PLEAS FOR THE NEW CONSTITUTION
Gladstonians when pressed with the manifest objections to which the new
constitution is open rely for its defence either upon general
considerations intended to show that the criticisms on the new
constitution are in themselves futile, or upon certain more or less
specific arguments, of which the main object is to establish that the
policy of Home Rule is either necessary or at least free from danger,
and that, therefore, this policy and the new constitution in which it is
to be embodied deserve a trial.
My object in this chapter is to examine with fairness the value both of
these general considerations and of these specific arguments.
The general considerations are based upon the alleged prophetic
character of the criticisms on the new constitution or upon the
anomalies to be found in the existing English constitution.
Ministerialists try to invalidate strictures on the Home Rule Bill, such
as those set forth in the foregoing pages, by the assertion that the
objections are mere prophecy and therefore not worth attention.
This line of defence may, as against Home Rulers, be disposed of at once
by an _argumentum ad hominem_. No politicians have made freer use of
prediction. Every Gladstonian speech is in effect a statement that is a
prophecy of the benefits which Home Rule will confer on the United
Kingdom. Gladstonian anticipations no doubt are prophecies of future
blessings; but whoever foretells the future is equally a prophet,
whether he announces the end of the world or foretells the dawn of a
millennium. And history affords no presumption in favour of the prophet
who prophesies smooth things. The prognostics of a pessimist may be as
much belied by the event as the hopes of an optimist. But for one
prophet to decry the predictions of another simply as prophecies is a
downright absurdity. Even among rival soothsayers some regard must be
had to fairness and common sense; when Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah,
smote Micaiah on the cheek, he struck him not on the ground that he
prophesied but that his gloomy predictions were false. Zedekiah was an
imposter, he was not a fool, and after all Micaiah, who prophesied evil
and not good, turned out the true prophet.
But an _argumentum ad hominem_ is never a satisfactory form of
reasoning, and it is worth while considering for a moment what is the
value of prophecy or foresight in politics. Candour compels the
admission that anticipations of the future are at best most uncertain.
Cobden and Bright foretold that Free Trade would benefit England; they
also foretold that the civilised world would, influenced by England's
example, reject protective tariffs. Neither anticipation was
unreasonable, but the one was justified whilst the other was confuted by
events. All that can be said is that on such anticipations,
untrustworthy though they may be, the conduct no less of public than of
private life depends. Criticism on anything that is new and untried,
whether it be a new-built bridge or a new-made constitution, is of
necessity predictive. But there is an essential difference between
foresight and guessing. The prevision of a philosophic statesman is
grounded on the knowledge of the past and on the analysis of existing
tendencies. It deals with principles. Such, for example, was the
foresight of Burke when he dogmatically foretold that the French
Constitution of 1791 could not stand.[108] Guessing is at best based on
acute observation of the current events of the day, that is of things
which are in their nature uncertain. On January 29, 1848, Tocqueville
analysed the condition of French society, and in the Chamber of Deputies
foretold the approach of revolution.
On February 21, 1848, Girardin said that the monarchy of July would not
last three days longer. February 24 verified the insight and foresight
of the statesman, and proved that the journalist was an acute observer.
The difference is worth consideration. Tocqueville's prophecy would in
all probability have been substantially realised had Louis Philippe
shown as much energy in 1848 as in 1832, and had the Orleanist dynasty
reigned till after his death. Girardin's guess would not have been even
a happy hit if one of a thousand accidents had averted the catastrophe
of February 24. The worth of the arguments against or for the new
constitution depends upon the extent to which they are based upon a
mastery of general principles and upon a sound analysis of the
conditions of the time, and in these conditions are included the
character of the English and of the Irish people. But to object to
criticisms simply as prophecies is to reject foresight and to forbid
politicians who are creating a constitution for the future to consider
what will be its future working.
Another Gladstonian argument is that because the English constitution
itself is full of paradoxes, peculiarities, and anomalies, therefore the
contradictions or anomalies which are patent in the new constitution
(such for example as the retention of the Irish members at Westminster)
are of no importance.
The fact asserted is past dispute. Our institutions are based upon
fictions. The Prime Minister, the real head of the English Executive, is
an official unknown to the law. The Queen, who is the only
constitutional head of the Executive, is not the real head of the
Government. The Crown possesses a veto on all legislation and never
exercises it; the House of Lords might, if the House pleased, reject
year by year every Bill sent up to it by the House of Commons; yet such
a course of action is never actually pursued and could not be dreamt of
except by a madman. There is no advantage in exemplifying further a
condition of things which must be known to every person who has the
slightest acquaintance with either the law, or the custom, of the
constitution. But the inference which Gladstonian apologists draw from
the existence of anomalies is, in the strict sense of the word,
preposterous. On the face of the matter it is a strange way of reasoning
to say that because the constitution is filled with odd arrangements
which no man can justify in theory, you therefore, when designing a new
constitution, should take no care to make your arrangements consistent
and harmonious. But the Gladstonian error goes a good deal deeper than
is at first sight apparent. The anomalies or the fictions of the
constitution are in reality adaptations, often awkward enough in
themselves, of some old institution, and are preserved because, though
they look strange, they are found to work well. Thus the King of England
was at one time the actual sovereign of the State, or at any rate the
most important member of the sovereign power, and the Ministers were in
reality, what they are still in name, the King's servants. The powers of
the Crown have been greatly diminished, and have been transferred in
effect to the Houses of Parliament, or rather to the House of Commons,
and the Ministers taken from the Houses are in fact, though not in name,
servants of Parliament. This arrangement leaves an undefined and
undefinable amount of authority to the Crown. It is not an arrangement
which any man would have planned beforehand; but it is kept up, not
because it is an anomaly, but because it has, as a matter of
experience, turned out convenient. What even plausible argument can
thence be drawn to show that a new constitutional arrangement, on the
face of it awkward and inconvenient, will for some unknown reason turn
out workable and beneficial? He who reasons thus, if reasoning it can be
called, might as well argue that because an old shoe which has gradually
been worn to the form of the foot is comfortable, therefore a shoemaker
need not care to make a new shoe fit.
These two general replies to strictures on the new constitution are in
themselves of no worth whatever. They deserve examination for two
reasons only. They are, in various shapes, put forward by politicians of
eminence, they exhibit further in a clear form a defect which mars a
good deal of Gladstonian reasoning. Ministerialists seem to think that
arguments good for the purpose of conservatism are available for the
purpose of innovation. This is an error. A conservative reasoner may
urge the uncertainty of all prevision, or the fact that the actual
constitution, though theoretically absurd or imperfect, works well, as
reasons of some weight, though not of overwhelming weight, for leaving
things as they are, but it must puzzle any sensible man to see how
either the uncertainty of prevision or the fair working of existing
institutions can be twisted into reasons for taking a political leap in
the dark.
Let us dismiss then objections which as they are fatal to all criticism
are in reality ineffective against any criticism of our new
constitution. When this is done it will be found that the Gladstonian
pleas in favour of Home Rule, for such are in reality their apologies
for the new constitution, may be brought under two heads. They are
intended to show, first, that the concession of parliamentary
independence to Ireland is a necessity, and, secondly, that at worst it
involves no danger.[109]
A. _Necessity for Home Rule_. That the concession of Home Rule to
Ireland is a necessity, forms the implied, if not always the asserted,
foundation of the case in favour of Gladstonian policy.
Ireland, it is argued, has for generations been discontented and
disloyal. Every sort of remedy has been tried. The rule of the ordinary
law, coercion, Protestant supremacy, Catholic relief, the
disestablishment of the Anglican Church, the maintenance of the English
land tenure and English landlordism, the introduction of a new system of
land tenure unknown to any other country in the world and more
favourable to tenants than the land law of any other State in Europe,
the removal of every grievance which could be made patent to the
Imperial Parliament, every plan or experiment which could approve itself
to the judgment of English politicians has been tried, and no scheme,
however plausible, has ended in success. Concession has proved as
useless as severity, and the existence in the Statute Book of a
permanent Coercion Act is a standing proof of failure. He who asserts
that Irish disloyalty or discontent has not declined understates the
case. It has increased. Grattan was a statesman of a more exalted type
than O'Connell, and Grattan was more zealous for connection with England
than was the Roman Catholic tribune. And though in Grattan's time the
grievances of Ireland were in every man's judgment far more intolerable
than, even on the showing of Home Rulers, are the wrongs which Ireland
now endures, the Ireland of Grattan was loyal to England. O'Connell was
a nobler leader than Parnell, and it would be absurd to suppose that any
Parnellite or Anti-Parnellite exerted a tenth of O'Connell's influence.
Yet Parnell and Parnell's followers have achieved a feat which the hero
of Catholic emancipation could never accomplish; O'Connell never
obtained for Repeal more than half the votes of Ireland's parliamentary
representatives; Parnell and his followers have rallied the vast
majority of Irish members in support of Home Rule. Meanwhile year by
year the government of England is weakened, and (though the argument
comes awkwardly from the mouth of English constitutionalists who are
allies and friends of conspirators and boycotters) the morality of
English public life has been undermined, by the presence at Westminster
of Irish members who, regarding the English Parliament as an alien
power, weaken its action, despise its traditions, and degrade its
character. One remedy for Irish miseries and for English dangers has not
been tried. No English statesman before Mr. Gladstone (it is urged) has
offered to Ireland the one thing which Ireland desires--the boon or
right of parliamentary independence. Be the desire for Home Rule
reasonable or not, it is Home Rule for which Ireland longs. Ireland
feels herself a nation. Satisfy then Ireland's wish, meet the feeling of
nationality, and Ireland will be at rest. This experiment must at least
be tried; its perils must be risked. The present situation is
intolerable, the concession of Home Rule to Ireland is a necessity.
This, to the best of my apprehension, is the Gladstonian argument. My
aim has certainly been to state it fairly and in its full force.
Is the argument valid? Is the plea of necessity made out? The answer may
be given without hesitation. It is not. The allegations on which the
whole train of reasoning rests are tainted by exaggeration or
misapprehension, and the allegations, even if taken as true, do not
establish the required inference; the premises are unsound, and the
premises do not support the conclusion.
The premises are unsound.
The Gladstonians are far too much of parliamentary formalists. Their
imagination and their reason are impressed by the strength in the House
of Commons of the Irish party. The eighty votes from Ireland daunt them.
But wise men must look behind votes at facts. The eighty Irish Home
Rulers are, it is true, no light matter, even when allowance is made
for the way in which corruption and intimidation vitiate the vote of
Ireland. But their voice is not the voice of the Irish people; it is at
most the mutter or the clamour of a predominant Irish faction. It is the
voice of Ireland in the same sense in which a century ago the shouts or
yells of the Jacobin Club were the voice of France. To any one who looks
behind the forms of the constitution to the realities of life, the voice
of Irish wealth, of Irish intelligence, and of Irish loyalty is at least
as important as the voice of Irish sedition or discontent. The eighty
votes must in any case be reckoned morally at not more than sixty, for
to this number they would be reduced by any fair and democratic scheme
of representation. No one can be less tempted than myself to make light
of Irish turbulence and Irish misery. But it must not be exaggerated.
The discontent of 1893 is nothing to the rebellion, sedition, or
disloyalty of 1782, of 1798, of 1829, or of 1848. If Irishmen of one
class are discontented, Irishmen of another class are contented,
prosperous, and loyal. The protest of Irish Protestants--the grandsons
of the men who detested the Union--against the dissolution of the Union,
is the reward and triumph of Pitt's policy of Union. The eighty Irish
members ask for Home Rule, but the tenant farmers of Ireland ask not for
Home Rule but for the ownership of the land; and the Irish tenant
farmers will and may under a Unionist Government become owners of their
land, and, what is no slight matter, may become owners by honest means.
Vain for Mr. M'Carthy[110] to assert that Irish farmers would not have
accepted even from Mr. Parnell the most favourable of land laws in
exchange for Home Rule. Mr. M'Carthy believes what he says, but it is
impossible for any student of Irish history or of Irish politics to
believe Mr. M'Carthy. Facts are too strong for him. Mr. Lalor showed a
prevision denied to our amiable novelist. Gustave de Beaumont understood
political philosophy better than the lively recorder of the superficial
aspects of recent English history. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt, and the
whole line of witnesses before the Special Commission, tell a different
tale. The very name of the _Land_ League is significant. Home Rule was a
mere theme for academic discussion in the mouth of Mr. Butt. Repeal
itself never touched the strongest passions of Irish nature, though
advocated by the most eloquent and popular of Irish orators. Not an
independent Parliament, but independent ownership of land, has always
been the desire of Irish cultivators. It was a cry for the land which
gave force to the demand for Home Rule; and an Irish agitator, if his
strength fails, renews it by touching the earth. But why confine our
observation to Ireland? We here come upon the passions, not of Irish
nature, but of human nature. There is not a landowner in France who does
not care tenfold more for the security of his land than for the form of
the government. If peasants trembled for their property the Republic
would fall to-morrow. This is no mere conjecture; the peasantry were
Jacobins as long as the Jacobins gave them the land, they were
Imperialists whilst Napoleon was their security against a restoration
which to them meant confiscation of land purchased or seized during the
Revolution. The country population of France heard with indifference of
the fall of Louis Philippe, and possibly approved the proclamation of
the second Republic. But the communism of 1848 roused every landowner
against Paris. The peasant proprietors filled the benches of the
National Assembly with Conservatives or Reactionists who would save them
from plunder; fear became for once the cause of courage, and dread of
loss of property sent thousands of peasant proprietors to Paris, that
they might crush by force of arms the socialist insurrection of June.
Perjury, fraud, and cruelty disgraced the _coup d'état_ of 1851. But, as
Liberals now see, the second Empire, hateful though it was to every man
who loved freedom or cared for integrity, did not owe the permanence of
its power to cunning or to violence. It was the dread of the Red Spectre
which drove the landowners of France into Imperialism; they may have
liked parliamentary liberty, it was a pleasant luxury, but they loved
their land and property, it was their life-blood, and by Socialism their
land and property was they believed menaced.
As to the Coercion Act, no sensible man, be he Radical or Tory, need
trouble himself. The Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887, is
neither a disgrace to England nor an injury to Ireland. Its permanence,
which is the cause of its mildness, is its merit. Well would it have
been had the Act been extended to the whole United Kingdom. Local laws
are open to some of the same objections as temporary laws. The
enactment contains some improvements in our criminal procedure. There is
no more idle superstition than the belief that criminal procedure does
not, like other human arrangements, require change. If incendiarism
should become an element in the conduct of trade disputes, if dynamite
is to be recognised as a legitimate arm in political conflicts, the
criminal law of the United Kingdom will, we may be sure, need and
receive several alterations and improvements.
By far the strongest portion of the Gladstonian argument is the stress
that can be laid on the demoralisation of Parliament, produced partly,
though not wholly, by the Irish vote. This is a consideration which, as
far as it goes, tells in favour of Home Rule. It is, however, a
consideration of which the Gladstonian apologist for the new
constitution of 1893 [can] make no use. His reasoning of necessity
stands thus:
The presence of 80 Irish members at Westminster has demoralised
Parliament, therefore we must above all things retain 80 or possibly 103
Irish members at Westminster. He is placed in a hopeless dilemma; he
dare not draw the only conclusion to which his argument points, namely,
that the Irish members must be excluded from the Parliament at
Westminster. By a strange fatality, the policy of 1823 retrospectively
condemns the policy of 1886, whilst the very strongest argument in
favour of the policy of 1886 condemns the policy of 1893.
The premises, were they sound, do not support the conclusion.
There exists undoubtedly such a thing in politics as necessity.
When England acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, or
when France surrendered Metz and Strasburg, no one could talk of
imprudence of impolicy. The will of Englishmen and of Frenchmen was
coerced by the force of events. When all Protestant Ireland was in arms,
when the whole Irish nation demanded parliamentary independence, when
England had been defeated in America, when France and Spain were allied
against her, then the acceptance of Grattan's declaration of right was
in truth a necessity. When Wellington became the supporter of Catholic
Emancipation because he would not face civil war, when famine was at our
gates and Peel repealed the corn laws--then again politicians could
plead the excuse of necessity. In these and like crises the wisest men
and the bravest men are forced to recognise the logic of facts; and
necessity rather than prudence dictates the course of statesmanship. But
no such crisis has now arisen. England and Ireland were as safe under
the government of Lord Salisbury as under the government of Mr.
Gladstone--perhaps safer. No one except an extremely excited and very
rhetorical politician will venture to assert that, if Lord Salisbury
instead of Mr. Gladstone had last summer gained a majority of forty, any
man or woman throughout the United Kingdom would have trembled for the
safety of the country. The sky is far less dark than on that fearful day
eleven years back[111] when England stood aghast at the assassinations
of the Phoenix Park. Irish discontent is an immense evil, of which every
just man must deplore the existence; its removal would be the greatest
benefit which statesmanship could by any possibility confer upon
England. But the immediate dealing with it in a particular way is not a
necessity. Were the Home Rule Bill, and every Home Rule Bill, rejected
by Parliament, the United Kingdom would be as safe as it has been at any
time for the last ninety years and more.
In plain truth we have all of us forgotten the meaning of necessity.
Gladstonians have come honestly to confuse the needs of a party with the
necessities of the country. This is a delusion that at all times and in
all lands affects great political connections which, having once
rendered high services to the nation, have outlived the valid reasons
for their existence. The Republicans saved the United States from
disruption. Hence in 1888, when Secession was an historical memory, many
of the most to be respected among Americans believed that the rule of an
honest Democrat was a worse evil than the rule of a corrupt Republican.
Thousands of Frenchmen, amidst the moral bankruptcy of Republican
politicians, still hold that, because Republicans years ago saved France
from ruin, even reconciled Conservatives cannot in the year 1893 be
placed in office without danger to the commonwealth. So it is abroad; so
it has been in England. In 1760 the best and wisest of English statesmen
deemed it impossible that England should be rightly governed by any
politicians but the representatives of the Revolution Families. In 1829
honest citizens trembled at the thought of power passing into the hands
of the Whigs; for the Tories had ruled for nearly sixty years, and the
Tories had preserved England from revolution and invasion. So at this
moment to many well-meaning Liberals the long predominance of the
Liberal party makes the possibility of a Cabinet containing politicians
who may in any sense be called Tories seem a monstrous calamity, which
it is a necessity to avert. Vain to point out that Lord Salisbury and
Mr. Balfour are such Tories as Eldon would have called Jacobins and Lord
Melbourne Radicals, and that, they are allied with the best and most
trustworthy of living Liberal leaders. Their is no arguing with
sentiment; it is necessary to keep the Gladstonian Liberals in office,
and the constitution must be sacrificed in order that Lord Salisbury may
not resume the Premiership. But there is a deeper cause than all this
for our strange ideas of necessity. Habitual ease and unvarying
prosperity have for a moment lowered the national spirit. Englishmen
confuse inconveniences with dangers; they have forgotten what real peril
is; they cannot understand the calmness with which, not a century ago,
their fathers resisted at once insurrection in Ireland and the most
powerful foreign enemy who has ever challenged the power of England, and
this too at a time when the population of Great Britain was not above
nine millions and the people of Ireland numbered more than four
millions, when France was the leading military power of the world, and
Ireland might at any moment receive the aid of a French army led by one
of the best French generals. The men of 1798 or 1800 would mock at our
ideas of necessity. Ireland has not an eighth of the population of the
United Kingdom; our Home Rulers are not Ireland; they are a very
different thing--the Irish populace. Let us yield everything which ought
to be yielded to justice; let us obey the dictates of expediency, which
is only justice looked at from another side; let us concede much to
generosity; but in the name of common sense, of honesty, and of
manliness, let us hear no more of necessity. Once in an age necessity
may be the defence of statesmanship forced to confess its own blindness,
but it is far more often the plea of tyranny, of ambition, of cowardice,
or despair.
B. _No danger in Home Rule_. The arguments which are employed to show
that the policy of Home Rule and the new constitution which embodies it
involve no danger for England are in the main drawn from the
'Safeguards' or Restrictions contained in the Bill--from the alleged
precedent of Grattan's Constitution--from the success of Home Rule in
other parts of the world--and, generally, from the expediency of
trustfulness.
i. _The Safeguards_. The Restrictions on the power of the Irish
Parliament are, it is asserted, sufficient and more than sufficient to
reassure Unionists, and an intimation is sometimes added that, if
further security is wanted, further safeguards may be provided.
This ground of confidence may be briefly dismissed; its answer is in
effect supplied by the foregoing pages.
On the action of the Irish Executive the Restrictions place, and from
the nature of things can place, no restraint whatever, and yet both
England and the Irish Loyalists have far more reason to dread the abuse
of executive than of legislative authority. On the legal action of the
Irish Parliament the Restrictions do place a certain restraint, but the
Restrictions are, as already shown, not in reality enforceable. They are
for good purposes a nullity; they are effective, if at all, almost
wholly for evil; they exhibit the radical and fatal inconsistency of
Gladstonian policy. The policy of Home Rule is a policy of absolute and
unrestricted trust; the safeguards are based on distrust. There is
something to be said for generous confidence, and something also for
distrustful prudence; there is nothing to be said for ineffective
suspicion.
ii. _Grattan's Constitution_. From the asserted harmony between England
and Ireland from 1782 to 1800 under Grattan's Constitution, the
inference is drawn that there is no reason to fear discord between
England and Ireland under the Gladstonian constitution of 1893.
The fallacy underlying the appeal to this precedent has been, to use
words of Mr. Lecky, 'so frequently exposed that I can only wonder at its
repetition.'[112] Under Grattan's Constitution the Irish Executive was
appointed, not by the Irish Parliament, but by the English Ministry; the
Irish Parliament consisted solely of Protestants; it represented the
miscalled 'English garrison,' and was in sympathy with the governing
classes of England. With all this to promote harmony, the concord
between the governing powers in England and in Ireland was dubious. The
rejection of England's proposals as to trade, and the exaction of the
Renunciation Act, betray a condition of opinion which at any moment
might have produced open discord. When at last the parliamentary
independence of Ireland had led up to a savage rebellion, suppressed I
fear with savage severity, English statesmen knew that an independent
Irish Parliament threatened the existence of England. I may be allowed,
even by Gladstonians, to place the genius and patriotism of Pitt on at
least a level with the genius and patriotism of the present Premier. I
may be allowed to doubt whether Mr. Gladstone's studies, however
profound, in the history of Ireland, can, in 1893, render his
acquaintance with the circumstances and the dangers of 1800 equal to the
knowledge of the Minister who, in 1800, carried the Act of Union. And
Pitt then held that the Union with Ireland was necessary for the
preservation of England. If moreover Grattan's Constitution be a
precedent for our guidance, let us see to what the precedent points. The
leading principles or features of Grattan's Constitution are well known.
They are the absolute sovereignty of the Irish Parliament, and its
independence of and equality with the Parliament of Great Britain; the
renunciation by the British Parliament of any claim whatever to
legislate for Ireland, and of any jurisdiction on the part of any
British court to entertain appeals from Ireland; and, lastly, the
absence of all representation of Ireland in the Parliament at
Westminster. Each of these principles or features is denied or reversed
by our new Gladstonian constitution. The Irish Parliament is to be, not
a sovereign legislature, but a subordinate legislature created by
statute, and a legislature of such restricted and inferior authority as
to be unworthy of the name of a parliament. The Imperial Parliament,
with its vast majority of British members, asserts its absolute
supremacy in Ireland, and the right at its discretion to legislate for
Ireland on any matter whatever; in Ireland there is to be founded an
Imperial or British Court appointed by the Imperial Ministry, having
jurisdiction on all matters affecting Imperial rights, and the final
Court of Appeal from every tribunal in Ireland is to be the British
Privy Council. Add to this that Irish members are to sit in the
Parliament of Westminster as the 'outward and visible sign' of the
Imperial Parliament's supremacy. But if every principle of Grattan's
Constitution be contradicted by the Gladstonian constitution, if every
principle which Grattan detested is a principle which Mr. Gladstone
asserts, with what show of reason can the success, uncertain though it
be, of the Constitution of 1782 be pleaded as evidence of the probable
success of the Gladstonian constitution of 1893? That two arrangements
are unlike is to ordinary minds no proof that they will have similar
results; a parliamentary majority of forty-two may repeal the Act of
Union, but it cannot repeal the laws of logic.[113]
iii. _Success of Home Rule_. All over the world, we are told, Home Rule
has succeeded; there are, under the government of the British Crown, at
least twenty countries enjoying Home Rule, and their local independence
causes no inconvenience to the United Kingdom or to the British Empire.
It follows therefore that Home Rule in Ireland will be a success and
will in no way disturb the peace or prosperity of the United Kingdom.
The sole difficulty in meeting this argument is the extreme vagueness of
its principal term. The words 'Home Rule' are in their signification so
vague, at any rate as employed by Ministerialists, that they cover
governments of totally different descriptions. Hungary, Norway, a State
of the American Union, a Province of the Canadian Dominion, the Dominion
itself, Man, Jersey, and Guernsey, every English colony with
representative institutions, are each described, by one Gladstonian
reasoner or another, as happy and prosperous under Home Rule. But there
is no one who will deny that the dissimilarities between the governments
existing in each of the countries referred to are at least as striking
as are their similarities; that the contrast, for example, between the
relation of Hungary to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the relation of
New York to the United States is at least as obvious as its likeness.
The analogy, moreover, between Home Rule in any of these countries and
Home Rule in Ireland is at best distant and shadowy.[114]
The crisis is too serious to permit us to waste words in examining the
curiosities of the Home Rule controversy. Of Hungary, and its relation
to the Empire of which it forms part, nothing at all will here be said.
There is nothing in that relation analogous to Irish Home Rule. Nor need
we trouble ourselves with the 'Home Rule' of Rhodes, of Samos, or of the
Lebanon. Of these and any other States, if such there be, which enjoy
'Home Rule' under the supremacy of the Sultan, all that need be said is
that it is satisfactory to learn on the authority of Mr. Gladstone that
any part whatever of the Turkish Empire is well governed and happy. If
any one can seriously suppose that the prosperity of Man and the Channel
Islands, which reap all the benefits and bear none of the burdens of
connection with Great Britain, and moreover have at no time been
discontented, affords any reason for supposing that the secular
miseries and discontent of Ireland will be cured by a system of
government totally different from that which prevails either in Man, or
Guernsey, or in Jersey, let him refer to these interesting islands.[115]
For myself I shall leave them out of account. Of the cordial relations
between Sweden and Norway we hear nothing; the goodwill generated by a
system of Home Rule is bringing these countries to the brink of civil
war.[116]
There are two analogous cases or precedents on which serious reasoners
rely in support of a policy of Home Rule for Ireland. The success of
federal government in other countries, and especially in the United
States, and the success of colonial independence throughout the British
Empire, are adduced as presumptions that Home Rule would knit together
Great Britain and Ireland, or, as the cant of the day goes, transform a
paper union into a union of hearts. If New York be loyal to the United
States, if New Zealand be loyal to the British Crown, why should not
Ireland, when endowed with local independence resembling the
independence of an American State or of a self-governing British colony,
be a loyal member of the United Kingdom?[117]
This is the suggested argument--let us consider its validity.
As to federalism.--All the conditions which make a federal constitution
work successfully in the United States, in Switzerland, and possibly in
Germany, are wanting in England and Ireland. No man till the last five
or six years has even suggested that Englishmen or Scotsmen desire a
federal government for its own sake. Whether Mr. Gladstone himself has
any wish to federalise the whole United Kingdom is at least open to
doubt. Where federalism has succeeded, it has succeeded as a means of
uniting separate communities into a nation; it has not been used as a
means of disuniting one State into separate nationalities. The United
States, it has been well said, is a nation under the form of a federal
government. Gladstonians apparently wish to bind together two, or shall
we say three or four, nations, or nationalities, under the reality of a
federation and the name of a United Kingdom. While all the powerful
countries of the world are increasing their strength by union, the
advocates of the new constitution pretend to increase the moral strength
of the United Kingdom by loosening the ties of its political unity. If
any one ask why federalism which has succeeded in America should not
succeed in the United Kingdom, the true answer is best suggested by
another question: Why would not the constitutional monarchy of England
suit the United States? The answer in each case is the same. The
circumstances and wants of the two countries are essentially different;
and if this be not a sufficient reply, the reflection is worth making
that in the three great Confederacies of the world unity has been
achieved, or enforced by armed conflict.
As to colonial independence.--The plain and decisive reason why the
loyalty of New Zealand to the Empire affords no presumption of the
loyalty under our new constitution of Ireland to the United Kingdom is
this: The whole condition of New Zealand is different from the condition
of Ireland, and our new constitution is not intended to give Ireland the
position of New Zealand. Thousands of miles separate New Zealand from
Great Britain. Ireland is separated from us by not much more than twelve
miles. New Zealand has never been hostile to England; her people are
loyal to the British Crown. Ireland, or part of the Irish people, has
been divided from England by a feud of centuries; it would be difficult
among Irish Nationalists to obtain even the show of loyalty to the
Crown. New Zealand is wealthy, and New Zealand pays not a single tax
into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. Ireland is poor, and, if her
taxation is lightened by Home Rule, the tribute which will be paid to
England will be heavy, and far more galling than the taxes she now pays
in common with the rest of the United Kingdom. The new constitution,
again, is utterly unlike a colonial constitution. Its burdens would not
be tolerated by any one of our independent colonies. The rights it
gives, no less than the obligations it imposes, are foreign to our
colonial system. The presence of the Irish representation at Westminster
forbids all comparison between Ireland under Home Rule and New Zealand
under a system of colonial independence.
But the matter must be pressed further. Even were it possible to place
Ireland in the position either of an American State or Swiss Canton, or
of an independent colony, the arrangement would not meet the needs of
the United Kingdom. This is a point which has not as yet arrested
attention. For the safety of the United Kingdom it is absolutely
necessary that the authority of the Imperial Government, or, in other
words, the law of the land, should be enforced in Ireland in a sense in
which the law of the land is rarely enforced in federations, and in
which it is certainly not enforced by the Imperial Government in
self-governing colonies.
In federations the law of the land is nearly powerless when opposed to
the will of a particular State. President Jackson's reported dictum,
'John Marshall[118] has delivered his judgment, let him now enforce it
if he can,' and the fact that the judgment was never enforced,[119] are
things not to be forgotten. They are worth a thousand disquisitions on
the admirable working of federalism. But there is no need to rely on a
traditional story, which, however, is an embodiment of an undoubted
transaction. The plainest facts of American history all tell the same
tale. No Abolitionist could in 1850 without peril to his life have
preached abolition in South Carolina; difficult indeed was the
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law and small the practical respect
paid in Massachusetts to the doctrine of the Dred Scott Case. Unless all
reports are false, the Negro vote throughout the Southern States is at
this moment practically falsified, and little do the Constitutional
Amendments benefit a Negro in any case where his conduct offends
Southern principle or prejudice. For my present argument it matters
nothing whether the oppression of individuals or the defiance of law was
or was not, in all these cases, as it certainly was in some instances, a
violation to the supreme law of the land. If the law was violated then,
why should we expect Imperial law to be of more force in Ireland than
federal law in South Carolina, or in Massachusetts? If the rights of
individuals were not adequately protected by federal law against the
injustice of a particular State, then why expect that the provisions of
our new constitution, far less stringent as they are than the protective
provisions of the United States Constitution, should avail to protect
unpopular persons in Ireland against the legal tyranny of the Irish
Executive or the Irish Parliament?
Experience of federalism is not confined to the United States. The Swiss
Confederation is in Europe the most successful both of democratic and of
federal polities. The Swiss Executive exercises powers common to all
continental governments but of a description which no English Cabinet
could claim, and the Swiss Executive is made up of statesmen skilful
beyond measure in what may be called the diplomacy of federalism. Yet in
Switzerland, as in the United States, federal government means weak
government. Ticino is a small Canton, but from the days of Athenian
greatness small States have been the instructors of the world, and
Englishmen, hesitating over a political leap in the dark, would do well
to study the Ticinese revolution of September 11, 1890. The Radicals of
the Canton rose in insurrection, and deposed the lawful government by
violence; as Englishmen may remember, the contest though short involved
at least one murder. The Swiss Executive (called the Federal Council)
forthwith took steps to restore order and to reinstate the lawful
Cantonal government. Their own commissioner, a military officer, in
effect declined to put the overthrown government back in power. Order
was restored, but the law was never vindicated. A strange set of
negotiations, transactions, or intrigues took place. In the Federal
Assembly at Berne, the Conservatives, a minority, urged the rights of
the lawful government of Ticino. The Liberals defended or palliated the
revolutionists. On the whole the advantage seems to have rested with
the latter. A trial before a Federal Court took place, but the accused
were acquitted. No one, if I am rightly informed, was punished for an
act of manifest treason. It is even more noticeable that Professor
Hilty, a distinguished and respected Swiss publicist, vindicates or
palliates the admitted breach of law, in deference to the principle or
sentiment, which if true has wide application, that 'human nature is not
revolutionary, and that no revolution ever arises without a heavy share
of guilt (Mitschuld) on the part of the government against which the
revolution is directed.'[120] The instructiveness of this passage in
Swiss history as regards the working of our new constitution is obvious;
Englishmen should specially note the interconnection between lawlessness
in Ticino and the balance of parties at Berne; it is easy to foresee an
analogous connection between revolution, say in Dublin or Belfast, and
the balance of parties at Westminster. But this is not my immediate
point; my point is that the Federal Government at Berne cannot enforce
obedience to law in Ticino in the way in which Englishmen expect that
the Imperial Government shall, under any circumstances, enforce or cause
the law to be enforced in Ireland.
But Ireland, it will be said, is to occupy a position like that of a
self-governing colony. In British colonies the Imperial power and the
rule of law are respected; both therefore will be respected in Ireland.
The plain answer to this suggestion is that in a British self-governing
colony, no law is enforceable which is opposed to colonial sentiment and
which the colonial Ministry refuse to put into execution. One
well-ascertained fact is enough to dispose of a hundred platitudes about
Imperial supremacy and the loyal obedience of our colonies. Victoria is
as loyal to the Crown as any colony which England possesses, yet the
submission to law of the Victorian Government and people is not by any
means unlimited. Ten years ago three British subjects arrived at
Melbourne and were about to land. Popular sentiment, or in other words
the will of the mob, had decreed that they should not enter the colony.
The Victorian Premier (Mr. Service) announced in Parliament that their
landing should be hindered. The police, acting under the orders of the
Ministry, boarded the ship which brought the strangers, went near to
assaulting the captain, and forcibly prevented the hated travellers from
setting foot on shore. By arrangement between the Melbourne Government,
the captain, and the three men, who were by this time in terror of their
lives, the victims of lawlessness were carried back to England. That the
law had been grossly violated no one can really dispute. The violation
was the more serious because it excited no notice. No appeal was
apparently made to the Courts. The Governor--the representative of
Imperial power and Imperial justice--knew presumably what was going on,
yet he uttered not one word of remonstrance. The Agent-General for
Victoria, when at last a private person in England called attention to
the outrage at Melbourne, pleaded in effect the plea of necessity, and
described the act of tyranny, whereby British citizens were in a British
colony turned into outlaws, as 'an act of executive authority.' The
Imperial Government did I believe--what was perhaps the wisest thing it
could do--nothing. Imperial supremacy in the colonies was, as regards
the protection of unpopular individuals, admitted to be a farce. What,
however, rendered the three travellers unpopular? They were Irish
informers who had aided, unless I am mistaken, in the conviction of the
Phoenix Park murderers. Let us now in imagination conceive our new
constitution to have come into being, and transfer the transactions at
Melbourne in 1883 to Dublin in 1894. Will the Imperial supremacy which
is supposed to be so effective in the colonies be of any more worth in
Ireland than in Victoria?[121]
Were it true, then, which it certainly is not, that the conditions exist
in Ireland which conduce to the maintenance of federal power in the
State of a well-arranged federation, and to the maintenance of Imperial
power in a self-governing British colony, this would not be enough to
support the argument in favour of the new constitution. For the Imperial
Government needs that the law should be maintained, and the rights of
individuals be protected, in Ireland with greater stringency than the
law is enforced or the rights of individuals are protected either under
a federal government or in a British colony. Miserable indeed would be
the position of England were she forced in Ireland to wink at
lawlessness such as but the other day disgraced New Orleans, or at mob
law countenanced by the 'Executive,' such as in 1883 ruled supreme at
Melbourne. Foreign powers at any rate would rightly decline to let the
defects of our constitution excuse the neglect of international duties.
If England cannot shuffle off her responsibilities, England is bound in
prudence to maintain her power.
iv. _The Policy of Trust_. 'I believe myself that suspicion is the
besetting vice of politicians and that trust is often the truest
wisdom.'[122]
This sentiment is followed by curious and ambiguous qualifications. It
is not cited for the sake of fixing Mr. Gladstone with any doctrine
whatever; it is quoted because it neatly expresses the sentiment which,
in one form or another, underlies most of the arguments in favour of
Home Rule or of our new constitution. The right attitude for a
politician, it is urged, is trust; he should trust the Irish leaders and
their assurances or professions; he should trust in the training
conferred upon men by the exercise of power; he should trust in the
healing effects of a policy of conciliation, or, to put the matter
shortly, he should trust in the goodness and reasonableness of human
nature. Exercise only a little trustfulness and the policy of Home Rule,
it is suggested, may be seen to be a wise and prudent policy.[123]
How far, then, is trust in any of the three forms, which it may on this
occasion take, a reasonable sentiment?
We are told to trust the Irish leaders.
My answer to this advice is plain and decided. Confidence is not a
matter of choice. You cannot give your trust simply because you wish to
give it. Men are trusted because they are trustworthy. The Irish Home
Rule leaders as a body cannot inspire trust, for the simple reason that
their whole policy and conduct prove them untrustworthy. Politicians,
strange as the fact may appear to them, cannot get quit of their past.
Look for a moment at the history--the patent, acknowledged history--of
the agitators or the patriots (and I doubt not that many of them are,
from their own point of view, patriotic) in whom we are asked to
confide, and whose assurances are to form the basis on which to rest a
dubious policy. They have been till recently the foes of England. This
in itself is not much; many a rebel has been the enemy of England, and
yet has been entitled to the respect of Englishmen. But there are deeds
which neither hatred to England nor love of Ireland can justify. Even
sedition has its moral code, and like war itself is subject to
obligations which no man can neglect without infamy. The conspirators
condemned by the Special Commission--and among them are to be found the
most prominent of the Irish leaders[124]--have been guilty of conduct
which no wise man ought to forget and no good man ought to palliate.
They have for years excited Irish ignorance against England and against
English officials by a system of gross incessant slander; witness the
pages of _United Ireland_ when Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan
were in power at Dublin. The men whom we are told to trust are men who
did enter into a criminal conspiracy by a system of coercion and
intimidation to promote an agrarian agitation against the payment of
agricultural rents, for the purpose of impoverishing and expelling from
the country the English landlords[125]; they are men found guilty of not
denouncing intimidation which led to crime and outrage, but of
persisting in it with a knowledge of its effect.[126] They are proved to
have made payments to compensate persons injured in the commission of
crime[127]; they are men who have solicited and taken the money of
Patrick Ford, the advocate of dynamite; and have invited and obtained
the co-operation of the Clan-na-Gael.[128] Their whole system of
agitation has been utterly unlike that of honourable agitators,
conspirators, or rebels; it would have excited the horror of O'Connell;
it would have been repudiated with disgust by Davis, by Gavan Duffy, by
Smith O'Brien, and the other Irish leaders of 1848. The men who now ask
for our confidence have in their attack upon England forgotten what was
due to Ireland; they have deliberately taught Irish peasants lessons of
dishonesty, oppression, and cruelty, which the farmers of Ireland may
take years to unlearn. Of the degradation which they have gradually
inflicted upon the English Parliament one is glad to say little. It is,
however, well that the House of Commons should recollect that
parliamentary debates are open to all the world and that Englishmen and
Englishwomen see no reason why brutalities of expression should be
tolerated in the oldest representative Assembly of Europe which would be
reproved in any respectable English meeting. But you can sometimes trust
men's capacity where you cannot trust their moral feeling. Unfortunately
the Irish Parliamentary party have given us examples of their ability in
matters of government which are not reassuring. The scenes of Committee
Room No. 15[129] are a rehearsal of parliamentary life under Home Rule
at Dublin.
But the Gladstonians, we shall be told, guarantee the good faith of
their associates. Unfortunately, as judges of character the Gladstonians
are out of court. The leader who first obtained their confidence was Mr.
Parnell. If the Home Rule Bill of 1886 had become law Mr. Parnell would
have become Premier of Ireland, and we should have been bidden to put
trust in his loyalty and his integrity. There are no Gladstonians now
who think Mr. Parnell trustworthy. Why should they be better judges of
the trustworthiness of Mr. Dillon, Mr. M'Carthy, or Mr. Davitt, than
they were of the character of the statesman who was the leader, friend
or patron of the whole Irish Parliamentary party? Note, however--for in
this matter it is essential to make one's meaning perfectly clear--I do
not allege, or suppose, that the assurances of the Irish leaders are
mendacious. They believe, I doubt not, what they say at the moment; but
their words mean very little. In a sense they believed, or did not
disbelieve, the slanderous accusations which filled the pages of _United
Ireland_. In a sense they now believe that the Home Rule Bill is a
satisfactory compromise. But the belief in each case must be considered
essentially superficial. Men are the victims of their own career: it is
absolutely impossible that leaders many of whom have indulged in
virulence, in slanders, in cruelty, in oppression, should be suddenly
credited with strict truthfulness, with sobriety, with respect for the
rights of others. Even as it is, landlords are, in Mr. Sexton's eyes,
criminals,[130] and he therefore cannot be trusted to act with fairness
towards Irish landowners. Mr. Redmond holds that imprisoned dynamiters
and other criminals should be released, whether guilty or not, and it is
therefore reasonable not to put Mr. Redmond in a position where he can
insist upon an amnesty for dynamiters and conspirators. Nor is it at all
clear that as regards amnesty any Anti-Parnellite dare dissent from the
doctrine of Mr. Redmond. It is odious, it will be said, to dwell on
faults or crimes which, were it possible, every man would wish
forgotten. But when we are asked to trust politicians who are
untrustworthy, it is a duty to say why we must refuse to them every kind
of confidence. Of the penalty for such plain speaking I am well aware.
It will be said that to attack the Irish leaders is to slander the Irish
people. This is untrue. In times of revolution men perpetually come to
the front unworthy of the nation whom they lead. To treat distrust of
the leaders of the Land League as dislike or distrust of the Irish
people is as unfair as to say that the censor of Robespierre, of Marat,
or of Barère denies that during the Revolution Frenchmen displayed high
genius and rare virtues. There are thousands of Irishmen who will
endorse every word I have written about the Irish leaders. Add to this
that I am not called upon to pronounce any further condemnation upon the
party than was pronounced upon the chief among them by the Special
Commission. All I assert is that from the nature of things the men found
guilty by the Commission cannot inspire trust.
Power, it is often intimated, teaches its own lessons. Trust Irishmen
with the government of their own country, and you may feel confident
that experience will teach them how to govern justly.
To this argument I need not myself provide a reply: it has been
admirably given by my friend Mr. Bryce. Every word which in the
following passage refers to the State legislatures of the United States
applies in principle to the future Parliament at Dublin:--
'The chief lesson which a study of the more vicious among the State
legislatures teaches, is that power does not necessarily bring
responsibility in its train. I should be ashamed to write down so
bald a platitude were it not that it is one of those platitudes
which are constantly forgotten or ignored. People who know well
enough that, in private life, wealth or rank or any other kind of
power is as likely to mar a man as to make him, to lower as to
raise his sense of duty, have nevertheless contracted the habit of
talking as if human nature changed when it entered public life, as
if the mere possession of public functions, whether of voting or of
legislating, tended of itself to secure their proper exercise. We
know that power does not purify men in despotic governments, but we
talk as if it did so in free governments. Every one would of course
admit, if the point were put flatly to him, that power alone is not
enough, but that there must be added to power, in the case of the
voter, a direct interest in the choice of good men, in the case of
the legislator, responsibility to the voters, in the case of both,
a measure of enlightenment and honour. What the legislatures of the
worst States show is not merely the need for the existence of a
sound public opinion, for such a public opinion exists, but the
need for methods by which it can be brought into efficient action
upon representatives who, if they are left to themselves, and are
not individually persons with a sense of honour and a character to
lose, will be at least as bad in public life as they could be in
private. The greatness of the scale on which they act, and of the
material interests they control, will do little to inspire them.
New York and Pennsylvania are by far the largest and wealthiest
States in the Union. Their legislatures are confessedly the
worst.'[131]
The passage is the more impressive just because it is not written with a
view to Ireland. No one doubts that the people of the United States,
both in morality and in talent, equal if they do not excel the people of
any other country in the world. But the warmest eulogist of America
seeks throughout his work for the explanation of the fact which is
really past dispute, that the political morality of the United States
sinks below the general morality of the nation.[132] There is not the
least reason why under a vicious constitution the government at Dublin
should not reflect or exaggerate the vices, rather than represent the
noble qualities and the gifts, of the Irish people.
But the doctrine of trust takes another and more general form. You may
place confidence, it is alleged, in the goodness of human nature, and
should believe that the concession of Home Rule, just because it meets
the wishes of the Irish people, will take away every source of
discontent, and thereby remove any difficulty in making even an
imperfect constitution work well.
To this the answer may fairly be made, which I have made in the
preceding pages, that Home Rule does not meet the wish of the most
important part of the Irish people, but in truth arouses their
abhorrence, and that even Home Rulers care much less than Gladstonians
suppose about constitutional changes. To give a man a vote for a
Parliament at Dublin when he is demanding an acre or two of land, comes
very near giving him a stone when he asks for bread. But I assume for a
moment that the Irishmen, who express no great enthusiasm for the Home
Rule Bill, desire the new constitution as ardently as sixty years or so
ago our fathers desired parliamentary reform. Yet even on this
assumption the belief in Home Rule as a panacea for Irish ills is
childish, and belongs to a bygone stage of opinion. We now know that
changes in political machinery, however important, do not of themselves
produce content. A poverty-stricken peasant in Connaught will not be
made happy because a Parliament meets at Dublin. We now further know
that the difficulty of satisfying popular aspirations often arises from
the fundamental faults of human nature. Trust in the people may often be
wiser than distrust, but to suppose that masses of men are wiser, more
reasonable, or more virtuous than the individuals of which they consist,
is as idle a political delusion as the corresponding ecclesiastical
delusion that a church has virtues denied to the believers who make up
the church. On this point an anecdote makes my meaning clearer than an
argument. On May 15, 1848, the French National Assembly was invaded by
an armed mob, who shouted and yelled for three hours and more, and
threatened at any moment to slaughter the representatives of France.
From June 22-26, 1848, there raged the most terrible of the
insurrections which Paris has seen. For the first time in modern history
the workmen of the capital rose against the body of the more or less
well-to-do citizens. There was not a man in Paris who did not tremble
for his property and his life. Householders feared the very servants in
their homes. Between these days of ferocity intervened a day of
sentiment. On May 21, 1848, the Assembly attended a Feast of Concord.
There were carts filled with allegorical figures, there were
processions, there were embraces; the whole town, soldiers, national
guards, gardes mobiles, armed workmen, a million of men or more, passed
in array before the deputies. The feast was a feast of concord, but
every deputy had provided himself with pistols or some weapon of
defence. This was the occasion when we are told by the reporter of the
scene, 'Carnot said to me with a touch of that silliness (_niaiserie_)
which is always to be found mixed up with the virtues of honest
democrats, "Believe me, my dear colleague, you must always trust the
people." I remember I answered him rather rudely, "Ah! why didn't you
remind me of that on the day before May 15?"' The anecdote is told by
the greatest political thinker whom France has produced since the days
of Montesquieu. 'Trust in the people' did not appear the last word of
political wisdom to Alexis de Tocqueville.[133]
The Gladstonian pleas to which answer has been made are, it will be
said, arguments not in favour of our new constitution, but in support of
Home Rule. The remark is just; it points to a curious weakness in the
reasoning of Gladstonians. They adduce many reasons of more or less
weight for conceding some kind of Home Rule to Ireland. But few indeed
are the reasons put forward, either in the House of Commons or
elsewhere, in favour of the actual Home Rule Bill of 1893. As to the
merits of this definite measure Ministerialists show a singular
reticence. It may be that they wish to save time and hold that the
measure commends itself without any recommendation by force of its own
inherent merits. But to a critic of the new constitution another
explanation suggests itself. Can it be possible that Ministerialists
themselves are not certain what are the fixed principles of the new
policy? Everything about it is indefinite, vague, uncertain. Who can say
with assurance what Gladstonians understand by Imperial supremacy? Is
there or is there not any idea of excluding Ulster from the operation of
the Bill? Is it or is it not a principle that members from Ireland shall
be summoned to Westminster? Are the Irish members, if summoned, to vote
on all matters, or on some only? To each of these questions the only
answer that can be given is--nobody knows. But in this state of
ignorance it is natural and excusable that apologists should confine
themselves to general lines of defence. No politician who respects
himself would willingly risk a vigorous apology for the special
provisions of a particular measure, when, for aught he knows, the
provision which he thinks essential turns out to be an unimportant
detail, and is liable to sudden variation.
FOOTNOTES:
[108] 'I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they are not
likely to alter yours.... But hereafter they may be of some use to you,
in some future form which your commonwealth may take. In the present it
can hardly remain; but before its final settlement it may be obliged to
pass, as one of our poets says, "through great varieties of untried
being," and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and
blood.'--_Burke's Works_, ii. (ed. 1872), p. 517, 'Reflections on the
Revolution in France.'
[109] As to the general causes of the strength of the Home Rule movement
in England, and the general considerations in its favour, see _England's
Case against Home Rule_ (3rd ed.), ch. iii. and iv. pp. 34-127. From the
opinions expressed in these chapters I see no reason for receding.
[110] Mr. M'Carthy, April 10, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debate_, 353.
[111] [May 6, 1882. Now twenty-nine years back.]
[112] Every one should read Mr. Lecky's letter of April 4, 1893,
addressed to the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, and printed in the
_Chamber's Reply_ to Mr. Gladstone's speech. It deals immediately not
with the relations between England and Ireland, but with the alleged
prosperity of Ireland under Grattan's Constitution. But in principle it
applies to the point here discussed, and I venture to say that every
page of Mr. Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ which
refers to Grattan's Parliament bears out the contention, that no
inference can be drawn from it as to the successful working, as regards
either England or Ireland, of the legislature to be constituted under
the Home Rule Bill.
[113] Add also that steamboats and railways have practically, since the
time of Grattan, brought Ireland nearer to England, and Dublin nearer to
London. At the end of the last or the beginning of this century a Lord
Lieutenant was for weeks prevented by adverse winds from crossing from
Holyhead to Dublin. Mr. Morley can attend a Cabinet Council at
Westminster one afternoon and breakfast next morning in Dublin.
[114] With the conclusions as to Home Rule of my lamented friend Mr.
Freeman it is impossible for me to agree. But for that very reason I can
the more freely insist upon the merit of his paper on _Irish Home Rule
and its Analogies_ as an attempt to clear up our ideas as to the meaning
of Home Rule. He, for instance, points out that the relations between
Hungary and Austria do not constitute the relation of Home Rule and
afford no analogy to the relation which Home Rulers propose to establish
between Great Britain and Ireland. See _The New Princeton Review_ for
1888, vol. vi. pp. 172, 190.
[115] A Gladstonian who thinks the case of the Channel Islands in point,
would do well to get up the facts of their history. They were no more
'given' a constitution by England than, as most Frenchmen believe, they
were conquered from France. See Mr. Haldane, April 7, 1893, _Times
Parliamentary Debates_, p. 333.
[116] They have now (1911) led to political separation, happily without
the need for civil war.
[117] See further on this point, Home Rule as Federalism, _England's
Case against Home Rule_ (3rd ed.), pp. 160-197, and for Home Rule as
Colonial Independence, _ib_. pp. 197-218.
[118] Then the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
[119] See 'Andrew Jackson,' _American Statesmen Series_, p. 182.
[120] Hilty, _Separatabdruck aus dem Politischen Jahrbuch der
Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft_ (_Jahrgang_ 1891), p. 377.
[121] For the story of Kavanagh, Hanlon, and Smith, and their attempted
landing at Melbourne, see _England's Case_ (3rd ed.), p. 207.
[122] Mr. Gladstone, February 13, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_,
p. 307.
[123] An eminent and very able Gladstonian M.P. once said in my
presence, in effect, for I cannot cite his actual words, that the
difference between Gladstonians and Unionists was a difference in their
judgment of character or of human nature. He touched I believe far more
nearly than do most politicians the root of the differences which divide
the authors and the critics of our new constitution.
[124] Report of Special Commission, pp. 54, 55.
[125] _Ibid_. pp. 53, 119.
[126] _Ibid_. pp. 119, 120.
[127] Report of Special Commission, p. 120.
[128] _Ibid_.
[129] This Committee Room was the scene of the desertion of Parnell by
the majority of his former followers.
[130] 'The crime of the Land League was a trifle compared to the crime
of the landlords.'--Mr. Sexton, April 20, 1893, _Times Parliamentary
Debates_, p. 525.
[131] Bryce, _American Commonwealth_ (1st ed.), ii. pp. 190, 191.
[132] Compare _ibid_. ii. p. 618.
[133] 'Carnot me dit avec cette niaiserie que les démocrates honnêtes ne
manquent guère de mêler à leur vertu: "Croyez-moi, mon cher collègue, il
faut toujours se fier au peuple." Je me rappelle que je lui répondis
assez brusquement: "Eh! que ne me disiez-vous cela la veille du 15
mai?"'--_Souvenirs de Alexis de Tocqueville_, p. 196.