STRENGTH OF THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND.
[Sidenote: Strength of movement.]
A dispassionate observer will easily convince himself that in Great
Britain the movement in favour of Home Rule is stronger than is believed
by its opponents. Patent facts show that this is so. In 1880 no single
English statesman had avowed himself its supporter; not fifty English or
Scotch members of Parliament could have been found to vote for an
enquiry into the admissibility of Mr. Parnell's policy. It may well be
doubted whether at that date ten British constituencies would have
returned to Parliament representatives pledged to grant Ireland a
separate legislature. Contrast this state of things with the present
condition of affairs. England has indeed pronounced decisively against
any tampering with the Act of Union, but the leading statesman of the
day has avowed himself a Home Ruler; he is supported by eminent
colleagues, and by nearly two hundred representatives of British
constituencies. Scotland and Wales on the whole favour the policy of
separation, and if, as has been roughly computed, of the electors of
the United Kingdom, 1,316,327 have voted in support of the Union, the
same computation shows that 1,238,342 are, to say the least, indifferent
to its maintenance. These are facts which tell their own tale. The Home
Rule movement has waxed strong. What is in England the source of its
strength, and what are the arguments in its support relied upon by its
English advocates?
[Sidenote: Source of its strength.]
Nine persons out of ten will reply that the Home Rule movement in
England owes its origin and force to the patronage of Mr. Gladstone. No
one who has watched the ebb and flow of popular feeling will underrate
that statesman's influence, and few persons, whatever their political
bias, will deny that but for Mr. Gladstone's conversion Mr. Parnell's
teaching would not at this moment have gained for him as many as fifty
disciples among English politicians. It may even be conceded that but
for Mr. Gladstone's action no English party would, during his lifetime,
have adopted the Parliamentary independence of Ireland as a watchword.
But here, as in other instances, there is grave danger of mistaking the
occasion for the cause of events, and if Mr. Gladstone's conversion has
determined the form and increased the momentum of the Home Rule
movement, it would be an error to hold that the prevalence of doctrines
unfavourable to the maintenance of the Union between England and Ireland
were wholly or even in the main due to his conduct. His conversion
itself remains to be accounted for. This would (except to those critics
who ascribe the most important acts of public statesmanship to the
pettiest forms of private selfishness) remain almost unaccountable
unless it were regarded in the light, in which it ought no doubt to be
looked upon, of an example of the facility with which a leader guided by
keen sympathy with the real or supposed opinions or emotions of the
moment follows, while apparently he guides, the phases of public
opinion. Candour moreover compels the admission that, if Mr. Gladstone's
action has led some politicians to "find salvation"--according to the
miserable cant of the day--in the adoption of opinions which cannot be
dignified with the name of convictions, many honest men both within and
without the sphere of public life have under the countenance of a great
name been encouraged to avow publicly sympathies with the demand for
Home Rule which have been slowly matured, and have hitherto scarcely
been acknowledged even in the convert's own mind. To any one who
perceives that the force of a movement opposed to the traditions of
English statesmanship must be attributed to some cause beyond the
personal influence of a leader, the idea naturally suggests itself that
the prevalence of conversions to the policy of Home Rule is due to the
power of argument, and that the English people have been brought to see
the expediency of conceding a legislature to Ireland by the same methods
which induced them to abolish the policy of Protection. This notion does
not correspond with known facts. Till a recent date hardly an argument
was addressed to the English public in favour of Home Rule; no great
writer or speaker even aimed at proving to the nation that a reform or
innovation which has been rejected again and again as repeal had more to
recommend it under a new name. Great changes in our institutions or
policy have hitherto been preceded by lengthy, in general by too
lengthy, discussion. The doctrines of Free Trade were established by
Adam Smith seventy years before the abolition of the Corn Laws, and
Protection was not vanquished till Cobden and Bright had, by laborious
controversy, exposed its fallacies in every corner of Great Britain. The
reasons in favour of Catholic Emancipation were stated in their full
force by Burke more than forty years before a Roman Catholic was
admitted to Parliament, and the whole case in favour of the Catholics
had been argued out in the presence of the nation long before the
passing of the Catholic Relief Bill. No movement ever appealed to keener
popular sympathies than the movement for the abolition of slavery. Yet
the Abolitionists made their case out--proved it, as lawyers say, "up to
the very hilt," before a single slave was released from bondage. The
Irish Church (it may be suggested) was abolished off-hand. This apparent
exception to the regular course of long argumentative controversy which
in England marks all great innovations has misled Home Rulers, yet the
exception is only apparent. Long before 1869 the intelligence of
England--one might say of the civilised world--had been convinced by
the power of reason that the maintenance in a Roman Catholic country,
and at the expense of a Roman Catholic population, of a Protestant
ecclesiastical establishment was an indefensible anomaly. The walls fell
at the first blast which sounded attack, because the foundations had
been argumentatively sapped and undermined for more than a generation.
With the cause of Home Rule it is far otherwise. Its sudden progress has
been characterised by a singular absence of systematic discussion. No
one supposes that its English advocates are deficient in talent or in
zeal. Mr. Gladstone, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Bryce--to name no others--are
as competent apologists for any opinion they entertain as can well be
found. They have been put upon their mettle; they have addressed the
nation in Parliament and out of Parliament; they have produced a certain
number of reasons, which deserve respectful consideration, in support of
their favourite innovation. But no candid critic can feel that these
eminent men, and other less distinguished labourers in the same cause,
have put forward arguments of strength enough to account for the
undoubted conviction of the reasoners. Appeals to trust in the people,
to confidence in human nature, to the strength of love as contrasted
with the weakness of law, to shame for our past misgovernment of the
Irish, to sanguine expectations of terminating a secular feud which has
caused wretchedness to Ireland and has lessened the power of England,
would appear in the judgment of orators addressing English electors
likely to have much more weight with their audience than any attempt to
prove that the establishment of a Parliament at Dublin will be conducive
to the benefit of the Empire. Nor is this wonderful. The plain truth is
that the strength of the Home Rule movement depends, as far as England
is concerned, on a peculiar, though not of necessity a transitory, state
of opinion. The arguments of Home Rulers, whatever their worth (and I
have not the remotest intention of denying that they have weight),
derive at least half their power from their correspondence with dominant
sentiments. That this is so is admitted by the now celebrated appeal
from the classes to the masses. It is in its nature an appeal from a
verdict likely to be pronounced by the understanding or the prejudice of
educated men, to the emotions of the uneducated crowd. The appeal may or
may not be justifiable. This is not the point for discussion; but the
making of such an appeal necessarily implies that the existence of
certain widespread feelings is a condition requisite for full
appreciation of the reasoning in support of Home Rule. The reasons may
be good, but it is faith which gives them convincing power. They derive
their cogency from a favouring atmosphere of opinion or feeling. Two
features of recent controversy suffice of themselves (if proof were
needed) to establish the truth of this assertion. The rhetorical
emphasis laid by Home Rulers on the baseness of the arts which carried
the Act of Union is, as an argument in favour of repealing the Act,
little else than irrational. The assumed infamy of Pitt does not prove
the alleged wisdom of Gladstone; and to urge the repeal of an Act which
has stood for nearly a century, because it was carried by corruption, is
in the eye of reason as absurd as to question the title of modern French
landowners because of the horrors of the Reign of Terror. Even a
Legitimist would not now base a moral claim to an estate on the ground
that his grandfather was deprived of it through confiscation and murder.
But rhetoric is not governed by the laws of logic, and insistence on the
corruption or the criminality by which the Act of Union was carried is
an effective method of conciliating popular sentiment to the cause of
repeal. No notion again has been more widely circulated or put forward
on higher authority than that past reforms have been due in the main to
the enthusiasm of the masses. But no notion is more directly at variance
with the lessons of history. In the eighteenth century the enlightenment
of the Whig aristocracy was England's safeguard against the Jacobitism
and the bigotry of the crowd. Every effort in favour of religious
liberty was till recently the work of an educated minority who opposed
popular prejudice. In the last century popular sentiment would have
denied all rights to Jews; in 1780 Lord George Gordon was the hero of
the people of England, and even more emphatically of the people of
Scotland. And Burke was forced to present an elaborate defence to his
constituents at Bristol for taking part in an attempt to mitigate the
penal laws against the Roman Catholics. There is every reason to suppose
that even in 1829 a _plébiscite_, had one been possible, would have
negatived the Catholic Relief Bill. The mitigation again of the Criminal
Law was the work of thinkers like Romilly and Bentham. These eminent
reformers would have been much surprised to have been told that the
uneducated masses were their staunch supporters. One of the greatest
improvements ever effected by legislation was the reform in the
administration of parochial relief. The new poor law was essentially
unpopular; its principles were established by economists; its enactment
was due to the Whigs, supported, as it should always be remembered to
his credit, by the Duke of Wellington. It may be conjectured from recent
legislation that at this very moment an indiscriminate renewal of
outdoor relief would command the approval of the agricultural voters.
Protection in the form of the corn laws was unpopular in England; this,
however, cannot with fairness be put down to the moral or intellectual
credit of the multitude. The corn laws were disliked because they
enhanced the price of bread. Even as it was, the Chartists used to
interrupt the meetings of the Anti-Corn Law League, and it is an idle
fancy that the dangers of a protective tariff are in themselves more
patent to the electors of England than to the democracy of France or of
America. Trades Unionism is in many of its features a form of
protectionism. If again we turn to foreign policy, we must read history
with a strangely perverted eye if we hold that the people have in
general condemned wars, whether just or unjust. There is hardly to be
named a great war in which England has been engaged which has not
engaged popular support. In the struggle with the American Colonies the
warlike sentiment of the people was undoubtedly opposed to the prudence
and justice of a small body of enlightened men, who found their
representative in Burke. In England, it is true, no great change of law
or of policy can in general be effected until it has in some sort been
sanctioned by popular approval. But to attribute every advance, or even
most advances, along the path of progress to the masses by whom a step
forward is finally sanctioned, is hardly a more patent fallacy than the
notion that because every statute is passed with the assent of the
Crown, to the Queen may be ascribed the glory of every beneficial Act
passed in her name. To maintain, as every man versed in history must
maintain, that ignorance must from the necessity of the case be the ally
of prejudice, is not to deny to the people their merits or virtues. If
ignorance were wisdom as well as bliss, every effort in favour of
popular education were folly. No doubt the rich or educated classes are
slaves to delusions from which the crowd are free. This concession falls
far short of the doctrine that legislative progress is mainly due to the
soundness of popular feeling. That this doctrine should in one shape or
another have been promulgated, and have formed the basis of an argument
for a complicated change in the constitution, is a sign that the
advocates of the innovation or reform feel instinctively that the
strength of their case lies in its coincidence with dominant sentiment.
Nor is it hard to see what is the condition of sentiment or opinion
which favours the doctrine of Home Rule. The matter, however, is of such
importance as well to repay careful examination.
For the first time in the course of English history, national policy has
passed under the sway, not so much of democratic convictions, but of a
far stronger power--democratic sentiment. Every idea which can rightly
or wrongly be called popular, commands, even among persons who deem
themselves Conservatives, ready assent or superstitious deference. Hence
flow (be it at once conceded) some of the best characteristics of the
age, such as the detestation of inhumanity; the distrust in violent
methods of government; the dislike to anything which savours of
indifference to the wishes, or callousness to the wants, of the people.
Hence the growth of the conviction that property has at least as many
duties as rights, and of the faith inspired, rather by compassion than
by reason, that the toiling multitudes can and must be made to share in
the prosperity and the luxuries created in great part by their ceaseless
labour. From the same source--from the prevalence of the democratic
spirit--arise a crowd of dubious not to say ignoble ideas, as that the
voice of the majority is the voice of God; that it is a folly, if not a
crime, to resist any widespread phase of belief or of passion; that any
body of persons claiming to be united by a sense of nationality
possesses an inherent and divine right to be treated as an independent
community. Many of these notions are radically inconsistent with one
another. The dogma, for example, of the supremacy of the majority, or
the conviction that legislation ought to aim at the greatest happiness
of the greatest number, each belong to a different order of ideas from
the principle of nationality, and may easily come into conflict with it.
This inconsistency does not lessen the influence exerted by the mass of
democratic feeling. We may, however, well note that democratic ideas at
the present day produce their effect far less by exciting enthusiasm
(for they now kindle nothing like the fiery fervour which the doctrines
of popular sovereignty or of human equality excited a century ago
throughout the length and breadth of Europe), than by their singular
capacity for dissolving the convictions which oppose the claims of
revolutionists. Of this solvent power recent events have given us more
than enough examples. One may suffice. The argument that because Irish
householders have received votes therefore the majority of the electors
of the United Kingdom must concede to the majority of Irish householders
anything whatever having reference to Ireland which Irish householders
desire, is logically absurd. But (combined, no doubt, with other causes)
it convinced the Conservative Government of 1885 that the executive in
Ireland was bound to bow to the will of the Irish people, and was
relieved from the obligation of enforcing at all costs the law of the
land. Popular sympathies, moreover, blend in the minds of modern
Englishmen with feelings of a much less generous and much less
respectable order. Dislike of trouble, hatred to the performance of
arduous public duties, a growing indifference to ordinary commonplace
ideas of law and justice, contempt for the legal rights of individuals
whenever these rights clash for a moment with the ease or interest of
the public, exert an incalculable influence on the conduct, and in truth
upon the convictions, both of Members of Parliament and of electors. It
is not too much to say that the favour or acquiescence with which
so-called practical politicians are prepared to accept Home Rule is
grounded to a far greater extent than any one who respects the character
of England likes to confess upon the _naïve_ but intense conviction that
it is too much to expect from five hundred and more English gentlemen
that they should take the trouble of withstanding the continuous
pressure exerted by eighty-six Parnellites. Cowardice masks itself under
the show of compromise, and men of eminent respectability yield to the
terror of being bored concessions which their forefathers would have
refused to the threat of armed rebellion. It is unnecessary to explain
how this condition of opinion, under which the best and the lowest
feelings of human nature are blended in a current of democratic
sentiment, predisposes large bodies of Englishmen towards acquiescence
in the Home Rule movement. My aim is not so much to analyse with
precision the mode in which the cause of Home Rule is fostered by the
moral atmosphere of the day, as to insist upon the all-important
consideration that the progress of the Home Rule movement is due rather
to the encouragement it derives from prevailing sentiment than to any
intellectual conviction on the part of Englishmen that it is dictated by
considerations of sound policy.