There is no argument in favour of Home Rule for Ireland which is more
frequently used to-day than that which is based on the analogy of our
Colonial experience. In the history of every one of our Colonies--so
runs one variant of the argument--from Lord Durham's report on Canada
down to the grant of responsible government to the Transvaal, "Home
Rule" has turned disaffection into loyalty, and has inaugurated a career
of prosperity. Why should we then hesitate to apply to Irish discontent
the "freedom" which has proved so sovereign a remedy elsewhere? Again,
if our Dominions have been able to combine local Home Rule with national
unity--so runs another variant--why should a policy which works
successfully in Canada or Australia not work in the United Kingdom?
Another suggestion freely thrown out is that Home Rule is only the
beginning of a process of federalisation which is to bring us to the
goal of Imperial Federation. In one form or another the Colonial Analogy
occupies the foreground of almost every speech or article in favour of
Irish Home Rule. The ablest, as well as the most courageous, piece of
Home Rule advocacy which has so far appeared, Mr. Erskine Childers's
"Framework of Home Rule," is based from first to last on this analogy
and on little else.
That the argument is effective cannot be gainsaid. It is the argument
which appeals most strongly to the great body of thoughtful Liberals who
from every other point of view look upon the project with unconcealed
misgiving. It is the argument which has appealed to public opinion in
the Dominions, and has there secured public resolutions and private
subscriptions for the Nationalist cause. In one of its forms it appealed
to the imagination of an Imperialist like Cecil Rhodes. In another it
has, undoubtedly, in recent years attracted not a few Unionists who have
been prepared to approach with, at any rate, an open mind the
consideration of a federal constitution for the United Kingdom. And,
indeed, if the analogy really applied, it would be difficult to resist
the conclusion. If Ireland has really been denied something which has
proved the secret of Colonial loyalty and prosperity, what Englishman
would be so short-sighted as to wish to deprive her of it for the mere
sake of domination? If Home Rule were really a stepping-stone towards
Imperial Federation, how insincere our professions of "thinking
Imperially," if we are not prepared to sacrifice a merely local
sentiment of union for a great all-embracing ideal!
But, as a matter of fact, there is no such analogy bearing on the
question which, here and now, is at issue. On the contrary the whole
trend of Colonial experience confirms, in the most striking fashion, the
essential soundness of the position which Unionists have maintained
throughout, that the material, social and moral interests, alike of
Ireland and of Great Britain, demand that they should remain members of
one effective, undivided legislative and administrative organisation.
The whole argument, indeed, plausible as it is, is based on a series of
confusions, due, in part, to deliberate obscuring of the issue, in part
to the vagueness of the phrase "Home Rule," and to the general ignorance
of the origin and real nature of the British Colonial system. There are,
indeed, three main confusions of thought. There is, first of all, the
confusion between "free" or "self-governing" institutions, as contrasted
with unrepresentative or autocratic rule, and separate government,
whether for all or for specified purposes, as contrasted with a common
government. In the next place there is the confusion between the status
of a self-governing Dominion, in its relations to the Imperial
Government, and the status of a Colonial state or provincial government
towards the Dominion of which it forms a part. A truly inimitable
instance of this confusion has been provided by Mr. Redmond in a
declaration made on more than one occasion that all that Ireland asks
for, is, "What has already been given to twenty-eight different portions
of the Empire."[54] Considering that the "portions" thus enumerated
include practically sovereign nation states like Canada, provinces like
those of the South African Union, with little more than county council
powers, and stray survivals, like the Isle of Man, of an earlier system
of government, based on the same principle of ascendency and
interference as the government of Ireland under Poynings's Act, it is
difficult to know which to admire most, Mr. Redmond's assurance, or his
cynical appreciation of the ignorance or capacity for deliberate
self-deception of those with whom he has to deal. The third confusion is
that between Imperial functions and national or Dominion functions, due
to the fact that the two are combined in the United Kingdom Parliament,
which is also, under present conditions, the Imperial Parliament, and to
the consequent habitual use of the word "Imperial" in two quite
different senses. It is this last confusion which makes such a
declaration as Mr. Asquith's about safeguarding "the indefeasible
authority of the Imperial Parliament" a mere equivocation, for it
affords no indication as to whether the supremacy retained is the
effective and direct control maintained by Canada over Ontario, or the
much slighter and vaguer supremacy exercised by the United Kingdom over
the Dominions. It is this same confusion, too, which is responsible for
the notion that the problem of creating a true Imperial Parliament or
Council by a federation of the Dominions would be assisted, either by
creating an additional Dominion in the shape of Ireland, or by
arranging the internal constitution of the United Kingdom, as one of the
federating Dominions, on a federal rather than on a unitary basis.
The confusion of ideas between self-government and separate government
pervades the whole argument that the granting of "Home Rule" to Ireland
would be analogous to the grant of responsible institutions to the
Colonies. The essence of Home Rule is the creation of a separate
government for Ireland. The essence of our Colonial policy has been the
establishment of popular self-government in the Colonies. That this
self-government has been effected through local parliaments and local
executives, and not by representation in a common parliament, is a
consequence of the immense distances and the profound differences in
local conditions separating the Dominions from the Mother Country. It is
an adaptation of the policy to peculiar conditions, and not an essential
principle of the policy itself.
This is obvious from any consideration of the circumstances under which
the policy of Colonial self-government originated. Under the old
Colonial system which preceded it, the Governor not only controlled the
executive government, whose members were simply his official
subordinates, but also controlled legislation through a nominated Upper
Chamber or Legislative Council. The object of this restrictive policy
was not interference with local affairs, but the supposed necessity of
safeguarding general Imperial interests. Local affairs were, in the
main, left to the local government. But the peculiar constitution of
that government rendered it almost inevitable that the practical control
of those affairs should fall into the hands of a narrowly limited class,
clustering round the Governor and his circle, and by its privileges and
prejudices creating in those excluded from that class a spirit of
opposition, which extended from its members to the whole Imperial system
which they were supposed to personify. In each of the North American
Colonies a small oligarchy, generally known as the "Family Compact,"
was able to "monopolise the Executive Council, the Legislative Council,
the Bench, the Bar, and all offices of profit." It was against this
system, and not against the Imperial connection or even against undue
interference from England, that the Canadian rebellion of 1837 was
directed. In 1838 Lord Durham made his famous report in which he
attributed the troubles to their true cause, the disregard of public
opinion, and proposed that the Governor should in future govern, in
local affairs, in accordance with the advice given by Colonial Ministers
enjoying the confidence of the popular Assembly. A few years later his
policy was put into execution by Lord Elgin in Canada, and rapidly
extended to other Colonies. Five years ago the same system of government
was applied to the Transvaal and to the Orange River Colony.[55]
From the foregoing brief summary, it is sufficiently clear that the
really vital feature of the policy inaugurated by Lord Durham was the
acceptance of responsible popular government in local affairs, and not
the separation of Colonial government from Imperial control. The policy
did not involve the setting up of new legislative machinery or a new
definition of Imperial relations. For an existing system of separate
government in local affairs, which created friction and discontent, it
simply substituted a new system which has, in the main, worked smoothly
up to the present. From the success of this policy, what possible direct
inference can be drawn as to the effect of setting up in Ireland, not a
similar system of government, for Ireland already enjoys political
institutions as fully representative as those of any Colony, or of any
other portion of the United Kingdom, but a separate centre of
government?
At the same time the success of responsible government in the Colonies
is, on closer examination, by no means without bearing on the problem of
Ireland. That system of Colonial responsible government which seems to
us so simple and obvious is, on the contrary, one of the most artificial
systems the world has ever known, based as it is upon conditions which
have never been present before in the world's history, and which are now
rapidly disappearing, never, perhaps, to recur. That a popular assembly
in complete control of the executive, should respect an unwritten
convention limiting its powers and rights to purely local affairs, and
submit to a purely external control of its wider interests and
destinies, seemed to most of Lord Durham's contemporaries almost
unthinkable. Not only those who opposed the policy, but many of those
who advocated it, were convinced that it would lead to complete
separation. Nor were their fears or hopes by any means ill-grounded.
That they were not justified by the event was due to an altogether
exceptional combination of factors. The first of these was the
overwhelming supremacy of the United Kingdom in commerce and naval
power, and its practical monopoly of political influence in the outer
world. Sheltered by an invincible navy, far removed from the sound of
international conflict, the Colonies had no practical motive for
concerning themselves with foreign affairs, or with any but purely local
measures of defence. Even when, as in 1854, they were technically
involved by the United Kingdom in war with a great Power, they were not
so much as inconvenienced. The United Kingdom, on the other hand,
incurred no serious expenditure for their defence beyond what was in any
case required for the defence of its sea-borne commerce, nor was its
foreign policy at any time seriously deflected by regard for Colonial
considerations. Even when the Colonies encroached on the original limits
set them, and began to establish protectionist tariffs against the
Mother Country, British manufacturers could afford to disregard a
handicap of which they were at first scarcely sensible, while British
statesmen smiled condescendingly at the harmless aberrations of Colonial
inexperience. Another factor was the very fact that it was colonies that
the United Kingdom was dealing with, new countries where every other
interest was secondary to that of opening up and developing the untamed
wilderness, to creating the material framework which, in fulness of
time, might support a complete national life. There was consequently
little real interest in external policy in the Colonial assemblies,
little leisure for criticism of the Imperial authorities, little desire
to assert any particular point of view. Last, but not least, was the
factor of distance, interposing a veil of obscurity between the
different communities in the Empire; mitigating minor causes of
friction, keeping Colonial politics free from being entangled in the
British Party system.
The British system of Colonial self-government has so far proved
workable because of the exceptional circumstances in which it
originated. But its success cannot be regarded as wholly unqualified.
The failure to provide any direct representation of Colonial interests
and aspirations in the Imperial Parliament may not have mattered as far
as foreign policy and defence were concerned. But it did affect the
colonies most seriously from the economic point of view, for it
precluded them from pressing with any effect for the development of
inter-Imperial communications, or from resisting the abolition of the
system of preferential trade which meant so much to their prosperity.
Under the influence of a narrowly selfish and short-sighted policy,
inspired by English manufacturing interests, Canada saw the stream of
commerce and population pass by her shores on its way to the United
States. The relative progress of the British Colonies and of the United
States since the abolition of preference is some measure of the economic
weakness of a political system which has no common trade policy. In any
case the British Colonial system, as we have known it is inevitably
moving towards its crisis. The conditions under which it originated are
fast disappearing. The commercial and political expansion of Europe, of
America, of Asia, are bringing the Dominions more and more into the
arena of international conflict. The growth of foreign navies is forcing
them to realise the necessity of taking a larger part in their own
defence. Their growing national self-consciousness demands not only that
they should cease to be dependent on the Mother Country for their
safety, but also that they should exercise control over the foreign
policy of which defence is merely the instrument. There are only two
possible solutions to the problem which is now developing: the one is
complete separation, the other is partnership in an Imperial Union in
which British subjects in the Dominions shall stand on exactly the same
footing, and enjoy the same powers and privileges in Imperial affairs,
as British subjects in the United Kingdom.
The conditions--geographical, economic, political--which, in the
Colonies, made the grant of free institutions, unaccompanied by some
form of political federation or union, even a temporary success, were,
indeed, exceptional. None of them were present in the circumstances of
Ireland before the Union. They are not present to-day. Geographically
the United Kingdom is a single compact island group, of which Ireland is
by no means the most outlying portion. No part of Ireland is to-day, or
ever was, as inaccessible from the political centre of British power as
the remoter parts of the Highlands, not to speak of the Shetlands or
Hebrides. Racially, no less than physically, Ireland is an integral part
of the United Kingdom, peopled as it is with the same mixture of racial
elements as the main island of the group. The blend of Celt with Dane,
with Normans and English of the Pale, with English citizens of the
seaports and Cromwellian settlers, which constitutes Celtic Ireland,
so-called, is less Celtic both in speech and in blood than either Wales
or the Highlands. Religion alone has maintained a difference between a
predominantly Celtic and a predominantly Teutonic Ireland which would
otherwise have disappeared far more completely than the difference
between Celtic and Teutonic Scotland. Economically, the connection
between Ireland and Great Britain, always close, has become such that
to-day Ireland subsists almost wholly upon the English market. In these
respects, at least, there is no resemblance between the conditions of
Ireland and that of any of the Colonies.
On the other hand, politically, Ireland was for centuries treated as a
colony--"the first and nearest of the Colonies," as Mr. Childers puts
it. The difficulties and defects of early Colonial government were
intensified by the great conflict of the Reformation, which made Ireland
a centre of foreign intrigue, and by the long religious and
constitutional struggle of the seventeenth century, which fell with
terrible severity upon a population which had throughout espoused the
losing cause. Cromwell; realising that "if there is to be a prosperous,
strong and United Kingdom there must be one Parliament and one
Parliament only," freed Ireland from the Colonial status. Unfortunately,
his policy was reversed in 1660, and for over a century Ireland endured
the position of "least favoured Colony"--least favoured, partly because,
with the possible exception of linen, all her industries were
competitive with, and not complementary to English industries, and so
were deliberately crushed in accordance with the common economic policy
of the time, partly because the memories of past struggles kept England
suspicious and jealous of Irish prosperity. Every evil under which the
old colonial system laboured in Canada before the rebellion was
intensified in Ireland by the religious and racial feud between the mass
of the people and the ascendant caste. The same solvent of free
government that Durham recommended was needed by Ireland. In view of the
geographical and economic position of Ireland, and in the political
circumstances of the time, it could only be applied through union with
Great Britain. Union had been vainly prayed for by the Irish Parliament
at the time of the Scottish Union. Most thoughtful students, not least
among them Adam Smith,[56] had seen in it the only cure for the evils
which afflicted the hapless island.
Meanwhile, in 1782, the dominant caste utilised the Ulster volunteer
movement to wrest from Great Britain, then in the last throes of the war
against France, Spain, and America, the independence of the Irish
Parliament. Theoretically co-equal with the British Parliament,
Grattan's Parliament was, in practice, kept by bribery in a position
differing very little from that of Canada before the rebellion. Still
the new system in Ireland might, under conditions resembling those of
Canada in 1840, have gradually evolved into a workable scheme of
self-government. But the conditions were too different. A temporary
economic revival, indeed, followed the removal of the crippling
restrictions upon Irish trade. But, politically, the new system began to
break down almost from the start. Its entanglement in English party
politics, which geography made inevitable, lead to deadlocks over trade
and over the regency question, the latter practically involving the
right to choose a separate sovereign. The same geographical conditions
made it impossible for Ireland to escape the influence of the French
Revolution. The factious spirit and the oppression of the ruling caste
did the rest. There is no need to dwell here on the horrors of the
rising of 1798, and of its repression, or on the political and financial
chaos that marked the collapse of an ill-starred experiment. England,
struggling for her existence, had had enough of French invasion, civil
war, and general anarchy on her flank. The Irish Parliament died, as it
had lived, by corruption, and Castlereagh and Pitt conferred upon
Ireland the too long delayed boon of equal partnership in the United
Kingdom.
The mistakes which, for a century, deprived the Union of much of its
effect--the delay in granting Catholic emancipation, the folly of Free
Trade, acquiesced in by Irish members, by which agrarian strife was
intensified, and through which Ireland again lost the increase of
population which she had gained in the first half century of Union--need
not be discussed here. The fact remains that to-day Ireland is
prosperous, and on the eve of far greater prosperity under a sane
system of national economic policy. What is more, Ireland is in the
enjoyment of practically every liberty and every privilege that is
enjoyed by any other part of the United Kingdom, of greater liberty and
privilege than is enjoyed by Dominions which have no control of Imperial
affairs. The principle which in the case of the Colonies was applied
through separate governments has, in her case, been applied through
Union. It could only have been applied through Union in 1800. It can
only be applied through Union to-day. Railways and steamships have
strengthened the geographical and economic reasons for union;
train-ferries and aircraft will intensify them still further. Meanwhile
the political and strategical conditions of these islands in the near
future are far more likely to resemble those of the great Napoleonic
struggle than those of the Colonial Empire in its halcyon period.
In one aspect, then, the Union was the only feasible way of carrying out
the principle which underlay the successful establishment of Colonial
self-government. In another aspect it was the last step of a natural
and, indeed, inevitable process for which the history of the British
Colonies since the grant of self-government has furnished analogies in
abundance. It has furnished none for the reversal of that process. It is
only necessary to consider the reasons which, in various degrees,
influenced the several groups of independent Colonies in North America,
Australia, and South Africa to unite under a single government, whether
federal or unitary, thus wholly or partially surrendering the "Home
Rule" previously enjoyed by them, in order to see how close is the
parallel. The weak and scattered North American Colonies were at a
serious disadvantage in all political and commercial negotiations with
their powerful neighbour, the United States, a fact very clearly
emphasised by the termination of Lord Elgin's reciprocity treaty in
1864. None of them was in a position to deal with the vast territories
of the North-West, undeveloped by the Hudson's Bay Company, and in
imminent danger of American occupation. A common trade policy, a common
railway policy, and a common banking system were essential to a rapid
development of their great resources, and only a common government could
provide them. In Australia the chief factor in bringing about federation
was the weakness and want of influence of the separate Colonies in
dealing with problems of defence and external policy, impressed upon
them by German and French colonial expansion in the Pacific, and by the
growth of Japan. In South Africa, on the other hand, the factors were
mainly internal. The constant friction over railway and customs
agreements, continually on the verge of breaking down, embittered the
relations of the different Colonies and maintained an atmosphere of
uncertainty discouraging to commercial enterprise. Four different
governments dealt with a labour supply mainly required in one colony.
Four agricultural departments dealt with locusts and cattle plagues,
which knew no political boundaries, and which could only be stamped out
by the most prompt and determined action. Four systems of law and four
organisations for defence secured, as Lord Selborne pointed out in a
striking Memorandum (Blue Book Cd. 3564) a minimum of return for a
maximum of expense. A native rising in Natal warned South Africans that
the mistake of a single Colony might at any moment set the whole of
South Africa ablaze with rebellion. In the absence of larger issues
local politics in each Colony turned almost exclusively on the racial
feud. A comprehensive union alone could bring commercial stability and
progressive development, mitigate race hatred, and pave the way to a
true South African nationality.
All the weakness in external relations, all the internal friction and
impediment to progress, all the bitterness and pettiness of local
politics, which marked the absence of union among neighbouring colonies,
also characterised the relations of Great Britain and Ireland in the
eighteenth century. But there was this difference: the immense
disproportion in wealth and power, and the political control exercised
by the greater state, caused all the evils of disunion to concentrate
with intensified force upon the smaller state. To undo the mischief of
eighteenth century disunion required at least a generation. A series of
political mistakes and mischances, and a disastrous economic policy,
have left the healing task of union incomplete after a century. But
renewed disunion to-day would only mean a renewal of old local feuds to
the point of civil war, a renewal of old economic friction, in which
most of the injury would be suffered by the weaker combatant, the
indefinite postponing for Ireland of the prospect, now so hopeful, of
national development and social amelioration, a weakening of the whole
United Kingdom for diplomacy or for defence. It is a policy which no
Dominion in the Empire would dream of adopting--a policy which every
Dominion would most certainly resist by force, just as the United States
resisted it when attempted, with more than a mere pretext of
constitutional justification, by the Southern States.
Now for the "exception which proves the rule": there is one Colonial
analogy for what would be the position of Ireland under Home Rule,
namely, the position of Newfoundland outside the confederation of the
other North American Colonies.[57] The analogy is only partial, for this
reason, that whereas Ireland is almost wholly dependent economically on
Great Britain, Newfoundland has little direct trade with Canada, and
moreover enjoys a virtual monopoly of one particular commodity, namely
codfish, by which it manages to support its small population.
Nevertheless, no one can doubt that with its favoured geographical
position, and with its great natural resources, Newfoundland would have
been developed in a very different fashion if for the last forty years
it had been an integral part of the Dominion. Nor is the loss all on the
side of Newfoundland, as the history of even the last few years has
shown. In 1902, Newfoundland negotiated a commercial Convention with the
United States which, in return for a free entry for Newfoundland fish
into the United States, practically gave the Newfoundland market to
American manufacturers, and explicitly forbade the granting of any trade
preference to the United Kingdom or to Canada. When, fortunately, the
American Senate rejected the Convention, Newfoundland embarked on a
course of legislative reprisal against American fishing. But this
involved the Imperial Government in a diplomatic conflict which, but for
the excellent relations subsisting with the United States, might easily
have led to a grave crisis. The inconveniences and dangers which Irish
trade policy might lead to under Home Rule can easily be inferred from
this single example, all the more if Irish policy should be influenced,
as Newfoundland's policy certainly was not, by a bias of hostility to
the Empire.
So much for the first confusion, that which would base the case for a
_separate government_ in Ireland on the success of _free institutions_
in the Colonies, entirely ignoring the whole movement for union, which
has made every geographical group of Colonies follow the example of the
Mother Country. We must now deal with the second confusion, that which
is based on a hazy notion that Home Rule is only a preliminary step to
endowing the United Kingdom as a whole with a working federal
constitution like that of Canada or Australia. Ireland, in fact, so runs
the pleasing delusion, is to be set up as an experimental Quebec, and
the other provinces will follow suit shortly. Not all Home Rulers,
indeed, are obsessed by this confusion. Mr. Childers, for instance,
makes short work of what he calls the "federal chimera," dismissing the
idea as "wholly impracticable," and pointing out that Home Rule must be
"not merely non-federal, but anti-federal." But the great majority of
Liberals to-day are busy deluding themselves or each other, and the
Nationalists are, naturally, not unwilling to help them in that task,
with the idea of Home Rule for Ireland followed by "Home Rule all
round."
The new Home Rule Bill has not yet appeared, but certain main features
of it can be taken for granted. It will be a Bill which, save possibly
for a pious expression of hope in the preamble, will deal with Ireland
only. It will set up in Ireland an Irish legislature and executive
responsible for the "peace, order, and good government" of Ireland,
subject to certain restrictions and limitations. It will assign to
Ireland the whole of the Irish revenues, though probably retaining the
control of customs and excise, and in that case retaining some Irish
representatives at Westminster. So far from fixing any contribution to
Imperial expenditure from Ireland, it will, apparently, include the
provision of an Imperial grant in aid towards Land Purchase and Old Age
Pensions. Any such measure is wholly incompatible with even the loosest
federal system. A federal scheme postulates the existence over the whole
confederation of two concurrent systems of government, each exercising
direct control over the citizens within its own sphere, each having its
legislative and executive functions, and its sources of revenue, clearly
defined. The Home Rule Bill will certainly not set up any such division
of government and its functions in Great Britain. Nor will it, in
reality, set up any such effective double system of government in
Ireland. What it will set up will be a national or Dominion government
in Ireland, separate and exclusive, but subject to certain restrictions
and interferences which it will be the first business of the Irish
representatives, in Dublin or Westminster, to get rid of. Long before
Scotland or Wales, let alone England, get any consideration of their
demand for Home Rule, if demand there be, the last traces of any
quasi-federal element the Bill may contain will have been got rid of.
In a federation every citizen, in whatever state or province he resides,
is as fully a citizen of the federation as every other citizen. He not
only has the same federal vote, and pays the same federal taxes, but he
has the same access to the federal courts, and the same right to the
direct protection of the federal executive. In what sense are any of
these conditions likely to be true of, let us say, an Irish landlord
under this Home Rule Bill? Again, federalism implies that all the
subordinate units are in an equal position relatively to the federal
authority. Is this Bill likely to be so framed that its provisions can
be adapted unchanged to Scotland, Wales, or England? And if they could,
what sort of a residuum of a United Kingdom government would be left
over? Take finance alone: if every unit under "Home Rule all round" is
to receive the whole product of its taxation, what becomes of the
revenue on which the general government of the United Kingdom will have
to subsist? The fact is that the creation of a federal state, whether by
confederation or by devolution of powers, must be, in the main, a
simultaneous act. Additional subordinate units may subsequently join the
confederation under the conditions of the federal constitution. Backward
areas which are unable to provide for an efficient provincial
expenditure, over and above their contribution to federal expenditure,
may be held back as territories directly controlled by the federal
authorities till they are financially and in other respects ripe for the
grant of provincial powers. If a federal scheme were really seriously
contemplated by the present Government they would have to adopt one of
two courses. They would either have to establish it simultaneously for
the whole United Kingdom, and in that case limit the powers and
functions of the provinces so narrowly as to make it possible for
Ireland to raise its provincial revenue without undue difficulty, the
rest of Ireland's needs being met by a substantial federal expenditure
carried out by federal officials. Or else they might begin by the
creation of a federal constitution with considerable provincial powers
for England, Scotland, and Wales, keeping back Ireland as a federal
territory till its economic and social conditions justified the
establishment of provincial institutions. The converse policy of
treating the case of Ireland as "prior in point of time and
urgency,"[58] of giving the poorest and most backward portion of the
United Kingdom the whole of its revenue and a practically unfettered
control of its territory, is, indeed, "not merely non-federal, but
anti-federal."
The truth is that the federal element in this Home Rule Bill, as in that
of 1893, will be merely a pretence, designed to keep timid and
hesitating Home Rulers in line--a tactical manoeuvre of much the same
character as the talk about a reformed Second Chamber which preceded the
Parliament Act, and found due burial in the preamble to that Act. In
essence the Bill will set up Ireland as an entirely separate state
subject to certain restrictions which the Government have no serious
intention of enforcing, and the Irish every intention of disregarding,
or abolishing as the outcome of further agitation. For this policy of
pretence there is one admirable parallel in our Colonial history--the
policy by which "Home Rule" was "given" to the Transvaal after Majuba.
It was the same policy of avoiding expense and trouble, political or
military--the policy, in fact, of "cutting the loss"--tricked out with
the same humbug about "magnanimity" and "conciliation," about trust in
Boer (or Nationalist) moderation when in power, the same contemptuous
passing over of the loyalists as persons of "too pronounced" views, or
as "interested contractors and stock-jobbers."[59] It was embodied in a
Convention by which the "inhabitants of the Transvaal territory" were
"accorded complete self-government, subject to the suzerainty of Her
Majesty" under a series of limitations which, if enforced, would have
implied a measure of British control in many respects greater than that
exercised over a self-governing Colony, and with a number of guarantees
to protect the loyalists. The Government was able to "save its face,"
while its hesitating followers were able to quiet their consciences, by
the reassuring phrases of the Convention. The Boer Volksraad frankly
declared itself still dissatisfied, but ratified the Convention,
"maintaining all objections to the Convention ... and for the purpose of
showing to everybody that the love of peace and unity inspires it, for
the time being, and provisionally submitting the articles of the
Convention to a practical test." If any Nationalist Convention in Dublin
should accept the new Home Rule Bill, we can take it for granted that it
will be in exactly the same spirit, and possibly in almost the same
phraseology.[60]
From the first the limitations of the Convention were disregarded. Short
of armed intervention there was no machinery for enforcing them, and the
Boers knew perfectly well that there was no real desire on the part of
an embarrassed Government to raise a hornet's nest by making the
attempt. The British resident, with his nominally autocratic powers, was
a mere impotent laughing stock. The ruined loyalists left the country,
or remained to become the most embittered enemies of the British
Government. In three years a new Convention was drafted--an even greater
masterpiece of make-believe than the first--which could be expounded to
Parliament as a mere modification of certain unworkable provisions, but
which the Boers took as a definite surrender of all claims to
suzerainty, and as a definite recognition of their position as an
"independent sovereign state," bound temporarily by the provisions of a
treaty, which could have no permanent force in "fixing the boundary to
the march of a nation." So far from being reconciled they were only
emboldened to embark on a policy of aggression, which in 1885 involved
the British Government in military measures costing nearly as much as
would have been required to suppress the whole rising in 1881. For the
time being the stagnation and chronic bankruptcy which followed the
removal of British rule and the exodus of the loyalists limited
Transvaal ambitions. The gold discoveries both increased that ambition
by furnishing it with revenue, and at the same time brought about a
close economic intercourse with the neighbouring colonies which, under
the political conditions of disunion, was bound to create friction. In
the end the policy of make-believe and "cutting the loss" had to be
redeemed at the cost of 20,000 lives and of £200,000,000.
Reconciliation, in large measure, has come since. But it has only come
because British statesmen showed, firstly, in the war, their inflexible
resolution to stamp out the policy of separation, and secondly, after
the war, their devotion to the real welfare of South Africa in a policy
of economic reconstruction, and in the establishment of those free and
equal British institutions under which--by the final dying out of a
spurious nationalism based on racial prejudice and garbled
history--South Africa may become a real, living nation.
The reservations and guarantees which this Home Rule Bill may contain
cannot possibly constitute the framework of a federal constitution. All
they can guarantee is a period of friction and agitation which will
continue till Ireland has secured a position of complete separation from
the United Kingdom. At the best the Home Rule experiment would then
reduce Ireland to the position of another Newfoundland; at the worst it
might repeat all the most disastrous features of the history of "Home
Rule" in the Transvaal. At the same time it may be worth inquiring how
far there would really be any valid Colonial analogy for the
introduction of a federal system of "Home Rule all round" if such a
scheme had been honestly contemplated. The first thing to keep in mind
is that the internal constitution of the Dominions presents a whole
gradation of constitutional types. There is the loose federal system of
Australia, in which the Commonwealth powers are strictly limited and
defined, and all residuary powers left to the States. There is the close
confederation of Canada in which all residuary powers are vested in the
Dominion. There is the non-federal unitary government of South Africa
with a system of provincial local governments with somewhat wide county
council powers. There is, lastly, the purely unitary government of the
two islands of New Zealand. Each of these types is the outcome of
peculiar geographical, economic, and historical conditions. To
understand the federal system of Australia it is essential to remember
that till comparatively recent times Australia consisted, to all
intents, of four or five seaport towns, each with its own tributary
agricultural and mining area, strung out, at distances varying from 500
to 1300 miles, along the southern and eastern third of a coast line of
nearly 9000 miles looped round an unexplored and reputedly uninhabitable
interior. Each of these seaports traded directly with the United Kingdom
and Europe in competition with the others. With economic motives for
union practically non-existent, with external factors awakening a
general apprehension rather than confronting Australia with any
immediate danger, it was impossible to find the driving power to
overcome local jealousies sufficiently to secure more than a minimum of
union. The Commonwealth Constitution is a makeshift which, as the
internal trade of Australia grows and as railway communications are
developed, will inevitably be amended in the direction of increasing the
power of the Commonwealth and diminishing that of the States. In Canada
the economic link between Canada proper and the Maritime Provinces was,
before Confederation, almost as weak as that of Australia. British
Columbia, which it was hoped to include in the Confederation, was then
separated by a journey of months from Eastern Canada, and was, indeed,
much nearer to Australia or New Zealand. Quebec, with its racial and
religious peculiarities, added another problem. That the Confederation
was nevertheless such a close and strong one was due both to the menace
of American power in the south, and to the terrible example of the
weakness of the American constitution as made manifest by the Civil War.
Yet even so, Sir John Macdonald, the father of Confederation, frankly
declared the federal constitution a necessary evil--
"As regards the comparative advantages of a Legislative and a
Federal Union I have never hesitated to state my own opinions....
I have always contended that if we could agree to have one
government and one Parliament ... it would be the best, the
cheapest, the most vigorous, the strongest system of government we
could adopt."
This also was the view of the framers of the South African Union. The
circumstances of South Africa enabled them to carry it into effect. For
all its extent, South Africa is geographically a single, homogeneous
country with no marked internal boundaries. It is peopled by two white
races everywhere intermixed in varying proportions and nowhere separated
into large compact blocks. The immense preponderance and central
position of the Rand mining industry makes South Africa practically a
single economic system. The very bitterness of the long political and
racial struggle which had preceded intensified the argument for really
effective union.
If we compare the conditions in the United Kingdom with those of the
Dominions it is obvious at once that there is no possible analogy with
the conditions of Canada or Australia, but a considerable analogy with
South Africa and New Zealand. The British Isles are but little larger
than the New Zealand group, and much more compact and homogeneous. Their
close economic intercourse, the presence of two races with a history of
strife behind them, but compelled by their inextricable geographical
blending to confront the necessity of union, are reproduced in the
conditions of South Africa. In so far then as the Colonial analogy bears
upon the question at all, it cannot be said to be in favour of Federal
Home Rule any more than of Separatist Home Rule. The most it can fairly
be said to warrant is the establishment of provincial councils with
powers akin to those of the South African Councils. For such councils,
built up by the federation of adjoining counties and county boroughs,
carrying out more effectively some of the existing powers of those
bodies, and adding to them such other powers, legislative or
administrative, as it may be convenient to bestow on them, a very strong
case may be made on the grounds of the congestion of Parliamentary
business. But that has nothing to do with Home Rule, either Separatist
or Federal.
But if the congestion of Parliamentary business might be appreciably
relieved by some such provincial bodies--larger "national" bodies would
only duplicate work, not relieve it--the true remedy for the confusion
of principles and objectives which, rather than the mere waste of time,
is the chief defect of our Parliamentary system, lies in a proper
separation of the local affairs of the United Kingdom from the general
work of the Empire, in other words, in some form of Imperial federation.
What is needed is not the creation of separate parliaments _within_ the
United Kingdom, but the creation of a separate Parliament _for_ the
United Kingdom, a Parliament which should deal with the affairs of the
United Kingdom considered as one of the Dominions, leaving the general
problems of Imperial policy to a common Imperial Parliament or Council
equally representative of the citizens of every Dominion. No form of
Home Rule can in any sense advance that desirable solution of our
Imperial problems. The creation of an additional Dominion in the shape
of Ireland would merely add one to the number of units to be considered,
and would be contrary to the spirit of the resolution passed at the 1897
Conference, that it was desirable "wherever and whenever practicable, to
group together under a federal union those Colonies which are
geographically united." The problem would be no more affected by the
setting up of a federal constitution for the United Kingdom, than it
would be if South Africa decided, after all, to give her provinces
federal powers, or Australia carried unification by a referendum. The
notion that the Dominions could simply come inside the United Kingdom
federation, though it sometimes figures in Home Rule speeches, is merely
a product of the third form of confusion of ideas previously referred
to, and is a sheer absurdity. The terms and conditions of a United
Kingdom federation would necessarily differ in almost every respect from
those of an Imperial Federation, and a constitution framed for the one
object would be unworkable for the other. Nor would it ever be
acceptable to the Dominions, which regard themselves as potentially, if
not actually, the equals of the United Kingdom as a whole. From their
point of view the United Kingdom might almost as well be asked to step
inside the Australian Commonwealth on the footing of Tasmania, as that
they should be asked to join in, in the capacity of an additional
Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, under any scheme of "Home Rule all round."
It should be sufficiently clear from the foregoing analysis that the
vague and confused claim that the success of British Colonial policy is
an argument for the Home Rule Bill has no shadow of justification. It
has been shown, first of all, that the factor of success in our Colonial
policy was not the factor of separatism implied in Home Rule, but the
factor of responsible government already secured for Ireland by the
Union. It has been shown, secondly, that the experience of the Colonies
since the establishment of responsible government has in every case
forced union upon them, and union in the closest form which the facts of
trade and geography permitted of. Colonial experience is thus no
argument even for a federal scheme of "Home Rule all round," if such a
scheme could possibly result from an Irish Home Rule Bill, which it
cannot. The disadvantages and dangers of the contrary policy of disunion
have been shown, in their least noxious form in the case of
Newfoundland, which has simply remained outside the adjoining Dominion,
and in their deadliest form in the case of the Transvaal, where "Home
Rule" was given in 1881, as it would be given to Ireland to-day, if the
Government succeeded, not from conviction and whole-heartedly, but as a
mean-spirited concession, made to save trouble, and under the most
disingenuous and least workable provisions. Lastly, it has been made
clear that Home Rule cannot possibly assist, but can only obscure and
confuse, the movement for the establishment of a true Imperial Union.
Unionists and Imperialists can choose no better ground for their
resistance to Home Rule than the wide and varied field of Colonial
experience.
But Colonial experience can give us more than that. It can provide us
not only with an immense mass of arguments and instances against
disruption, but with invaluable instances of what can be done to
strengthen and build up the Union against all possible future danger of
disruptive tendencies. The confederation of Canada was accomplished in
the teeth of all the geographical and economic conditions of the time.
Canadian statesmanship thereupon set itself to transform geography, and
to divert the course of trade in order to make the Union a reality. The
Intercolonial Railway, the Canadian Pacific, the Grand Trunk Pacific,
the proposed Hudson Bay Railway, and the Georgian Bay Canal schemes, all
these have been deliberate instruments of policy, aiming, first of all,
at bridging the wilderness between practically isolated settlements
scattered across a continent, and creating a continuous Canada, east and
west; and, secondly, at giving that continuous strip depth as well as
extension. Hand in hand with the policy of constructing the internal
framework of transportation, which is the skeleton of the economic and
social life of a nation, went the policy of maintaining a national
tariff to clothe that skeleton with the flesh and blood of production
and exchange, and, as far as possible, to clothe it evenly. Australia,
too, is waking, though somewhat hesitatingly, to the need of
transcontinental railways, for the protection of new industries and for
the even development and filling up of all her territories. In South
Africa the economic process preceded the political. It was the dread of
the breakdown of a temporary customs union already in existence that
precipitated the discussion of union. And it was the development of the
Rand as the great internal market of South Africa, and the competitive
construction of railway lines from the coast, that really decided the
question of legislative union against federation. All three instances
lead to the same conclusion that union to be really effective and stable
needs three things: firstly, a developed system of internal
communications reducing all natural barriers to social, political, and
commercial intercourse to the very minimum; secondly, a national tariff,
protective or otherwise, sufficient at least to encourage the fullest
flow of trade along those communications rather than outside of them;
thirdly, a deliberate use of the tariff and of the national expenditure
to secure, as far as possible, the even development of every portion of
the national territory.
In the United Kingdom all these instruments for making the Union real
are still unutilised. The system of _laisser faire_ in the matter of
internal communications has allowed St. George's Channel still to remain
a real barrier. A dozen train-ferries, carrying not only the railway
traffic between Great Britain and Ireland, but enabling the true west
coast of the United Kingdom to be used for transatlantic traffic, would
obliterate that strip of sea which a British minister recently urged as
an insuperable objection to a democratic union.[61] To construct them
would not be doing as much, relatively, as little Denmark has long since
done, by the same means, to unite her sea-divided territory. The
creation of a tariff which shall assist not only manufactures, but
agriculture and rural industries, is another essential step. In view of
Ireland's undeveloped industrial condition the giving of bounties to the
establishment in Ireland of new industries, such as the silk industry,
would be a thoroughly justifiable extension of the Unionist policy
carried out through the Congested Districts Board and the Department of
Agriculture. The diversion to Ireland of a larger part of the general
national and Imperial expenditure, whether by the establishment of a
naval base, or the giving out of battleship contracts, or even only of
contracts for Army uniforms, would also be of appreciable assistance to
Ireland and to the Union. Ireland suffers to-day economically and
politically, from the legacy of political separation in the eighteenth
century, and of economic disunion in the nineteenth. It is the business
of Unionists not only to maintain the legal framework of the Union, but
to give it a vitality and fulness of content which it has never
possessed.