, he is welcomed. His +religion, whatever it may be, does not count. Parnell and Smith O'Brien +were Protestant landlords. Many of the most trusted popular leaders, +Tone, Robert Emmet, John Mitchel, Isaac Butt, and others in the past +have been Protestants. Ten Members of the present Nationalist party are +Protestants. The Home Rule issue would have lost some of its bitterness +if a Unionist electorate had ever elected a Catholic to Parliament. + +Still, it is unfortunately true that the great bulk of the landlords and +ex-landlords stand aloof from the Home Rule movement. The collateral +result is that far too many of them instinctively stand aloof even from +those purely economic and intellectual movements which tend to make a +living united Ireland out of chaos. The national loss is heavy; the +waste of talent and of driving-power, for Ireland needs driving-power +from her leisured and cultured classes, is melancholy to contemplate. + +Everywhere one sees waste of talent in Ireland. The land abounds in men +with ideas and potentialities waiting for those normal chances of +development which self-governed countries provide. Much of this good +material is crushed under unnatural political tyrannies caused by +ceaseless agitation for and against an abstract aim which should have +been satisfied long ago, so that the energies it absorbed might have +been diverted into practical channels. There is too much moral +cowardice, too little bold, independent thought and action. Nobody knows +what Ireland really is, and of what she is capable. Nobody can know +until she has responsibility for her own fate. + +Local government, where popular opinion is nominally free, suffers from +the absence of free central government. Is it not on the face of it +preposterous to give complete powers of local taxation and +administration to a country while withholding from it, as unsafe and +improper, central co-ordinating control? For any country but Ireland--at +any rate, in the British self-governing Colonies and the United +States--such a policy would be regarded as crazy. Still more +unreasonable is it to complain that local authorities under such a +system spend part of the energy which should be devoted wholly to local +affairs in abstract politics. I forbear from engaging in the statistical +war over the numbers of Catholics and Protestants employed and elected +by local bodies. One must remember, what Unionists sometimes forget, +that Ireland is, broadly speaking, a Roman Catholic country, and that +until thirteen years ago local administration and patronage were almost +exclusively in Protestant hands. We should naturally expect a marked +change; but, with that reminder, I prefer to appeal to the reader's +common sense. Deny national Home Rule, and give local Home Rule. What +would one expect to happen? What would have happened in any Colony? What +would Mr. Arthur Balfour himself have prophesied with certainty in the +case of any other country but Ireland? Why, this, that each little local +body would become an outlet for suppressed agitation, and that national +or anti-national politics, not urgent local necessities, would enter +into local elections and influence the composition of local bodies. And +what would be the further consequence? That numbers of the best local +men would stand aloof or be rejected, and that favouritism would find a +congenial soil. + +In point of fact, Irish local authorities, under the circumstances, are +wonderfully free from these evils, only another proof of the resilience +and vitality of the country under persistent mismanagement. On the whole +they bear comparison with British local authorities in thrift, purity, +and efficiency. None of them has ever yet had a scandal like that of +Poplar. All of them have shown sense and spirit in forwarding sanitation +and technical education. They vary widely, of course, the lowest units +in the scale being the least efficient, as in England. County Councils, +for example, are better than Rural District Councils. On the other hand, +Dublin Corporation, though not so bad as it is sometimes painted, +occasionally sets a very bad example. The standard of efficiency is +higher in the Protestant north than in the Catholic south, the standard +of religious toleration lower. But at bottom it is not a question of +theology, as every well-informed person knows, but a question of +politics. The same causes that keep the landed gentry out of Parliament +keep them, although not to the same degree, out of local politics. +Sometimes this is their own fault, for declining to take part in them; +for many of the Protestant upper class in Nationalist districts obtain +election in spite of being Unionists. Tolerance is slowly growing in +Nationalist, though not, it is to be feared, in Unionist, districts; +again a quite intelligible fact.[58] But when all is said and done, it +is an undeniable fact that Irish local authorities, especially those in +the poverty-stricken west, where all social activities are more +retrograde than elsewhere, are capable of great improvement, and that +improvement can come only by allowing them to concentrate on local +affairs, and obtain the co-operation of all classes and religions. The +very existence of a central Government of which Irishmen were proud +would influence the tone and standard of all minor authorities to the +bottom of the scale. + +Meanwhile, obvious and urgent problems, which no Parliament but an Irish +Parliament can deal with, cry aloud for settlement. The Poor Law, +railways, arterial drainage, afforestation, are questions which I need +only refer to by name, confining myself to the greater issues. +Education, primary and intermediate, is perhaps the greatest. The +present system is almost universally condemned, and its bad results are +recognized. It has got to be reformed. By no possibility can it be +reformed so long as the Union lasts, not only because the Boards, +National and Intermediate, which control education, are composed of +unelected amateurs, but because there is no means of finding out what +the national opinion is as to the course reform is to take. Meanwhile +the children and the country suffer. The Intermediate Board is a purely +examining and prize-giving body, and its system by general agreement is +imperfect. In the National or Primary schools the percentage of average +daily attendance (71.1 per cent.), though slowly improving, is still +very bad.[59] Many of the school-houses are, in the words of the +Commissioners, "mere hovels," unsanitary, leaky, ill-ventilated. The +distribution of schools and funds is chaotic and wasteful. Out of 8,401 +schools (in 1909-10)[60] nearly two hundred have an average daily +attendance of less than fifteen pupils. In 1730 the number is less than +thirty, and it is not only in sparsely inhabited country districts, but +in big towns, that the distribution is bad. The power of the +Commissioners to stop the creation of unduly small schools, and even +semi-bogus establishments which come into being in the great cities, is +imperfect. Another example of the curious mixture of anarchy and +despotism that the system of Irish government presents may be seen in +the Annual Report of the Commissioners. With a mutinous audacity which +would be laughable, if the case were one for laughing, the Commissioners +openly rail at the Treasury for the parsimony of its grants, and, in +order to stir its compassion, paint the condition of Irish education in +black colours. Imagine the various Departmental Ministers in Great +Britain publicly attacking in their Annual Reports the Cabinet of which +they were members! The Treasury, needless to say, is not to blame. It +pays out of the common Imperial purse all but a negligible fraction of +the cost of primary education in Ireland. Nothing is raised by rates, +and only L141,096 (in 1909-10) from voluntary and local sources, as +compared with L1,688,547 from State grants. The Treasury has no +guarantee that this money is well spent; on the contrary, it knows from +the Reports of the Commissioners themselves that a great deal of it is +very badly spent. The business is a comic opera, but it has a tragic +significance for Ireland. Primary education is so bad that a great +number of the pupils are absolutely unfit to receive the expensive and +excellent technical instruction organized by the Department of +Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and contributed to by the +ratepayers. The Belfast Technical Institute, for example, has to go +outside its proper functions, and spend from its too small stock in +providing introductory courses in elementary subjects, so as to equip +children for the reception of higher knowledge.[61] All over the country +the complaint is the same. No machinery whatever exists for +co-ordinating primary, secondary, technical, and University education, +and opportioning funds in an economical and profitable manner. + +Religion is the immediate cause of the trouble; absence of popular +control the fundamental cause. The national system of primary education, +designed originally in 1831 to be undenominational, has become rigidly +denominational. Out of 8,401 primary schools, 2,461 only are attended by +both Protestants and Roman Catholics. The rest are of an exclusively +sectarian character. Even the Protestants do not combine. The Church of +Ireland, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and other smaller +denominations, frequently have small separate schools in the same +parish. The management (save in the model schools, which are attended +only by Protestants) is exclusively sectarian, the local clergyman, +Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland, or Nonconformist having almost +autocratic control over the school. + +This education question has got to be thrashed out by a Home Ruled +Ireland, and the sooner the better. After Home Rule the Treasury grant +will stop, and Ireland will have to raise and apportion the funds +herself, and set her house in order. At whatever sacrifice of religious +scruples, and, it is needless to add that to the Roman Catholic +hierarchy the sacrifice will be the greatest, the Irish people must +control and finance its schools, whether through a central department +alone, or through local authorities as well. There is no reason in the +world why a compromise should not be arrived at which would secure +vastly increased efficiency and leave the teaching of denominational +religion uninjured. Other countries, where the same religions exist side +by side, have attained that compromise. Ireland will be judged by her +success in attaining it. + +Another important question is the treatment of the Congested Districts. +More than a third of Ireland is now under the benevolent jurisdiction of +a despotic Board.[62] So long as its funds are raised from general +Imperial taxation, the inevitable tendency is to shirk the thorough +discussion of this grave subject, to lay the responsibility on Great +Britain, to acquiesce in a policy of extreme paternalism, and to appeal +for higher and higher doles from the Treasury. This cannot go on. +Whoever, in the eyes of Divine Justice, was originally responsible for +the condition of the submerged west, and for the ruin of the evicted +tenants, Ireland, if she wants Home Rule, must shoulder the +responsibility herself, and think out the whole question independently. +The Congested Districts Board has done, and continues to do, good work +in the purchase and resettlement of estates; but even in this sphere +there are wide differences of opinion as to the proper methods and +policy to be employed, especially with regard to the division of +grasslands and the migration of landless men. Its other remedial work +(part of which is now taken over by the Department of Agriculture under +the Land Act of 1909), in encouraging fisheries, industries, and farm +improvements out of State money, is open to criticism on the ground of +its tendency to pauperize and weaken character. I do not care to +pronounce on the controversy, though I think that there is much to be +said for the view that money is best spent by encouraging agricultural +co-operation. Many able and distinguished men have devoted their minds +to the subject, but it is plain that Ireland as a whole has not thought, +and cannot think, the matter out in a responsible spirit, and that the +only way of reaching a truly Irish decision is through an Irish +Parliament, which both raises and votes money for the purpose.[63] The +reinstatement of evicted tenants teems with practical difficulties which +can only be solved in the same way. As long as Great Britain remains +responsible, errors are liable to be made which one day may be deeply +regretted. + +The same observation applies to all future land legislation, not +excepting Land Purchase, which I deal with fully in a later chapter.[64] +That great department of administration must, for financial reasons, be +worked in harmonious consultation with the British Government; but it +ought to be controlled by Ireland, and a free and normal outlet given to +criticisms like those emanating from Mr. William O'Brien, whatever the +intrinsic value of these criticisms. Purchase itself settles nothing +beyond the bare ownership of the land. It leaves the distribution and +use of the land, except in the "resettled" districts, where it was, with +a third or a quarter of the holdings so small as to be classed as +"uneconomic." Ireland is not as yet awake to the possibilities of the +silent revolution proceeding from the erection of a small peasant +proprietorship. The sense of responsibility in these new proprietors +will be quickened and the interests of the whole country forwarded by a +National Parliament. + +Temperance will never be tackled thoroughly but by an Irish Parliament. +All Irishmen are ashamed in their hearts of the encouragement given to +drunkenness by the still grossly excessive number of licensed houses, +which in 1909 was 22,591, and of the National Drink Bill, which in the +same year was L13,310,469,[65] or L3 11d. per head of a population not +rich in this world's goods. Temperance is not really a party or a +sectarian question. All the Churches make noble efforts to forward +reform, and in a rationally governed Ireland reform would be considered +on its merits. At present it is inextricably mixed up with Nationalist +and anti-Nationalist politics, and with irrelevant questions of Imperial +taxation. + +The latest examples of the embarrassment into which Ireland without Home +Rule is liable to drift from the absence of a formed public opinion and +the means to give it effect, are the labour troubles and the National +Insurance scheme. There are signs that English labour is thrusting +forward Irish labour in advance of its own will and in advance of +general Irish opinion. In all labour questions Ireland's position as an +agricultural country is totally different from that of Great Britain. +The same legislation cannot be applicable to both. Ireland should frame +her own. Under present conditions it is impossible to know the +considered judgment of Ireland. There is certainly much opposition to +Insurance, and if all Irishmen thoroughly realized that the scheme might +complicate the finance of Home Rule and involve a greater financial +dependence on Great Britain than exists even at present, they would +study it with still more critical eyes,[66] as they would certainly have +studied the Old Age Pensions scheme with more critical eyes. + +Here I am led naturally to the great and all-embracing questions of +Irish finance and expenditure, which lie behind all the topics already +discussed and many others. The subject is far too important and +interwoven with history to be dealt with otherwise than as an historical +whole, and that course I propose to take in a later part of the book. It +is enough to say that all the arguments for Home Rule are summed up in +the fiscal argument. Every Irishman worth his salt ought to be ashamed +and indignant at the present position. + +The whole machinery of Irish Government, and the whole fiscal system +under which Ireland lives, need to be thoroughly overhauled by Irishmen +in their own interests, and in the interests of Great Britain. Among +many other writers, Mr. Barry O'Brien, in his "Dublin Castle and the +Irish People," Lord Dunraven in "The Outlook in Ireland," and Mr. G.F.H. +Berkeley in a paper contributed to "Home Rule Problems," have lucidly +and wittily described the wonderful collection of sixty-seven +irresponsible and unrelated Boards nominated by the Chief Secretary, or +Lord-Lieutenant, which, with the official services beneath them, +constitute the colonial bureaucracy of Ireland; the extravagance of the +judicial and other salaries, and the total lack of any central control +worthy of the name. By omitting a number of insignificant little +bureaux, the figure 67, according to Mr. Berkeley's classification, may +be reduced to 42, of which 26 are directly under Castle influence, and +the rest either branches of British Departments or directly under the +Treasury. In 1906, out of 1,611 principal official posts, 626 were +obtained purely by nomination, and 766 by a qualifying examination only. +In an able-bodied male population, which we may estimate at a million, +there are reckoned to be about 60,000 persons employed by the State, or +1 in 18. If we add 180,000 Old Age Pensioners, we reach the figure of +nearly a quarter of a million persons, out of a total population of +under four and a half millions, dependent wholly or partially for their +living on the State, exclusive of Army and Navy pensioners; again about +1 in 18. Four millions of money are paid in salaries or pensions to +State employees, and two and three-quarter millions to Old Age +Pensioners. + +It is so easy to make fun about Irish administration that one has to be +cautious not to mistake the nature or exaggerate the dimensions of the +evil. The great defect is that the expenditure is not controlled by +Ireland and has no relation to the revenue derived from Ireland. The +Castle is not the odious institution that it was in the dark days of the +land war; but it is still a foreign, not an Irish institution, working, +like the Government of the most dependent of Crown Colonies, in a world +of its own, with autocratic powers, and immunity from all popular +influence. Beyond the criticism that one religious denomination, the +Church of Ireland, is rather unduly favoured in patronage, there is no +personal complaint against the officials. They are as able, kindly, +hard-working, and courteous as any other officials. Some of the +principal posts are held by men of the highest distinction, who will be +as necessary to the new Government as to the old. It is absolutely +essential, but it will not be easy, to make substantial administrative +economies at the outset, not only from the additional stress of novel +work which will be thrown upon a Home Rule Government, but from the +widespread claims of vested interests. It will require courageous +statesmanship, backed by courageous public opinion, to overhaul a +bureaucracy so old and extensive. Take the police, for example, the +first and most urgent subject for reduction. Adding the Royal Irish +Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police together, we have a +force of no less than 12,000 officers and men, a force twice as numerous +in proportion to population as those of England and Wales, and costing +the huge sum of a million and a half; and this in a country which now is +unusually free from crime, and which at all times has been naturally +less disposed to crime than any part of Great Britain. It is the +forcible maintenance of bad economic conditions that has produced Irish +crime in the past. Irishmen hotly resent that symbol of coercion, the +swollen police force, which is as far removed from their own control as +a foreign army of occupation. On the other hand, the force itself is +composed of Irishmen, and is a considerable, though an unhealthy, +economic factor in the life of the country. It performs some minor +official duties outside the domain of justice; it is efficient, and its +individual members are not unpopular. Reduction will be difficult. But +drastic reduction, at least by a half, must eventually be brought about +if Ireland is to hold up her head in the face of the world. + +The difficulty will extend through all the ramifications of public +expenditure. Ireland, through no fault of her own, against her +persistent protests, has been retained in a position which is +destructive to thrifty instincts. A rain of officials has produced an +unhealthy thirst for the profits of officialdom. No one feels +responsibility for the money spent for national purposes, because no one +in Ireland _is_, in any real sense, responsible. There is no Irish +Budget or Irish Exchequer to make a separate Irish Government logically +defensible. The people are heavily taxed, but, rightly, they do not +connect their taxes with the expenditure going on around them. On the +contrary, their mental habit is to look to Great Britain as the source +of grants, salaries, pensions. + +And the worst of it is that they are now at the point of being +financially dependent on Great Britain. After more than a century of +Union finance, after contributing, all told, over three hundred and +twenty millions of money to the Imperial purse over and above +expenditure in Ireland, they have now ceased to contribute a penny, and +are a little in debt. As we shall see, when I come to a closer +examination of finance, the main factor in producing this result has +been the Old Age Pensions. The application of the British scale, +unmodified, to Ireland is the kind of blunder which the Union +encourages. Ireland, where wages and the standard of living are far +lower than in England, does not need pensions on so high a scale, and +already suffers too much from benevolent paternalism. It was an +unavoidable blunder, given a joint financial system, but it has gravely +compromised Home Rule finance. + +For acquiescing in this and similar grants, beyond the ascertained +taxable resources of the country; for the general deficiency of public +spirit and matured public opinion in Ireland; for the backwardness of +education, temperance legislation, and other important reforms, the +Irish Parliamentary parties cannot be held responsible. They are +abnormal in their composition and aims, and, beyond a certain limited +point, they are powerless, even if they had the will, to promote Irish +policies. That is the pernicious result of an unsatisfied claim for +self-government. It is the same everywhere else. While an agitation for +self-government lasts, a country is stagnant, retrograde, or, like +Ireland, progressive only by dint of extraordinary native exertions. +Read the Durham report on the condition of the Canadas during the long +agitation for Home Rule, and you will recognize the same state of +things. The leaders of the agitation have to concentrate on the abstract +and primary claim for Home Rule, and are reluctant to dissipate their +energies on minor ends. Yet they, too, are liable to irrational and +painful divisions, like that which divides Mr. O'Brien from Mr. Redmond; +symptoms of irritation in the body politic, not of political sanity. +They cannot prove their powers of constructive statesmanship, because +they are not given the power to construct or the responsibility which +evokes statesmanship. The anti-Home Rule partisans degenerate into +violent but equally sincere upholders of a pure negation. + +Many of the able men who belong to both the Irish parties will, it is +to be hoped, soon be finding a far more fruitful and practical field for +their abilities in a free Ireland. But the parties, as such, will +disappear, on condition that the measure of Home Rule given to Ireland +is adequate. On that point I shall have more to say later. If it is +adequate, and Irish politicians are absorbed in vital Irish politics, +the structure of the existing parties falls to pieces, to the immense +advantage both of Ireland--including the Protestant sections of +Ulster--and of Great Britain. At present both parties, divided normally +by a gulf of sentiment, do combine for certain limited purposes of Irish +legislation, but both are, in different degrees and ways, sterile. The +policy of the Nationalist party has been positive in the past, because +it wrung from Parliament the land legislation which saved a perishing +society. It is essentially positive still in that it seeks Home Rule, +which is the condition precedent to practical politics in Ireland. More, +the party is independent, in a sense which can be applied to no other +party in the United Kingdom. Its Members accept no offices or titles, +the ordinary prizes of political life. But they themselves could not +contend that they are truly representative of three-quarters of Ireland +in any other sense than that they are Home Rulers. Half of the wit, +brains, and eloquence of their best men runs to waste. Some of them are +merely nominated by the party machine, to represent, not local needs, +but a paramount principle which the electors insist rightly on setting +above immediate local needs. + +The purpose of the Irish Unionist party in the Commons is purely +negative, to defeat Home Rule. It does not represent North-East Ulster, +or any other fragment of Ireland, in any sense but that. It is +passionately sentimental and absolutely unrepresentative of the +practical, virile genius of Ulster industry. The Irish Unionist peers, +in addition to voicing the same negative, are for the most part the +spokesmen of a small minority of Irishmen in whom the long habit of +upholding landlord interests has begun to outlive the need. + +I have said little directly about the problem of modern Ulster, not +because I underrate its importance, which is very great, but because I +have some hope that my arguments up to this point may be perceived to +have a strong, though indirect, bearing upon it.[67] The religious +question I leave to others, with only these few observations. It is +impossible to make out a historical case for the religious intolerance +of Roman Catholics in Ireland, or a practical case for the likelihood of +a Roman Catholic tyranny in the future. No attempt which can be +described as even plausible has ever been made in either direction. The +late Mr. Lecky, a Unionist historian, and one of the most eminent +thinkers and writers of our time, has nobly vindicated Catholic Ireland, +banishing both the theory and the fear into the domain of myth.[68] + +He has shown, what, indeed, nobody denies, that, from the measures which +provoked the Rebellion of 1641, through the Penal Code, to the middle of +the nineteenth century, intolerance, inspired by supposed political +necessities, and of a ferocity almost unequalled in history, came from +the Protestant colonists. In that brilliant little essay of his +Nationalist youth, "Clerical Influences" (1861), he described the +sectarian animosity which was raging at that period as "the direct and +inevitable consequence of the Union," and wrote as follows: "Much has +been said of the terrific force with which it would rage were the Irish +Parliament restored. We maintain, on the other hand, that no truth is +more clearly stamped upon the page of history, and more distinctly +deducible from the constitution of the human mind, than that a national +feeling is the only check to sectarian passions." He was himself an +anti-Catholic extremist in the sense of holding (with many others) that +"the logical consequences of the doctrines of the Church of Rome would +be fatal to an independent and patriotic policy in any land." But he +insists in the same passage "that nothing is more clear than that in +every land where a healthy national feeling exists, Roman Catholic +politicians are both independent and patriotic." + +He never recanted these opinions (which are confirmed by the subsequent +course of events) even after his conversion to Unionism, but derived his +opposition to Home Rule from a dread of all democratic tendencies,[69] +the only ground on which, if men would be willing to confess the naked +truth, it can be opposed. There the matter ought to rest. If the +doctrines of the Church of Rome are, in fact, inconsistent with +political freedom--I myself pronounce no opinion on that point--it is +plain to the most superficial observer that the Church, as a factor in +politics, stands to lose rather than to gain by Home Rule. British +statesmen have often accepted that view, and have endeavoured to use the +Roman Catholic hierarchy against popular movements, just as they +enlisted its influence to secure the Union. The Roman Catholic laity +have often subsequently rejected what they have considered to be undue +political dictation from the seat of authority in Rome. + +If I may venture an opinion, I believe that both of these mutually +irreconcilable propositions--that Home Rule means Rome Rule, and that +Rome is the enemy to Home Rule--are wrong.[70] Such ludicrous +contradictions only help to destroy the case against trusting a free +Ireland to give religion its legitimate, and no more than legitimate, +position in the State. Ireland is intensely religious, and it would be a +disaster of the first magnitude if the Roman Catholic masses were to +lose faith in their Church. The preservation of that faith depends on +the political Liberalism of the Church. + +Corresponding tolerance will be demanded of Ulster Protestants. At +present passion, not reason, governs the religious side of their +opposition to Home Rule. It is futile to criticize Ulster Unionists for +making the religious argument the spear-head of their attack on Home +Rule. The argument is one which especially appeals to portions of the +British electorate, and the rules of political warfare permit free use +of it. It was pushed beyond the legitimate point, to actual violence, in +the Orange opposition to responsible government in Canada in 1849. And +it has more than once inflamed and embittered Australian politics, as it +inflames the politics of certain English constituencies. But it is +hardly to be conceived that Ulster Unionists really fear Roman Catholic +tyranny. The fear is unmanly and unworthy of them. To anyone who has +lived in an overwhelmingly Catholic district, and seen the complete +tranquillity and safety in which Protestants exercise their religion, it +seems painfully abnormal that a great city like Belfast, with a +population more than two-thirds Protestant, should become hysterical +over Catholic tyranny. It would be physically impossible to enforce any +tyrannical law in Ulster or anywhere else, even if such a law were +proposed, and many leading Protestants from all parts of Ireland have +stated publicly that they have no fear of any such result from Home +Rule.[71] + +"Loyalty" to the Crown is a false issue. Disloyalty to the Crown is a +negligible factor in all parts of Ireland. Loyalty or disloyalty to a +certain political system is the real matter at issue. At the present day +the really serious objections to Home Rule on the part of the leading +Ulster Unionists seem to be economic. They have built up thriving trades +under the Union. They have the closest business connections with Great +Britain, and a mutual fabric of credit. They cherish sincere and +profound apprehensions that their business prosperity will suffer by any +change in the form of government. To scoff at these apprehensions is +absurd and impolitic in the last degree. But to reason against them is +also an almost fruitless labour. Those who feel them vaguely picture an +Irish Parliament composed of Home Rulers and Unionists, in the same +proportion to population as at present, and divided by the same bitter +and demoralizing feuds. But there will be no Home Rulers after Home +Rule, that is to say, if the Home Rule conceded is sufficient. I believe +that Ulster Unionists do not realize either the beneficent +transformation which will follow a change from sentimental to practical +politics in Ireland, as it has followed a similar change in every other +country in the Empire, or the enormous weight which their own fine +qualities and strong economic position will give them in the settlement +of Irish questions. + +Nor do they realize, I venture to think, that any Irish Government, +however composed, will be a patriotic Government pledged and compelled +for its own credit and safety to do its best for the interests of +Ireland. I have never met an Irishman who was not proud of the northern +industries, and it is obvious that the industrial prosperity of the +north is vital to the fiscal and general interests of Ireland, just as +the far more wealthy mining interests of the Rand are vital to the +stability and prosperity of the Transvaal, and were regarded as such and +treated as such by the farmer majority of the Transvaal after the grant +of Home Rule. Those interests have prospered amazingly since, and in +that country, be it remembered, volunteer British corps raised on the +Rand had been the toughest of all the British foes which the peasant +commandos had to meet in a war ended only four years before. + +If the fears of Ulster took any concrete form, it would be easier to +combat them; but they are unformulated, nebulous. Meanwhile, it is hard +to imagine what measure of oppression could possibly be invented by the +most malignant Irish Government which would not recoil like a boomerang +upon those in whose supposed interests it was framed. I shall have to +deal with this point again in discussing taxation, and need here only +remind the reader that Ulster is not a Province, any part of which could +possibly be injured by any form of taxation which did not hit other +Provinces equally. + +It is the belief of Ulster Unionists that their prosperity depends on +the maintenance of the Union, but the belief rests on no sound +foundation. Rural emigration from Ulster, even from the Protestant +parts, has been as great as from the rest of Ireland.[72] It is easy to +point to a fall in stocks when the Home Rule issue is uppermost, but +such phenomena occur in the case of big changes of government in any +country. They merely reflect the fact that certain moneyed interests do, +in fact, fear a change of government, and whether those fears are +irrational or not, the effect is the same. It is an historical fact, on +the other hand, that political freedom in a white country, in the long +run invariably promotes industrial expansion and financial confidence. +Canada is one remarkable example, Australia is another. The Balkan +States are others. Not that I wish to push the colonial example to +extremes. Vast undeveloped territories impair the analogy to Ireland; +but it is none the less true that when a country with a separate +economic life of its own obtains rulers of its own choice, and gains a +national pride and responsibility, it goes ahead, not backward. + +Intense, indeed, must be the racial prejudice which can cause Ulstermen +to forget the only really glorious memories of their past. Orange +memories are stirring, but they are not glorious beside the traditions +of the Volunteers. The Orange flag is the symbol of conquest, +confiscation, racial and religious ascendancy. It is not noble for +Irishmen to celebrate annually a battle in which Ireland was defeated, +or to taunt their Catholic compatriots with agrarian lawlessness to +which their own forefathers were forced to resort, in order to obtain a +privileged immunity from the same scandalous land laws. Ulstermen +reached spiritual greatness when, like true patriots, they stood for +tolerance, Parliamentary reform, and the unity of Ireland. They fell, +surely, when they consented to style themselves a "garrison" under the +shelter of an absentee Parliament, which, through the enslavement and +degradation of the old Irish Parliament, had driven tens of thousands of +their own race into exile and rebellion. + +They cherish the Imperial tradition, but let them love its sublime and +reject its ignoble side. It is sublime where it stands for liberty; +ignoble--and none knew this better than the Ulster-American +rebels--where it stands for government based on the dissensions of the +governed. + +The verdict of history is that for men in the position of the Ulster +Unionists, the path of honour and patriotism, and the path of true +self-interest, lies in co-operation with their fellow-citizens for the +attainment of political freedom under the Crown. It is not as if they +had to create a tradition. The tradition lives. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[42] See pp. 13-17 and 66-71. + +[43] Dealt with fully in Chapter XIV. + +[44] In 1910-11, L2,408,000 (Treasury Return No. 220, 1911); plus +L225,000 estimated increase owing to removal of Poor Law +disqualification (Answer to Question in House of Commons, February 15, +1911). + +[45] See p. 101. + +[46] See particularly "Ireland in the New Century," Sir Horace Plunkett; +"Contemporary Ireland," E. Paul-Dubois; "The New Ireland," Sydney +Brooks. + +[47] "Report of the Recess Committee," New Edition (Fisher Unwin). + +[48] Colonel Saunderson, for example, the leader of the Irish Unionists +in the Commons, refused publicly to be a member of a committee on which +Mr. Redmond sat. Mr. John Redmond himself wrote that he could not take a +very sanguine view of the Conference, but that he was "unwilling to take +the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful +legislation in Ireland." + +[49] Area under cultivation in 1875, 5,332,813 acres; in 1894, 4,931,011 +acres (in 1899, 4,627,545 acres; in 1900, on a system of classification +dividing arable land more accurately from pasture, there were only +3,100,397 acres arable, and in 1905 the figures were 2,999,082 acres) +(Official Returns). Population in 1841, 8,175,124; in 1851, 6,552,385; +in 1861, 5,798,976; in 1871, 5,412,377; in 1881, 5,174,836; in 1891, +4,704,750; in 1892, 4,633,808; in 1893, 4,607,462; in 1894, 4,589,260; +in 1895, 4,559,936 (in 1901, 4,458,775; in 1905, 4,391,543).--Census +Returns and _Thoms' Directory_. + +[50] _Council of Agriculture_: 68 members elected by County Councils; 84 +appointed by the Department from the various provinces. Total 102. + +_Board of Agriculture_: 8 members elected by Council of Agriculture; 4 +appointed by the Department. Total 12. + +_Board of Technical Instruction_: 10 members appointed by County +Boroughs; 4 elected by Council of Agriculture; 6 appointed by the +various Government Departments; 1 by a joint Committee of Dublin +District Councils. Total 21. + +[51] I am not forgetting Scotland. Her few local departments are +theoretically, but not practically, at the mercy of English votes and +influence. Scotch opinion, broadly speaking, governs Scotch affairs. +Precisely to the extent to which it does not so govern them, is a demand +for Home Rule likely to grow. + +[52] Even the Recess Committee (and we cannot wonder) but dimly grasped +the constitutional position when they laid stress on the necessity for +an Agricultural Minister "directly responsible to Parliament." +Logically, they should have first recommended the establishment of an +Irish Parliament to which the Minister should be responsible. To make +him responsible to the House of Commons was absurd; and a Departmental +Committee of 1907 has, in fact, recommended that the Vice-President +should not have a seat in Parliament, but should remain in his proper +place, Ireland. Meanwhile, the original mistake has caused friction and +controversy. Soon after the Liberal Ministry took office in 1906, Sir +Horace Plunkett, the first Vice-President, as a Unionist, was replaced +by Mr. T.W. Russell, a Home Ruler. On the assumption that such an Office +was Parliamentary, its holder standing or falling with the British +Ministry of the day, the step was quite justifiable, and even necessary. +On the opposite assumption, confirmed by the Departmental Committee, the +step was unjustifiable, that is, on the theory of the Union. An Irish +Parliament alone should have the power of displacing Irish Ministers. + +[53] See footnote, p. 159. + +[54] "Organization and Policy of the Department," Official Pamphlet. + +[55] + +STATISTICS OF THE IRISH AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT TO DECEMBER +31, 1909, WITH NUMBER OF SOCIETIES IN EXISTENCE ON DECEMBER 31, 1910 +(SUPPLIED BY THE I.A.O.S.): + +--------------------------------------------------------------------- +Description. |Number of |Membership.|Paid-up |Loan |Turnover. + |Societies. | |Shares. |Capital. | + |-----------| | | | + |1910.|1909.| | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------------- +Creameries | 392 | 380 | 44,213 | 138,354 | 111,365 | 1,841,400 +Agricultural | 169 | 155 | 16,050 | 6,253 | 40,326 | 112,222 +Credit | 237 | 234 | 18,422 | -- | 56,469 | 57,641 +Poultry | 18 | 18 | 6,152 | 2,292 | 4,026 | 64,342 +Industries | 21 | 21 | 1,375 | 1,267 | 1,450 | 7,666 +Miscellaneous| 37 | 15 | 4,633 | 15,015 | 2,864 | 48,987 +Flax | 9 | 9 | 589 | 482 | 5,796 | 2,286 +Federations | 3 | 3 | 227 | 6,753 | 6,360 | 259,925 +--------------------------------------------------------------------- + | 886 | 835 | 91,661 | 170,416 | 228,656 | 2,394,469 +--------------------------------------------------------------------- + + + +[56] An Irish Trademark has been secured, and has proved of great value +"Irish Weeks," for the furtherance of the sale of Irish products, are +held. The organ of the Association is the _Irish Industrial Journal_, +published weekly in Dublin. + +[57] On December 31, 1909, Irish was taught as an "extra subject" in +3,006 primary schools out of 8,401, and in 161 schools in Irish-speaking +districts in the West a bi-lingual programme of instruction was in force +(Report of Committee of National Education, 1910). Forty-six thousand +pupils passed the test of the inspectors. Irish in 1910 was made a +compulsory subject for matriculation at the National University. + +[58] The election by Nationalist votes of Lord Ashtown, a militant +Unionist peer of the most uncompromising type, in the spring of 1911 to +one of the Galway District Councils is a good recent example of this +tendency. + +[59] Permissive powers exist for County Councils to enforce compulsory +attendance. + +[60] Including 342 convent, 54 monastery, 125 workhouse, and 71 model +schools. + +[61] See "Prospectus of the Municipal Technical Institute, Belfast," +1910-11, pp. 55 and 57-58. Reading, Grammar, and Simple Arithmetic are +taught. + +[62] See Report of the Congested Districts Board, 1909-11. + +[63] See Report of Royal Commission on Congestion in Ireland (Cd. 4097); +especially a Memorandum by Sir Horace Plunkett, published as a separate +pamphlet by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. + +[64] See Chapter XIV. + +[65] Annual Report (1910) of the "Irish Association for the Prevention +of Intemperance." The estimate is that of Dr. Dawson Burns. By the +Licensing (Ireland) Act of 1902, the issue of any new licenses was +prohibited. + +[66] I write before the scheme has been fully discussed in Parliament. + +[67] It is scarcely necessary for me to remind the reader that the word +"Ulster," as used in current political dialectics, is misleading. Part +of Ulster is overwhelmingly Catholic; in part the population is divided +between the two creeds, and in two counties it is overwhelmingly +Protestant. In the whole province the Protestants are in a majority of +150,000, but since a number of Protestants vote Nationalist, the +representation of the province is almost equal, the Unionists holding +seventeen seats out of thirty-three. + +[68] "Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," "Leaders of Public Opinion in +Ireland," "Clerical Influences." + +[69] See "Democracy and Liberty." + +[70] Many Unionists are to be found in the same breath prophesying +Catholic tyranny under Home Rule and averring without any evidence that +clerical influence caused the repudiation in 1907 of the Council Bill, +because it placed education under a semi-popular body. + +[71] "Religious Intolerance under Home Rule: Some Opinions of Leading +Irish Protestants," pamphlet (1911) compiled by J. McVeagh, M.P. + +[72] The Census of 1911 shows that the population of Ireland is still +falling. The province of Leinster, mainly Catholic, alone shows a small +increase, derived from the counties of Dublin (including Dublin City) +and Kildare. In Ulster, Down and Antrim, which include the city of +Belfast, alone show an increase, but not so great as that of County +Dublin. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE + + +I. + +THE ELEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM. + + +It was not only to support the principle of Home Rule for Ireland that I +followed in some detail the growth of the Liberal principle of +government as applied to outlying portions of the British Empire. The +historical circumstances which moulded the form of each individual +Colonial Constitution, the Constitutions themselves, and the +modifications they have subsequently undergone, supply a mass of +material rich in interest and instruction for the makers of an Irish +Constitution. Nor is the analogy academical. Ireland is at this moment +under a form of government unique, so far as I know, in the whole world, +but resembling more closely than anything else that of a British Crown +Colony where the Executive is outside popular control, and the +Legislature is only partially within it; with this additional and +crowning inconvenience, that the Irish Crown Colony can obstruct the +business of the Mother Country. What we have to do is to liberate Great +Britain and to give Ireland a rational Constitution--not pedantically +adhering to any colonial model, but recognizing that, however closely +her past history resembles that of a Colony, Ireland, by her +geographical position, has a closer community of interest with Great +Britain than that of any Colony. + +Three main difficulties have to be contended with: first, that the +system to be overthrown is so ancient, and the prejudice against Home +Rule so inveterate; second, the Irish are not agreed upon any +constructive scheme; third, the confusion in the popular mind between +"Federal" and other systems of Home Rule. + + +A. + +With regard to the first of these obstacles, we have got to make a big +national effort to take a sensible and dispassionate view of the whole +problem. We must cease to regard Ireland as an insubordinate captive, as +a "possession" to be exploited for profit, or as a child to be humoured +and spoiled. All this is _vieux jeu_. It belongs to an utterly +discredited form of so-called Imperialism, which might more fitly be +called Little Englandism, masquerading in the showy trappings of +Bismarckian philosophy. We have gone too far in the "dismemberment" of +our historic Empire, and near enough to the dismemberment of what +remains, to apply this worn-out metaphor to the process of making +Ireland politically free. + +In Ireland we must build on trust, or we build on sand. + +What is best for Ireland will be best for the Empire. + +Let us firmly grasp these principles, or we shall fail. They may be +carried to the extreme point. If it were for Ireland's moral and +material good to become an independent nation, it would be Great +Britain's interest to encourage her to secede and assume the position of +a small State like Belgium, whose independence in our own interests we +guarantee. Since nobody of sense, in or out of Ireland supposes that her +interest lies in that direction, we need not consider the point; but it +is just as well to bear in mind that a prosperous and friendly neighbour +on a footing of independence is better than a discontented and backward +neighbour on a footing of dependence. The corollary is this--that any +restrictions or limitations upon the subordinate Irish Government and +Parliament which are not scientifically designed to secure the easy +working of the whole Imperial machinery, but are the outcome of +suspicion and distrust, will serve only to aggravate existing evils. +When the supreme object of a Home Rule measure is to create a sense of +responsibility in the people to whom it is extended, what could be more +perversely unwise than to accompany the gift with a declaration of the +incompetence of the people to exercise responsibility, and with +restraints designed to prevent them from proving the contrary? + +Centuries of experience have not yet secured general acceptation for +this simple principle. In this domain of thought the tenacity of error +is marvellous, even if we make full allowance for the disturbing effect +on men's minds of India and other coloured dependencies where despotic, +or semi-despotic, systems are in vogue. Since the expansion of England +began in the seventeenth century, it cannot be said that the principle +of trusting white races to manage their own affairs has ever received +the express and conscious sanction of a united British people. It has +been repeatedly repudiated by Governments in the most categorical terms, +and repudiated sometimes to the point of bloodshed. In other cases it +has met with lazy retrospective acquiescence on the discovery that +powers surreptitiously obtained or granted without formal legislation +had not been abused. The Australian Acts of 1850 and 1855 were the first +approach to a spontaneous application of the full principle; but even +then many statesmen were not fully alive to the consequences of their +action, while there was no public interest, and very little +Parliamentary interest, in the fate of these remote dependencies. The +fully developed modern doctrine of comradeship with the great +self-governing Dominions, a doctrine which we may date from the +accession of Mr. Chamberlain to Colonial Secretaryship in 1895, was not +the natural outcome of a belief in self-government, but a sudden and +effusive acceptation of its matured results in certain definite cases. +Irish Home Rule itself had, in the preceding decade, twice been rejected +by the nation. With the first opportunity, after 1895, of testing belief +in the principle, namely, in the Transvaal Constitution of 1905, the +Government failed. Finally, in 1906, when, to redeem that failure, for +the first time in the whole history of the Empire a Cabinet +spontaneously and unreservedly declared its full belief in the +principle, and translated that belief into law, the whole of the +Opposition, representing nearly half the electorate, washed their hands +of the policy, and, if the constitutional means had existed, would, +admittedly, have defeated it, as they had defeated the Home Rule Bills +of 1886 and 1893. The change of national opinion has, I believe, been +considerable; but the circumstances remain ominous for the dispassionate +discussion of the Irish Constitution. Patriotic people can only do their +best to ensure that the grant of Home Rule shall not be nullified by +restrictions and limitations which, if they are designed merely to +appease opposition, are destined to create friction and discontent. + +I am far from implying that restrictions are bad things in themselves. +All Constitutions, whether the sole work of the men who are to live +under them, like that of the United States, or the gift of a Sovereign +State to a dependency, or the joint work of a Sovereign and a dependent +State, contain restrictions designed for the common good. The criterion +of their value is the measure of consent they meet with from those who +have to live under and work the Constitution, and it is that +circumstance which makes it urgent that Irish opinion should be evoked +upon their future Constitution, and that the Irish Nationalist party +should think out its own scheme of Home Rule. The Constitution of the +United States contains many self-imposed restrictions upon the powers +both of the Central and the State Governments, in the interest of +minorities; and nobody accuses the Americans of having insulted +themselves. + +It will be no slur on Ireland, for example, if the most elaborate +safeguards against the oppression of the Protestant minority are +inserted in the Bill, provided that Nationalist Ireland, recognizing the +fears of the minority, spontaneously recommends, or, at any rate, freely +consents to their insertion--a consent which could not, of course, be +expected if their tendency was to derange the functions of Government or +cripple the Legislature. + +On the other hand, it would be a slur on Ireland which she would justly +resent, besides being a highly impolitic step, to deny to the Irish +Executive an important power, such, for example, as the control of its +own police. + + +B. + +It is a grave difficulty that there is no public opinion in Ireland as +to the form of the Irish Constitution. That is an almost inevitable +result of political conditions past and present. Violent intestinal +antagonisms are not favourable to constructive thought. The best men of +a country, working in harmony, are needed to devise a good Constitution, +and if any Irishman could succeed in convening a Conference like that +which created the South African Union, he would be famous and honoured +for ever in the annals of the future Ireland. That Conference, we must +remember, was itself the result of the grants of Home Rule two years +previously, and these grants in their turn were greatly facilitated by +the co-operation of Britons and Dutchmen.[73] Canada, in 1840, is a +warning of the errors made in constructing a Constitution without such +co-operation. Eventually it had to be torn up and refashioned. The best +way of avoiding any such error in Ireland's case is to expel the spirit +of distrust which animated the framers of the Canadian Union Act of +1840. + + +C. + +So much for the spirit in which we should approach the problem, and I +pass to the consideration of the problem itself. What is to be the +framework of Home Rule? I take it for granted that there must, in the +broad sense, be responsible government, that is to say, an Irish +Legislature, with an Irish Cabinet responsible to that Legislature, and, +through the Lord-Lieutenant, to the Crown. So much is common ground with +nearly all advocates of Home Rule, for I take it that there is no +question of reverting to anything in the nature of the abortive Irish +Council Bill of 1907.[74] But agreement upon responsible government does +not carry us far enough. What are to be the relations between the +subordinate Irish Parliament and Government, and the Imperial Parliament +and Government? + +We immediately feel the need of a scientific nomenclature. In popular +parlance, two possible types of Home Rule are recognized--"Federal" and +"Colonial." Both, of course, may be "Colonial," because there are +Colonial Federations as well as Colonial Unitary States. But, +nomenclature apart, the two possible types of Irish Home Rule correspond +to two distinct types of subordinate Constitution. The "Colonial" type +is peculiar to the British Empire, the other is to be found in many +parts of the world--the United States, for example, and Germany, and +Switzerland. + +Let us examine these types a little more closely, confining ourselves as +far as possible to the British Empire, past and present, because within +it we can find nearly all the instruction we need. As I showed in my +sketch of the growth of Colonial Home Rule, all the Colonies now classed +as self-governing, together with the American Colonies before their +independence, were originally unitary States, subordinate to the Crown, +each looking directly to Great Britain, possessing no constitutional +relation with one another, and gradually obtaining their individual +local autonomies under the name of "Responsible Government." New Zealand +and Newfoundland alone have maintained their original individualities, +and their Constitutions, from an historical standpoint, are the best +examples of the first of the two types we are considering. Now for the +Federal type. Very early in the history of the American Colonies (in +1643) the New England group formed amongst themselves a loose +confederation, which was not formally recognized by the British +Government, and which perished in 1684. In the next century the War of +Independence produced the confederation of all the thirteen Colonies, +but this was little more in effect than a very badly contrived alliance +for military purposes, and it was a keen sense of the inadequacy of the +bond that stimulated the construction of the Great Constitution of 1787, +the first Federal Union ever devised by the English-speaking race. All +the States combined to confer certain defined powers upon a Federal +Parliament, to which each sent representatives, and upon a Federal +Executive whose head, the President, all shared in electing. At the same +time, each State preserved its own Constitution and the power to amend +it, with the one broad condition that it must be Republican, and subject +to any limitation upon its powers which the Federal Constitution +imposed. + +Eighty years elapsed before any similar Federal Union was formed by +Colonies within the British Empire. As we have seen, all the various +North American Colonies which received Constitutions in the last quarter +of the eighteenth century, and all the Australasian Colonies similarly +honoured in the nineteenth century, were placed in direct relation to +the British Crown and in isolation from one another. Upper Canada had no +political ties with Lower Canada, Nova Scotia none with New Brunswick, +Victoria none with Tasmania. Several abortive schemes were proposed at +one time or another for the Federation of the North American Colonies, +but the first measure of amalgamation, namely, the union of the two +Canadas in 1840, was a step in the wrong direction, and bore, as I have +shown, a marked resemblance, particularly in the motives which dictated +it, to the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. It was a compulsory +Union, imposed by the Mother Country, and founded on suspicion of the +French. So far from being Federal, it was a clumsy and unworkable +Legislative Union of the two Provinces, which lasted as long as it did +only because the principle of responsible government, established in +1847, covered a multitude of sins. The somewhat similar attempt in +Australia in 1843 to amalgamate the two settlements of Port Phillip, +afterwards Victoria, and New South Wales, at a time when each had +evolved a distinct individuality of its own, was defeated by the +strenuous opposition of the Port Phillip colonists, and revoked in 1850. + +Meanwhile, all aspirations after Federation in the outlying parts of the +Empire were discouraged by the home authorities. The most practical plan +of all, Sir George Grey's great scheme of South African Federation in +1859, was nipped in the bud. Canada eventually led the way. The failure +of the Canadian Union brought about its dissolution in 1867 by the +Provinces concerned, under the sanction of Great Britain (an example of +really sensible "dismemberment"), and their voluntary Federation as +Ontario and Quebec, together with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, under +the collective title of the Dominion of Canada, and the subsequent +inclusion in this Federation of all the North American Provinces with +the exception of Newfoundland. + +Note, at the outset, that this Federation differed from that of the +United States in being founded on the recognition of an organic relation +with an external suzerain authority--an authority which the Americans +had abjured in framing their independent Republic. In the matter of +constitutional relations with Great Britain, the Dominion of Canada now +assumed, in its collective capacity, the position formerly held by each +individual Province, and still held by Newfoundland. Direct relations +between the individual Provinces of the Federation and the Mother +Country practically ceased, and were replaced by a Federal relation with +the Dominion. Provincial Lieutenant-Governors are appointed by the +Dominion Government acting in the name of the Governor-General, not +directly by the British Government,[75] and, although in constitutional +theory the Crown, as in every least fraction of the Empire, is the sole +and immediate source of executive authority, and an indispensable agent +in all legislation, not only in the Dominion, but in the Provinces,[76] +in actual practice the only organic connection left between a Province +and Great Britain is the right of appeal directly to the King in +Council, that is, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, +without the intervention of the Supreme Court of Canada. + +So much for the external relations of the Dominion. In respect to the +domestic relations between the Provinces and the Dominion, the Federal +principle used in Canada is fundamentally the same as that which obtains +in the United States and in every true Federation in the world, whether +Monarchical or Republican, whether self-contained, like the United +States, Germany, and Switzerland, or linked, as in the British Empire, +to a supreme and sovereign Government centred in London. Each Province, +as in every genuine Federation, is an _imperium in imperio_, possessing +a Constitution of its own, and delegating central powers to a Federal +Government. The nature and extent of the powers thus delegated or +reserved, and the character of the Federal Constitution itself, vary +widely in different Federations, but we need not consider these +differences in any detail. Let us remark generally, however, that the +powers of the Canadian Province are much smaller than those of the +American State, and that what lawyers call "the residuary powers"--that +is, all powers not specifically allotted--belong to the Dominion, +whereas in the United States and Switzerland they belong to the State or +Canton. + +The Australian Commonwealth of 1900 came into being in the same way as +the Dominion of Canada, by the voluntary act of the several Colonies +concerned--Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western +Australia, Queensland--under the sanction of the British Crown and +Parliament. New Zealand stood out, and remained, like Newfoundland, a +unitary State directly subordinate to Great Britain. Nor, in the matter +of relations with the Mother Country, were the federating Colonies +merged so completely in the Commonwealth as the Provinces of Canada in +the Dominion. The Canadians had not only to construct the Dominion +Constitution, but new Constitutions for two of the federating +Provinces--Ontario and Quebec--and it was natural, therefore, that they +should identify the Provinces more closely with the Dominion. The +Australians, having to deal with six ready-made State Constitutions, +left them as they were, subject only to the limitations imposed by the +Commonwealth Constitution. One of the results is that the State +Governors are still appointed directly by the British Government, not by +the Commonwealth. This constitutional arrangement, however, has no very +practical significance. The right of appeal direct from a State Court to +the King in Council, without the intervention of the High Court of +Australia, remains, as in Canada, the only direct link between the +individual States and the British Government. + +The Federal tie between the States and the Commonwealth, as defined in +the Act of 1900, is looser than that between the Provinces of Canada and +the Dominion, and bears more resemblance to the relation between a State +and the Federal Government of the United States. As in that country and +in Switzerland, residuary powers rest with the State or Canton +Governments, not with the Federal Government. + +The South African Union of 1909, comprising the Colonies of the Cape of +Good Hope, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony, had a +Federal origin, so to speak, in that the old Colonies agreed to abandon +a great part of their autonomies to a central Government and +Legislature; but the spirit of unity carried them so far as almost to +annul State rights. The powers now retained by the provincial +Legislatures are so small, and the control of the Union Government is so +far-reaching, that the whole system is rightly described as a Union, not +as a Federation. The Provinces, which are really little more than +municipalities, have no longer any relation except in remotest +constitutional theory with the Mother Country, their Administrators are +appointed by the Union, and, unlike the Provinces of Canada and the +States of Australia, they have not even an internal system of +responsible government.[77] No direct appeal lies to the King in Council +from the provincial Courts, which are now, in fact, only "divisions" of +the Supreme Court of South Africa. The Provinces, in short, do not +possess "Constitutions" at all. Their powers can be extinguished without +their individual assent by an Act of the Union Parliament, whereas the +Canadian Dominion has no power to amend either the Dominion or the +Provincial Constitutions, and in Australia constitutional amendments +must be agreed to by the States separately as well as by the +Commonwealth Parliament. But these revolutionary changes in the status +of the old South African Colonies were brought about, let us remember, +by the free consent of the inhabitants of South Africa, after prolonged +deliberation. + +The United States, the Australian Commonwealth, and the Canadian +Dominion are, then, the three genuine Federations which the +English-speaking races have constructed. The two last are included in +the present British Empire, and they stand side by side with the three +unitary Colonies--South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland. The +constitutional relation of each of these five bodies to the Mother +Country is precisely the same, although they differ widely in internal +structure, as in wealth and population. Within each of the two +Federations, as we have seen, there exists a nexus of minor +Constitutions, State or Provincial, which have virtually no relations +with the Mother Country, but are integral parts of the major Federation. + + + +II. + +FEDERAL OR COLONIAL HOME RULE? + + +We are now in a position to pose our main question, and the simplest +course is to pose it in an illustrative form. Broadly speaking, is the +relation between Ireland and Great Britain to resemble that between the +Province of Quebec and the Dominion of Canada, or that between the +Dominion of Canada and the United Kingdom? One might equally well +contrast the relation of Victoria to the Australian Commonwealth with +the relation of New Zealand or Newfoundland to the United Kingdom. I +choose the Canadian illustration because it is more compact and +striking, and because it corresponds more closely to the history and to +the realities of the case. Moreover, Quebec, although she had a no more +stormy domestic history, owing to lack of Home Rule, than Ontario, is +bi-racial, and on that account underwent in 1840 compulsory amalgamation +with her wholly British neighbour, just as Ireland, originally +bi-racial, was forcibly amalgamated with Great Britain in 1800. The +Canadian partners agreed to break this bond, to fashion a better one on +the Federal principle, in the manner vaguely adumbrated by advocates of +the "Federal" principle for Irish Home Rule, and, as regards their +relations with the Mother Country, to pool their interests and accept +representation by the Dominion alone. + +Quebec Home Rule or Dominion Home Rule? Needless to say, these are only +broad types chosen expressly to illustrate two possible types of +relation between Ireland and Great Britain, which I shall henceforth +refer to as "Federal" and "Colonial." There is no reason why we should +not profit in other respects by both examples, nor is there any +possibility of copying either faithfully. + +Both types fulfil the fundamental condition laid down at the beginning +of our discussion--both, that is to say, are consistent with responsible +government in Ireland. Quebec, in its inner working, is a microcosm of +the Dominion, and the Dominion system of responsible government is +almost an exact copy of the unwritten British Constitution. In Quebec +(as in all the Provinces and States of Canada and Australia) there is a +Cabinet, headed by a Prime Minister, composed of Members of the +Legislature, and responsible at once to that Legislature and to the +Lieutenant-Governor as representing the Crown. Ireland, under a similar +system (and, _a fortiori_, if she were put in the position of the +Dominion), would have a Cabinet responsible at once to the Irish +Legislature and to the Lord-Lieutenant representing the Crown. The +parallel is more apposite in the case of the Province of Quebec than in +the case of an Australian State, because, as I noted above, the +provincial Lieutenant-Governor is actually appointed by the Dominion +Government, and is in his turn responsible in the first instance to that +Government, just as the Irish Governor, or Lord-Lieutenant, who, under +Home Rule, will for the first time justify his existence, is, and will +still be, appointed by the British Government. + +But with the possibility of responsible government granted, it must be +confessed that the arguments against "Quebec Home Rule" as a measure of +practical politics at the present moment, are insuperable. In the first +place there is no question in the coming Bill of federalizing the United +Kingdom on the lines of the Dominion of Canada--that is, of constructing +a new Federal Parliament elected by the whole realm, together with new +local Legislatures elected by the various fractions of the realm. +Scottish and Welsh Home Rule are in the air, but they are not practical +issues. English Home Rule is not even in the air. I mean that +Englishmen, whatever their views on the congestion of Parliamentary +business owing to the pressure of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish affairs, +have not seriously considered the idea of a subordinate Legislature +exclusively English, which would be just as essential a feature of a +completely federalized kingdom as subordinate Legislatures exclusively +Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. + +Not that it is essential to the federalization of the United Kingdom +that Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales, should all have separate +Legislature. Any one of these fractions could coalesce with another or +others in a joint Legislature. It would be technically possible, though +highly unreasonable, to go to the extreme of giving Great Britain, +regarded as one Province, a separate Legislature; Ireland, regarded as +another Province, a separate Legislature; and, above these two +subordinate bodies, a new Imperial Parliament representing the whole +realm. Such a dual Federation was nearly coming about in Canada, when +Ontario and Quebec dissolved their Union and resolved to federate. It +became a quadruple Federation, owing to the adhesion of Nova Scotia and +New Brunswick; but in a dual form it would have worked just as well. It +is scarcely necessary to say that the disparity in population, +resources, and power between Ireland and Great Britain render a dual +Federation, which, of course, involves three Legislatures, chimerical. +What I want to insist on is that, whatever subdivisions are adopted, it +is absolutely essential to every Federation that there should be a +division of powers between a central and at least two local +Legislatures--three altogether. That is the minimum. Other things are +also essential, but for the moment we can confine ourselves to the +outstanding requirement. Now, there is no question in the coming Bill of +any such Federation. Later years may see such a development, whether +from pressure of work on the Imperial Parliament or from irresistible +demand for Home Rule from Scotland or Wales, or both, but not next year. +The Bill will contemplate two Parliaments, not three, namely, the +existing Imperial Parliament and the Irish Legislature. There is, +therefore, no question of Federal Home Rule, and the term "Federal," as +applied to Irish Home Rule at the present time, is meaningless. + +Nor can the coming Bill for Ireland make any preparation, technically, +for a general Federation. Morally, as I shall show, it might have an +important effect in stimulating local sentiment, not only in England, +Scotland, and Wales, but in Ireland, towards a general Federation in the +future, but in its mechanical structure it must be not merely +non-Federal, but anti-Federal. One often hears it carelessly propounded +that Irish Home Rule, so devised as to be applicable in later years, if +they so desire, to Scotland, Wales, and England, will give us by smooth +mechanical means a General Federation. This is a fallacy. At one stage +or another, the earliest or the latest, we should have to create a +totally new central Parliament, still elected by the whole people, but +exclusively devoted to Imperial affairs, and wholly exempt from local +business, before we possessed anything in the nature of a Federation. +But, whatever the future has in store, it would be a scandal if Irish +Home Rule were to be hampered or delayed by the existence of Scotch or +Welsh claims, and it is earnestly to be hoped that no action of that +kind will be taken. The case of Ireland is centuries old, and more +urgent than ever. It differs radically from any case that can possibly +be made for Scotland and Wales. + +The Bill, I repeat, must be anti-Federal, centrifugal. In the case of +Ireland we have first to dissolve an unnatural union, and then to revive +an old right to autonomy, before we can reach a healthy Federal Union. +Such, exactly, was the history of Canada. If, in that case, the +dissolution of the Legislative Union and the construction of the Federal +Union were consummated simultaneously in the British North America Act +of 1867, they were nevertheless two distinct phases, and of these two +phases the first, implying the revival of the old separate autonomies, +was the indispensable precursor of Federal Union. This antecedent +recognition of autonomy was not peculiar to Canada. Every Federation in +the world arose in the same way, by the voluntary act of States under +one Crown or suzerainty, but independent of one another, and it is of +the essence of Federalism that this psychological condition should +exist. Compulsory Federation would not last a year. It would indeed be +practicable to federalize the United Kingdom by one Legislative Act, but +the prior right to and fitness for complete Home Rule on the part of +each of the component parts would have to be implicitly recognized. + +It needs only a moment's consideration of Anglo-Irish history to see the +special applicability of the psychological rule to Ireland. The evils of +the Canadian Union, during the twenty-seven years of its duration, are +infinitesimal beside the mischief, moral and material, which have been +caused to both partners by the forcible amalgamation of Great Britain +and Ireland; the waste of indigenous talent, industrial and political; +the dispersion all over the globe of Irishmen; the conversion of friends +into enemies, of peaceable citizens into plotters of treason, of farmers +into criminals, of poets and statesmen into gaolbirds; the check to the +production of wealth and Anglo-Irish commerce; the dislocation and +demoralization of Parliamentary life; and, saddest results of all, the +reactionary effect upon British statesmanship, domestic and Imperial, +and the deterioration of Irish character within Ireland. The voluntary +principle--at any rate, among the English-speaking races--is as +essential to a true Union, like that of the South African Colonies or +that of Scotland and England, as to a Federation. It is a sheer +impossibility to create a perfect, mechanical Union on a basis of hatred +and coercion; witness the strangely anomalous colonial features +surviving in Irish Government--the Lord-Lieutenancy, the separate +administration, and the standing army of police. + +Persons inclined to reckon the advantages, whether of Federation or of +Union, in pounds, shillings, and pence, may regard the psychological +requirement as fanciful. It is not fanciful; on the contrary, it is +related in the clearest way to the concrete facts of the situation. +Before there is any question of Federation Ireland needs to find +herself, to test her own potentialities, to prove independence of +character, thought, and action, and to discover what she can do by her +own unaided will with her own resources. As I endeavoured to show in the +last chapter, these are the true reasons for Home Rule. + +Home Rule is neither a luxury nor a plaything, but a tremendously +exacting duty which must be undertaken by every country conscious of +repression and valuing its self-respect, and which Ireland is praying to +be allowed to undertake. When a people has learnt to understand the +extent of its own powers and limitations, then it can safely and +honourably co-operate on a Federal basis with other peoples, and, in the +interests of efficiency and economy, can delegate to a central +Government, partly of its own choice, functions hitherto locally +exercised. Once more, that is the origin of all true Federations, +British and foreign, in all parts of the world. + +If, then, the Home Rule Bill cannot in legal form be a federating or +unifying measure, it must be one of a precisely opposite character, and +a measure of devolution. It is a proof of the need for a scientific +nomenclature that the word "devolution" has to Irish ears come to mean +something similar in kind to "Federal" Home Rule, but less in degree, +and something different in kind from "Colonial" Home Rule, and +infinitely less in degree. What a tangle of truth and fallacy from the +misuse of a single word! It is associated rightly with the ill-starred +Irish Council Bill of 1907, and it has been universally but wrongly used +to indicate a small measure of local government in contradistinction to +the Home Rule Bills of Mr. Gladstone and, _a fortiori_, to any more +liberal schemes. + +Nevertheless, the problem before us is one of devolution pure and +simple, and the question is, how far is devolution to go? It may go to +the full length of Colonial Home Rule, that is, Ireland may be vested +with the full freedom now enjoyed by a self-governing Colony (for the +grants of Colonial Home Rule were measures of devolution), or it might +at the other extreme take the form of a petty municipal government. By +hypothesis, however, we are precluded from considering any scheme which +does not admit of responsible government in Ireland. That condition +commits us to something in the nature of "Colonial" Home Rule, now +enjoyed by States widely varying in size, wealth, and population, from +the Dominion of Canada, with over seven million inhabitants, to +Newfoundland, with under a quarter of a million inhabitants and very +slender resources. It is worth notice also (to shift our analogy for the +moment) that little Newfoundland, which, owing to divergency of +interest, has declined both federation with the Dominion and union with +any of the constituent parts of the Dominion, subsists happily and +peacefully by the side of her powerful neighbour; and that New Zealand, +for the same reason, prefers to occupy the same independent position by +the side of Australia. + + +III. + +THE EXCLUSION OR RETENTION OF IRISH MEMBERS AT WESTMINSTER.[78] + + +We have discarded the "Federal" solution as wholly impracticable, and +have arrived at the "Colonial" solution. And at this point I feel it +necessary to plead for the reader's patient, if reluctant, attention to +what follows. The solution I suggest is unpopular, mainly, I believe, +because prejudice has so beclouded the issue in the past, and because +for the eighteen years since the last Home Rule Bill, while prejudice +has diminished, the subject of Irish Home Rule has ceased to be studied +with scientific care. + +Where is the crux of the problem? In what provision of the coming Bill +will the difference between Federal Home Rule and Colonial Home Rule +arise? The answer is clear: in the retention or exclusion of Irish +Members at Westminster. No Colony has representatives at Westminster. +The Federal solution, on the other hand, whether it be applied to the +whole Empire or to the United Kingdom alone, involves an exclusively +Federal Parliament unconcerned with State or provincial affairs. That we +have not got. What we have got is an absolutely supreme and sovereign +Parliament which has legal authority, not only over all Imperial affairs +within and without the United Kingdom, but over the minutest local +affairs. Unrepresented though the Colonies are, they can legally be +taxed, coerced, enslaved at any moment by an Act passed by a party +majority in this Parliament. Such measures, though legal, would be +unconstitutional; but, both by law and custom, and in actual daily +practice, Parliament passes and enforces certain Acts affecting the +self-governing Colonies, and wields potential and actual authority of +all-embracing extent over the Empire and over the local affairs of the +United Kingdom. + +When we set up an Irish Legislature, then, we have to contemplate four +different classes of affairs in a descending scale: (1) Affairs of +common interest to the whole Empire; (2) affairs of exclusive interest +to the United Kingdom; (3) affairs exclusively British; (4) affairs +exclusively Irish. + +With regard to (1), the prospects of Imperial Federation do not affect +the Irish issue. It is no doubt illogical and sometimes highly +inconvenient that the British Cabinet and Parliament, representing +British and Irish electors only, should decide matters which deeply +concern the whole Empire, including the self-governing Colonies, but it +is the fact. In the meantime we are securing very effective consultation +with the self-governing Colonies by the method of Imperial Conference. A +Federal Parliament for the whole Empire is a possible though a remote +alternative to that system. Colonial representation in the present +Imperial Parliament is an altogether impracticable alternative. The +suggestion had often been made for the American Colonies at the height +of their discontent, later for Canada as an alternative to the Act of +1791, and in recent times also. The same fallacious idea underlay the +Union of Ireland with Great Britain and her representation in +Parliament, while retaining colonial institutions. At present the +prospects of Imperial Federation seem to be indifferent. On the other +hand, the affection between all branches of our race which is the +indispensable groundwork of Federation becomes visibly stronger, and +will become stronger, provided that we do not revert to the ancient and +discredited policy either of dictating to the Colonies or taking sides +with one or another of the parties within them, provided also that the +Colonies in their growing strength do not dictate to us or take sides +with one or other of our parties. + +But, whatever the prospects of Imperial Federation, so long as the +present situation lasts, there is no reason for giving a self-governing +Ireland more control over Imperial matters affecting the self-governing +Colonies than the self-governing Colonies themselves possess. The +present position is illogical enough; that would be to render it doubly +illogical. Representation of Ireland, therefore, at Westminster, on the +ground that she should take part in settling matters of the widest +Imperial purport, is indefensible. The alternative and much more +effectual method, as with the Colonies, is Conference. + +(2-4) But it is when we come to regard the United Kingdom as a +self-contained entity that the difficulty of retaining Irish Members at +Westminster appears most formidable. If we discard the Federal solution +we must discard it wholeheartedly, not from a pedantic love of logic, +but to avoid real, practical anomalies which might cause the whole +political machine to work even worse than it does at present. From what +I have written, it will be seen at once that to retain the Irish Members +in the House of Commons, while giving Ireland responsible government, +would be to set up a kind of hybrid system, retaining the disadvantages +of the Union without gaining the advantages of Federalism. A Federal +system needs a Federal Parliament, which we have not got, and shall not +get for a long time yet. To introduce into it a quasi-Federal element is +to mix oil with water. + +I state the proposition in this broad way at first in order to push home +the truth that Irish representation at Westminster will involve +anomalies and dangers which, beyond a certain very limited point, cannot +be mitigated. Methods of mitigation I will deal with in a moment. Let me +remark first upon the strange history of this question of Irish +representation at Westminster. Obviously it is the most fundamental +question of all in the matter of Home Rule. The whole structure of the +Bill hangs on it. It affects every provision, and particularly the +financial provisions. Yet Mr. Gladstone went no farther than to call it +an "organic detail," and in popular controversy it is still generally +regarded in that light, or even in a less serious light. As a matter of +history, however, it has proved to be a factor of importance in deciding +the fate of the Home Rule Bills. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone, in proposing to +exclude Irish Members altogether, roused a storm of purely sentimental +opposition. In 1893, in proposing to retain them--first with limited +functions, then on the old terms of complete equality with British +Members--he met with opposition even more formidable, because it was not +merely sentimental, but unanswerably practical. On both occasions Mr. +Chamberlain took a prominent part in the opposition: in 1886 because he +was then a Federalist, advocating "Quebec" Home Rule for Ireland, and +regarding the exclusion of Irish Members from Westminster as +contravening the Federal principle; in 1893 because, having ceased to be +a Home Ruler, he had no difficulty in showing that the retention of +Irish Members, either with full or limited functions, was neither +Federation nor Union, but an unworkable mixture of the two. + +These facts should be a warning to those who trifle thoughtlessly with +what they call "Federal" Home Rule. It was through a desperate desire to +conciliate that Mr. Gladstone caught at the Federal chimera in 1893, and +produced a scheme which he himself could not defend. And it was one of +the very statesmen that he sought to conciliate--a statesman, moreover, +possessing one of the keenest and strongest intellects of the time--who +snatched at the chimera in 1886, and argued it out of existence in 1893. +We Home Rulers do not want a repetition of those events. We want Home +Rule, and if we are to be defeated, let us be defeated on a simple +straightforward issue, not on an indefensible complication of our own +devising. + +Now to details. There are five ways of dealing with the question, and of +these I will take first the four different ways of including Irish +Members in the House of Commons, leaving their total _exclusion_ to the +last. + +1. Inclusion of Irish Members in their full numbers for all +purposes--that is, with a right to vote upon all questions--British, +Irish, and Imperial. [By "full numbers" I mean, not the existing figure +of 103, but numbers fully, and no more than fully, warrantable according +to the latest figures of population--say 70.] + +2. Inclusion in full numbers for limited purposes. + +3. Inclusion in reduced numbers for all purposes. [By "reduced numbers" +I mean in numbers less than population would warrant.] + +4. Inclusion in reduced numbers for limited purposes. + +Now (4) I only set out for symmetry. It has never been proposed by +anybody, and hardly needs notice. + +The three others are alike in two respects--that they leave untouched +the question of representation in the House of Lords, and that they +directly infringe both the Federal principle and the Union principle by +giving representation, both in a unitary and a subordinate Legislature, +to one portion of the realm. + +Let us look at No. 1--inclusion in full numbers for all purposes. This +was Mr. Gladstone's revised proposal of 1893, and it formed part of the +Bill thrown out by the Lords. The number of Irish Members was to have +been 80. But reduction, as Mr. Gladstone admitted, would scarcely affect +the inherent difficulties of inclusion. Nor must it be forgotten that +reduction from 103 to 70 can be justified only by the concession of a +large measure of Home Rule. It is one of the paradoxes of an unnatural +Union that, over-represented as Ireland is, she has not now power enough +to secure her own will. To reduce her numbers, while retaining large +powers over Irish affairs at Westminster, would be unjust. For the time +being I shall defer the consideration of those powers, and argue the +matter on broad principle, assuming that the powers retained in Imperial +hands are small enough to warrant a reduction from 103 to 70. + +Now let us apply our touchstone to this question of inclusion in "full" +numbers. Will it be good for Ireland? Surely not. + +(_a_) It will be bad for Ireland, in the first place, to have her +energies weakened at the outset by having to find two complete sets of +representatives, when she will be in urgent need of all her best men to +do her own work. There is no analogy with Quebec, Victoria, +Massachusetts, or Wuertemburg, which had all been accustomed to +self-government before they entered their respective Federations. +Ireland has to find her best men, create her domestic policies, +reconstruct her administration, and the larger the reservoir of talent +she has to draw from the better. When true Federation becomes practical +politics it will be another matter. By that time she will have men to +spare. + +(_b_) More serious objection still, retention in full numbers will, it +is to be feared, tend to counteract the benefits of Home Rule in Ireland +by keeping alive old dissensions and bad political habits. If, after +long and hot controversy, a system is set up under which Great Britain +can still be regarded as a pacificator--half umpire and half +policeman--of what Peel called the "warring sects" of Ireland, it is to +be feared that the Members sent to London may fall into the old +unnatural party divisions; a Protestant minority seeking to revoke or +curtail Home Rule, and a Nationalist majority--paradoxical survival of a +pre-national period--seeking to maintain or enlarge Home Rule. These +unhappy results would react in their turn upon the Irish Legislature, +impairing the value of Home Rule, and making Ireland, as of old, the +cockpit of sectarian and sentimental politics. The same results would +have happened if, simultaneously with the concession of Home Rule to +Canada, Australia and South Africa, these Colonies had been given +representation in the British Parliament. + +(_c_) Whatever the extent of the danger I have indicated, inclusion in +full numbers will tend to keep alive the habit of dependence on Great +Britain for financial aid, a habit so ingrained, through no fault of +Ireland's, that it will be difficult to break if the Parliamentary +leverage is left intact. If ever there was a country which needed, as +far as humanly possible, to be thrown for a time--not necessarily for a +long time--upon its own resources, it is Ireland. Every other +self-governing Colony in the Empire has gone through that bracing and +purifying ordeal, accepting from the Mother Country, without repayment, +only the loan of military and naval defence, and Ireland can imitate +them without dishonour. + +What is bad for Ireland is sure to be bad for Great Britain, too, and +the bad effect in this case is sufficiently apparent. Imagine the result +if Quebec, besides having her own Legislature and her own +representatives in the Dominion Parliament, were to be represented also +in the Ontario Legislature. Ireland, besides controlling her own +affairs, free from British interference, would have a voice in British +affairs, and sometimes a deciding voice. "If you keep the Irish in," +said Mr. John Morley in 1886--and he meant in their full numbers--"they +will be what they have ever been in the past--the arbitrators and +masters of English policy, of English legislative business, and of the +rise and fall of British administrations." That is a rather exaggerated +account of the past, for had it been literally true Ireland would have +had Home Rule long ago; and it was unduly pessimistic about the future, +for it hardly made sufficient allowance for a change in Irish spirit as +a result of Home Rule; but there is a truth in the words which everybody +recognizes and whose recognition is one of the great motive forces +behind Home Rule. Even a total change in Irish sentiments and parties +would not remove the danger, and might intensify it by producing at +Westminster a solid instead of, as at present, a divided, Irish vote. It +would be truer, perhaps, to say what I said above, that retention of +Members would tend to stereotype Irish parties and the mutual antipathy +of Ireland and Great Britain. + +2. Inclusion in full numbers (say 70) for limited purposes. This (with +the figure of 80) was Mr. Gladstone's original proposal of 1893, and it +took the form of a clause known as the "In and Out Clause," which +purported to divide all Parliamentary business into Imperial, Irish, and +non-Irish business, and to give Irish Members the right to vote only on +Imperial and Irish subjects. Mr. Gladstone never disguised his view that +a sound classification was impracticable, and put forward the clause, +frankly, as a tentative scheme for the discussion of the House. Like its +successor, the "Omnes omnia" Clause, it was riddled with criticism, and +it was eventually withdrawn. Without investigating details, the reader +will perceive at once the hopeless confusion arising from an attempt to +inject a tincture of Federalism into a unitary Parliament, forming part +of an unwritten Constitution of great age and infinite delicacy. It is +not merely that it is absolutely impossible to distinguish rigidly +between Imperial, Irish, and British business. The great objection is +that there would be two alternating majorities in an Assembly which is, +and must be, absolutely governed by a party majority, and which, through +that majority, controls the Executive. It "passed the wit of man," said +Mr. Gladstone, to separate in practice the Legislative and Executive +functions in the British Constitution. At present a hostile vote in the +House of Commons overturns the Ministry of the day and changes the whole +British and Imperial administration. A hostile vote, therefore, +determined by the Irish Members, on a question affecting Ireland, such +as the application to Ireland of a British Bill, would seriously +embarrass the Ministry, if it did not overturn it. The log-rolling and +illicit pressure which this state of things would encourage may be +easily imagined. A Ministry might find itself after a General Election +in the position of having a majority for some purposes and not for +others. That was actually the case in 1893, when Mr. Gladstone, with a +majority, including the Irish Nationalists, of only 40, was carrying his +Bill through Parliament. It is actually the case now, in the sense that +if the Irish Nationalists voted with the Opposition, the Ministry would +be defeated. Any change for the better in Irish sentiment towards Great +Britain would _pro tanto_ mitigate the difficulty, but would not remove +it, and might, as I suggested above, increase it, by the creation of a +solid Irish vote. If Great Britain resents the present system, she alone +is to blame. As long as she insists on keeping the Irish Members out of +Ireland, where they ought to be, she thoroughly deserves their tyranny, +and would be wise to get rid of it by the means they suggest. Until they +are given Home Rule, they are not only justified in using their power, +but are bound, in duty and honour, to use it. To reproduce in the Home +Rule Bill, albeit in a modified form, conditions which might lead to the +same results as before would surely be a gratuitous act of unwisdom. + +3. Inclusion in reduced numbers for all purposes. By "reduced numbers" +is meant numbers less than the population of Ireland warrants. For the +sake of argument we may assume the number to be 35, that is, +approximately half the proper proportion; but directly we desert a +scientific principle of allocation, the exact figure we adopt is a +matter of arbitrary choice. + +Mr. Gladstone appears to have contemplated this plan for a brief period +in 1889; but he dropped it. Clearly it cannot be defended on any logical +grounds, but only as a compromise designed, as it avowedly was, to +conciliate British opinion. It would minimize but not remove the +difficulties inherent in No. 1; and so far as it did lessen these +difficulties, the representation given would be impotent and +superfluous. That is why I have taken it last in order of the three +possible methods of inclusion. It raises in the sharpest and clearest +form the important question underlying the whole of the discussion we +have just been through--namely, what are to be the powers delegated to +the Irish Parliament and Executive, and what are to be the powers +reserved to the Imperial Parliament and Executive? + +If the powers reserved are small, it will be possible to justify not +merely a small Irish representation in the House of Commons, but even +under certain conditions the total exclusion of Irish members. Indeed, +if the figure 35 corresponded to the facts of the case, one might as +well abandon these painful efforts to "conciliate British opinion," +accept total exclusion, and substitute Conference for representation. If +the powers reserved are large, full representation in spite of all the +crushing objections to it, will be absolutely necessary, in order to +safeguard Irish interests. Here is the grand dilemma, and it says little +for our common sense as a nation that we should submit to be puzzled and +worried by it any longer. Half the worry arises from the old and +infinitely pernicious habit of regarding Ireland as outside the pale of +political science, of ignoring in her case what Lord Morley has called +the "fundamental probabilities of civil society." Let us break this +habit once and for all and take the logical and politic course of total +exclusion, with its logical and politic accompaniment, a measure of Home +Rule wide enough to justify the absence of Irish representation at +Westminster. That will be found to be the path both of duty and of +safety. + +Let it be clearly understood that lapse of time has not diminished +appreciably the power of the arguments against the inclusion of Irish +Members in the House of Commons. On their merits, these arguments are +still unanswerable, and we had better recognize the fact. Mr. Balfour +said, in 1893, "Those questions" (of representation at Westminster) "are +not capable of solution, and the very fact that they are incapable of +solution affords, in our opinion, a conclusive argument against the +whole scheme, of which one or other of the plans in question must form a +part." Speaking as a Unionist, Mr. Balfour was right, and, as Home +Rulers, we should be wise to remember it. + +Lastly, even if the question of inclusion in the House of Commons were +"capable of solution," as it is not, there would remain the problem +raised by the House of Lords. It is idle to ignore the fact that the +bulk of the Irish peerage, and the Assembly of which it forms part, has +been for a century in consistent and resolute opposition to the views of +the vast majority of Irishmen. The recent curtailment of its powers, +whether a right or a wrong measure in itself, does not make it any the +more suitable as an Upper Chamber, under a Home Rule scheme, for the +decision of important Irish questions reserved for settlement at +Westminster; indeed, the bare proposal is the best imaginable example of +the extraordinary complications which would ensue from the introduction +of a quasi-Federal element into a unitary Constitution. + +Federal Upper Chambers, so far from being hostile to State rights, are +almost invariably framed on the principle of giving disproportionately +large representation to the smaller States. In the United States and +Australia, for example, every State, however small, has an equal number +of Senators. + +It will be clear now that there are two distinct ways of approaching the +question of the framework of Home Rule. One may begin with the nature +and extent of the powers reserved or delegated, and proceed from them to +the inclusion and exclusion of Irish representation at Westminster, or +one may begin with the topic of inclusion or exclusion and proceed from +it to the nature and extent of powers. While premising that we must +trust Ireland and evoke her sense of responsibility, I chose the latter +of the two courses, because I believe it to be on the whole the most +illuminating and trustworthy course. It is also the more logical course, +though I should not have adopted it for that reason alone; and I have +already given, I hope, some good reasons to show that in this matter +logic and policy coincide. Englishmen pride themselves on the lack of +logic which characterizes their slowly evolved institutions, but they +may easily carry that pride to preposterous extremes. Faced now with the +necessity of making a written Constitution which will stand the test of +daily use they would commit the last of innumerable errors in Irish +policy if, with full warning from experience elsewhere, they were to +frame a measure whose unprecedented and unworkable provisions were the +outcome of a distrust of Ireland which it was the ostensible object of +the measure itself to remove. + + +IV. + +IRISH POWERS AND THEIR BEARING ON EXCLUSION. + + +I pass to what I suggest to be the right solution: Total exclusion, as +proposed by Mr. Gladstone in 1886, though he shrank from recommending +what he knew to be its financial corollary. Mr. Bright regarded +exclusion as the "best clause" of a dangerous scheme, and Mr. +Chamberlain has admitted that he attacked it, as he attacked the +proposals for Land Purchase, which he knew to be right, in order to +"kill the Bill."[79] I propose only to recapitulate the merits of +exclusion before dealing with the alleged difficulties of that form of +Home Rule, and in particular with the point on which the controversy +mainly turns--Finance. + +To give Ireland Colonial Home Rule, without representation in London, is +to follow the natural channel of historical development. Ireland was +virtually a Colony, and is treated still in many respects as an inferior +type of Colony, in other respects as a partner in a vicious type of +Union. We cannot improve the Union, and it is, admittedly, a failure. +Let us, then, in broad outline, model her political system on that of a +self-governing Colony. + +History apart, circumstances demand this solution. It is the best +solution for Ireland, because she needs, precisely what the Colonies +needed--full play for her native faculties, full responsibility for the +adjustment of her internal dissensions, for the exploitation, unaided, +of her own resources, and for the settlement of neglected problems +peculiar to herself. As a member of the Imperial family she will gain, +not lose. And the Empire, here as everywhere else, will gain, not lose. + +These ends will be jeopardized if we continue to bind her to the British +Parliament, and restrict her own autonomy accordingly. Reciprocally, we +damage the British Parliament and gratuitously invite friction and +deadlock in the administration either of British or of Imperial affairs, +or both. Of the difficulties raised we can mitigate one only by bringing +another into existence. Endeavouring to minimize them all by reducing +the Irish representation to the lowest point, we either do a gross +injustice to Ireland, by diminishing her control over interests vital to +her, or, by conceding that control, remove the necessity for any +representation at all. Most Irish Unionists would, I believe, prefer +exclusion to retention. One gathers that from the debates of 1893, and +the view is in accordance with the traditional Ulster spirit, and the +spirit generally displayed by powerful minorities threatened with a Home +Rule to which they object on principle. It was the spirit displayed by +the Upper Canadian minority, in 1838-39 (_vide_ p. 101), in threatening +to leave the Empire rather than submit to Home Rule, and by the +Transvaal minority in the lukewarm and divided support given to the +half-baked Constitution of 1905, and in the hearty welcome given to the +full autonomy of 1906. How the Colonists expressed themselves matters +nothing. We must make generous allowance for hot party feeling and old +prejudices. The Canadian minorities did not really mean to call in the +United States, nor does it signify a particle that some of the +Johannesburgers vowed that anything could be borne which freed them from +the interference of a Liberal Government. These opinions are transient +and negligible. The spirit is essentially healthy. Paradox as it may +seem, the uncompromising attitude of Ulster Unionists, as voiced by the +ablest representative they ever had, Colonel Saunderson,[80] is hopeful +for the prospects of Home Rule. They fight doggedly for the Union, but I +believe they would prefer a real Home Rule to a half-measure, and in +making that choice they would show their virility and courage at its +true worth. + +Where are the dangers and difficulties of exclusion? The dangers first. +I believe, from a study of events in the last twenty-five years, that +the strongest opposition to it was founded, not so much upon a +reluctance to give Ireland powers full enough to render needless her +representation at Westminster, but on a jealous desire to keep Irish +Members under surveillance, as a dangerous and intractable body of men +who would hatch mischief against the Empire if they were allowed to +disappear from sight; the same kind of instinct which urged +revolutionary Paris to stop the flight of Louis and to keep him under +lock and key. In the case of Ireland it is possible to understand the +prevalence of this instinct in 1886, though even then it was irrational +enough. But in 1911 we should be ashamed to entertain it. Irish plots +against the Empire have passed into electoral scares, and if they had +not, representation in London would be no safeguard. We should also +dismiss the more rational but groundless view that Imperial co-operation +necessitates representation in a joint Assembly. Conference is a better +method. Anyone who studies the proceedings of the last Imperial +Conference and observes the number and variety of the subjects discussed +and the numerous and valuable decisions arrived at, will realize how +much can be done by mutual good-will and the pressure of mutual +interest.[81] + +It may be objected that, with one or two exceptions of quite recent +date, the Colonies have contributed nothing to the upkeep of the Empire, +except in the very indirect form of maintaining local military forces, +that their present tendency --unquestionably a sound tendency--is to +co-operate, not by way of direct money contribution to Imperial funds, +but by the construction of local Navies out of their own money, and, in +time of peace, under their own immediate control, and that Ireland +cannot be allowed to follow their example. The objection has no point. +Ireland, through no fault of her own, has reached a stage (if we are to +trust the Treasury figures) where she no longer pays any cash +contribution to Imperial expenses, nor is it possible to look back with +any satisfaction upon the enormous total of her cash contributions in +the past. They were not the voluntary offerings of a willing partner, +but the product of a joint financial system which, like all consequences +of a forced Union, was bad for Ireland. If we consider that a similar +attempt to extort an Imperial contribution from the American States led +to their secession; that the principle was definitely abandoned in the +case of the later Colonies; that, on the contrary, large annual sums +raised in these islands were, until quite recent times, spent for +purposes of defence within these Colonies; that in the South African War +two hundred and fifty million pounds were spent in order to assist +British subjects in the Transvaal to obtain the rights of freemen in a +self-governing Colony; and that to this day indirect colonial +contributions in the shape of local expenditure are small in proportion +to the immense benefit derived from the protection of the Imperial Navy, +Army, and Diplomacy, and from the assistance of British credit; if we +then reflect that before the Union Ireland was, in the matter of +contribution, somewhat in the same position as Canada or Australia +to-day--that is, paying no fixed cash tribute, but voluntarily assuming +the burden, very heavy in time of war, of certain Army establishments; +that for seventeen years after the Union contributions fixed on a scale +grossly inequitable drove her into bankruptcy; that from 1819 until two +years ago, she paid, by dint of excessive taxation and in spite of +terrible economic depression, a considerable share, and sometimes more +than her proportionate share, of Imperial expenditure;[82] if, finally, +we remember that, cash payments apart, Irishmen for centuries past have +taken an important part in manning the Army and Navy, have fought and +died on innumerable battle-fields in the service of the Empire, and have +contributed some of its ablest military leaders; if we consider all +these facts soberly and reasonably, we shall, I believe, agree that it +would be fair and right to place a Home Ruled Ireland in the position of +a self-governing Colony, with a moral obligation to contribute, when her +means permit, and in proportion to her means, but without a statutory +and compulsory tribute. + +What form should that contribution eventually take? Does it necessarily +follow that Ireland should be given power to construct her own Navy, and +raise and control her own troops? Let us use our common sense, and use +it, let me add, fearlessly. If Ireland really _wanted_ full colonial +powers, if, like Australia and Canada, she would be discontented and +resentful at their denial, we should be wise to grant them, and rely on +common interests and affections to secure friendly co-operation. Does it +not stand to reason that a friendly alliance even with a foreign power, +such as France, to say nothing of the far more intimate relations with a +consanguineous Colony, is better business than any arrangement for +common forces unwillingly or resentfully acceded to? But, as I pointed +out in Chapter VIII., all these uneasy speculations about independent +Irish armaments are superfluous. Ireland does not want separate +armaments. The sporadic attempts to discourage enlistment in the +Imperial forces are, as every sensible person should recognize, the +results of refusing Home Rule. They would have occurred in every Colony +under similar circumstances, and they do occur in one degree or another +wherever countries agitate vainly for Home Rule. If Russia misinterprets +such phenomena, we have, let us hope, more political enlightenment than +Russia. + +Ireland's strategical situation bears no analogy to that of Australia +and Canada, which, for geographical reasons, are compelled, as South +Africa will be compelled, to make a certain amount of independent +provision, not only for military, but for naval defence, and would be +wanting in patriotic feeling if they did otherwise. New Zealand, on the +other hand, is too small to be capable of creating a Navy, and rightly +contributes to ours. We have arrived at an interesting psychological +point when Australia and Canada both seem to be inclined to reserve, in +theory, a right to abstain from engaging their Navies in a war +undertaken by Great Britain, but nobody will be alarmed by this +theoretical reservation. It is an insignificant matter beside the Naval +Agreement reached at the last Conference (1911)--an agreement worth more +than volumes of unwritten statutes--to the effect that the personnel of +the colonial fleets is to be interchangeable with that of the Imperial +fleet and that in a joint war colonial ships are to form an integral +part of the British fleet under the control of the Admiralty. With such +an agreement in existence, it becomes superfluous to lay stress upon the +fact that without formal and complete separation from the Mother Country +in time of peace, the neutrality of a Colony would not be recognized by +a belligerent enemy of Great Britain in time of war. In any case these +developments have no concern for Ireland, which does not want, and need +not be given, power to raise a local Navy. Nor, with regard to the +regular land forces, will anything be changed. Troops quartered in +Ireland will be, as before, and as in the Colonies now, under complete +Imperial control. So will Imperial camps, magazines, arsenals, +dock-yards. On the other hand, arrangements should certainly be made to +permit the raising of Volunteer forces in Ireland. There are large +numbers of Irishmen in the British Territorial Army, and Ireland sent +five companies to the South African War. Though the poverty of the +country will for a long time check the growth of Volunteer forces, it is +the Union which presents the only serious obstacle to their +establishment. No surer proof of the need for Home Rule could be adduced +than the fact that it was held to be impossible to extend the +Territorial system to Ireland. One of the objects of Home Rule is to +remove this suspicious atmosphere. Whether local power to organize and +arm Volunteers in Ireland should be given to the Irish authority, or, as +in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, reserved to the Imperial +Government, is, if we trust Ireland, as we must, a secondary and not a +vital matter, which would not affect the question of representation at +Westminster.[83] Probably it would be most convenient to leave the +matters in the hands of the Irish Legislature. In any case, the +Command-in-Chief of all forces in Ireland, regular or volunteer, would, +as in the Colonies,[84] be vested in the King. + +The control of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan +Police does not affect the question of representation at Westminster. +With or without representation, Ireland should be given the control of +all her own police forces from the first, without the restrictions +imposed by the Bills of 1886 and 1893 with regard to Imperial control of +the existing forces.[85] + +With the important exception of taxation, with which I shall deal last, +no other power which should properly be reserved to the Imperial +Parliament, or delegated to the Irish Parliament, has any appreciable +bearing upon the exclusion of Irish Members from the House of Commons. +Nor do any of them raise issues which are likely to be troublesome. +Common sense and mutual convenience should decide them. The Army, Navy, +and other military forces I have already dealt with. The Crown, the +Lord-Lieutenant, War and Peace, Prize and Booty of War, Foreign +Relations and Treaties (with the exception of commercial Treaties), +Titles, Extradition, Neutrality,[86] and Treason, are subjects upon +which the Colonies have no power to legislate or act, and of which it +would be needless, strictly, to make any formal statutory exception in +the case of Ireland, though the exception no doubt will be made in the +Bill. Naturalization, Coinage, Copyright, Patents, Trademarks, are all +matters in which the Colonies have local powers, whose existence, and +the limitations attaching to them, are determined either solely by +constitutional custom or with the addition of an implied or express +statutory authority.[87] The two former would, I should think, be wholly +reserved to the Imperial Parliament. In the case of the latter three, +which were wholly reserved in the Bill of 1886 and 1893, Ireland might +be placed in the position of a self-governing Colony.[88] + +In Trade and Navigation it would be wise to take the same course. The +Home Rule Bill of 1886, without giving Ireland representation at +Westminster, denied her all powers over Trade and Navigation. The Bill +of 1893 gave her powers over Trade within Ireland and Inland Navigation, +and these powers at any rate should be given in the coming Bill, +together with the larger functions also; though Ireland would naturally +leave in operation the great bulk of the statutes concerned, since they +intimately affect the commercial and industrial relations of the two +countries. For the rest, Ireland no more than the Colonies can be freed +from a measure of Imperial control maintained by Acts like the Merchant +Shipping Act of 1894. + +The Postal Service in Ireland should, as in the Bill of 1886, come under +Irish control. + +In the Home Rule Bill of 1893 (Section 34) it was laid down that for +three years the Irish Legislature should not "pass an Act respecting the +relations of landlord or tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of +land generally." Such a provision repeated in the coming Bill would be +inconsistent with the absence of Irish Members from Westminster. But I +take it for granted that there is no question of its repetition. At +first it might appear that Land Purchase should be distinguished from +other branches of land legislation and reserved to the Imperial +Government on the ground that it needs Imperial credit. I shall deal +with this point fully in Chapter XIV., and only need here to express the +view that Land Purchase cannot be separated from other branches of land +legislation, or from the Congested Districts Board, or even from the +control of the police, and that we are bound to give, and shall be +acting wisely in giving, all these powers to the Irish Legislature from +the first. + +It is necessary perhaps to add that non-representation at Westminster +does not in the smallest degree affect the complete legal supremacy of +the Imperial Parliament over the subordinate Irish Legislature. This +Legislature will in legal language be a "local and territorial" body, +like those of the Colonies. It will be the creature of Parliament, and +could be amended or even extinguished by it in a subsequent Act. The +Bill of 1886 (perhaps because it never reached the Committee stage) said +nothing explicit about the supremacy, though the Bill of 1893, while +providing for representation at Westminster, repeatedly (and sometimes +quite superfluously) affirmed it--in the Preamble, for example, and in a +rider to Clause 2. The King's authority, through the Lord-Lieutenant, +will be supreme in Ireland, as, through the Governors, it is supreme in +the Colonies. Every Irish Bill, like every Colonial Bill, will require +the Royal Assent, given through the Lord-Lieutenant, who will correspond +to the Colonial Governors. The Lord-Lieutenant, like his colonial +counterpart, will have to exercise both his Executive and Legislative +functions in a double capacity: in the first instance by the advice of +his Irish Cabinet, but subject to a veto by the British Cabinet. This +dual capacity has belonged to all Colonial Governors ever since the +principle of responsible government was established. As I showed in +earlier chapters, it was regarded even by Lord John Russell as +impossible and absurd as late as 1840; but it ought by now to be +understood by every educated man, and we may hope to be spared the +philosophical disquisitions and hair-splitting criticisms which it +evoked from men who should have known better in the Home Rule debates of +1893. + +Laws framed at Westminster will be applicable to Ireland, as they are +frequently made applicable to the Colonies.[89] Conversely, only through +the express legislative authority of Westminster will an Irish, like a +Colonial Act,[90] be held to operate outside the borders of Ireland. + +Apart from the strict legal omnipotence of Imperial sovereignty, it is, +of course, impossible to say now what the exact constitutional position +of Ireland will be under any form of Home Rule. No Bill can state it +fully in set terms. Time, custom, and judicial decisions will build up a +body of doctrine. It is so with the Colonies, whose exact constitutional +relations with the Mother Country are still a matter of juristic debate, +and are only to be deduced from the study of an immense number of +judicial decisions and of Imperial Acts passed subsequently to the grant +of the original Constitutions. Some of these Acts I have already +illustrated. The one Act of general application, namely, the Colonial +Laws Validity Act, cannot be read without the rest, though in form it +appears to contain a complete set of rules. While giving general power +to a self-governing Colony "to make laws for the peace, welfare, and +good government of the Colony" (words which will also necessarily appear +in the Home Rule Bill), the Act makes void all colonial laws or parts of +laws which are "repugnant to the provisions of any Act of Parliament +extending to the Colony to which such law shall relate," and this +provision will no doubt, be applied, _mutatis mutandis,_ to Ireland, as +it was in Section 32 of the Home Rule Bill of 1893. The Irish +Legislature, that is, will be able "to repeal or alter any enactments in +force in Ireland except such as either relate to matters beyond the +power of the Irish Legislature, or, being enacted by Parliament after +the passing of this Act, may be expressly extended to Ireland." + +It will be noticed that the words "beyond the power of the Irish +Legislature" referred to the subjects expressly excepted in the Bill +itself. This is one of the points in which the Irish Constitution will +bear at any rate a superficial resemblance to that of a Province or +State within a Federation rather than to that of a self-governing +Colony. The practice of expressly, and in the text of a Constitution, +forbidding a self-governing Colony to legislate upon certain subjects, +or of expressly reserving concurrent or exclusive powers of legislation +to the Mother Country, has fallen into disuse since the establishment of +the principle of responsible government. Such restrictions were inserted +in the Canadian Union Act of 1840, where the old right of the Mother +Country to impose customs duties in the Colonies for the regulation of +commerce was reaffirmed, and even in the Acts of 1855 for giving full +powers of self-government to the Australian Colonies, which were +forbidden to impose intercolonial customs, though they were expressly +granted the power of imposing any other customs duties they pleased,[91] +but they do not appear in modern Constitutions, for example in the +Transvaal Constitution of 1906. As I have indicated, this implies no +change in the strict legal theory of Colonial subordination to the +Mother Country; for, although the tendency of modern juristic thought is +to ascribe "plenary" power to a Colony, restrictions nevertheless do +exist in practice, and are contained, express or implicit, in a number +of disjointed Acts. + +A Federating Colony, on the other hand, like a foreign Federation, has +in its own self-made, domestic Constitution to apportion powers with +some approach to precision between the federal and the provincial +authorities, and in this respect the Irish Bill, in reserving certain +powers to the Imperial Parliament, will resemble a federating Bill, and +it should follow the American and Australian precedents in leaving +residuary powers to the subordinate or Irish Legislature, not, in +accordance with the Canadian precedent, to the Parliament at +Westminster. That is an indispensable corollary of excluding Irish +Members from Westminster. + +In speaking of powers reserved or delegated, and of residuary or +unallocated powers, I have thus far referred only to powers which must +be exercised, or at any rate may need to be exercised, if not by the +subordinate legislature, then by the superior Parliament. Those +restrictions on the Irish Legislature which are imposed in order to +protect the religious or economic interests of a minority within the +State, or as a recognition that there are certain kinds of laws which it +is morally wrong to pass, fall into an altogether different category. By +implication they morally bind the superior Parliament too, and are +irrelevant, therefore, to the question of representation. They will be +necessary, no doubt, in the coming Irish Bill, though they need not be +so extensive as those which are to be found in Clause 4 of the Bill of +1893, some of which are borrowed from the famous anti-slavery amendments +of 1865-1869 to the Constitution of the United States.[92] In inserting +them we shall again be following the "Federal" rather than the +"Colonial" model. No such restrictions have been imposed by the Mother +Country upon any self-governing Colony. The nearest approach, perhaps, +to such a tendency was the provision in the Transvaal Constitution of +1906 (Section 39), that "any law whereby persons not of European birth +or descent may be subjected or made liable to any disabilities or +restrictions to which persons of European birth or descent are not also +subjected or made liable" should be specially "reserved"--that is, sent +home by the Governor--for the signification of the Royal pleasure; but +no similar provision appeared in the Act of 1909 for constituting the +South African Union. In Federal systems, on the other hand, such +restrictions, taking the form of self-denying ordinances, are common, +whether appearing in the Federal Constitution itself or in the +subordinate State Constitutions. The Constitution of the United States, +for example, in addition to the anti-slavery provisions noted above, +enacts that the National Government cannot (by Amendment I.) establish +any religion or prohibit its free exercise, or (by Amendment V.) take +private property for public use without just compensation, or (by +Article 1, Sec. 9) grant a title of nobility. Neither (by Amendment XIV. +and Article 1, Sec. 10 respectively) can a State do these things. By +Article 1, Sec. 10, a State cannot pass a law impairing the obligation of a +contract. Exactly similar restrictions appear in many of the individual +State Constitutions. Others forbid the establishment of any church or +sect; the introduction of armed men "for the suppression of domestic +violence"; "perpetuities or monopolies," and a variety of other things. +Analogous provisions are to be found in the British North America Act, +1867 (constituting the Dominion of Canada), where the provincial +Legislatures are forbidden to interfere with certain rights and +privileges of religious bodies in the matter of education. There are no +limitations of the kind in the Australian Commonwealth Act of 1900. +Australia, no doubt, correctly represents the tendency of modern thought +on this matter. Some of the American safeguards have produced great +inconvenience. Nor can it be denied that the most elaborately contrived +legal safeguards are of less value than the moral safeguard afforded by +the sense of honour, justice, and prudence in the community. The +existence of these qualities in Ireland, as in other white countries, is +the true foundation of Home Rule. Some day Irishmen will ask, as a +united country, for the repeal of these statutory safeguards. + +That brings me to the penultimate point of importance, which may be held +to affect the inclusion or exclusion of Irish Members at Westminster--I +mean the question of future constitutional amendment. Here the colonial +analogies are a little complicated. Since the Australian Colonies Act of +1850, in the new grant of a Constitution to a self-governing Colony, +power has invariably been given to amend its own Constitution, without, +of course, detracting from any powers specified in it for preserving the +sovereignty of the Mother Country. Canada, when federating in 1867, took +the somewhat singular course of making no provision in her Federal +Constitution for its subsequent amendment, though, by Section 92 of the +British North America Act, she gave her Provinces the exclusive right to +amend their own Constitutions, a right which three of them have used to +abolish their Upper Chambers. The Dominion Constitution, then, cannot be +amended otherwise than by an Imperial Act. Such amending Acts are +promoted by the Dominion Government without any specially devised +machinery for ascertaining the public opinion of Canadians. Australia, +on the other hand, when federating in 1900, made elaborate arrangements, +which have been put several times into operation, for the amendment of +the Federal Constitution by the Australian people itself, without an +Imperial Act. Now, it will follow as a matter of course that Ireland +will be given powers, as in both the previous Bills,[93] to amend her +own Constitution within certain defined limits, after a certain lapse of +time, and without encroaching upon Imperial authority. For my part I +would strongly urge that the powers now to be conferred should be much +wider; for I believe that Ireland alone can make a really perfect +Constitution for herself. But, that point apart, the question arises of +the further amendment, outside such permissive powers, of the Home Rule +Act itself, which will, of course, contain within its four corners the +whole of the Irish Constitution, so far as it can be written down. No +special arrangements were made for such a contingency in the Bill of +1893, presumably because Ireland was to be represented at Westminster +and would have a share in the making of any amending act. In the Bill of +1886, which excluded the Irish Members, Mr. Gladstone proposed (in +Clause 39) that no alteration of the Act should be made (apart, of +course, from points left for Irish alteration) except (1) by an Imperial +Act formally assented to by the Irish Legislature, or (2) by an Imperial +Act for the passing of which a stated number of Members of both branches +of the Irish Legislature should be summoned to sit at Westminster. + +It will be clear, I think, now, in 1911, that this latter proposal is +not worth revival. No substantial amendment of the Act should properly +be made without the formal consent of the Irish Legislature, +representing Irish public opinion, and the prior consultation with the +Irish Cabinet which such consent would imply. If the lamentable +necessity ever arose of amending the Act against the wishes of Ireland, +the sudden invasion of Westminster by a body of angry Irish Members, too +small to affect the result (for otherwise the attempt to amend would not +be made) and large enough to revive the old political dislocation and +passion, would not simplify the process of amendment or be of value to +anybody concerned. The proposal was probably only suggested by a vague +leaning towards the Federal principle, which, in the present case, we +should certainly reject. It serves indeed as one more illustration of +the anomalies which might result from the inclusion of Irish Members at +Westminster. No more unhealthy position could be imagined than one which +would render it possible for an amendment of the Home Rule Act, whether +in the direction of greater latitude or of stricter limitation, to +depend solely upon the Irish vote in an Assembly predominately +non-Irish. That is not to the discredit of Ireland. The system would be +just as indefensible, whatever the subordinate State concerned. It would +be Federalism run mad, and would make Alexander Hamilton turn in his +grave. It is worth while to note that, even under a sane and normal +Federal system, the Irish Constitution would be less easily alterable in +either direction than under the plan of treating her as a self-governing +Colony. In the latter case action is direct and simple, while most +Federal Constitutions are extraordinarily difficult to amend. The +Dominion of Canada is only an apparent exception. + +I turn lastly to Finance, the point which most closely affects +representation at Westminster, and which distinguishes any form of +quasi-Federal Home Rule most sharply from its alternative, "Colonial" +Home Rule. + +All Federal systems necessarily involve a certain amount of joint +finance between the superior and the inferior Government. The +distribution of financial powers varies widely in different Federations, +but all have this feature in common--that the central or superior +Government controls Customs and Excise, and is to a large degree +financed by means of the revenue derived from those sources. The United +States Government, as distinguished from that of the individual States, +pays in this way for almost its entire expenditure.[94] So does the +Dominion of Canada;[95] while in the Australian Commonwealth the +receipts from Customs and Excise alone more than cover the whole +Commonwealth expenditure.[96] + +Finance makes or mars Federations. Some Federations or organic Unions of +independent States have come into being through a strong desire in the +separate States to have, among other things, a common system of Customs, +and in the case of the German Empire and the South African Union a +Customs Union or _Zollverein_ has preceded Federation. These phenomena +are the most marked illustration of the general truth that a common +desire to federate, or unite, on the part of individual States is a +condition precedent to a sound Federation or Union. On the other hand, +finance, especially the question of joint Customs, has sometimes +presented obstacles to a Federation which, on other grounds, was +earnestly desired. The long delay in achieving the Australian Federation +was largely due to the desire of New South Wales to maintain her Free +Trade system, while the financial arrangements generally caused most of +the practical difficulties met with in arranging the Federation both of +Canada and Australia, and in their subsequent domestic relations. Nova +Scotia in the former case, and Western Australia in the latter, held out +to the last instant, and the former subsequently had to receive +exceptionally favourable treatment. In both Federations some measure of +friction is chronic, and in neither has a perfectly satisfactory system +been evolved. The Union of Ireland and Great Britain in 1800 was in this +respect, as in all others, a flagrant departure from sound principle. +The Customs Union which followed it was a forced Customs Union, and, +together with the other financial arrangements between the two +countries, has produced results incredibly absurd and mischievous. Some +of these results I briefly indicated in Chapter V. In the following +chapters I shall tell the whole story fully, and I hope to convince the +reader that we should follow, not only historically, but morally and +practically, the correct line of action if, in dissolving the +Legislative Union, we dissolve the Customs Union also. That would +involve a virtually independent system of finance for Ireland, and place +her fiscally in the position of a self-governing Colony. If and when a +real Federation of the United Kingdom becomes practical politics, she +would then have the choice of entering it in the spirit and on the terms +invariably associated with all true Federations or Unions. That is, she +would voluntarily relinquish, in her own interest, financial and other +rights to a central Government solely concerned with central affairs. + +I need scarcely point out in this connection the vital importance of the +question of representation at Westminster. Ireland resembles the +self-governing Colonies, and differs from Great Britain, in that the +greater part of the revenue raised from her inhabitants is derived from +Customs and Excise--that is, from the indirect taxation of commodities +of common use. If she is denied control of these sources of revenue +under the coming Bill, it will be absolutely necessary, in spite of all +the concomitant difficulties, to give her a representation at +Westminster which is as effective as it can be made. But let it be +realized that we could not make her control over her own finance as +effective as that exercised by a small State within a Federation, +because such a State, however small, has equal, or at any rate +disproportionately large, representation in the Federal Upper Chamber, +and Federal Upper Chambers can reject Money Bills. The Upper Chamber in +Ireland's case would be the House of Lords, where she could scarcely be +given effective representation, and which, in any case, cannot reject +Money Bills. + +Let us now examine Ireland's claim for fiscal autonomy. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[73] See p. 140. + +[74] The Bill set up a Council of eighty-two elected and twenty-four +nominated members, with the Under-Secretary as an _ex-officio_ member. +So far it resembled the abortive Transvaal Constitution of 1905 (see p. +130), but the Irish Council was only to be given control of certain +specified Departments, and was financed by a fixed Imperial grant. It +was to have no power of legislation or taxation, and was under the +complete control of the Lord-Lieutenant. + +[75] This arrangement, which is peculiar to the Canadian Federation, is +regarded by some authorities as a somewhat serious infraction of the +Federal principle, since it seems to imply executive control of the +Province by the central Government. The Governors of the States in the +Australian Federation are appointed by the Home Government. + +[76] The Judicial Committee has ruled "that the relation between the +Crown and the Provinces is the same as that between the Crown and +Dominion in respect of such powers, executive and legislative, as are +vested in them respectively." (Maritime Bank of Canada _v._ +Receiver-General of New Brunswick, 1892). + +[77] They are governed by Executive Committees, the members of which +need not be members of the Councils. + +[78] In writing upon this subject, I am indebted to an able paper by Mr. +Basil Williams, which is to be found in "Home Rule Problems." + +[79] "Life of Parnell," R. Barry O'Brien, pp. 149 and 139-141. + +[80] _E.g._, in 1893, on Clause I. of the Home Rule Bill (Hansard, p. +490): "The Irish minority were willing to be treated on the footing of a +Colony, but they protested against a supremacy which would enable the +honourable gentleman who formed the Irish Government to appeal to the +Imperial Parliament for the assistance of the Army and Navy to compel +the Irish minority to obey their behests." + +[81] Cd. 5741, 1911. Some of the subjects discussed were Commercial +Relations and Shipping, Navigation Law, Labour Exchanges, Uniformity in +Copyright, etc., Emigration, Naturalization, Compensation for Accidents, +etc. + +[82] I am summarizing facts fully narrated in Chapters XI. and XII. + +[83] In the Federal Constitutions of Australia and Canada the central +Federal Parliament is responsible for the colonial defences, but the +Provinces or States are, of course, represented in the Federal +Parliament. + +[84] Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, Sec. 58, and +British North America Act, 1867, Sec. 15. Until quite recently it was +the custom always to give the command of the Canadian Militia to a +British officer lent to Canada. The present Commander, however, is a +Canadian. + +[85] See Appendix. + +[86] A Colony may make local regulations to carry out an Imperial Law +about extradition and neutrality, but may not touch the law. + +[87] For the constitutional position of self-governing Colonies, the +author owes much to Mr. Moore's "Commonwealth of Australia." + +[88] The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, and the +British North America Act, 1867, in order to delimit the respective +powers of the Federal and Provincial Legislatures, set out a list of +subjects on which the Federal Parliament has exclusive or collateral +power to legislate. There is implied, of course, a pre-existing right on +the part of the Colony, as a whole, _qua_ Colony, to legislate on the +matters referred to in the list. But the pre-existing right is subject +to any pre-existing constitutional or statutory limitations. _E.g.,_ +"Naturalization and Aliens" is in the list of Commonwealth powers (Sec. +51, xix.), and of the Canadian powers (Sec. 91, xxv.), but the power of +any Colony is limited by Acts of 1847 and 1879 to giving naturalization +within its own borders. (At the Imperial Conference of 1911 a scheme was +foreshadowed for standardizing naturalization throughout the Empire.) + +"Copyright" is also in both lists, but the colonial power is limited by +the International Copyright Act of 1886, which, by Sec. 8, implies that +a "British possession" may only make laws "respecting the Copyright +within the limits of such possession of works produced in that +possession." This Copyright Act is an example of implied limitation and +sanction together. The Coinage Act of 1853 is an example of implied +sanction only, in empowering a Colony to legislate as if the Act had not +been passed. Another class of Imperial Acts confers _direct_ powers to +legislate on certain subjects--_e.g.,_ the Australian Colonies Custom +Duties Act of 1873 (removing the restrictions imposed upon intercolonial +duties in 1850). The Naturalization Acts are partly of this character, +and other examples are the Colonial Naval Defence Act of 1865, and +certain provisions of the Army Act of 1881, and the Colonial Courts of +Admiralty Act of 1890. + +[89] _E.g.,_ Colonial Attorneys Belief Act, 1857; Colonial Probates Act, +1892; parts of the Finance Act, 1894; and Wills Act, 1861. + +[90] _E.g.,_ Colonial Laws made under sanction of the following Imperial +Acts: Colonial Prisoners Removal, 1869; Merchant Shipping, 1894; +Sections 478 and 736, Colonial Marriages, 1866. + +[91] _E.g.,_ 18 Vict. Ch. 55, Sections 42 and 43. + +[92] See Appendix, under the head of restrictions on "Irish Matters." +For convenience, land legislation is included in the list, though it +clearly belongs to a different category, and I have so dealt with it +above. + +[93] In the Bill of 1886 (Clause 11, Subsec. 7) and in the Bill of 1893 +(Clause 8, Subsec. 3) power was given to alter the qualifications of the +franchise, etc., for the Lower House--in the former Bill after the first +dissolution, in the latter after six years. + +[94] In 1910, of the total Federal revenue of 675,511,715 dollars, +623,616,963 dollars were raised in this way, or twelve-thirteenths. +(Postal revenue, which balances Postal receipts, is excluded.) + +[95] In 1909-10 Dominion revenue from Customs and Excise was 75,409,487 +dollars. Total ordinary expenditure (excluding capital accounts), +79,411,747 dollars. + +[96] Estimate for 1910-11. Total Federal revenue, L16,841,629; revenue +from Customs and Excise, L111,700,000. Total Federal expenditure +L11,122,297. L5,267,500 will be available for return to the State +exchequers (see pp. 245-246). + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +UNION FINANCE + + +I ask the reader to follow with particular care the following historical +summary of Anglo-Irish finance. None of it is irrelevant, I venture to +say. It is not possible to construct a financial scheme, or to criticize +it when framed, without a fairly accurate knowledge of the historical +facts. + + +I. + +BEFORE THE UNION.[97] + +Before the Union Ireland had a fiscal system distinct from that of Great +Britain, a separate Exchequer, a separate Debt, a separate system of +taxation, a separate Budget. Yet she can never truly be said to have had +financial independence, because she was never a truly self-governing +country. Until 1779, when the Protestant Volunteers protested with arms +in their hands against the annihilation of Irish industries in the +interest of British merchants and growers, her external trade and, +consequently, her internal production, were absolutely at the mercy of +Great Britain. As I showed in Chapter I., Ireland was treated +considerably worse than the most oppressed Colony, with permanently +ruinous results. On the other hand, her internal taxation, never above a +million a year, and her Debt, never above two millions in amount, were +not heavy. But from 1779, through Grattan's Parliament to the Union, a +short period of twenty-one years, Ireland, though still governed on the +ascendancy system by an unrepresentative and corrupt Parliament of +exactly the same composition as before, nevertheless had financial +independence in the sense that her Parliament had complete control of +Irish taxation, revenue, and trade. It was, moreover, in these financial +matters that the Parliament showed most genuine national patriotism, +together with a greatly enhanced measure of the Imperial patriotism +traditional with it. Internal taxation, except in time of war, was still +comparatively light; depressed home industries were judiciously +encouraged by bounties; no attempt was made at vindictive retaliation +upon British imports, though Irish exports to Great Britain were still +unmercifully penalized; and sums, growing to a relatively enormous size +during the French War, which began in 1793, were annually voted for the +Imperial forces. This voluntary contribution, which had averaged +L585,000 in the eleven years of peace, from 1783 to 1793, rose to +L3,401,760 in 1797,[98] and in 1799, when Ireland was paying the bill +for British troops called in to suppress her own Rebellion, to +L4,596,762, out of a total Irish expenditure for the year on all +purposes, military and civil, of L6,854,804. Not more than half, on the +average, of these war expenses were met out of the annual taxes. Debt +was created to meet the balance; but neither the debt, heavy as it was, +nor the taxes, were intolerably burdensome--that is, if we regard +Ireland as financially responsible for Imperial wars and for the +suppression of a Rebellion which was provoked by scandalous +misgovernment. Tax revenue rose from L1,106,504 in 1783, when the free +Parliament first prepared a Budget, to L3,017,758 in 1800, and averaged +a million and a half. In the same period the total amount of the funded +and unfunded Irish Debt rose from L1,917,784 to L28,541,157, almost the +whole of this increase having taken place in the seven years of war +immediately preceding the Union. In Great Britain both Debt and taxation +had risen in a larger ratio, and were relatively far greater. For +example, in the six years, 1793-1798 inclusive, L186,000,000 had been +added to the British Debt, only L14,000,000 to the Irish Debt. In 1801 +the British Debt stood at L489,127,057; the Irish Debt at L32,215,223. + + +II. + +FROM THE UNION TO THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION OF 1894-1896. + + +The Union of 1800, therefore, could not be justified on the ground that +a poor country would profit by fiscal amalgamation with a rich country, +and Pitt and Castlereagh, when framing the Union Act, recognized that +truth by leaving Ireland with a separate fiscal system, as before; +though the administration of this system was, of course, now to be +wholly in British hands. There were to be separate Exchequers, +Debts,[99] taxes, and balance-sheets, with the following restrictions: +That prohibitions against imports and bounties on exports (corn +excepted), should cease reciprocally in both countries; that, with the +exception of 10 per cent. ad valorem duties on a variety of articles +named, there should be mutual free trade; and that no tax on any article +of consumption should be higher in Ireland than in Great Britain. + +But although Pitt and Castlereagh ostensibly carried out the principle +of separate fiscal systems, they laid the foundations for a fiscal +amalgamation which was disastrous to Ireland. Since his Commercial +Propositions of 1785, Pitt had never abandoned the idea of obtaining +from Ireland an obligatory annual contribution to Imperial services +based on some fixed principle. By Clause 7 of the Act of Union he +achieved his aim. It was settled that for twenty years Ireland should +contribute in the proportion of 1 to 71/2 (or 2 to 15)--that is, that +Great Britain should pay 15/17, or 88.24 per cent., of common Imperial +expenses, including the charge for debt contracted for Imperial +services, and Ireland 2/17, or 11.76 per cent. Nobody now denies that +this ratio was grossly unjust to Ireland. It took no account of the +relative pre-Union Debts; it took no account of the tribute of nearly +four millions paid in rents to absentee English proprietors; it was +based on superficial deductions from inadequate and misleading data, and +the Act was hardly passed before its absurdity became manifest. Fifteen +years of almost incessant war followed the Union. Ireland, even by +raising taxation to the highest possible point, was unable to pay her +contribution without contracting a Debt colossal in proportion to her +resources. While Great Britain only doubled her Debt, and paid 71 per +cent. of her expenses out of current taxation, the Irish Debt +quadrupled, and in 1817 reached the portentous total of L112,634,773; +while only 49 per cent. of Irish expenditure was paid for out of +revenue. Here is a little table which shows the effect upon Ireland of +Clause 7 of the Act of Union: + + Five Years. Average Average + Revenue. Expenditure. + L L + { 1785-1790 1,246,000 1,247,000 +Before Union ---{ 1790-1795 1,340,000 1,646,000 + { 1795-1800 2,100,000 4,601,000 + + { 1801-1806 3,643,000 7,270,000 +After Union ---{ 1806-1811 4,885,000 9,061,000 + { 1811-1816 5,927,424 13,188,000 + +The scandal could no longer be overlooked. It was impossible to raise +the Irish taxes. Their yield was already showing signs of diminishing. +But the Act of Union had provided for the situation which had arisen. +One of the sections of the famous Clause 7 enacted that if and when the +separate Debts of the two countries should reach the proportion of their +respective Imperial contributions, Parliament might, if it thought fit, +declare that all future expenses of the United Kingdom should be +defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in +both countries, "_subject only to such exemptions and abatements in +favour of Ireland as circumstances may appear from time to time to +demand_." The framers of this section had anticipated that the English +Debt would sink to the level of the Irish Debt. Anglo-Irish finance +teems with grim jokes of this sort; but the section was useful in either +event. With its terms before them, a Committee sat to consider the state +of Ireland, with the result that, by an Act which came into operation on +January 5, 1817, the Exchequers, Debts, revenues, and expenditures, but +not as yet the taxes, of the two countries were amalgamated. In +Professor Oldham's words,[100] "the corpse of Ireland's insolvency was +huddled into the grave, and no questions were to be asked." The whole +expenditure, Imperial and local, of the United Kingdom, Ireland +included, was to be defrayed out of a Consolidated Fund, and the +arrangements, therefore, for a separate Irish contribution on a fixed +basis to Imperial services were cancelled. Henceforth her Imperial +contribution, for anyone who troubled to calculate it, was represented +by the excess of revenue raised within Ireland over the expenditure in +Ireland. A mutual free trade was also established, not instantaneously, +but in the course of a few years. By 1824 all duties, as between Ireland +and England, had ceased, and in 1826 the custom-houses ceased to record +the transit of goods between England and Ireland, except in articles +such as spirits, on which a different excise duty was charged. No +statistics were compiled, therefore, of Anglo-Irish trade until ninety +years later, when the Irish Department of Agriculture began to prepare +returns. Such was the origin of our Customs Union against the world +(for, needless to say, those were still the days of high Protection), +and it is instructive to compare it with the voluntary pacts of the +German States and South African Colonies, and with their political +results. + +In one important point unification was left incomplete. It was +impossible in 1817 to equalize internal taxation in the two countries, +though it was held desirable to do so, because Ireland could not have +borne the higher British scale, and suffered enough under her own. +Regard, too, was had at first to those important words in the Act of +Union which guaranteed to Ireland such "exemptions and abatements" as +might appear fair. But they were soon forgotten. Without any inquiry +into the taxable capacity of Ireland, the stamp, tea, and tobacco duties +were equalized early in the period, the enhancement in Ireland of the +last duty from 1s. to 3s. on raw tobacco, and from 1s. to 16s. on +manufactured tobacco, laying an exceptionally heavy burden on the Irish +poor. Meanwhile the abolition, after the close of the war, of taxes +representing about sixteen millions a year, and purely affecting Great +Britain, gave a relief to her which Ireland did not feel. But it was not +until 1853, when Mr. Gladstone extended the income-tax to Ireland, and +raised the Irish spirit duty, that the principle of "exemptions and +abatements" was most seriously infringed. Mr. Disraeli followed in 1855 +with a further elevation of the spirit duty, which was finally equalized +with the British duty in 1858, at 8s. a gallon; while in 1860 both +duties were raised to 10s. In the seven years 1853-1860 the taxation of +Ireland was raised by no less than two and a half millions per annum. It +will be recalled that the great famine had taken place in 1846-47, and +that between the Census of 1841 and that of 1861 the population sank +from eight to six millions, while the British population rose from +eighteen and a half to twenty-three millions. The statistical result of +the increased taxes, therefore, was to show a rise in taxation per head +of the Irish people from 13s. 11d. in 1849 to L1 5s. 4d. in 1859, while +in Great Britain it rose only from L2 7s. 8d. to L2 10s. during the same +period. Equality of taxation has never been wholly established, for to +this day a few quite unimportant taxes are not levied, or are levied on +a lower scale in Ireland;[101] but from 1858 onward we may regard the +taxation of the two countries as almost identically the same. + +In the meantime a great revolution, also beginning at the time of the +famine, had taken place in the fiscal system of the United Kingdom. Free +Trade with the outside world had been established, and whatever we may +conclude about its effect, it had been established, as we know, with a +special view to British industrial interests, and without the smallest +concern for Irish interests, which were predominantly agricultural. It +was certainly followed by an immense industrial expansion and prosperity +in Great Britain; it was certainly initiated at the lowest point of +Ireland's moral and physical wretchedness. Opinions differ as to the +precise economic effect upon Ireland. Miss Murray, in her thoughtful and +exhaustive study of the commercial relations between England and +Ireland, holds that, as agricultural producers, the Irish lost far more +than they have gained as consumers of foodstuffs, while a number of +small and struggling rural industries, whose powerful counterparts in +Great Britain could easily withstand foreign competition, did undeniably +succumb in Ireland. + +My own opinion is that the past influence upon Ireland of free trade, in +the first instance with Great Britain, and later with the outside world, +though a highly interesting and important topic in itself, is commonly +exaggerated, to the neglect of the vastly more important question of the +tenure of land. Free trade did not cause the famine. On the contrary, +the presage of the famine was one of the minor causes which induced Peel +to take up Cobden's policy for the free importation of foodstuffs. The +effect of that policy upon Ireland sinks into insignificance beside an +agrarian system which had reduced the mass of the Irish peasants to +serfs, kept them near the borders of destitution, and in a state of +sporadic crime for a century and a half before, and for forty years +after the repeal of the Corn Laws, and, at the climax of a period of +high protection for agricultural products, rendered it possible for a +mere failure of the potato-crop to cause death to three-quarters of a +million persons. These things do not happen in properly governed, in +other words in self-governed, countries, whatever their fiscal system, +and they have never happened to Irishmen in any other part of the world +but in their own fertile island. Manufacturing industries stand on a +different footing. Most of the staple industries of Ireland, notably the +woollen industry, and the aptitudes which brought them into being, were +deliberately destroyed long ago by fiscal measures imposed by England, +and their destruction aggravated the misery and exhaustion produced by a +bad land system. How far their partial revival under the fiscal Home +Rule of Grattan's Parliament was genuine, and might, with a continuance +of fiscal Home Rule, have been permanent, it is impossible to say. The +retarding effect of the Rebellion, and the long start already obtained +by Great Britain in the industrial race, are factors beyond accurate +calculation. But one thing is certain, that the revival of industries +was, at that stage, of trivial importance beside the rural regeneration +of Ireland, and that Grattan's Parliament had not the remotest influence +for good upon the land question, which it neglected as heartlessly as +its predecessors for a century before and its successors for seventy +years afterwards.[102] + +Industries are valuable assets for any country; but countries almost +wholly agricultural, like Denmark, can prosper remarkably, and without +Protection, provided that they possess or evolve a sound system of +agrarian tenure, in other words, a sound relation between tenant and +landlord, or, in default of that, peasant ownership. In every country in +the world that has been a _sine qua non_ of prosperity. Suppose that +English labourers had built out of their own money and by their own +hands the factories, docks, and railways in which they worked, and that +the resulting profits, wages deducted, went solely to ground landlords. +That gives us some idea of the old Irish land system, whose overthrowal +began only in 1870; a system under which the landlord put no capital +into the land, though his rent represented the full profits of the +tenant's capital and labour, less an amount equivalent to a bare +subsistence wage, governed by competition. + +The present influence upon Ireland of the Imperial fiscal system, now +that peasant proprietorship has been half accomplished, is another +matter upon which I shall have to say more presently, when we have +completed our review of Anglo-Irish finance. Let us return to the point +we had reached: that free trade with the outside world and the +equalization of taxation between Great Britain and Ireland approximately +coincided in point of time, and were also contemporaneous with rapid and +continuous growth in the wealth and population of Great Britain, and a +steady and continuous decline in the Irish population. We know now, +moreover, though nobody knew it then, because the calculation was not +yet made, that Ireland was paying a large contribution to Imperial +services, over and above her local expenditure. In the half-century +between 1810 and 1860 she had paid an average yearly sum of nearly four +millions, and a total sum of nearly two hundred millions. In the year +1859-60, when the now equalized spirit duties were raised to 10s., she +paid L5,396,000; a sum considerably more than double the expenditure on +Irish services, and equivalent to no less than five-sevenths of the +revenue raised in Ireland. + +Parliament gave no serious attention to any of these phenomena from the +time of the fiscal union in 1817 until after the introduction of Mr. +Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill in 1893. No settled conclusions were +arrived at as to the relative wealth of the two countries, as to the +capacity of Ireland to bear the British scale of taxation, or even as to +the amount of revenue derived from and expended in the countries +respectively, with the consequent contributions made to common Imperial +services. A Committee sat in 1864-65, which compiled some interesting +information and heard some important witnesses, but ignored the main +questions at issue and produced what Sir Edward Hamilton described later +as an "impotent" Report. Sir Joseph MacKenna, an able Irish banker, +again and again, between 1867 and 1876, pleaded for an inquiry into +Anglo-Irish finance, alleging gross injustice in the incidence of Irish +taxation, and obtained nothing more than a rough return showing that +between 1841 and 1871 the gross tax revenue per head of the population +had risen in Ireland from 9s. 6.7d. to L1 6s. 2.2d. and had fallen in +Great Britain from L2 9s. 9.5d. to L2 4s. 1.6d. For the first time also +it was shown that the national beverages of England and Ireland, beer +and whisky, respectively, were taxed in a ratio unfair to Ireland. In +1886 Mr. Gladstone, in preparing his first Home Rule Bill, had to +re-open the question of the relative resources of Ireland and Great +Britain for the first time since the Union, because he proposed a fixed +annual contribution, unchangeable for thirty years, from Ireland towards +the Imperial services. He fixed the contribution at one-fifteenth or +approximately half that of two-seventeenths fixed by Pitt in 1800, and +the new figure was certainly not too low. In 1888 the question was again +incidentally raised by Mr. Goschen, who apportioned certain equivalent +grants towards local taxation in England, Scotland, and Ireland, in the +proportion of 80, 11, 9, apparently on the principle that those were the +proportions in which each country respectively contributed to Imperial +expenditure. Mr. Gladstone, in preparing the Home Rule Bill of 1893, +made investigations which threw additional light on the true amount of +revenue derived from Ireland, with allowance made for revenue from +dutiable goods taxed in Ireland but consumed in Great Britain, and _vice +versa_, but his financial scheme, as revised in the course of the +Session and passed by the House of Commons, evaded the crucial issue by +making Ireland's contribution to Imperial services a quota, one-third, +of her true annual revenue. This quota, moreover, was indirectly +reduced by temporary subsidies in aid of Irish charges (_e.g._, for +Police) and was estimated, with these deductions, not to exceed at the +outset one-fortieth. + + +III. + +THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION OF 1894-1896. + + +It was now apparent that, with or without Home Rule, the whole subject +needed serious investigation, and in 1894, after the defeat of Mr. +Gladstone's Bill, a Royal Commission under the Presidency of Mr. Hugh +Childers was appointed to consider the "Financial Relations between +Great Britain and Ireland." Their Report deserves careful study, because +it contains within it all the essential materials for forming a judgment +upon the financial problem of to-day. All that it lacks are the +complementary figures of the subsequent seventeen years, and these +figures, which I shall presently add, do not affect the conflict of +principles, though they throw into more vivid relief than ever the +outcome of conflicting principles. + +In composition it was a very strong Commission; it consulted the highest +financial authorities in the Kingdom; it made for two years an +exhaustive examination, historical and practical, of the questions +submitted to it, and although the members disagreed on some important +points, the conclusions upon which they were unanimous cannot be +impugned. The terms of reference were: + +"1. Upon what principles of comparison, and by the application of what +specific standards, the relative capacity of Great Britain and Ireland +to bear taxation may be most equitably determined. + +"2. What, so far as can be ascertained, is the true proportion, under +the principles and specific standards so determined, between the taxable +capacity of Great Britain and Ireland. + +"3. The history of the financial relations between Great Britain and +Ireland at and after the Legislative Union, the charge for Irish +purposes on the Imperial Exchequer during that period, and the amount of +Irish taxation remaining available for contribution to Imperial +expenditure; also the Imperial expenditure to which it is considered +equitable that Ireland should contribute." + +It will be observed that Questions 1 and 2 deal with abstract points, +No. 3 (except the last clause) with concrete facts.[103] + +In their short unanimous Report the Commissioners began by stating that +"Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purposes of this inquiry, be +considered as separate entities." + +To Question 1 they made no unanimous answer. This was immaterial, +because, as a result of numerous tests (assessment to estate duties and +income-tax, consumption of commodities, population, etc.) all arrived +unanimously at an answer to the next question. + +Answer to Question 2 (and incidentally, as will be seen, to part of +Question 3): "That whilst the tax revenue of Ireland is about +_one-eleventh_ of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity +of Ireland is very much smaller, _and is not estimated by any of us as +exceeding one-twentieth_." + +The wording of the answer needs to be explained by reference to the text +of the Report. + +(_a_) In saying "tax revenue" the Commissioners meant to exclude non-tax +revenue--_e.g._, Post Office receipts, etc.--but the Commissioners in +their various separate Reports generally employed the figures of total +revenue. Taking these as our basis, the Irish revenue then raised would +have been nearly one-twelfth instead of one-eleventh of the British +revenue. In other words, of the total revenue of the United Kingdom, +Ireland paid nearly _one-thirteenth_. (_b_) As to the true Irish taxable +capacity of "one-twentieth," some confusion arises owing to the use of +the phrase by different Commissioners in different senses. Mr. Childers +and Sir David Barbour appear to have meant one-twentieth of the United +Kingdom's taxable capacity, the others one-twentieth of Great +Britain's. In order to be on the conservative side, I shall adopt the +former estimate. The discrepancy is not material to the conclusions of +the Commissioners, as, for reasons which I need not go into, they agreed +that the minimum amount of over-taxation was two millions and +three-quarters. + +This was the main outstanding conclusion of the Royal Commission. +Translated into figures, it showed the following facts: In 1893-94 the +total revenue of the United Kingdom from all sources was L96,855,627. Of +this sum the revenue contributed by Great Britain from all sources was +L89,286,978; by Ireland, L7,568,649--that is, between one-eleventh and +one-twelfth of the British revenue. + +If Ireland in 1893-94 had paid in proportion to her true taxable +capacity of one-twentieth, the maximum arrived at by any member of the +Commission, the revenue derived from her would have been L4,842,781. + +In other words, there was held to be an excess payment from Ireland of +L2,725,868. + +It was not suggested by any member of the Commission that Ireland, since +the Union, had grown richer at a more rapid rate than England, and was +therefore more capable of bearing taxation. On the contrary, it was +admitted that she had grown, relatively, much poorer. On the most +moderate estimate, therefore, the over-taxation of Ireland since the +Union, computed strictly on the principle laid down, could be +represented as amounting in 1894 to something like two hundred and fifty +millions, or, if we date from the fiscal union of 1817, two hundred +millions. + +The answer given by the Commissioners to Question 3, so far as it goes, +is explanatory of the previous answer. + +"That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events +showed, she was unable to bear. + +"That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 +was not justified by the then existing circumstances." + +And they added the opinion "that identity of rates of taxation does not +necessarily involve equality of burden." + +Their answers, so far as they were complete, to the other inquiries +contained in Question No. 3 about the tax revenue of Ireland and the +net contribution of Ireland in the past to Imperial services, are to be +found in figures included in the body of the Report, and these figures +formed, of course, the basis of their unanimous conclusion as to the +over-taxation of Ireland. + +These figures, to which I have often alluded in this volume, necessitate +a short digression, because they and subsequent Returns of the same sort +form the only official data upon which to estimate the present financial +position of Ireland. + +They were extracted partly from annual Returns originally issued by the +Treasury for the Home Rule Bill of 1893, and entitled "Financial +Relations (England, Scotland, and Ireland)," and partly from a new +document known as the "Pease" Return, No. 313 of 1894. These Returns, +taken together, represented the first serious attempt by the Treasury to +construct an account covering a period from 1819-20 to 1890-91, and +showing (_a_) the exact revenue derived from Ireland and Great Britain +respectively; (_b_) the local expenditure in Ireland and Great Britain +respectively, as distinguished from Imperial expenditure incurred for +the benefit of the whole United Kingdom; (_c_) the net contribution of +Ireland and Great Britain respectively to this latter expenditure for +Imperial services only. + +Since 1894 two regular annual Returns have been compiled, the one +showing the revenue, local expenditure, and net Imperial contribution of +Scotland, Ireland, and England (including Wales), the other giving an +historical summary of similar figures for Great Britain and Ireland +only, from 1819-20 to the current date. + +Two insoluble problems have had to be grappled with by the Treasury in +preparing these Returns: first, to differentiate Imperial expenditure +from local expenditure; second, to arrive at the "true" net revenue of +the partners as distinguished from the revenue collected within their +respective limits. Both these problems arise whenever an attempt is made +to look behind a system of unitary finance into the burdens and +contributions of different portions of a united realm, and the latter, +though not the former, of the two may arise in just as acute a form if +the realm consists of federated States with a common system of Customs +and Excise. + +With regard to the first problem, it is, of course, easy, in the case of +a Federation, to distinguish between central, or Federal, expenditure +and local, or State, expenditure, because the functions of the Federal +Government and State Governments are delimited in the Constitution, and +the separate expenditures form the subject of separate balance-sheets. +But in a Union, and above all in a Union to which one part of the realm +is an unwilling party, like that of the British Isles, it is clear that +no absolutely accurate line can be drawn between Imperial and local +expenditure. The Army, the Navy, and a number of other things are +clearly enough Imperial, but there are many debatable items. For +example, Is the upkeep of the Lord-Lieutenant an Irish or an Imperial +charge? Is a loss on Post Office business in Ireland to be charged +against Ireland, or should Ireland be credited with a proportion of the +profits of the whole postal business of the United Kingdom? More +searching questions still: Is the enormous charge for the Irish Police, +which is under Imperial control, and exists avowedly for the purpose of +forcibly maintaining, in the Imperial interest, an unpopular form of +government in Ireland, to be charged against Ireland? Or, again, should +Ireland be debited with the cost of the machinery for carrying out Land +Purchase, a policy admittedly rendered necessary by the enforced +maintenance in the past of bad land laws? Obviously such questions can +never be answered so as to satisfy both Irishmen and Englishmen, because +they go to the root of the political relations between Ireland and Great +Britain. The Royal Commission, therefore, was naturally unable to give a +unanimous answer to the last clause of Question No. 3 of their Terms of +Reference--namely, "What is the Imperial expenditure to which Ireland +should equitably contribute?" Some members held that under the Union +even a theoretical classification was unjustifiable, while it was +obvious that under the Union no effect could be given to it. Still, the +classification had to be made, in order to arrive at a theoretical +estimate of the financial situations of Great Britain and Ireland +respectively, and the Treasury, charged with the preparation of this +estimate, took the only course open to it in reckoning as Irish +expenditure all expenditure which would not have to be incurred if +Ireland did not exist. It was the perfectly correct course for the +Treasury to take in dealing with the task set before them, and, as we +shall see, it provides the only basis on which to construct the +balance-sheet of a financially independent Ireland. + +The insolubility of the second problem--that of discovering the "true" +revenue of Ireland and Great Britain respectively--arises from the +difficulty of tracing the passage of dutiable articles from one part of +the kingdom to the other, and of tracing the incidence of direct imposts +such as income-tax and stamps. The great bulk of Irish revenue is +derived from indirect taxes on commodities, liquor, tobacco, tea, sugar, +etc. Since the consumer pays the tax, revenue is rightly credited to the +country of consumption. The tax, for example, on tobacco manufactured in +Ireland may be collected in Ireland, but the revenue from Irish-made +tobacco exported to and consumed in Great Britain is rightly credited to +Great Britain. The converse holds true. Half the tea consumed in Ireland +has paid duty in London, but the whole of the revenue from tea consumed +in Ireland must be credited to Ireland. Now, since 1826, no official +records had been kept by the Customs-houses of the transit of goods +between Ireland and England, except in the solitary case of spirits. The +data, therefore, did not exist, and do not exist now, except in the case +of spirits, for an accurate computation. This is frankly confessed by +the Treasury officials. They base their published figures on certain +arbitrary methods of calculation which have never been submitted to any +public inquiry, and which, as they admit, contain an element of +guesswork. The matter is an exceedingly important one to Ireland, +because ever since 1870 an increasingly heavy deduction has been made by +the Treasury from her "collected" revenue, and her "true" revenue has +proportionately diminished. Part of this deduction is no doubt due to +the fact that her exports of tobacco and liquor have, in recent times, +much exceeded her imports, but the margin for error is nevertheless +large. Mr. Gladstone, in framing his Home Rule Bill of 1886, was so +sensible of the inherent difficulties of the calculation that, while +retaining Customs and Excise under Imperial control, he credited to the +Irish Exchequer the whole of the revenue collected within Ireland. On +the balance of Anglo-Irish exchange in dutiable articles, as roughly +estimated at that time, this provision meant an annual allowance to +Ireland of nearly a million and a half pounds, the principal reason +being that Ireland, which is a larger manufacturer of spirits and +tobacco, was exporting more than she consumed of these commodities. In +the Bill of 1893, as part of a wholly different financial scheme, Mr. +Gladstone abandoned the plan just described, and provided for the annual +calculation of "true" Irish revenue, as distinguished from "collected" +revenue; but it is a proof of the obscurity and intricacy of the whole +business that the Treasury officials made a mistake of L400,000 in the +initial calculation, with the result that Mr. Gladstone had to recast +his financial scheme from top to bottom. + +In the Return of 1894, as presented to the Royal Commission, this error +was eliminated, but the method of calculation remained imperfect. Nobody +knows now what the true figures are, and there is good reason to think +that Irish revenue has always been, and still is, substantially +underestimated. + +The same obscurity shrouded, and still shrouds, the "true" Irish revenue +from income-tax and stamps, whose proceeds it is exceedingly difficult +to trace under a system of unitary finance, and which are traced by the +Treasury in a fashion again admittedly unreliable.[104] + +In regard to taxes on consumption the same difficulty has been met with +in Australia since the federation of the Colonies and the delegation to +the Commonwealth Government of exclusive control over Customs and +Excise. The product of these duties makes up the bulk of Australian +revenue, and is far too large for the needs of the Commonwealth +Government. The Constitution of 1900 provided that the surplus should be +returned to the individual States in proportion to their "true" +contributions to the revenue, and for the calculation of these "true" +contributions an elaborate system of book-keeping was instituted, in +order to trace the ultimate place of consumption of dutiable articles. +Each State was then credited with its "true" revenue, and debited, among +other things, with a proportionate share of the expense of any +Department transferred by the Constitution from the State to the +Commonwealth. The system caused general dissatisfaction, owing, as the +Australian Official Year Book puts it, "to the practical impossibility +of ensuring that in every case a consuming State will be duly credited +with revenue collected on its behalf in a distributing State." That is +the well-founded complaint of Ireland in regard to the Treasury returns. +Hitherto in Australia efforts to change the system for another +allocating the surplus on a basis of population have not been +successful.[105] The Canadian Federal Constitution uses the basis of +population for the distribution of small subsidies to the Provinces, but +complaints have arisen as to its fairness. British Columbia, for +example, for a long time complained that her subsidy was too small, one +of the grounds being that her consumption of dutiable goods was +unusually large. No means existed of verifying this complaint by +figures.[106] + +With this explanatory digression about a very important feature of +Anglo-Irish finance, I return to the findings of the Royal Commission of +1894-1896. The figures supplied to them were as shown on the opposite +page. + +It will be noticed that the average "true" revenue of Ireland was +stationary at a little over five millions from 1820 to 1850, rose with a +bound to seven and a half millions with the equalization of taxes in the +decade 1850-1860, and remained stationary at that figure for the +remaining thirty-four years. Expenditure in Ireland quadrupled in the +whole sixty-four years; and the net contribution to Imperial services, +after rising from three and a half millions (in round numbers) in 1820 +to five and a half millions in 1860, fell automatically, as the +expenditure rose, and had stood at two millions from 1890 afterwards. +Population had fallen by two millions, but the "true" revenue raised per +head of population rose from 15s. 5d. in 1819 to L1 13s. 5d. in 1894, +while the local expenditure rose from 4s. 7d. per head in 1820 to L1 5s. +in 1894. + +STATEMENT SHOWING THE ESTIMATED LOCAL EXPENDITURE INCURRED IN IRELAND, +AND THE BALANCE OF TRUE REVENUE WHICH IS AVAILABLE FOR IMPERIAL SERVICES +AFTER SUCH EXPENDITURE HAS BEEN MET: + + Revenue as Adjustment Estimated Estimated Balance Population + Collected (+) or (-) True Local available + Revenue Expenditures for + Imperial + Services +Decadal +figures. L L L L L +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- +1819-20 5,253,909 + 2,655 5,256,564 1,564,880 3,691,684 6,801,000 +1829-30 4,161,217 +1,040,908 5,502,125 1,345,579 4,156,576 7,767,401 +1839-40 4,571,150 + 841,739 5,412,889 1,789,567 3,626,322 8,175,124 +1849-50 4,338,091 + 523,374 4,861,465 2,247,687 2,613,778 6,574,278 +1859-60 7,097,994 + 602,430 7,700,334 2,304,334 5,396,000 5,798,967 +1869-70 7,331,058 + 95,274 7,426,332 2,938,122 4,488,210 5,412,377 +1879-80 7,831,316 - 550,520 7,280,856 4,054,549 3,226,307 5,174,836 +1889-90 9,005,932 -1,271,254 7,734,678 5,057,708 2,676,970 4,704,750 + +Annual +figures. L L L L L +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- +1890-91 9,301,463 -1,506,988 7,734,475 5,723,399 2,071,076 -- +1891-92 9,639,344 -1,671,226 7,968,105 6,021,810 1,946,295 -- +1892-93 9,425,177 -1,986,780 7,438,397 5,540,508 1,897,880 -- +1893-94 9,650,649 -2,082,000 7,568,649 5,602,555 1,966,094 1,638,000 + +In 1893-94, the last year under review, Ireland, in round figures, was +producing a net revenue of seven and a half millions, was costing five +and a half millions, and was, therefore, contributing to Imperial +services a surplus of two millions. In the same year, while contributing +her two millions, she was overtaxed, according to the lowest estimate of +the Commissioners, by two and three-quarter millions. + +But the significance of these figures cannot be discerned without an +examination of their counterparts on the British side of the account. In +the whole period Great Britain's "true" revenue had risen from +L51,445,764 to L89,286,978; her local expenditure from L4,439,333 to +L30,618,586, and her net contribution to Imperial services from +L47,006,431 to L58,668,392. Her population had increased from +13,765,000 in 1820 to 33,469,000 (estimated) in 1893, but her "true" +revenue had _fallen_ per head of the population from L3 13s. to L2 13s. +4d. (approximately), although her local expenditure had risen from 4s. +7d. to L1 2s. (approximately). In other words, a great increase of +wealth had enabled the British taxpayer to pay far more while feeling +the burden far less. The converse was true of Ireland. + +The current state of the account in 1893-94 was as follows: + + Great Britain Ireland + 1893-94 (Population, (Population, Totals. + 33,469,000). 4,638,000). + + L L L +"True" Revenue 89,286,978 7,568,649 96,855,627 +Local Expenditure 30,618,586 5,602,555 36,221,141 +Net contribution to Imperial + Services 58,668,392 1,966,094 60,634,486 + +Great Britain, though raising in "true" revenue between eleven and +twelve times as much as Ireland, was costing only between five and six +times as much to administer as Ireland, and was therefore contributing +to Imperial services twenty-eight times as much as Ireland. + +Now the Commissioners had stated that the taxable capacity of Ireland +was not one-eleventh, but, at the utmost, one-twentieth --in other +words, that she ought to contribute not more than one-twentieth of the +United Kingdom revenue. On that basis she should as we have seen, have +been showing a revenue in 1893-94 not of L7,568,649, but of L4,842,781. + +But, if her local expenditure had also been proportionate to her true +taxable capacity of one-twentieth, instead of standing at L5,602,555, it +would have stood at L1,811,057, or two-thirds less, while if her net +contribution to Imperial services had likewise been a twentieth, instead +of paying L1,966,094, she would have had to pay L3,031,724, or a million +more. + +The conclusion, therefore, might be extracted from the figures that, +although by hypothesis overtaxed, Ireland was drawing a balance of +profit, because, by having more spent on her--or, to put it in another +way, by costing more to govern, she paid a million less to the common +purse than if she had been taxed according to her capacity. + +This was precisely the conclusion drawn by one member of the Commission, +Sir David Barbour, and implicitly acquiesced in by one other member, Sir +Thomas Sutherland. All the other Commissioners agreed that there was +something seriously amiss, and declined to regard the disproportionately +high expenditure on Ireland as compensation for the over-high taxation. +The O'Conor Don, as successor in the chairmanship to Mr. Childers, and +four others contented themselves with setting forth the facts, but made +no recommendations, on the ground that the Commission had not been asked +to make any. Mr. Childers, who died before the completion of the +inquiry, left a Draft Report recommending that a special grant, +amounting to two millions a year, should for the future be allocated to +Ireland. The other six members, dividing into two groups of three, under +Lord Farrer and Mr. Sexton respectively, and stating their views in two +different Reports, all agreed that a form of Home Rule giving financial +independence to Ireland was the only solution of the difficulty. + +The questions at issue were not at all obscure. Any apparent obscurity +was caused by the terms of reference to the Commission, which assumed +the permanence of the Union, while it was absolutely impossible for the +Commission, divided though its members were in politics, to start work +at all without, as they said, considering Great Britain and Ireland as +"separate entities." The reader must be on his guard against +exaggerating the "over-taxation of Ireland" in its purely cash aspect. +The really important points were: (1) The suitability of the Irish taxes +and the responsibility for levying them; (2) the amount and suitability +of the expenditure in Ireland and the responsibility for its +distribution. In order to see conflicting principles stated in their +clearest form the reader should compare the terse and vigorous reports +of Sir David Barbour on the one hand, and of Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, +and Mr. Currie on the other. + +It was Sir David Barbour's great merit that he was not afraid of his own +conclusions. He frankly stated, like all the other Commissioners, that +Ireland's taxation, considered by itself, without regard to Irish +expenditure, was unsuitable and unjust. He recognized that a system of +taxation which was suitable for a rich, industrial, and expanding +country like Great Britain was unsuitable for a poor, agricultural, and +economically stagnant country like Ireland. He had before him the +figures showing that two-thirds of the Irish population was rural, and +that between three and four-fifths of the English population was +urban.[107] He laid special stress on the fact that five-sevenths of +Irish revenue, as compared with less than half the British revenue, was +derived from taxes on commodities of general consumption, pressing +heavily on the poor, and set forth the figures showing that the product +of these taxes represented a charge of L1 2s. 0.95d. per head of the +population in Ireland, and L1 1s. 0.05d. in Great Britain, although the +wealth per head of Great Britain, as he admitted, "was much greater than +the wealth of Ireland per head."[108] His conclusion was that this state +of affairs, though regrettable, could not be helped, because, under the +Union, whose permanence he took for granted, a change of general +taxation to suit Ireland was simply impracticable. He did, it is true, +point out incidentally that the same hardship might be said to affect +poor localities in Great Britain and poor individuals in Great Britain, +but he recoiled from the absurd fallacy involved in saying that on that +account Ireland was not unjustly taxed. If he had gone to that length he +could never have signed the unanimous Report. + +I only mention this latter point because some outside critics have been +bold enough to assert the fallacy in its completeness, proving, as they +easily can, that the purchase of a pound of tea or a pint of beer is as +great an expense to a man with 10s. a week in Whitechapel as to a man +with 10s. a week in Connemara. Such reasoning nullifies the whole +science of taxation. It would be as sensible to say that our whole +fiscal system might wisely be transplanted in its entirety to any +foreign country or to any self-governing Colony absolutely irrespective +of their social and economic conditions and of their habits. Yet Ireland +in these respects has always differed from Great Britain at least as +much as any self-governing Colony and many European countries. The +tea-tax produces scarcely anything in France; it produces an enormous +amount relatively in Ireland, and is a greater burden there than in +Great Britain. The wine-tax is not felt by Ireland; it is felt more by +England; it would cause a revolution in France. Beer is taxed lightly in +the United Kingdom, but the Irishman drinks only half as much beer as +the Englishman. Meat is untaxed, but the Irish poor eat no meat. Spirits +and tobacco are highly taxed, and they are consumed more largely in +Ireland than in England. And so on. The whole Commission recognized that +the circumstances of the two countries were different, and stated "that +identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of +burden." + +Nor could Sir David Barbour have dissociated himself from these +conclusions without destroying the rest of his argument. He pointed out +with truth that merely to reduce Irish taxation to its correct level, +and to leave Irish expenditure where it was, would be to wipe out +Ireland's contribution to Imperial purposes and leave her with a subsidy +from Great Britain of three-quarters of a million. On the other hand, he +held, as I have already indicated, that unduly heavy taxation in Ireland +was already compensated for by an excess of local expenditure in Ireland +as compared with Great Britain. But how, on its merits, and apart from +the question of taxation, could such an excess be justified? The Act of +Union had provided for indiscriminate expenditure in the event of a +fiscal union. Most of the other Commissioners, indeed, had objected to +the idea of distinguishing between "Imperial" expenditure and "local" +expenditure, and striking a balance called an "Imperial contribution," +without, at the same time, distinguishing politically between Ireland +and Great Britain. In other words, they took up the not very logical +position that Ireland must be considered as a separate entity for +purposes of finance owing to the phrase about "abatements and +exemptions," but not for purposes of expenditure. Whether this was a +correct interpretation of the Act of Union has always been a matter of +dispute, but the practical problem is little affected thereby. Sir David +Barbour thought it an incorrect interpretation, and reached the more +logical position that Ireland, both for revenue and expenditure, could +be regarded as a separate entity. This view enabled him to put forward +an argument which, while ostensibly palliating the over-taxation of +Ireland, in reality condemned the whole of the political system +established by the Union. We can, he said, in effect, rightly +distinguish between Imperial and local expenditure, and it is +permissible to spend more on Ireland than on Great Britain. By so +spending more we not only cancel our debt to Ireland, but make her a +present of a million which would otherwise go to swell her contribution +to Imperial purposes. Now, to get at the pith of this argument, the +reader must bear in mind what Sir David Barbour thought it needless to +remark upon, that Ireland had, and has, a separate quasi-colonial system +of administration of her own, but outside her own control, a system of +which he approved. In other words, besides having to be considered in +finance as a "separate entity," she was to a large extent in actual +fact, politically, a "separate entity," though not a self-governing +entity, to which through the channel of the Irish Government Departments +a special large quota for local expenditure could be easily allocated. +As an economist, therefore, and as an upholder of the strangely +paradoxical system set up by the so-called "Union," Sir David Barbour +was absolutely consistent. + +So were Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, and Mr. Currie in coming to +diametrically opposite conclusions. The crux of the discussion, stripped +of academical reasoning, was simple. Everything turned, obviously, on +the nature, amount, and origin of Irish expenditure. Sir David Barbour +had passed lightly over these vital points, recommending only that any +future _saving_ of expenditure in Ireland ought to be used for Irish +purposes--a further admission of Ireland's separate political +existence--and shutting his eyes to future _increases_ of expenditure. +Lord Farrer and his colleagues, while agreeing that it was impossible to +alter the taxation of Ireland so long as the Union lasted, agreed that +additional local expenditure in Ireland could not be regarded as a +set-off to undue taxation, not only because such a doctrine was +inherently fallacious on economic grounds, and would hardly be listened +to in the case of any other country than Ireland, but because Irish +expenditure was subjected to no proper means of control. Both Irish +revenue and Irish services, the former being only theoretically, the +latter actually, distinct and separate, were outside the control of +Irishmen, who had therefore no motive for economy. Nor was there any +proper measure of determining what expenditure was good for Ireland and +what was bad, though they held that there was reason to believe that +much of Irish administration was both bad and costly. With regard to the +extensive system of Imperial loans, whose charge swelled the Irish +expenditure, they quoted the unchallenged evidence of Mr. Murrough +O'Brien[109] to the effect that the system of Imperial loans for +temporary emergencies and charity loans--"made to keep the people quiet +or to keep them alive"--tends to increase the poverty of Ireland, "does +not prevent the recurrence of famine, distress, and discontent," and +that "a great deal of the money nominally meant to be spent on +productive works has been misspent and wasted." They also dwelt, with +emphasis, on official figures showing the extravagance of Civil +Government in Ireland, the cost having risen from 1s. 10d. per head of +the population in 1820 to 19s. 7d. per head in 1893, whereas the cost of +Civil Government in Great Britain had only risen from 1s. 7d. to 11s. +5d. The charge for legal salaries and five principal Departments in +Ireland was double the right figure according to population, and +represented an excess cost of nearly L200,000. In wealthy and +progressive Belgium, Civil Government cost 10s. per head, or little more +than half as much per head as in Ireland.[110] The absurdity of +representing such excess charges and the wasteful expenditure of a +blundering philanthropy, as a recompense for over-taxation, was +manifest. + +Meanwhile, the rise in the cost of Irish Government, coupled with a +stagnant revenue, had decreased the annual contribution of Ireland to +Imperial services, which had fallen from five and a half millions in +1860 to two millions in 1894; unless, indeed, half the cost of Irish +police, virtually a branch of the Imperial Army, and costing double the +amount of Scottish and English police, were to be reckoned, not as an +Irish expense, on the principle adopted by the Treasury, but as a part +of Imperial expenditure. In any case both partners suffered from +excessive and unwise expenditure in Ireland. + +The gist of their conclusions was as follows:[111] + +1. It is impossible, under the Union, to vary taxation for the benefit +of Ireland. + +2. Additional benevolent expenditure in Ireland is not a remedy for +over-taxation.[112] + +"We entertain a profound distrust of benevolences, doles, grants-in-aid, +by whatever name they are called, ... or by whatever machinery it is +proposed to distribute them, convinced, as we are, that in some form or +other political influence or personal interest will creep in so as to +defeat, in part at any rate, the attainment of the objects for which the +expenditure is made." + +3. "We believe that the expenditure of public funds cannot be wisely and +economically controlled unless _those who have the disposal_ of public +money are made _responsible_ for raising it as well as spending it." +Grants of money "tend to weaken the spirit of independence and +self-reliance," the absence of which qualities "has been the main cause +of the backward condition" of Ireland. + +4. "One sure method of redressing the inequality which has been shown to +exist between Great Britain and Ireland will be to put upon the Irish +people the duty of levying their own taxes and of providing for their +own expenditure." + +5. "If it is objected that the course we suggest may lead to the +imposition of new Customs duties in Ireland, we might reply that in this +case, as in that of the Colonies, _freedom is a greater good than free +trade._ We doubt, however, whether Irishmen, if entrusted with their own +finance, would attempt to raise fiscal barriers between the two +countries; for we are satisfied that Ireland, and not Great Britain, +would be the loser by such a policy. The market of Great Britain is of +infinitely greater importance to Ireland than that of Ireland to Great +Britain." The only point on which the three Commissioners differed +concerned Ireland's contribution to Imperial services. Lord Farrer and +Mr. Currie, taking Home Rule as the foundation of their argument, and +prophesying, quite correctly, that under the Union, in a few years, +Ireland's contribution would disappear altogether, recommended that no +such contribution should be exacted by law until Ireland's taxable +capacity approximately reached that of Great Britain. Lord Welby, +regarding Home Rule as an essential but a distant ideal, was for an +immediate reorganization of Anglo-Irish finances which should provide +for a large reduction of Irish Civil expenditure, the saving to be +devoted, on Sir David Barbour's principle, to Irish purposes, and for a +fixed contribution from Ireland to the Army, Navy, National Debt, etc. +How Lord Welby, consistently with his previous argument, could count +upon any reduction of expenditure in Ireland under the existing +political system it is difficult to see. At any rate, subsequent events +proved both him and Sir David Barbour signally wrong on this important +point.[113] + +In every other point the wisdom of the three Commissioners has been +abundantly proved by lapse of time. Do not the conclusions set forth +above bear upon them the stamp of common sense? If it were not for the +inveterate prejudice against Home Rule on other than financial grounds, +no one would dream of disputing them; for they are based on principles +universally accepted in every part of the British Empire but Ireland, +and in most parts of the civilized world. They constitute, in fact, +financially, one of the strongest arguments possible for political Home +Rule. + +There, at any rate, lies a clear issue. Seventeen years have not altered +the essential principles involved. On the contrary, it will be seen that +every year of the seventeen has strengthened the argument of Lord Farrer +and his colleagues, and weakened the argument of Sir David Barbour. But, +before proceeding to this final demonstration, let me in general terms +describe what befell the Royal Commission's Report, which was published +in 1896. For a moment all Ireland, irrespective of class or creed, was +alight with patriotic excitement. Few listened to Sir David Barbour's +view, namely, that so long as Irish expenditure came near Irish revenue +there could be no Irish grievance. Home Rulers and Unionists met on +friendly platforms to denounce the over-taxation of Ireland and to +display figures showing the hundreds of millions of profit made by +Great Britain out of an unconscionable fiscal bargain. This criticism +missed the real point and the unanimity was short-lived. No change could +be made in the system without Home Rule, and the dissension about Home +Rule was strong enough to prevent Irishmen from uniting against a fiscal +system which was not only unjust but demoralizing to Ireland. A Unionist +Government was in power for nine more years after 1896, and a Liberal +Government, pledged temporarily not to give Home Rule, for four further +years. The natural result was that, in default of Home Rule, all parties +in Ireland embraced Sir David Barbour's insidiously attractive +reservation, and have ever since fallen into the habit of regarding +additional expenditure on Ireland, not only on its merits, but as a +set-off to excessive taxation and as something having no relation +whatever to the taxable resources of the country. Nobody took seriously +Sir David Barbour's counsel of perfection about the reduction of the +cost of Irish Civil Government and the allocation of the saving to +Ireland, because such a process was, humanly speaking, impossible. +Expenditure is never reduced except by those who raise the money for it. +On the other hand, in the face of the findings of the Royal Commission, +and in the face of Ireland's economic condition, no Government which +refused Home Rule could have refused large additional Irish expenditure. +Much of it, indeed, was merely an automatic reflection of the immense +growth of national expenditure in the wealthy and expanding +partner-country over the water, and took the form of "equivalent +grants," whether for the corresponding British head of expense or for +something totally different. No doubt some of the money was well spent, +but all of it came in a wrong form, through wrong channels, and was +regarded in Ireland in a false light. Lastly came Old Age Pensions +applied on the British scale to a far poorer population. + +Every word of Lord Welby's and Lord Farrer's condemnation was justified +by events; every prophecy they made has been fulfilled. And the worst of +it is that the delay has damaged the prospects of Home Rule. The habit +of dissociating income from revenue becomes inveterate. The habit of +nursing an old grievance and of expecting "restitution" for funds +unwarrantably levied in the past is hard to shake off. Restitution has +gone too far already. Perpetuated, it would ruin Ireland. Home Rulers +worth their salt must leave this cry to those Unionists who descend to +use it; but it is surely amazing that any Irishman, least of all those +who claim to represent the wealth and intelligence of the country, +should tolerate a political system which inexorably involves a fiscal +system so humiliating to Ireland. Until three years ago it could easily +have been put an end to without affecting the independent solvency of +Ireland, even on the basis of an enormously swollen civil expenditure, +and with the inclusion of services strictly Imperial in origin and +character. Now it is a different matter, and we are faced with the +opposition of British statesmen who, by sustaining the Union, drove +Ireland to the verge of insolvency, and now use insolvency as an +argument against Home Rule. + +One respects the clean and honest side of Unionism, but there can be +nothing but reprobation for the meanness of this latter-day argument. +For generations Ireland herself has asked to be free both from coercion +and bribes, sanely conscious in her soul that both are equally +demoralizing. The aim--though in the past not generally the conscious +aim--of Unionism was to sap the moral fibre of Ireland now by one means, +now by the other. At last the aim is avowed, so that men who applauded +Mr. Chamberlain in 1893 for sneering at Irish patriotism as a "sickly +plant which needed to be watered by British gold" merely because her +contribution under the Home Rule Bill was to be small are now urging +Ireland to maintain the Union--in Mr. Walter Long's words--for its +"eleemosynary benefits."[114] Ireland herself must and will rise to a +higher moral level than that, when she is fully awake to the gravity of +the situation. Those who love her most will not lose a minute in +explaining that situation. Too much time already has been lost. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[97] The Treasury Returns of 1869, "Public Income and Expenditure," in +two volumes, are the basis of all information up to that date. + +[98] Mr. Secretary Pelham in this year estimated that Ireland, though +contributing nothing in money to the Navy, had furnished no less than +38,000 men to the Navy since the beginning of the war. + +[99] Pre-Union Debts were to be separate. Post-Union Debt _contracted +for Imperial services_ was to be regarded as joint, and its charge was +to be borne by the two countries in the proportions of their respective +contributions (see below); but post-Union Debt contracted by Ireland for +domestic services was to be kept separate. + +[100] Eight lectures delivered in the National University, Dublin, in +1911. + +[101] Inhabited house duty, railway passenger tax, carriages, armorial +bearings, etc. The license for dogs is half the English scale. + +[102] On Foster's Corn Law of 1784, see p. 51. + +[103] The text of the unanimous conclusions was as follows: + +1. That Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purpose of this inquiry, +be considered as separate entities. + +2. That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events +showed, she was unable to bear. + +3. That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 +was not justified by the then existing circumstances. + +4. That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve +equality of burden. + +5. That, whilst the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventh +of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is +very much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding +one-twentieth. + +[104] Detailed criticism of the current Treasury accounts under this +head will be found on pp. 276-278. + +[105] A referendum taken on April 13, 1910, defeated the new proposals. +See "Report of Premiers' Conference held at Brisbane, May, 1907" +(Commonwealth Parliamentary Sessional Paper, No. 13, 1907), and for a +clear statement of the whole subject, the "Year-Book (1911) of the +Commonwealth of Australia." (The relevant clauses of the Constitutional +Act are Nos. 88 to 93.) The reasons for the failure of the system were +summarized as follows: + +"1. The trouble and expense which the necessary record entails. + +"2. The practical impossibility of ensuring that in every case a +consuming State will be duly credited with revenue collected on its +behalf in a distributing State. + +"3. The difficulty involved in equitably determining the amount to be +debited to the several States in respect of general Commonwealth +expenses. + +"4. The uncertainty on the part of the State Governments as to the +amount which will become available. + +"5. The impossibility of securing independent State and Commonwealth +finance." + +See also pp. 295-299. + +[106] See Proceedings of the Conference of Provincial Premiers, 1906, at +Ottawa (Canadian Sessional Papers, vol. xl.), especially McBride's +Memorandum for British Columbia. Numerous other grounds for special +treatment were alleged--_e.g.,_ abnormal cost of civil government, due +to vast extent of Province. + +[107] Final Report, p. 24 (Census figures of 1891). + +[108] Final Report, p. 122. + +[109] Final Report, p. 50. + +[110] Ibid., pp. 48, 49. + +[111] Ibid., pp. 51-54. + +[112] They were at issue here with Mr. Childers, who, in his Draft +Report, proposed halving the rates on Irish railways and further +endowing the Congested Districts Board. But Mr. Childers, though a Home +Ruler, felt himself bound by the Terms of Reference not to suggest a +Home Rule solution. + +[113] Lord Welby (Final Report, p. 54) compared his proposal for Ireland +with the system in the Isle of Man, where the proceeds of a tariff +distinct from that of Great Britain were devoted in the first instance +to the payment of a fixed Imperial contribution and the surplus to local +needs. But in the Isle of Man the whole point was that the tariff was a +local tariff, chosen by Manxmen to suit themselves, while the +administration was under Manx control. + +[114] Letter to the _Belfast Telegraph_, October 7, 1911. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE PRESENT FINANCIAL SITUATION + + +I. + +ANGLO-IRISH FINANCE TO-DAY. + + +The finances of Ireland since the Union, when reviewed by the Royal +Commission in 1894-1896, exhibited five principal features: + +1. A declining population. + +2. An estimated true taxable capacity falling as compared with that of +Great Britain, and standing in 1893-94 at a maximum of 1 to 19. + +3. A revenue stationary for thirty-four years, and showing in 1893-94 a +ratio of 1 to 12 with that of Great Britain. + +4. A growing local expenditure (though stationary for the last four +years). + +5. A dwindling net contribution to Imperial services (though stationary +for the last four years). + +If we review the subsequent seventeen years, we find: + +1. A population still declining, though at a slower rate. + +2. An estimated true taxable capacity still falling as compared with +that of Great Britain, and now standing at a maximum of 1 to 24.[115] +That is, Ireland ought strictly to be paying no more than +one-twenty-fifth of the United Kingdom revenue. + +3. A revenue rising, but very slowly and inelastically as compared with +that of Great Britain, and now showing a ratio of 1 to 15; so that the +"over-taxation" of Ireland, as reckoned on the Royal Commission's +principles, is still at least three millions.[116] + +4. A local expenditure growing rapidly and disproportionately to Irish +revenue; now just double the expenditure of 1893-94. + +5. A net contribution to Imperial services automatically diminishing +with the growth of Irish expenditure, disappearing altogether in +1909-10, and now converted into an adverse balance against Ireland of +L1,312,500. + +In Great Britain during the same seventeen years, population, taxable +capacity, revenue, expenditure, and net contribution to Imperial +services have all grown steadily, and, what is more important, in +healthy proportions to one another. + +On the next page will be found the comparative figures for Ireland and +Great Britain of revenue, expenditure, and contribution for 1893-94 and +1910-11. + +Let me remark at the outset _(a)_ that they and other official figures +given in this chapter are taken from the annual Treasury returns alluded +to at p. 242, "Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland, and Ireland)" +and "Imperial Revenue (Collection and Expenditure) (Great Britain and +Ireland)." For the current year 1910-11 the official numbers of these +Returns are 220 and 221, and the latter of the two is virtually a +continuation of the original return, No. 313 of 1894; _(b)_ that the +non-collection of a large part of the revenue of 1909-10, owing to the +delay in passing the Budget, makes the revenue figures of the last two +years, regarded in isolation, misleading; those of the first year being +abnormally low, those of the last abnormally high. I therefore give the +mean figures of the two years. Expenditure is, of course, unaffected, +_(c)_ That the Irish revenue shown as "true" is reduced by heavy +deductions from the revenue as actually collected in Ireland. At p. 244 +I explained that this adjustment can be regarded only as approximately +correct, owing to the admittedly unreliable methods adopted by the +Treasury, _(d)_ That the revenue shown includes non-tax as well as tax +revenue. + + Ireland. Great Britain. + + 1893-94. 1910-11. 1893-94. 1910-11. + +Population 4,638,000 4,381,951 33,469,000 40,834,790 + (estimated) + +"Collected" revenue L9,650,649 L11,704,500 L88,728,428 L156,574,250 +(including non-tax (mean of two (mean of two +revenue) years, 1910- years, 1910- + 11, 1909-10) 11, 1909-10) + +"True" revenue L7,568,649 L10,032,000 L89,286,978 L155,137,250 +(including (mean of two (mean of two +non-tax revenue) years, 1910- years, 1910- + 11, 1909-10) 11, 1909-10) + +Local Expenditure L5,602,555 L11,344,500 L30,618,586 L60,544,000 + + +Contribution to L1,966,094 Nil[A] L58,668,392 L94,593,250 +Imperial Services + +[A] Local Expenditure in excess of "true" revenue (as averaged for +years, 1910-11, 1909-10): L1,312,500. + +Irish expenditure has been rapidly overtaking Irish revenue during the +last three years. In 1907-08 there was a balance available for Imperial +services of L1,811,000; in 1908-09, of only L583,000; and in 1910-11, on +the basis of a mean of that and the previous year, the deficit shown +above of L1,312,500. The principal cause is the Old Age Pensions Vote, +which began in 1908. + +If all the elements of the problem be considered together, it will be +seen that the fiscal partnership is as ill-matched as ever, and has +produced results increasingly anomalous. Each of the partners and their +united interests suffer. Ireland is still more heavily taxed relatively +to Great Britain, yet Ireland's contribution to Imperial services has +been converted into a minus quantity. Why? Because Irish expenditure, +paid out of the common purse, has doubled, while Irish revenue has +increased by less than a third. + +Let me give the final survey of Anglo-Irish finance since the Union, in +the tabular form shown by Professor Oldham at the meeting of the British +Association in September, 1911: + + NET BALANCES PAID BY IRELAND TO GREAT BRITAIN. + + Single Irish "True" Expenditure Balance Decadal + Year. Revenue. in Ireland. One Year. Balance. + L L L L + 1819-20 5,256,564 1,564,880 3,691,684 36,916,840 + 1829-30 5,502,125 1,345,549 4,156,576 41,565,760 + 1839-40 5,415,889 1,789,567 3,626,322 36,263,220 + 1849-50 4,861,465 2,247,687 2,613,778 26,137,780 + 1859-60 7,700,334 2,304,334 5,396,000 53,960,000 + 1869-70 7,426,332 2,938,122 4,488,210 44,882,100 + 1879-80 7,280,856 4,054,549 3,226,307 32,263,070 + 1889-90 7,734,678 5,057,708 2,676,970 26,769,700 + 1899-1900 8,664,500 6,980,000 1,684,500 16,845,000 + + Averaged Balances for 90 years 315,603,470 + Add, Actual Balances, 1900-09 16,214,000 + + Net Payments, in 99 years 331,817,470 + Deduct Drawings, deficit of 1909-10 2,357,500 + + Net Payments, in 100 years 329,459,970 + Add, Actual Balance, 1910-11 321,000 + +Net Balances paid by Ireland to Great Britain, 1809-1911 329,780,970 + +What has become of Sir David Barbour's argument in favour of the +existing fiscal system? He admitted that Ireland was overtaxed by two +millions and three-quarters. But he showed, it will be remembered, that +if not only the revenue, but the expenditure and contribution to +Imperial services had all been in proportion to Ireland's real taxable +capacity of one-twentieth, she would have been a loser by a +million.[117] Ireland, therefore, he argued, had certainly no grievance, +while Great Britain received the substantial, though not strictly +sufficient, sum of two millions as Ireland's contribution to Imperial +expenses. + +Let us apply the same reasoning to the present situation. Ireland, by +hypothesis, is "overtaxed" by three millions,[118] but if not only the +revenue, but the expenditure and contribution to Imperial services of +Ireland were all in proportion to her real taxable capacity, which we +may estimate now at one-twenty-fifth, we find that she would be a loser +by five millions. Her "true" revenue from all sources _ought_ on this +supposition to be L6,605,900; it _is_ L10,032,000. Her local expenditure +_ought_ to be L2,875,540; it _is_ L11,344,500. Her contribution to +Imperial services _ought_ to be L3,730,360; it _is_ a minus quantity of +L1,312,500. Sir David Barbour's reasoning, then, leads us to this +astounding paradox, that Ireland, while overtaxed by three millions, +gains five millions by the arrangement. Moreover, whether we accept Sir +David Barbour's reasoning or not, it is a fact that to-day Ireland, +which contributed to Imperial services five and a half millions in 1860, +and two millions in 1894, now, so far from contributing anything, costs +a million and a quarter more than she brings in. This, certainly, was +not a result he either anticipated or would have approved of. On the +contrary, he anticipated a reduction in Irish civil expenditure, to be +saved for Irish purposes, without prejudice to the Imperial +contribution. It makes the brain dizzy to compare his anticipation with +the reality. + +How, on the other hand, stands the argument of Lord Farrer and Mr. +Currie? They prophesied a great increase in Irish expenditure and the +disappearance of the contribution to Imperial services. That has come +true. Lord Welby (and indeed the majority of the Commission) was with +them in declining to regard excessive local expenditure as a set-off to +excessive and unsuitable taxation, and in condemning root and branch the +system of grants, aids, and doles as wasteful in itself and as sapping +the self-reliance of Irishmen. There again they were right. They were at +one with all their colleagues in holding that under the Union it was +impossible to differentiate between the taxation of Ireland and Great +Britain, and they prescribed, as the only sound remedy, Home Rule. Once +more they were right. + +The figures of to-day constitute the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the +Union. For over a century in Ireland we have defied the laws of +political economy, but they have conquered us at last. Sound finance +demands that revenue and expenditure should be co-related. Ireland's +economic circumstances are widely different from those of Great Britain, +but she has been included, without any regard to her needs and without +any reference to Irish expenditure, in a system of taxation designed +exclusively for the capacities and needs of Great Britain. Hence Irish +revenue is both excessive and inadequate. + +"Excessive"? "Inadequate"? What do these terms really mean? Let us once +and for all clear our minds of all obscurity and look the facts in the +face. No one knows what Irish revenue and expenditure ought to be, or +would be, if Irishmen had controlled their own destinies. It is useless +to parade immense sums as the cash equivalent of over-taxation; it is +idle to array against them rival figures of over-expenditure. Normal +Irish revenue and normal Irish expenditure are matters of speculation. +For all we know, Ireland, had she been permitted normal political +development, would be raising a larger revenue, and feeling it less; +while it is absolutely certain that she would be paying her own way and +contributing to Imperial services more, in proportion to her resources, +than she did before the Union. The political and therefore the economic +development of Ireland have been deliberately and forcibly arrested. I +do not say malignantly, because there was no malignant intention. But +the action, if mistaken, was deliberately and consistently sustained. +Much of Irish industrial talent was lost irrevocably before the old +industrial restrictions were removed. There remained the land, an +immense source of potential wealth, if properly developed under a +rational system of agrarian tenure. For the best part of a century after +the Union, the agrarian tenure, dating from the first genuine +colonization of Ireland, when the land was confiscated wholesale and the +peasantry enslaved, was maintained by force of arms. Thirty years ago +(if we date from the Land Act of 1881) we began to change this tenure +into another equally defective, though far more favourable to the +tenant. A little later, but only eight years ago, on a thorough and +systematic scale, we began the parallel policy of Land Purchase. Even +now, having transferred half the land to peasant ownership, and placed +the other half under judicial rents, many of our statesmen are unwilling +to give Ireland the control of its own affairs. On the contrary, step +by step with the economic enfranchisement of the farmers, has gone the +policy of destroying their personal and political independence, and +forcing them to look outside their own country for financial aid, by +spending money upon Ireland which Irishmen have no direct responsibility +for raising. What a travesty of statesmanship! First, having assisted +the farmer to buy his own land, to clap him on the back with "Now, my +fine fellow, you are a free man." In the same breath to tell him that he +is not fit to have a direct voice in the management of his own country's +affairs, and to try and reconcile him to this insult by sapping that +very independence of character which the acquirement of a freehold has +begun to instil in him. + +I described in Chapter IX. how a number of patriotic Irishmen, working +both at industrial and agricultural development, have striven to +counteract this fatal tendency, and to persuade their countrymen to rely +on themselves alone. But I venture to repeat what I said then, that +without the bracing discipline of Home Rule, and, above all, of the +financial Home Rule, these efforts are doomed to comparative failure. + +It is absolutely necessary to produce an equilibrium between revenue and +expenditure in Ireland, as in every other country in the world. Whatever +the temporary strain upon Ireland, whatever the sacrifices involved, the +thing must be done, and done now or never. Great Britain's interest is +something, but it is trivial beside that of Ireland. The situation is +growing worse, not better, and Irishmen should unite to insist that the +whole system should stop. + + +II. + +IRISH EXPENDITURE. + + +Let us look a little more closely at Irish expenditure, as disclosed in +the Treasury returns. + +For purposes of comparison, I set out first the main heads of Civil +Expenditure for England, Scotland, and Ireland in the year 1910-11:[119] + + Population. England, Scotland, Ireland, + 36,075,269. 4,759,521. 4,381,951. + + L L L +Civil Government Charges, 1910-11: + (_a_) On Consolidated Fund: + (1) Civil List, Salaries, Pensions, + and Miscellaneous Charges 340,500 148,000 138,500 + (2) Development and Road + Improvement Funds + (3) Payments to Local Taxation + Accounts, etc. 7,199,500 1,204,500 1,477,500 + (_b_) Voted 26,121,500 4,180,500 8,026,000 + +Total Civil Government Charges 33,661,500 5,533,000 9,642,000 + +Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue 3,157,000 464,000 298,000 +Post Office Services 15,798,500 1,930,000 1,404,500 + +Total Expenditure 52,617,000 7,927,000 11,344,500 + + L s. d. L s. d. L s. d. +Per head of population 1 9 2 1 13 31/2 2 11 9 + + +The totals, if we consider relative populations, appear startling. + +Look at the third, or Irish, column, and set aside the two last items, +"Customs, Excise, and Inland Revenue," and "Post-Office Services," which +represent the cost of collecting Irish Revenue and maintaining the Irish +postal, telegraph, and telephone services. We may note in passing, +however, that the Post-Office receipts in Ireland in 1910-11, according +to the Treasury estimate, were less than the outgoings by L249,000 +(receipts, L1,155,500; outgoings, L1,404,500). + +The Civil Government Charges are the most important heads of expense, +and these are divided into two main classes: (_a_) charged on +Consolidated Fund; (_b_) Voted. + +Class (_a_) consists of (1) Salaries, Pensions, etc.; (2) Development +and Road Improvement Funds; (3) Payments to Local Taxation Accounts. + +In other parts of Return No. 220 will be found the details of +expenditure in these various classes: + +(1) The Salaries and Pensions need not detain us long. The principal +item is judicial salaries, L102,000, as compared with L282,000 for +England, which has more than eight times the population of Ireland. +Another item, L20,000 for the Lord-Lieutenant, is double the sum +allotted to any Colonial Governor, even of the Dominion of Canada, which +has nearly twice the population of Ireland. But the extravagance lies, +not in the cash amount, but in the fact that the Irish Lord-Lieutenancy +is, under present conditions, an anomalous institution. No Irishman +would grudge a penny of the sum if the Lord-Lieutenant, like a Colonial +Governor, presided over a responsibly governed Ireland. + +(2) Road Improvement and Development Funds. This category is blank for +the year 1910-11. There will be payments for the current year which will +swell the Irish expenditure. + +(3) Payments to Local Taxation Accounts, L1,477,500. This raises an +intricate subject, into which I cannot enter in great detail. It is well +known that the whole system of relieving local taxation out of Imperial +taxation needs thorough revision. Meanwhile Ireland, like other parts of +Great Britain, has been allotted at various times a multitude of +different grants under various Acts, but principally under the Local +Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, and the Finance Acts of recent years. + +Local Government on the British pattern was, as I have already +described, extended to Ireland only in 1898. The money now raised in +Ireland by Local Taxation is about L4,800,000, exclusive of the Grants +in Aid which we are now considering, and which appear, rightly, on the +national balance-sheet because they come from the common purse.[120] +They are based on different principles, and originated in many different +ways. Some are fixed annual sums, determined either by some arbitrary +standard or (as in the case of the Licence Duty grants and the Customs +and Excise grants[121]) on the Irish proceeds of certain duties in a +year taken as standard. The Estate Duty grants still vary with the total +product of duties in the United Kingdom, and are still allocated on the +proportion settled by Mr. Goschen in 1888--namely, 9 parts to Ireland, +11 to Scotland, and 80 to England.[122] If the proportion were to be +revised now, and, on Mr. Goschen's method, made to correspond to the +respective estimated contributions to Imperial Services, Ireland, +instead of getting L418,000, would get nothing at all. The largest item +in the list--namely, the "Agricultural Grant," a fixed annual sum of +L728,000, dating from the Local Government Act of 1898--was designed +partly to reconcile Irish landlords to the passage of that Act. Nearly +half of it represented the remission of the landlord's half-share of the +poor-rate on agricultural land, as estimated in the standard year +1896-97. The English precedent for this was the Agricultural Rates Act +of 1896, which relieved the English owner of agricultural land in a +similar way. Irish conditions were so different, however, that it was +felt necessary in this case to balance the landlord's boon with an +equivalent boon to the tenant; so that half the tenant's share of the +county cess was also remitted. The result was a disproportionately large +grant as compared with those received by England and Scotland.[123] We +must remark, as one of the minor intricacies of Irish finance, that all +these grants do not actually go in relief of Local Taxation. Some of +them are diverted to public Departments, such as the Board of +Intermediate Education, the Congested Districts Board, and the +Department of Agriculture. + +All these grants will cease, as such, after Home Rule, while their +amount must be reckoned as part of the cost of Irish Government. The +Irish Parliament will have to revise the whole system of relief to Local +Taxation and establish it on some simple and rational basis. Meanwhile, +it is important to remember that the Irish grants form the major part of +the Guarantee Fund set up by the Land Purchase Acts, and, until the last +amending Land Act of 1909, were chargeable--the Estate Duties Grant, hi +the first instance, the Agricultural Grant in the second instance--with +the increasingly heavy losses incurred in floating Land Stock below par. +In 1908-09 the sums so withdrawn amounted to L90,000. That liability was +removed by Mr. Birrell's Act, and they now remain chargeable only with +any arrears in the annuities paid by the purchasing tenants. This is a +negligible liability, and should properly be placed upon the Irish +Government as a whole, which, if it pleased, could recover the money +from localities.[124] + +We now reach the category _(b)_ "Voted," and find in the Irish column +the truly enormous sum of L8,026,000--nearly double that of Scotland +(L4,180,500), which has a population slightly greater, and more than a +third of that of England (L26,121,500), which has a population eight +times as great. + +When we search the various tables of detailed expenditure, three +prominent items arrest our attention: + +Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police[125] L1,464,500 +Old Age Pensions L2,408,000 +Public (_i.e._, Primary) Education L1,632,000 + + L5,504,500 + +Those three items may be said to epitomize the history of Ireland under +the Union--coercion, pauperization, deficient education. The first two +are, of course, intimately connected. The existing cost of police, +surviving needlessly at the monstrous figure shown, represents the past +cost of enforcing laws economically hurtful to Ireland. The economic +hurt is reflected in the cost of Old Age Pensions paid to a +disproportionately large number of old people, below the official +standard of wealth, in a country drained by emigration for seventy years +past of its strongest sons and daughters. Police in Ireland costs twice +as much as in England and Scotland, where (with the exception of the +_London Metropolitan Police_) it is a local, not a national charge, +while Irish Old Age Pensions cost in 1910-11 more than twice as much as +Scottish Pensions, and amounted to two-fifths of English Pensions.[126] +With full allowance for excess payments owing to the lack of all birth +records prior to a certain date, the Irish figure is relatively +enormous. It is L100,000 greater than the whole cost of Irish Government +in 1860, and, with the addition made in the estimates of the present +year, it is just a million more than what, according to Sir David +Barbour's reasoning, would have been the whole cost of Irish Government +in 1893-94, had Irish expenditure, like Irish revenue, been in +proportion to the taxable capacity of Ireland. + +I touched upon the Irish aspect of the policy of Old Age Pensions at p. +181. Whatever the pecuniary charge, I suggest that it is absolutely +necessary for Ireland in the future to control both payment and policy, +and she might find it in her best interest, with due notice and due +regard to present interests, to halve the scale of pensions. It is not a +question of the general policy of Old Age Pensions, but of the +applicability of a certain scale to Ireland, where agricultural wages +(for example) average only 11s. 3d. as compared with 18s. 4d. for +England, and 19s. 7d. for Scotland.[127] Of all ways of remedying a +backward economic condition, that of excessive pensions is the worst. + +The cost of Irish Primary Education--L1,632,000, as I pointed out in +Chapter IX.--is at once too high and too low; too high in the sense that +much of it is wasted owing to the lack of popular control, too low in +the sense that it is a scandal to spend nearly as much on police as on +the education of children, and L800,000 more on Old Age Pensions than on +the education of children. If part or even the whole of the additional +expense eventually necessary is raised by rates, so much the better. +Accurate comparison is difficult with the English and Scottish +expenditure on elementary education, because the greater part of the +cost in those countries is borne by private endowments and local rates, +whereas in Ireland no local rate is raised for elementary education, +there are no endowments, and private subscriptions are very small.[128] +It is certain, however, that far greater sums, in proportion to +population, are spent in England and Scotland than in Ireland. This is +little to be wondered at if we consider the painful history of education +in Ireland; but we cannot recall the past, and, as I urged in Chapter +IX., one of the first duties of a free Ireland will be to improve the +education of the children. + +The Irish vote for Universities and Colleges, L166,000, has been swelled +by the recent establishment of the National University. No item in the +whole list represents money better spent. + +With regard to other Irish services, I shall make use, with Professor +Oldham's consent, of some interesting tables compiled by him, showing +the principal variations in Irish expenditure since the year +1891-92.[129] + +They include certain expenses which I have already alluded to, and +others which I shall have to remark upon further, besides giving a +general view of the growth in the cost of Irish government. Neither of +lists A or B is exhaustive: + +A. INCREASES OF EXPENDITURE. + + 1910-11. 1891-92. + L L +1. Old Age Pensions 2,408,000 -- +2. Primary Education 1,632,000 843,755 +3. Universities and Colleges 166,000 26,000 +4. Payments to Local Taxation Account 1,477,500 399,260 + +5. Ireland Development Grant 191,500 -- + +6. Post Office 1,404,500 749,046 +7. Cost of collecting Irish Revenue 298,000 223,362 +8. Surveys of the United Kingdom 81,000 47,603 + +9. Land Commission 414,500 91,826 +10. Department of Agriculture 415,000 44,630 +11. Other items (five[130]) 240,500 172,918 + --------- --------- + 8,728,500 2,598,400 + +Nos. 1 to 4 I have already dealt with, but it is interesting to note the +contrasting figures of 1893-94. + +No. 5. The Ireland Development Grant of L191,500 is interesting as an +example of the haphazard methods of Anglo-Irish finance. It is an annual +sum voted for various development purposes, and was originally +established (at the figure of L185,000) in 1903 as an equivalent for the +capitation grants for school attendance in England, given under the +Education Act of 1902 in lieu of school fees. In allotting the Irish +equivalent, Mr. Goschen's proportion of 80, 11, 9 was for the first time +condemned by all parties. What the proportion ought to be was a matter +of dispute, but it was fixed in this case on the basis of population. +Since the English grant has now risen to L2,500,000, the Irish +proportion therefore is now, strictly speaking, inadequate. + +Nos. 6, 7, and 8 are examples of charges debited by the Treasury against +Ireland which are open to criticism as long as the Union lasts, and +which meet with much complaint in Ireland. Obviously, however, the first +two at any rate are charges which an Ireland financially independent +would have to bear. + +No. 9. The Land Commission vote of L414,500 is of course the direct +result of an abnormally bad system, necessitating abnormal and costly +remedial administration. Ireland herself is not morally responsible for +a penny of it, but if she is wise she will shoulder the cost as a +corollary of responsible government. Small administrative economies may +be made, and the cost will disappear altogether with the completion of +Land Purchase, say in fifteen years, but in the immediate future no +reduction can be counted on with certainty. The figure given includes +the cost of the Land Commission proper, which deals with Judicial Rents +and manages finance, as well as the cost of the Estates Commissioners +who conduct the machinery of Land Purchase. It also includes losses on +the flotation of Land Stock at a discount, and the interest and +sinking-fund on the Stock raised to pay the bonus to landlords. + +No. 10. The vote of L415,000 for the Department of Agriculture, whose +origin and functions I described in Chapter IX., does not accurately +show the actual cost of the Department, because it excludes the greater +part of an Endowment Income of L166,000 a year, derived partly from the +Irish Church Fund, partly from the Irish Local Taxation Account, and +partly from the interest on a capital endowment of L200,000, as well as +other small miscellaneous grants. But it includes a sum of about L44,000 +for some museums, colleges, gardens, etc., whose English counterparts +are subsidized under different votes, as well as the sum of L144,000 +for the Congested Districts Board.[131] Nor does this latter sum +represent the full cost of the Congested Districts Board, which has also +an Endowment Income from the Irish Church Fund of L41,250, a subsidy +from the Ireland Development Grant, and a fluctuating income from +various sources--rents, etc. + +Part of the expense of the Department itself must be regarded as +abnormal, in view of the extraordinarily backward economic condition of +the country when it was founded. Nor, valuable as the Department's work +is, can it be safely assumed that the cost is not extravagant. As long +as any Department relies on an Imperial vote there can be no certainty +that the expenditure will be economical. The whole cost of the Congested +Districts Board is abnormal. Its very existence is evidence of the +failure of external government in Ireland, and, as I urged in Chapter +IX., the whole question of the treatment of the congested districts +needs thorough investigation at the hands of a responsible Irish +Government. + + B. REDUCTIONS IN EXPENDITURE. + + 1910-11. 1891-92. + + L L +1. Relief of Distress 5,000 183,675 +2. Pauper Lunatics Grant 111,655 +3. Teachers' Pensions Grant 90,000 +4. Railways (Ireland) Grant 61,000 341,934 +5. Local Government Board 92,500 132,748 +6. Chief Secretary's Offices 27,500 39,681 +7. Registrar-General's Office 13,000 29,926 +8. Justice and Police 2,090,500 2,129,849 + --------- --------- + 2,289,500 3,059,468 + +Most of these reductions are deceptive. No. 1 is the saving of an +abnormal grant, Nos. 2 and 5 signify mere transfers to Grants in Aid of +Local Taxation, No. 7 a transfer of duties to the Department of +Agriculture. + +The table shows a total reduction of L769,968, while Table A shows a +total increase of L6,130,000. Together they account for an increase +since 1891-92 of L5,360,032. + +Here is a similar table, confined to Justice and Police: + +C. EXPENDITURE ON JUSTICE AND POLICE. + + 1910-11. 1891-92. + L L +1. Judicial Salaries ... ... ... 102,000 110,244 +2. Dublin Metropolitan Police ... 93,500 91,998 +3. Royal Irish Constabulary ... ... 1,371,000 1,362,348 +4. Judicial Pensions, etc. ... ... 15,000 18,656 +5. Law Charges ... ... ... ... 65,500 71,977 +6. Superior Courts Offices ... ... 110,500 116,851 +7. County Courts Offices ... ... 109,000 112,895 +8. Prisons, etc. ... ... ... ... 112,000 134,429 +9. Reformatories, etc. ... ... ... 112,000 110,451 + + 2,090,500 2,129,849 + +To Nos. 1, 2, and 3 I have already referred. The whole charge of two +millions, though it shows a slight decrease in twenty years, is grossly +out of proportion to the resources of Ireland. Under heads 6 and 7 are +included a number of posts which are notoriously little more than +sinecures. + +To sum up once more, the cost of the Irish Government as paid out of the +common purse in the last completed financial year was L11,344,500, or L2 +11s. 9d. per head of the population, as compared with a cost per head of +L1 9s. 2d. in England, and in Scotland of L1 13s. 31/2d. But this is not +the minimum figure with which we have to reckon in considering the Home +Rule scheme; some items show a marked increase in the Estimates of the +current year: (1) The increase in Old Age Pensions, not certain yet, +will be at least L250,000. (2) The Land Commission is L544,000, as +compared with L414,500. (3) Universities and Colleges, L186,256, as +compared with L166,000. (4) Department of Agriculture, L426,609, as +compared with L415,000. (5) Registrar-General's Office, L29,020, as +compared with L13,000. (6) Valuation and Boundary Survey, L44,581, as +compared with L30,000. (7) Public Works and Buildings in Ireland, +L273,370, as compared with L215,000. Even with allowance for +over-estimates, especially in the last of these items,[132] we must +anticipate an increase of nearly half a million under the above heads, +to which we must add L150,000 recently allocated by the Road Board to +Ireland for the year 1911-12, and L34,750 already allocated by the +Development Commissioners. If Ireland comes prematurely into the +National Insurance scheme, and assumes eventual financial responsibility +for her share of the cost, that will be an additional source of expense; +but it is to be hoped that her leaders, in common prudence, will +henceforth endeavour to stem the rising flood of Irish expenditure, and +so facilitate the retrenchments imperatively necessary under Home Rule. +As it is, the total outgoings of the current year (1911-12), swelled by +the increases shown above, will probably amount to L12,000,000, while +this total will in its turn be added to by the office costs of the Irish +Legislature and the salaries of Ministers. + +The scheme framed cannot assume immediate economies, and a responsible +Ireland alone can decide the nature and extent of the drastic economies +which must be made in the future. Beyond the brief remarks and hints +made in the course of this chapter, I myself venture only to lay down +the broad proposition that, to the last farthing, Irish revenue must +govern and limit Irish expenditure. For any hardship entailed in +achieving that aim Ireland will find superabundant compensation in the +moral independence which is the foundation of national welfare. She will +be sorely tempted to sell part of her freedom for a price. At whatever +cost, she will be wise to resist. + +If Irish revenue is to be the measure of Irish expenditure, it follows +that it must be wholly, or at any rate predominately, under Irish +control. Let us look a little more closely, therefore, into its amount +and composition. + + +III. + +IRISH REVENUE. + + +As I have already pointed out, in order to arrive at the present revenue +of Ireland, our best course is to take the mean tax revenue of the two +years 1909-10 and 1910-11, and to add to it the non-tax revenue of +1910-11, which was, of course, unaffected by the delay in passing the +Budget of 1909. For clearness, however, I first set out separately the +Irish figures of these two years, distinguishing between tax revenue and +non-tax revenue, and giving the "collected" revenue and the "true" +revenue in different columns: + + 1909-10. 1910-11. + + Revenue as Revenue as + Collected. "True." Collected. "True" + +TAX REVENUE. L L L L +Customs 2,742,000 2,755,000 3,103,000 2,977,000 +Excise 4,487,000 2,898,000 5,826,000 3,734,000 +Estate, etc., Duties 684,000 684,000 1,144,000 1,144,000 +Stamps 293,000 315,000 326,000 351,000 +Income Tax 388,000 451,000 1,825,000 2,164,000 +Land Value Duties -- -- 1,000 1,000 + +Total Irish Revenue from +Taxes 8,594,000 7,103,000 12,225,000 10,371,000 + +NON-TAX REVENUE. +Postal Service 900,000 900,000 935,000 935,000 +Telegraph Service 180,000 180,000 185,500 185,500 +Telephone Service 30,000 30,000 35,000 35,000 +Crown Lands 26,000 26,000 24,500 24,500 +Miscellaneous 116,000 116,000 114,500 114,500 + +Total Irish Non-Tax +Revenue 1,252,000 1,252,000 1,294,500 1,294,500 + +Aggregate Irish 9,846,000 8,355,000 13,519,500 11,665,500 +Revenue + +Percentage of the Aggregate +Revenue of the +United Kingdom 7.52 6.38 6.57 5.67 + +On p. 276 are the details of the mean tax revenue, "collected" and +"true," of the two years 1909-10, 1910-11, with the non-tax revenue of +the latest year, 1910-11, added to them. + +PRESENT IRISH REVENUE (MEAN OF THE LAST TWO YEARS). + + +Details of Revenue. Mean Collected Mean "True" or + Tax "Contributed" Tax + Revenue of the Revenue of the + Years 1909-10, Years 1909-10, + 1910-11. 1910-11. + + TAX REVENUE. L L +Indirect{Customs 2,922,500 2,866,000 +Taxation{Excise 5,156,500 3,316,000 + (incl. licences + L284,500) + +Total Indirect Taxation 8,079,000 6,182,000 + + {Estate Duties 914,000 914,000 +Direct Taxation{Stamps 309,500 333,000 + {Income Tax 1,106,500 1,307,500 + {Land Value Duties 1,000 1,000 + +Total Direct Taxation 2,331,000 2,555,500 + +Total Tax Revenue 10,410,000 8,737,500 + +NON TAX REVENUE (1910 11). +Postal Service 935,000 935,000 +Telegraph Service 185,500 185,500 +Telephone Service 35,000 35,000 +Crown Lands 24,000 24,500 +Miscellaneous 114,500 114,500 + +Total Non Tax Revenue (1910 11) 1,294,500 1,294,500 + + Collected "True" or + Revenue "Contributed" + at the Revenue at the + Present Day. Present Day, + +Aggregates 11,704,500 10,032,000 + +The two aggregate figures at the bottom, L11,704,500 and L10,032,000, +approximately represent the Treasury estimate of the "collected" and the +"true" revenue of Ireland, respectively, at the present day. They are +confirmed by the figures of previous years; for the average revenue of +the five years, 1904-09, was as follows: "collected," L11,320,000; +"true" or "contributed," L9,612,400, the new taxation of 1909-10 having +added L500,000 to the "true" revenue. I must again remind the reader, +however, that the figures are open to the criticism that the adjustment +between the "collected" tax revenue and the "true" revenue is inaccurate +owing to the methods employed by the Treasury. It will be observed that +the resulting net deduction from the "collected" tax revenue of to-day, +a deduction attributable, on the balance of the various figures, almost +exclusively to Excise,[133] and mainly to the Excise duty on spirits, +amounts to L1,672,500, and makes all the difference between the solvency +and insolvency of Ireland regarded as an independent financial unit. Her +expenditure, it will be remembered, was L11,344,500, her "collected" +revenue L11,704,500, leaving a surplus of L360,000, which becomes a +deficit of L1,312,500 if we reckon only the "true" or "contributed" +revenue of L10,032,000. On the other hand, the principle, as +distinguished from the methods of adjustment, is perfectly sound if we +wish to arrive at a correct idea of the financial position of Ireland. +The L1,672,500 virtually represents the duties on goods exported from +Ireland, and consumed in Great Britain, or rather the excess of these +duties over those levied on goods exported from Great Britain and +consumed in Ireland. The consumer pays the tax on dutiable commodities, +and a financially independent Ireland could not raise revenue twice over +from the same commodity. She would, for example, have to give a drawback +from the Excise duty on spirits exported to England, since a Customs +duty would be levied on its import into England. On the other hand, she +would be entitled to every penny of revenue derived from the tea and +sugar imported into and consumed within her borders, and to the full +income tax on property held by Irishmen. + +Now, for two reasons, I do not propose to make any exhaustive inquiry +into the accuracy of Treasury adjustments for "true" revenue. My first +reason is, that full material for calculation cannot be obtained by any +private individual, and could not be obtained and worked up even by the +Treasury without an enormous expenditure of time and trouble. The most +careful inquiry I have seen is embodied in an exceedingly able pamphlet +by "an Irishman," entitled "The Financial Relations of Ireland with the +Imperial Exchequer," and I mention below a few of the criticisms made by +the writer. His and other investigations seem to prove that Irish +revenue is considerably underestimated, perhaps by half a million.[134] +My second reason is that errors of adjustment in either direction cannot +affect in any substantial way the kind of financial scheme we are to +adopt in the Home Rule Bill. + +Let us fix our attention, then, on the second of the two columns in the +table on p. 276, showing the aggregate "true" revenue of Ireland at the +present day. Disregard the non-tax revenue from the various postal +services (which represents payment for services rendered, and is +swallowed up by an excess on the expenditure side of L249,000), and +examine the heads of tax revenue shown in the upper half of the column. +It will be seen that 70-75 per cent. of Irish "true" revenue is derived +from Customs and Excise duties, which, with the exception perhaps of +licence duties, may be classed as indirect taxation. The deduction for +"true" revenue, it will be observed, has considerably modified the +proportion, which for "collected" revenue works out at 77.61 per cent., +or nearly four-fifths. + +As the reader is aware, this is not a new feature in Irish finance. It +formed the basis of the Report of the Financial Relations Commission +with regard to the over-taxation of Ireland. Much the greater part of +Irish revenue, even since the abolition of protective duties and the +substitution of direct taxation, has always been derived from taxes on +articles of common consumption, the simple reason being that Ireland is +a country where there is little accumulated wealth from which to extract +direct taxation. In Great Britain, whose circumstances dictate the +finance of the United Kingdom, no less than 54.79 per cent. of the tax +revenue is derived from direct taxation, only 45.21 per cent. from +Customs and Excise.[135] + +The Irish figures show that to retain in the hands of the Imperial +Parliament the control of Irish Customs and Excise will be to retain +almost paramount control over Irish revenue; to deny Ireland the main +lever she needs for co-ordinating her expenditure and her revenue, and +for making her taxation suitable to her economic conditions. It will be +to preserve the framework of a fiscal system which the highest financial +authorities have pronounced to be unfair to Ireland, and which +incontrovertible facts show to be uneconomical both for Ireland and +Great Britain. + +Meanwhile that system has at length produced a deficit, with which I +shall deal in the next chapter. Its amount, probably exaggerated, must +necessarily remain uncertain under the present fiscal Union. One thing +alone is certain, that it will grow as long as that Union lasts. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[115] _I.e._, on the generally accepted basis of (1) assessment to death +duties, (2) assessment to income-tax. With regard to (1), in the last +report of the Inland Revenue Commissioners, the figure for the United +Kingdom was L371,808,534; for Ireland, L15,872,302, or 1/234. With +regard to (2), the figure for the United Kingdom was 1009.9 millions; +for Ireland, 39.7 millions, or 1/254. Deduct a small allowance for the +difference between resources and taxable capacity, and the result +approximately is one-twenty-fifth. + +[116] + +Total revenue (including non-tax revenue) of United + Kingdom (mean of two years. 1909-10, 1910-11) L165,147,500 +One-twenty-fifth L6,605,900 +Actual "true" revenue contributed by Ireland (mean + of two years, 1909-10, 1910-11) L10,032,000 + ----------- +"Over-taxation" L3,426,100 + +If only the tax-revenue be taken, the over-taxation amounts to +L3,109,800 (total revenue for United Kingdom, L140,680,000; +one-twenty-fifth=L5,627,200; actual Irish revenue, L8,737,000). Some +members of the Royal Commission made certain allowances for education +grants, etc., which it would be useless to parallel now. + +[117] See pp. 248-249. + +[118] See p. 259, footnote. + +[119] Treasury Return, No. 220, 1911. + +[120] A list is given at p. 10 of Return 220 (1911), and an admirable +exposition of the whole subject from the Irish standpoint will be found +in Professor Oldham's seventh published lecture on the "Public Finances +of Ireland" (1911). + +[121] The "Whisky Money" was so treated under the Finance Act of 1910. + +[122] See p. 238. + +[123] Between 1896 and 1898 the equivalent grants to Scotland and +Ireland were based on the Goschen proportion, 80, 11, 9, the English +grant being taken as standard. Scotch grants are now determined by +special legislation. + +[124] See Chapter XIV. + +[125] Only part of the Dublin Metropolitan Police is paid out of State +Funds, the rest by the City of Dublin. + +[126] The relative figures were: Ireland, L2,408,000; Scotland, +L1,064,000; England, L6,325,500. The recent removal of the +disqualification for Poor Law Relief adds considerably to these amounts. + +[127] In the poorest parts of Ireland they range as low as 9s. + +[128] See pp. 174-176. In 1908, England and Wales spent L21,987,004 on +elementary education, and raised L10,467,804 for it in rates. Of the +rest, L11,104,305 came from Parliamentary grants. Fees and endowment +incomes of voluntary schools are not included (Statistical Abstract of +United Kingdom, 1910). + +The actual Parliamentary Votes, as they appear in the accounts for +1910-11, are: England (Class IV.), "Board of Education," L14,166,500; +Scotland, "Public Education," L2,250,000; Ireland, "Public Education," +L1,632,000. But the English Votes include sums devoted to technical +education, museums, etc., whose counterparts in Ireland come under other +departments. + +[129] Two years earlier than the date I have chiefly used for the +purposes of comparison, but the difference is not material. In point of +fact, the expenditure was L300,000 less in the later than in the earlier +year. + +[130] (1) Rates on Government Buildings; (2) Superannuation; (3) +Government Printing; (4) Board of Works; (5) Home Office. + +[131] Department of Agriculture, Endowment Fund: + + { (1) Local Taxation Account L78,000 + Income from --{ (2) Irish Church Fund L70,000 + (3) Interest on Capital sum of L200,000. + + Also (in 1909-10): + From Ireland Development Fund L7,000 + Under an Act of 1902 L5,000 + + + +[132] The amount _voted_ for Public Works in 1910-11 was L259,848 [see +"Civil Service Estimates" for 1911-12 (No. 63--1911)]; the amount +_spent_, according to Return No. 220, L215,000. + +[133] Under the heads of Excise, the principal deduction is in Spirits +(L1,793,000 in 1910-11) and Beer (L309,000 in 1910-11). + +The items of Irish tax revenue in which the Treasury make _no_ +adjustment are: Excise Licenses (L356,000 in 1910-11); Club Duty (L2,000 +in 1910-11); "other items" (L10,000 in 1910-11); Cards and Patent +Medicines (L10,000 in 1910-11); "Estate, etc., Duties" (L1,144,000 in +1910-11); Income Tax (Schedules A and B) (L694,000 in +1910-11--abnormally large figure owing to non-collection in previous +year); Land Value Duties (L1,000 in 1910-11). + +All the heads of Customs revenue are subject to adjustment, though the +total result is only a small deduction from Ireland (L126,000 in +1910-11). In all but two the adjustment is in favour of Ireland. The two +exceptions are "Foreign Spirits," where a deduction of L25,000 is made +in 1910-11, and Tobacco, where a deduction of L620,000 is made in +1910-11. + +[134] _Income Tax_, Schedules C and D (dividends from Government Stocks, +public companies, foreign dividends, etc.). The Treasury estimate (as +stated in a side-note to the Return) is based on statistics of _Estate +Duty_ for the five years ending 1908. But what light can Estate Duty +throw on (for example) the dividends collected at the source from +British or foreign securities held by Irish banks? Schedule C deals with +"Government Stocks, etc.," Schedule D with "Public Companies, Foreign +Dividends, etc.," but in the adjustment for "true" revenue no +distinction is made between them. Now the Banking Statistics (Ireland) +of 1910 show that dividends were payable at the Bank of Ireland on +L38,732,000 of Government securities, and that, in addition, a debt +bearing interest was due to the Bank from the Government of 21/2 millions. +Income Tax on these items alone would be L65,000, less rebates; but the +whole of Schedule C, which includes Foreign and Colonial Government +Stocks, is given in 1909-10 as only L30,000. + +No attempt is made to credit Ireland with a share of the profits made by +English and Scottish companies through business done in Ireland. + +The only reliable items in Income Tax are those of A and B (Land, +Houses, and Occupation of Land), where in 1908-09 Ireland contributed +about 6 per cent. of the total; under other heads, according to the +Treasury, only 3.5 per cent. The writer estimates the true contribution +as several hundred thousand pounds more. + +_Post Office_.--The Treasury give no clue as to how they calculate the +profit and loss on Postal Services. Figures of letters, telegrams, +parcels, etc., delivered in Ireland are known from the +Postmaster-General's report, but the report does not distinguish Irish +from English postal orders, of which 1211/2 millions were issued in the +United Kingdom in 1909-10. There is good reason to believe that a part +of the postal profit now wholly credited to England should in reality be +credited to Ireland. + +_Stamps_.--Far too little allowance is made by the Treasury for stamps +on transfers executed through English and Scottish exchanges for shares +bought or sold by Irishmen, and for bonds, deeds, insurances, issues of +capital, etc. + +_Tea and Sugar_.--The Treasury base their calculation "on quantities +inter-changed between Great Britain and Ireland in 1903-04," and I learn +from the Inland Revenue Department that by this means the consumption +per head of the population was arrived at, and that the present official +figures are based on the assumption that the relation of consumption per +head in Ireland to consumption per head in the United Kingdom as a whole +has not altered since 1903-04. The unreliability of this assumption is +manifest. It is probable that the heavy additional duty on spirits has +raised the consumption of tea in Ireland more than in Great Britain, and +the figures of Imports compiled by the Department of Agriculture seem to +confirm this view. + +[135] On the basis of the mean revenue of 1909-10 and 1910-11. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE + + +I. + +THE ESSENCE OF HOME RULE. + + +Let us now sum up this financial question, and give its place in the +general problem of Home Rule. In Chapter X. I argued that, on broad +grounds of political policy, Ireland, in her own interest, and in the +general interest of the United Kingdom, should have "Colonial" Home Rule +without representation in the Imperial Parliament. Leaving finance +temporarily aside, while observing that any substantial Imperial control +over Irish finance would defeat the "colonial" solution of the problem, +I endeavoured to show that there were no tenable grounds of a +non-financial character for retaining Irish Members at Westminster, nor +any dangers to be feared from excluding them. I have now reviewed the +history of Anglo-Irish finance up to the present day, and I hope in so +doing to have proved that, so far from presenting an obstacle to +"Colonial" Home Rule, the financial conditions demand such a solution. +Finance and policy are inseparably one. All the considerations which +render Home Rule desirable lead irresistibly to the financial +independence of Ireland, with complete control assigned to her over all +branches of taxation. Without financial independence it is impossible to +realize the objects of Home Rule. It would be a miracle were the case +otherwise. Ireland would, indeed, be abnormal if, after her history, she +could reach prosperity and stability without passing through a phase of +financial independence. No parallel, even in the most distant degree, +could be found for any such metamorphosis in the whole of the British +Empire. + +If we study Ireland's interest, we shall promote Imperial interests. The +main object of Home Rule is to make Ireland self-reliant. Lord Welby and +his colleagues were right in 1896 when they declared that ideal to be +impracticable without giving Ireland entire responsibility both for her +revenue and her expenditure. This declaration is as true as ever. The +situation has changed only in one respect: that financial independence +will now mean a financial sacrifice to Ireland, whereas in 1896 it would +have meant a financial gain to Ireland--that is, if Lord Welby's +recommendation in favour of remitting the Irish contribution to Imperial +services had been carried out. At that time Ireland contributed two +millions. Now Great Britain contributes over a million to Ireland. +Sooner or later that subsidy must stop, and the sooner it stops the +better. + +But it is of vital importance that Ireland should understand the +situation. The present position is dangerous, because the Irish people +at large are ignorant of the facts, and their leaders are taking no +steps to enlighten them. The reasons are intelligible, but they are not +sound reasons. Paced with the facts and the choice, Ireland would not +hesitate, but she must know the facts and understand the nature of the +choice. + + +II. + +THE DEFICIT. + + +Let us deal at once with the question of the deficit. It is +inconceivable surely that the existence of a deficit should be used as +an argument against financial independence, much less as an argument +against Home Rule in general. Will anyone be found to say that an island +with a fertile soil, several nourishing industries, and a clever +population of four and a half millions, is to be regarded, whatever its +past history, as incapable of supporting a Government of its own out of +its own resources? Let nobody be tempted by the fallacy that, given +time, Ireland will regain financial stability under the fiscal Union, +and at a later stage, perhaps, be more fitted to bear the burden of +fiscal independence. The supposition is chimerical. The present system, +besides being radically vicious in a purely scientific sense, undermines +the moral power of Ireland to secure her own regeneration. + +It is now 1911. The deficit, once a large surplus, came into being only +two years ago. It was the direct and inevitable result of a fiscal Union +against which Ireland has for generations unceasingly protested, and it +was a result actually foretold in 1896 by Lord Welby and his two +colleagues. It could have been averted, as they pointed out, only by a +form of Home Rule giving financial independence to Ireland. But the +warning was older than the Report of the Financial Relations Commission. +Mr. Gladstone told the House of Commons in 1886, when introducing his +Home Rule Bill, that no limit could be set to Irish expenditure under +the Union; he and Sir William Harcourt repeated the warning in 1893, and +if the reader will study the debates on the financial clauses of the +Bill of 1893,[136] he will find pages of bitter diatribe founded on the +small net contribution from Ireland to Imperial services for which the +revised financial scheme provided. Ireland, said the Opposition, was to +make money out of Great Britain, and escape her fair proportion of +Imperial charges. Mr. Chamberlain showed that, with allowance for +payment from the Imperial purse of part of the cost of Irish police, the +net initial contribution was about one-fortieth, and asked: "Is Irish +patriotism a plant of such sickly growth that it has to be watered with +British gold?" The taunt was as pointless as it was cruel, for although +the Union had kept Ireland poor, Irish leaders, in spite of that +poverty, had asked for a financial independence which Mr. Gladstone in +neither of his Bills felt disposed to give her. Mr. Chamberlain had his +way; the Union was maintained, and as a result Ireland's actual +contribution of two millions at that date has been replaced by a subsidy +from Great Britain. Are we to be told now by Unionists that the Union +must be maintained in order to maintain this subsidy? or by Home Rulers +that the Irish deficit is an argument for the perpetuation of the +financial dependence which caused it, and an insuperable bar to the +financial independence which alone can extinguish it? + +No; let us look the facts in the face. Here is a deficit officially +given as L1,312,000. It is probably less, owing to an underestimate of +Irish revenue. But it may grow to be more, even with allowance for an +automatic growth of revenue, owing to the increased votes of the present +year, and the expenses peculiar to the establishment of the new Irish +Legislature and Government. What her really healthy and normal revenue +should be only Ireland herself can discover in the future. What her +right expenditure should be she alone can determine. We can only work +upon the data we have before us. Economy cannot be instantaneous, either +in Ireland or anywhere else. Assume, then, an initial deficit in the +Irish balance-sheet on the basis of present taxation. Its exact size +cannot affect the manner of dealing with it. How are we to deal with it? + +Let us dismiss at once the theory of "restitution" with the earnest hope +that we shall hear nothing of it in the coming controversy. No Irishman +will argue that a subsidy to the extent of, or exceeding the deficit, is +a good thing in itself, and should be large and lasting because it will +represent compensation for money unfairly exacted in the past. It is, +indeed, true that the Union impoverished Ireland, but the most grievous +wrong was moral, and for that wrong alone is reparation possible. Home +Rule is not worth fighting for if it has not as its end and aim a +self-reliant and self-supporting Ireland. Nor does it improve the +argument in the least to represent the subsidy as productive expenditure +for the purpose of raising Ireland's taxable capacity and improving her +economic position. No money raised outside of Ireland will have that +effect. Once admit the principle of restitution, and where are you to +stop? What rational or scientific limit can be set to it? More pertinent +question still, what are the conditions which will inevitably be imposed +in exchange? Ireland cannot have it both ways. She must either hold out +for financial independence or, for every financial boon, submit to a +corresponding deduction from her political liberty. + +If there were no alternative between financial independence without a +farthing of temporary aid, and permanent financial dependence with a +permanent loss of liberty, it would pay Ireland a thousandfold in the +future to choose the former scheme, remodel taxation promptly to meet +the initial deficit, and with equal promptitude set on foot such a +drastic reduction of expenditure as would ensure the rapid attainment of +a proper financial equilibrium. When once the Irish realized the issue, +they would accept the responsibility with all its attendant sacrifices, +which would no doubt be severe. + +But there is an alternative, and that is to make good the initial +deficit, whatever the financial authorities finally pronounce it to be, +with an initial subsidy of equal size, or perhaps of somewhat greater +size so as to admit of a small initial surplus, _but destined to +diminish by stated amounts, and within a few years to terminate_. To +such assistance, given unconditionally, Ireland has an unanswerable +claim, and to such assistance she ought, in my opinion, to limit her +claim. Until two years ago she contributed uninterruptedly, and +sometimes excessively, to the support of the Empire. With men and money +she has made efforts for the common weal which no self-governing Colony +has made, though she has been treated, politically and financially, as +not even a Crown Colony has been treated. Just at the point where the +self-governing Colonies, thanks to the liberty allowed them, are +beginning to contribute indirectly to the defence of the Empire, +Ireland, as the ultimate result of a century of coercive government, +ceases to contribute. She can claim honourably, if she wills, to be +placed, by temporary financial aid from the authority which is +responsible for her undoing, in the financial position of a +self-governing Colony. + +From the British point of view it is difficult to see any valid +objection to the course suggested. There will be no stinginess in the +settlement. Even if there were any disposition in that direction, it +would be idle to grudge the initial subsidy, because an equivalent sum +is already being paid. The Union will infallibly continue to accentuate +the deficit and increase the resulting burden on the taxpayers of Great +Britain. The plan proposed would eventually remove that burden. But, +obviously, its success hinges on the concession of full financial powers +to an Ireland unrepresented at Westminster. In their own interests, if +not for very shame, Englishmen should decline to make use of the old +adage, that "he who pays the piper should call the tune." For more than +a century Ireland paid the piper and England called the tune--and what a +tune, and with what results! Representation has nothing to do with the +case. Precedents are needless, but there are, as a fact, many. Crown +Colonies have frequently received free grants for the relief of +distress--Jamaica and other West Indian islands, for example. The +Transvaal and Orange River Colony received several millions after the +war to enable the ruined farmers to start business on a footing of +solvency. During the whole period of their adolescence, and, indeed, +until quite a recent date, all the self-governing Colonies were +virtually subsidized by the allocation of British forces for local +defence, maintained at the Imperial charge. And Ireland paid her share +of this charge. Similar garrisons were, are, and will be, maintained in +Ireland. Yes, but Ireland contributed to their cost, and in course of +time will, it is to be hoped, resume her contributions with a gladder +heart and a freer conscience than ever before. + +Canada was economically stagnant under coercion. If, in her case, we had +carried coercion as far as we carried it in Ireland, it would have been +necessary to give her a temporary subsidy in order to enable her to +assume the position of a self-governing Colony. Ireland's proximity does +not alter economic laws. "Facts are stubborn things," and these are the +Irish facts. Duty apart, no more profitable investment could possibly be +made by the British tax-payer than a subsidy designed to enable Ireland +to stand on her legs again. The present tribute to her is a dead loss. + +The subsidy, if given, ought, I submit, on no account to be earmarked, +on the bad precedent set by the Bills of 1886 and 1893,[137] for any +particular head of expenditure in Ireland, as for Police, Pensions, Land +Commission, or Education. As I have shown previously, nothing is easier +than to pick out items of excessive expenditure, or of +under-expenditure, for which Ireland is not herself responsible. But to +allocate a grant specially to any of these purposes would be superfluous +unless the intention were to maintain Imperial control over the service +in question. As I urged in Chapter X., none of the services mentioned +above ought to be retained under Imperial control. Extravagance in the +first three will not be properly checked, save by a responsible Ireland. +Nor will extra money on Education be properly spent until it is raised +and spent by Ireland. There are no other services, with the possible +exception of Posts, to which a subsidy could possibly be applicable. +Even in that case an earmarked subsidy would be out of place. But Posts +are outside the point we are discussing. If for mutual convenience they +were to be kept under Imperial control--a step which would not render +imperative Irish representation at Westminster--their finance would +remain, as at present, common to the whole United Kingdom. There is +officially held, on bad evidence, to be a loss on Irish Posts of +L249,000, and this loss is debited against Ireland, and goes to swell +the deficit we have been considering. With the Posts under Imperial +control, the initial deficit to be made good by subsidy would be reduced +by the amount of the loss. Should it, however, be decided that Ireland +is fairly entitled to a share of the large general profit earned by the +Postal Services of the United Kingdom, the annual profit so attributable +to Ireland would be set off against the annual subsidy as long as the +subsidy lasted, and after it was at an end would be a clear item of +revenue to Ireland. My own opinion, as I stated in Chapter X., is that +the Irish postal system, whether standing by itself it shows a profit or +a loss, ought to be under Irish control. + + +III. + +FUTURE CONTRIBUTION TO IMPERIAL SERVICES. + + +This must be left a voluntary matter for Ireland, as it is for the +self-governing Colonies. There is no contribution from Ireland at +present, and to fix a future date at which a fixed contribution, like +that from the Isle of Man, should begin, is a course hardly practicable +even if it were desirable. + + +IV. + +IRELAND'S SHARE OF THE NATIONAL DEBT. + + +Until two years ago Ireland, of course, contributed, _inter alia_, to +the annual interest and sinking fund, amounting in 1910-11 to +L24,554,000, on the National Debt of the United Kingdom. It is +impossible to estimate her share of the capital of the Debt, and I +scarcely think that anyone would seriously propose to encumber the new +Ireland with an old Debt, based on some arbitrary estimate. For the +great bulk of Debt created in the past she has little moral +responsibility--no more, at any rate, than the self-governing Colonies. +In this respect she must begin, like them, with a clean sheet. + + +V. + +IRELAND'S SHARE OF IMPERIAL MISCELLANEOUS REVENUE. + + +On the other hand, Ireland, in consideration of the remissions +mentioned, must renounce the share to which she is technically entitled +of the Imperial Miscellaneous Revenue, derived mainly from Suez Canal +shares and the Mint, and amounting altogether in 1910-11 to +L2,769,500.[138] + + +VI. + +IRISH CONTROL OF CUSTOMS AND EXCISE. + + +Let us now come to close quarters with this important issue. The grand +argument on the affirmative side is that the products of these duties +represent nearly four-fifths of the tax revenue collected in Ireland. +What are the objections? + +We need scarcely consider the general objection, sometimes made +ostensibly in the interests of Ireland, that her public men have little +financial experience. The fact is true, and it is not their fault. But +the financial scheme cannot reasonably be based on a recognition of a +temporary lack of experience. + +I place Customs and Excise together because I believe there is no +serious question of making a distinction between the two, and of +allowing Ireland to levy and collect her own Excise duties, while +denying her authority over Customs. It is true that until 1860 such a +distinction was made, and a lower Excise duty levied upon Irish than +upon British spirits;[139] but the tendency in all modern States is to +make the authority over Customs the same as that over Excise, and any +departure from that principle, in the case of modern Ireland, is likely +to cause considerable inconvenience. License Duties, which are included +under the head of Excise, may, no doubt, without much inconvenience, be +differentiated from the rest, but their Irish proceeds (L284,000) are +too small to influence the question. + +Excise, then, follows Customs. What are the objections to giving +Ireland, like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, control over her +own Customs? Without doubt, the establishment of a new Customs barrier +between Ireland and Great Britain is in itself a drawback. The +Custom-house machinery exists, of course, at present, because Ireland is +an island; nor would the additional function of checking British as well +as foreign imports into Ireland cause any great increase of expense; but +since the great bulk of Irish external trade is with Great Britain, +there will unquestionably be a certain amount of inconvenience and +expense both to Ireland and Great Britain in submitting merchandise on +both sides of the Irish Channel to the passage of a Customs barrier. + +That seems to be the limit to which criticism can justly go in the case +of Ireland and Great Britain. That is as far as it goes in the analogous +case of New Zealand and the Australian Commonwealth, where a small +island State has a separate Customs system from that of a large, +wealthy, and populous neighbour of the same race, and with many +identical interests. That is as far as it goes in the parallel case of +little Newfoundland and the great Dominion of Canada. Neither the +Dominion nor the Commonwealth claim that proximity, power, and racial +identity give them the right to control the trade and taxation of their +small independent neighbours, nor does the smallest friction result from +the mutual independence. On the contrary, both the Dominions and the +Commonwealth were founded on that vital principle of a pre-existent +State independence surrendered voluntarily for larger ends. The whole +Empire depends on the principle of local autonomy, and, above all, on +the principle of local financial autonomy. Endeavours in America to +sustain the opposite theory led to disaster. We have for generations +regarded it as perfectly natural that the self-governing Colonies should +have Customs systems of their own, even when they are used for the +purpose of imposing heavy duties on goods coming from the Mother +Country, and we know that that liberty has borne fruit a hundredfold in +affection and loyalty to the Imperial Government. Until the Union of +Great Britain and Ireland it was regarded as equally natural that +Ireland should have control of her own Customs, along with all other +branches of revenue. Even after the Union, although there was no Irish +control over anything Irish, it was recognized, until the fiscal +unification of the two countries in 1817, that Irish conditions required +a separate Customs system, which, in fact, existed until 1826.[140] How +fiscal unification and the subsequent abolition of separate Customs was +brought about I have told in Chapter XI. It is not a pleasant story. To +say the least, the conditions, moral and material, were not such as to +warrant the inference that there is any inherent necessity for joint +Customs between Ireland and Great Britain. The presumption raised by all +subsequent events is in the opposite direction. + +But the tradition of unified Customs, now nearly a century old, has +immense potency, and unless it is fearlessly scrutinized and challenged, +may be able, reinforced by the passions excited by the great controversy +over Free Trade and Protection, to defy the warnings writ large upon the +page of history. The tradition must be so challenged. Say what we will +about the proximity of Ireland and Great Britain, descant as we will in +law-books, pamphlets, leading articles, debates, on what ought +theoretically to be the fiscal relations of the two countries, we cannot +escape from the fact that, in this as in so many other respects, both +the human and economic problem before us is fundamentally a colonial +problem, and that its being so is not the fault of Ireland, but of Great +Britain. + +Belief in Home Rule seems to me necessarily to involve a willingness to +give Ireland her Customs. Great Britain has no moral right to lay it +down that her views about trade shall govern the course of Irish policy; +and if Great Britain believes sincerely in Home Rule, she should be +willing to trust Ireland, regardless of the economic consequences, and +regardless of the effect upon the great Tariff controversy. + +The effect upon that controversy I shall not discuss. It seems to me to +possess only a tactical and electioneering interest, and that side of +the Home Rule problem I have rigidly avoided, while expressing in +general terms my belief that sound policy and sound tactics in reality +coincide. The Home Rule Bill is far more likely to be wrecked by +timidity than by boldness, by precautions and compromises than by a +fearless accommodation of British policy to Irish facts and needs. + +As to the danger to Great Britain of separate Irish Customs, it seems +to me to be greatly exaggerated. Ireland's own interests will primarily +dictate her action. What she will decide her interest to be, nobody can +foretell with certainty beyond a limited point, because Irish public +opinion is not formed. Ireland has taken little or no part in the fiscal +controversy, for the simple reason that she has been absorbed in the +task of getting Home Rule, and until she gets it she is precluded from +formulating a trustworthy national opinion on most of the great subjects +which agitate modern societies. There is, however, no tradition in +favour of high Protection, even from Grattan's commercially free +Parliament. The question of a low protective or purely revenue tariff on +imports has not received any serious investigation. Let us frankly admit +at the outset that no country in the world, economically situated as +Ireland is, dispenses with a general tariff of some sort, and +undoubtedly there are to-day a good many Irishmen outside political life +who advocate the encouragement of infant Irish manufacturing industries +by sufficient protective duties directed against Great Britain as well +as against the outside world. It would be strange if there were not, in +view of the distressing past history of Ireland's throttled industries, +and in view of the strenuous efforts now being made by the Development +Associations to push the manufacture and sale of Irish goods in all +parts of the world. There are many avowed Free Traders also; nor are the +Development Associations themselves officially protectionist. The +opinion is sometimes expressed that Ireland, which could easily be +self-supporting in the matter of food, occupies an unhealthy position in +exporting a large proportion of her own agricultural produce, butter, +bacon, meat, etc., and in importing for her own consumption inferior +British and foreign qualities of some of the principal foodstuffs; but, +so far as it is possible to ascertain it, the predominant opinion seems +to be that an agricultural tariff would not be a good remedy for this +weakness, if it be one, and that Ireland's future development, like that +of Denmark, lies in the increasingly scientific organization of her +agricultural industries, and in the better cultivation of her own soil. +"Better farming, better business, better living," to use the admirable +motto invented by Sir Horace Plunkett for the I.A.O.S. In the absence of +an Irish Legislature, no special importance can be attached to +individual expressions of opinion. Yet a measure of prophecy is +permissible. The Irish Legislature will have to study the national +interest, and it is possible to say with certainty at least this--that +Ireland's interest lies in maintaining close and friendly trade +relations with Great Britain. Unfortunately, we have no means of +accurately ascertaining the amount of trade done by Ireland with Great +Britain and with foreign and colonial countries respectively. Irish +commerce takes, of course, three forms: _(a)_ Direct trade with +countries outside Great Britain; _(b)_ indirect trade with these +countries via Great Britain; _(c)_ direct local trade with Great +Britain. The statisticians of the Irish Department of Agriculture make +only an imperfect attempt to distinguish between these classes, but +their figures, so far as they go, prove beyond question that the great +bulk of Irish external commerce belongs to Class _(c)_--local trade with +Great Britain. The total value of Irish trade in 1909 is estimated at +L125,675,847, of which L63,947,155 was for imports, L61,728,692 for +exports. Probably 80 per cent., at least, of this trade was strictly +local. Certainly Great Britain is the market for very nearly the whole +of Irish agricultural produce, and for most of her exports of linen, +ships, tobacco, liquor, etc. Any aggressive action likely to provoke a +tariff war would be ruinous to Ireland, while it would hurt Great +Britain far less in proportion. But, in fact, both countries would +suffer, Great Britain from the loss of an easily accessible food-supply +of extraordinary value, not only for economic, but for strategical +reasons; Ireland from the loss of an excellent and indispensable +customer. + +On the other hand, whatever Ireland's trade policy may be, she certainly +needs the power of fixing her own duties upon commodities like tea and +sugar, which are of foreign origin, and are now merely transported to +her through British ports. Taxation of this sort is a matter of the +deepest concern to a country where agricultural wages average only +eleven shillings a week, and which cannot reduce its exorbitant Old Age +Pensions Bill without giving some compensatory relief to the classes +concerned. Tobacco, of which in its manufactured forms Ireland is a +considerable producer as well as a large consumer, belongs to the same +category. Liquor is an important article of production in Ireland, as +well as of consumption, and the Irish Legislature ought to be able to +form and carry out its own liquor policy. Ireland is just as able and +willing to promote temperance as Great Britain, and just as competent to +reconcile a temperance policy with due regard to producing and +distributing interests. + +The Customs tariff is an Irish question, not an Ulster question. The +interests of the Protestant farmers of North-East Ulster are identical +with those of the rest of Ireland, and obviously it will be a matter of +the profoundest importance for Ireland as a whole to safeguard the +interests of the shipbuilding and linen industries in the North in +whatever way may seem best. The Industrial Development Associations, +which are affiliated in a national organization, and are far above petty +sectarian jealousies, may be trusted to see that Ireland steers a safe +financial course in her trade policy. + +If there is little or no danger that a Home-Ruled Ireland will commit +tariff follies of her own, she has unquestionably a right to escape from +further entanglement in the tariff policy of Great Britain. What may be +the issue of Great Britain's great fiscal controversy nobody can +foretell. But as long as a protective tariff remains the cardinal point +in the constructive policy of one of the British parties, there is a +strong likelihood of such a tariff, which would be uniform for the whole +United Kingdom, being carried into law. Free Traders, like myself, may +deplore the possibility, but we cannot shut our eyes to it. That tariff, +if and when it is framed, will, like the Free Trade tariff of the past, +be framed without regard to Irish interests, which are predominantly +agricultural, and with exclusive regard to British interests, which are +mainly industrial. Whatever may have been the original ideal of the +Conservative Protectionists, however highly they may once have valued +the protection of agriculture, irresistible political forces have driven +them in the direction of a tariff framed mainly to secure the adhesion +of the great manufacturing towns. The electoral power of these towns, +the growing resentment of the working classes in most parts of the world +at the increasing cost of living, the fact that Great Britain cannot +under any conceivable circumstances feed her own population, have been +reflected in the definite abandonment by the party leaders of the +proposed small duty against colonial imports, and in the admission by +Mr. Bonar Law at Manchester, during the last General Election, that the +proposed tariff would not benefit the farmers. Nor will the failure of +the Reciprocity Agreement between Canada and the United States +appreciably diminish the obstacles to food-taxes in the United Kingdom. +Any practicable protective tariff, therefore, on the ground of its +injustice to Ireland, would cause strong and legitimate resentment in +that country, which is subjected to the most formidable competition from +foreign and colonial foodstuffs, but whose great competition in +manufactured goods is Great Britain herself. The one Irish industry +which might favour it is the linen industry of the North. It would have +no attraction for the shipbuilding industry, which in no part of the +British Isles has anything to gain by Protection, as I believe all +parties to the controversy agree. Other small manufacturing industries +would complain that they gained nothing; while the agricultural +population would complain that, as consumers, they would be damaged by +higher prices for clothing and other manufactured articles, while as +producers they were ignored. + +The difficulty is only one further proof of the dissimilarity of +economic conditions between Great Britain and Ireland, and of the +artificial and unnatural character of the present fiscal union. Justice +to Ireland demands its dissolution. The dangers are imaginary. Liberals, +however firm their belief in Free Trade, should hold, with Lord Welby +and his Home Rule colleagues on the Financial Relations Commission, that +"even if Ireland initiates a protective policy, in this case, as in that +of the Colonies, freedom is a greater good than Free Trade." As for the +Protectionists, I have never seen an argument from that source, and I do +not see how any consistent or plausible argument could possibly be +framed, to show that a uniform tariff for the United Kingdom could be +fair to Ireland. Professor Hewins, the leading Tariff Reform economist, +virtually acknowledges the impossibility in his Introduction to Miss +Murray's "Commercial Relations between England and Ireland." There were +two sound lines of policy, he points out, which might have been adopted +towards Ireland in the period prior to the Union: (1)To have placed her +on a level of equality with the Colonies, applying the mercantile +system indiscriminately and impartially to the Colonies and to her; or +(2) to have aimed from the first at the financial and commercial unity +of the British Isles. Neither of these courses was taken. Ireland, while +kept financially and commercially separate, "was in a less favourable +position than that of a Colony." With regard to the present, "Most of +the difficulties of an economic character," says the Professor, "in the +financial relations between England and Ireland, arise from the +differences of economic structure and organization between the two +countries. If Ireland were a highly organized, populous, manufacturing +country, the present fiscal system would probably work out no worse than +it does in the urban districts of Great Britain. But whatever be the +virtues or demerits of that system, it was certainly not framed with any +reference to the economic conditions which prevail in Ireland." We wait +for the seemingly unavoidable political inference, but in vain. +Professor Hewins is a Unionist. "A 'national' policy for Ireland ... is +never likely to be possible." Well, that is plain speaking, and the more +plainly these things are said the better. Let Unionists, if they will, +tell Ireland frankly that she must eternally suffer for the Union, but +let them not pretend, as they do pretend, that Ireland profits by the +Union. + + +VII. + +FEDERAL FINANCE. + + +Directly we leave the simple path of financial independence, and +endeavour to construct schemes which on the one hand disguise the +financial difficulties of Ireland, and on the other provide for Imperial +control of Irish Customs and Excise, we involve ourselves in a tangle of +difficulties. A brief examination of these schemes will throw into still +stronger relief the merits of the simpler solution. + +First of all, let us dispose finally of the Federal analogy. In Chapter +X. I showed that the framework of Home Rule cannot be Federal, because +the conditions of Federation do not exist in the United Kingdom. One of +the invariable features of a Federation is the Federal control of +Customs and Excise, but I pointed out that an equally invariable +condition precedent to Federation was the willingness on the part of a +self-supporting State, previously possessing complete financial +independence, to abandon its individual control over this realm of +taxation to a Federal Government of its own choosing,[141] and that no +such condition existed in the case of Ireland. But some features of +Federal finance undoubtedly may be made to show a superficial analogy to +Anglo-Irish conditions, and may therefore have an attraction for those +who shrink from giving Ireland financial independence. In the first +place, it is possible to find Federal precedents for the payment out of +the common purse of certain large items of Irish expenditure. There is +no precedent for the payment of Police, but Old Age Pensions, for +example, are paid in Australia by the Commonwealth, not by the States. +The chief point of interest, however, is the mechanism of Federal +finance. The Australian and Canadian Federations are the only two which +suggest even a remote parallel. There the subordinate States are +actually "subsidized" by regular annual payments out of Federal +revenues, mainly derived from Customs and Excise, and in the case of +Australia, as I observed at p. 245, the process at present entails an +elaborate system of bookkeeping to distinguish between the "collected" +and "true" revenue of the several States, similar in kind to the +calculations now made by the Treasury for ascertaining the "collected" +and "true" revenue derived from Ireland, Scotland, and England.[142] + +In Australia this system of bookkeeping is discredited, although the +recent attempt by a Commonwealth Referendum to abolish both it and the +financial system of which it forms a part just failed. It is to be hoped +that, whatever financial scheme is adopted for Ireland, this bad +colonial precedent, together with the precedent of the Home Rule Bill of +1893, will not be made pretexts for perpetuating a system whose defects +are so glaring, and which is a source of continual dissatisfaction to +Ireland. If Irish Customs and Excise are to be outside Irish control, +while their proceeds are to be credited to Ireland, let her whole +collected revenue from those sources be credited to her, in spite of the +excessive allocation that step would involve. + +Apart from this point of similarity in mechanism, the Australian and +Canadian subsidies to the States and Provinces respectively are of no +value as models for a Home Rule Bill. Let us examine the case of +Australia. There the Commonwealth, besides having exclusive control of +Customs and Excise, has general powers of taxation concurrently with the +States, though in practice Commonwealth taxation is almost entirely +confined to Customs and Excise. All surplus Commonwealth revenue is, by +the present law, returnable to the States, and the total annual amount +so returned must not be less than three-fourths of the total proceeds of +Customs and Excise; so large are these proceeds, and so small, +relatively, the expenses of the Commonwealth Government.[143] Here at +the outset is a feature which places Australian Federal Finance in an +altogether different category to that of the United Kingdom, where only +47.6 per cent, of the revenue is from Customs and Excise. Nor are the +distributions of surplus revenue to the States really "subsidies," even +in the case of the poorest States, but repayments, on a method laid down +in the Constitution, of that part of the State contribution to Federal +services which the Federal Government does not want. Here the system of +bookkeeping is of some service to us, because it reveals, approximately, +at any rate, both the contribution and the actual repayment, which is +based on a calculation of the amount saved to the State by the +transference of certain departments to the Federal Government, set off +by a _per capita_ charge for new Federal expenditure, as, for example, +for Old Age Pensions (see Table on p. 297). + +The great bulk of the tax revenue shown comes, as I have said, from +Customs and Excise, and it is unnecessary to set out the respective +figures of revenue derived from these duties.[144] It will be seen, +after deducting repayments from contributions, that even the poorest +States make a substantial net contribution to Federal purposes. On the +other hand, the relative proportion of revenue contributed by Western +Australia and Tasmania is diminishing. In Western Australia it was 12-49 +per cent. of the whole in 1905, 8-13 per cent. of the whole in 1909. In +the same period, not only relatively, but actually, the gross +contribution of Western Australia has diminished from L1,431,624 in 1905 +to L1,166,126 in 1909, while the repayment to her has also diminished +from L1,031,223 in 1905 to L627,933. Tasmania's repayment is also +diminishing, though her gross contribution has increased. These +circumstances suggest a slight resemblance to the growing disproportion +between the resources of Ireland and Great Britain, but they do not +assist us towards a solution of the Irish problem. Each Australian +State, while contributing the whole of its Customs and Excise to the +Federal Government, receives back at least half, and in some cases +two-thirds,[146] and adds that sum to its own independent revenue for +the maintenance of the State Government. The sum refunded amounts on +the average to a little below a quarter of the total State revenue--to +be accurate, 23.01 per cent. Of the remaining 76.99 per cent., only 10 +per cent, on the average is derived from direct taxation; 10.10 per cent +from public lands, 4.15 per cent, from miscellaneous services, and no +less than 52.55 per cent, from Public Works--railways, tramways, +harbours, etc. + +CONTRIBUTIONS OF, AND REPAYMENTS TO, THE STATES OF THE AUSTRALIAN +COMMONWEALTH, 1908-09.[145] + +----------------------------------------------------------- + Contributions to Repayments from + Revenue. Commonwealth. +----------------------------------------------------------- + L L +New South Wales 5,621,958 3,326,276 +Victoria 3,750,161 1,987,435 +Queensland 1,989,540 1,027,047 +South Australia 1,307,621 716,957 +Western Australia 1,166,126 627,938 +Tasmania 515,387 244,747 + ------------------------------- + Total Common- Total + wealth Revenue. Repayments. + -------------------------------- + 14,350,793 7,930,395 +----------------------------------------------------------- + +Here are the details of revenue for 1908-1909 in the richest and the +poorest State, respectively: + +Particulars. New South Wales. Tasmania. + L L +Refunded by the Commonwealth 3,377,213 232,342 +Taxation (direct) 907,249 250,835 +Public Works and Services 7,309,062 329,192 +Land 1,778,002 96,519 +Miscellaneous 274,600 25,017 + +Totals 13,646,126 934,405 + +Now, Ireland raises no public revenues at all from Public Works, only +L24,500 out of a total of ten millions from public lands; while 29.25 +per cent, of her "true" tax revenue comes from direct taxation and 70.75 +per cent, from Customs and Excise. To take away even a third of her +receipts from Customs and Excise would be to leave her with a deficit of +three millions and a half, which would have to be made up by additions +to a direct taxation, which is already vastly higher than in any part of +Australia. She needs every penny of her revenue from whatever source +derived, and there is no possibility of extracting from her a +contribution to Imperial services, unless it be an illusory contribution +based on faked figures. + +The real moral to be derived from the Australian comparison is that both +Australia and Ireland are countries where accumulated wealth is +comparatively small, and where the importance of indirect taxation is +very great. All the more reason for giving Ireland control of her own +indirect taxation. Canada, and, indeed, all the self-governing Colonies, +suggest the same moral. In Canada the Federal or Dominion Parliament has +an unlimited power of taxation, the Provinces being vested only with the +concurrent right of direct taxation within their respective borders +(B.N. America Act, Clauses 91 and 92). In practice, nearly the whole +Federal tax revenue is derived from Customs and Excise. We have no +materials for a comparison of gross and net provincial contributions, +because no records are compiled. Under an Act of 1907, revising the +former arrangements, two small subsidies, forming a fixed charge on the +gross Federal revenue, and bearing no specific proportion to the income +from Customs and Excise, are given to each Province. + +1. A subsidy (from L20,000 to L40,000) based on the total provincial +population. + +2. A payment of 80 cents per head of the provincial population. + +Both together are very small by comparison with the Australian payments. +Neither is really a subsidy, though it is given that name, but the +return of a surplus indirectly contributed. It is, indeed, conceivable +that a new and poor Province might actually contribute less than she +received back. One Province, British Columbia, having long complained +that she contributed far more than her share, and received back too +little, obtained an exceptional grant of L20,000 under the Act of +1907.[147] The sums raised independently in each Province for the +support of the provincial administration are, as in Australia, derived +to a very slight extent from direct taxation, and to a very large extent +from public property; not, as in Australia, from railways, tramways, +etc., but mainly from vast tracts of public land. In this respect the +Provinces resemble the Dominion, which derives a large revenue from the +same source. + +In three vital points, then, Anglo-Irish finance differs from that of +the Colonial Federations. Ireland's whole net income comes from taxes; +she needs it all; and her economic conditions are totally different from +those of Great Britain. So far from borrowing anything from Federal +finance, we should deduce from it the moral of financial independence +for Ireland. With all the powerful centripetal forces, moral and +material, which originally united, and now hold together, the federated +States of Australia and Canada, there is continual controversy, and +sometimes considerable friction, over finance, generally in connection +with the position of the poorer Provinces or States. Some problems are +still unsolved. Good authorities, among them Sir Arthur Bourinot, think +that the Canadian subsidies are unsound. Australia is dissatisfied with +her system. The American States, while giving up Customs and Excise, are +self-supporting entities; but that system has its drawback, in Federal +extravagance. We must remember, too, that even if these examples were of +any use to us, the weak States or Provinces in a Federation have a +greater control over Federal financial policy than Ireland could have +under any scheme which reserved Customs and Excise to the Imperial +Parliament; because the Federal principle, partially infringed only in +the case of Canada, is to give them disproportionately high +representation in the Upper Federal chamber, which can reject money +Bills.[148] + +On all counts, Ireland's position is that of a country which +imperatively needs fiscal isolation similar to that enjoyed by States +prior to Federation, before it can dream of embarking on the perilous +sea of quasi-Federal finance. Trouble enough comes from the present +joint system. We should make a clean sweep of it, permit Ireland, with a +minimum of temporary assistance, to find her own financial equilibrium, +and so lay the foundation, perhaps, for a genuine Federation in the +future. + + +VIII. + +ALTERNATIVE SCHEMES OF HOME RULE FINANCE[149] + + +Historically, these fall into two classes; though, as I shall show, they +are for all intents and purposes merged in one to-day. + +The two classes are--(1) The Gladstonian; (2) the "Contract." + +1. _Mr. Gladstone's Schemes_.--It is unnecessary to examine these in +close detail, though, if the reader cares to do so, he will find details +set forth in the Appendix. Four outstanding features were common to the +schemes both of 1886 and 1893: (_a_) Permanent Imperial control over the +imposition of Customs and Excise; (_b_) Irish control over all other +taxation; (_c_) an annual Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure; +(_d_) Imperial payment of part cost of the Irish Police. + +With regard to (_a_), the most important point of difference in the two +Bills was that under the first Ireland was credited with her whole +"collected" revenue from Customs and Excise, under the second (as +amended) with only her "true" revenue, which was less than the former by +L1,700,000. Another point in which the two Bills differed was the +permission to Ireland, under the Bill of 1893, after six years, to +collect her own Excise. Both imposition and collection were wholly +reserved under the Bill of 1886. I have already given grounds for the +impolicy of retaining control over Customs and Excise. Let me only ask +the reader, in conclusion, to figure the situation. How could Ireland +frame a financial policy? Three-quarters of the revenue, as at present +levied, of a country profoundly dissimilar economically from Great +Britain, and in need of drastic reforms of expenditure and marked +changes in taxation, would be permanently outside the reach of an Irish +Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, in spite of the representation at +Westminster which Imperial control would entail, would in the long-run +fluctuate according to British needs and notions. In the long-run, I +repeat; but incidentally there would be sharp and damaging conflicts. +Occasions might occur like that of 1909, when the majority of Irishmen, +rightly or wrongly, resented the form of new taxation, and would have +secured the rejection of the Budget had not that step been hurtful to +the prospects of Home Rule. It will be useless to blame either Ireland +or Great Britain. Every country is bound to study its own circumstances. +A similar crisis would have imperilled even the strongest Federation. We +are not in the least concerned at the moment with the goodness or +badness of that famous Budget. We are concerned with the effect on the +relations of the two countries, and with the indefeasible right of +Ireland and Great Britain to do what they consider best for their own +interests. + +With regard to (_b_), the Bill of 1893 differed from that of 1886 in the +provision of a suspensory period of six years, during which all existing +taxation in Ireland was to be under Imperial control, though Ireland +could impose additional taxes of her own. After six years--and, under +the Bill of 1886, from the outset--Ireland was to have control over all +taxation other than Customs and Excise. Where is the wisdom in +selecting direct taxation as peculiarly suitable to Irish control? It is +already higher in Ireland than in any country economically situated as +Ireland is. Yet Ireland's power to reduce it will be very small and very +difficult to use, if she is rigidly excluded from changes in the +indirect taxation which presses mainly on the poor. Would she naturally +be inclined to increase direct taxation? Land Value Duties produce next +to nothing in Ireland, and their extension would be unpopular. The +existing rates of Income-Tax and Estate Duties cannot be raised, though +their incidence might be extended to cover poorer elements of the +population, as, for example, the small farmers. That is a kind of +measure which the farmers would, if necessary, willingly agree to, in +order to balance the accounts of a financially independent Ireland, but +it is not the kind of measure they would care about when their national +finance was dictated by Great Britain. If one cared to make a +dialectical point, one could add that a common argument against Home +Rule is a fear of oppressive taxation of the rich or oppressive taxation +of North-East Ulster, at the hands of an Irish Parliament, through high +direct imposts. The fear is one of those which scarcely need serious +discussion. If Irish statesmen were as black as their most industrious +traducers paint them, they could not by any ingenuity invent any new +direct tax which would not hit all the provinces equally, saving perhaps +a tax on pasture ranches, which would hit North-East Ulster least; while +super-taxes on the exceptionally rich, if they were worth the trouble of +collecting, would drive wealth out of a poor country at the very moment +when it was most urgently necessary to gain the confidence of investors +and the few wealthy residents. + +With regard to (c), Mr. Gladstone's various devices for obtaining from +Ireland a contribution to Imperial services possess now only a +melancholy and academical interest, because, without an elaborate +manipulation of the accounts, so as to disguise their true significance, +no such contribution can possibly be obtained. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone +provided for an annual payment from Ireland, fixed in amount for thirty +years; in 1893 for the contribution of a _quota_--namely, one-third--of +her "true" annual revenue from Imperial taxes, to run for six years, and +then to be revised. His calculations were conditioned to some extent by +_(d),_ the part payment from the Imperial purse of the cost of Irish +Police, coupled, of course, with continued Imperial control of that +Police, pending its replacement by a new civil force. It is easy enough +in ways like this to show a balance in Ireland's favour, and, at the +same time, to cripple the responsibility of the Irish Legislature by +transferring selected services from the Irish to the Imperial side of +the account. We can extend the process to Old Age Pensions, the Land +Commission, and what not. As I have repeatedly urged, this course is +radically unsound. As for the Police, there can be no responsible +government without control of the agents of law and order. + +By crediting Ireland with her whole "collected" revenue, we can give her +at once a balance of half a million. By freeing her from the payment of +Old Age Pensions, we can make the balance three millions. With the +elimination of the Land Commission and the Police, we can make it five +millions. Then we can postulate an imaginary taxable capacity, an ideal +contribution to Imperial services, and a hypothetical share of the +National Debt, and so arrive at a Budget which will look well on paper, +but which will deceive nobody, and be open to crushing criticism. + +2. "_Contract_" _Finance_.--It will be seen that both Mr. Gladstone's +schemes set up in Ireland--though under the Bill of 1893 only after six +years--a dual system of taxation, Imperial and Irish, after the Federal +model. The revenue, "collected" or "true," derived from Imperial taxes +levied in Ireland, was to be paid, after the deduction of sums due to +the Imperial Government on various accounts, into the Irish Exchequer. +And into the same Exchequer went the proceeds of taxes levied by Ireland +herself. The distinguishing feature of "Contract" finance is that it +maintains the fiscal unity of the British Isles. All taxation in Ireland +would be permanently levied and collected, as before, by the Imperial +Parliament, Ireland being allowed only the barren and illusory privilege +of levying new additional taxes of her own. Out of the Imperial +Exchequer a lump sum of fixed amount, or a sum equivalent to the revenue +_collected_ in Ireland, would be handed over to Ireland, by contract, as +it were, for the maintenance of the Administration. + +The simplicity of this scheme seems to me to be its only merit. It +disposes of all complicated bookkeeping, all heart-burnings over "true" +and "collected" revenue, and all controversies, for a long time at any +rate, over an Irish contribution to the Empire; while it involves and +immensely facilitates a subsidy based on the reservation of selected +Irish services for Imperial management and payment. On the other hand, +it is not Home Rule. It annihilates the responsibility of Ireland for +her own fortunes, and is, indeed, altogether incompatible with what we +know as responsible government. Its germ appeared in the Irish Council +Bill of 1907--a Bill which did not pretend to set up anything +approaching responsible government, and to which the scheme was +therefore in a sense appropriate, though it must, I think, have produced +mischievous results if it had been carried into law.[150] + +I wish to speak with the utmost respect of Lord MacDonnell and the other +patriotic Irishmen who have advocated this kind of financial solution. +There was a time when it might have been good policy for Ireland to +obtain any--even the smallest--financial powers of her own as a lever, +though a very bad lever, for the attainment of more. But we ought now to +make a sound and final settlement, and I do earnestly urge upon all +those who have Irish interests at heart to reject schemes which merely +evade, if they do not actually aggravate, some of the pressing +difficulties of the Irish problem of to-day. The fact that Contract +finance works well in India is _prima facie_ a reason why it should not +work well in Ireland. It does not exist, and it could not be made to +show good results, in any community of white men. If anyone is disposed +to trace a faint analogy--which in any case would be a false +analogy--with the lesser of the two small subsidies given by the +Dominion of Canada in aid of the Provincial administrations,[151] let +him imagine what the moral and practical consequences would be if, +instead of constituting a small fraction of the provincial income, this +subsidy were increased to a lump sum calculated by the Dominion +Government as correct and sufficient for the whole internal government +of the Province. And the pernicious results in a Canadian Province would +be trivial beside the pernicious results in Ireland, where the whole +system of expenditure and revenue needs to be recast; where large +economies are needed, together with additional outlay on education; and +where above all, the sense of national responsibility, deliberately +stifled for centuries, needs to be evoked. Nothing could be more cruel +to Ireland than to give her a fictitious financial freedom, and then to +complain that she did not use it well. No nation could use freedom well +under the Contract system of finance, whether based on a fixed grant or +on revenue derived from Ireland. It is not in human nature to reduce +expenditure unless the reduction is reflected in reduced taxation. Every +official threatened with retrenchment, even in the services under Irish +control and, _a fortiori,_ in the services outside Irish control, would +have a grievance in which the public would sympathize, while resentment +at an unequal fiscal union would be unabated. Irish statesmen, like any +other men in the same position, would be exposed unfairly to the +continual temptation of preserving institutions and payments as they +were, of making changes only of personnel, and of annually appealing to +Great Britain for more money for new expenditure. These appeals could +not possibly be refused. If Great Britain chooses to place Ireland in a +position of financial dependence, she must take the consequences and pay +the bill, as in the past, even if the bill exceeds the revenue derived +from Ireland. But, indeed, under Contract finance, attempts to make +Irish expenditure conform to Irish revenue would necessarily be +abandoned. + +Bad as the results must be, we are inexorably driven to some form of +Contract finance directly we relinquish its anti-type, financial +independence. There is very little practical difference between the +Gladstonian and later plans. We may be drawn along the downward path +either by considerations of revenue, or considerations of expenditure, +or by both combined. To retain Imperial control of Customs and Excise, +while crediting the Irish proceeds to Ireland, is in itself equivalent +to making three-quarters of Irish tax revenue take the form of an annual +money grant fixed by Great Britain. If Englishmen also want to retain +control over Irish Police, and Irishmen are short-sighted enough to +desire Imperial control, as a corollary of Imperial payment, of Old Age +Pensions, National Insurance, or Land Purchase, there at once are four +millions, or more than a third of present Irish expenditure, withheld +from Irish authority. To cover the remaining seven millions by a +Contract allowance, instead of going through the pretence of allotting +items of revenue and of deducting a contribution to Imperial services, +is a step which is only too likely to commend itself to harassed +statesmen. But it would not be Home Rule. + +This is not a matter of speculation, but of experience. As long ago as +1818, in the case of Canada, we discarded as vicious the old doctrine +that a dependency ought not to be allowed to provide for the whole cost +of government out of its own taxes, for fear that its Legislature would +control policy. If we are going to remove features which make Ireland +resemble a Crown Colony now, do not let us import others which recall +the ancient fallacies of a century ago. + +There remains to be considered the important question of loans, and to +that I shall devote a separate chapter. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[136] Hansard, July 21 and 25, 1893. + +[137] Both Bills provided for part payment of the cost of Irish Police +from Imperial funds. + +[138] Return No. 220. + +[139] See p. 234. + +[140] See p. 234. + +[141] I need scarcely point out that the newly-created Provinces of the +Dominion of Canada are exceptions to this rule. But there is no analogy +with Ireland. Such Provinces are carved out of newly settled public +territory and given local government. + +[142] See pp. 244-245, and 277-278. + +[143] Until two years ago even the remaining one-fourth, added to other +small items of Commonwealth revenue, was too large for the expenditure, +and a part of it was returned annually to the States. + +[144] The other principal source of revenue is from Posts, but that is +almost exactly balanced by expenditure, so that it barely affects the +amount of the repayment to the States. + +[145] These figures are taken from the Official Year-Book of the +Commonwealth of Australia, No. 3, 1901-1909. + +[146] It must be understood that the law requiring three-quarters of the +Commonwealth revenue from Customs and Excise to be returned to the +States does not imply that each State should have three-quarters of its +contribution returned, but that the total amount returned should be at +least three-quarters. + +[147] See p. 244. + +[148] Except perhaps in the case of Canada. + +[149] The Author is indebted, here and elsewhere, to papers by Messrs. +C.R. Buxton, P. MacDermot, and R.C. Phillimore, in "Home Rule Problems." + +[150] By Clause 5 the following sums were allocated to the Irish Council +for five years: (1) L3,750,000 for the maintenance of eight Government +Departments; (2) L300,000 for public works; (3) L114,000 supplemental. + +[151] See p. 299. Under the Act of 1867, No. 2 was earmarked for this +purpose. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +LAND PURCHASE FINANCE[152] + + +I. LAND PURCHASE LOANS. + + +The data of the land problem are as follows: + +The superficial area of Ireland is 20,350,725 acres, and in 1909 it was +utilized as follows:[153] + + Acres. Percentage. + +Area under tillage, hay and fruit 4,582,697 22.5 +Area under pasture 9,997,445 + 61.6 +Grazed mountain land 2,548,569 +Woods, etc. 301,444 1.5 + +Bog, barren mountain, water, + roads, townlands, etc. 2,925,570 14.4 + +Total 20,350,725 100.0 + +The agricultural area, calculated by the exclusion of the last item in +the above column, works out at 17,425,155 acres, but since bog forms +part of a large number of farms, we may, for the purposes of Land +Purchase, place the agricultural area of Ireland at 18,739,644 acres, +the figure given in the Census of 1901, and its annual value for rating +purposes, as given in the same census, at L10,061,667. + +This area is divided into 603,827 agricultural holdings, which are in +the hands of 554,060 occupiers, and vary in size from vast pasture +ranches to the tiny plots of miserable rock-sown soil, which abound in +the congested districts of the west. + +But small holdings largely predominate. More than two-thirds do not +exceed 30 acres; 153,565 are between 5 and 15 acres, and 147,580 are +below 5 acres. + +Size, however, is by itself an imperfect index to value. The effects of +the ancient confiscations and of the extraordinarily unequal +distribution of land which they and the bad Irish agrarian system +produced may be gauged by the valuation figures of the Census of 1901, +which showed that 335,491, or 68.5 per cent, of the total number of +holdings had an annual value (for rating purposes) not exceeding L15, +while they covered only a little more than a third of the total +agricultural area; 134,182 of these holdings were rated below L4, and +covered only 1,360,000 acres. + +All farms rated below L4, and a large number of those below L15, may be +regarded as "uneconomic"--that is, incapable by themselves of supplying +a decent living to the farmer and his family. + +I shall say no more here about the legislation beginning forty years +ago, which revolutionized the agrarian tenure derived directly from the +Penal Code, and converted the Irish tenant into a "judicial" tenant with +a rent fixed by the Land Commission, with security of tenure, and free +sale of the tenant-right.[154] There are now in Ireland two distinct +classes of occupying tenants, "judicial" tenants, and purchasing +tenants, and it is upon the question of the State-aided transference of +the land from the landlord to the tenant that I wish to concentrate the +reader's attention. + +The principle of Land Purchase is this: The State advances money, raised +by a public loan, to the tenant, who pays off the landlord with it, and +becomes for a fixed period the tenant of the State. During this period +he pays, in lieu of rent, an annuity, which represents both interest and +sinking-fund on the capital sum advanced to him. At the end of the +period, which, of course, will vary with the fixed annual amount of the +sinking-fund, he becomes owner in fee-simple of his farm. + +There is no charity to the tenant. He borrows the money and pays it back +in a perfectly regular way, and the State has made a temporary +investment of a profitable character. + +And now, for the last time, I must trouble the reader with a little +indispensable history. There are four phases in the history of Irish +Land Purchase. + +1. John Bright was the first British statesman to maintain that no +healthy and lasting readjustment of the relations between landlord and +tenant in Ireland could ever be made by law. He advocated State-aided +purchase; and in the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869 and the Land +Acts of 1870 and 1881, clauses were inserted allowing the State to +advance money for Land Purchase. The conditions, however, were so +onerous, both to landlord and tenant, that only 7,665 tenants out of +more than half a million were able to avail themselves of these purchase +clauses. + +2. The Ashbourne Act of 1885 was the first successful measure of the +kind. Five millions were advanced under it, and five millions more under +an extending Act of 1887. Next came the Act of 1891, empowering the loan +of thirty-three millions, followed by the amending and simplifying Act +of 1896. These Acts form a body of legislation by themselves, of which I +need refer only to a few salient characteristics. They were all alike in +settling the tenant's annuity (in lieu of rent) at 4 per cent, on the +purchase money, though the proportions allocated to interest and +sinking-fund varied. Under the first two Acts the period for final +redemption of his loan by the tenant was forty-nine years, under the +third forty-two years, though this period was extended to seventy years +if the tenant availed himself of decadal reductions in the annuity, +proportionate to the capital paid off by the sinking-fund. + +The average price of the holdings sold under these Acts represented +seventeen and a half years' purchase, and the tenant's great inducement +to buy was that, by the aid of cheap State credit, the annuity he paid, +even over so short a period as forty-nine years, represented a reduction +of more than 20 per cent, on his existing judicial rent. + +Under the first Act, that of 1885, the landlord received the purchase +money in cash, under the other two, in guaranteed 3 per cent, or 2| per +cent, stock, an arrangement which suited him very well as long as +Government stocks maintained the high level which they reached in the +period preceding the South African War. With the heavy fall in stocks +during and after the war, purchase came to a standstill. The net result +of the operations under the Acts of 1885 to 1896 was that close upon +twenty-four million pounds were advanced to 72,000 tenants, occupying +about two and a half million acres, out of the total of 18,739,644 +acres which constitute the agricultural area of Ireland. + +3. Once begun, purchase had to be continued, if for no other reason than +that a purchasing tenant paid in annuity a substantially lower sum than +the non-purchasing judicial tenant paid in rent, with the additional, if +distant, prospect of an absolute fee-simple in the future. + +Mr. Wyndham, acting on the recommendation of a friendly Conference +between landlords and tenants, took the bull by the horns in 1903, and +carried the great Land Act of that year. Under the Wyndham Act the +system of cash payment to the landlord, dropped since 1891, was resumed, +on a basis calculated to give a selling landlord a sum which, invested +in gilt-edged 3 or 31/4 per cent. stocks, would yield him as much as the +second term judicial rents on the holdings sold, less 10 per cent., +representing his former cost of collection; while the annuity payable by +the tenant in lieu of rent was reduced from 4 to 31/4 per cent., of which +21/2 per cent, was interest on the purchase money advanced, and 1/2 per +cent, was sinking-fund. This reduction involved an extension of the +period of redemption from forty-nine to sixty-eight and a half years. +The annuity was calculated to represent an average reduction of from 15 +to 25 per cent, on second-term judicial rents. Since the gross income of +the landlord was to be reduced only by 10 per cent. on a basis of 3 per +cent. investments, while the annual payment by the tenant was to be +reduced by an average of 20 per cent., clearly there was a gap to be +filled up, and this gap was filled by a State bonus to the selling +landlord of 12 per cent, on the purchase money, a bonus which went +wholly to him personally, clear of all reversionary rights under +settlements. A sum of twelve millions altogether was to be expended on +the bonus. + +In addition to direct sales between landlord and tenant through the +Estates Commissioners, large powers were also given both to the Land +Commission and the Congested Districts Board for the purchase and resale +of certain classes of estates--land in congested districts, untenanted +land, etc. + +The Act was enormously popular. The landlord, in view of the manifold +insecurities of land tenure in Ireland, made an excellent bargain, and +the tenant, tempted by the immediate transformation of his rent into an +annuity of reduced amount, ignored the extension by twenty years of the +period of redemption, and was willing to agree at high prices for the +purchase of his land. The average price of land sold rose from the +seventeen and a half years' purchase under the old Acts to over twenty +years' purchase, and the soil of Ireland rapidly began to change hands. +But the Act broke down on finance, as adapted to what were then +estimated as the requirements of the purchase operation. The estimate +for the total sum required was one hundred millions, and the purchase +money was to be raised by successive issues of 2-3/4 per cent. +Guaranteed Land Stock. Sums needed from time to time for payment of the +landlord's bonus were also raised by stock, and were placed to an +account known as the Land Purchase Aid Fund. + +Now, any loss on flotation, due to stock being issued at a discount, was +to be borne, in the first instance, by the Ireland Development +Grant,[155] and, if and when that was exhausted, by the ratepayers of +Ireland through deduction from the grants in aid of Local Taxation.[156] +The stock, like all Government stocks at that period, fell heavily from +the first, and in 1908 the point was reached when further issues would +have entailed a heavy loss payable out of Irish rates, growing +ultimately, as it was calculated, to an annual charge of more than half +a million. The infliction of such a burden upon the ratepayers of +Ireland was felt to be inequitable. Ireland was not responsible for the +evils which necessitated purchase, and even if she were, the ratepayers +were not the right persons to be mulcted. Meanwhile, purchase was at a +complete standstill. + +4. This serious situation led to Mr. Birrell's Land Act of 1909, which +was based upon the Report of a Treasury Committee which sat in the +previous year.[157] The problem was twofold: (a) how to deal with future +agreements to purchase, between landlord and tenant;(6) how to deal with +agreements to purchase pending under the Act of 1903, but as yet +uncompleted. + +(a) With regard to future agreements, there are four main points:(1) The +old policy of payment in stock, instead of in cash, is reverted to, and +the stock is a 3 per cent. stock. + +(2) The tenant's annuity is raised from 31/4 to 31/2 per cent. + +(3) The period of redemption is reduced from sixty-eight and a half +years to sixty-five and a half years. (4) The landlord's bonus is +allocated on a graduated scale, under which the higher the price the +land is sold at, the less is the bonus conferred. These changes, though +no doubt somewhat prejudicial to the prospects of Land Purchase, were +absolutely necessary, owing to a cause beyond human control--the +condition of the money-market. + +(b) In regard to pending purchase agreements arrived at under the old +Act, no alteration is made in the terms of the bargains already +concluded between landlord and tenant; but changes are made in the +method of financing these agreed sales. Briefly, parties can obtain +priority in treatment among the enormous mass of cases awaiting the +decision of the Land Commission by agreeing to accept 2-3/4 per cent. +stock at a price not lower than 92 per cent, (which means, at present +prices, that the loss on flotation is split between the landlord and the +State), or, by waiting their turn, they can obtain half the price in +stock at 92, and half in cash. Payments elected to be made wholly in +cash come last of all. Bonus to be paid in cash as before. + +Losses caused by the flotation of stock at a discount no longer fall +upon the Irish rates. Any loss not capable of being borne by the Ireland +Development Grant is to be borne by the Imperial Exchequer. + +Other important clauses gave compulsory powers of purchase to the +Congested Districts Board, and, in the case of "congested estates" and +untenanted land outside the jurisdiction of the Board, to the Estates +Commissioners. Otherwise Purchase and Sale remained voluntary. + +So much for the history of Land Purchase. How exactly do we stand at the +present moment? + +In round numbers, nearly 24 millions have actually been advanced under +the old Acts prior to 1903, and up to March of this year (1911) a +further sum of 421/4 millions had actually been advanced under the Wyndham +Act of 1903 and the Birrell Act of 1909.[158] + +That makes a total of 661/2 millions actually advanced to 165,133 tenants +up to March of 1911, covering the purchase of nearly 6 million acres of +land, or nearly a third of the total agricultural area of Ireland. The +tenants of the land are now quasi-freeholders, and will eventually be +complete freeholders. In addition, agreements for the purchase of +properties by 150,490 tenants, under the Wyndham and Birrell Acts, at a +total price of 461/2 millions, for 41/2 million acres, were pending in +March, 1911, though the sale and vesting were not yet completed. The +properties represented by these agreements will be duly transferred in +the course of the next few years, though the congestion of business is +very great. + +That will make a total of 113 millions advanced to 315,623 tenants for +the purchase of 11 million acres under all Acts up to and including that +of 1909. Now, how much more will be required? We have only one recent +official estimate--that made by the Land Commission in 1908 for the +Treasury Committee which sat to consider the crisis in Land Purchase. It +did not pretend to give an accurate forecast, but only to estimate the +maximum amount which would be needed, on the assumption that all unsold +land would eventually be sold at the average price reached under the Act +of 1903.[159] It is certain that the amount so calculated, covering as +it does all classes and descriptions of agricultural land, and including +land farmed by the landlord himself, as well as short-term pasture +tenancies,[160] will considerably exceed the actual requirements. Some +of the unsold land, especially of the pasture land, will never need to +be sold; nor is the average purchase price likely to remain permanently +as high as that obtained under the Act of 1903. + +Still, this speculative estimate gives us an outside figure which is +useful. The conclusion from it is that 95 millions may be required to +finance all future sales initiated under the Act of 1909. + +But if we want to know how much cash may be wanted, dating from March, +1911, onwards, to finance Land Purchase, we must add the 461/2 millions +needed for sales now agreed upon, and waiting to be carried through, but +not yet completed. That brings the total to 1411/2 millions. + +For the reasons given above, I think we might very well strike off 20 +from the 95 millions of future sales, and so reduce the total to 1211/2 +millions. + +Two further questions remain to be considered: (1) Can we assume that in +the future purchase will proceed smoothly? (2) Who pays for the +machinery of Land Purchase, and what is the security for the money +advanced? + +1. The Act of 1909 is still young. At the end of March, 1911, +applications had been lodged for the direct sale of 5,477 holdings at a +price of L1,623,526, representing an average of 20-8 years' purchase, +and negotiations were in progress for the purchase by the Congested +Districts Board of estates worth another 11/2 millions. Total, a little +over 3 millions--a substantial amount of business in view of the +artificial acceleration caused by events in 1907 and 1908, the +subsequent reaction, and the enormous arrears of business still +remaining to be cleared up. + +We should naturally expect a slight check to purchase under the Act of +1909, since the inducement both to landlord and tenant is less. The +tenant would be inclined to hold out for a lower price because his +annuity is higher (though signs of this check are not yet apparent), and +the landlord is paid in a stock whose market price seems to be slowly +but steadily falling. It is now (November, 1911) at 861/4. On the other +hand, the wise change in the allocation of the bonus places a +much-needed premium on sales of poor land at low prices, and reverses +the process by which a wealthy landlord of good land sometimes obtained +the largest reward for submission to sale.[161] Moreover, there is +constant pressure towards purchase owing to the better financial +position of the purchasing tenant over the non-purchasing or judicial +tenant, while the fear in the landlord's mind of further periodical +reductions in the judicial rents tends to induce him to meet this +pressure halfway. + +Still, there is a point beyond which such pressure might not be strong +enough to carry on voluntary Purchase, especially if the 3 per cent, +stock continued to fall. Wide powers of compulsion,[162] covering +considerably more than a third of Ireland, and including the poorest +areas, where purchase is most needed, already exist under the Act of +1909. Some think that general compulsion will be needed. Other +well-informed men count with confidence on completing all the necessary +part of the purchase of Irish land in from twelve to fifteen years under +the existing system. On the other hand, it is necessary to contemplate +the possible need for universal compulsion. + +2. Cost of the working of Land Purchase, and security for the money +advanced. It is just as well to make these points perfectly clear, in +view of the legends which obtain circulation about the "giving" of +British money for the purchase of Irish land. + +The cost of the Land Purchase machinery falls at present on the +taxpayers of the whole United Kingdom, including, of course, those of +Ireland. It amounted in 1909-10, as I showed in the last chapter, to +L414,500, and for 1911 the estimate is L544,395. This sum includes the +administrative cost of the Land Commission and Estates Commissioners, +the temporary losses on flotation caused in financing, under the Act of +1909, the balance of agreements made under the Act of 1903, and the +bonus to landlords. + +The Treasury, in their returns estimating the revenue and expenditure of +various parts of the United Kingdom, debit the whole of this sum against +Ireland, and, moral responsibility apart, I regard it as necessary that, +under Home Rule, Ireland should assume both the cost and the management +of Purchase. + +Apart from the annual vote I have mentioned, Land Purchase pays for +itself. The security for the individual holders of the Guaranteed Land +Stock by means of which the purchase money is raised is the Consolidated +Fund of the United Kingdom, but the Consolidated Fund has never been +called upon for a penny, either for interest or capital, and never will +be. + +At present the initial security of the Government which controls the +Consolidated Fund--in other words, the initial security of the United +Kingdom taxpayers--is the Irish rates; for the grants in aid of Irish +local taxation still form a guarantee fund chargeable with the unpaid +annuities of defaulting tenants, though they have escaped the liability +for losses on the notation of stock at a discount. The ultimate security +is the purchased land itself; for, in the last resort, a defaulting +tenant who, it must be remembered, is a State tenant, can be sold up. +But the really important security is the tenant himself. The Irish +tenants, treated properly, pay their debts as honestly and punctually as +any other class of men in the world. Annuities in arrear are negligible. +The last Report of the Land Commission shows that out of two million +pounds of annuities due from 165,133 purchasing tenants, and close upon +another two millions of interest (in lieu of rent) upon holdings agreed +to be purchased by 150,490 tenants--a total of nearly four million +pounds--only L28,084 were uncollected on March 31 last. The cases of +hopeless default, leading to a sale of the land, were only fifty-four. +Not a penny has actually been lost. + +The State, then, or, if we choose so to put it, the United Kingdom +taxpayers, are safe from loss, and make a good investment. There has +never been the faintest symptom of a strike against annuities, and the +only cause which could conceivably ever suggest such a strike would be +the irritation provoked by a persistent refusal to grant Home Rule. Even +that possibility I regard as out of the question, because there is a +sanctity attaching to annuities which it would be hard to impair. Still, +to speak broadly, it is true that Home Rule will improve a security +already good, and that Home Rule, with financial independence, will make +it absolutely impregnable. + +Let me sum up. + +More than half the agricultural land of Ireland is sold to the tenants, +or agreed to be sold. Eleven million acres out of 183/4 million acres have +changed hands, or will soon change hands; 315,623 out of 554,060 +occupiers now pay annuities or interest in lieu of rent, to the amount +of nearly 4 million pounds. In regard to value, out of a total value of +208 millions for the whole agricultural land of Ireland, 661/2 millions +have actually been advanced for purchase, 461/2 millions are due to be +advanced under signed agreements; and, on the extreme estimate of the +Land Commission, based on the supposition that all the remaining land +will ultimately be sold, 95 millions more will have to be advanced. +Total future liability on the extreme estimate, 1411/2 millions; or, if we +take the more moderate and reasonable figure I suggested, 1211/2 millions. + +Now, two conditions must be laid down-- + + 1. Purchase ought to continue. + + 2. Cheap Imperial credit is necessary for it. + +These conditions ought not to entail, beyond a strictly limited point, +the continued control of Purchase by the Imperial Government. That step, +as I suggested at p. 221, might involve Imperial control over (1) the +Congested Districts Board; (2) the whole work of the Land Commission, +outside Purchase, and all Irish land legislation; (3) the Irish police; +because the power of distraint for annuities, the last resource of the +creditor Government, rests, of course, with the arm of the law. + +Any one of these consequences, as I have urged, would be inconsistent +with responsible government in Ireland. + +What are the objections to Irish control over Purchase, with its +corollary, Irish payment of the running costs of Purchase? Two distinct +interests have to be considered: (1) That of the British taxpayer; (2) +that of the landlord. + +1. If we carry out the plan I have advocated, the British taxpayer, as +soon as he ceases to contribute to the diminishing subsidy suggested at +p. 284 in order to meet the initial deficit in the national Irish +balance-sheet, will cease to contribute anything towards the running +costs, landlord's bonus, and flotation losses of a Purchase operation +for the necessity of which Great Britain, in the past, was in reality +responsible. Great Britain is under a moral obligation to continue to +support Land Purchase with her national credit, which is indispensable. +She is also entitled to demand whatever reasonable conditions she thinks +fit, for example, a share in the nomination of Land and Estates +Commissioners; while any new legislation will, in the ordinary course, +need her assent. The security, as I said above, will be impregnable. The +purchasing tenant would become the tenant of the Irish State. The Irish +Government, as a whole, instead of the individual annuitants, would, of +course, be responsible to the Imperial Government, would collect the +annuities itself, and bear any contingent loss by their non-payment. To +repudiate a public obligation of that sort would be as ruinous to +Ireland as the repudiation of a public debt is to any State in the +world. + +In point of fact, the Irish Government would find it good policy to +popularize Irish Land Stock in Ireland. At present prices the 3 per +cent, stock is among the cheapest and safest in the world, and would +return to the farmer thrice as much interest as the average bank deposit +which he now favours. + +Mercifully, there is no exact historical precedent for such a case as +Ireland, though, on a small scale, Prince Edward Island is an +instructive parallel.[163] But if precedents, in the shape of guaranteed +loans to self-governing Colonies, are needed, they exist. The most +relevant and recent is the Imperial guaranteed loan of 35 millions made +to the Transvaal by Mr. Balfour's Government in 1903 after the great +war. Why it should be a heresy to do for Ireland what we did for the +Transvaal, I am at a loss to conceive. The loan became, of course, an +obligation of the Colony when it received Home Rule, and in 1907 a +further guaranteed loan of 5 millions was authorized, of which 4 +millions has been issued. Like Irish Land Stock, these loans are secured +on the Consolidated Fund; but I do not think a fear is now suggested +that the Consolidated Fund is in danger on that account. Prophecies of +that sort were common enough in the mouths of those who opposed +Transvaal Home Rule, but they did not long survive its enactment. + +Another precedent is a guaranteed railway loan to Canada in 1873 of +L3,600,000, which is just now becoming redeemable, while the Crown +Colony of Mauritius received a guaranteed loan of L600,000 in 1892. The +British and Irish taxpayers have also made themselves responsible for +L9,424,000 on account of Egypt; L6,023,700 on account of Greece; and +L5,000,000 on account of Turkey. The total nominal amount of the +guaranteed loans to countries, colonial or foreign, outside the United +Kingdom is L63,647,700. The total amount outstanding on March 31, 1911, +was L59,474,200, and the Government holds securities only to the value +of L4,800,556 against these liabilities, leaving the net liability of +the taxpayer at L54,673,644. + +The net liability of the taxpayer at the same date on account of Irish +Guaranteed Land Stocks of all descriptions was L65,764,054.[164] Ireland +has a claim to Imperial credit far superior to any of the Colonies, +dependencies, or foreign Powers mentioned, and the credit should not +entail control, or the representation of Ireland at Westminster. + +Incidentally, it goes without saying that Ireland, in common with the +Colonies, should receive the very valuable privilege of having +independent loans raised by herself inscribed at the Bank of England, +and made trustee securities. + +2. It may be argued that the Congested Districts Board and the Land +Commission, and through them Irish statesmen, may be subjected to local +pressure hostile to the landlord's interests, and that the Irish +Government would feel itself more free for social and other reforms if +the land question were placed legally outside their purview. My answer +is, in the first place, that Great Britain would cease to lend if her +conditions were unfulfilled; in the second place, that in this, as in +all matters, we are bound to place faith in the self-respect and sense +of justice of a free Ireland--in its common prudence, too; for it would +be a disaster whose magnitude is universally recognized in Ireland if +any course were to be taken which prevented the landlord class from +joining in the great work of making a new Ireland. Fair treatment of the +landlords by a free Ireland, as distinguished from fair treatment at the +hands of an external authority, would do more than anything else to +bring about a reconciliation. That is human nature all the world over. + + +II. MINOR LOANS TO IRELAND. + + +It remains only to refer briefly to two other cases where Ireland +benefits from Imperial credit. + +(1) The Labourers (Ireland) Act of 1906 sanctioned the advance of money +through the Land Commission to Rural Councils for building labourers' +cottages--a class of loans previously made by the Public Works +Commissioners of Ireland. L3,111,816 had been advanced under this head +on March 31, 1911, and L1,138,184 had been applied for. The money is +raised by guaranteed 23/4 per cent, stock in the same way as the money for +Land Purchase. + +(2) In addition, there are the loans granted by the Irish Commissioners +of Public Works. In their capacity as lenders, which is only one of a +multitude of capacities, the Commissioners are really a subordinate +branch of the Treasury, and fulfil the same function as the Public Works +Loans Commissioners in Great Britain. They lend principally to local +authorities for all manner of public works and public health +requirements, also to private individuals, mainly for the improvement of +land, and, to a small extent, to Arterial Drainage Boards and to +railways. They get their money from the National Debt Commissioners, and +in 1909-10 issued loans to the amount of L293,233--a figure which shows +a considerable reduction on that of the previous two years.[165] The +total amount of 35,000 outstanding loans on March 31, 1910, was +L9,608,110, of which between two-thirds and three-quarters were due from +local authorities. The interest varies, as in Great Britain, from 23/4 to +5 per cent., according to the nature of the security, and in 1909-10 +averaged L3 10s. 6d. Most of the loans are secured on local rates, where +the interest payable is either 31/2 or 33/4 per cent., according to the +period of the loan; others on undertakings such as harbours; and others +on the land for the improvement of which the money is borrowed. + +Here, then, are two small and secondary problems. Under Home Rule +Ireland will have no claim to further Imperial credit for loans of +either of the above classes. On the other hand, there is no reason why +the Treasury, if it pleases, and on its own terms, should not lend as +before, though not directly, as it virtually does now, but indirectly, +by loan to the Irish Government. The security will be just as good, and +probably better. If a negligent Local Government Board under Irish +control sanctions reckless loans by local authorities, and a negligent +Irish Government advances for such loans money borrowed from Great +Britain, the Irish Treasury will suffer. Such eventualities need not +seriously be considered. The analogy with the Transvaal and Canada +loans, which were mainly for public works, is very close. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[152] Parts of this chapter have appeared in a paper by the Author in +"Home Rule Problems." + +[153] Agricultural Statistics of Ireland, 1909. + +[154] See pp. 10-17, 66-71. + +[155] See p. 270-271. + +[156] See p. 267. + +[157] Cd. 4005, 1908. + +[158] This and subsequent figures are taken from an answer to question +in the House of Commons, July 25, 1911, and from the current Exports of +the Land Commission and Estates Commissioners. + +[159] Cd. 4412, 1908. The basis taken was the Poor Law valuation of the +lands unsold, multiplied by the number of years purchase of the lands +sold under the Act of 1903. On this basis the value of the land neither +sold nor agreed to be sold in 1908 was L103,931,848. On the basis of +acreage, the estimate worked out at L102,078,448, and on the basis of +holdings (regarded as unreliable by the Commissioners) at L92,660,694. +The total sum required from first to last, including sums already +advanced under all the various Acts, was L208,366,175. + +[160] Pasture land let on eleven months' tenancies (a common form of +tenure) counts as untenanted land, and is subject to purchase by the +Land Commissioners, compulsorily, if necessary. + +[161] But not always. Heavily mortgaged landlords profited most, +perhaps, under the Act of 1903. + +[162] Only once exercised up to October, 1911: over Lord Inchiquin's +estate in Clare, to be acquired for the relief of congestion. + +[163] See p. 75. There the loan for compulsory Land Purchase was +ultimately raised by the Dominion of Canada, as one of the conditions +upon which Prince Edward Island entered the Federation in 1873. Under +the Land Purchase Act, passed in 1875 by the Island Legislature, with +the assent of the Dominion, three Commissioners adjudicated upon the +sales; representing the Island Government, the Landlords, and the +Dominion Government respectively. + +[164] Finance accounts of the United Kingdom, 1911. + +[165] Report of the Commissioners of Public Works, 1910. The amount in +1907-08 was L434,796; in 1908-09, L361,282. The Commissioners have been +lending since 1819, and have lent since that date L48,792,319. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE IRISH CONSTITUTION[166] + + +I have dealt with the major issues of Home Rule. The exclusion or +retention of Irish Members at Westminster, and the powers--above all, +the financial powers--of the Irish State, are the two points of cardinal +importance. As I have shown, they are inseparably connected, and form, +in reality, one great question. + +I have endeavoured to prove that from whatever angle we approach that +central issue, whether we argue from representation to powers, or from +powers to representation, and whether the particular powers we argue +from be financial, legislative, or executive; whether we place Irish, +British, or Imperial interests in the forefront of our exposition--we +are led irresistibly to the colonial solution--that is, to the cessation +of Irish representation at Westminster, coupled with a concession to +Ireland of the full legislative and executive authority appropriate to +that measure of independence, and, above all, with fiscal autonomy. + +All the other provisions of the Bill are secondary. They may be divided +into two categories, which necessarily overlap: + +1. Provisions concerning Ireland only. + +2. Provisions defining the Imperial authority over Ireland. + +The structure of the Irish Legislature, the position of the Irish +Judiciary, the safeguards for minorities, the provision made for +existing servants of the State, the statutory arrangements, if any, for +the future reorganization of the Irish Police--these and other questions +are of great intrinsic importance, and need the most careful discussion; +but they are altogether subordinate to those we have already considered. +If it be over-sanguine to hope, in Ireland's interest, that they will be +discussed in a calm and dispassionate way, we can at least demand that +those provisions belonging to the second category, which present no +appreciable difficulty, will not excite bitter and barren disputes like +those of 1893. + +It is not within the scope of this volume to discuss exhaustively the +secondary provisions of the Bill, or to suggest the exact statutory form +which those provisions, major or minor, should take. In this chapter I +shall deal briefly with matters which I have hitherto left aside, and +incidentally give more precision to the points upon which I have already +suggested a conclusion, in both cases indicating, so far as possible, +the most useful precedents and parallels from other Constitutions. The +result will be the rough sketch of a Home Rule Bill. + + +PREAMBLE. + +"Whereas it is expedient that _without impairing or restricting the +supreme authority of Parliament_, an Irish Legislature should be +created, etc." So ran the opening sentence of the Home Rule Bill of +1893. The words I have italicized are harmless but superfluous. They +have never appeared in the Constitutions granted to Colonies, even at +periods when the Colonies were most distrusted. Nothing can impair the +supreme authority of Parliament. + + +EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY. + +In all parts of the Empire, power emanates from the Sovereign, and is +wielded locally in his name. + +Section 9 of the British North America Act of 1867 runs as follows: "The +Executive Government and authority of and over Canada is hereby declared +to continue and be vested in the Queen." Similar words are used in the +South Africa Act of 1909, and in the Commonwealth of Australia +Constitution Act of 1900. Curiously enough, these were Acts to legalize +the Federation, or Union, of separate Colonies, and were passed at a +time when the principle embodied needed no affirmation. In earlier Acts +for granting Colonial Constitutions, the principle was taken for +granted, and implied in numerous provisions, but not stated explicitly. +The most recent unitary Constitution, that of the Transvaal (Section +47), was even more reticent, though the principle was none the less +clear. The point is unimportant, and the words used in the Home Rule +Bills of 1886 and 1893 (Clauses 5 and 7 respectively), modified to meet +a change of Sovereign, will serve very well: "The Executive power in +Ireland (or the Executive Government of Ireland) shall continue vested +in His Majesty...." + +Thereon follow the provisions for delegation of the Royal authority, +first to the Sovereign's personal Representative in Ireland, and then +through him to the members of the Irish Executive. The simpler these +provisions are, the better. What we know as responsible government has +never been defined in any Act of Parliament. The phrase "responsible +government" has only once appeared in any Constitution--namely, in the +preamble of the Transvaal Constitution granted in 1906, and even then no +attempt was made at definition, though certain sections, like certain +sections in the Australian Constitutions of 1855 and in the later +Federal Acts, inferentially suggested features of responsible +government. + +The system is two-sided. Ministers are responsible on the one hand to +the King direct, as in Great Britain, or to the King's Representative, +as in the Colonies, and, on the other hand, to the elected Legislature. +Ireland will resemble a Colony in being a dependent State under a +Representative of the King--namely, the Lord-Lieutenant. This personage, +corresponding to the Colonial Governor, will also have to act in a dual +capacity. On the one hand he will be responsible to the King, or, +virtually, to the British Cabinet, and, on the other hand, he will be +bound by an unwritten law to nominate for the Government of Ireland +persons acceptable to the elected Legislature, and in Irish matters to +act by their advice in all normal circumstances. + +Let us dispose first of the relation of the Ministers and of other +public officials to the Legislature. There will be no question, +presumably, of giving statutory power to this relation. It is an +unwritten custom--(1) that Ministers must be members of one branch of +the Legislature; (2) that they must hold the confidence of the elected +branch; (3) that, as a Cabinet, they stand or fall together; and, +lastly, (4) that all non-political officials are excluded from the +Legislature. The first and the last of these conventions have taken +legal form in some isolated cases;[167] the other two appear in no +statute that has yet been framed.[168] + +Neither have the functions in practice exercised by the Ministry or +Cabinet, nor the relations which in practice exist between it and the +King's Representative, ever had statutory definition. Whatever form the +Home Rule Bill takes, it cannot give legal precision to these things. +The King's Representative always nominates an Executive Council--that +is, a Cabinet to "advise" him in the Government, and whether, as in the +Bill of 1893, that Council is called an Executive Committee of the Privy +Council of Ireland by analogy with the Dominion of Canada, where it is +the "King's Privy Council for Canada," or whether it is merely an +Executive Council is immaterial. That it is, nominally, the +constitutional duty of the King's Representative (like that of the King +himself) to perform executive acts on the advice of his Ministers is +never stated expressly. He is always, and generally in the text of the +Constitution, vested with the power of summoning, proroguing, and +dissolving the Legislature, and of giving or withholding the Royal +Assent to Bills. He also, by unwritten law, wields the prerogative of +Pardon, and appoints all public servants; and in all these cases, except +in the case of appointing non-political officials, he occasionally has +to act on his own personal responsibility. + +This personal responsibility cannot be distinguished in practice from +his responsibility to the Crown, which appoints and can remove him. +Cases have arisen where the Governor of a self-governing Colony has +written home for special guidance on some specific point, and where the +answer given has been that he must act on his own responsibility, or +follow the advice of his Ministers. All Colonial Governors, however, +whether or not their powers are defined in the Constitution, are +appointed by Commission from the Crown with powers defined in Letters +Patent and Instructions as to their exercise. These Letters Patent and +Instructions are not of much importance in the case of a self-governing +Colony where responsible advice so largely controls the action of the +Governor. Sometimes the executive powers given by Instructions to the +Governor are indirectly alluded to in the Constitution, as in the South +Africa Act of 1909, where, by Clause 9, under the head of "Executive +Government," the Governor-General is "to exercise such powers and +functions of the King as His Majesty may be pleased to assign to him." +In the Australian and Canadian Acts of 1900 and 1867 respectively, the +words do not appear. I name this point because in Clause 5 of the Home +Rule Bill of 1893, and Clause 7 of the Bill of 1886, a similar course +was taken in providing that the Lord-Lieutenant should "exercise any +prerogatives, or other executive power of the Queen, the exercise of +which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty." The words are not +strictly necessary. The Lord-Lieutenant will, of course, have his +Letters Patent and Instructions, but the powers of the Crown are +theoretically absolute. If the Crown, acting under responsible British +advice, should wish to defy the Irish Legislature, it could do so +whatever the terms of the Bill. + +Naturally, there will be certain Imperial and non-Irish matters in which +the Lord-Lieutenant will act primarily under the orders of the British +Cabinet, and the Departmental British Minister primarily responsible for +Irish-Imperial matters would be the Home Secretary.[169] + +The question may be raised, as in 1893 (July 3, Hansard), whether a +staff of Imperial officials ought not to be set up to conduct any +Imperial business which has to be done in Ireland, on the analogy of the +Federal staff in the United States. I hope Mr. Gladstone's answer will +still hold good--that no such staff is needed; that the Irish officials +will be responsible, and ought, on the Home Rule principle, to be +trusted, as they are trusted in the Colonies. + +The Royal Assent to Bills is always a matter for express enactment in +the Constitution, but here the "instructions" of the Governor, and even +his personal "discretion," have generally been alluded to in recent +Constitutions, whether conferred by Act or Letters Patent. The typical +form of words is that the Governor "shall declare his Assent according +to his discretion, but subject to His Majesty's instructions."[170] The +Home Rule Bill of 1893 left out reference to "discretion," and, on the +other hand, is, I think, the only document of the kind in which the +"advice of the Executive Council" has ever been expressly alluded to, +although the practice, of course, is that the Assent, normally, is given +or withheld on that advice. The Transvaal Constitution of 1906 (Section +39) was unique in prescribing that special instructions must be received +by the Governor in the case of each proposed law, before the Assent is +given. I hope that will not be made a precedent for Ireland. Such +precautions only irritate the law-makers, and serve no useful purpose. + +Colonial Governors, besides the power of Assent and Veto, may "reserve" +Bills for the Royal pleasure, which is to be signified within two years. +Moreover, Bills which have received the Governor's Assent may be +disallowed within one or two years.[171] Neither of these provisions +appeared in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, and neither appear to +be strictly necessary, owing to the proximity of Ireland. Whatever is +done, we may hope that the practice now established in Canada, where the +Federal Government never disallows a provincial law on any other ground +than that it is _ultra vires_, and, _a fortiori_, the similar practice +as between Great Britain and the Dominions, may be imitated in the case +of Ireland. + +To sum up, the terse and simple words of the Bill of 1886 really +enunciate all that is necessary: + +[Sidenote: Constitution of the Executive Authority.] + +"7.--(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." + +LORD-LIEUTENANT AND CIVIL LIST. + +The restriction as to the religion of the Lord-Lieutenant will, of +course, be removed. There is no reason why his term of office should be +limited by law. His salary, payable by Ireland, should perhaps be stated +in the Act, as in the case of Canada and South Africa, though not in +that of Australia. Australia, on the other hand, has a statutory Civil +List, and a fixed Civil List was an invariable feature of the old +Constitutions given to self-governing Colonies. Canada and South Africa +are under no such restrictions, and it would be very inexpedient to +impose them upon Ireland. + + +LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY. + +The Irish Legislature will be given power, according to the historic +phrase, "to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of +Ireland," subject to restrictions afterwards named. That the laws should +be only "in respect of matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some +part thereof" goes without saying, and need not be copied from the Bill +of 1893 (Clause 2). Nor need the superfluous proviso in the same clause +be reproduced, asserting the "supreme power and authority of the +Parliament of the United Kingdom." The supreme power becomes none the +more supreme for such assertions. Clause 2 of the Bill of 1886 is simple +and decisive: + + "2. With the exceptions of and subject to the restrictions in this + Act mentioned, it shall be lawful for (Her) Majesty (the Queen), by + and with the advice of the Irish Legislative Body, to make laws for + the peace, order, and good government of Ireland, and by any such + law to alter and repeal any law in Ireland." + +With the restrictions on the powers of the Legislature I dealt fully +enough in Chapter X.,[172] and I need only summarize my conclusions: + +1. _Reservations of Imperial Authority._--The Irish Legislature should +_not_ have power to make laws upon-- + +{The Crown or a Regency. +{Making of War or Peace. +{Prize and Booty of War. +{Army or Navy. +{Foreign Relations and Treaties (excepting Commercial Treaties). +{Conduct as Neutrals. +{Titles and Dignities. +{Extradition. +{Treason. +Coinage. +Naturalization and Alienage. + +Reservation of the nine subjects included in the bracket is implied, +without enactment, in all colonial Constitutions, but in the Irish Bill +it is no doubt necessary that all reserved powers should be formally +specified. + +All powers not specifically reserved will belong to the Irish +Legislature, subject to those restrictions, constitutional or statutory, +which in matters like Trade and Navigation, Copyright, Patents, etc., +bind the whole Empire. + +Section 32 of the Bill of 1893, borrowed from the Colonial Laws Validity +Act, will no doubt be applied. + +2. _Minority Safeguards_.--This point, too, I dealt with in Chapter +X.[173] Let the Nationalist Members come forward and frankly accept any +prohibitory clauses which the fears of the minority may suggest, +provided that they do not impair the ordinary legislative power which +every efficient Legislature must enjoy. Almost every conceivable +safeguard for the protection of religion, denominational education, and +civil rights was inserted in the Bill of 1893, including even some of +the "slavery" Amendments to the United States Constitution. The list may +require revision--(_a_) in view of the recent establishment of the +National University, and the disappearances of all apprehension about +the status of Trinity College, Dublin; (_b_) in regard to an +extraordinarily wide Sub-clause (No. 9) about interference with +Corporations; (_c_) in regard to the words, "in accordance with settled +principles and precedents," which appeared in Sub-clause (No. 8) +(Legislature to make no law "Whereby any person may be deprived of life, +liberty, or property without due process of law[174] _in accordance with +settled principles and precedents_," etc.). A debate on this question +may be found in Hansard, May 30, 1893. The words italicized were added +in Committee on the motion of Mr. Gerald Balfour, though the +Attorney-General declared that they gave no additional strength to the +phrase "due process of law," while they certainly appear calculated to +provoke litigation. Sir Henry James appeared to think that they made the +suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act _ultra vires._ If that is their +effect, there is no reason why they should be inserted. Even a Canadian +Province, whose powers are more limited than those of the subordinate +States in any other Federation, has "exclusive" powers within its own +borders over "property and civil rights,"[175] and can, beyond any +doubt, suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, if it pleases. + +The same superfluous words appeared in Sub-clause (No. 9) about +Corporations. + + +THE IRISH LEGISLATURE.[176] + +As I urged in Chapter X., this is a subject in which large powers of +constitutional revision--much larger than those contained in either of +the Home Rule Bills--should be given to the Irish Legislature itself, +corresponding to the powers given by statute to the self-governing +Colonies, and to the powers always held by the constituent States of a +Federation. In the Bill itself it would be wisest to follow beaten +tracks as far as possible, and not to embark on experiments. Present +conditions are, unhappily, very unfavourable for the elaboration of any +scheme ideally fit for Ireland. + +_A Bi-Cameral Legislature._--Working on this principle, we must affirm +that Ireland's position, without representation in the Imperial +Parliament, would certainly make a Second Chamber requisite. Three of +the Provinces within the Federation of Canada (Manitoba, British +Columbia, and Ontario) prefer to do without Second Chambers--so do most +of the Swiss Cantons--but all the Federal Legislatures of the world are +bi-cameral, and all the unitary Constitutions of self-governing Colonies +have been, or are, bi-cameral. + +_The Upper Chamber._--One simple course would be to constitute the Upper +Chamber of a limited number of Irish Peers, chosen by the whole of their +number, as they are chosen at present for representation in the House of +Lords. Historical and practical considerations render this course out of +the question, though some people would be fairly sanguine about the +success of such a body in commanding confidence, on the indispensable +condition that all representation at Westminster were to cease. It has +been membership, before the Union of an ascendency Parliament, and after +the Union of an absentee Parliament, which has kept the bulk of the +Irish peerage in violent hostility to the bulk of the Irish people. +Those Peers who seek and obtain a career in an Irish popular +Legislature--to both branches of which they will, of course, be +eligible--will be able to do valuable service to their country. The same +applies to all landlords. Now that land reform is converting Ireland +itself into a nation of small landholders, who, in most countries, are +very Conservative in tendency, the ancient cleavage is likely to +disappear. Indeed, an ideal Second Chamber ought perhaps to give special +weight to urban and industrial interests, while aiming, not at an +obstructive, but at a revising body of steady, moderate, highly-educated +business men. + +We have to choose one of two alternatives: a nominated or an elective +chamber. The choice is difficult, for second chambers all over the world +may be said to be on their trial. On the other hand, nothing vital +depends upon the choice, for experience proves that countries can +flourish equally under every imaginable variety of second chamber, +provided that means exist for enabling popular wishes, in the long-run, +to prevail. The European and American examples are of little use to us, +and the widely varied types within the Empire admit of no sure +inferences. Allowance must be made for the effect of the Referendum +wherever it exists (as in Australia and Switzerland), as a force tending +to weaken both Chambers, but especially the Upper Chamber of a +Legislature. It does, indeed, seem to be generally admitted, even by +Canadians, that the nominated Senate of the Dominion of Canada, which is +added to on strict party principles by successive Governments, is not a +success, and it was so regarded by the Australian Colonies when they +entered upon Federation, and set up an elective Senate. The South +African statesmen, who had to reckon with racial divisions similar to +those in Ireland, compromised with a Senate partly nominated, partly +elected, but made the whole arrangement revisable in ten years.[177] + +It would be desirable, perhaps, on similar grounds of immediate policy, +to let those who now represent the minority in Ireland have a deciding +voice in the matter. No arrangement made otherwise than by a free +Ireland herself can be regarded as final, and I suggest only that a +nominated Chamber would be the best expedient at the outset, or in the +alternative a partly nominated, partly elected Chamber. + +If and in so far as the Upper Chamber is elective, should election be +direct or indirect? There is a somewhat attractive Irish precedent for +indirect election, namely, the present highly successful Department of +Agriculture, whose Council and Boards the County Councils have a share +in constituting,[178] and I have seen and admired a most ingenious +scheme of Irish manufacture for constructing the whole Irish Legislature +and Ministry on this principle. But the objections appear to be +considerable. Local bodies in the future should not be mixed up in +national politics. That has been their bane in the past. Besides, the +principle of indirect election is under a cloud everywhere, most of all +in the United States. Australia rejected it in 1900, and the South +Africans, while giving it partial recognition in the Senate, made the +expedient provisional. + +_The Lower House_.--The Lower House might very well be elected on the +same franchise and from the same constituencies as at present, subject +to any small redistributional modifications necessitated by changes of +population. This is certainly a matter which Ireland should have full +power to settle for itself subsequently. + +Lord Courtney's proposals for Proportional Representation[179] merit +close consideration and possess great attractions, especially in view of +their very favourable reception from Nationalists in Ireland. My own +feeling is that such novel proposals may overload a Bill which, however +simply it be framed, will provoke very long and very warm discussion. If +the system were to be regarded by the present minority as a real +safeguard for their interests, its establishment, on tactical grounds +alone, would be worth any expenditure of time and trouble; but, if they +accept the assumption that existing parties in Ireland are going to be +stereotyped under Home Rule, and then point to the paucity of Unionists +in all parts of Ireland but the north-east of Ulster, they can +demonstrate that no _practicable_ enlargement of constituencies could +seriously influence the results of an election. My own view, already +expressed, is that, provided we give Ireland sufficient freedom, wholly +new parties must, within a short time, inevitably be formed in Ireland, +and the old barriers of race and religion be broken down, and, +therefore, that all expedients devised on the contrary hypothesis will +eventually prove to be needless and might even prove unpopular and +inconvenient. On the other hand, merits are claimed, with a great show +of reason, for Proportional Representation, which are altogether +independent of the protection of minorities from oppression. It is +claimed that the system brings forward moderate men of all shades of +opinion, checks party animus, and steadies the policy of the State. But +I think that a free Ireland should be the judge of these merits. At +present the bulk of the people do not understand the subject, and need +much education before they can appreciate the issue. + +Meanwhile, the conventional party system, based on conventional +constituencies, will, to say the least, do no more harm to Ireland than +to any other State in the Empire. Any minor defects will be +infinitesimal beside the vast and beneficial change wrought by +responsible government. + + +DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN THE TWO HOUSES. + +It is essential to provide for this, and it would be difficult to better +the proposal in the Bill of 1893: that after two years, or an +intervening dissolution, the question should be decided by a joint vote +in joint session. + + +MONEY BILLS AND RESOLUTIONS. + +To originate in the Lower House on the motion of a Minister. + + +POLICE. + +The Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police should be +under Irish control from the first. The former force will undoubtedly +have to be reconstituted, and its reconstitution, as an ordinary Civil +Police, ought to be undertaken by the Irish Government, but the +financial interests of "retrenched" officers and men should be +safeguarded in the Bill itself. + + +JUDGES. + +All future appointments should be made by the Irish Government, without +the suspensory period of six years named in the Bill of 1893. Present +Irish Judges should retain their appointments, as in both previous +Bills. The precedent of Canada, where provincial Judges, unlike the +State Judges of Australia, are appointed and paid by the Federal +Government, is certainly not relevant. + + +LAW COURTS. + +The Federal analogy, except in one particular noticed under the next +heading, has no application to Ireland. Only one provision of any +importance is needed, namely, that Appeals, in the last resort, should +be to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council instead of to the +House of Lords. The Judicial Committee is the final Court of Appeal for +the whole Empire, and, strengthened by one or more Irish Judges, should +hear Irish Appeals. It is true that the tribunal has been subjected to +some criticism lately, especially from Australia. Federal States +naturally wish to secure pre-eminent authority for their own Supreme +Courts. But the tribunal is, on the whole, popular with the colonial +democracies, and the argument from distance and expense does not apply +to Ireland. At the end of an interesting discussion at the last Imperial +Conference, in which suggestions were put forward for strengthening the +Judicial Committee by Colonial Judges, it was agreed that new proposals +should be made by the Imperial Government for an Imperial Final Court of +Appeal in two divisions, one for the United Kingdom, another for the +Colonies. If that step is taken, the position of Ireland will need fresh +consideration.[180] + + +DECISION OF CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS.[181] + +The validity of an Irish Act which has received the Royal Assent will, +like that of a Colonial Act which has received the Royal Assent, be +determined in the ordinary course by the Irish Courts, with an ultimate +appeal to the Judicial Committee, which should be strengthened for the +occasion by one or more Irish Judges. But both the previous Home Rule +Bills made the convenient provision that the Lord-Lieutenant should have +the power of referring questions of validity arising on a Bill, before +its enactment, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for final +decision. There is a useful Canadian precedent for this provision, in +the Imperial Act passed in 1891, for giving the Governor-General in +Council power, in the widest terms, to refer, _inter alia_, questions +touching provincial legislation to the Supreme Court of Canada, with an +appeal from it to the Judicial Committee.[182] To follow this precedent +would not involve any Federal complications. + + +EXCHEQUER JUDGES. + +If Ireland controls her own Customs and Excise, no provision for this +tribunal appears to be necessary, unless it be that some counterpart is +needed for the Colonial Courts of Admiralty.[183] The Bill of 1886 +(Clause 20) limited the jurisdiction to revenue questions. The Bill of +1893 (Clause 19) widened it to include "any matter not within the power +of the Irish Legislature," or "any matter affected by a law which the +Irish Legislature have not power to repeal or alter." The minds of the +authors of this clause were evidently affected by the Federal principle +which involves two judicial authorities--one for Federal, one for +provincial matters. There seems to be no reason for embarking on any +such complications in the case of Ireland. + + +SAFEGUARDS FOR EXISTING PUBLIC SERVANTS IN IRELAND.[184] + +Retrenchment, and in some departments drastic retrenchment, will be +needed in the Irish public service, just as it was needed in the +Transvaal after the grant of Home Rule to that Colony. It is highly +desirable that statutory provision should be made safeguarding existing +interests. No such provision was made in the case of the Transvaal, and +some bad feeling resulted. The past responsibility for excessive Civil +expenditure lies, of course, on Great Britain, as it lay in the case of +the Transvaal, and on grounds of abstract justice it would have been +fair in that case for Great Britain to have assumed a limited part of +the expense of compensating retrenched public servants. The practical +objections to such a policy are, however, very great. In this, as in all +matters, Ireland will gain more by independence than by financial aid, +however strongly justified. All payments should be a direct charge upon +the Irish Exchequer, not, as in some cases under the Bill of 1893, upon +the Imperial Exchequer in the first instance, with provision for +repayment from Ireland. + + +FINANCE. + +I summarize the conclusions already indicated in previous chapters: + +1. Fiscal independence, with complete control over all Irish taxation +and expenditure. + +2. Initial deficit to be supplied by a grant-in-aid, diminishing +annually and terminable in a short period, say, seven years. + +3. Future contribution to Imperial services to be voluntary. + +4. Remission to Ireland of her share of the National Debt, and +relinquishment by Ireland of her share of the Imperial Miscellaneous +Revenue. + +5. Imperial credit for Land Purchase to be extended as before, by loans +guaranteed on the Consolidated Fund, under any conditions now or +hereafter to be made by the Imperial authorities. + +Loans to the Public Works Commissioners to be optional. + + +REPRESENTATION AT WESTMINSTER. + +To cease. + + +CONFERENCE BETWEEN THE IRISH AND IMPERIAL AUTHORITIES. + +This is a very important point, because friendly consultation, as at +present with the Colonies, will take the place of Irish representation +in the Imperial Parliament, and will prove a far more satisfactory means +of securing harmony and co-operation. Arrangements similar to those of +the Imperial Conference, only more precise and efficient, and of a +permanent character, should be made for consultation between the Irish +and British authorities on all subjects where the interests of the two +countries touch one another. The need for more frequent consultation +with the Colonies is being felt with increasing force, and although no +permanent consultation body has yet been created, special _ad hoc_ +conferences have recently been held--for Defence in 1909, and for +Copyright in 1910--in addition to the quadrennial meetings, where a vast +amount of varied topics are discussed, and the most valuable decisions +arrived at.[185] + +What the precise machinery should be in the case of Anglo-Irish +relations I do not venture to say. The Ministers of the respective +countries will be so easily accessible to one another that there would +seem to be no need for the frequent attendance of a powerful personnel +at joint meetings. But a Standing Committee, with a small official +staff, would be necessary. + + +CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.[186] + +For amendment of the Home Rule Act itself it is not possible to make any +statutory provision. Like all Constitutional Acts, it will only be +alterable by another Imperial statute, which, if it were needed, should +be promoted by Ireland. But one of the most important clauses in the Act +itself will be that defining Ireland's power to amend her own +Constitution without coming to Parliament. I venture to repeat the view +that this power should be as wide as possible, consistently with the +maintenance of the Imperial authority, and subject, of course, to +provisions prescribing--(1) a time-limit for the initial arrangements; +(2) the method of ascertaining Irish opinion; and (3) the majority in +the Legislature, or in the electorate, or in both, necessary to sanction +a constitutional change.[187] If a Home Rule Constitution, passed into +law in the heat of a party fight at Westminster, proves to be perfect, a +miracle will have been performed unparalleled in the history of the +Empire. At this moment a Committee of Ireland's ablest men of all +parties should be at work upon it, with an instructed public opinion +behind them. So only are good Constitutions made, and even the very best +need subsequent amendment. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[166] For details of prior Home Rule Bills, see the Appendix. + +[167] The Victorian and South Australian Constitutions of 1855 state in +clear terms that the Ministry must be members of the Legislature, and +all the Australian Constitutions of the same date, except that of +Tasmania, formally exclude all other officials from the Legislature. The +Transvaal Constitution of 1906 made no reference to either point; nor do +the Federating Acts of 1867, 1900, and 1909 for Canada, Australia, and +South Africa. + +[168] A fifth custom, very common, of compelling new Ministers to seek +re-election is incorporated in most of the Australian Constitutions, but +was expressly ruled out in Section 47 of the Transvaal Constitution of +1906. + +[169] See Hansard, July 3, 1893, Speech of Mr. John Morley. + +[170] The words "subject to this Constitution" or "subject to this Act" +are sometimes added, but have no special significance. The Australian +Commonwealth Constitution Act does not mention the Governor's +"instructions," but only his "discretion." + +[171] British North America Act, 1867, Sects. 55-57; Commonwealth of +Australia Constitution Act, 1900, Sects. 58-60. + +[172] See especially pp. 213-229. + +[173] See pp. 223-225. + +[174] Taken from Amendment XIV. to the United States Constitution, +passed July 28, 1866. + +[175] British North America Act, 1867, Sect. 92 (13). But the Province +may not encroach on powers reserved to the Dominion--e.g., in bankruptcy +(Gushing v. Depuy [before Jud. Comm. of Privy Council]). See the +"Constitution of Canada," J.E.C. Munro, pp. 247-253. There has been much +litigation over points where Dominion and Federal powers overlapped. +(See "Federations and Unions of the British Empire," H.E. Egerton, pp. +151-153). + +[176] For the proposals of the Bills of 1886 and 1893, see Appendix. + +[177] South Africa Act, 1909, Sects. 24 and 25. + +[178] See pp. 155-162. + +[179] See Pamphlet No. 17, published by Proportional Representation +Society, and an excellent paper by Mr. J.F. Williams in "Home Rule +Problems." + +[180] Cd. 5741, 1911, pp. 46-51. + +[181] See Appendix and the Bill of 1886, Clause 25; Bill of 1893, Clause +22. + +[182] 54 and 55 Vict., Ch. 25, Sect. 4. + +[183] Courts of Admiralty in the Colonies are regulated by Imperial +Acts, though by an Act of 1890 large powers were conferred on the +Colonies of declaring ordinary Courts to be Courts of Admiralty (see +Moore's "Commonwealth of Australia," pp. 11 and 251). + +[184] See Clauses 27-30 of the Bill of 1886, and Clauses 25-28 of the +Bill of 1893. + +[185] See the Precis of Proceedings, Cd. 5741, 1911. + +[186] See pp. 225-227. + +[187] See Section 128 of the Australia Constitution Act, 1900, and +Section 152 of the South Africa Act, 1909. + + + + +CONCLUSION + + +Is it altogether idle to hope that some such body will yet come into +existence, if not in time to influence the drafting of the Bill, at any +rate to bring to bear upon its provisions the sober wisdom, not of one +party only in the State, but of all; and so, if it were possible, to +give to the charter of Ireland in her "new birth of freedom" the +sanction of a united people? + +Home Rule will eventually come. Within the Empire, the utmost achieved +by the government of white men without their own consent is to weaken +their capacity to assume the sacred responsibility of self-government. +It is impossible to kill the idea of Home Rule, though it is possible, +by retarding its realization, to pervert some of its strength and +beauty, and to diminish the vital energy on which its fruition depends. +And it is possible in the case of Ireland, up to and in the very hour of +her emancipation, after a struggle more bitter and exhausting than any +in the Empire, to heap obstacles in the path of the men who have carried +her to the goal, and on whom in the first instance must fall the +extraordinarily difficult and delicate task of political reconstruction. +They will be on their mettle in the eyes of the world to prove that the +prophets of evil were wrong, to show sympathy and inspire confidence in +the very quarters where they have been most savagely traduced and least +trusted, and they will have to exhibit dauntless courage in attacking +old abuses and promoting new reforms. They will need their hands +strengthened in every possible way. + +The help must come--and it cannot come too soon--from the working +optimists of Ireland, from the hundreds of men and women, of both +parties and creeds, who are labouring outside politics to extirpate that +stifling undergrowth of pessimism which runs riot in countries denied +the light and air of freedom. All these people agree on the axiom that +Ireland has a distinct individual existence, and that her future depends +upon herself. No one should dare to stop there. Let him who feels +impelled to stop there at any rate act with open eyes. In expecting to +realize social reconstruction without political reconstruction--however +divergent the aims may now seem to be--he expects to achieve what has +never been achieved in any country in the Empire, and to achieve this +miracle in the very country which has suffered most from political +repression, and possesses the most fantastic system of government to be +found in the King's dominions. The thing is impossible, and if at bottom +he feels it to be so, and inclines sadly to the view that political +servitude is but the least of two evils, I would only venture to suggest +this: Is it not a finer course to stake something on a risk run in every +white community but Ireland rather than to face the certainty of half +achievement? And is it not, after all, a sound risk to trust the very +men who now respond to the appeal for self-reliance, mutual tolerance, +and united effort in their private affairs, not to renounce these +qualities and abuse the rights of citizenship when the public affairs of +their country are under their own control? + +As for the risk to Great Britain, I have only this last word to say: Let +her people, not for the first time, show that they can rise superior to +the philosophy, as fallacious in effect as it is base and cowardly in +purpose, which sets the safety of a great nation above the happiness and +prosperity of a small one. Within the last few weeks the wheel has +turned full circle, and the almost inexplicable contradiction which has +existed for so long between Unionism and Imperialism has been +illuminated with a frank cynicism rare in our public life. It is being +said that the freedom given to Canada cannot be given to Ireland, +because the separation from the Empire theoretically rendered possible +by such a step would be immaterial in the case of Canada, which is +distant, but perilous in the case of Ireland, which is near. If this be +Imperialism, it should stink in the nostrils of every decent citizen at +home and abroad. + +It is true, to our shame, that, by little more than an accident, Canada +obtained the freedom which gave her people harmony, energy, and wealth +in the teeth of this mean and selfish doctrine. But Lord Durham took a +higher view. Let me recall the memorable words which he added to his +long and brilliant argument for liberty as a source, not only of +domestic regeneration, but of affection and loyalty to the Motherland: +"_But at any rate our first duty is to secure the well-being of our +colonial countrymen;_ and if, in the hidden decrees of that wisdom by +which this world is ruled, it is written that these countries are not +for ever to remain portions of the Empire, we owe it to our honour to +take good care that, when they separate from us, they should not be the +only countries on the American continent in which the Anglo-Saxon race +shall be found unfit to govern itself." + +Lord Durham was doubly right; in his prophecy of the closer union +liberty would promote, and in elementary law which he laid down, of +moral obligation which, whatever the result, he held superior to +dynastic calculations. It is a fact of ominous significance that the +intellectual successors of the men who most hotly repudiated both these +doctrines in 1838 are being driven by pressure of their Irish views to +revive that repudiation in 1911, and to revive it in the midst of the +most effusive protestations of the need for still closer union with a +Colony which would either have undergone the fate of Ireland or have +ceased to be a member of the Empire if their philosophy had triumphed. I +do not believe there is any conscious cant in that flagrant +contradiction, but I do firmly believe that so long as their error about +Ireland poisons in them the springs of Imperial thought, some element of +fallacy lies in any Imperial policy they undertake. In common prudence, +at any rate, they should avoid telling Canada, while beckoning her +nearer to the heart of the Empire, that they only gave her freedom +because she was so far. + +But I rely still on an awakening, on a fundamental change of spirit. The +Empire owes everything to those who have disputed, sometimes at the cost +of their lives, illegitimate authority. Some day the politicians who now +spend sleepless nights with paste and scissors in ransacking the ancient +files of the world's Press for proofs that Mr. Redmond once used words +signifying that he aimed at "separation"--whatever that phrase may +mean--will regret that they ever demeaned themselves by such petty +labour, and will place Mr. Redmond among the number of those who have +saved the Empire from the consequences of its own errors. + + + + +APPENDIX + + +COMPARATIVE TABLE, SHOWING THE PRINCIPAL PROVISIONS OF THE HOME RULE +BILLS OF 1886 AND 1893 + +HOME RULE BILL OF 1886. HOME RULE BILL OF 1893. + + THE IRISH LEGISLATURE. + +To consist of the Crown and _Two To consist of the Crown and +Orders_, sitting together, and _Two Houses_, sitting separately. +unless either Order demands a +separate vote, voting together. + +1. _First Order_, to consist of 1. _Council_, of 48 Councillors +_(a)_ 75 members elected on a L25 elected on a L20 franchise from +franchise from a new set of a new set of constituencies. +constituencies. Term of office, Term of office, eight years. +ten years. _(b)_ 28 Peerage +members, to give place by +degrees to elective members as in +_(a)_. + +_2. Second Order_, 204 members 2. _Assembly_ of 103 members +elected as at present. Two from each elected as at present. +constituency (with an alteration +in the case of Cork). + +Dissolution at least every five Dissolution at least every five +years. years. + + _Money Bills_ and votes to + originate in the Assembly. + + + DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN ORDERS OR HOUSES. + +After three years or a After two years or a +dissolution question to be dissolution question to be +decided by joint vote. decided by joint vote in + joint session. + + + + ESTRICTIONS ON IRISH LEGISLATURE. + + 1. _Imperial Matters_. + +_No power to make laws about_-- + _Nor_ with: the Lord-Lieutenant, +The Crown, War or Peace, Army or conduct as Neutrals, Extradition, +Navy, Volunteers or Militia, Trade-marks, nor (for six years) +Prize or Booty of War, Treaties, Post Office in or out of +Titles, Treason, Naturalization, Ireland. +Trade or Navigation, +Lighthouses, etc., Coinage, But Trade _within Ireland_ and +Copyright, Patents, Post Office _inland_ Navigation conceded to +(except within Ireland). Ireland. + + + 2. _Irish Matters. + +No power to make laws for the purpose of_-- + +(1) _Establishing or endowing (1) Ditto, ditto, but more +any religion_ or imposing explicit and far-reaching. +disabilities or conferring +privileges on account of +_religion_, or affecting the +undenominational constitution +of National schools, etc. + +(2) Impairing rights or property (2) Ditto, ditto, or "without +of corporations, without address for due process of law" and +both Orders and consent of Crown. compensation. + + (3) Depriving anyone of _life, + liberty, or property_ without + due process of law in accordance + with settled precedents, or + denying _equal protection of + laws_, or taking property + without _just compensation_. + + (4) Imposing disabilities or + conferring privileges on account + of _birth, parentage, or place + of business_. + + (5) (_For three years_) + respecting relations of + _landlord and tenant_ or the + purchase and letting of _land_ + generally. + + + IRISH REPRESENTATION IN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT. + +To cease altogether (except in Ireland to send 80 members to +the case of a proposed Westminster (instead of 103). +alteration of the Home Rule Act). Peers as before. + + + EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY. + +The Crown, as represented by the Lord-Lieutenant, acting in Irish +affairs with the advice of an Irish Cabinet responsible to the Irish +Legislature. + + + POWER OF VETO ON IRISH LEGISLATION. + +To be held by Lord-Lieutenant To be held by Lord-Lieutenant, +(acting normally on the advice _acting on advice of Irish +of Irish Cabinet?), but subject Cabinet_, but subject to +to instructions from Imperial instructions from Imperial +Government. Government. + + + FINANCE. + + 1. _Taxation_. + +_Customs and Excise_ still to be (1) _For six years_ all existing +levied by Imperial Parliament and taxes to continue to be imposed +collected by Imperial officers. by Imperial Parliament and +All other taxes to be under Irish collected by Imperial officers. +control. + + Ireland to have power to impose + additional taxes of her own. + + (2) _After six years_, Customs + and Excise to remain Imperial + taxes; all others to be under + Irish control. But Excise to be + collected, though not levied, + by Ireland. + + + 2. _Ireland's Revenue_. + +_Gross_ revenue collected in (1) _True_ Irish revenue from +Ireland from Imperial and Irish Imperial taxes (_i.e._, with +taxes and Crown Lands, etc.; allowance made for duties +_plus_ an Imperial grant towards collected in Ireland on +the cost of Irish Police. (Total articles consumed in Great +cost at that time L1,500,000: Britain, and _vice versa_). +Ireland to pay L1,000,000, +Treasury any surplus over (2) Revenue from Irish taxes +L1,000,000, until cost reduced and Crown Lands. +to that point.) + (3) Imperial grant of one-third + of annual cost of Irish Police + (equal in first year to + L486,000). + + + 3. _Ireland's Contribution to Imperial Exchequer_. + +(1) _For thirty years_ Ireland (1) _For six years_ Ireland to +to pay fixed annual maximum sums, pay _one-third of the "true" +representing Ireland's share of revenue raised in Ireland from +(a) Army, Navy, Civil List, etc.; Imperial taxes and Crown +(b) National Debt. Payments not Lands_. (Estimated share for +to be increased, but might be first year, L2,276,000, or +diminished. Share for Army, Navy, about one-twenty-eighth of +etc., never to exceed total Imperial expenditure.) +one-fifteenth of total cost. +Total payments under these heads +for first year, L3,242,000. + +(2) _After thirty years_, (2) _After six years_, both +contribution _to be revisable_. method and amount of + Ireland's contribution to be + revised and settled afresh. + + + 4. _Contribution to Special War Taxes_. + +Optional to Ireland. For six years compulsory on + Ireland to pay her + proportional share of any + such tax levied. + + + _5. Post Office_. + +To be taken over by Ireland For six years to remain under +under Irish Act. Imperial control. Profit or + loss on Irish posts to be + credited to or debited + _against_ Ireland. + + + POLICE. + +Dublin Police to be under Both Dublin Police and +Imperial control for two years. Constabulary, as long as they +Constabulary, "while that force should exist, to be under +subsists," to be under Imperial Imperial control. +control, but Ireland to have +power to create a new force Meanwhile an ordinary locally +under control of local controlled civil police to be +authorities. gradually established by Irish + Government, and to take the + place of the old forces. + + But _for six years_, Imperial + Government to have the power + to maintain in existence the + old forces, if considered + expedient. + + + JUDGES. + + _Present Irish Judges to Remain_. + +All future Irish Judges to be For six years future Irish +appointed by Irish Government. Supreme Court Judges (not + County Court Judges, etc.) + to be appointed by Imperial + Government. After six years + by Irish Government. + + + LAW COURTS. + + _Constitution to Remain the Same_. + + But appeals to the House of + Lords to cease; instead, to + the Judicial Committee of + the Privy Council. + + + CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS. + + _(As to Validity of Irish Laws, etc.)_. + +To be decided by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (including +one or more Irish Judges). + + + EXCHEQUER JUDGES. + +Legal proceedings in Ireland All legal proceedings in +or against Imperial revenue land Ireland _which touch any +authorities to be referred, if matter_ (financial or +either party wishes, to the otherwise) _not within the +Exchequer Division Judges of power of the Irish +the United Kingdom. Legislature_ to be referred, + if either party wishes, to + two Exchequer Judges appointed + and paid by the Imperial + Government. Appeal to be to + the Judicial Committee of the + Privy Council. + + + LORD-LIEUTENANT + + _Might be of any Religion_. + +Term of office indefinite. Term of office six years. + + + CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. + +After the first dissolution, After six years, Legislature +Legislature to have power to to have power to reconstitute +reconstitute Second Order. Assembly. + + + + +REMARKS ON THE FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS. + +The arrangements differed widely in the two Bills. + +The main points of likeness were: (1) That from the first there was to +be a _separate Irish Exchequer_; (2) that for all time Ireland was to be +_denied control over the imposition of Customs and Excise_--that is to +say, over about _three-quarters of her revenue_ as then raised; (3) that +about _a third of the cost of the Irish Police_ was to be paid by the +Imperial Government; (4) that payments due from Ireland to the Imperial +Government were to be made a first charge on proceeds of Imperial taxes +in Ireland. + +The principal points of difference were: + +1. Under the Bill of 1886, apart from the very important restriction of +Customs and Excise, Ireland was at once to have freedom to control her +own taxation. + +Under the Bill of 1893 (as amended) there was to be a suspensory period +of six years during which all existing taxes were to continue to be +imposed by the Imperial Government; but with power to Ireland to add +taxes of her own. _Amounts_ of Imperial taxes might be varied, but _no +new ones_ imposed, except specially for war. After six years, financial +freedom, except in Customs and Excise. Excise, however, was to be +_collected_, though not levied, by Ireland. + +2. "_Collected" and "True" Revenue_.--In 1886, Ireland was credited with +all the revenue _collected in Ireland_ from Customs and Excise _(i.e.,_ +the "gross" revenue from those taxes), but she had to pay the cost of +collection herself. + +In 1893 allowance was made for duties collected in Ireland on articles +consumed in Great Britain, and _vice versa,_ Ireland being credited only +with her "true" revenue--that is, revenue from dutiable articles +_consumed in Ireland._ Similar allowances made in the Income Tax +account. A joint Anglo-Irish Committee was to settle these adjustments. +This system involved a deduction from the first year's gross Irish +revenue of nearly two millions. (In 1886 the corresponding sum, credited +to Ireland, was L1,400,000.) On the other hand, in 1893 the greater part +of the cost of collection (L235,000) was not to be borne by Ireland. + +3. _Imperial Contribution by Ireland._--In 1886, a fixed annual maximum, +which might be diminished, but could not be exceeded, revisable in +thirty years. + +In 1893 (for six years) an annually ascertained _quota_--namely, a third +of Ireland's "true" revenue (exclusive of taxes imposed by herself). + +4. _Ireland's Budget._--Note the important point that under both Bills +three-quarters of Irish revenue was derived from Customs and Excise, +over which, in 1886, Ireland could exercise no control; in 1903 only the +control given by the presence of eighty members in the House of Commons. +In both cases Ireland was to be wholly responsible for her own civil +expenditure (except for the existing Police). Under both Bills Ireland +was intended to start with a surplus of about half a million, which may +be regarded roughly as the equivalent, in both cases, of the Imperial +share of the cost of the Irish Police. But note that, in 1886, Ireland +being pledged to pay a fixed million of the cost of Police, would obtain +no relief until the cost was reduced below a million; while in 1893, +paying two-thirds of the annually ascertained cost, she would obtain +relief from any annual reduction. The Police referred to was, of course, +the then existing Police, imperially organized and controlled. The new +civil Police eventually set up in substitution would be financed and +controlled by the Irish Government. The charges, therefore, on the +British taxpayer would, it was expected, be a rapidly diminishing one. + +The loss on Irish posts in 1893, debited against Ireland, was estimated +at L52,000. + +5. _Special War Taxes._--Ireland's contribution optional in 1886; in +1893, compulsory (at any rate, for six years, which would have included +the beginning of the South African War). + + + + +INDEX + +Abercromby, Sir R., 57, 129 +Absentee taxes, in Ireland, 23-30; + in Australasia, 116 +Absenteeism, + in Ireland, 12, 51; + in Prince Edward Island, 75-76; + in Upper Canada, 80; + in Lower Canada, 85; + in Australia, 110 +Acadia. See Maritime Provinces +Act of Union, 1800, 60-64, 232-233 +Administrators, in South Africa, 197 +Agricultural Co-operation. See Irish Agricultural Organization Society, + also 168, 177 +Agricultural Grant, Ireland, 267 +Agricultural Rates Act, 1896, 267 +Agricultural Statistics, Ireland, 150, 306-308 +Amendment of Constitution, + Ireland, 225-227, 338; + Colonies, 225-226, 338 +American Colonies, + colonization of, 8-9; + land tenure in (see Land Tenure); + mercantile system, 17-18, 30; + government of, 22-23, 33; + Revolution in, 30-35, 72, 74. + See also United States +Anglo-Normans, in Ireland, 6-7 +Annuities, tenant's. See Land Purchase +Armagh, Peep o' Day Boys in, 55 +Army Act, 1881, 220 (footnote) +Army and Navy, 218-219, 329 +Arnold, Benedict, 40 +Ashbourne Act, 1885, 309. + See also Land Acts +Australian Colonies Act, 1850, 107, 225 +Australian Colonies Customs Duties Act, 1873, 220, footnote +Australian Colonies, history of, + See Chapter VI., and under names of the various States; + federation of, as Commonwealth of Australia, 119, 196, 198; + finance in, 227-228, 245-246, 288, 295-298. + See also Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, + Constitutions, Federal Systems, Customs and Excise, Subsidies + +Baldwin, Robert, in Upper Canada, 82, 103 +Balfour, Arthur,138, 152, 172, 212 +Balfour, Gerald, 152, 158, 338 +Baltimore, Lord, 21 +Barbour, Sir David, on Anglo-Irish Finance, 249-257 +Barry, Sir Redmond, 114 +Belfast, 45, 146, 162, 170, 175 +Belgium, cost of Government in, 253 +Berkeley, G.F.H., 178 +Bidwell, B., in Upper Canada, 82 +Birrell, Augustine, his Land Act of 1909. + See Land Acts, Land Tenure, Land Purchase +Bloemfontein, Convention of, 123 +Boer War of 1880-1881, 125; + of 1899-1902, 128-129, 133,216 +Bonus to landlords, 310-312, 317. + See also Land Purchase +Boomplatz, battle of, 1848, 123 +Botha, General, 143 +Brand, President, 124 +Bright, John, 69, 71, 213, 308 +British Columbia, finances of, 246, 299; + Upper Chamber in, 331 +British North America Act, + 1867, citations from, 219, 220 (footnote), 225, 299, 323, + 325 (footnote), 327, 330 (footnote); + 1891, 335. + See also Canada +Buller, Charles, 87, 89, 94-95 +Burgh, Hussey, 36 +Burke, Edmund, 12, 27-29, 34, 59, 74, 77 +Burke, Robert O'Hara, 114 +Butt, Isaac, 71, 135, 171 + +Canada, Upper and Lower, + history of, (see Chapter V. and Introduction, viii, 340-341); + relations of, with American Colonies, 72; + with United States, 80, 87, 92, 101; + Union of the two Provinces proposed, 76-78, + carried out, 96-104, 106, 192, 194, 198, 200-201, 223, + and Introduction, viii; + comparison of history with that of Transvaal, 132-135; + confederation of, as the Dominion of Canada, proposed, 82, 96, + carried out (1867), 97, 193-196; + finance in, 227-228, 298-299, 304. + See also Constitutions, Federal Systems, Customs and Excise, Subsidies, + Guaranteed Loans, British North America Acts, 1867, 1891 +Carleton, Sir Guy, 73, 129 +Carnarvon, Lord, 123-124 +Carolina, plantation of, 9, 10, 23 +Carson, Sir Edward, Introduction, x +Casey, Judge, 115 +Castlereagh, Lord, 62, 134, 135 +Catholic Relief Act, + 1778, 36; + 1793, 52-53, 55 +Chamberlain, Joseph, 1-4, 11, 103, 206, 257, 282 +Channel Islands, finance, 288 +Charlemont, Lord, 16, 46-47, 61 +Charles II., King, 9 +Chartist movement, 88 +Chatham, Lord, 27, 29-31, 34, 74 +Chief Secretary, 64,160; + compared with Canadian Governor, 102 +Childers, Hugh, + in Prince Edward Island, 76 (footnote); + as Chairman of Royal Commission on finance, 239-257 +Church Funds, Irish, 271-272 +Civil List, 328 +Civil servants, + Ireland, 336; + Transvaal, 336 +Clare, Earl of, See Fitzgibbon +Clergy Reserves, + Upper Canada, 82; + Lower Canada, 84-85 +Cockburn, Sir John, 85 +Coinage, + colonial and Irish powers over, 219, 220 (footnote); + Act of 1853, 220 (footnote) +Collins, Francis, in Upper Canada, 82 +Colonial Attorneys Relief Act, 1857, 222 (footnote) +Colonial Courts of Admiralty Act, 1890, 220 (footnote), 336 (and footnote) +Colonial Defence forces, 215-219 (and footnote) +Colonial Laws Validity Act, 222 +Colonial Marriages Act, 1866, 222 (footnote) +Colonial Naval Defence Act, 1865, 220 (footnote) +Colonial Office, 79 +Colonial Prisoners' Removal Act, 1869, 222 (footnote) +Colonial Probates Act, 1892, 222 (footnote) +Commercial Propositions of 1785, 43, 232 +Commercial Restrictions, + Ireland, 17-19, 30, 37, 236, 294; + American Colonies, 17-18, 30; + Canada, 78 +Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900, citations from, 219, + 220 (footnote), 296, 324-325 (footnote), 338 (footnote), 332 +Conferences, Imperial, 205, 215, 337; + suggestions for, with Ireland under Home Rule, 205, 215, 337 +Congested Districts Board, 152, 176-167; + in Land Purchase, 310, 314; + under Home Rule, 176-177, 317, 319 +Connecticut, 8-9, 23 +Constitutional Act, 1791, Canada, 76-79, 80 +Constitutional Doubts, settlement of, 335 +Constitution, Irish, summary of proposed, Chapter XV. +Constitutions: + Transvaal, + of 1905, 130-137; + of 1906, 137-139, 223-224, 323-324, 325 (footnote); + United States, 191, 193-197, 224-225, 227; + Dominion of Canada, 219, 220, 227, 327, 328, 330, 331, 334; + Australian States, 107-108, 325 (footnote); + Commonwealth of Australia, 196, 213, 219, 220, 227, 332; + South African Union, 197, 224. + See also Federal Systems and individual Colonies +Continental Congress. 1774, 35 +"Contract" finance, 300, 303-306 +Contribution of Ireland to Imperial services; + in the eighteenth century, 26, 231; + during the Union, 216, 234, 237-239, 247, 253-254, 282; + under Home Rule, 216, 282, 286-287, 302-303,337 +Convict system, Australia, 74 +Copyright, 219-20 (footnote); + Imperial Conference on, 337 +Corn Laws, Repeal of, 236 +Cornwallis, Lord, 35, 62 +Courtney, Lord, 333 +Cromwell, Oliver, 9 +Crown Colony, features of, in Irish Government, 1-2, 64, 144, 157, 179, + 188, 213, 284, 306 +Crown Lands, revenue from, 275 +Currie, B.W., 249, 252 +Customs and Excise, + Ireland, control of, under Home Rule, 227-229, 231-234, 275-279, + 287-294, 300-301; + Australia, 227-228, 245-246, 288, 295-299; + Canada, 227-228; + United States, 227-228; + in Colonies generally, 254, 288. + See also Finance, Federal Systems +Debt, Irish public, until 1816, 230-233 +Danish invasions, 6 +Declaration of Independence, + Irish, 38; + American, 35 +Declaratory Acts for America and Ireland, 23-24, 31, 34, 45 +Defender Society, 55-56 +Deficit, in Irish Revenue, + amount of, 259-260, 277, 279; + method of dealing with, 281-286, 337 +Denmark, agricultural policy in, 237, 290 +Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, 152; + founding of, 155-162; + allusions to, 234, 274, 291, 332 +Derby, Lord, 123 +Derry, Bishop of, 47 +Development Commissioners, grants to Ireland, 274 +Devolution movement, 152 +Devon Commission, 1845, 69 +Dillon, John, 146 +Disagreement between two Chambers of Irish Legislature, 334 +Disestablishment of Irish Church, 70, 103, 154 +Disraeli, Benjamin, 109, 235 +Dissenters, in Ireland, 9, 19-20, 24, 31; + in American Colonies, 9, 20; + in Canada, 80-82 +Dublin, 170, 173, 186 +Duffy, Sir C. Gavan, 114-116 +Dunraven, Lord, 152, 178 +Durban, Conference at, for Closer Union, 156-157, 192 +Durham, Lord, Introduction, viii, 88-91, 94-99, 104, 126 +Durham Report, 94-99, 104, 133 +Dutch East India Company, 120 + + +Education, Ireland, 71, 170, 174-176, 285; + finance of, 268-269; + England, 269; + Scotland, 269 +Egerton, H.E., 31, 330 +Elgin, Lord, 93, 102-103, 105 +Emancipation, Catholic, 52-53, 57, 62-63, 88 +Emigration, from Ireland, 19-20, 31, 87, 111, 148, 156, 186 +Emmett, Robert, 83, 86, 135, 171 +Encumbered Estates Act, 1849, 69, 111 +Equalization of taxes, in Ireland and Great Britain, 234-235, 246 +Estate duties, assessment to, + as test of taxable capacity, 240, 238; + yield of, in Ireland, 275-276 +Estates Commissioners. See Land Purchase +Eureka Stockade, 1854, 112-113 +Evicted tenants, 177 +Executive authority, + in Colonies, 221-222, 323-328; + in Ireland, under Home Rule, 221-222, 323-328 +Executive Council, + in Upper Canada, 79, 81, 100; + in Lower Canada, 79, 84, 100 +Extradition, + Colonial powers over, 219 (and footnote); + Irish powers over, 219, 329 + + +"Family Compact," + in Upper Canada, 81; + in the Maritime Provinces, 88 +Famine, Irish, 1847, 69, 103, 236 +Farrer, Lord, 249, 252-256 +"Federal" Home Rule, 188, 192-206, 226-227, 294-300 +Federal systems, in general, 192-197; + Upper Chamber in, 212-213, 229, 300, 331-332; + division of powers, as in Home Rule Bill, 223, 330; + Amendment of Constitution, 225-227; + finance, 227-229, 242-246, 294-300; + judiciary, 334-336; + settlement of constitutional questions, 335. + See also Canada, Australian Colonies, South Africa, United States, + Switzerland, Germany, Constitutions +Fenianism, 70 +Financial relations of Ireland and Great Britain + (see Chapters XI., XII., XIII.); + before the Union, 230-231, 290; + from the Union to 1896, 232-57; + Royal Commission on, 1894-1896, 239-57; + present situation, 178-181, and Chapters XII. and XIII. +Finance, of the Home Rule Bill, Chapter XIII., and summary, 337 +Finance, Colonial. See Federal Systems, and under names of Colonies +Finance Act, 1894, 222 (footnote) +Finance Act, 1909, 259, 301 +Finlay, Father T.A., 165 +Fiscal amalgamation, 1817, 233, 289 +Fisher, J., author of "The End of the Irish Parliament," 13, 54 +Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, Introduction, xi, and 49, 58-9, 60, 62, 65, + 97, 126, 131, 134, 146 +Fitzgibbon, James, 81 +Fitzwilliam, Lord, 53-54 +Flood, Henry, 46-47 +Ford, Patrick, 149 +Fortescue, Hon. J.W., 39-40 +Foster's Corn Law, 51, 236 (footnote) +Fox, Charles James, + on Canada, 78-79; + on Ireland, 91 +France, Seven Years' War with, 26; + in Canada, 72-73; + in American War of Independence, 35; + effect of, on Ireland, 35; + effect of French Revolution on Ireland, 54-55; + invasions of Ireland, 56 +Franklin, Benjamin, 31, 33-34 +Free Trade, opinion in Ireland on, 170, 290; + influence of, on Ireland, 235-237. + See also Tariff Reform, Customs and Excise +French-Canadians. See Chapter V., especially pages 72-78, 83-87, 96-97; + also 121 +Frere, Sir Bartle, 124 + +Gaelic League, 166-168 +Geelong, 114 +Georgia, 9, 21 +Germany, 147; + Federal Constitution of, 195, 228 (Zollverein) +Gladstone, W.E., + Irish land reform, 68, 70, 99; + on colonial liberty, 109-111; + his Transvaal and Irish policies, 125, 128; + on representation of Ireland at Westminster, 203-211; + taxation of Ireland, 234-235; + on Irish expenditure, 282; + financial schemes in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, 300-303, + and Appendix; + for details of the Bills generally, see Appendix and in the text _passim_ +Gourlay, William, in Upper Canada, 82 +Governors, + in American Colonies, 23, 33; + in the Canadas, 79, 102; + in the Dominion of Canada, 195, 199; + in the Commonwealth of Australia, 195 (footnote), 196, 221 +Grattan, Henry, 44, 45, 46, 50, 53 +Grattan's Parliament, Chapter III. +Greene, General, 40 +Greville's "Memoirs," 94, 103 +Grey, Sir George, in Australasia, 115-117; + in South Africa, 123-124, 194 +Grote, George, 89, 92 +Guarantee Fund, 267. See also Land Purchase +Guaranteed Loans, + to Ireland (see Land Purchase); + to the Transvaal and Canada, 318; + to Crown Colonies and Foreign Powers, 318-319 + + +Habeas Corpus Act, 330 +Hamilton, Sir Edward, 238 +Hancock, John, 35 +Henderson, Professor G.C., 116 +Henry VIII., Ireland in the reign of, 8 +Hewins, Professor W.A.S., 293-294 +Holland, Bernard, 33 +Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. + For details, see Appendix, allusions in text _passim_ +"Home Rule Problems," edited by + Basil Williams, Introduction, xiv, + and pp. 178, 203, 307, 333 +House of Lords: under the Union, 64; + after Home Rule, 212, 229, 300 +Howe, Joseph, in Nova Scotia, 88 +Hume, philosophy of, 59 +Hume, Joseph, 89, 90, 109 +Hyde, Dr. Douglas, 166 + +Imperial Federation, 204-205 +"In and Out" Clause, 209 +Income Tax, + first imposition of, in Ireland, 234-235; + assessment to, as test of taxable capacity, 240, 258; + yield of, in Ireland, 275-276; + errors in computing Irish yield, 278 (footnote) +India, 12 +Indians, in America, 10 +Industrial Development Associations, 165, 168, 290, 292 +Insurance, National, 178, 274, 306 +International Copyright Act, 1886, 220 (footnote) +Ireland Development Grant, 311 +Irish Agricultural Organization Society, 162-165 +Irish Council Bill, 1907, 192, 304 +_Irish Homestead_, 165 +Irish Members at Westminster. See Representation at Westminster +Irish Universities Act, 1908, 153, 173 +Isle of Man, finance of, 255, 288 +Jamaica, 1, 284 +James, Sir Henry, 330 +Jebb, Richard, 117-118 +Johannesburg, 131, 133 +Judges, Irish, under Home Rule, 334-5; + Exchequer Judges, 336 +Judicial salaries, Ireland, 273 + + +Kilmore, 114 +Kitchener, Lord, 129 +Kruger, President Paul, 124 +Kyte, Ambrose, 114 + + +Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1906, 153, 320 +Labour questions, in Ireland, 170, 178 +Lafontaine, Sir Louis, 103 +Laing's Nek, 125 +Lalor, Peter, 112-113 +Land Acts, Irish, of 1870, 16-17, 68, 70-71, 151, 309; + 1881, 16-17, 70, 103, 151, 309; + 1885, 309; + 1887, 70, 151; + 1891, 70, 152, 309-310; + 1896, 70, 152, 309; + 1903, 71, 103, 152-153, 155, 310-321; + 1909, 153, 311-321. + See also Land Tenure, Land Purchase +Land Commission, 70; + cost and control of, 273, 303, 317-319 +Land League, 70 +Land Purchase in Ireland, Chapter XIV., 71, 151, 152-153, 177, 243, 285, 337; + in Prince Edward Island, 75, 318 +Land Tenure, in Ireland, 11-17, 51, 55-57, 65, 66-70, 143, 151-152, + 177, 236-237; + in America, 10, 15; + in Prince Edward Island, 13, 75-76, 115, 143; + in Upper Canada, 80; + in Lower Canada, 84-85; + in Australia, 115-116; + in New Zealand, 116. + See also Land Acts, Land Purchase +Lanyon, Sir Owen, 124, 127 +Law, Bonar, 293 +Law Courts, Ireland, 334-335 +Lecky, Professor W.H., Introduction, vi and ix, and 6, 13, 16, 19, + 29, 49, 57, 183 +Legislative Councils, in America, 23; + in Upper Canada, 79, 81, 100-102; + in Lower Canada, 79, 84, 100 +Legislature, Irish, powers of, general, 213-229, 328-330; + financial powers, Chapter XIII., and 317-321, 337; + composition of, 330-334. + For restrictions on, see also Safeguards for Minorities +Legislatures, Colonial, powers and limitations of, general, 215-229. + See also Constitutions, Federal Systems, and under names of Colonies +Leinster, plantations in, 9 +Lieutenant-Governors, in Dominion of Canada, 195, 221 +Limerick, Treaty of, 12, 63 +Local Government Board, cost of, 272 +Local Government, working of, in Ireland, 103, 172-174 +Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, 103, 154, 158 +Local taxation, Ireland, 266; + grants in aid of, 266-267, 311 +Locker-Lampson, G., Introduction, vi, and 65 +Londonderry, Lord, 61 +Long, Walter, Introduction, x, xi, and 142, 152 +Lord-Lieutenant, + before the Union, 22-23, 32-33; + under the Union, 64; + under Home Rule, 192, 199, 219, 221, 266, 324-327, 328, 335 +Louisburg, capture of, 73 +Lyttelton, Mr. Alfred, 131-132, 135 + + +MacDonnell, Lord, 61, 152, 304 +Mackenzie, W.L., in Upper Canada, 74, 82, 86-87, 94, 105 +McKenna, Sir J., 238 +McManus, T.B., 115 +Maine, 8 +Majuba, 125, 128 +Malta, 1 +Manitoba, 331 +Maritime Provinces, 72, 75, 88, 95, and Chapter V. + See also Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island +Maryland, 8-9, 21 +Massachusetts, 8, 10, 22-23 (and footnote), 35 +Meagher, T.F., 113-114 +Melbourne, Lord, 94 +Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, 220, 222 +Mill, John Stuart, 67, 69, 89, 95 +Milner, Lord, 129, 131, 138-139, 142 +Miscellaneous revenue, Imperial, Ireland's share of, 286-287 +Mitchel, John, 113-114 +Molesworth, Sir William, 89, 93-94, 109 +Molyneux, on Irish liberty, 31 +Montreal, 74-75, 103 +Montgomery, General, 35, 75 +Moore, W. Harrison, author of "The Commonwealth of Australia," 219 +Morgan's Riflemen, 73 +Morley, Lord, his "Life of Gladstone," Introduction, x, and 109, 125; + on Irish Members at Westminster, 209; + on Clause 7 of the Bill of 1886, 326 +Municipal Technical Institute, Belfast, 162, 175 +Municipal Reform Act, 1840, 103 +Munster, plantations in, 9 +Murray, Miss A.E., 17, 235, 293 + +Natal, 140, 196 +National Debt, Ireland's contribution to, 286-287, 337 +Naturalization, 219, 220 (footnote), 329 +Naval Agreement, 1911, 218 +Navigation Acts, 17-18 +Navies, Colonial. See Colonial Defence Forces +Neilson, John, in Lower Canada, 85 +Nelson, Wilfred, in Lower Canada, 85 +Netherlands Government, 121 +Neutrality, 219, 329 +New Brunswick, Chapter V., and 72, 75-76, 88, 97, 194 +New England, 9, 21, 120 +Newfoundland, 73, 193-197, 288 +New Haven, 8 +New Netherlands, plantation of, 9 +New South Wales, 106-107, 114, 117, 120, 194, 196; + finance in, 297-298, 300 +New Zealand, 106, 108, 115-117, 147, 193, 197, 217, 288 +Ninety-two Resolutions, Lower Canada, 86 +Nixon, Captain John, 35 +North Carolina, 21 (footnote) +Nova Scotia, Chapter V., and 72, 76, 88, 97, 102, 194 + + +Oakboys, in Ulster, 16 +O'Brien, Barry, 178, 213 +O'Brien, Murrough, 253 +O'Brien, Smith, 83, 103, 114, 171 +O'Brien, William, 177, 181 +O'Callaghan, Dr., in Lower Canada, 85 +O'Connell, Daniel, 70-71, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 99, 123 +O'Conor Don, the, 249 +Octennial Act, 168, 357 +O'Hara, James, 81 +Old Age Pensions, 153, 178-179, 181, 273, 285, 291, 303 +Oldham, Professor C.H., on Irish finance, 234, 262, 270 +O'Loughlen, Sir Brian, in Victoria, 114 +"Omnes Omnia" Clause, 209 +Ontario, Province of, + prior to 1867, See Canada; + after 1867, see Canada, Confederation of, and 194, 196, 331 +Orange Free State, 120, 123-124, 126, 135, 196, 285 +Orange Society, + in Ireland, 55, 137, 155, 184, 187; + in Canada, 87, 103, 184; + in Australia, 114, 184 +O'Shanassy, Sir John, in Victoria, 114 + +Paley, Dr., Philosophy of, 59 +Papineau, Louis, in Lower Canada, 47, 85-87, 94, 105 +Parliamentary parties, Irish, 181-182 +Parliament, Irish (pre-Union), 24, 43, 50-58, 61, 62; + finance under, 230-231, 290 +Parnell, Charles Stewart, 135, 151, 171 +Patents, 219 +Peace of Paris, 26 +Peel, Sir Robert, on the Repeal of the Union, 91-92, 99, 236 +Peep o' Day Boys, 55 +Penal Code, 12-14, 26, 36, 55, 57, 65, 72, 156, 183, 308 +Penn, William, 9 +Pennsylvania, 9, 21 +Pilkington, Mrs., 165 +Pitt, William, 50, 53, 54, 62, 74, 96, 106, 135, 232 +Plantations, of Ireland and America, 8-9 +Plunkett House, 164 +Plunkett, Sir Horace, 155, 159 (footnote), 160, 165 +Police, Irish, + present position and cost of, 253, 273; + under Home Rule, 180, 219, 285, 334 +Poor Law (Ireland), 71, 174 +Port Phillip. See Victoria +Postal Services, Irish, powers over, 220; + loss on, 243, 275, 286 +Poynings' Act, 24, 45 +Preamble, Home Rule Bill, 323 +Prince Edward Island, 13, 72, 74, 88, 97, 115. + See also Land Tenure, Land Purchase +Prize and Booty of War, 219, 329 +Proportional Representation, 333 +Proprietary Colonies of America, 10, 23 +Public Works, Commissioners of, Ireland, 319-321, 337 + +Quakers, 9, 21 +_Quarterly Review_, 99 +Quebec, town of, 74 +Quebec, Province of, prior to 1791, 72-78; + from 1791 to 1867, see under names of Lower Canada and Canada; + after 1867, see Canada, Confederation of, and 194, 196, 198-200, 208; + present Constitution of, compared with Irish Home Rule, 198-200, 206, 209 +Quebec Act, 1774, 73-74 +Queensland, 109, 196; + finance in, 297 + +Railways, Ireland, 71, 174 +Raleigh, Sir Walter, 8 +Rebellions, Irish, + of 1798, 55, 56; + of 1848, 83, 103 +Recess Committee, action and report of, 155-162 +Reciprocity Agreement, 293 +Redmond, John, 141, 148, 156, 181, 341 +Reform, Parliamentary (Ireland), 45-46, 50-58; + Great Britain, 48, 53, 59, 88 +Repeal of the Union, 70, 91 +Representation at Westminster, of Ireland, 203-229, 284, 337; + of American Colonies (proposals for), 34, 205; + of Canada (proposals for), 77 +Residuary powers, under Home Rule, 223. + See also Federal Systems +Retief, Piet, 122 +Revenue, from Ireland. + See Financial Relations, Estate Duties, Income Tax, Customs and Excise +Revenue, "true" and "collected," + method of estimating in United Kingdom, 242-246, 275-278 (and footnotes); + in Australia, 242-246, 296 +Revolution, Irish, 1780-2, Chapter II.; + American, 1775, Chapter II +Rhode Island, 8, 23 (footnote) +Road Board, grants to Ireland, 274 +Roebuck, J.A., 89, 90, 94 +Rose, Holland, 75 +Royal Assent, 221, 326-327 +Ruskin, John, 106 +Russell, George W., 165 +Russell, Lord John, on Canada, 87, 90, 91, 92, 99, 100, 102, 221; + on Australia, 109-110 +Russell, T.W., 159 (and footnote) +Rutland, Lord, 54, 77 + +Safeguards for Minorities, Ireland, 191, 223-225, 329-330; + United States, 224, 329-330; + Canada, 225; + Australia, 225 +St. Lawrence, River, 75 +Salaberry, Colonel, 83 +Sand River Convention, 1852, 123 +Saunderson, Colonel, 156 (footnote), 215 (and footnote) +Scotland, 104, 159 (footnote); + Home Rule for, 200-203; + revenue from, and expenditure on, 238, 242; + police in, 253; + education in, 269 +Selborne, Lord, 142 +Seventh Report of Grievances (Upper Canada), 82, 86 +Seven Years' War, 26, 72 +Sexton, T., 249 +Shepstone, Sir T., 124 +Sinn Fein, 168 +Smith, Adam, 51 +Smith, Sir Harry, 123 +Socialism, in Ireland, Introduction, xiv, 144, 170 +South Africa Act, 1909, citations from, 140-141, 323, 326, 332, 338 +South African Colonies, + history of, see Chapter VII., + and under Cape of Good Hope, Transvaal, Orange Free State, Natal; + Federal Union, proposed (1859), 117, 123; + Conference for Closer Union (1908), 140, 156-157; + Union of 1909, 140-143, 196-197; + see also South Africa Act, 1900, Constitutions, Federal Systems +South Australia, 106-107, 116, 196; + finance in, 297 +Spanish Colonies, 25 +Spirit duty, 234-235, 237-238, 244 +Stamp Act (1765), and Revenue Duties (America), 27, 34-35, 72 +Stanley, Lord, 90-92 +Steelboys, in Ulster, 16 +Subsidies, + to Ireland, under Home Rule, 281-286, 337; + to Colonies, 284-285; + by Federal Governments to subordinate States or Provinces, 296-300, 304 +Suez Canal shares, revenue from, 287 +Supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, 204, 221-225, 323, 328 +Supreme Court, + of Australia, 196, 334-335; + of South Africa, 197, 334-335; + of Canada, 195, 334-335 +Sutherland, Sir T., 249 +Swift, Dean, 32 +Switzerland, Federal Constitution of, 195, 331 +_Sydney Bulletin_, 117, 143 + +Tariff Reform, opinion in Ireland on, 170; + effect of, on Ireland, 289, 292-293; + opinion of Professor Hewins on, for Ireland, 293-294 +Tariffs. See Customs and Excise, Free Trade, Tariff Reform +Tasmania, 106-107, 113, 196; + finance in, 297-298, 300 +Taxable capacity of Ireland: in 1800, 232; + in 1894, 238-257; + in 1911, 258-260 +Technical Instruction, Ireland, 161, 175 +Temperance Reform, Ireland, 177-178, 292 +Tenant League, 70 +Ten Resolutions (1837), 87 +Territorials, Ireland, 118, 218 +Thompson, Poulett, Lord Sydenham, 102 +Titles, power of conferring, 219, 329 +Tone, Wolfe, 54, 56, 57, 62, 73, 76, 86, 135 +Toronto, 81 +Townshend, Lord, 25, 32 +Townshend, Charles, 27 +Town Tenants Act, 153 +Trade, external, of Ireland, 147-148, 291 +Trade and Navigation, Colonial and Irish powers over, 220, 329 +Trade-mark, + Irish, 165; + Colonial and Irish powers over, 219 +Transvaal, Introduction, xiv, 120, 123-143, 196, 318, 336, + and whole of Chapter VII. + See also South African Colonies, Constitutions +Treason, 219, 329 +Treasury, Committee on Land Purchase, 1908, 311; + Returns (Financial Relations), 242-246, 259-260, 264-279 +Treaties, power of making, 219, 329 +Trek, the Great, 120-123, 128, 133 +Trimleston, Lord, 25 + +Ulster, plantation of, 8, 9; + land tenure in, 15, 52, 55-7; + emigration from, 15, 19-20, 31, 186; + Orange Society in (see Orange Society); + comparison with Canadian minorities, 92, 97-9, 100-2, 214; + with Transvaal minority, 139, 186, 214; + views of, with regard to representation at Westminster, 214-215; + under Home Rule, Introduction, x, xii, 170, 182-187, 302, 333 +Ulster Custom. See Ulster, Land Tenure in +"Umpirage," of Great Britain, + in Canada, 101, 155; + in Ireland, 155, 208 +"Undertakers," 25, 81 +Union, + of Ireland and Great Britain, Chapter IV.; + compared with that of the two Canadas, Introduction, viii, 77-78, + 96-104, 106, 192, 194, 198, 200-201; + of the Canadas (see Canada) +United Empire Loyalists, 74-75, 80 +United Irishmen, 54, 56, 76 +United States, relations with Canada, 80, 87, 92, 101; + emigration to, from Ireland, 111, 148; + feeling towards Ireland, 148-149; + Constitution of, 193-195. + See also Federal Systems, Constitutions, Safeguards for Minorities, + Customs, and Excise +Universities, Irish, 153, 273, 329 +Upper Chamber, Irish, under Home Rule, 331-332. + See also Federal Systems + +Van Diemen's Land. See Tasmania +Vereeniging, Peace of, 129 +Victoria, Chapter V., and 106-107, 114-115, 194, 196, 198, 208; + finance in, 297 +Virginia, 8, 22 +Volksraad, 124 +Volunteers, Ireland (1778-1783), 37, 44-45, 52, 54, 60-61, 73, 103, + 135, 187, 230. + See also Territorials + +Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, + in Canada, 89, 94-95, 104; + in Australia, 108-109, 116 +Wakefield, Vicar of, 107 +Wales, Home Rule for, 199-200 +War and Peace, power of making, 219, 329 +Washington, General George, 40 +Welby, Lord, on Anglo-Irish finance, 249-256, 280-281, 282, 293 +Wellington, Duke of, on Ireland and Canada, 70, 88, 90, 126 +Wentworth, William, in Australia, 107, 114, 120 +Western Australia, 106-108, 115, 196, and Chapter V. +West Indies, banishment of Irish to, 9; + grants-in-aid to, 284 +Whiteboys, 16, 51, 56, 67, 107 +Willcocks, Stephen, in Upper Canada, 82 +William IV., on Canada, 99 +Williams, Basil, Editor of "Home Rule Problems," Introduction, xiv, 203 +Wills Act, 1861, 222 (footnote) +Wilmot, Samuel, in New Brunswick, 88 +Wyndham, George, 152; + his Land Act of 1903, 71, 152, 310, etc. + +Young, Arthur, on Ireland, 14, 32, 69 +Young Ireland movement, 71, 114, 135 + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Framework of Home Rule, by Erskine Childers + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE *** + +***** This file should be named 15086.txt or 15086.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/0/8/15086/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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