MEANING OF HOME RULE.
"Home Rule" is a term which, like all current and popular phrases, is,
though intelligible, wanting in precision. Hence it is well, before we
investigate the different forms which schemes of Home Rule may assume,
to fix in our minds precisely what Home Rule does mean and what it does
not mean.
[Sidenote: What Home Rule means.]
"Home Rule"--or, to speak more accurately, the policy of Home
Rule--means, if we may use language with which we are all familiar in
relation to the Colonies, the endowment of Ireland with representative
institutions and responsible government.
It means, therefore, the creation of an Irish Parliament which shall
have legislative authority in matters of Irish concern, and of an Irish
executive responsible (in general) for its acts to the Irish Parliament
or the Irish people. Hence every scheme of Home Rule which merits that
name is marked by three features--_first_, the creation of an Irish
Parliament; _secondly_, the right of the Irish Parliament to legislate
within its own sphere (however that sphere may be defined) with habitual
freedom from the control of the Imperial or British Parliament; and
_thirdly_, the habitual responsibility of the Irish executive for its
acts to the Irish people or to their representatives.
These three characteristics, which I do not attempt to define with
anything like logical precision, constitute the essence of Home Rule.
Other things, however important in themselves, are matters of
subordinate detail, and open to discussion or compromise. The
limitations to the sphere within which the Irish Parliament is to exert
independent authority, the definition of the term "Irish concerns," the
constitution of the Irish Parliament, the nature and appointment of the
Irish executive (which, though it is no doubt generally assumed to be a
Cabinet chosen in effect like the Victorian Ministry, by the local
Parliament, might well, and indeed far better, be a President or Council
elected, like the Governor of New York, by popular vote), the occasions
on which the British Parliament should retain the legal or moral right
of legislation for Ireland--these and a score of other subjects which at
once suggest themselves to a critic of constitutions are of supreme
importance, but in whatever way they may be determined, they do not
touch the principle of Home Rule. A scheme, on the other hand, however
wise its provisions, which lacked the essential characteristics already
enumerated, would not meet the demand for Home Rule; an Act which did
not constitute a Parliament for Ireland could not possibly satisfy the
sentiment of Irish nationality; an Irish Parliament which did not
habitually, at any rate, legislate with independence of the Parliament
at Westminster could not divest the law in Ireland of its "foreign
garb"; an executive not responsible directly or indirectly to the Irish
people could not give full effect to the legislation of an Irish
Parliament, and the existence of such an executive would (if the true
ground why law is hated in Ireland be its alien character) only divert
popular hostility from the law to the government.
[Sidenote: What Home Rule does not mean.]
Home Rule does not mean Local Self-Government; Home Rule does not mean
National Independence.
Local Self-Government means the delegation by the Sovereign, and in
England therefore by Parliament, to local bodies, say town councils,
county boards, vestries, and the like, of strictly subordinate powers of
legislation for definite localities. The authority possessed by such
local bodies extends over definite and limited areas, (which themselves
are often created by legislation); exists for definite purposes; is
directly conferred or tolerated by Parliament; has no capacity of
indefinite extension; and neither comes into competition with nor
restrains, either legally or morally, the legislative authority of
Parliament. Logically, indeed, there may be difficulty in drawing the
precise line of demarcation between a plan for conferring on Ireland the
minimum of legislative independence which could without absurdity be
dignified with the name of Home Rule, and a plan for giving to the
boroughs and counties of Ireland the maximum of law-making power which
could, without fraud upon the intelligence of the English people, be
comprehended within the elastic phrase "extension of Local
Self-Government." But this logical puzzle need give us no trouble; it is
based on the fact that every non-sovereign law-making body, whether it
be the French National Assembly, the American Congress, or the London,
Chatham and Dover Railway Co., belongs to one and the same genus.[2] The
casuists of jurisprudence may quibble for ever over the confines between
Home Rule and Local Self-Government; men of sense engaged in the
consideration of affairs thrust aside such inopportune logomachy, and
content themselves with the knowledge that were the Town Council, say,
of Birmingham or of Belfast endowed with tenfold its present powers, it
would differ essentially from any Irish Parliament which, even though
denied the Parliamentary title, should represent the people of Ireland,
and should have received the very smallest amount of authority which
could by any possibility satisfy Mr. Parnell. Nor are differences which
may not admit of easy definition difficult for a candid enquirer to
discern. A town council, whatever its powers, does not represent a
nation, and derives no prestige from the principle of nationality; the
feeblest legislative assembly meeting at Dublin would rightly claim to
speak for the Irish people. A town council, whether of Birmingham or of
Belfast, springs from and is kept alive by the will of Parliament, and
cannot pretend that its powers, however extensive, compete with the
authority of its creator. Should a town council use even its strictly
legal rights in a way not conducive to the public interest, Parliament
would without scruple override the bye-laws of the council by the force
of Parliamentary enactment. The authority of an Irish representative
assembly would from the necessity of things be, if not a legal, at any
rate a moral check, I will not say on Parliamentary sovereignty, but
assuredly on Parliamentary legislation. Extended rights of
self-government, though given to every local body in Ireland, would not
affect the relation between the people of Ireland and the Parliament at
Westminster. The very aim of Home Rule, even under its least pretentious
form, is to introduce a new relation between the people of Ireland and
the Parliament at Westminster. The matter may be summed up in one
phrase: Local Self-Government however extended means the delegation,
Home Rule however curtailed means the surrender, of Parliamentary
authority.
[Sidenote: Local Self-Government.]
The distinction here insisted upon is of practical importance, for it is
connected with a question so pressing as to excuse an apparent, though
not more than an apparent, digression.
English Radicals, and many politicians who are not Radicals, hold,
whether rightly or not, that the sphere of Local Self-Government may
with benefit to the nation be greatly extended in England. The soundness
of this view in no way concerns us, and it is a matter upon which there
is no reason, for our present purpose, to form or express an opinion;
they also hope that by a similar extension of Local Self-Government to
Ireland they may satisfy the demand for Home Rule. They conceive, in
short, that it is possible to confer a substantial benefit upon the
Irish people, and to close a dangerous agitation, by giving to Belfast
and to Cork the same municipal privileges which they wish to extend to
Birmingham or to Liverpool. The reasons for this belief are threefold:
that Local Self-Government is itself a benefit; that Ireland ought, as
of right, to have the same institutions as England; that Local or
Municipal Self-Government will meet the real if not the nominal wish of
the Irish people. This hope I believe to be delusive. The reasons on
which it is grounded are--one of them probably, and two of them
certainly--unsound.
Local Self-Government is one of those arrangements which, like most
political institutions, cannot be called absolutely good or bad. It is a
good thing, I suppose, at Birmingham, and was some fifty years ago a
good thing in Massachusetts, and it may prove (though this is
speculation) a good thing in an English county. Local Self-Government is
not admirable at New York; it works less well than it once did in New
England; it does not produce very happy effects in London parishes; we
may well doubt whether it be really suited for modern France. Local
Self-Government where it flourishes is quite as much a result as a cause
of a happy social condition; the eulogies bestowed upon it contain a
curious mixture of truth and falsehood. What is true is, that where
self-government flourishes, society is in a sound state; what is false
is, that Local Self-Government produces a sound state of society. The
primary condition necessary for the success of self-government is
harmony between different classes. The rich must be the guides of the
poor, the poor must put trust in the rich. Men who are placed above
corruption must interest themselves in the laborious but important
details of local administration; men who might be corrupted themselves,
must desire to place power in the hands of leaders who are as a class
incorruptible. High public spirit, a detestation of jobbery, trust and
goodwill between rich and poor, are the feelings which make good local
or municipal government possible. There are certain parts of England,
there are larger parts of the United States, where these admirable and
rare conditions exist. Do they exist in Ireland? I need not answer the
question, for if they existed our difficulties in Ireland would be at an
end. If, indeed, there were a genuine desire for Local Self-Government,
expressed by Irishmen themselves, every sensible man would at once
surrender _à priori_ theories in favour of the conclusions drawn by
practical experience. But no such wish has been expressed, and until it
is expressed, a thoughtful observer may fairly believe that Local
Self-Government will not flourish in a country where are presented none
of the conditions on which its prosperity depends, and he may conjecture
that in Ireland, as in France, an honest centralised administration of
impartial officials, and not Local Self-Government, would best meet the
real wants of the people.[3]
The notion that Ireland or any one part of the United Kingdom ought, or
has a claim, to have the same institutions as every other part rests on
a confusion of ideas, and is a false deduction from democratic
principles. It is founded on the feeling which has caused half the
errors of democracy, that a fraction of a nation has a right to speak
with the authority of the whole, and that the right of each portion of
the people to make its wishes heard involves the right to have them
granted. This delusion has once and again made Paris the ruler of
France, and the Parisian mob the master of Paris. The sound principle of
democratic government--and England must, under the present state of
things, be ruled on democratic principles--is, that all parts of the
country must be governed in the way which the whole of the State as
represented by the majority thereof deems expedient for each part, and
that while every part should be allowed a voice to make known its wants,
the decision how these wants are to be met must be given by the whole
State, that is (in the particular instance) by the majority of the
electors of Great Britain and Ireland. From this principle it does not
follow either that every part of the kingdom should have those
institutions which that part prefers, (though in so far as this end can
be attained its attainment is desirable,) or, still less, that every
part of the kingdom should have the same institutions as every other
part. That this is so everybody in a general way admits. No one supposes
that because the people of Leicester abominate vaccination the
Vaccination Acts are not to be extended to that borough, or that the
wish of the people of Birmingham in favour of free schools is decisive
in favour of making education in Birmingham gratuitous. The will of a
locality is admitted not to be the expression of the will of the nation.
No one, again, fancies that the legal institutions of England ought of
necessity to be extended to Scotland, or the law of Scotland to England.
In Ireland recent legislation has, and with general approval,
established institutions which no one alleges must, because they exist
in Ireland, be applied of necessity or as a matter of justice to
England. English tenants might in many cases, it is likely enough, think
the provisions of the Irish Land Acts a boon, but no one would listen to
the argument that simply because under the special circumstances of
Ireland special privileges are given to Irish tenants, similar
privileges ought to be conferred upon every English tenant farmer. The
idea therefore that because English boroughs or counties receive an
increased measure of self-government the same measure ought to be
extended to Ireland, though it sounds plausible, is neither conformable
to democratic principle nor to our habitual practice, grounded as that
practice is on considerations of common sense and expediency. The true
watchwords which should guide English democrats in their dealings with
Ireland, as in truth with every other part of the United Kingdom, are
not "equality," "similarity," and "simultaneity," but "unity of
government," "equality of political rights," "diversity of
institutions." Unless English democrats see this they will commit a
double fault: they will not in reality deal with Ireland as with
England, for to deal with societies in essentially different conditions
in the same manner is in truth to treat them differently; they will
not--and this is of even more importance--perform the true function of
the democracy, which is to remove by special legislation, mainly in a
democratic direction, the peculiar evils which are the result of
Ireland's peculiar and calamitous history.
Once realise that Local Self-Government is essentially different from
Home Rule, and it becomes patent that the idea of satisfying the wish
for Home Rule by increasing the municipal franchises of every township
in Ireland is a dangerous delusion. Local Self-Government may be an
excellent thing in its way--it is possibly (though I do not say it is)
the thing which the inhabitants of Ireland ought to wish for; but it is
not the thing which they do wish for, and it has not the qualities
which, if Home Rule be really desired by the Irish people, make Home
Rule desirable. It does not meet the feeling of nationality; it does not
give the popular leaders authority to settle the land question; it does
not free the law from its alien aspect. The very reasons which make
English reformers favour the extension of Local Self-Government in
Ireland prove that Local Self-Government, whatever its merits, is no
substitute for Parliamentary independence. Englishmen recommend Local
Self-Government because it does not check on the authority of the
Imperial Parliament; Home Rulers desire Home Rule because it does check
Imperial legislation. Brandy is good, and water is good; but when a
neighbour asks for a glass of spirits, it is mockery to tender a glass
of water on the ground that both spirits and water are drink. The
benevolent person who makes the offer must not wonder if he receives no
thanks.
[Sidenote: National Independence.]
Home Rule does not mean National Independence. This proposition needs no
elaboration. Any plan of Home Rule whatever implies that there are
spheres of national life in which Ireland is not to act with the freedom
of an independent State. Mr. Parnell and his followers accept in
principle Mr. Gladstone's proposals, and therefore are willing to accept
for Ireland restrictions on her political liberty absolutely
inconsistent with the principle of nationality. Under the Gladstonian
constitution her foreign policy is to be wholly regulated by a British
Parliament in which sit no Irish representatives; she is not to have the
right either of raising an army or of endowing a church; she is in fact
to surrender any claim to the rights of a nation in consideration of
receiving a certain number of State-rights. In all this there is nothing
unreasonable and nothing blameworthy. One part of the United Kingdom is
prepared to accept new terms of partnership. But this acceptance,
though reasonable and fair enough, is quite inconsistent with any claim
for national independence. A nation is one thing, a state forming part
of a federation is quite another. To ask for the position of a dependent
colony like Victoria, or of a province such as Ontario, is to renounce
the demand to be a nation. A _bonâ fide_ Home Ruler cannot be a _bonâ
fide_ Nationalist. This point deserves attention, not for the sake of
the miserable and ruinous advantage which is obtained by taunting an
adversary in controversy with inconsistency till you drive him to
improve his logical position by increasing the exactingness of his
demands, but because the advocates of Home Rule (honestly enough, no
doubt) confuse the matter under discussion by a strange kind of
intellectual shuffle. When they wish to minimise the sacrifice to
England of establishing a Parliament in Ireland, they bring Home Rule
down nearly to the proportions of Local Self-Government; when they wish
to maximise--if the word may be allowed--the blessings to Ireland of a
separate legislature, they all but identify Home Rule with National
Independence. Yet you have no more right to expect from any form of
State-rights the new life which sometimes is roused among a people by
the spirit and the responsibilities of becoming a nation, than you have
to suppose that municipal councils will satisfy the feelings which
demand an Irish Parliament.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] See Dicey, Law of the Constitution (2nd ed.), p. 80.
[3] De Beaumont's opinions on this point are perfectly clear: they
represent the judgment of an extremely able thinker, who approaches the
problems presented by Irish society with an impartiality which from the
nature of things is unattainable by any Englishman or Irishman. His
utterances will moreover command the more respect from the consideration
that De Beaumont, belonging as he did to the school of his intimate
friend De Tocqueville, was inclined rather to overrate than to underrate
the virtues of self-government; whilst as a Frenchman he possessed a
knowledge which cannot fall to any Englishman of the benefits conferred
upon the people by a good administration of the French type. The
following extracts from a chapter too long for complete citation, which
is written to show that Ireland needs a centralised government, deserve
the most careful attention. The whole chapter, and indeed the whole work
to which it belongs, ought at the present moment to be familiar to every
English Liberal:--
"_Pour détruire le pouvoir politique de l'aristocratie, il faudrait lui
ôter l'application quotidienne des lois, comme on l'a privée
précédemment àdu pouvoir de les faire. Il faudrait, par conséquent,
modifier profondément le système administratif et judiciaire qui repose
sur l'institution des juges de paix et sur l'organisation des grands
jurys, tels qu'ils sont constitués aujourd'hui. Et d'abord, pour
exécuter cette réforme, il faudrait centraliser le pouvoir_.
* * * * *
"_Plus on considère l'état de l'Irlande, et plus il semble qu'à tout
prendre un gouvernement central fortement constitué serait, du moins
pour quelque temps, le meilleur que puisse avoir ce pays. Une
aristocratie existe, qu'on veut réformer. Mais à qui remettre le pouvoir
qu'on va retirer de ses mains? Aux classes moyennes?--Elles ne font que
de naître en Irlande. L'avenir leur appartient; mats ne
compromettront-elles pas cet avenir, si la charge de mener la société
est confiée dès aujourd'hui à leurs mains inhabiles et à leurs ardentes
passions?_
_"Telle est aujourd'hui en Irlande la situation des partis, que l'on ne
peut obtenir quelque justice des pouvoirs politiques, si on les laisse à
l'aristocratie protestante, et que l'on ne saurait guere en espérer
davantage, si on les donne aussitôt à la classe moyenne catholique qui
s'élève._
_"Ce qu'il faudrait à l'Irlande, ce serait une administration supérieure
aux partis, à l'ombre de laquelle les classes moyennes pussent grandir,
se développer et s'instruire, pendant que l'aristocratie perdrait son
pouvoir._
* * * * *
_"Il n'entre, du reste, ni dans mon désir, ni dans mon plan, d'expliquer
la forme et le mécanisme de la centralisation qui conviendrait à
l'Irlande, et dont je me borne à reconnaître en principe l'utilité
passagère pour ce pays; je ne hasarderai, sur ce sujet, qu'une seule
idée pratique._
_"C'est que, pour organiser en Irlande un gouvernement central puissant,
il faudrait de plus en plus resserrer le lien d'union qui attache
l'Irlande à l'Angleterre, rapprocher le plus possible Dublin de Londres,
et faire de l'Irlande un comté anglais._
* * * * *
_"On ne conteste point que l'Irlande ait besoin d'un gouvernement
spécial; et s'il y a nécessité de la soumettre à un régime législatif
autre que celui de l'Angleterre, il faut bien aussi des agents
particuliers pour appliquer des règles différentes d'administration.
Mais, ceci étant admis, l'on ne voit pas ce qui aujourd'hui empêcherait
de placer le siége du gouvernement irlandais dans la première ville de
l'empire britannique._
* * * * *
_"La réforme de la vice-royauté et l'abolition des administrations
locales d'Irlande ne sont, sans doute, que des changements de forme.
Mais ce sont des moyens pratiques indispensables pour exécuter les
réformes politiques dont ce pays a besoin. Il faut que, pendant la
période de transition où se trouve l'Irlande, ceux qui la gouvernent
soient placés absolument en dehors d'elle, de ses moeurs, de ses
passions; il faut que son gouvernement cesse complétement d'être
irlandais; il faut qu'il soit entièrement, non pas anglais, mais remis à
des Anglais."_--2 De Beaumont, _l'Irlande, Sociale, Politique et
Religieuse_, pp. 124-129