THE MAINTENANCE OF THE UNION.
[Sidenote: The failure of the Union; its nature.]
Eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of the Treaty of
Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do not yet form an
united nation. The Irish people are, if not more wretched (for the whole
European world has made progress, and Ireland with it), yet more
conscious of wretchedness; and Irish disaffection to England is, if not
deeper, more wide-spread than in 1800. An Act meant by its authors to be
the source of the prosperity and concord which, though slowly, followed
upon the union with Scotland, has not made Ireland rich, has not put an
end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the feud between
Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of Irish tenants,
has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and has therefore not
removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment which can fairly be
brought against the Act of Union. It is, however, of importance to
notice that the main charges to which the Act of Union is liable are
negative. It has not removed (its foes, say that it has not mitigated)
great evils; but the mass of ills for which the Union is constantly made
chargeable were in existence before the days of Pitt or Cornwallis.
Destitution, sectarian animosities, harsh evictions, met by savage
outrages, the terror of secret societies, the stern enforcement of law
which to the people represented anything but justice, are phenomena of
Irish society, which, as they existed before the Volunteers established
the Parliamentary independence of the country, and continued to exist
when Ireland was subject to no laws but those passed by an Irish
Parliament, cannot be attributed to the Act of Union. That enactment
introduced a purely political change. It could not, except very
indirectly, either increase or remove evils which it did not affect to
touch. To two charges its authors are indeed, with more or less of
justice, liable; they committed the intellectual error of supposing that
a change or improvement in the form of the Constitution would remove
evils due to social and economical causes; they committed the moral
error of thinking that a beneficial enactment might allowably be passed
by means which outraged all the best moral feeling of Ireland. Their
mistakes are worth notice. England is again told that a Constitutional
change is the remedy for Irish misery. Ethical considerations (in this
case the moral rights of a loyal minority and the legal rights of Irish
landlords) are, it is again intimated, to be held of slight account
compared with the benefit to Ireland and to England which is to be
expected from an experiment in Constitution-making. To impartial
observers it may appear that the proposed policy of 1886 threatens to
reproduce in its essence the errors and the vices of the policy of 1800.
Be this as it may, the reflection that the ill results of the Act of
Union are mainly negative suggests the conclusion that the good results
(if any) of its repeal would probably be negative also, and clears the
way for the question with which we are immediately concerned, namely,
What are the actual and undoubted evils to England of maintaining a
legislative union with Ireland?
[Sidenote: The evils of maintaining the Union]
The nature and extent of these evils has been considered in criticising
the arguments in favour of Home Rule. A bare enumeration of them
therefore may here suffice.
[Sidenote: 1. Complication of English policy.]
_First._--The Union hampers and complicates English policy, and this
even independently of the existing agitation for Home Rule. The tenacity
of England during the war with America, her triumphant energy during the
revolutionary struggle, were due to a unity of feeling on the part, at
any rate, of her governing classes, which even under the most favourable
circumstances can hardly exist in a Parliament containing, as the
Parliament of the United Kingdom always must contain, a large body of
Irish Roman Catholics. If it be urged that the presence of Roman
Catholics is due to the Catholic Emancipation Act, and not to the Act of
Union, the remark is true but irrelevant. No maintainer or assailant of
the Union is insane enough to propose the repeal of the Emancipation
Act.
[Sidenote: 2. Obstruction]
_Secondly_.--The refusal of Home Rule involves a long, tedious, and
demoralising contest with opponents will use, and from their own point
of view have a right to use, all the arts of obstruction and of
Parliamentary intrigue. The battle of the Constitution must be fought
out in Parliament, and if it is to be won, Englishmen may be compelled
to forego for a time much useful legislation, to modify the rules of
party government, and, it is possible, even the forms of the
Constitution.
[Sidenote: 3. Strict government in Ireland.]
_Thirdly_.--If the Union is to be maintained with advantage to any part
of the United Kingdom, the people of the United Kingdom must make the
most strenuous, firm, and continuous effort, lasting, it may well be,
for twenty years or more, to enforce throughout every part of the United
Kingdom obedience to the law of the land. This effort can only be
justified by the equally strenuous determination (which must involve an
infinity of trouble) to give ear to every Irish complaint, and to see
that the laws which the Irish people obey are laws of justice, and (what
is much the same thing) laws which in the long run the people of Ireland
will feel to be just. To carry out this course of action is difficult
for all governments, is perhaps specially difficult for a democratic
government. To maintain the Union is no easy task, though it has yet to
be proved that any form of Home Rule will give more ease to the people
of England; nor can the difficulty be got rid of, though it may be
somewhat changed, by abolishing the Irish representation in Parliament,
or by treating Ireland as a Crown colony. Such steps, which could hardly
be termed maintenance of the Union, might, as expedients for carrying
through safely a course of reform, be morally and for a time
justifiable. Their adoption is, however, liable to an almost insuperable
objection. Democracy in Great Britain does not comport with official
autocracy in Ireland. Every government must be true to its principles,
and a democracy which played the benevolent despot would suffer
demoralisation.
[Sidenote: Good results of the Union.]
The Act of Union has been the aim of so much random invective that its
good fruits (for it has borne good no less than evil fruits) are in
danger of being forgotten. It ended once and for all an intolerable
condition of affairs, and its scope will never be understood unless its
enactments are read in the lurid light cast upon them by the rebellion
of 1798. The hateful means used to obtain an apparently good end have
cast a slur on the reputation of more than one high-toned statesman.
Humanity, in the case of Cornwallis at least, had far more share than
ambition in his determination to abolish the Irish Parliament. His
anxiety in 1798 to save Catholics and rebels from oppression was as keen
and as noble as the anxiety of Canning in 1858 to protect the natives of
India from the resentments excited by the Mutiny. Every reason which in
our own day after the Gordon riots made it necessary to abolish the
ancient constitution of Jamaica told in 1800 in favour of abolishing the
still more ancient Parliament of Ireland. If statesmen, bent on
restoring at least the rule of law and peace in a distracted country,
fancied that the corruption of the legislature might be counted a low
price to pay for protecting the mass of the population from the rule or
the vengeance of a faction, they committed a grave moral error. But
their mistake was more pardonable than it seems to modern critics, and
the lesson which it teaches--that you cannot base a just policy upon a
foundation of iniquity--is one which the modern censors of Pitt may well
lay to heart. However this may be, the transactions which discredited
the passing of the Act of Union give no ground for repealing it, and,
except to a rhetorician in want of an _argumentum ad hominem_, it will
never appear that the philosophic historian who maintains that the
Treaty of Union was ill-conceived and premature, contradicts the
political philosopher who contends that to repeal the Union would be not
to cancel but to aggravate the evils of an historical error. The
considerations which recommend or require the maintenance of the Union
are often forgotten, but are obvious.
[Sidenote: Reasons for maintaining the Union.]
The support of the Union is, after all, let controversialists say what
they like, the policy which in fact holds the field, and it is (strange
though the assertion may appear) on the advocates of innovation, not on
the supporters of things as they are, that lies the burden of making out
their case. A fundamental alteration in the constitution of the realm is
in itself no light matter, and any man who has eyes to see or ears to
hear may easily convince himself that the creation of an Irish
Parliament must be the beginning, not the end, of a revolution. Dublin
is not the only city in the United Kingdom which has contained an
Assembly which not only occasionally denied, but during the whole of its
existence never admitted, the sovereignty of the Parliament at
Westminster; and in the present state of the world it is inconceivable
that Irish autonomy--if such be the proper term--should not excite or
justify claims for local independence which would unloose the ties which
bind together the huge fabric of the British Empire.
[Sidenote: Strengthens the English Crown.]
The Union again of England and Ireland has increased, as its relaxation
would of necessity diminish, the power of the central government. That
the Treaty of Union has, disappointing and even harmful as some of its
results have been, formed a guarantee against successful rebellion,
hardly admits of question. The difference between the abortive revolt of
1848 or the Fenian disturbances of 1866, and the desperate insurrection
of 1798, affords some measure of the strength which the legislative
unity of the kingdom has added to the English Crown. If it be suggested
that the disloyalty which has prompted sedition during this century was
less deep than the animosities which armed the insurgents of '98, the
suggestion may be true, but it incidentally shows that under the Union
some progress, however slight, has been made towards national harmony,
and recalls the important fact that at the present day the wealth and
the energy of Protestant Ireland firmly support the legislative unity of
the kingdom. Consider again what are the facilities possessed, say, by
the State of New York, by the kingdom of Bavaria, or by the Cape Colony
for interfering with or arresting the action of the central power to
which the State, kingdom, or dependency is subject, and you perceive at
once how ample must, from the very necessity of the case, be the
opportunities possessed by a semi-independent Irish executive
representing a semi-independent Irish Parliament for embarrassing the
action of the Government in London. This will appear more clearly from a
detailed examination of the different forms which may be assumed by Home
Rule. One remark, however, may with advantage be made at this point of
our argument, since it holds good of every possible scheme for repealing
or modifying the Union. Powers conferred upon an executive and a
Parliament at Dublin must from the nature of things be a deduction from
the powers which can be exercised by the Parliament and Ministry at
Westminster. This is a principle the truth of which is independent of
the wishes or fancies either of Englishmen or of Irishmen. "The more you
have of the more," runs a quaint Spanish proverb, "the less you have of
the less." The saying is of mathematical certainty, but the depth and
variety of its application are constantly forgotten in the excitement of
controversy.
[Sidenote: Enables it to maintain freedom.]
To the existence of the Union and to the power which it confers upon the
executive, is due the possibility of curbing the violence of religious
and political zealots by the interposition of an authority endowed at
once with overpowering strength and obvious impartiality. In Belfast
even a Nationalist must, if he is a peaceable citizen, feel that the
withdrawal of the Queen's troops would not conduce to his comfort. Under
a system of Home Rule, it will perhaps be said, one body of fanatics or
the other would, with or without the aid of the army, gain the upper
hand and restore order. Grant the truth, which may perhaps be a little
doubtful of this suggestion, it is at best a plea not for Home Rule but
for separation, since no civilised government could, whilst England and
Ireland formed under any terms whatever parts of the same political
community, suffer Belfast to become the scene of a free fight which
should decide by the ordeal of battle whether Protestants should
tyrannise over Catholics, or Catholics coerce Protestants by a reign of
terror. A reign of order moreover is not equivalent to the reign of
justice. Still less is it equivalent to the establishment of that
personal freedom which can only exist under the equal rule of equal
law, and is the blessing which every government worthy the name is bound
to confer upon its subjects.
An impartial foreigner again would probably hold, as indeed De Beaumont
(unless I misunderstand his teaching) did to the end of his life
actually hold, that the existing connection between England and Ireland
is dictated by the state of the world, by the circumstances of the
times, by the very nature of things. We are living in 1886, not in 1782:
the nineteenth century is not the age for small States or for weak
States. Such an observer, however, would also see much that is hidden by
the dust of battle from the combatants in a desperate political conflict
What is really needed to meet the real wants of which the cry for Home
Rule is a more or less factitious expression is, he would note, much
more a change in the spirit of Englishmen than an alteration in the
constitution of England. If Englishmen could learn to speak and think of
Irishmen with the respect and consideration due to fellow-citizens, if
they could cease to jeer at Irishmen now as not much more than a century
ago they used to jeer at Scotchmen, the Union would soon become
something more than a mere work of legal ingenuity. A change of feeling
would make it easy for English politicians and English voters to
perceive that the local affairs of Ireland ought to be managed in the
Parliament of the United Kingdom in accordance with the opinion of the
Parliamentary representatives of Ireland, just as Scotch affairs are
managed at Westminster in accordance with the opinions of Parliamentary
representatives of Scotland. Towards this reform in the practice which
need not change anything in the law of our constitution, Mr. Bright has
already pointed the way, and Mr. Bright's moral intuitions have more
than once given him a power denied to our other statesmen of prophetic
insight into the future of English policy. Meanwhile those who urge the
maintenance of the Union have a right to insist upon the possibilities
which it contains of reconciling the strength of the Empire with due
regard to the local interests and local sentiment of Ireland.
[Sidenote: And carry out just reforms.]
The Union, lastly, whilst it increases the power of the whole United
Kingdom, provides the means of carrying out, and of carrying out with
due regard to justice, any reform, innovation, or if you please
revolution, required for the prosperity of the Irish people. The duty,
it has been laid down, of an English Minister is to effect by his policy
all those changes in Ireland which a revolution would effect by force.
The maxim comes from a strange quarter, but the doctrine of Disraeli
sums up on this matter the teaching of Mill and De Beaumont, and it is
absolutely sound if you add to it the implied condition that an English
Minister, whilst aiming at the ends of a wise revolutionist, must pay a
respect to the demands of justice not always evinced by the
revolutionary spirit. But to put in force a policy of just revolution,
nothing is so necessary as the combination of resistless power with
infinite wealth. This is exactly what the government of the United
Kingdom can, and no Irish government could, supply. Mr. Gladstone and
his followers fully admit this, and the Land Purchase Bill was the sign
of their conviction that the policy of Home Rule itself needs for its
success and justification the power to draw upon the wealth of the
United Kingdom. Let the United Kingdom, it is said in effect, pay fifty
millions, that without any injustice to Irish landlords Irish tenants
may be turned into landowners, and may then enjoy the blessings of Home
Rule, freed from all temptation to use legislative power for purposes of
confiscation. The advice may in one sense be sound, but prudence
suggests that if the fifty millions are to be expended, it were best
first to settle the agrarian feud, and then to see whether the demand
for Home Rule would not die a natural death. French peasants were
Jacobins until the revolution secured to them the soil of France. The
same men when transformed into landed proprietors became the staunch
opponents of Jacobinism. It is in any case the interest of England to
see whether, say in a generation, the existing or further changes in the
tenure of land may not avert all necessity or demand for changes in the
constitution. Interest here coincides with duty. No scheme whether of
Home Rule or of Irish independence has been proposed, nor, it may be
said with confidence, ever can be proposed, which, disguise the matter
as you will, does not savour of treachery to thousands of Irishmen who
have performed the duties and claim to retain the rights of citizens of
the United Kingdom. The worst delusion of the revolutionary spirit is
the notion that justice to the people may be based upon injustice to
individuals. Protestants have not more, but neither have they less,
claim to protection from the State than Catholics. Even landowners are
not of necessity wrong-doers. Rent is a debt, and it may occasionally be
the duty, even of a tenant, to pay his creditor. An insolvent debtor
has, however excusable or pitiable his position, no absolute moral right
to improve his own position by torturing or murdering any solvent
neighbour who may be inclined to pay his own debts. To maintain the
Union is to maintain the effort to perform the obligations of the
country, and to compel all citizens of the country to perform the duties
imposed by law. The effort is an arduous one, the more so since it must
be combined with the equally strenuous endeavour to see that in Ireland,
as in every part of the United Kingdom, the demands of the law be made
to coincide with the demands of morality and of humanity. Still _pactum
serva_ is a good maxim for nations no less than for individuals: there
may be a higher law than the rule of keeping one's promise, but before a
man or a government incurs even the appearance of bad faith, it were
well to see whether the so-called higher law of conscience may not in
reality be the lower dictates of indolence or cowardice. Neither nations
nor individuals are bound in duty to do impossibilities. The limit of
power is the limit of responsibility, but if England can no longer
enforce justice in Ireland, there will still be the grave question
whether this fearful result of past misdoing or error does not suggest
and justify Separation rather than Home Rule.