In this brief sketch of the measures passed by Unionist Governments
since 1886 with the object of promoting the material prosperity of
Ireland, many points of interest have been necessarily omitted; but what
has been said will suffice to show how baseless is the assertion, so
frequently urged as an argument for Home Rule, that the Imperial
Parliament is incapable of legislating successfully for Irish wants.[72]
Nothing could be more futile than to represent Irish problems, and
especially the problems of Irish rural life, as so unique that only a
Parliament sitting in Dublin can hope to solve them satisfactorily. As a
matter of fact, the rural question in Ireland is, in most of its
essential features, very similar to the rural question in other
countries, of which Denmark is perhaps the best example; and the
methods which have been successful there are already proving successful
here. Single ownership of the land by the cultivator; State aid,
encouraging and supplemementing co-operation and self-help; co-operation
and self-help providing suitable opportunities for the fruitful
application of State aid--these are the principles by which Unionist
legislation for Ireland has been guided, and they are the principles
which any wise legislation must follow, whether it emanate from an Irish
or from the Imperial Parliament. Indeed, if there is anything "unique"
in the Irish case, it is the deep division of sentiment inherited from
the unhappy history of the country and reinforced by those differences
of race and creed to which I have already alluded as making two Irelands
out of one. But the remedy for this is not to cut Ireland adrift and
leave the two sections to fight it out alone, but rather to maintain the
existing constitution as the best guarantee that the balance will be
held even between them.
Sir Horace Plunkett has well summed up the real needs of rural Ireland
in the formula "better farming, better business, better living." He has
himself done more than any other single man to bring the desired
improvement about. I am not ashamed to acknowledge myself his disciple,
and in the measures for which I was responsible during my time in
Ireland, I ever kept the practical objects for which he has striven
steadily in view. In a speech which I made shortly after taking office I
used the phrase "killing Home Rule with kindness." This phrase has been
repeatedly quoted since, as if it had been a formal declaration on the
part of the incoming Irish Government that to "kill Home Rule" was the
Alpha and the Omega of their policy. What I really said was that we
intended to promote measures having for their object an increase in the
material prosperity of the country; that if we could thereby kill Home
Rule with kindness, so much the better; but that the policy stood on its
own merits, irrespective of any ulterior consequences.
In my view that is the only true attitude for a Unionist Government to
take up. But in our efforts to improve material conditions and to remove
grievances, how small is the encouragement or help that we have received
from leaders of the Nationalist Party! "Their aim," said Goldwin Smith
long ago, "has always been to create a Nationalist feeling, which would
end in political separation, not the redress of particular wrongs and
grievances, or the introduction of practical improvements." I should
imagine that there has seldom, if ever, been an important political
party which has exhibited so little constructive ability as the Irish
Parliamentarians. Their own legislative proposals during the last thirty
years have been a negligible quantity; and I think I am justified in
saying that there is not one of the great measures passed by Unionist
Governments since 1886 which has not been either opposed by the
accredited leaders of the Party, or, at best, received with carping and
futile, rather than helpful, criticism. I must personally
acknowledge--and I do so gladly--that I received useful assistance and
valuable criticism from the Messrs. Healy in conducting the Local
Government Bill through the House of Commons; and credit must also be
given to Mr. John Redmond for the part he took in aiding to bring
together the Recess Committee. But the Messrs. Healy have always acted
independently; and Mr. John Redmond was, at the time referred to, leader
of only a small minority of the Irish Nationalists. The feeling of the
majority, and certainly of the leaders of the majority, was reflected,
as we have seen, in the refusal of Mr. Justin McCarthy to have anything
to do with the movement.
Mr. Dillon in particular has shown a disposition to regard minor
political grievances, and even poverty and discontent, as so much fuel
wherewith to stoke the lagging engine of Home Rule. Remedial measures
short of Home Rule seem to take in his eyes the character of attempts to
deprive the Irish Party of so many valuable assets. Nor is this spirit
of tacit or open hostility confined to acts of the legislature. Of all
the social and economic movements in Ireland during recent years, the
spread of agricultural co-operation has been without doubt among the
greatest and the most beneficial. It has never found a friend in Mr.
Dillon. In the movement itself and in the Irish Agricultural
Organisation Society, founded expressly to promote it, he can only see a
cunning device of the enemy to undermine Nationalism. In this matter Mr.
Dillon's attitude is also the official attitude of the Irish Party. Thus
Mr. Redmond (now reconciled with Mr. Dillon and become leader of the
main body of Nationalists), in a letter to Mr. Patrick Ford, dated
October 4, 1904, does not scruple to say of Sir Horace Plunkett's truly
patriotic work:--
"I myself, indeed, at one time entertained some belief in the good
intentions of Sir Horace Plunkett and his friends, but recent
events have entirely undeceived me; and Sir Horace Plunkett's
recent book, full as it is of undisguised contempt for the Irish
race, makes it plain to me that the real object of the movement in
question is to undermine the National Party and divert the minds of
our people from Home Rule, which is the only thing that can ever
lead to a real revival of Irish industries."
Those who have read Sir H. Plunkett's "Ireland in the New Century" will
hardly know which most to wonder at in these words, the extraordinary
misdescription of the whole spirit of his book, or the total failure to
realise the absolute necessity to Irish farming of a movement which not
only has its counterpart all over the Continent of Europe, but has since
inspired similar action in the United States, in India, and quite
recently in Great Britain as well.