be weighed to the earth by his overpowering admiration for them as
effective instruments for the will of peoples. They are, it is true,
the displacement of one kind of arbitrary power by another kind of
arbitrary power. They are, in the form in which we best know them, the
substitution of a king and his chosen advisers by a government and
an assembly of popular representatives to which it is responsible.
Accepting that substitution as the central authority by which a State
may be created, is it possible to carry into the change the spirit
of the old State? The answer to that question is that the spirit
of the old State not only may be so conveyed, but that it actually
corrects, in great measure, the modern weakness of parliaments, by
bringing them into closer relation with the differing and special
interests of the Nation. The translation of the old State, that now
lives in the intuitions and expectations of the Nation, into the
modern conditions that are now part of the Nation’s surface-thinking,
corrects the weakness of modern ideas while providing just the kind of
centralisation that the old State lacked.
The essential part of the working of the old State was clearly the
convocation of its great councils. While these met at regular periods
the State continued its central function, and existed as a whole. When
they were discontinued, as they sometimes were, the State fell into
disarray, and existed only in its parts. Now in modern times, as it so
happens, Irishmen meeting in their own concerns and acting at their own
initiative created just such another council. The work of the Recess
Committee resulted in the formation of the Department of Agriculture,
the working of which was intended to lie at the instance and in the
power of a Council of Farmers elected through the country to manage
their own concerns. Perhaps no better instance could be given of the
tragic futility of trying to work the conceptions of one Polity through
the conditions of its alien rival. For the President of the Council
became Minister of an alien bureaucratic government. He took his orders
from that government, even though every farmer in Ireland was outraged
by the effect of those orders. He took his salary from that government,
and existed at the will of that government, with the result that the
Council that was supposed to express and control the interest of
farming in Ireland was itself controlled by the interests of farmers in
somebody else’s country, and so was brought to a nullity. Moreover,
while the farmers met in council to study their exclusive interests
their President openly expressed his intention to study the interests
of traders, even when the two interests were opposed to one another;
and as the Council of Farmers had no means of enforcing its will, and
no court to which to appeal, it fell into decay, and by neglect came in
the end to be largely an echo of its President’s will.
Yet, though the Department of Agriculture is an eloquent example of how
things ought not to be done, it does in fact contain a striking idea,
evolved by consultation of Irishmen on Irish soil, that carries the
conception of the old Irish State. If an Irish Assembly, or Parliament,
were surrounded by a number of such councils, representing each of the
special interests or concerns of the Nation, the elder State would be
translated into modern conditions and transfigure those conditions by
drawing the arbitrary and purely theoretical business of parliaments
into a definite relation to the life of a nation. Instead of the
monarch and his court would appear a government and the representative
assembly from which it is drawn and to which it is responsible. Instead
of three or four special councils representing the comparatively simple
texture of the life in the first millenium would appear a number
of such special councils representing the proportionately greater
complexity of the life of to-day. And just as in the old State each
council held authority in its own concerns leaving to the monarch the
co-ordination of the whole, so the modern councils would each rule
their own affairs subject to the control of the assembly of the Nation.
There would thus be two different kinds of representation gathered
together. There would be the direct representation of the Nation, and
there would be the representation of the special interests the union
and pattern of which create the national life. Both would meet in the
Government.
The councils would include every sort of interest, but they would not
be of equal size or of the same formation. Both size and formation
would correspond to the internal requirements of each interest, or
concern. Those representing Farming and Labour, for instance, would
necessarily be large, not only because of the size of the interests
they would represent, but also because the nature of those interests
would demand a wide expression of opinion. Those representing Law,
Capital and Education would be smaller, because of the narrower and
more special nature of their interests. Those representing the Army and
Naval Defence would not only be smaller yet, but would necessarily be
formed in other ways. Each council would be formed by the direct vote
of all those in the country engaged in that branch of work. The Council
of Local Administration would naturally consist of the elected heads
of stateships, and would thus exactly correspond to the Council of
Rulers in the old State. But the Council of the Army, Naval Defence and
the Police would either consist of heads of departments, by promotion
or appointment, or partly of such heads and partly of men chosen by
the direct vote of officers and rank and file. The details, for the
moment, are immaterial. They would require closer attention at the
moment of creation. The main matter is that each council would control
its own affairs by the direct representation of all the people in the
country engaged in its practical conduct. And these special interests
would meet the direct representation of the Nation by Assembly in the
Government of the day.
The Government would, by necessity, depending as it would on the will
of the Assembly, be found from and always be responsible to that
Assembly. That is to say, the largest party, or combination of parties,
just as in the present clumsy theory of government, would create
the Government of the day. But the Ministers of Government would be
presidents of various councils, and would reflect their desire. Instead
of evolving theories from consultation with the permanent officials
of departments, as happens in England and most other countries, they
would be directly in touch with the interests over whose destinies
they preside, and their attention would be occupied with the immediate
practical questions raised from time to time. If some scheme suggested
itself to them as desirable they would first have to win the consent
and approval of their respective councils before coming to the Assembly
with them; and when they came, they would come not only as Ministers of
the Government but as spokesmen of their councils. Thus the clumsiness
and constant injustice of majority government would continually be
refined by contact with living issues. Within the body of the existing
law each special interest would be the arbiter of its own affairs.
When fresh legislation became necessary by changed conditions, or
through other causes, its council would discuss it, formulate it, and
be responsible through its president for the initiative of bringing it
before the Assembly of the Nation.
A system such as this, as has been said, would bring into joint
operation two kinds of representation: the representation of special
interests and the representation of the whole people. Clearly they
would require a solvent and a corrective. New legislation might be
initiated by a council and be considerably altered by the Assembly.
This would naturally only be the case in extreme cases, for the will
of such councils would naturally have a far higher authority than the
sole will of one man in consultation with permanent officials. Yet
the contingency would have to be provided for. For the council might
reject the amended form of its wish, as it would have the right to do.
Or the Assembly might reject the suggestion altogether, or compel its
withdrawal, with the result that the initiative might be repeated.
Very properly the final decision would rest with the Assembly, for it
would be responsible not to special interests, but to the whole Nation.
Yet the councils would equally require some further court to which to
appeal on the argument that no Assembly at all times and in all cases
represents a nation’s will, however frequently it be elected. They
would therefore demand some court in which they themselves had a direct
voice.
This could be created by a Senate half as large as the Assembly. A
third of the Senate could be created by large electoral areas, say the
provinces, voting by proportional representation. By that method men
would be chosen who commanded general respect but did not wear a party
colour or control a local following pronounced enough to win favour
at the hustings, and who, on the other hand, could not be said to
represent any special interest. But two-thirds of the Senate would be
chosen in equal proportions by the various councils acting as electoral
colleges. Electoral colleges, that act simply and only as electoral
colleges, as in America, have generally proved to be failures. They
dilute the popular will to no particular purpose, and lend themselves
to intrigue. But the councils would not be primarily elected as
electoral colleges. They would be elected to control and direct their
own special interests. Only in a secondary capacity would they act as
electoral colleges. Nor would their appointments to the Senate have
the right to sit both in the Councils and in the Senate. Men or women
chosen for the Senate by the various councils would sit and act only in
the Senate.
Legislation initiated in the Assembly would proceed automatically to
the Senate, before which body, if a council felt aggrieved, its case
would be argued by its representatives. If Assembly and Senate agreed
no further could be said in the matter. If they disagreed, after a
given length of time (during which time the subject of dispute would
be laid aside) both Assembly and Senate would sit, debate and vote on
the matter as one body, and the decision so taken would be final during
the life of that Assembly.
It is claimed that a system such as this reflects the spirit of the
old Irish State as translated into modern conditions, answering at
one time the instincts that have persisted in the Nation and the
surface-thinking it has since acquired. It gives no undue obeisance to
the modern invention of parliaments, but draws the Government created
by an Assembly of Representatives into definite relation with the
interests it is supposed to study while making those interests the
deciders of their own affairs within the limits of national agreement.
It could not help but reflect the instincts and thoughts of the
Nation. Being brought so closely into touch with its life it would at
once react to the changes of that life. Yet the stability and central
function of government would be assured. The utmost liberty would be
given to the parts while ensuring the central action of the whole, as
the limbs of the body have an independent liberty while obeying the
rhythm created and disciplined by the mind.
Certain parts of government belong so essentially to the business of
the whole that they would not come under the review of any special
council. The Minister, or Ministers, in charge of these would be
responsible to none but the Nation, for they would directly concern the
Nation as a whole and not in any one of its parts. The chief of these
of course is finance. The only council which the Minister of Finance
could consult or advise would be the Assembly of Representatives, as
drawn directly, well or ill, from the people’s choice. All direct
money arrangements, such as taxes, the creation of debt or credit,
the purchase of properties or monopolies, and so forth, would lie in
his care, would arise at his initiative and would be solved by the
Assembly. The Senate could claim the right to debate any such measure,
and to suggest alterations, but whether the Assembly accepted or
rejected these alterations would lie at its own discretion.
There would be other matters of the same nature. The creation of
new forms or units of government, for example, or changes in the
constitution, where rendered necessary by changing conditions, or
any matter outside the range of the councils, or transcending their
capacity, or any new legislation at the initiative of one council that
would demand some independent measure to bring it into co-ordination
with the working of some other council, would all be of this kind, and
would lie at the initiative of the Chief Minister of State, who would
be responsible for the State to its elected President and would be
chosen by him to create the Ministry.
Such business would naturally be more frequent at the beginning of
the working of the State than when it was in complete movement.
For example, the first work of the State would inevitably be the
re-creation of its local government in order to bring it into
conformity with practical necessities on the lines of the stateships
of the old State. Nothing more unwieldy and uneconomical than the
present system, or lack of system, could very well have been devised.
It is a patchwork quilt of foreign ideas, that express no realities in
Ireland, that are alternately the theme of the mirth and the tears,
but always the derision, of Irishmen, and that even in the country of
their invention have not proved to be a conspicuous success. Urban
Councils, District Councils, Poor Law Guardians, Town Commissioners
and County Councils all have their independent lives without being
fitted in as parts of a co-related whole. Seen in contrast with the
compactness and completeness of the old stateships nothing could seem
more haphazard and accidental. So long as they exist, as they now do,
it will be impossible to speak of an Irish State, for a State does not
exist only by reason of the larger, more central forms of government,
but in the degree in which those larger forms are drawn into relation
with smaller and local units of government. They neither correspond
to any efficiency in the State nor to any efficiency in relation to
their own needs. They divide up a given area into a number of separate
and even opposed units, whereas the life of that area is generally
itself a unit, however variously its activities may be expressed. A
small township and the country lying about it, for example, can only
artificially be broken up into two units, one the town and the other
the country, for their life is woven of one piece. Even the industries
of the towns depend on the country lying round about. Any weakening of
the whole weakens each one of its parts, and the whole is weakened by
being broken into irresponsible parts. For the life of the whole exists
as a community not as a patchwork.
Moreover, the present councils are neither large enough nor small
enough for efficiency. A very small council would create great rivalry
in its election and would cause a fierce light to beat on all its
actions. Under such circumstances corruption would be difficult.
But a council of this sort would not be representative of the life
it governed. A large council, on the other hand, would have its own
kind of efficiency, and would be representative of all the life
it expressed. It would naturally have to create its officers of
government, from whom it could withdraw the power it gave when they
ceased to express its will. Expressing itself by way of debate it
would create an interest in local government, and a feeling of general
responsibility, that cannot now be said to exist. The subjects debated
in the local Assembly would be discussed by the hearthside; the life
of the people would be quickened; and they would not reserve all their
thought for the larger national questions, but would expend it also
on their immediate local interests. Thus again corruption would be
made difficult. A field would be offered for the discussion of new
ideas of local government, local improvement or trade economy and
efficiency, whereas at the present moment local councils are sealed
chambers that by their construction can never admit fresh air and are
the natural breeding places for corruption. It is easy, and just, to
censure corruption in these local bodies, but it is yet more necessary
to see that their constitution simply invites corruption, just as it
invites their capture by one or two interests that rule them to the
exclusion of all other interests. Not only because they purport to
represent unreal and arbitrarily distinguished parts of a life that is
a fellowship (without even doing that much well), but also because of
their very form and constitution, such bodies have reduced the local
life of Ireland to a tangle of conflicting and corrupt interests.
These two criticisms suggest an obvious remedy. The first need is
to restore the life of the community, in a fellowship of town and
country, urban and rural, within a given area. The second need is
to let that community express its life, and assume control of all
its local affairs, in a legislative assembly of not less than fifty
and not more than a hundred. The satisfaction of these two needs
suggests difficulties that are incidental to each of them in turn as
new enterprises in statesmanship. Fortunately, as we are following a
historical continuity in the life of a Nation, answers are suggested
to both of these difficulties out of the old State, and only require
adaptation and re-framing to make them suit modern conditions.
The first difficulty is to find the natural area within which the
life of a community would be comprised. Here, manifestly, the past
would supply a very helpful answer, if it could be found. The area
comprised by the old stateships would naturally finally be decreed
by their internal needs and their external play and interplay upon
one another--that is to say, partly by certain obvious geographical
necessities and partly by economic conditions. Rivers, lakes, mountain
ranges and the sea would impose natural boundaries; and equal
accessibility to both mountain pasture and tillage, or alternatively
different stateships taking up different kinds of life, would suggest
other boundaries. These things can in many cases be traced in the
boundaries of the old stateships where they are discoverable--as in
many cases they are. Clearly since then the life of the people has
changed in many ways, and the statesman thinking of modern conditions
would find other boundaries naturally suggested to him. The transition
from the modern artificial limits of local life to the proper
communities, or fellowships, of the future would not be easy. Yet if
certain boundaries, drawn from a comparison of the old stateships with
the new requirements, were decreed, subsequent experience would soon
suggest a revision of working areas where these were found necessary.
At the present time these areas in many cases have already been found
in great measure by the co-operative societies that have created
petty stateships of their own. Such societies have been grouped round
an economic idea that, embodying as it does the sense of unity and
fellowship about which the new communities would be grouped, would
probably be adopted in some form by the stateships of the future;
but that would be for themselves to decide by debate in assembly.
And when it is remembered that some of these societies have already
undertaken from the power used for their factories to supply light to
neighbouring townships it is obvious that a larger relation for the
life of a stateship is at once indicated.
Clearly the past is equally full of suggestion in answering the second
difficulty. To ask, what officers would the assemblies of the new
stateships create for the conduct of its government, is at once to
think of the past. In the degree in which the life of these stateships
became more various its officers, or ministers, would become more
numerous, while if it remained simple they would be few. The first
would be the President of the Assembly, who would take his place in the
Council of Local Administration. The stateship would take control of
its own internal litigation under its own law officer, and the lawyers
beneath him would not merely be advocates in criminal actions, but
would serve as arbitrators in actions for tort. It would have its own
Finance Minister, its own Minister of Public Health, and if necessary
its own ministers of trade and agriculture, for local life in these
questions will not remain as stagnant as it is now, especially in the
wider areas that the stateships would include. Such ministers would
hold their power from the Assembly, and could work with committees
appointed by the Assembly. Offices, such as that of the recorder,
the surveyor, the doctors and the nurses would be filled by public
examination, but the actions of those who filled them would come
under the departments of government under the constant review of the
Assembly, which could terminate appointments at its will.
Stateships such as these would be the recognised units of the State.
That is to say, they would be political units, and would thus be the
constituencies for the return of one or more members, according to
population, to the Assembly of the Nation. From them that Assembly
would be constituted, just as the Councils would each be constituted
by the vote of all those in the Nation engaged in its own branch of
the national life. They would also be economic units, both for raising
and expending its own local taxation and for meeting the levies of the
State. Some of those levies would be for moneys now chargeable at the
discretion of local bodies. Any wise State will at once take within its
own control all the main arteries of communication through the country,
such as railways, canals and roads. It could re-imburse itself for the
maintenance of some or all of these by levies on the stateships through
which they pass; and the amount of these levies could come under the
review of the Council of Local Administration before being passed to
the decision of the Assembly of the Nation.
City Corporations are already such stateships, though with a more
compact life. As such they would remain; and the different nature of
their life would require corresponding changes in their constitution.
They would necessarily have to keep the same control that they now
possess. For instance, they now bear the responsibility for their own
streets and roadways; and so it would remain; for their roads are
not arteries of the country, intersecting many stateships, but only
arteries of themselves intersecting themselves. So, in most matters
corporations, having already become stateships, would remain as they
now are. The only change they would require to bring them into line
with their fellow stateships would be that their councils would need
to be enlarged. In most cases this enlargement would not need to be
considerable, for it is extremely probable that in the course of time
the country stateships would outrival the city stateships in wealth,
responsibility and the size of their respective corporate undertakings.
Thus alone can the life of the country maintain its own against the
life of the cities.