CHAPTER X_Ireland and the Home Rule Movement

CONCLUSION

"Unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations."

--EDMUND BURKE.

The position of the mass of the Irish people with regard to the present

form of government has nowhere been more cogently expressed than in the

chapter on the Union in the "Cambridge Modern History," the writer of

which describes it as a settlement by compulsion, not by consent; and

the penalty of such methods is, that the instrument possesses no moral

validity for those who do not accept the grounds on which it was

adopted. If Englishmen get this firmly fixed in their minds they will

understand that we regard all Unionist reforms, whether from Liberal or

Conservative Governments, as instalments of conscience money, in regard

to which, granting our premises, it would be sheer affectation to

express surprise or to feign disgust at the lack of effusive gratitude

with which we receive them. "Give us back our ancient liberties" has

been the cry of the Irish people ever since George III. gave his assent

to the Act of Union. The ties of sentiment which bind her colonies so

closely to Great Britain are conspicuous by their absence in the case of

Ireland. The ties of common interest which are not less strong in the

matter of her colonial possessions are, albeit in existence as far as

Great Britain and Ireland are concerned, obscured and vitiated by the

system of taxation which makes the poorer country contribute to the

joint expenses at a rate altogether disproportionate to her means, and

which, while making her in this wise pay the piper, in no sense allows

her to call the tune.

Never has there been applied in Ireland that doctrine which the _Times_

enunciated so sententiously half a century ago in speaking of the Papal

States--"The destiny of a nation ought to be determined not by the

opinions of other nations but by the opinion of the nation itself. To

decide whether they are well governed or not is for those who live under

that government." If the _Times_ were to apply the wisdom of these words

to the situation in Ireland instead of screaming "Separatism" at every

breath of a suggestion of the extension of democratic principles in

Ireland, it would take steps to secure a condition of things under which

the people would not be alienated and would be a source of strength and

not of weakness.

Writing in that paper in 1880, at a time when Ireland was seething with

lawlessness, Charles Gordon declared--"I must say that the state of our

countrymen in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people in

the world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as we

are, that they are patient beyond belief, loyal but broken-spirited and

desperate; lying on the verge of starvation where we would not keep

cattle."

On the day after the murder of Mr. Burke in the Phoenix Park a permanent

Civil Servant was sent straight from the admiralty to take his place as

Under Secretary. Sir Robert Hamilton who served in Dublin in those

trying conditions became a convinced Home Ruler, as did his chief, Lord

Spencer; and it is generally said to have been Sir Robert who converted

Mr. Gladstone to Home Rule. On the return to power of the Conservatives,

after the defeat of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, Sir Robert Hamilton was

retired, and in his stead Sir Redvers Buller was sent to rule Ireland

_manu militari_. This officer, on being examined by Lord Cowper's

Commission, expressed his opinion that the National League had been the

tenants' best, if not their only, friend. "You have got," he said, "a

very ignorant, poor people, and the law should look after them, instead

of which it has only looked after the rich." To hold opinions so

unconventional in the service of a Unionist Viceroy was impossible, and

in a year other fields for Sir Redvers' activities were found. Sir West

Ridgeway, who succeeded him, served as Mr. Balfour's lieutenant during

the latter's efforts to "kill Home Rule with kindness," and it is

significant to find him at this day writing articles in the reviews on

the disappearance of Unionism, and pinning his faith to Dunravenism as

the next move.

It is assuredly a remarkable fact that the shrewdest of English

statesmen have not been able to see the complication with which the

Irish problem is entangled. Macaulay imagined that the religious

difficulty was the crux of the Irish question, but Emancipation did not

bring the expected peace and contentment in its train. John Bright

imagined that the agrarian question was the only obstacle to

reconciliation, but a recognition three-quarters of a century after the

Union that the laws of tenure are made for man and not man for the laws

of tenure, failed to put an end to Irish disaffection. Mr. Gladstone

thought in 1870 that the Irish problem was solved. Complicated as the

question has been in its various aspects--religious, racial, economic,

and agrarian--our demands have too often and too long been met in the

spirit of the Levite who passed by on the other side, until violence has

forced tardy redress, acquiesced in with reluctance. If the action of

Wellington and Peel was pusillanimous in granting Emancipation, for the

express purpose of resisting which they were placed in power, backed as

they were in their refusal by their allies in Ireland, the next great

measures of reform forty years later were admitted by Mr. Gladstone

himself to be equally the result of violence and breaches of the law.

The Queen's Speech of 1880 contained but a passing reference to Ireland

and of the intention of the Government to rule without exceptional

legislation; the Queen's Speech of 1881 contained reference to little

but Ireland and of the intention of the Government to introduce a

Coercion Bill.

In July, 1885, Lord Salisbury's Viceroy, on taking office, deprecated

the use of Coercion, but in January, 1886, the same Government

introduced a Coercion Bill, though less than six months before they had

repudiated it, and had beaten the Liberal Government on this very issue

with the aid of the Irish vote. The manner in which both English parties

have eaten their words is warranted to inculcate political cynicism. If

in 1881 the Liberals are declared to have jettisoned their principles

and to have perpetrated that which a few months before they declared

would stultify their whole policy, the same damaging admission must be

made by the Tories as to their acquiescence in the Franchise Bill of

1884 and their conduct of the Land Bill of 1887.

"Anyone," said Cavour, "can govern in a state of siege," but I do not

think Englishmen realise the extent to which the ruling policy has been

to accentuate the repressive to the exclusion of the beneficent side of

government, and how ready they have been to make the government not one

of opinion, as in their own country, but one of force. When Mr. Balfour

introduced his perpetual Coercion Bill of 1887 it was estimated that

there had been one such measure for every year of the century that was

passing.

In the first instance, the institutions of Ireland, being imposed by a

conquering country, never earned that measure of respect bred partly of

pride which attaches itself to the self-sown customs and processes of

nations; but, having introduced her legal system, England superseded it

and took steps to rule by a code outside the Common Law, so that respect

was, therefore, asked for legal institutions which, on her own showing,

and by her own admissions, had proved inadequate. In Ireland Government

did not "meet the headlong violence of angry power by covering the

accused all over with the armour of the law," as in Erskine's famous

phrase it did in England with regard to those imbued with revolutionary

principles.

A rusty statute of Edward III., which was devised for the suppression of

brigandage, was used to condemn the leaders of the Irish people,

unheard, in a court of law. Trial by jury was suspended and the common

right of freedom of speech was infringed. In 1901 no less than ten

Members of Parliament were imprisoned under the Crimes Act, and it was

not until the appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell to the Under

Secretaryship that the proclamation of the Coercion Act was withdrawn.

It is no small matter that Mr. Bryce, when reviewing his period of

office, mentioned among the details of his policy that he had set his

face against jury-packing, and had allowed juries to be chosen perfectly

freely. The suspension of the most cherished Common Law rights of the

subject from Habeas Corpus downwards has been the inevitable result of a

failure to apply democratic principles of government. Jury-packing,

forbidden meetings, summary arrests and prosecutions, and police

reporters form a discreditable paraphernalia by which to maintain the

conduct of government.

As examples of the differential treatment meted out to Ireland which is

not of a nature to impress her with confidence in English methods may be

mentioned the fact that the Irish militia are drafted out of the country

for their training, that no citizen army of volunteers is permitted, and

the desire of one faction to preserve these discriminations is to be

seen in the anger with which was greeted the omission the other day of

the Irish Arms Act from the Expiring Laws Continuation Bill.

Under every bad government there arise popular organisations bred of the

wildness of despair which enjoy the moral sanction which the law has

failed to secure "When citizens," said Filangieri long ago, "see the

Sword of Justice idle they snatch a dagger." So long as the Government

sate on the safety valve, so long did periodic explosions of

revolutionary resentment arise, and one must appreciate the fact that in

a country so devoutly Catholic as is Ireland the natural conservatism

which attachment to an historic Church inculcates, and the direction on

its part of anathemas at secret societies and at violence, served to

make it more difficult by far to arouse revolutionary reprisals than it

would be in similar circumstances in England.

"When bad men combine," wrote Edmund Burke, "the good must associate,

else they will fall one by one an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible

struggle." No one can accuse Burke--the apostle of constitutionalism,

the arch-enemy of the French revolution--of condoning violence, but even

he admitted that there is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a

virtue.

England must blame herself for the war of classes with which the

National struggle has been complicated. It was the Act of Union which

made the landlord class look to England, and established it in the

anomalous position of a body drawing its income from one country and its

support from another; by this means it made them a veritable English

garrison appealing to England as being the only loyal people. Let us

hope it is not true to say at this date that like the Bourbons they have

learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. The rich, the proud, and the

powerful have had their day, and can one deny that the attempt to govern

Ireland in the sole interests of a minority has made Ireland what it is.

An unbiased French observer three-quarters of a century ago declared

that the cause of Irish distress was its _mauvaise aristocratic_. It was

the interest of this class, as they themselves admit, which was allowed

to dominate the policy of the Unionist Party, and to effect this, force

was the only available instrument. With the recognition of the fact that

the possession of property is no guarantee of intelligence has come the

crippling of the policy of _laissez faire_, supported though it was by

the brewers of Dublin and the shipbuilders of Belfast, for this

reason--that rich men tend always to rally to the defence of property.

The exercise of the duties which property imposes and the responsibility

which it entails being the chief advantages of a landed gentry, and

their main _raison d'être_ as a ruling caste having been conspicuous by

its absence, with few exceptions, in Ireland, the passing of the

landowner as a social factor is looked upon with complacency.

English statesmen seem to have applied that maxim of Machiavelli--that

benefits should be conferred little by little so as to be more fully

appreciated. It is hard to realise that little more than thirty years

have elapsed since the time when the landed interest was supreme in

these islands. Their power was first assailed by the Ballot Act of 1873,

and the Corrupt Practices Act of 1884 did much to put a term to a form

of intimidation at which Tories did not hold up their hands in horror,

while the Franchise Act of 1883 destroyed their power, so that in those

years passed away for ever the time when, as Archbishop Croke put it, an

Irish borough would elect Barabbas for thirty pieces of silver.

Of one thing, indeed, we may be certain, and that is that we have

touched bottom in the matter of Unionist concessions. The manner in

which the programme mapped out between Mr. Wyndham and Sir Antony

MacDonnell was rendered nugatory is evidence of that. The administration

of the Land Act, under the secret instructions issued by Dublin Castle,

was such as to cripple the Estates Commissioners in their application of

its provisions. The proposals as to the settlement of the University

question were nipped in the bud after advances had been made to the

Catholic bishops to discover what was the minimum which they would

accept, and this was done although Mr. Balfour had declared at

Manchester in 1899--"Unless the University question can be settled

Unionism is a failure."

Mr. F.H. Dale, an English Inspector of Schools, who, in the last couple

of years, has produced two comprehensive blue books on the state of

primary and secondary education in Ireland, declared that he found the

desire for higher education in Ireland greater than in England; but in

spite of this, so far, neither British party has advanced one step in

the direction of a permanent solution, pleading as excuse that the fear

of strengthening the hands of the priests blocks the way, albeit a

university under predominatingly lay control is all that even the

hierarchy in Ireland demand; while to add to the groundlessness on which

intolerance is based the only institution of a satisfactory kind which

is endowed by the State is a Jesuit College supported by what one can

only call circuitous means.

Mr. Balfour himself has admitted that no Protestant parent could

conscientiously send his son to a college which was as Catholic as

Trinity is Protestant. If Oxford and Cambridge had been founded by

foreign Catholics for the express purpose of destroying the Protestant

religion in England, a thirty years' abolition of tests, which in no

sense affected their "atmosphere," would not have overcome the prejudice

and scruples persisting against them.

The vicious circles round which Irish questions rotate is nowhere seen

more clearly than in this connection. When complaint is made that a

disproportionately small number of Catholics hold high appointments in

the public offices in Ireland, the reply is made that the number of

members of that Church with high educational qualifications is small;

when demands are made for facilities for higher education, the

reluctance of English people to publicly endow sectarian education is

urged as an excuse, although Irishmen have not, since Trinity abolished

tests, made any demands for a purely sectarian University or College.

I have shown how, as a result of our aloofness from both English

parties, we find ourselves between the upper and the nether millstones,

and in what way in regard to the University question the old error which

for so long obstructed the land question is at work--mean the error of

denying reform for English reasons and endeavouring to force English

doctrines into the law and government of Ireland and of suppressing

Irish customs and Irish ideas.

On the advent to power of the present Government the heads of the great

departments in Whitehall excused their apparent dilatoriness in

effecting those administrative changes which the country expected from a

Liberal Government, by the fact that after twenty years of Conservative

rule the permanent officials were so steeped in the methods of Toryism

their habits were to such a degree tinged and coloured by its policy,

that there was the greatest possible difficulty in making the necessary

alterations. In the case of Ireland this is so to a much greater extent,

and one must recognise the truth of that saying of some Irish member to

the effect that a new Chief Secretary was like the change of the dial on

a clock--the difference was not great, for the works remain the same.

The main arguments against reform are founded on prophetic fears, and if

one is impressed by the threats of a _jacquerie_ on the part of the

Orangemen, led though they may be again, as they were twenty years ago,

by a Minister of Cabinet rank, Nationalists, on the other hand, may

remind Englishmen that the Irish volcanoes are not yet extinct, and that

the history of reform is such as to show the value of violence on the

failure of peaceful persuasion--a feature the most lamentable in Irish

politics; and in this connection let it never be forgotten that "the

warnings of Irish members," as Mr. Morley wrote in the _Pall Mall

Gazette_ on the introduction of the Coercion Bill which followed the

Phoenix Park murders, "have a most unpleasant knack of coming true."

When the counsels of prudence coincide with the claims of justice,

surely the last word had been said to disarm opposition.

"Old Buckshot," said Parnell grimly enough in 1881, "thinks that by

making Ireland a gaol he will settle the Irish question." Throwing

over that theory Great Britain decided in 1884--in the phrase then

current--that to count heads was better than to break them, but having

counted them she ignored their verdict, and has continued so to do for

more than twenty years. One would have thought that she would have

applied the rigour of her theories and put an end to this travesty by

which she has conceded the letter of democracy--a phantom privilege

which she has rendered nugatory. It was the impossibility of ignoring

the constitutionally-expressed wishes of the Irish people after he had

extended the suffrage, which made Mr. Gladstone a Home Ruler, and

Englishmen have to remember that this, the only remedy in the whole of

their political materia medica which they have not tried, is the one

which has effected a cure wherever else it has been applied.

I ask, to what does England look forward in a prolongation of the

present conditions? There is no finality in the politics of Ireland any

more than in those of other countries. She cannot say to Ireland--"Thus

far shalt thou go, and no further." As one burning question is solved

another arises to take its place and to demand redress. The battle for

the moment may seem to be to the strong, but in the long run might is

unable to resist the advances of right. Time, we may well declare, is on

our side; but one has to count the cost in the material damage to us,

and in the moral damage to Great Britain, in the ultimate concession,

perhaps under duress, of so much which has repeatedly been refused.

Ever since, in 1881, Mr. Gladstone "banished to Saturn the laws of

political economy," strong measures of State socialism have been enacted

by both parties. It is not for nothing that the tenants in the West find

themselves to-day paying less than half for their holdings of what they

paid twenty years ago, and paying it, moreover, not by way of rent but

as a terminable annuity. If there is one point which the events of the

last generation have established in their eyes it is this--that Parnell

was justified in telling them to keep a firm grip of their holdings, and

that Great Britain has admitted the justice of the grounds on which

their agitation was based, by the revolution in the social fabric which

she has set in train by the Land Purchase Acts.

Who was the witty Frenchman who declared that England was an island and

that every Englishman was an island? It is not only because of this

preoccupation with their own affairs that their _amour propre_ has been

injured by their failure in Ireland. One cannot expect to gather figs

from thistles or grapes from thorns, and when Englishmen appreciate to

how small an extent the Union has enured to the advantage of Ireland,

they will understand the feelings which actuate the desire for

self-government. Is there anything which makes Englishmen believe that

the extension of Land Purchase or the foundation of a university will

make for a permanent settlement? The history of the last half century

can scarcely make them sanguine that when the burning questions of

to-day have been disposed of they will find in the Imperial Parliament

the knowledge, the interest, or the time necessary for dealing with new

questions as they arise--for arise they assuredly will.

Great Britain may legislate with lazy, ill-informed, good intentions, as

Mr. Gladstone admitted was done in the case of the Encumbered Estates

Act, or she may grant concessions piecemeal, and the minority which

thereby she maintains will denounce every reform as mere _panem et

circenses_ by which she hopes to keep the majority subdued.

The "loyal minority" have cried "wolf" too often. Nearly forty years

ago, when Disestablishment was threatened, the Protestant Archbishop of

Dublin said--"You will put to Irish Protestants the choice between

apostacy and expatriation, and every man among them who has money or

position, when he sees his Church go, will leave the country. If you do

that, you will find Ireland so difficult to manage that you will have to

depend on the gibbet and the sword."

The twenty-five attempts to settle by legislation the land question were

in nearly every instance denounced as spoliation by the House of Lords,

which was constrained to let them pass into law. The pages of Hansard

are grey with unfulfilled forebodings as to what would be the effect of

the extension of the Franchise and of the grant of popular Local

Government. The results of the former took the wind out of the sails of

those who declared that popular wishes in Ireland were overridden by a

political caucus, the success of local government has given Orangemen

occasion to blaspheme.

The history of Irish legislation on all these points has been one of

belated concession to demands repeatedly made, at first scouted and

finally surrendered. And withal, English statesmen have not killed Home

Rule with kindness. "Twenty years of resolute government" were

confidently expected to give Irish Nationalism its _quietus. E pur si

muove._

NOTES

[1] L. Paul-Dubois. _L'Irlande Contemporaine_, p. 174.

[2] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill," Vol. II., p. 455.

[3] _L'Irlande Contemporaine_, p. 232.

[4] Hansard, August 1, 1881.

[5] _Ibid._, September 3, 1886.

[6] _Ibid._, August 19, 1886.

[7] _Ibid._, March 22, 1887.

[8] _Ibid._, April 22, 1887.

[9] _Ibid._, February 14, 1907.

[10] The statement in the text, written shortly after the

prorogation of Parliament, unexpectedly demands modification. Almost all

the planters on the Clanricarde estate have expressed their readiness to

clear out of the evicted lands and to accept re-settlement elsewhere.

The Lords' amendments will in consequence not prove the obstacle which

it was feared they would to the exercise of powers of compulsion by the

Estates Commissioners against the owner.

[11] "Greville Memoirs," Series I., Vol. III., p. 269.

[12] _Ibid._, Series II., p. 217, December, 1843.

[13] _Ibid._, Series II., Vol. II., March, 1846.

[14] Hansard, February, 1848.

[15] _United Irishman_, May 14, 1904.

[16] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill," Vol. II., p. 4, October

14, 1885.

[17] Hansard, May 20, 1884.

[18] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill," Vol. II., p. 456,

1892.

[19] "Greville," Series I., Vol. II., p. 76, November, 1830.

[20] "Life of Whately," Vol. II., p. 246, 1852.

[21] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill," Vol. II., p. 28,

December, 1885.

[22] Morley's "Life of Gladstone," Vol. II., Bk. IX., Cap. 4,

p. 524.

[23] Hansard, March 6, 1905.

[24] _Times_, January 10, 1906.

[25] Mrs. John Richard Green, _Independent Review_, June,

1905.

[26] "Ireland and the Empire," p. 275.

[27] Hansard, May 7, 1907.

[28] Morley's "Life of Gladstone," Vol. II., Bk. IX., Cap. 1,

p. 481.

ADDENDUM

PAGE 51.--A Bill introduced last session by Mr. William Redmond which

passed through both Houses of Parliament without opposition or debate,

will, when at an early date it comes into force, repeal the Tobacco

Cultivation Act, 1831, which forbade the growth of tobacco in Ireland.

Under the new Act there will be no obstacle in the way of its

cultivation, provided the excise conditions which will be imposed are

complied with.

Among the places in which experiments in tobacco growing have been made

in the last few years are Randalstown in Meath, Tagoat in Wexford, and

Tullamore in King's County, and in addition Lord Dunraven and Col. Hon.

Otway Cuffe have shown the success with which this crop may be

cultivated in other parts of Ireland.

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