I am conscious that I ought to make some kind of apology for rushing
into print on a subject which I do not half know. But I do know just a
little more than I did when I was an ardent Home Ruler, influenced by
the seductive charm of sentiment and abstract principle only; and I
think that perhaps the process by which my own blindness has been
couched may help to clear the vision of others who see as I did. All
of us lay-folk are obliged to follow the leaders of those schools in
politics, science, or religion, to which our temperament and mental
idiosyncracies affiliate us. Life is not long enough for us to examine
from the beginning upwards all the questions in which we are
interested; and it is only by chance that we find ourselves set face
to face with the first principles and elemental facts of a cause to
which, perhaps, as blind and believing followers of our leaders, we
have committed ourselves with the ardour of conviction and the
intemperance of ignorance. In this matter of Ireland I believed in the
accusations of brutality, injustice, and general insolence of tyranny
from modern landlords to existing tenants, so constantly made by the
Home Rulers and their organs; and, shocking though the undeniable
crimes committed by the Campaigners were, they seemed to me the tragic
results of that kind of despair which seizes on men who, goaded to
madness by oppression, are reduced to masked murder as their sole
means of defence--and as, after all, but a sadly natural retaliation.
I knew nothing really of Lord Ashbourne's Act; and what I thought I
knew was, that it was more a blind than honest legislation, and did no
vital good. I thought that Home Rule would set all things straight,
and that the National Sentiment was one which ought to find practical
expression. I rejoiced over every election that took away one seat
from the Unionists and added another vote to the Home Rulers; and I
shut my eyes to the dismemberment of our glorious Empire and the
certainty of civil war in Ireland, should the Home Rule demanded by
the Parnellites and advocated by the Gladstonians become an
accomplished fact. In a word I committed the mistakes inevitable to
all who take feeling and conviction rather than fact and knowledge for
their guides.
Then I went to Ireland; and the scales fell from my eyes. I saw for
myself; heard facts I had never known before; and was consequently
enlightened as to the true meaning of the agitation and the real
condition of the people in their relation to politics, their
landlords, and the Plan of Campaign.
The outcome of this visit was two papers which were written for the
_New Review_--with the editor of whom, however, I stood somewhat in
the position of Balaam with Balak, when, called on to curse the
Israelites, he was forced by a superior power to bless them. So I with
the Unionists. The first paper was sent and passed, but it was delayed
by editorial difficulties through the critical months of the
bye-elections. When published in the December number, owing to the
exigencies of space, the backbone--namely the extracts from the Land
Acts, now included in this re-publication--was taken out of it, and my
own unsupported statements alone were left. I was sorry for this, as
it cut the ground from under my feet and left me in the position of
one of those mere impressionists who have already sufficiently
darkened counsel and obscured the truth of things. As the same
editorial difficulties and exigencies of space would doubtless delay
the second paper, like the first, I resolved, by the courteous
permission of the editor, to enlarge and publish both in a pamphlet
for which I alone should be responsible, and which would bind no
editor to even the semblance of endorsement.
I, only half-enlightened, write, as has been said, for the wholly
blind and ignorantly ardent who, as I did, accept sentiment for fact
and feeling for demonstration; who do not look at the solid legal
basis on which the present Government is dealing with the Irish
question; who believe all that the Home Rulers say, and nothing that
the Unionists demonstrate. I want them to study the plain and
indisputable facts of legislation as I have done, when I think they
must come to the same conclusions as those which have forced
themselves on my own mind--namely, that the Home Rule desired by the
Parnellites is not only a delusive impossibility, but is also high
treason against the integrity of the Empire, and would be a base
surrender of our obligations to the Irish Loyalists; that, whatever
the landlords were, they are now more sinned against than sinning;
and that in the orderly operation of the Land Acts now in force, with
the stern repression of outrages[A] and punishment of crimes, for
which peaceable folk are so largely indebted to Mr. Balfour, lies the
true pacification of this distressed and troubled country.