In the Home Rule contest of the last eighteen months no argument has
been more frequently used against the Liberal party than the charge of
sudden, and therefore, it would seem, dishonest change of view. "You
were opposed to an Irish Parliament at the election of 1880 and for some
time afterward; you are not entitled to advocate it in 1886." "You
passed a Coercion Bill in 1881, your Ministry (though against the
protests of an active section of its supporters) passed another Coercion
Bill in 1882; you have no right to resist a third such Bill in 1887,
and, if you do, your conduct can be due to nothing but party spite and
revenge at your own exclusion from office." Reproaches of this kind are
now the stock-in-trade, not merely of the ordinary politician, who, for
want of a case, abuses the plaintiff's attorney, but of leading men,
and, still more, of leading newspapers, who might be thought bound to
produce from recent events and an examination of the condition of
Ireland some better grounds for the passion they display. It is
noticeable that such reproaches come more often from the so-called
Liberal Unionists than from the present Ministry. Perhaps, with their
belief that all Liberals are unprincipled revolutionaries, the Tories
deem a sin more or less to be of small account. Perhaps a recollection
of their own remarkable gyrations, before and after the General
Election of 1885, may suggest that the less said about the past the
better for everybody. Be the cause what it may, it is surprising to find
that a section commanding so much ability as the group of Dissentient
Liberals does, should rely rather on the charge of inconsistency than on
the advocacy of any counter-policy of their own. It is not large and
elevated, but petty, minds that rejoice to say to an opponent (and all
the more so if he was once a friend), "You must either be wrong now, or
have been wrong then, because you have changed your opinion. I have not
changed; I was right then, and I am right now." Such an argument not
only dispenses with the necessity of sifting the facts, but it fosters
the satisfaction of the person who employs it. Consistency is the pet
virtue of the self-righteous, and the man who values himself on his
consistency can seldom be induced to see that to shut one's eyes to the
facts which time develops, to refuse to reconsider one's position by the
light they shed, to cling to an old solution when the problem is
substantially new, is a proof, not of fortitude and wisdom, but rather
of folly and conceit.
Such persons may be left to the contemplation of their own virtues. But
there are many fair-minded men of both political parties, or of neither,
who, while acquitting those Liberal members who supported Home Rule in
1886 and opposed Coercion in 1887 of the sordid or spiteful motives with
which the virulence of journalism credits them, have nevertheless been
surprised at the apparent swiftness and completeness of the change in
their opinions. It would be idle to deny that, in startling the minds of
steady-going people, this change did, for the moment, weaken the
influence and weight of those who had changed. This must be so. A man
who says now what he denied six years ago cannot expect to be believed
on his _ipse dixit_. He must set forth the grounds of his conviction. He
must explain how his views altered, and why reasons which formerly
satisfied him satisfy him no longer. It may be that the Liberal party
have omitted to do this as they ought. Occupied by warm and incessant
discussions, and conscious, I venture to believe, of their own honesty,
few of its members have been at the trouble of showing what were the
causes which modified their views, and what the stages of the process
which carried them from the position of 1880 to that of 1886.
Of that process I shall attempt in the following pages to give a sketch.
Such a sketch, though mainly retrospective, is pertinent to the issues
which now divide the country. It will indicate the origin and the
strength of the chief reasons by which Liberals are now governed. And,
if executed with proper fairness and truth, it may, as a study in
contemporary history, be of some little interest to those who in future
will attempt to understand our present conflict. The causes which
underlie changes of opinion are among the most obscure phenomena in
history, because those who undergo, these changes are often only half
conscious of them, and do not think of recording that which is
imperceptible in its growth, and whose importance is not realized till
it already belongs to the past.
The account which follows is based primarily on my own recollection of
the phases of opinion and feeling through which I myself, and the
friends whom I knew most intimately in the House of Commons, passed
during the Parliament which sat from 1880 till 1885. But I should not
think of giving it to the public if I did not believe that what happened
to our minds happened to many others also, and that the record of our
own slow movement from the position of 1880 to that of 1886 is
substantially a record of the movement of the Liberal party at large. We
were fairly typical members of that party, loyal to our leaders, but
placing the principles for which the Liberal party exists above the
success of the party itself; with our share of prepossessions and
prejudices, yet with reasonably open minds, and (as we believed)
inferior to no other section of the House of Commons in patriotism and
in attachment to the Constitution. I admit frankly that when we entered
Parliament we knew less about the Irish question than we ought to have
known, and that even after knowledge had been forced upon us, we were
more deferential to our leaders than was good either for us or for them.
But these are faults always chargeable on the great majority of members.
It is because those of whom I speak were in these respects fairly
typical, that it seems worth while to trace the history of their
opinions. If any one should accuse me of attributing to an earlier year
sentiments which began to appear in a later one, I can only reply that I
am aware of this danger, as one which always besets those who recall
their past states of mind, and that I have done my utmost to avoid it.
The change I have to describe was slow and gradual. It was
reluctant--that is to say, it seemed rather forced upon us by the
teaching of events than the work of our own minds. Each session marked a
further stage in it; and I therefore propose to examine its progress
session by session.
Session of 1880.--The General Election of 1880 turned mainly on the
foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government. Few Liberal candidates
said much about Ireland. Absorbed in the Eastern and Afghan questions,
they had not watched the progress of events in Ireland with the
requisite care, nor realized the gravity of the crisis which was
approaching. They were anxious to do justice to Ireland, in the way of
amending both the land laws and local government, but saw no reason for
going further. Nearly all of them refused, even when pressed by Irish
electors in their constituencies, to promise to vote for that
"parliamentary inquiry into the demand for Home Rule," which was then
propounded by those electors as a sort of test question. We (_i.e._ the
Liberal candidates of 1880) then declared that we thought an Irish
Parliament would involve serious constitutional difficulties, and that
we saw no reason why the Imperial Parliament should not do full justice
to Ireland. Little was said about Coercion. Hopes were expressed that it
would not be resorted to, but very few (if any) pledged themselves
against it.
When Mr. Forster was appointed Irish Secretary in Mr. Gladstone's
Government which the General Election brought into power, we (by which I
mean throughout the new Liberal members) were delighted. We knew him to
be conscientious, industrious, kind-hearted. We believed him to be
penetrating and judicious. We applauded his conduct in not renewing the
Coercion Act which Lord Beaconsfield's Government had failed to renew
before dissolving Parliament, and which indeed there was scarcely time
left after the election to renew, a fact which did not save Mr. Forster
from severe censure on the part of the Tories.
The chief business of the session was the Compensation for Disturbance
Bill, which Mr. Forster brought in for the sake of saving from immediate
eviction tenants whom a succession of bad seasons had rendered utterly
unable to pay their rents. This Bill was pressed through the House of
Commons with the utmost difficulty, and at an expenditure of time which
damaged the other work of the session, though the House continued to sit
into September. The Executive Government declared it to be necessary, in
order not only to relieve the misery of the people, but to secure the
tranquillity of the country. Nevertheless, the whole Tory party, and a
considerable section of the Liberal party, opposed it in the interests
of the Irish landlords, and of economic principles in general,
principles which (as commonly understood in England) it certainly
trenched on. When it reached the House of Lords it was contemptuously
rejected, and the unhappy Irish Secretary left to face as he best might
the cries of a wretched peasantry and the rising tide of outrage. What
was even more remarkable, was the coolness with which the Liberal party
took the defeat of a Bill their leaders had pronounced absolutely
needed. Had it been an English Bill of the same consequence to England
as it was to Ireland, the country would have been up in arms against the
House of Lords, demanding the reform or the abolition of a Chamber which
dared to disregard the will of the people. But nothing of the kind
happened. It was only an Irish measure. We relieved ourselves by a few
strong words, and the matter dropped.
It was in this session that the Liberal party first learnt what sort of
a spirit was burning in the hearts of Irish members. There had been
obstruction in the last years of the previous Parliament, but, as the
Tories were in power, they had to bear the brunt of it. Now that a
Liberal Ministry reigned, it fell on the Liberals. At first it incensed
us. Full of our own good intentions towards Ireland, we thought it
contrary to nature that Irish members should worry us, their friends, as
they had worried Tories, their hereditary enemies. Presently we came to
understand how matters stood. The Irish members made little difference
between the two great English parties. Both represented to them a
hostile domination. Both were ignorant of the condition of their
country. Both cared so little about Irish questions that nothing less
than deeds of violence out of doors or obstruction within doors could
secure their attention. Concessions had to be extorted from both by the
same devices; Coercion might be feared at the hands of both. Hence the
Irish party was resolved to treat both parties alike, and play off the
one against the other in the interests of Ireland alone, using the
questions which divide Englishmen and Scotchmen merely as levers
whereby to effect their own purposes, because themselves quite
indifferent to the substantial merits of those questions. To us new
members this was an alarming revelation. We found that the House of
Commons consisted of two distinct and dissimilar bodies: a large British
body (including some few Tories and Liberals from Ireland), which,
though it was distracted by party quarrels, really cared for the welfare
of the country and the dignity of the House, and would set aside its
quarrels in the presence of a great emergency; and a small Irish body,
which, though it spoke the English language, was practically foreign,
felt no interest in, no responsibility for, the business of Britain or
the Empire, and valued its place in the House only as a means of making
itself so disagreeable as to obtain its release. When we had grasped
this fact, we began to reflect on its causes and conjecture its effects.
We had read of the same things in the newspapers, but what a difference
there is between reading a drama in your study and seeing it acted on
the stage! We realized what Irish feeling was when we heard these angry
cries, and noted how appeals that would have affected English partisans
fell on deaf ears. I remember how one night in the summer of 1880, when
the Irish members kept us up very late over some trivial Bill of theirs,
refusing to adjourn till they had extorted terms, a friend, sitting
beside me, said, "See how things come round. They keep us out of bed
till five o'clock in the morning because our ancestors bullied theirs
for six centuries." And we saw that the natural relations of an
Executive, even a Liberal Executive, to the Irish members were those of
strife. Whose fault it was we were unable to decide. Perhaps the
Government was too stiff; perhaps the members were vexatious. Anyhow,
this strife was evidently the normal state of things, wholly unlike that
which existed between Scotch members, to whichever party they belonged,
and the executive authorities of Scotland.
Thus the session of 1880, though it did not bring us consciously nearer
to Home Rule, impressed three facts upon us: first, that the House of
Lords regarded Ireland solely from the point of view of English
landlords, sympathizing with Irish landlords; secondly, that the House
of Commons knew so little or cared so little about Ireland that when the
Executive declared a measure essential to the peace of Ireland, it
scarcely resented the rejection of that measure by the House of Lords;
thirdly, that the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons were a
foreign body, foreign in the sense in which a needle which a man
swallows is foreign, not helping the organism to discharge its
functions, but impeding them, and setting up irritation. We did not yet
draw from these facts all the conclusions we should now draw. But the
facts were there, and they began to tell upon our minds.
SESSION OF 1881.--The winter of 1880-81 was a terrible one in Ireland.
The rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill had borne the
fruit which Mr. Forster had predicted, and which the House of Lords had
ignored. Outrages were numerous and serious. The cry in England for
repressive measures had gone on rising from November, when it occasioned
a demonstration at the Guildhall banquet. Several Liberal members (of
whom I was one) went to Ireland at Christmas, to see with our own eyes
how things stood. We were struck by the difficulty of obtaining
trustworthy information in Dublin, where the richer classes, with whom
we chiefly came in contact, merely abused the Land League, while the
Land Leaguers declared that the accounts of outrages were grossly
exaggerated. The most prominent, Mr. Michael Davitt, assured me, and I
believe with perfect truth, that he had exerted himself to
discountenance outrage, and that if, as he expected, he was locked up by
the Government, outrages would increase. When one reached the disturbed
districts, where, of course, one talked to members as well of the
landlord class as of the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged
from the medley of contradictions was that, though there was much
agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity, the disorders were
not so bad as people in England believed, and might have been dealt with
by a vigorous administration of the existing law. Unfortunately, the
so-called "better classes," full of bitterness against the Liberal
Ministry and Mr. Forster (whom they did not praise till it was too
late), had not assisted the Executive, and had allowed things to reach a
pass at which it found the work of governing very difficult.
When the Coercion Bill of 1881 was introduced, many English Liberals
were inclined to resist it. The great majority voted for it, but within
two years they bitterly repented their votes. Our motives, which I
mention by way of extenuation, not of defence, were these. The Executive
Government declared that it could not deal with crime by the ordinary
law. If its followers refused exceptional powers, they must displace the
Ministry, and let in the Tories, who would doubtless obtain such powers,
and probably use them worse. We had still confidence in Mr. Forster's
judgment, and a deference to Irish Executive Governments generally which
Parliamentary experience is well fitted to dissipate. The violence with
which the Nationalist members resisted the introduction of the Bill had
roused our blood, and the foolish attempts which the Radical and Irish
electors in some constituencies had made to deter their members from
supporting it had told the other way, and disposed these members to vote
for it, in order to show that they were not to be cowed by threats.
Finally, we were assured that votes given for the Coercion Bill would
purchase a thorough-going Land Bill, and our anxiety for the latter
induced us, naturally, but erringly, to acquiesce in the former.
When that Land Bill went into Committee we perceived how much harm the
Coercion Bill had done in intensifying the bitterness of Irish members.
Although the Ministry was fighting for their interests against the Tory
party and the so-called Whiggish section of its own supporters, who were
seeking to cut down the benefits which the measure offered to Irish
tenants, the Nationalist members regarded it, and in particular Mr.
Forster, as their foe. They resented what they deemed the insult put
upon their country. They saw those who had been fighting, often, no
doubt, by unlawful methods, for the national cause, thrown into prison
and kept there without trial. They anticipated (not without reason) the
same fortune for themselves. Hence the friendliness which the Liberal
party sought to show them met with no response, and Mr. Forster was
worried with undiminished vehemence. In the discussions on the Bill we
found the Ministry generally resisting all amendments which came from
Irish members. When these amendments seemed to us right, we voted for
them, but they were almost always defeated by the union of the Tories
with the steady Ministerialists. Subsequent events have proved that many
were right, but, whether they were right or wrong, the fact which
impressed us was that in matters which concerned Ireland only, and lay
within the exclusive knowledge of Irishmen, Irish members were
constantly outvoted by English and Scotch members, who knew nothing at
all of the merits of the case, but simply obeyed the party whip. This
happened even when the Irish members who sat on the Liberal side (such
as Mr. Dickson and his Liberal colleagues from Ulster) joined the
Nationalist section in demanding some extension of the Bill which the
Ministry refused. And we perceived that nothing incensed the Irish
members more than the feeling that their arguments were addressed to
deaf ears; that they were overborne, not by reason, but by sheer weight
of numbers. Even if they convinced the Ministry, they could seldom hope
to obtain its assent, because the Ministry had to consider the House of
Lords, sure to reject amendments which favoured the tenant, while to
detach a number of Ministerialists sufficient to carry an amendment
against the Treasury Bench, the Moderate Liberals, and the Tories, was
evidently hopeless.
At the end of the session the House of Lords came again upon the scene.
It seriously damaged the Bill by its amendments, and would have
destroyed it but for the skill with which the head of the Government
handled these amendments, accepting the least pernicious, so as to
enable the Upper House without loss of dignity to recede from those
which were wholly inadmissible. Several times it seemed as if the
conflict would have to pass from Westminster to the country, and, in
contemplating the chances of a popular agitation or a dissolution, we
were regretfully obliged to own that the English people cared too little
and knew too little about Irish questions to give us much hope of
defeating the House of Lords and the Tories upon these issues.
An incident which occurred towards the end of the session seems, though
trifling in itself, so illustrative of the illogical position in which
we stood towards Ireland, as to deserve mention. Mr. Forster, still
Chief Secretary, had brought in a Bill for extinguishing the Queen's
University in Ireland, and creating in place of it a body to be called
the Royal University, which, however, was not to be a real university at
all, but only a set of examiners plus some salaried fellowships, to be
held at various places of instruction. Regarding this as a gross
educational blunder, which would destroy a useful existing body, and
create a sham university in its place, and finding several Parliamentary
friends on whose judgment I could rely to be of the same opinion, I gave
notice of opposition to the Bill. Mr. Forster came to me, and pressed
with great warmth that the opposition should be withdrawn. The Bill, he
said, would satisfy the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and complete the work
of the Land Bill in pacifying Ireland. The Irish members wanted it: what
business had an English member to interfere to defeat their wishes, and
thwart the Executive? The reply was obvious. Not to speak of the
simplicity of expecting the hierarchy to be satisfied by this small
concession, what were such arguments but the admission of Home Rule in
its worst form? "You resist the demand of the Irish members to legislate
for Ireland; you have just been demanding, and obtaining, the support of
English members against those amendments of the Land Bill which Irish
members declare to be necessary. Now you bid us surrender our own
judgment, ignore our own responsibility, and blindly pass a Bill which
we, who have studied these university questions as they affect both
Ireland and England, believe to be thoroughly mischievous to the
prospects of higher education in Ireland, only because the Irish
members, as you say, desire it. Do one thing or the other. Either give
them the power and the responsibility, or leave both with the Imperial
Parliament. You are now asking us to surrender the power, but to remain
still subject to the responsibility. We will not bear the latter without
the former. We shall prefer Home Rule." Needless to add that this
device--a sample of the petty sops by which successive generations of
English statesmen, Whigs and Tories alike, have sought to win over a
priesthood which uses and laughs at them--failed as completely as its
predecessors to settle the University question or to range the bishops
on the side of the Government.
The autumn and winter of 1881 revealed the magnitude of the mischief
done by making a Coercion Bill precede a Relief Bill. The Land Bill was
the largest concession made to the demands of the people since Catholic
Emancipation. It was a departure, justified by necessity, but still a
departure from our established principles of legislation. It ought to
have brought satisfaction and confidence, if not gratitude, with it;
ought to have led Ireland to believe in the sincere friendliness of
England, and produced a new cordiality between the islands. It did
nothing of the kind. It was held to have been extorted from our fears;
its grace and sweetness were destroyed by the concomitant severities
which the Coercion Act had brought into force, as wholesome food becomes
distasteful when some bitter compound has been sprinkled over it. We
were deeply mortified at this result of our efforts. What was the malign
power which made the boons we had conferred shrivel up, "like fairy
gifts fading away"? We still believed the Coercion Act to have been
justified, but lamented the fate which baffled the main object of our
efforts, the winning over Ireland to trust the justice and the capacity
of the Imperial Parliament. And thus the two facts which stood out from
the history of this eventful session were, first, that even in
legislating for the good of Ireland we were legislating against the
wishes of Ireland, imposing on her enactments which her representatives
opposed, and which we supported only at the bidding of the Ministry;
and, secondly, that at the end of a long session, entirely devoted to
her needs, we found her more hostile and not less disturbed than she had
been at its beginning. We began to wonder whether we should ever succeed
better on our present lines. But we still mostly regarded Home Rule as a
disagreeable solution.
SESSION OF 1882.--Still graver were the lessons of the first four months
of this year. Mr. Forster went on filling the prisons of Ireland with
persons whom he arrested under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, and
never brought to trial. But the country grew no more quiet. At last he
had nine hundred and forty men under lock and key, many of them not
"village ruffians," whose power a few weeks' detention was to break, but
political offenders, and even popular leaders. How long could this go
on? Where was it to stop? It became plain that the Act was a failure,
and that the people, trained to combination by a century and a half's
practice, were too strong for the Executive. Either the scheme and plan
of the Act had been wrong, or its administration had been incompetent.
Whichever was the source of the failure (most people will now blame
both), the fault must be laid at the door of the Irish Executive; not of
Mr. Forster himself, but of those on whom he relied. It had been a
Dublin Castle Bill, conceived and carried out by the incompetent
bureaucracy which has so long pretended to govern Ireland. Such a proof
of incompetence destroyed whatever confidence in that bureaucracy then
remained to us, and the disclosures which the Phoenix Park murders and
the subsequent proceedings against the Invincibles brought out, proved
beyond question that the Irish Executive had only succeeded in giving a
more dark and dangerous form, the form of ruthless conspiracy, to the
agitation it was combating.
When therefore the Prevention of Crime Bill of 1882 was brought in, some
of us felt unable to support it, and specially bound to resist those of
its provisions which related to trials without a jury, and to
boycotting. It was impossible, on the morrow of the Phoenix Park
murders, to deny that some coercive measure might be needed; but we had
so far lost faith in repression, and in the officials who were to
administer it, as to desire to limit it to what was absolutely
necessary, and we protested against enacting for Ireland a criminal code
which was not to be applied to Great Britain. Our resistance might have
been more successful but for the manner in which the Nationalist members
conducted their opposition. When they began to obstruct--not that under
the circumstances we felt entitled to censure them for obstructing a
Bill dealing so harshly with their countrymen--we were obliged to
desist, and our experience of the stormy scenes of the summer of 1882
deepened our sense of the passionate bitterness with which they regarded
English members, scarcely making an exception in favour of those who
were most disposed to sympathize with them. Many and many a time when we
listened to their fierce cries, we seemed to hear in them the
battle-cries of the centuries of strife between Celt and Englishman from
Athenry to Vinegar Hill; many a time we felt that this rage and mistrust
were chiefly of England's making; and yet not of England's, but rather
of the overmastering fate which had prolonged to our own days the
hatreds and the methods of barbarous times:
hêmeis d' ouk aitioi esmen
Alla Zeus kai Moira kai êerophoitis Herinus.
So much of the session as the Crime Bill had spared was consumed by the
Arrears Bill, over which we had again a "crisis" with the House of
Lords. This was the third session that had been practically given up to
Irishmen. The freshness and force of the Parliament of 1880--a
Parliament full of zeal and ability--had now been almost spent, yet few
of the plans of domestic legislation spread before the constituencies of
1880 had been realized. The Government had been anxious to legislate,
their majority had been ready to support them, but Ireland had blocked
the way; and now the only expedient for improving the procedure of the
House was to summon Parliament in an extra autumn session. Here was
another cause for reflection. England and Scotland were calling for
measures promised years ago, but no time could be found to discuss them.
Nothing was done to reorganize local government, to reform the liquor
laws, to improve secondary education, to deal with the housing of the
poor, or a dozen other urgent questions, because we were busy with
Ireland; and yet how little more loyal or contented did Ireland seem to
be for all we had done. We began to ask whether Home Rule might not be
as much an English and Scotch question as an Irish question. It was, at
any rate, clear that to allow Ireland to manage her own affairs would
open a prospect for England and Scotland to obtain time to attend to
theirs.[3]
This feeling was strengthened by the result of the attempts made in the
autumn session of 1882, to improve the procedure of the House of
Commons. We had cherished the hope that more drastic remedies against
obstruction and better arrangements for the conduct of business, might
relieve much of the pressure Irish members had made us suffer. The
passing of the New Rules shattered this hope, for it was plain they
would not accomplish what was needed. Some blamed the Government for not
framing a more stringent code. Some blamed the Tory and the Irish
Oppositions (now beginning to work in concert) for cutting down the
proposals of the Government. But most of us saw, and came to see still
more clearly in the three succeeding sessions, that the evil was too
deep-rooted to be cured by any changes of procedure, unless they went so
far as to destroy freedom of debate for English members also. The
presence in a deliberative assembly of a section numbering (or likely
soon to number) one-seventh of the whole--a section seeking to lower the
character of the assembly, and to derange its mechanism, with no further
interest in the greater part of its business except that of preventing
it from conducting that business--this was the phenomenon which
confronted us, and we felt that no rules of debate would overcome the
dangers it threatened.
It is from this year 1882 that I date the impression which we formed,
that Home Rule was sure to come. "It may be a bold experiment," we said
to one another in the lobbies; "there are serious difficulties in the
way, though the case for it is stronger than we thought two years ago.
But if the Irishmen persist as they are doing now, they will get it. It
is only a question of their tenacity."
It was impossible not to be struck during the conflicts of 1881 and 1882
with the small amount of real bitterness which the conduct of the Irish
members, irritating as it often was, provoked among the Liberals, who of
course bore the brunt of the conflict. The Nationalists did their best
to injure a Government which was at the same time being denounced by the
Tories as too favourable to Irish claims; they lowered the character of
Parliament by scenes far more painful than those of the session of 1887,
on which so much indignation has been lately expended; they said the
hardest things they could think of against us in the House; they
attacked us in our constituencies. Their partisans (for I do not charge
this on the leaders) interrupted and broke up our meetings.
Nevertheless, all this did not provoke responsive hatred from the
Liberals. There could not be a greater contrast than that between the
way in which the great bulk of the Liberal members all through the
Parliament of 1880 behaved towards their Irish antagonists, and the
violence with which the Tory members, under much slighter provocation,
conduct themselves towards those antagonists now. I say this not to the
credit of our temper, which was no better than that of other men heated
by the struggles of a crowded assembly. It was due entirely to our
feeling that there was a great balance of wrong standing to the debit of
England; that if the Irish were turbulent, it was the ill-treatment of
former days that had made them so; and that, whatever might be their
methods, they were fighting for their country. Although, therefore,
there was little social intercourse between us and them, there was
always a hope and a wish that the day might come when the Liberal party
should resume its natural position of joining the representatives of the
Irish people in obtaining radical reforms in Irish government. And the
remarkable speech of February 9, 1882, in which Mr. Gladstone declared
his mind to be open on the subject, and invited the Nationalists to
propound a practicable scheme of self-government, had encouraged us to
hope that this day might soon arrive.
SESSION OF 1883.--Three facts stood out in the history of this
comparatively quiet session, each of which brought us further along the
road we had entered.
One was the omission of Parliament to complete the work begun by the
Land Bill of 1881, of improving the condition of the Irish peasantry and
reorganizing Irish administration. The Nationalist members brought in
Bills for these purposes, including one for amending the Land Act by
admitting leaseholders to its benefits and securing tenants against
having their improvements reckoned against them in the fixing of rents.
Though we could not approve all the contents of these Bills, we desired
to see the Government either take them up and amend them, or introduce
Bills of its own to do what was needed. Some of us spoke strongly in
this sense, nor will any one now deny that we were right. Sound policy
called aloud for the completion of the undertaking of 1881. The
Government however refused, alleging, no doubt with some truth, that
Ireland could not have all the time of Parliament, but must let England
and Scotland have their turn. Nor was anything done towards the creation
of new local institutions in Ireland, or the reform of the Castle
bureaucracy. We were profoundly disheartened. We saw golden
opportunities slipping away, and doubted more than ever whether
Westminster was the place in which to legislate for Irish grievances.
Another momentous fact was the steady increase in the number of
Nationalist members. Every seat that fell vacant in Ireland was filled
by them. The moderate Irish party, most of whom had by this time crossed
the floor of the House, and were sitting among us, had evidently no
future. They were estimable, and, in some cases, able men, from whom we
had hoped much, as a link between the Liberal party and the Irish
people. But they seemed to have lost their hold on the people, nor were
they able to give us much practical counsel as to Irish problems. It was
clear that they would vanish at the next General Election, and
Parliament be left to settle accounts with the extreme men, whose
spirits rose as those of our friends steadily sank.
Lastly: it was in this session that the alliance of the Nationalists and
the Tory Opposition became a potent factor in politics. Its first
conspicuous manifestation was in the defeat of the Government by the
allied forces on the Affirmation Bill, when the least respectable
privates in both armies vied with one another in boisterous rejoicings
over the announcement of numbers in the division. I do not refer to this
as ground for complaint. It was in the course of our usual political
warfare that two groups, each hating and fearing the Ministry, should
unite to displace it. But we now saw what power the Irish section must
exert when it came to hold the balance of numbers in the House. Till
this division, the Government had commanded a majority of the whole
House. This would probably not outlast a dissolution. What then? Could
the two English parties, differing so profoundly from one another,
combine against the third party? Evidently not. We must, therefore, look
forward to unstable Governments, if not to a total dislocation of our
Parliamentary system.
Session of 1884.--I pass over the minor incidents of this year,
including the continued neglect of remedial legislation for Ireland to
dwell on its dominant and most impressive lesson. It was the year of the
Franchise Bill, which, as regards Ireland, worked an extension, not
merely of the county but also of the borough franchise, and produced,
owing to the economic condition of the humbler classes in that country,
a far more extensive change than in England or Scotland. When the Bill
was introduced the question at once arose--Should Ireland be included?
There were two ways of treating Ireland between which Parliament had to
choose.
One was to leave her out of the Bill, on the ground that the masses of
her population could not be trusted with the franchise, as being
ignorant, sympathetic to crime, hostile to the English Government. This
course was the logical concomitant of exceptional coercive legislation,
such as had been passed in 1881 and 1882. It was quite compatible with
generous remedial legislation. But it placed Ireland in an unequal and
lower position, treating her, as the Coercion Acts did, as a dependent
country, inhabited by a population unfit for the same measure of power
which the inhabitants of Britain might receive.
The other course was to bestow on Ireland the same extended franchise
which the English county occupiers were to receive, applying the
principle of equality, and disregarding the obvious consequences. These
consequences were both practical and logical. The practical consequence
was the increase in numbers and weight of the Irish party in Parliament
hostile to Parliament itself. The logical consequence was the duty of
complying with the wishes of the enfranchised nation. Whatever reasons
were good for giving this enlarged suffrage to the Irish masses, were
good for respecting the will which they might use to express it. If the
Irish were deemed fit to exercise the same full constitutional rights
in legislation as the English, must they not be fit for the same rights
of trial by jury, a free press, and all the privileges of personal
freedom?
Of these two courses the Cabinet chose the latter, those of its members
whom we must suppose, from the language they now hold, to have then
hesitated, either stifling their fears or not apprehending the
consequences of their boldness. It might have been expected, and indeed
was generally expected, that the Tory party would refuse to follow. They
talked largely about the danger of an extended Irish suffrage, and
pointed out that it would be a weapon in the hands of disloyalty. But
when the moment for resistance came, they swerved, and never divided in
either House against the application of the Bill to Ireland. They might
have failed to defeat the measure; but they would have immensely
strengthened their position, logically and morally, had they given
effect by their votes to the sentiments they were known to entertain,
and which not a few Liberals shared.
The effect of this uncontested grant to Ireland of a suffrage
practically universal was immense upon our minds, and the longer we
reflected on it the more significant did it become. It meant to us that
the old methods were abandoned, and, as we supposed, for ever. We had
deliberately given the Home Rule party arms against English control far
more powerful than they previously possessed. We had deliberately
asserted our faith in the Irish people. Impossible after this to fall
back on Coercion Bills. Impossible to refuse any request compatible with
the general safety of the United Kingdom, which Ireland as a nation
might prefer. Impossible to establish that system of Crown Colony
Government which we had come to perceive was the only real and solid
alternative to self-government. To those of us who had been feeling that
the Irish difficulty was much the greatest of all England's
difficulties, this stood out beyond the agitation of the autumn and the
compromise of the winter as the great political event of 1884.[4]
Although this sketch is in the main a record of Parliamentary opinion, I
ought not to pass over the influence which the study of their
constituents' ideas exerted upon members for the larger towns. We found
the vast bulk of our supporters--English supporters, for after 1882 it
was understood that the Irish voters were our enemies--sympathetic with
the Irish people. They knew and thought little about Home Rule,
believing that their member understood that question better than they
did, and willing, so long as he was sound on English issues, to trust
him. But they pitied Irish tenants, and condemned Irish landlords.
Though they acquiesced in a Coercion Bill when proposed by a Liberal
Cabinet, because they concluded that nothing less than necessity would
lead such a Cabinet to propose one, they so much disliked any
exceptional or repressive legislation that it was plain they would not
long tolerate it. Any popular leader denouncing coercion was certain to
have the sentiment of the English masses with him, while as to
suspending Irish representation or carrying out consistently the policy
of treating Ireland as a subject country, there was no chance in the
world of their approval. Those of us, therefore, who represented large
working-class constituencies became convinced that the solution of the
Irish problem must be sought in conciliation and self-government, if
only because the other solution, Crown Colony Government, was utterly
repugnant to the English masses, in whom the Franchise Bill of 1884,
completing that of 1867, had vested political supremacy.[5]
Session of 1885.--The allied powers of Toryism and Nationalism gained in
this year the victory they had so long striven for. In February they
reduced the Ministerial majority to fourteen; in June they overthrew the
Ministry. No one supposed that on either occasion the merits of the
issue had anything to do with the Nationalist vote: that vote was given
simply and solely against the Government, as the Government which had
passed the Coercion Acts of 1881 and 1882--Acts demanded by the Tory
party, and which had not conceded an Irish Parliament. At last the Irish
party had attained its position as the arbiter of power and office. Some
of us said, as we walked away from the House, under the dawning light of
that memorable 9th of June, "This means Home Rule." Our forecast was
soon to be confirmed. Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, formed upon the
resignation of Mr. Gladstone's, announced that it would not propose to
renew any part of the Coercion Act of 1882, which was to expire in
August. Here was a surrender indeed! But the Tory leaders went further.
They did not excuse themselves on the ground of want of time. They took
credit for their benevolence towards Ireland; they discovered excellent
reasons why the Act should be dropped. They even turned upon Lord
Spencer, whose administration they had hitherto blamed for its leniency,
and attacked him in Parliament, among the cheers of his Irish enemies.
From that time till the close of the General Election in December
everything was done, short of giving public pledges, to keep the Irish
leaders and the Irish voters in good humour. The Tory party in fact
posed as the true friends of Ireland, averse from coercion, and with
minds perfectly open on the subject of self-government.
This change of front, so sudden, so unblushing, completed the process
which had been going on in our minds. By 1882 we had come to feel that
Home Rule was inevitable, though probably undesirable. Before long we
had asked ourselves whether it was really undesirable, whether it might
not be a good thing both for England, whose Parliament and Cabinet
system it would relieve from impending dangers, while leaving free scope
for domestic legislation, and for Ireland, which could hardly manage her
affairs worse than we were managing them for her, and might manage them
better. And thus, by the spring of 1885, many of us were prepared for a
large scheme of local self-government in Ireland, including a central
legislative body in Dublin.[6]
Now when it was plain that the English party which had hitherto called
for repression, and had professed itself anxious for a patriotic union
of all parties to maintain order and a continuity of policy in Ireland,
was ready to bid for Irish help at the polls by throwing over repression
and reversing the policy it had advocated, we felt that the sooner
Ireland was taken out of English party politics the better. What
prospect was there of improving Ireland by the superior wisdom and
fairness of the British Parliament, if British leaders were to make
their Irish policy turn on interested bargains with Nationalist leaders?
Repression, which we clearly saw to be the only alternative to
self-government, seemed to be by common consent abandoned. I remember
how, at a party of members in the beginning of July, some one said,
"Well, there's an end for ever of coercion at any rate," and every one
assented as to an obvious truth. Accordingly the result of the new
departure of the Salisbury Cabinet in 1885 was to convince even doubters
that Home Rule must come, and to make those already convinced anxious to
see it come quickly, and to find the best form that could be given it.
Many of us expected the Tory Government to propose it. Rumour declared
the new Lord Lieutenant to be in favour of it. His government was
extremely conciliatory in Ireland, even to the recalcitrant corporation
of Limerick. Not to mention less serious and less respected Tory
Ministers, Lord Salisbury talked at Newport about the dualism of the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy with the air of a man who desired to have a
workable scheme, analogous, if not similar, suggested for Ireland and
Great Britain. The Irish Nationalists appeared to place their hopes in
this quarter, for they attacked the Liberal party with unexampled
bitterness, and threw all their voting strength into the Tory scale.
As it has lately been attempted to blacken the character of the Irish
leaders, it deserves to be remarked that whatever has been charged
against them was said or done by them before the spring of 1885, and
was, practically, perfectly well known to the Tory leaders when they
accepted the alliance of the Irish party in the House of Commons, and
courted their support in the election of 1885. To those who remember
what went on in the House in the sessions of 1884 and 1885, the horror
now professed by the Tory leaders for the conduct and words of the Irish
party would be matter for laughter if it were not also matter for just
indignation.
Why, it may be asked, if the persuasion that Home Rule was certain, and
even desirable, had become general among the Liberals who had sat
through the Parliament of 1880, was it not more fully expressed at the
election of 1885? This is a fair question, which I shall try to answer.
In the first place, the electors made few inquiries about Ireland. They
disliked the subject; they had not realized its supreme importance.
Those of us who felt anxious to explain our views (as was my own case)
had to volunteer to do so, for we were not asked about them. The Irish
party in the constituencies was in violent opposition to Liberal
candidates; it did not interrogate, but denounced. Further, it was felt
that the issue was mainly one to be decided in Ireland itself. The
question of Home Rule was being submitted, not, as heretofore, to a
limited constituency, but to the whole Irish people. Till their will had
been constitutionally declared at the polls it was not proper that
Englishmen or Scotchmen should anticipate its tenour. We should even
have been accused, had we volunteered our opinions, of seeking to affect
the result in Ireland, and, not only of playing for the Irish vote in
Great Britain, as we saw the Tories doing, but of prejudicing the
chances of those Liberal candidates who, in Irish constituencies, were
competing with extreme Nationalists. A third reason was that most
English and Scotch Liberals did not know how far their own dispositions
towards Home Rule were shared by their leaders. Mr. Gladstone's
declaration in his Midlothian address was no doubt a decided intimation
of his views, and was certainly understood by some (as by myself) to
imply the grant to Ireland of a Parliament; but, strong as its words
were, its importance does not seem to have been fully appreciated at the
moment. And the opinions of a statesman whose unequalled Irish
experience and elevated character gave him a weight only second to that
of Mr. Gladstone--I mean Lord Spencer--had not been made known. We had
consequently no certainty that there were leaders prepared to give
prompt effect to the views we entertained. Lastly, we were not prepared
with a practical scheme of self-government for Ireland. The Nationalist
members had propounded none which we could either adopt or criticize.
Convinced as we were that Home Rule would come and must come, we felt
the difficulties surrounding every suggestion that had yet been made,
and had not hammered out any plan which we could lay before the electors
as approved by Liberal opinion.[7] We were forced to confine ourselves
to generalities.
Whether it would have been better for us to have done our thinking and
scheme-making in public, and thereby have sooner forced the details of
the problem upon the attention of the country, need not now be inquired.
Any one can now see that something was lost by the omission. But those
who censure a course that has actually been taken usually fail to
estimate the evils that would have followed from the taking of the
opposite course. Such evils might in this instance have been as great as
those we have encountered.
I have spoken of the importance we attached to the decision of Ireland
itself, and of the attitude of expectancy which, while that decision was
uncertain, Englishmen were forced to maintain. We had not long to wait.
Early in December it was known that five-sixths of the members returned
from Ireland were Nationalists, and that the majorities which had
returned them were crushing. If ever a people spoke its will, the Irish
people spoke theirs at the election of 1885. The last link in the chain
of conviction, which events had been forging since 1880, was now
supplied. In passing the Franchise Bill of 1884, we had asked Ireland to
declare her mind. She had now answered. If the question was not a
mockery, and representative government a sham, we were bound to accept
the answer, subject only, but subject always, to the interests of the
whole United Kingdom. In other words, we were bound to devise such a
scheme of self-government for Ireland as would give full satisfaction to
her wishes, while maintaining the ultimate supremacy of the Imperial
Parliament and the unity of the British Empire.
Very few words are needed to summarize the outline which, omitting many
details which would have illustrated and confirmed its truth, I have
attempted to present of the progress of opinion among Liberal members of
the Parliament of 1880.
1. Our experience of the Coercion Bills of 1881 and 1882 disclosed the
enormous mischief which such measures do in alienating the minds of
Irishmen, and the difficulty of enlisting Irish sentiment on behalf of
the law. The results of the Act of 1881 taught us that the repression of
open agitation means the growth of far more dangerous conspiracy; those
of the Act of 1882 proved that even under an administration like Lord
Spencer's repression works no change for the better in the habits and
ideas of the people.
2. The conduct of the House of Lords in 1880 and 1881, and the malign
influence which its existence exerted whenever remedial legislation for
Ireland came in question, convinced us that full and complete justice
will never be done to Ireland by the British Parliament while the Upper
House (as at present constituted) remains a part of that Parliament.
3. The break-down of the procedure of the House of Commons, and the
failure of the efforts to amend it, proved that Parliament cannot work
so long as a considerable section of its members seek to impede its
working. To enable it to do its duty by England and Scotland, it was
evidently necessary, either to make the Irish members as loyal to
Parliament as English and Scotch members usually are, or else to exclude
them.
4. The discussions of Irish Bills in the House of Commons made us
realize how little English members knew about Ireland; how utterly
different were their competence for, and their attitude towards, Irish
questions and English questions. We perceived that we were legislating
in the dark for a country whose economic and social condition we did not
understand--a country to which we could not apply our English ideas of
policy; a country whose very temper and feeling were strange to us. We
were really fitter to pass laws for Canada or Australia than for this
isle within sight of our shores.
5. I have said that we were legislating in the dark. But there were two
quarters from which light was proffered, the Irish members and the Irish
Executive. We rejected the first, and could hardly help doing so, for to
accept it would have been to displace our own leaders. We followed the
light which the Executive gave. But in some cases (as notably in the
case of the Coercion Bill of 1881) it proved to be a "wandering fire,"
leading us into dangerous morasses. And we perceived that at all times
legislation at the bidding of the Executive, against the wishes of Irish
members, was not self-government or free government. It was despotism.
The rule of Ireland by the British Parliament was really "the rule of a
dependency through an official, responsible no doubt, but responsible
not to the ruled, but to an assembly of which they form less than a
sixth part."[8] As this assembly closed its ears to the one-sixth, and
gave effect to the will of the official, this was essentially arbitrary
government, and wanted those elements of success which free government
contains.
This experience had, by 1884, convinced us that the present relations of
the British Parliament to Ireland were bad, and could not last; that the
discontent of Ireland was justified; that the existing system, in
alienating the mind of Ireland, tended, not merely to Repeal, but to
Separation; that the simplest, and probably the only effective, remedy
for the increasing dangers was the grant of an Irish Legislature. Two
events clinched these conclusions. One was the Tory surrender of June,
1885. Self-government, we had come to see, was the only alternative to
Coercion, and now Coercion was gone. The other was the General Election
of December, 1885, when newly-enfranchised Ireland, through five-sixths
of her representatives, demanded a Parliament of her own.
These were not, as is sometimes alleged, conclusions of despair. We were
mostly persons of a cautious and conservative turn of mind, as men
imbued with the spirit of the British Constitution ought to be. The
first thing was to convince us that the existing relations of the
islands were faulty, and could not be maintained. This was a negative
result, and while we remained in that stage we were despondent. Many
Liberal members will remember the gloom that fell on us in 1882 and 1883
whenever we thought or spoke of Ireland. But presently the clouds
lifted. We still felt the old objections to any Home Rule scheme, though
we now saw that they were less formidable than the evils of the present
system. But we came to feel that the grant of self-government was a
right thing in itself. It was not merely a means of ridding ourselves of
our difficulties, not merely a boon yielded because long demanded. It
was a return to broad and deep principles, a conformity to those
natural laws which govern human society as well as the inanimate
world--an effort to enlist the better and higher feelings of mankind in
the creation of a truer union between the two nations than had ever yet
existed. When we perceived this, hope returned. It is strong with us
now, for, though we see troubles, perhaps even dangers, in the immediate
future, we are confident that the principles on which Liberal policy
towards Ireland is based will in the long run work out a happy issue for
her, as they have in and for every other country that has trusted to
them.
One last word as to Consistency. We learnt in the Parliament of 1880
many facts about Ireland we had not known before; we felt the force and
bearing of other facts previously accepted on hearsay, but not realized.
We saw the Irish problem change from what it had been in 1880 into the
new phase which stood apparent at the end of 1885, Coercion abandoned by
its former advocates, Self-government demanded by the nation. Were we to
disregard all these new facts, ignore all these new conditions, and
cling to old ideas, some of which we perceived to be mistaken, while
others, still true in themselves, were out-weighed by arguments of far
wider import? We did not so estimate our duty. We foresaw the taunts of
foes and the reproaches of friends. But we resolved to give effect to
the opinions we slowly, painfully, even reluctantly formed, opinions all
the stronger because not suddenly adopted, and founded upon evidence
whose strength no one can appreciate till he has studied the causes of
Irish discontent in Irish history, and been forced (as we were) to face
in Parliament the practical difficulties of the government of Ireland by
the British House of Commons.