THE NEW CONSTITUTION
A critic of the new constitution, intent on ascertaining how it affects
the relation of Great Britain and Ireland, will do well to divert his
attention from the numerous details of the Home Rule Bill, important as
many of them are,[25] and fix his mind almost exclusively upon the four
leading features of the measure.
These are:--
_First_. The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament.
_Secondly_. The retention of the Irish members in the Parliament
at Westminster.
_Thirdly_. The powers of the Irish Government, in which term is
here included both the Irish Executive and the Irish Parliament.
_Fourthly_. The Restrictions (popularly known as the safeguards)
and the obligations imposed upon the Irish Government.
These features are primary and essential; everything else, however
important in itself, is subsidiary and accidental.
A. _The Supremacy of the Imperial Parliament_[26]
The Home Rule Bill asserts in its preamble the inexpediency of
'impairing or restricting the supreme authority of Parliament'; and in
clause 33, apparently[27] assumes the right of the Imperial Parliament
after the passing of the Home Rule Bill to enact for Ireland laws which
cannot be repealed by the Irish Parliament.
The new constitution therefore maintains the supremacy of the Imperial
Parliament.
What, however, is the true meaning of this 'supreme authority,'
'supremacy,' or 'sovereignty,' if you like, of the Imperial Parliament?
The term, as already pointed out,[28] is distinctly ambiguous, and
unless this ambiguity is cleared up, the effect of the Home Rule Bill,
and the nature of our new constitution, will never be understood.
The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament may mean the right and power of
Parliament to govern Ireland in the same sense in which it now governs
England, that is, to exercise effective control over the whole
administration of affairs in Ireland, and for this purpose, through the
action of the English Government, or, when necessary, by legislation, to
direct, supervise and control the acts of every authority in Ireland,
including the Irish Executive and the Irish Legislature. If this were
the meaning of the expression, the Imperial Parliament would, after the
passing of the Home Rule Bill, as before, be as truly supreme in Ireland
as in England, in Scotland, in the Isle of Man, or in Jersey. The Irish
Executive and the Irish Parliament would, of course, be bodies
possessing large--and it might be very dangerous--delegated powers, but
they would stand in the same relation to the Imperial Parliament as does
the London County Council, which also possesses large delegated powers,
which administers the affairs of a population as large as that of
Scotland and which, very possibly, may receive from Parliament as time
goes on larger and more extended authority than the Council now
possesses. This is the sense which many Gladstonians, and some
Unionists, attribute to the term 'supremacy of Parliament.' It is not
the sense in which the expression 'supreme authority of Parliament' is
used in the Home Rule Bill.
The supremacy of Parliament may bear quite another sense; it may mean
that Parliament, whilst completely giving up the management of Irish
affairs (subject of course to the Restrictions contained in the Home
Rule Bill) to the Irish Executive and the Irish Legislature, retains in
Ireland, as elsewhere throughout the Empire, reserved sovereignty, or
the theoretical right (which exceptionally though rarely may be put into
practice) of passing laws for Ireland and of course, among other laws,
an Act modifying or repealing the terms of the Home Rule Bill itself. If
this is the meaning of the expression 'supreme authority of Parliament,'
the Imperial Parliament will, after the passing of the Home Rule Bill,
stand in substance in the relation to Ireland which Parliament occupies
towards any important self-governing colony, such as is the Canadian
Dominion or New Zealand. The Irish Executive and the Irish Parliament
will on this view constitute the real substantial government of Ireland,
just as the Ministry and the Parliament of New Zealand constitute the
real and substantial government of New Zealand. No doubt the Imperial
Parliament will retain the theoretical right to legislate for Ireland,
_e.g._ to pass an Irish Coercion Act, just as Parliament retains the
theoretical right to legislate for New Zealand or Canada. So the
Imperial Parliament has the legal right to repeal or override any law
passed by the New Zealand Parliament, to tax the inhabitants of New
Zealand, or finally, by the repeal of the New Zealand Constitution Act,
1852, 15 & 16 Vict. c. 72, to abolish the constitution of New Zealand
altogether. But these things Parliament will not, and to speak truly
cannot, do in New Zealand. The inhabitants of New Zealand possess as
regards their internal affairs for practical purposes complete
independence. They are governed from Wellington, they are not governed
from Westminster. If in short the supremacy of Parliament means under
the Home Rule Bill in Ireland what it means under 15 & 16 Vict. c. 72 in
New Zealand, the inhabitants of Ireland will, when the Home Rule Bill
passes into law, be governed from Dublin, they will not be governed from
Westminster. Every Irish Home Ruler, be he Parnellite or
Anti-Parnellite,[29] believes that the supremacy of Parliament is
intended to mean in Ireland what it means in New Zealand, and the Irish
Home Rulers are right. Any one will see that this is so who reflects on
the meaning of the policy of Home Rule, who studies the authoritative
utterances of Gladstonian leaders, such as Mr. Gladstone[30] himself,
Mr. Asquith,[31] or Mr. Bryce.[32] Gladstonian statesmen wrap up their
meaning in vague generalities; they insist, and in one sense with truth,
that the sovereignty of Parliament is reserved. They do not wish to
alarm their English followers. It is possible that they conceal even
from themselves how completely the Imperial Ministry and Parliament
surrender the practical government of Ireland into the hands of the
Irish Parliament and its leaders. But for all this, their own language
and the Bill itself prove that the supreme authority of Parliament is
under the new constitution to be taken in its limited, and what for the
sake of distinction we may call its 'colonial' sense. This is proved, if
evidence were wanting, by the provision[33] that after fifteen years from
the time when the Bill passes into law the financial relations between
England and Ireland may be revised in pursuance of an Address to the
Crown from the House of Commons or from the Irish legislative assembly.
If the Imperial Parliament retains an effective or practically unlimited
supremacy, the provision is futile and needless. What necessity is there
for enacting that a sovereign Parliament, which institutes, may alter a
scheme of taxation? But the provision is intelligible enough on one
supposition, and on one supposition only. It is both intelligible and in
place if Parliament gives up the real right of governing Ireland and
occupies towards what is now a part of the United Kingdom the position,
or something very like the position, which Parliament occupies towards a
self-governing colony. It then embodies a compact between England and
Ireland, and institutes a regular method for revising their financial
relations. But this very compact proves that as regards Ireland the
Imperial Parliament, if it reserves to itself ultimate sovereignty, has
for practical purposes surrendered the reality of control.
There is no need to assert that this supremacy of the Imperial
Parliament means nothing. The assertion would not be true. The
reservation of sovereign authority means something, but it does not mean
much. It does not mean the power or the right to govern Ireland; it
means at most the legal and moral right to modify, or put an end to, the
new constitution if ever it works badly.
The power, indeed, to abolish the constitution can neither be given nor
taken away by Acts of Parliament, by the declarations of English
statesmen, or the concessions of Irish leaders, whether authorised or
not to pledge the Irish people. It is given to Great Britain, not by
enactments, but by nature; it arises from the inherent capacity of a
strong, a flourishing, a populous, and a wealthy country to control or
coerce a neighbouring island which is poor, divided, and weak.[34] This
natural supremacy will, if the interests of Great Britain require it, be
enforced by armies, by ironclads, by blockades, by hostile tariffs, by
all the means through which national predominance can make itself felt.
All reference to superior power is, in controversies between citizens,
hateful to every man endowed with a sense of humanity or of justice. But
in serious discussions facts must be faced, and if, for the sake of
argument, I contrast, much against my will, the power of Great Britain
with the weakness of Ireland, let it be remembered that the conception
of a rivalry or conflict is forced upon Unionists by the mere proposal
of Home Rule. As long as we remain a United Kingdom, there is no more
need to think even of hypothetical or argumentative opposition between
the resources or interest of England and of Ireland than there is to
consider what in case of a contest may be the relative force of London
and of the Orkneys.
What, then, the new constitution secures is not the power, but the legal
right to abolish the new constitution. It is a right to carry through a
fundamental change by lawful means. The Bill legalises revolution. This
is well, for it is desirable that in a civilised State every change of
institutions should be effected by constitutional methods. But should
the circumstances ever arise under which Great Britain is resolved, in
spite of the wishes of the Irish people or a large portion thereof, to
abolish Home Rule and exercise the right of reserved sovereignty, there
is no reason to expect that Irishmen who oppose British policy will
admit that her use of sovereign power is morally justifiable. By force,
or the threat of force, the controversy will, we must expect, in the
last instance, be decided. However this may be, we must now realise what
the supremacy of Parliament, at any rate to the Irish leaders who accept
it, really means. It means nothing but the right of the Imperial
Parliament of its own authority to repeal the Home Rule Bill and destroy
the new constitution. The right may be worth having. But it is not the
right to govern Ireland or to control the Irish Government; it is not a
means of government at all: it is a method of constitutional revolution,
or reaction.
Some critic will object that this supremacy of Parliament means to him
a good deal more than the mere right to abolish the constitution. So be
it. Let the objector then tell us in precise language what it does mean.
If his reply is that the term is ambiguous, that its meaning must be
construed in accordance with events, and may, according to
circumstances, be restricted or extended, then he suggests that
Parliamentary supremacy is not only an empty right, but an urgent peril.
Nothing can be more dangerous than a compact between England and Ireland
which the contracting parties construe from the very beginning in
different senses. If by asserting the supreme authority of Parliament
English statesmen mean that Parliament reserves the right to supervise
and control the government of Ireland, whilst Irishmen understand that
Parliament retains nothing more than such a kind of supremacy or
sovereignty as it asserts, rather than exercises, in New Zealand, then
we are entering into a doubtful contract which lays the sure basis of a
quarrel. We are deliberately preparing the ground for disappointment,
for imputations of bad faith, for recriminations, for bitter animosity,
it may be for civil war. If there be, as is certainly the case, a fair
doubt as to what is meant by the supremacy of Parliament, let the doubt
be cleared up. This is required by the dictates both of expediency and
of honour. Meanwhile we may assume that the supremacy of Parliament, or
the 'supreme authority of Parliament,' means in substance the kind of
sovereignty which Parliament exercises, or claims to exercise, in every
part of the British Empire.
For the maintenance of such supremacy, be it valuable or be it
worthless, Great Britain pays a heavy price. For the sake of 'an
outward and visible sign of Imperial supremacy' we retain eighty Irish
members in the Imperial Parliament.[35]
B. _The Retention of the Irish Members in the Imperial Parliament_
This is now[36] an essential, or at least a most important part of the
ministerial policy for Ireland, yet it is a proposal which even its
advocates must find difficult of defence. In 1886 every Gladstonian
leader told us that it was desirable, politic, and just to exclude Irish
members from the Parliament at Westminster; this exclusion was pressed
upon England (plausibly enough) as a main advantage to be derived from
the concession of Home Rule to Ireland. In 1893 every Gladstonian leader
tells us that it is desirable, politic, and just to retain the Irish
members at Westminster, and their presence is, for some reason not easy
to explain, treated as removing every objection to the concession of
Home Rule to Ireland. This astounding variation of opinion in the
doctors of the State savours of empiricism, not to say quackery. A
surgeon who tells a patient that he will not live unless his leg is
amputated may be right, and may be worthy of trust; another surgeon who
asserts that amputation is unnecessary may be right, and worthy of
trust. But the surgeon who one moment insists that amputation is
necessary to the preservation of his patient's life, and the next moment
that it is unnecessary and may be fatal, is not the kind of adviser who
inspires confidence in his wisdom.
Let the ingenuity of Gladstonians reconcile, as best it can, the
doctrine of 1886 with the doctrine of 1893. To a man of sense who weighs
the matter without reference to considerations of party, one thing will
soon become apparent: the retention at Westminster of eighty, or indeed
of any Irish members at all, means under a scheme of Home Rule the ruin
of Ireland and the weakness of England.
As to Ireland.--The presence of Irish members at Westminster robs
Ireland of the one advantage which Home Rule might by any possibility
confer upon that country.
Any man in order to see that this is so has only to consider, first,
what may under favourable circumstances be the benefit of Home Rule to
Ireland, and next what is the natural result of summoning Irish members
to the Parliament at Westminster.
The best conceivable result of Home Rule is that it may detach Irishmen
from interest in English politics, and induce the most respected and
respectable men in Ireland to take matters into their own hands and
manage for themselves all strictly Irish affairs. For the last twenty
years, at least, Ireland has been represented, or misrepresented, by
eighty and more politicians, nominated in the main by Mr. Parnell. No
one supposes for a moment that the Nationalist leaders who appeared
before and were condemned by the Special Commission are fair samples of
the Irish people. They are, take them at their best, reckless agitators.
They were chosen by their patron, Mr. Parnell, not on account of their
worth or talent, but because they were apt instruments for carrying out
a policy of parliamentary intrigue, reinforced by a system of lawless
oppression.[37] These men are the product of a revolutionary era; they
no more represent the virtues and the genius of the Irish people than
the demagogues or fanatics of the Jacobin Club represented the genius
and the virtues of the French nation. We all know that Ireland abounds
in citizens of a very different stamp. She has never lacked among her
sons, and does not lack now, men of virtue, of vigour, and of genius.
Throughout the length and breadth of the country you will find hundreds
of men of merit--landlords whose lives have been honourable to
themselves, and a blessing to their tenants; merchants as honest and
successful as any in England or in Scotland; small landowners and tenant
farmers who have paid their rent and paid their way, who have cultivated
their land, who have never insulted or boycotted their neighbours, and
have never been driven by intimidation into meanness and fraud. Add to
these lawyers, thinkers, writers, and scholars, who rival or excel the
best representatives of their class in other parts of the United
Kingdom. These good men and true are not peculiar to any one creed or
party; they are not confined to any one province, or to any one class;
they are scattered through every part of the land; they are the true
backbone of Ireland; they have saved her from utter ruin; they may still
by their energy raise her to prosperity. But they have been thrust out
of politics by the talkers, the adventurers, the conspirators. It is
possible that if Home Rule compels Irishmen to turn their whole minds
to Irish affairs, the so-called representatives who misrepresent their
country may be dismissed from the world of politics, and the Parliament
at Dublin be filled with members who, whether they come from the North
or from the South, whether Unionists or Home Rulers, whether Roman
Catholics or Protestants, whether landowners, tenant farmers, ministers
of religion, merchants, or tradesmen, represent the real worth and
strength of the country. If this should happen, Home Rule would still
entail great evils on the whole United Kingdom. But even zealous
Unionists might hope that for these evils Ireland at least will obtain
some compensation. This hope, if the Irish members are retained at
Westminster, will never be fulfilled.
For even the occasional presence[38]--which will in practice be the
frequent presence--of the Irish members at Westminster destroys every
hope that Ireland will be governed by her best citizens. The reasons why
this is so are various; some of them may be shortly stated. The system,
in the first place, of double representation, under which members of the
Irish Parliament must flit to and fro between Ireland and England, and
debate one day about Irish matters in Dublin, and the next about
Imperial, or in truth British, matters in England, makes it impossible
for quiet hard-working Irishmen, who carry on the real business of
Ireland, to take part in politics. The political centre of interest, in
the second place, will after, as before, the passing of the Home Rule
Bill, be placed in London and not in Dublin. The humdrum local business
which under a system of Home Rule ought to be discussed in the Irish
Parliament, may vitally concern the prosperity of every inhabitant of
Ireland, but it will not in general lend itself to oratory, or arouse
popular excitement. The questions, on the other hand, to be discussed in
the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, as, for example, whether Mr.
Gladstone or Lord Salisbury shall be head of the British Cabinet,
whether the royal veto on Irish legislation shall be exercised on the
advice of the English or of the Irish Ministry, are matters which do not
in reality greatly affect the happiness of ordinary Irishmen. But they
give room for management, for diplomacy, for rhetoric, and are certain
on occasions to arouse both the interest and the passions of the Irish
people. We may take it for granted that the character of the Irish
representation at Westminster will govern the character of the
Parliament at Dublin.[39] Hence arises a third and fatal obstacle to the
active participation in Irish public life of Irishmen who are not
professional politicians. The Home Rule Bill of 1893 professes to
restrain on every side the action of the Irish government and
Parliament. These Restrictions are the comfort of English Gladstonians;
they are thought to be safeguards, though in reality there is nothing
which they make safe. But Restrictions which delight Gladstonians are
hateful to Irish Home Rulers. Their watchword is, 'Ireland a nation.' To
this cry every Home Ruler will rally, and so too will, if once the
Union is broken up, many an ardent loyalist, converted by anger at
England's treachery into an extreme Nationalist. Irishmen will wish for
an Irish army; they will wish for a protective policy; they will desire
that Ireland shall play a part in foreign affairs, and will claim for
her at least the independence of such a colony as New Zealand. To all
these wishes, and to many more, some of which under a system of Home
Rule are quite reasonable, the terms of the Home Rule Bill are opposed.
Home Rulers, and probably enough the whole Irish people, will insist
that the Bill, which will then have become an Act, must be modified. How
is the modification to be obtained? How is Home Rule to be made a
reality? By one method only: that is, by the freest use of those arts Of
intrigue and obstruction by which Home Rule will have been gained. But
for the carrying out of such a policy the agitators and intriguers who
for the last twenty years have weakened and degraded the Imperial
Parliament are the proper agents. For this work they, and they alone,
are fit. The quiet, industrious, stay-at-home merchants or lawyers, who
might be sent to Dublin for a month or two in the year to manage Irish
business on business-like principles, will not be sent to Westminster to
hold the balance between English parties. They cannot leave their
every-day work; were they willing to forsake their own business, they
are not the men to conduct with success the parliamentary game of brag,
obstruction, and finesse. Keep, in short, the Irish members at
Westminster, and you ensure the supremacy in Ireland of professional
politicians. By a curious fatality the Gladstonian policy which weakens
England ruins Ireland. Let no one fancy that this is the delusion of an
English Unionist. Sir Gavan Duffy is an Irish Nationalist of a far
higher type than the men who have drawn money from the Clan-na-Gael. In
'48 he was a rebel, but if he was disloyal to England, he was always
careful of the honour and character of Ireland. He, at least, perceives
the danger to his country of retaining Irish members in a Parliament
where they had ceased to have any proper place. 'For my own part,' he
says, 'I should not care if they did not attend [the Imperial
Parliament] for a generation, which will be needed for the manipulation
of their own affairs.'
All this, I shall be told, is prophecy; Gladstonian hopes are as
reasonable as Unionist fears. So be it. But in this matter my
predictions have a special claim on the attention of the Ministry, they
coincide with the forecast, or the foresight, of the present[40] Chief
Secretary for Ireland.
'Let us suppose that these Irish representatives for Imperial purposes
are not chosen by the legislative body, but are chosen directly by Irish
constituencies. You have already, according to our plan, two sets of
constituencies. You have the 103 constituencies that return the popular
branch of the legislative body, and you have those other constituencies
up to seventy-five which return the elective members of the other branch
of the legislative body. You have, therefore, got already on our plan
two sets of constituencies. Now, if you are going to send members to
Westminster for Imperial purposes to the number of forty-five or to the
number of ninety-five, you must mark out a third set of
constituencies--you must have a third set of elections. A system of that
kind does not strike me at least as being exactly the thing for a
country of which we are assured that before everything else its prime
want is a profound respite from political turmoil. There are plenty of
other objections from the Irish point of view, which I am not now going
to dwell upon. Depend upon it that an Irish Legislature will not be up
to the magnitude of the enormous business that is going to be cast upon
it unless you leave all the brains that Irish public men have got to do
Irish work in Ireland. Depend upon this, too, that if you have one set
of Irish members in London it is a moral certainty that disturbing
rivalries, disturbing intrigues would spring up, and that the natural
and wholesome play of forces and parties and leaders in the Irish
Assembly would be complicated and confused and thrown out of gear by the
separate representatives of the country. All this is bad enough.'[41]
These are the words of my friend Mr. Morley.[42] They were spoken at
Newcastle on April 21, 1886. He was then, as now, responsible for the
government of Ireland. Nothing can add to their gravity; nothing can add
to their force; they were true in 1886, they remain as true to-day as
they were seven years ago.[43]
As to England.--The presence of the Irish members at Westminster is on
the face of it a gross and patent injustice to Great Britain. It is
absurd, it is monstrous, that while the Irish Parliament and the Irish
Parliament alone settle whether Mr. Healy, Mr. M'Carthy, Mr. Redmond, or
Mr. Davitt is to be head of the Irish government, and England, though
vitally interested in the character of the Irish Executive, is not to
say a word in the matter, eighty Irishmen are to help in determining,
and are often actually to determine, whether Lord Salisbury or Mr.
Gladstone, Mr. Balfour or Mr. Chamberlain, is to be Prime Minister and
direct the policy of England. Here again 1 can rely on the invaluable
aid of Mr. Morley. He has denounced the effect on England of retaining
Irish members at Westminster with a strength of language and a weight of
authority to which it is impossible for me to make any pretension.
'But there is a word to be said about the effect on our own Parliament,
and I think the effect of such an arrangement--and I cannot help
thinking so till I hear of better arrangements--upon our own Parliament
would be worse still. It is very easy to talk about reducing the number
of the Irish members; perhaps it would not be so easy to do. It is very
easy to talk about letting them take part in some questions and not in
others, but it will be very difficult when you come to draw the line in
theory between the questions in which they shall take a part and those
in which they shall not take a part. But I do not care what precautions
you take; I do not care where you draw the line in theory; but you may
depend upon it--I predict--that there is no power on the earth that can
prevent the Irish members in such circumstances from being in the future
Parliament what they were in the past, and what to some extent they are
in the present, the arbiters and the masters of English policy, of
English legislative business, and of the rise and fall of British
Administrations. You will have weakened by the withdrawal of able men
the Legislature of Dublin, and you will have demoralized the Legislature
at Westminster. We know very well what that demoralisation means, for I
beg you to mark attentively the use to which the Irish members would
inevitably put their votes--inevitably and naturally. Those who make
most of the retention of the Irish members at Westminster are also those
who make most of there being what they call a real and effective and a
freely and constantly exercised veto at Westminster upon the doings at
Dublin. You see the position. A legislative body in Dublin passes a
Bill. The idea is that that Bill is to lie upon the table of the two
Houses of Parliament in London for forty days--forty days in the
wilderness. What does that mean? It means this, that every question that
had been fought out in Ireland would be fought out over again by the
Irish members in our Parliament. It means that the House of Lords here
would throw out pretty nearly every Bill that was passed at Dublin. What
would be the result of that? You would have the present block of our
business. You would have all the present irritation and exasperation.
English work would not be done; Irish feeling would not be conciliated,
but would be exasperated. The whole efforts of the Irish members would
be devoted to throwing their weight--I do not blame them for this--first
to one party and then to another until they had compelled the removal of
these provoking barriers, restrictions, and limitations which ought
never to have been set up. I cannot think, for my part I cannot see, how
an arrangement of that sort promises well either for the condition of
Ireland or for our Parliament. If anybody, in my opinion, were to move
an amendment to our Bill in the House of Commons in such a direction as
this, with all these consequences foreseen, I do not believe such an
amendment would find twenty supporters.'[44]
This was the opinion of Mr. John Morley in 1886. A word in it here or
there is inapplicable to the details of the present Bill; but in
principle every syllable cited by me from his Newcastle address forms
part of the Unionist argument against summoning as much as a single
Irish member to Westminster. His language is admirable, it cannot be
improved. All that any one who agrees with Mr. Morley can do in order to
force his argument home is to point out in a summary manner the ways in
which the Irish delegation at Westminster will enfeeble the Imperial
Government.
_First_. The Irish members, or rather the Irish delegation, will have a
voice and often a decisive voice in determining who are the men that
shall constitute the English Cabinet; on the Irish vote will depend
whether Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals, or Socialists shall
administer the government of England. It is vain to tell us Irish
members will be restrained, whether by law or custom, from voting on
British affairs when they will vote on the most important of all British
affairs, the composition and the character of the body which is to
govern England.
That the Irish members will thus vote on a matter of special and vital
importance to England is admitted. But things stand far worse than this.
The vote of the Irish delegation will and must be swayed by an interest
adverse to the welfare of Great Britain; for the interest of Great
Britain, or, to use ordinary language of England, is that the English
Government should be strong, and should represent the majority of the
English or British electors. The direct interest of the Irish delegation
is that the English Government should be weak, and represent the
minority of English electors. That this is so is obvious. The weaker the
British Government, the greater the weight of the Irish representatives.
But if the English Cabinet represents a minority of the British people,
and are kept in office only by the votes of their Irish allies, then the
influence of the Irish representatives and the weakness of the English
Government will have reached its extreme point. The effect therefore of
the arrangement which brings Irish members to Westminster is to place
the administration of English affairs in the hands of the party,
whichever it be, that does not represent the wishes of the English
people. This master stroke of Gladstonian astuteness ensures that
Radicals shall be in office when the opinion of England is Conservative,
and that Conservatives shall be in power when English opinion tends
towards Radicalism.
_Secondly_. The retention of the Irish members breaks up our whole
system of Cabinet government. This system has some inherent defects, but
it cannot work at all with any benefit to the country unless the Cabinet
can depend on the support of a permanent majority. The result of what
has happily been described as the 'in-and-out plan,' that is the scheme
for allowing Irish members to vote on some subjects and not on others,
will be the constitution of two majorities, and it is more than possible
that the one majority may belong to one party and the other majority to
another. Look at the effect on the transaction of public affairs. The
Irish members and the English Liberals combined may put in office a
Liberal Cabinet. On English matters, _e.g._ the question of
Disestablishment, or of Home Rule for Wales, the British majority
consisting of British members of Parliament only may constantly defeat
the Gladstonian Cabinet, and thus force into office a Conservative
Cabinet which could command a majority on all subjects of purely British
interest, but would always be in a minority on all matters of Imperial
policy, _e.g._ on the conduct of foreign affairs. Which Cabinet would
have a right to retain power? The sole answer is--neither. The proposed
plan, in short, undermines our whole scheme of government.
_Thirdly_. The Irish members who are now simply Irish members of the
Imperial Parliament will be transformed into a very different thing--an
Irish delegation. The importance of this change cannot be over-rated.
The essential merit of our present system of government is that the
Executive, no less than the Parliament of the United Kingdom, represents
the country as a whole. Our Premier may be a Scotsman, but we know of no
such thing as a Scottish Premier. Englishmen may form the majority of
the Cabinet, but we have never had an English Cabinet as contrasted with
a Scottish or an Irish Cabinet. It has never been contended, hardly has
it been hinted, that a Ministry ought to be made up of members taken in
certain proportions from each division of the kingdom. But from the
moment that sectional representation, and with it open advocacy of
sectional interests, is introduced into the House of Commons, there will
arise the necessity for the formation of sectional Cabinets.
The demand will be made, and the demand will be granted, that in the
administration no less than in the House there shall be a system of
representation; that England, that Scotland, that Ireland shall each
have their due share in the Ministry. But this state of things must be
fatal both to the capacity and to the fairness of the government. The
talent of the Cabinet will be diminished, because the Prime Minister
will no longer be able to choose as colleagues the ablest among his
supporters without reference to the now irrelevant question whether they
represent English, Scottish, or Irish constituencies. The character of
the Executive will be lowered because the Cabinet itself will represent
rival interests. It may seem that I am advocating the special claims of
England. This is not so. I am arguing on behalf of the efficiency of the
government of the United Kingdom. My argument is one to which Scotsmen
and Irishmen should give special heed. If once we have cabinets and
parties based upon sectional divisions, if we have English ministries
and English parties as opposed to Scottish ministries or Irish
ministries, and Scottish parties and Irish parties, it is not in the
long run the most powerful and wealthy portion of what is now the United
Kingdom which will suffer. It is hardly the interest of Scotsmen or
Irishmen to pursue a policy which suggests the odious but inevitable cry
'England for Englishmen.'
_Fourthly_, as long as Irish members remain at Westminster the English
Parliament will never be freed from debates about Irish affairs.
This is a point there is no need to labour. Unless (what no honest man
can openly propose) the 80 or 103 members from Ireland are to be taken
from one Irish party only, they must represent different interests and
different opinions. Some few at least will represent the wishes, the
complaints, or the wrongs of Ulster. But if this be so, it is certain
that the controversies which divide Ireland will make themselves heard
at Westminster. Can any sane man fancy that if the Dublin Parliament
passes an Act for the maintenance of order at Belfast, if the people of
Belfast are suspected of intending to resist the Irish government, if
Irish landlords, rightly or not, fear unfair treatment at the hands of
the Irish Ministry or the Irish Parliament, none of these things will be
heard of at Westminster? The supposition is incredible. Let Irish
members sit at Westminster and Irish affairs will be debated at
Westminster, and will often be debated when, under a system of Home
Rule, it were much better they should be passed over in silence. Admit,
what is not certain, that Home Rule in Ireland will occasionally
withdraw a few Irish questions from discussion in England, it must be
remembered that a new crop of Irish questions will arise. The federal
character of the new constitution must produce in one form or another
disputes and discussions as to the limits which bound the respective
authority of the Imperial and of the Irish Governments. The Imperial
Parliament will, for the first time, be harassed by the question of
State rights. Add to this that at every great political crisis the House
of Commons will have before it an inquiry which must produce
interminable debates, namely whether a given bill is or is not a measure
which concerns only the interest of Great Britain.
Two inducements are offered to England for the adoption of a plan the
evils whereof were so patent in 1886 that it then could not, if we are
to believe Mr. Morley,[45] have commanded twenty supporters in the House
of Commons.
The first inducement is that the presence of eighty Irish members at
Westminster is an outward and visible sign of the supremacy of the
Imperial Parliament.[46] On this point it is needless to say much; few
Englishmen will on consideration think it worth while to dislocate all
our system of government in order that the British Parliament may retain
in Ireland the kind of sovereignty which it retains in New Zealand. We
are rightly proud of our connection with our colonies, but no one would
seriously propose to retain nominal sovereignty in Canada at the price
of a perilous and injurious change in the constitution of England.
The second inducement is that Great Britain will be allowed the
exclusive management of British affairs.
This sort of spurious Home Rule for England turns out however to be as
illusory a blessing as the maintenance of parliamentary supremacy.
Great Britain is, under the new constitution, not allowed to appoint the
British Cabinet. Great Britain is forbidden to determine for herself any
matter of legislation or administration which, however deeply it
concerns British interests, trenches in the least degree on any Irish or
Imperial interest. Any matter of finance, which comes within the wide
head of Imperial liabilities, expenditure, and miscellaneous
revenue,[47] falls within the competence of the Irish members. Questions
of peace or war, our foreign relations, every diplomatic transaction, is
a matter on which the Irish delegation may pronounce a decision. The
conjecture is at least plausible[48] that Irish members will have a
right to discuss and vote upon any subject debated in the Parliament at
Westminster which involves the fate of a British Cabinet. Let it be
granted that, if the provisions of the Home Rule Bill be observed, no
Irish representative can vote 'on any Bill, or motion in relation
thereto, the operation of which Bill or motion is confined to Great
Britain.'[49] But then when is the operation of a Bill confined to Great
Britain, or, to use popular language, what is a British Bill? This is an
inquiry in the decision whereof the Irish members will take part. The
Irish members, therefore, at Westminster will be judges of their own
rights, and in the only cases in which it is of practical importance to
Great Britain that the Irish representatives should not vote, will be
able with the aid of a British minority to fix the limits of their own
jurisdiction.[50] Let the Irish members and a British minority boldly
vote that the operation of a Bill, say for the Disestablishment of the
English Church, is not confined to Great Britain, and they can boldly
vote that the Bill do pass, and no Court in Great Britain or the British
Empire can question the validity of a law enacted in open defiance of
the spirit or even the words of the Constitution.[51] The right of
British members to the management of even exclusively British affairs
will depend not upon the law of the land, but upon the moderation and
sense of equity which may restrain the unfairness of partisanship.
For a parliamentary minority will, if only it throw scruples to the
winds, be constantly able to transform itself into a majority by the
unconstitutional admission of the Irish vote. This is not a power which
any party, be it Conservative or Radical, English, Scottish, or Irish,
ought to possess. Partisanship knows nothing of moderation. And the
reason of this blindness to the claims of justice is that the spirit of
party combines within itself some of the best and some of the worst of
human passions. It often unites the self-sacrificing zealotry of
religious fanaticism with the recklessness of the gambling table. Let an
assailant of the Contagious Diseases Act, a fanatic for temperance, a
protectionist who believes that free trade is the ruin of the country,
an anti-vivisectionist who holds that any painful experiment on live
animals is the most heinous of sins; let any man who has come to believe
that his own credit, no less than the salvation of the country, depends
on the success of a particular party, know that the triumph of his cause
depends upon his voting that a particular measure operates beyond Great
Britain, and we know well enough in which way he will vote. He will vote
what he knows to be untrue rather than sacrifice a cause which he
believes to be sacred. He will think himself both a fool and a traitor
if he sacrifices the victory which is within his grasp to the
maintenance of technical legality, or rather to respect for a rule of
constitutional procedure.
Suppose, however, that I have underrated the equity of human nature, and
that no faction in the House of Commons ever attempts to violate the
spirit of the Constitution. The supposition is bold, not to say absurd;
but even if its reasonableness be granted, this does not suffice for the
protection of England's rights. The question whether a given Bill does
or does not operate exclusively in Great Britain may often give rise to
fair dispute, and (what should be noted) this dispute will always be
decided against Great Britain in the only instances in which its
decision is to Great Britain of any importance whatever. An example best
shows my meaning. Let a Bill be brought forward for establishing Home
Rule in Wales. Is the operation of the Bill confined to Great Britain?
An English member, unless he is a Home Ruler, will answer with an
undoubted affirmative. An English, or Irish, or Welsh Home Ruler will
with equal certainty, and equal honesty, give a negative answer. The
question admits of fair debate, but we know already how the debate will
be decided. If the Unionists constitute a majority of the House, the
Irish vote will be excluded. But in this case its exclusion is of no
practical importance. If the Unionists constitute indeed a majority of
British representatives, but do not constitute a majority of the House,
the Irish vote will be included. The Irish representatives will decide
whether Wales shall constitute a separate State, and the right of Great
Britain to manage British affairs will not prevent the dismemberment of
England. Home Rule, such as it is for England, means at best a totally
different thing from Home Rule for Ireland. In the case of England it
means a limited and precarious control of legislation for Great Britain
by British members of Parliament. In the case of Ireland it means the
real and substantial and exclusive government of Ireland by an Irish
Ministry and an Irish Parliament.
But will the advantage of even this modified half-and-half Home Rule be
really offered to England?
Gladstonians, it is rumoured (and before these pages are in print the
rumour may turn out to be a fact), have their own remedy for some of the
only too-patent absurdities of the 'in-and-out system' embodied in
clause 9 of the Home Rule Bill. A suggestion is made which would be
amusing for its irony, were it not revolting for its cynicism, that the
difficulty of the double majority should be removed by the allowing
members not only to remain at Westminster in their full number, but also
to vote there on all matters whatever, including those affairs which
exclusively concern the interests of Great Britain. This is no doubt a
remedy for some of the evils of an unworkable proposal. It is a cure
which to any Englishman of sense or spirit will seem tenfold worse than
the disease. It is a cure in that sense only in which a traveller may be
said to be relieved from the fear of robbery by a highwayman shooting
him dead. The irregular interference of the Irish delegation in the
formation of the British Cabinet, and other matters which indirectly
concern England, is to be regularised (if I may use the term) by
allowing to Irish members permanent despotism over England in matters
which, on a system of Home Rule, concern England alone. Irish members
may disestablish the Church of England, though England is to have no
voice in the pettiest of Irish affairs. Irish members are to be allowed
to impose taxes on England, say to double the income tax, though of
these taxes no inhabitant of Ireland will pay a penny; the Irish
delegation--and this is the worst grievance of all--is to be enabled, in
combination with a British minority, to detach Wales from England, or to
vote Home Rule for Scotland, or to federalise still further the United
Kingdom by voting that Man, Jersey, and Guernsey shall send members to
the Imperial Parliament. Note that all this may be done by the Irish
delegation, though, under the new Constitution, England will not have a
word to say on such questions as whether the right of electing members
for the Parliament at Dublin shall or shall not be extended to every
adult, or whether Ulster shall, or shall not, be allowed Home Rule of
its own. The absurdity of this policy ought to prevent its ever being
adopted; but in these days absurdity seems to tell as little against
wild schemes of legislation as their injustice.
All this consideration of haggling and trafficking between Great Britain
and Ireland is loathsome to every true Unionist who considers Englishmen
and Irishmen as still citizens of one nation. But, when Gladstonians
propose to divide the United Kingdom into two States, it is as essential
as it is painful to weigh well what is the gain of Great Britain in the
new scheme of political partnership. If the matter be looked at from
this point of view, it is easy to see how miserable are the offers
tendered to England. Compare for a moment the authority to be given her
under the new constitution with the authority she has hitherto
possessed or the authority tendered to her under the Home Rule Bill of
1886.
Up to 1782 the British Parliament held in its own hands the absolute
control not only of every British affair, but every matter of policy
affecting either Ireland or the British Empire. The British Parliament,
in which sat not a single representative of any Irish county or borough,
appointed the Irish Executive. The British Parliament, whenever it
thought fit, legislated for Ireland; the British Parliament controlled
the whole course of Irish legislation; every Act which passed the
Parliament of Ireland was inspected, amended, and, if the English
Ministry saw fit, vetoed in England. The system was a bad system and an
unjust system. It is well that it ended. But as regarded the control of
the British Empire it corresponded roughly with facts. The Empire was in
the main the outcome of British energy and British strength, and the
British Empire was governed by Great Britain.
The constitution of 1782 gave legislative independence to Ireland, but
did not degrade the British Parliament to the position which will be
occupied by the Imperial Parliament under the constitution of 1893. The
British Parliament remained supreme in Great Britain; the British
Parliament controlled the Imperial policy both of England and of
Ireland. The British Parliament, or rather the British Ministry,
virtually appointed the Irish Executive. The British Parliament
renounced all rights to legislate for Ireland[52]; the British
Parliament technically possessed no representatives in the Parliament
at Dublin. But any one who judges of institutions not by words but by
facts will perceive that in one way or another the influence and the
wishes of the British Government were represented more than sufficiently
in the Irish Houses of Parliament. Grattan's constitution, in short,
left the British Parliament absolutely supreme in all British and
Imperial affairs, and gave to the British Ministry predominating weight
in the government of Ireland. This is a very different thing from the
shadowy sovereignty which the English Parliament retains, but abstains
from exercising, in our self-governing colonies. It is a very different
thing from the nominal power to legislate for Ireland which the new
constitution confers upon the Imperial Parliament.
Since the Union England and Ireland have been politically one nation.
The Imperial or British Government has controlled, and the Imperial
Parliament has passed laws for, the whole country. Nor has the presence
of the Irish members till recent days substantially limited the
authority of Great Britain. Till 1829 the Protestant landlords of
Ireland who were represented in the Imperial Parliament shared the
principles or the prejudices of English landowners. Since the granting
of Catholic emancipation Roman Catholic or Irish ideas or interests have
undoubtedly perplexed or encumbered the working of British politics.
But the representatives of Ireland have been for the most part divided
between the two great English parties, and it was not till Mr. Parnell's
influence united the majority of Irish representatives into a party
hostile to Great Britain that any essential evil or inconvenience
resulted from their presence at Westminster. This inconvenience,
whatever its extent, has been the price of the Union. The gain has been
worth the payment: the action of Parliament has been hampered, but its
essential and effective authority throughout the realm has been
maintained.
In 1886 Mr. Gladstone framed a constitution which was meant to be a
final and a just settlement of the questions at issue between England
and Ireland. Under the constitution of 1886 Great Britain surrendered to
Ireland about the same amount of independence as is offered her under
the proposed constitution of 1893. But the difference in the position of
Great Britain under the two constitutions is immense.
Under the constitution of 1886 Great Britain was offered a position of
the highest authority.
To the British Parliament (in which was to sit not a single Irish
member) was to fall the appointment of the British or Imperial Ministry.
The British Parliament received absolute control of all British,
colonial, Imperial, and foreign affairs. Perfect unity was restored to
the spirit of her government, and predominance in the British, or, to
use ordinary language, in the English, Parliament was given to the
conservative elements of English society. Great Britain became mistress
in her own home; she became much more than this; she was enthroned as
undisputed sovereign of the British Empire.[53]
Under the constitution, in short, of 1886, if Great Britain was weakened
on one side she was strengthened on another. Her Parliament obtained an
immense accession of authority, and was all but entirely freed both from
the necessity for considering Irish questions and from the damage of
Irish obstruction. Ireland surrendered to England all share in the
government of the Empire, and the further dismemberment of Great Britain
without the assent of the British people became difficult, if not
impossible. It does not lie in the mouth of Gladstonians to say that the
measure of 1886 was unjust. It was laid before the country as a
compromise which was just to England and to Ireland. The Irish leaders,
we were told, accepted the proposal, just as we are told that they
accept the proposed constitution of 1893. If the acceptance was honest,
then in 1886 they agreed to a bargain far more favourable to England
than the contract now pressed on our acceptance. If their acquiescence
was a mere pretence, what trust can we place in the assertion that they
accept the arrangement of 1893?
However this may be, it is clear that England is now offered a position
of weakness and of inferiority such as she has never occupied during the
whole course of her history. What is the meaning or justification of the
proposed surrender by England of every compensation for Irish Home Rule
which was offered her in 1886?
For this surrender Gladstonians assign but two reasons.
The presence of the Irish members at Westminster is, it is said, a
concession to the wishes of Unionists.
This plea, even were it supported by the facts of the case, would be
futile. It might pass muster with disputants in search of a verbal
triumph, but to any man seriously concerned for the welfare of the
nation must appear childishly irrelevant. The welfare of the State
cannot turn upon the neatness of a _tu quoque_; retorts are not reasons,
and had every Unionist, down from the Duke of Devonshire to the present
writer, pressed in 1886 for the retention of the Irish members at
Westminster, the controversial inexpertness of the Unionists seven years
ago would not diminish the dangers with which, under a system of Home
Rule, the presence of the Irish members at Westminster actually
threatens England. But the plea, futile as it is, is not supported by
fact. It rests on a misrepresentation of the Unionist position in 1886.
'The case in truth stands thus:--Mr. Gladstone was [in 1886] placed in
effect in this dilemma: "If you do not," said his opponents, "retain the
Irish representatives at Westminster, the sovereignty of the British
Parliament will be, under the terms of your Bill, no more than a name;
if you do retain them, Great Britain will lose the only material
advantage offered her in exchange for the local independence of
Ireland." Gladstonians, in substance, replied that the devices embodied
in the Government of Ireland Bill at once freed the British Parliament
from the presence of the Parnellites and safeguarded the sovereignty of
the British, or (for in this matter there was some confusion) of the
Imperial Parliament. On the latter point issue was joined. The other
horn of the dilemma fell out of sight, and some Unionists, rightly
believing that the Bill as it stood did not preserve the supremacy of
the British Parliament, pressed the Ministry hard with all the
difficulties involved in the removal of the Irish members. In the heat
of debate speeches were, I doubt not, delivered in which the argument
that you could not, as the Bill stood, remove the Irish members from
Westminster and keep the British Parliament supreme in Ireland, was
driven so far as to sound like an argument in favour of, at all costs,
allowing members from Ireland to sit in the English Parliament. Those
who appeared to fall into this error were, it must be noted, but a
fraction of the Unionist Party, and their mistake was little more than
verbal. When the Ministry maintained that the removal of the Irish
members from Westminster was a main feature of their Home Rule policy,
opponents naturally insisted upon the defects of the scheme laid before
them, and did not insist on the equal or greater defects of a plan which
the Government did not advocate. Mr. Gladstone, we are now told, has
changed his position, and assents to the principle that Ireland must be
represented in the British Parliament. If this assent be represented as
a concession to the demands of Unionists, my reply is that it is no such
thing. It is merely the acceptance of a different horn of an
argumentative dilemma. Grant for the sake of argument (what is by no
means certain) that the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is really
saved. The advantage offered to England in exchange for Home Rule is
assuredly gone. My friend, Mr. John Morley, used to argue in favour of
Home Rule from the necessity of freeing the English Parliament from
Parnellite obstruction. As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know
what he thinks of a concession which strikes his strongest argumentative
weapon out of his hands. My curiosity will be satisfied on the same day
which tells us Lord Spencer's reflections on the surrender of the policy
represented by the Land Purchase Bill. Meanwhile, I know well enough the
thoughts of every Unionist who is not tied by the exigencies of his
political antecedents or utterances. To say that in the eyes of such a
man the proposed concession is worthless, is to say far too little. It
is not a concession which he rates at a low price; it is a proposal
which he heart and soul condemns.'[54]
These words were not written to meet the present condition of the
controversy; they were published in 1887 at a time when no Gladstonian,
except Mr. Gladstone (if indeed he were an exception), knew whether the
retention in the Parliament at Westminster, or the exclusion from the
Parliament at Westminster, of the Irish members, was an essential
principle of Home Rule.
England again, it is alleged, suffers without murmuring all the
inconvenience caused by the Irish vote at Westminster; and she may well,
under a system of Home Rule, bear without complaint evils which she has
tolerated for near a century.
The answer to this reasoning is plain. It is a sorry plea indeed for a
desperate innovation that it leaves the evils of the existing state of
things no worse than they now are. For the sake of the maintenance of
the Union, which Unionists hold of inestimable value, England has borne
the inconvenience caused to her by the Irish vote. It argues simplicity,
or impudence, to urge that England should continue to bear the
inconvenience when the national unity is sacrificed for the sake of
which it was endured. But the reply does not stop here. The presence of
Irish members at Westminster under the new constitution increases and
stereotypes the evils, whatever their extent, now resulting from the
existence of 103 Irish members in the House of Commons. The evils are
increased because the Irish members are turned into a delegation from
the Irish State, and their action ceases to be influenced, as it now is,
by the consideration--a very important one--that the Imperial Parliament
not only in theory but in fact legislates for Ireland, and that the
English Cabinet controls the Irish administration and directs the course
of political promotion in Ireland. The sentiment and the interest of the
Irish members will be changed. Whether they come from North or South
they will be representatives of Ireland, and will naturally and rightly
consider themselves agents bound in every case to make the best bargain
they can for Ireland as against the United Kingdom, or, in plain
language, as against England. They will no longer feel it their interest
to keep in power the English party which they think will best govern
Ireland, for with the government of Ireland the Imperial Parliament
will, as long as the new constitution stands, have no practical concern.
No honest Home Ruler supposes that, if the Home Rule Bill passes into
law, the Imperial Parliament will, even should the tragedy of the
Phoenix Park be repeated in some more terrible form, pass a Crimes Act
for Ireland; to the Irish Government will belong the punishment of Irish
crime. No interest will therefore restrain the Irish delegation from
swaying backwards and forwards between the two English parties, in
order to obtain from the one or the other some momentary advantage, or
some lucrative concession, to the Irish people. Intrigue will be
pardonable, diplomatic finesse will become a duty. This evil no doubt in
some degree exists, but under the present state of things it admits of
diminution. A just redistribution of the franchise will undoubtedly
lessen the number of Ireland's representatives, whilst it will increase
the relative importance, if not the actual numbers, of loyalists in the
representation of Ireland. The gradual settlement of the land question,
as Unionists believe, will further strike at the true root of Irish
discontent, and in removing the true grievance of the Irish tenants will
diminish the strength of the party which depends for its power on the
revolutionary elements in Irish society. But all chance of mitigating
the inconvenience inflicted upon England by the presence of the Irish
members vanishes for ever when they are changed into an Irish
delegation, and are compelled by their position to be the mere
mouthpiece of Ireland's claims against England.
The alleged reasons for the weakening of England are untenable, and,
were they tenfold stronger than they are, could not remove the flagrant
contradiction between the Gladstonian policy of 1886 and the Gladstonian
policy of 1893.
But a contradiction which cannot be removed may be explained.
The withdrawal of the Irish members from Westminster might give Ireland
the chance of obtaining some of the benefits, and compensate England for
some of the evils, of Home Rule. But however this may be, one result it
would produce with certainty; it would dash the Gladstonian party to
pieces. The friends of Disestablishment, the Welsh, or the Scottish,
Home Rulers, the London Socialists, all the revolutionists throughout
the country, know that with the departure of the Irish representatives
from Westminster their own hopes of triumph must be indefinitely
postponed. England is the stronghold of British conservatism, and an
arrangement which leaves the fate of England in the hands of Englishmen
may be favourable to reform, but is fatal to revolution. Has this fact
arrested the attention of Gladstonians? I know not. It is an unfortunate
coincidence that the least defensible portion of an indefensible policy
should, while it threatens ruin to England, offer temporary salvation to
the party who rally round Mr. Gladstone.[55]
C. _The Powers of the Irish Government_
I. _The Irish Executive_. At the head of the Irish Executive will
nominally stand the Lord Lieutenant; he will however in reality occupy
the position of a colonial Governor, and be, for most purposes, little
more than the ornamental figure-head of the Irish Administration. The
real executive government of Ireland[56] must be a parliamentary
Ministry or Cabinet[57] chosen in effect, though not in name, by the
Irish Parliament, or rather by the Irish Legislative Assembly, or House
of Commons, just as the English Cabinet is appointed in effect by the
English House of Commons. Allowing then for the occasional intervention
of the Lord Lieutenant as the representative of the Imperial Parliament
to protect either the interests of the Empire or the special rights of
the United Kingdom,[58] the Irish Ministry is to occupy in Ireland the
position which the New Zealand Ministry occupies in New Zealand, and
will for most purposes as truly govern Ireland as the New Zealand
Ministry governs New Zealand, or as Mr. Gladstone's Ministry governs
England. The Irish Ministry will be the true Government of Ireland.
This is a fact to which the attention of the English public ought to be
sedulously directed. The creation of an independent Irish Parliament
strikes the imagination; it is seen to be an innovation of primary
importance. The creation of an independent Irish Cabinet or Ministry is
taken as a matter of course, and neither Unionists nor Gladstonians see
its full import. Yet in Ireland, as elsewhere, the character of the
Executive is of more practical consequence than the character of the
Legislature. A country may dispense, for a long time, with legislation;
no country can dispense with good government.
This principle holds good even in an orderly country such as England,
where the sphere of the administration is far less extended than it is
in most States. We might get on for a good while prosperously enough
without a Parliament, or without new laws, but if anything deprived us
even for a week of an Executive, or if, for any reason, the whole spirit
of the public administration were changed, every Englishman would feel
this portentous revolution in every concern of his daily life. The
protection of the Government, of the army, of the police, of the law
courts, are with us so much matters of course, that we never realise how
much the comfort and prosperity of our existence hang upon it, nor do we
reflect that the aid we derive from the Courts is in the last instance
dependent upon the decisions of the judges being actively supported by
the forces at the command of the executive power. Again, we are so used
to the preservation on the part of the Executive and the Courts of an
attitude of perfect impartiality and to the extension of their aid to
all citizens alike, that we can hardly even in imagination conceive what
would be the condition of things if the public administration favoured
particular classes and looked askance on the rights of one class, whilst
it enforced with rigour the rights of another. Yet events which have
been passing before our eyes may show any one how absolutely dependent
we may be, at any moment, for our enjoyment of life, property, or
freedom upon the authority and the equity of the Executive. Consider the
strike at Hull. Practically the legal rights and personal freedom of
every inhabitant of the city depend upon the action of the Government.
It is as plain as day that if the Government had taken actively and
unfairly the side of one party or the other to the contest, the party
which the Government favoured would at once have won. Suppose, though
the supposition is a very improbable one, that the Home Secretary had
directed the police to put down every form of picketing and to arrest
every one who counselled the free labourers to desert their employment,
the strike would come at once to an end. Suppose on the other hand--the
supposition is also a wild one--that the Home Secretary had declined to
protect the rights of the free labourers, that the troops had been
withdrawn, and that the police had been inactive; suppose, in short,
that the Government had been careless to maintain order. The Trade
Unionists would at once have become supreme, and freedom of contract, as
well as liberty of person, would have been at once abolished. Even in
England then the power to exercise our rights as citizens has its source
in the constant, though unobserved, intervention of the executive power.
What is true of England is truer still of countries where the sphere of
the administration is more widely extended than with us, and what is
true of every civilised country is truest of all of Ireland. Ireland is
a country where the sphere of the administration is large, and where it
will probably be increased. Ireland is divided by hostile factions not
too much prone to respect the law. Even as things stand, the Irish
Executive finds it hard enough to hold a perfectly even and level
course, and the whole state of the country depends upon the spirit in
which the law is enforced. One of the very gravest defects of our
present system is that in Ireland a change of government means, to a
certain extent, a change in the administration of the law. Yet both Mr.
Balfour and Mr. Morley have enforced the law, and have meant, according
to their lights, to act towards all citizens with equitable
impartiality. And Mr. Balfour, Mr. Morley, or any statesman appointed by
the Imperial Parliament, is likely to act with more fairness than at the
present moment would any Executive chosen by any Irish Parliament. One
thing, at any rate, is certain. An independent Irish Executive will
possess immense power. It will be able by mere administrative action or
inaction, without passing a single law which infringes any Restriction
to be imposed by the Irish Government Act, 1893, to effect a revolution.
Let us consider for a moment a few of the things which the Irish Cabinet
might do if it chose. It might confine all political, administrative, or
judicial appointments to Nationalists, and thus exclude Loyalists from
all positions of public trust. It might place the Bench,[59] the
magistracy, the police wholly in the hands of Catholics; it might, by
encouragement of athletic clubs where the Catholic population were
trained to the use of arms, combined with the rigorous suppression of
every Protestant association suspected, rightly or not, of preparing
resistance to the Parliament at Dublin, bring about the arming of
Catholic and the disarming of Protestant Ireland, and, at the same time,
raise a force as formidable to England as an openly enrolled Irish army.
But the mere inaction of the Executive might in many spheres produce
greater results than active unfairness. The refusal of the police for
the enforcement of evictions would abolish rent throughout the country.
And the same result might be attained by a more moderate course. Irish
Ministers might in practice draw a distinction between 'good' landlords
and 'bad' landlords, and might grant the aid of the police for the
collection of reasonable, though refusing it for the collection of
excessive rents, and might at last magnanimously recognise the virtues
of Mr. Smith-Barry, whilst passing a practical sentence of outlawry on
Lord Clanricarde. Is there anything absurd or unreasonable in the
supposition that a Ministry of Land Leaguers chosen by a Parliament of
Nationalists should attempt to enforce the unwritten law of the Land
League? A Gladstonian who answers this question in the affirmative
entertains a far lower opinion than can any candid Unionist of Mr.
Gladstone's Irish allies. It would be the grossest unfairness to suggest
that every man convicted of conspiracy by the Special Commission added
to criminality and recklessness a monstrous form of hypocrisy, and that,
whilst urging Irish peasants to boycott evictors and land-grabbers, he
felt no genuine moral abhorrence of evictions and land-grabbing. But if,
as is certainly the case, the founders of the Land League really
detested the existing system of land tenure, and considered a landlord
who exacted rent a criminal, and a tenant who paid it a caitiff, it is
as certain as anything can be that they will be under the greatest
temptation, not to say, in their own eyes, under a stringent moral
obligation, to strain the power of an Irish Executive for the purpose of
abolishing the payment of rent. Nothing, at any rate, will seem to an
Irish Ministry more desirable than that within three years[60] from the
passing of the Bill landlords and tenants should come to an arrangement,
and nothing is more likely to produce this result than the withdrawal
from the landlords of the aid, if not the protection, of the law. My
argument, however, at the present point does not require the assertion
or the belief that an Irish Ministry will be guilty of every act of
oppression which it can legally commit. All that I insist upon is that
an Irish Ministry will exercise immense power, and that without
violating a letter of the constitution, and without passing a single act
which any Court whatever could treat as void, the Ministry will be able
to change the social condition of Ireland. The Irish Cabinet, remember,
will not be checked by any Irish House of Commons, for it will represent
the majority of that House. It will not need to fear the interposition
of the Imperial Ministry or the Imperial Parliament, for if the
authorities in England are to supervise and correct the conduct of the
Irish Cabinet, Home Rule is at an end. Mr. Asquith has repudiated all
idea of creating two Executives in Ireland[61] for the ordinary purposes
of government, and from his own point of view he is right. The notion of
a dual control is preposterous; the attempt to carry it out must involve
anarchy or revolution. The Irish Ministry must in ordinary matters be at
least as free as the Ministry of a self-governing colony. The
independence of the Irish Executive is indeed a totally new phenomenon
in Irish history, and is, as I have said, a far more important matter
than the independence of the Irish Parliament, but it is an essential
feature of Home Rule, and every elector throughout England should try to
realise its import.
One check, indeed, is placed upon the power of the Irish Cabinet. The
military forces of the Crown, and the Royal Irish Constabulary and
Dublin Metropolitan Police (as long as they exist[62]), are subject to
the control of the Imperial or English Ministry.[63] The result is that
the English Cabinet will have the means of using force in Ireland for
the maintenance of order, for the execution of the law, or for the
maintenance of the authority of the Imperial Parliament. But this
advantage is after all purchased at the price of placing the country
under the rule of something very like two Executives. If the policy of
the Irish Cabinet, _e.g._ as to suppressing a riot at Dublin or Belfast,
should differ from the policy of the English Cabinet, the ordinary
police may be called into action whilst the army or the royal
constabulary stand by inactive, or the army may disperse a meeting which
the Irish Ministry hold to be a lawful assembly.
II. _The Irish Parliament._ The authority of the Irish Parliament,
whilst acting within the limits of the constitution, is extremely
wide.[64]
The Parliament appoints the Irish Government of the day; it will
determine whether Mr. M'Carthy or Mr. Redmond, Mr. Healy or Mr. Davitt,
directs the Irish Administration. In this matter the British Government
will have no voice. The English Ministry are under the new constitution
expected in many ways to co-operate with the Irish Ministry, yet it is
quite conceivable that the Ministers of the Crown at Dublin may be men
whose whole ideas of expediency, of policy, of political morality, may
be opposed to the ideas of the Ministers of the Crown at Westminster.
The Irish Parliament, again, even if every Restriction on its powers
inserted in the Home Rule Bill should pass into law, will be found to
have ample scope for legislative action.[65]
It can repeal[66] any Act affecting Ireland which was enacted before the
passing of the Home Rule Bill. Thus it can do away with the right to the
writ of _habeas corpus_; it can abolish the whole system of trial by
jury; it can by wide rules as to the change of venue expose any
inhabitant of Belfast, charged with any offence against the Irish
Government, to the certainty of being tried in Dublin or in Cork. If an
Irish law cannot touch the law of treason or of treason-felony, the
leaders of the Irish Parliament may easily invent new offences not
called by these names, and the Parliament may impose severe penalties on
any one who attempts by act or by speech to bring the Irish Government
into contempt. A new law of sacrilege may be passed which would make
criticism of the Irish priesthood, or attacks on the Roman Catholic
religion, or the public advocacy of Protestantism, practically
impossible. The Irish House of Commons may take the decision of election
petitions into its own hands, and members nominated by the priests may
determine the proper limits of spiritual influence. Thus the party
dominant at Dublin can, if they see fit, abolish all freedom of
election; nor is this all that the Irish Parliament can accomplish in
the way of ensuring the supremacy of an Irish party. After six years
from the passing of the Home Rule Bill--let us say in the year 1900--the
Irish Parliament can alter the qualification of the electors and the
distribution of the members among the constituencies. Parliament can in
fact introduce at once universal suffrage, and do everything which the
ingenuity of partisanship can suggest for diminishing the
representation of property and of Protestantism. If, further, in any
part of Ireland there be reason to fear opposition to the laws of the
Irish Parliament, a severer Coercion Act may be passed than any which
has as yet found its way on to the pages of the English or the Irish
Statute Book. Worse than all this, the Irish Parliament has the right to
legislate with regard to transactions which have taken place before the
passing of the Home Rule Bill. An Act inflicting penalties on
magistrates who have been zealous in the enforcement of the Crimes Act,
an Act abolishing the right to recover debts incurred before 1893, an
Act for compensation to tenants who had suffered from obedience to the
behests of the Land League, are all Acts which, however monstrous, the
Irish Parliament is, under the new constitution, competent to pass.
My assertion is, be it noted, not that all or any of such laws would be
passed, but that the passing of them would, under the new constitution,
be legal. The Irish Parliament could further by its legislation pursue
lines of policy opposed to the moral feeling and political judgment of
Great Britain, and this too where Irish legislation practically affects
Great Britain. State lotteries might be re-established, gambling tables
might be re-opened at Dublin. If the imposition of protective duties on
imported goods is forbidden, there is nothing apparently to prevent the
reintroduction of Protection into Ireland by the payment of bounties;
there is certainly nothing to prohibit the repeal or suspension of the
Factory Acts, so that English manufacturers might be compelled to
compete with Irish rivals who are freed from the limits imposed upon
excessive labour by the humanity or the wisdom of England. The power of
the Irish Parliament to pass laws which in the eyes of Englishmen are
unwise or inequitable, is, it will be urged, an essential part of the
policy of Home Rule. I admit that this is so. But this makes it the more
necessary that English electors should realise what this essential
characteristic of Home Rule means, or may mean. The Nonconformist
conscience exposed Irish Home Rulers to painful humiliation and possible
ruin by forbidding them to follow the political leader of their choice
to whom they had deliberately renewed their allegiance. Is it certain
that Englishmen who could not tolerate the official authority of Mr.
Parnell will bear the official leadership, say of Mr. Healy, if employed
to carry out the economical principles of Mr. Davitt?