It may seem I have spoken lightly of that infant whose birth I referred
to with more solemnity in the opening pages of this book, and indeed I
am a little dubious about that infant. The signature of the Irish mind
is nowhere present in it, and I look upon it with something of the
hesitating loyalty the inhabitant of a new Balkan State night feel for
his imported prince, doubtful whether that sovereign will reflect
the will of his new subjects or whether his policy will not constrain
national character into an alien mould. The signature of the Irish mind
is not apparent anywhere in this new machinery for self-government. Our
politicians seem to have been unaware that they had any wisdom to learn
from the more obvious failures of representative government as they knew
it. So far, as I have knowledge, no Irishman during the past century
of effort for political freedom took the trouble to think out a form
of government befitting Irish circumstance and character. We left it
absolutely to those whom we declared incapable of understanding us
or governing us to devise for us a system by which we might govern
ourselves. I do not criticize those who devised the new machinery of
self-government, but those who did not devise it, and who discouraged
the exercise of political imagination in Ireland. It is said of an
artist that it was his fantasy first to paint his ideal of womanly
beauty, and, when this was done, to approximate it touch by touch to
the sitter, and when the sitter cried, "Ah, now it is growing like!" the
artist ceased, combining the maximum of ideal beauty possible with the
minimum of likeness. Now if we had thought out the ideal structure of
Irish government we might have offered it for criticism by those in
whose power it was to accept or reject, and have gradually approximated
it until a point was reached where the compromise left at least
something of our making and imagination in it. There is nothing of us
in the Act which is in abeyance as I write. I am less concerned with
it than with the creation of a social order, for the social order in
a country is the strong and fast fortress where national character
is created and preserved. A legislature may theoretically allow
self-government, but by its constitution may operate against national
character and its expression in a civilization. We have accepted the
principle of representative government, and that, I readily concede, is
the ideal principle, but the method by which a representative character
is to be given to State institutions we have not thought out at all. We
have committed the error our neighbors have committed of assuming that
the representative assembly which can legislate for general interests
can deal equally with particular interests; that the body of men who
will act unitedly so as to secure the liberty of person or liberty of
thought, which all desire for themselves, will also act wisely where
class problems and the development of particular industries are
concerned. The whole history of representative assemblies shows that
the machinery adequate for the furtherance and protection of general
interests operates unjustly or stupidly in practice against particular
interests. The long neglect of agriculture and the actual condition of
the sweated are instances. I agree that representative government is
the ideal, but how is it to operate in the legislature and still more
in administration? Are government departments to be controlled by
Parliament or by the representatives of the particular class to promote
whose interests special departments were created. I hold that the
continuous efficiency of State departments can only be maintained when
they are controlled in respect of policy, not by the casual politician
whom the fluctuations of popular emotion places at their head, but by
the class or industry the State institution was created to serve. A
department of State can conceivably be preserved from stagnation by
a minister of strong will, who has a more profound knowledge of
the problems connected with his department than even his permanent
officials. He might vitalize them from above. But does the party system
yield us such Ministers? In practice is not high position the reward of
service to party? Is special knowledge demanded of the controller of a
Board of Trade or a Board of Agriculture? Do we not all know that the
vast majority of Ministers are controlled by the permanent officials
of their department. Failing great Ministers, the operations of a
department may be vitalized by control over its policy exercised, not
by a general assembly like Parliament, but by a board elected from the
class or industry the department ostensibly was created to serve. An
agricultural department controlled by a council or board composed solely
of those making their livelihood out of agriculture and elected solely
by their own class, would, we may be certain, be practical in its
methods. It would receive perpetual stimulus from those engaged in
making their living by the industry. Parliaments or senates should
confine themselves to matters of general interest, leaving particular or
special interests to those who understand them, to the specialists, and
only intervene when national interests are involved by a clashing of
particular interests. Our State institutions will never fulfill their
functions efficiently until they are subject in respect of policy not
to general control, but the control of the class they were created to
serve.
That ideal can only be realized fully when all industries are organized.
But we should work towards it. Parliament may act as a kind of guardian
of the unorganized, but, once an industry is organized, once it has
come of age, it must resent domination by bodies without the special
knowledge of which it has the monopoly within itself. It should not
tolerate domination by the unexpert outsider, whatever may be his repute
in other spheres. It is only when industries are organized that
the democratic system of election can justify itself by results
in administration. When a county, let us say, chooses a member of
Parliament to represent every interest, only too often it chooses a
man who can represent few interests except his own. The greatest common
denominator of the constituents is as a rule some fluent utterer of
platitudes. But if the farmers in a county, or the manufacturers in
a county, or the workers in a county, had each to choose a man to
represent them, we may be certain the farmers would choose one whom they
regarded as competent to interpret their needs, the manufacturers a man
of real ability, and labor would select its best intelligence. Persons
engaged in special work rarely fall to recognize the best men in their
own industry. Then they judge somewhat as experts, whereas they are
by no means experts when they are asked to select a representative
to represent everybody in every industry. To secure good government I
conceive we must have two kinds of representative assemblies running
concurrently with their spheres of influence well defined. One, the
supreme body, should be elected by counties or cities to deal with
general interests, taxation, justice, education, the duties and rights
of individual citizens as citizens. The other bodies should be elected
by the people engaged in particular occupations to control the policy
of the State institutions created to foster particular interests. The
average man will elect people to his mind whose deliberations will be in
a sphere where the ideas of the average man ought to be heard and must
be respected. The specialists in their department of industry will elect
experts to work in a sphere where their knowledge will be invaluable,
and where, if it is not present, there will be muddle.
The machinery of government ought never to be complicated, and ought
to be easily understood by the citizens. In Ireland, where we have
at present no thought of foreign policy, no question of army or
navy, departments of State should fall naturally into a few divisions
concerned with agriculture, education, local government, justice,
police, and taxation. The administration of some of these are matters
of national concern, and they should and must be under parliamentary
control, and that control should be jealously protected. Others are
sectional, and these should be controlled in respect of policy by
persons representative of these sections, and elected solely by them. I
think there should also be a department of Labor. I am not sure that the
main work of the Minister in charge ought not to be the organization of
labor in its proper unions or guilds. It is a work as important to the
State as the organization of agriculture, and indeed from a humanitarian
point of view more urgent. Nothing is more lamentable, nothing fills
the heart more with despair, than the multitude of isolated workers,
sweated, unable to fix a price for their work, ignorant of its true
economic value; connected with no union, unable to find any body to fall
back on for help or advice in trouble, neglected altogether by society,
which yet has to pay a heavy price in disease, charity, poor rates,
and in social disorder for its neglect. Was not the last Irish rising
largely composed of those who were economically neglected and oppressed?
Society bears a heavier burden for its indifference than it would bear
if it accepted responsibility for the organization of labor in its own
defense. The State in these islands recommends farmers to organize for
the protection of their interests and assists in the organization, and
leaves the organized farmers free to use their organizations as
they will. As good a case could be made for the State aiding in the
organization of labor for the protection of its own interests. A
ministry of labor should seek out all wage-earners; where there is no
trade union one should be organized, and, where one exists, all workers
should be pressed to join it. Such a ministry ought to be the city of
refuge for the proletarian, and the Minister be the Father of Labor,
fighting its battles for an entry into humanity and its rightful place
in civilization.
If we consider the problem of representation, it should not be
impossible to devise a system of which the foundation might be the
County Councils, where there would be as sub-divisions, committees for
local government, agriculture, and technical instruction or trade to
deal with local administration in these matters. These committees
should send representatives to general councils of local government,
agriculture, and trade. The election should not be by the County Council
as a body, but by the committees, so that traders would have no voice
in choosing a representative for farmers, nor farmers interfere in
the choice of manufacturers or traders selecting a representative on a
general Council of Trade, and it should be regarded as ridiculous any
such intervention as for a War Office to claim it should have a voice
along with the Admiralty in the selection of captains and commanders of
vessels of war. At these general councils, which might meet twice a year
for whatever number of days may be expedient, general policies would be
decided and boards elected to ensure the carrying out by the officials
of the policies decided upon. By this process of selection men who had
to control Boards of Agriculture, Trade, or Local Government would be
three times elected, each time by a gradually decreasing electorate,
with a gradually increasing special knowledge of the matters to be
dealt with. A really useless person may contrive to be chosen as
representative by a thousand electors. It requires an able man
to convince a committee of ten persons, themselves more or less
specialists, that his is the best brain among them. Where national
education, a thorny subject in Ireland, is concerned, I think the
educationalists in provinces might be asked to elect representatives
from their own profession on a Council of Education to act as an
advisory body to the Minister of Education. County Council elections are
not exactly means by which miracles of culture are discovered. A man who
came to be member of a board of control would at least have proved
his ability to others engaged on work like his own who have special
knowledge of it and of his capacity to deal with it. If this system
was accepted, we would not have traders on our Council of Agriculture
protesting against the farmers organizing their industry, because none
but persons concerned with agriculture would be a owed to be members
of agricultural committees, and this would, of course, involve the
concentration of merchants and manufacturers upon the work of a Board of
Trade and the control of a policy of technical instruction suitable for
industrial workers, where agricultural advisers in their turn would be
out of place. Control so exercised over the policy of State institutions
would vitalize them, and tend to make them enter more intimately into
the department of national effort they were created to foster. The
stagnation which falls on most Government departments is due to this,
that the responsible heads rarely have a knowledge great enough to
enable them to inaugurate new methods, that parliamentary control is
never adequate, is rarely exercised with knowledge, and there is always
a party in power to defend the policy of their Minister, for if one
Minister is successfully attacked a whole party goes out of power. We,
in Ireland, should desire above all things efficiency in our public
servants. They will stagnate in their offices unless they are
continually stimulated by intimate connection with the class they work
for and who have a power of control. This system would also, I believe,
lead to less jobbery. Men in an assembly, where theoretically every
class and interest are represented, often conspire to make bad
appointments, because only a minority have knowledge of what
qualifications the official ought to have, and they are outvoted by
representatives who do their friends such good turns often in sheer
ignorance that they are betraying their constituents. Where specialists
have power, and where the well-being of their own industry is concerned,
they never willingly appoint the inefficient. Such an organization
of our County Council system would operate also to break up sectarian
cliques. The feeling of organized classes, farmers, or industrialists,
concerned about their own well-being, would oppose itself to sectarian
sentiment where its application was unfitting.
In the system of representative government I have outlined, we would
have one supreme or national assembly concerned with general interests,
justice, taxation, education, the apportioning of revenue to its
various uses, reserving to itself direct control over the policy of
the departments of treasury, police, judiciary, all that affects the
citizens equally; and, beneath it, other councils, representative of
classes and special interests, controlling the policy and administration
of the State departments concerned with their work. Where everybody
was concerned everybody would have that measure of control which a vote
confers; where particular interests were concerned these interests would
not be hampered in their development by the intervention of busybodies
from outside. Of course on matters where particular interests clashed
with general interests, or were unable to adjust themselves to other
interests, the supreme Assembly would have to decide. The more sectional
interests are removed from discussion in the National Assembly, and
the more it confines itself to general interests the more will it
approximate to the ideal sense, be less the haunt of greed, and more the
vehicle of the national will and the national being.
By the application of the principle of representative government now in
force, one is reminded of nothing so much as the palette of an artist
who had squeezed out the primary colors and mixed them into a greasy
drab tint, where the purity of every color was lost, or the most
powerful pigment was in dull domination. If the modification of the
representative principle I have outlined was in operation, with each
interest or industry organized, and freed from alien interference, the
effect might be likened to a disc with the seven primary colors raying
from a centre, and made to whirl where the motion produced rather the
effect of pure light. We must not mix the colors of national life
until conflicting interests muddle themselves into a gray drab of human
futility, but strive, so far as possible, to keep them pure and unmixed,
each retaining its own peculiar lustre, so that in their conjunction
with others they will harmonize, as do the pure primary colors, and
in their motion make a light of true intelligence to prevail in the
national being.