[35] It may, I am quite aware, be argued that the presence of Irish representatives is not requisite for the maintenance of parliamentary supremacy. In theory it is not. An arrangement might quite conceivably be made (which if Home Rule were to be conceded might be the least objectionable method of carrying out a radically vicious policy) under which it should be distinctly agreed that Ireland should occupy the position of a self-governing colony with all the immunities and disadvantages thereof, and should cease to be represented at Westminster, whilst the British Parliament retained the right to abolish, or modify, the Irish constitution. Such an arrangement would, however, make it perfectly plain that the sovereignty of the British Parliament meant in Ireland what the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament now means in New Zealand. But 'the retention of the Irish members is a matter of great public importance' (at any rate in the opinion of Mr. Gladstone) 'because it visibly exhibits that supremacy' (i.e. the supremacy of Parliament) 'in a manner intelligible to the people.'—Mr. Gladstone, Feb. 13, 1893, Times Parliamentary Debates, p. 306. See as to Home Rule in the character of colonial independence, England's Case against Home Rule (3rd ed.), pp. 197-218.

[36] i.e. at the moment when these pages are written. What parts of the Government of Ireland Bill may or may not be officially deemed essential by the time these pages appear in print, no sensible man will undertake to predict. Mr. Gladstone's own language is most extraordinary. On the retention of the Irish members, which in the eyes of any ordinary man affects the whole character of the new constitution, and essentially distinguishes the Home Rule policy of 1886 from the Home Rule policy of 1893, he uses (inter alia) these words: 'On the important subject of the retention of the Irish members I do not regard it, and I never have regarded it, as touching what may be called the principles of the Bill. It is not included in one of them. But whether it be a principle of the Bill or not, there is no question that it is a very weighty and, if I may say so, an organic detail which cuts rather deep in some respects into the composition of the Bill.'—Mr. Gladstone, Feb. 13, 1893, Times Parliamentary Debates, pp. 305, 306. This statement, with the whole passage of which it forms part, is as astounding as would have been a statement by Lord John Russell on introducing the great Reform Bill, that he could not say whether the disfranchisement of rotten boroughs did or did not form a principle of the measure.

[37] Compare Report of Special Commission, pp. 18, 19.

[38] Under the Home Rule Bill of 1893 as sent up to the House of Lords, it would have been the 'constant presence.'

[39] The division of parties in an American State is governed not by questions concerning the internal affairs of the State, but by the questions which divide parties at Washington. State politics depend upon federal politics. 'The national parties have engulfed the State parties. The latter have disappeared absolutely as independent bodies, and survive merely as branches of the national parties, working each in its own State for the tenets and purposes which a national party professes and seeks to attain.' See Bryce, American Commonwealth, ii. p. 194.

[40] i.e. in 1893.

[41] Mr. Morley at Newcastle, The Times, April 22, 1886.

[42] Now Lord Morley of Blackburn.

[43] i.e. in 1893, and as they continue to be in 1911.

[44] Mr. Morley at Newcastle, The Times, April 22, 1886. [Morley's argument applied primarily, no doubt, to the Home Rule Bill of 1886; its force, however, was infinitely strengthened as applied to the Home Rule Bill of 1893 by the change which retained eighty Irish members at Westminster with unrestricted powers of legislation. The tenor of his argument applies, I contend with confidence, to any Home Rule Bill which shall propose to give Ireland a real Irish Parliament led by an Irish Cabinet, and at the same time to retain representatives of Ireland as members of the British Parliament.]

[45] See p. 43, ante.

[46] See Motley's speech, Times, April 22, 1886.

[47] See Bill, Third Schedule.

[48] This is at any rate the opinion of Mr. Redmond expressed in the Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1892.

[49] Bill, clause 9, sub-clause (3).

[50] The authors of the Home Rule Bill foresee the possibility of such an erroneous decision. They have carefully provided that such an error shall have no legal effect. Clause 9, sub-clause (4), 'Compliance with the provisions of this section shall not be questioned otherwise than in each House in manner provided by the House,' is in reality a provision sanctioning the grossest unfairness. Its effect is that a British Bill passed solely by virtue of the Irish vote is, on its becoming an Act, good law, in spite of its having been passed in violation of the constitutional rule laid down in clause 9, sub-clause (3), that an Irish member shall not be entitled to deliberate or vote on any Bill the operation of which is confined to Great Britain.

[51] Compare Bill, clause 9, sub-clause (3), and sub-clause (4), which provides that 'compliance with the provisions of this section shall not be questioned otherwise than in each House in manner provided by the House.'

[52] 23 Geo. III. c. 28.

[53] The reader, in order to understand this account of the proposed constitution of 1886, should remember that under that constitution there were in effect, though not in name, constituted three different Parliaments, which must be carefully distinguished.

1. The British Parliament at Westminster, containing no Irish members, which was to legislate for Great Britain and for the whole British Empire except Ireland.

2. The Irish Parliament at Dublin, containing no British representatives, which was to legislate for Ireland, but which was not to legislate for England, Scotland, or for any other part of the British Empire, and was not to have any voice whatever in the general policy of the Empire.

3. The Imperial Parliament also sitting at Westminster, and comprising both the British and the Irish Parliament. This body would have corresponded nearly, if not exactly, with the existing Parliament of the United Kingdom, and was intended to come together only on special occasions and for a special purpose, namely the revision or the alteration of the Gladstonian constitution. For the fuller explanation of the whole of this subject see England's Case against Home Rule (3rd ed.), pp. 234, 238

Note that England gains little or nothing (as compared with what was offered to her under the Home Rule Bill of 1886) by the Imperial Parliament retaining the power to legislate for Ireland, for even under that Bill the Imperial Parliament (i.e. the Parliament at Westminster when consisting both of British and of Irish members) could legislate for Ireland.

[54] Unionist Delusions, pp. 6-9.

[55] The following passage from the writings of a man whose words, whilst he was yet amongst us, Unionists and Gladstonians alike always heard with the respect due to sense, to ability, to knowledge, and to fairness, deserves attention:—

'In Mr. Gladstone's proposed measure of Home Rule' [i.e. the Bill of 1886]' the Parliament sitting at Westminster was no longer to contain Irish members. I hold this to be an essential feature of the scheme, an essential feature of any scheme of Home Rule. By Mr. Gladstone's scheme, Ireland was formally to exchange a nominal voice, both in its own affairs and in common affairs, for the real management of its own affairs and no voice at all in common affairs. This is the true relation of Home Rule. As dependent Canada has no representatives in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, so neither would dependent Ireland have representatives in the Parliament of Great Britain. I am unable to understand why this provision, which seemed so naturally to follow from the rest of the scheme, awakened so powerful an opposition among Mr. Gladstone's own supporters. I believe the Irish have no wish to appear in the British Parliament. They wish to manage their own affairs, and are ready to leave Great Britain to manage its own affairs and those of the "Empire" to boot. It is very hard to see in what character the Irish members are to show themselves at Westminster. If they may vote on British affairs, while the British members do not vote on Irish affairs, surely too great a privilege is given to Ireland; it is Great Britain which will become the dependency. If they are to vote on "Imperial" affairs only, to say nothing of the difficulty of defining such affairs, it will be something very strange, very novel, very hard to work, to have members of Parliament who are only half-members, who must walk out of the House whenever certain classes of subjects are discussed.' (E.A. Freeman, 'Irish Home Rule and its Analogies,' The New Princeton Review, vi. pp. 194, 195.)

Mr. Freeman's language proves that I have not overrated the essential difference or opposition between the Home Rule policy of 1886 and the Home Rule policy of 1893.

[56] It is styled in the Home Rule Bill 'an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland.'

[57] If there were reason to expect (which there is not) that the Home Rule Bill would pass into law, it would be worth while to consider carefully a question which has not yet engaged the attention of English statesmen: Is it desirable that under a system of Home Rule the Irish Executive should be a Parliamentry Ministry? The answer to this question is by no means clear. Both in the United States, and in every State of the Union, the executive power is lodged in the hands of an official who is neither appointed nor removable by the Legislature. The same remark applies to the Executive of the German Empire. In Switzerland the Ministry, or Council of State, is indeed appointed, but is not removable by the Federal Assembly or Parliament. Arguments certainly might be suggested in favour of creating for Ireland an Executive whose tenure of office might be independent of the will of the Irish Parliament. Ireland, in short, like many other countries, might gain by the possession of a non-parliamentary Executive. See as to the distinction between a parliamentary and a non-parliamentary Executive, Law of the Constitution (7th ed.), App. p. 480.

[58] See Bill, clause 14.

[59] This would apparently approve itself to Dr. Nulty, Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath. Of Mr. Justice Andrews he seems to have written that 'this Judge is a Unitarian,' and that it appears to the Bishop that 'the man who denies the divinity of our Lord is as incompetent to form clear, correct, and reliable conceptions of the feelings, the instincts, the opinions, and the religious convictions of an intensely Irish population as if they were inhabitants of another planet.' See The Times, April 3, 1893, p. 8, where a correspondent from Ireland purports to give the effect of a pamphlet by Dr. Nulty. The Bishop wrote, I suppose, with a view to Mr. Justice Andrews' opinions as to priestly influence at elections, but the Bishop's words suggest the inference that the government of a Catholic country ought to appoint Catholic Judges. Why should we be surprised at this? Religious toleration is not a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.

[60] See Home Rule Bill, 1893, clause 35, p. 214, post.

[61] 'I am not suggesting for a moment that we are going to set up in Ireland two independent and separate Executives. I think the granting of Home Rule in any intelligible sense would be entirely incomplete if it were not supplemented by the granting of executive power, and in my judgment the Executive in Ireland is intended to be and must be dependent upon and responsible to the Irish Legislature in Irish affairs. But that does not in the least prevent the retention in the Crown of the executive government of the United Kingdom, as it provided in this Bill such executive authority as is necessary for the execution of the Imperial laws' (sic). Mr. Asquith, April 14, 1893, Times Parliamentary Debates, p. 440. Compare Hansard, vol. xi. same date, p. 348.

[62] Bill, clause 30.

[63] This is technically expressed in the Bill by the provision that 'the two forces [viz. the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police] shall, while they continue, be subject to the control of the Lord Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty.' As to the military or naval forces of the Crown, the Bill contains no provision, but it cannot, it is submitted, be doubted that they will remain subject to the Imperial Government, and, except with the sanction of the Imperial Government, will not be subject to the control of the Irish Executive.

[64] See Bill, clauses 1-5, and as to the Restrictions on its legislative power, see pp. 80-110, post.

[65] See two excellent articles in the Spectator of February 25 and March 4, 1893.

[66] Of course all these statements are to be taken subject to the Restrictions placed on the powers of the Irish Legislature by Bill, clauses 3, 4, pp. 197, 198 post.

[67] These Restrictions, or safeguards, deprive Ireland of powers in fact possessed by the Legislature of any self-governing colony, and I believe by the Isle of Man or Jersey. [Compare the Home Rule Bill 1893, clause 3, sub-clause (3) (p. 197, post,) as it appears in the original Bill, with the same clause as amended by the House of Commons and sent up to the House of Lords. The original clause forbids the Irish Parliament to make any law in respect (inter alia) of 'naval or military forces or the defence of the realm.' The clause as amended by the House of Commons forbids the Irish Parliament to make any law in respect of '(3.) Navy, Army, Militia, Volunteers, and any other military forces, or the defence of the realm, or forts, or permanent military camps, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings, or any places purchased for the erection thereof.'

In 1893, Unionists and Gladstonians alike were determined that on no pretence whatever should an Irish Parliament be allowed to raise an Irish army, even of volunteers. The very name of 'volunteers,' and the history of 1780-82, explain and justify their prudence.

[68] Clause 4, sub-clause (1) to (4).

[69] For the details of the Restrictions contained in clauses 3 and 4 the reader should study carefully the terms of the Bill itself. See Bill, in Appendix.

[70] In more than one case it is pretty clear that the Restrictions are in themselves ineffective. Take these instances:—

1. The Restrictions do not really prevent the drilling of an armed force. The Act which makes drilling illegal is a statute of 1819, 60 Geo. III. 1 Geo. IV. c. 1. This Act applies to Ireland and cannot (it is submitted) be repealed by the Irish Parliament. But this statute of 1819 might easily be evaded, for by sec. 1 meetings for training and drilling may be allowed by any two Justices of the Peace. The Irish Executive might, and probably would, appoint plenty of justices who were willing to allow training and drilling. The men thus trained and drilled could not, I conceive, technically be made a volunteer force, but they might, for all that, be a very dangerous armed body.

2. It is not certain what is the real effect of the provisions whereby no 'person may be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.' Does it, for example, preserve a right to trial by jury? I doubt whether it does. American judgments on the same words in United States Constitution, Amendments, art. 14, would of course have no legal authority in the United Kingdom, and there is a special reason why they often could not be followed. No process would (it is submitted) be considered in an Irish or British Court as not a 'due' process, for which a parallel could be found in the legislation of the Imperial Parliament. But the Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act, 1882, sec. 1, to instance no other enactment, took away the right to trial by jury in cases of trial for treason, murder, etc.

3. Private property might still in fact be taken without just compensation. The Privy Council would not apparently have to consider whether in any given case property was taken without just compensation, but whether a particular law was a law whereby it might be taken without just compensation. Suppose, for example, Sir James Mathew and the commissioners who sat with him were constituted by an Irish Act a Court for determining what compensation should be given for the taking of certain property for public use, and the Act itself provided that just compensation must be given. It is very doubtful how far the Privy Council could treat the Act as invalid, or could in any way enter upon the question whether just compensation had been given. Yet it is plain that such a Court might give very far from just compensation, say to Lord Clanricarde.

[71] Constitution, art. i sect. 10.

[72] See Mr. J. Morley, April 18, 1893, Times Parl. Deb., p. 500.

[73] See Bill, clause 5, sub-clause (3). The language of this clause disposes of the contention put forward by at least one Gladstonian candidate at the last general election [i.e. of 1892], that the veto must of necessity be exercised under the control of the British Cabinet; an arrangement too futile for an ardent Gladstonian to contemplate as possible is therefore actually enacted in the Government of Ireland Bill.

[74] It is to be presumed that the Crown, or in effect the British Cabinet, does not in the case of Ireland retain the power of 'disallowance' under which the Crown occasionally annuls colonial Acts which have received the assent of a colonial Governor. The power to disallow an Irish Act which, though not unconstitutional, has worked injustice, might be of advantage. But in truth the parliamentary methods for enforcing the Restrictions or safeguards are utterly unreal; they do not repay examination; whether there be two sham modes of enforcement, or one, must be to a sensible man a matter of indifference. As to the disallowance of Acts see Rules and Regulations published for the use of the Colonial Office, chap. iii.; Legislative Councils and Assemblies, Rules 48-54; British North America Act, 1868, sections 55-57; England's Case against Home Rule (3rd ed.), p. 33. [Compare Dicey, Law of Constitution (7th ed.), pp. 111-114.]

[75] The appeal to the English Privy Council, both under clauses 19, 22, and 23 of the Bill, appears to be in each case an appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. [The particular provisions contained in the Home Rule Bill, 1893, as to an appeal to the Privy Council, etc., are now of little direct importance, but they are worth study as showing the extreme difficulty of providing any satisfactory body for acting as a Court called upon to decide the numerous constitutional questions, as to the legislative power of an Irish Parliament, which must be raised under any Home Rule Act whatever.]

[76] See Bill, clause 23.

[77] See Tocqueville, Democratie en Amerique, i. chap. viii. pp. 231-250; Bryce, American Commonwealth, ii. (1st ed.) p. 45; ibid. i. ch. 23.

[78] Compare England's Case against Home Rule (3rd ed.), pp. 257, 258.

[79] Compare Bill, clauses 19, 22, pp. 206, 209, post.

[80] Bill, clause 19, sub-clause(4).

[81] Clause 19, sub-clause (5). The whole of the provisions as to the Exchequer Judges are extremely obscure. The jurisdiction and the powers of the Court, should it ever be formed, will need to be defined by a special Act of Parliament. There are special laws regulating the action of the Federal Judiciary both in the United States and in Switzerland. As the matter at present stands the jurisdiction of the Exchequer Judges and of the Privy Council as a Court of Appeal from them may apparently be thus described.

It extends to all legal proceedings in Ireland which

(i) are instituted at the instance of or against the Treasury or Commissioners of Customs, or any of their officers, or

(ii) relate to the election of members to serve in [the Imperial] Parliament, or

(iii) touch any matter not within the powers of the Irish Legislature, or

(iv) touch any matter affected by a law which the Irish Legislature have not power to repeal or alter.

It is possible that sub-clause (4) gives the Exchequer Judges a much wider jurisdiction than is intended by the authors of the Home Rule Bill, and the strictures which have been made on this sub-clause deserve attention. My purpose, however, is not to criticise the details of the Home Rule Bill or to suggest amendments thereto. Its fundamental principle is, in the eyes of every Unionist, unsound, and the Bill itself therefore unamendable. My object is simply to describe and criticise the general constitutional provisions of the Bill and to show their bearing and effect.

[82] Compare England's Case (3rd ed.), pp. 258, 259.

[83] See England's Case (3rd ed.), pp. 214-218.

[84] See Home Rule Bill, clause 3, sub-clause (7) (p. 198, post), and compare same clause slightly amended, in Bill, as sent up to the House of Lords, sub-clause (8).

[85] These strictures on the financial arrangements which were to exist between England and Ireland apply directly to the Home Rule Bill as introduced into the House of Commons, but they are less applicable to the Bill as amended, more or less in favour of Ireland, before the Bill was sent up to the House of Lords. Compare clause 10 of the original Bill with clause 11 of the Bill as amended and brought up to the House of Lords.

[86] Bill, clauses 14, 15, and 16. [Compare with these clauses of the original Bill clauses 13, 14, 15, and 16 of the Bill as amended before being sent to the House of Lords.]

[87] See Fiske, Critical Period of American History, chs. iii. and iv.

[88] See, e.g., letter of Mr. Clancy, M.P., on the Financial Clauses of the Home Rule Bill, Manchester Guardian, April 4, 1893.

[89] Bill, clause 15.

[90] See pp. 72 and 82, ante.

[91] See pp. 79, 80, ante.

[92] Souvenirs de Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 63.

[93] The reader should note the history of the insurrection in Ticino during 1891. It is quite clear that the Liberals of Ticino who had distinctly broken the law were more or less comforted or protected by the Liberal party in the Swiss Federal Assembly. Compare Hilty, Separatabdruck aus dem Politischen Jahrbuch der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (Jahrgang 1891).

[94] See p. 103, ante. [The force of this illustration has been increased by every Land Act passed since 1893. 'The Imperial Exchequer [i.e. in effect Great Britain] has made a free grant of L17,000,000 towards furthering land purchase; moreover to that end it has expressed its willingness to pledge its credit to the amount of L183,000,000 of which over L35,000,000 has already been raised. The Imperial Exchequer looks to the Irish tenant purchaser for the interest and sinking fund on that loan.'—Cambray, Irish Affairs, p. 214.]



CHAPTER III

WHY THE NEW CONSTITUTION WILL NOT BE A SETTLEMENT OF THE IRISH QUESTION

'We believe that this measure [the Home Rule Bill] when improved in Committee will be, at all events in our time, a final settlement of the Irish question.'[95]

'Five speeches were made from the Irish benches ... there was not one of those speeches which fell short of what we have declared to be in our opinion necessary for the acceptance of this Bill. That is where we look for a durable and solid statement as to finality. We find the word finality not even eschewed by the generous unreserve of the honourable member for North Longford[96] who attached the character of finality to the Bill.... What said the honourable member for Kerry[97] last night? He said, "This is a Bill that will end the feud of ages" This is exactly what we want to do. That is what I call acceptance by the Irish members of this Bill.... What we mean by this Bill is to close and bury a controversy of seven hundred years.'[98]

This hope of ending the feud of ages has been for years dangled by Gladstonians before the English electorate. It has gained thousands of votes for Home Rule. But it is doomed to disappointment. The new constitution will never be a settlement of the Irish question: and this for three reasons, which can be definitely stated and easily understood.

First. The new constitution satisfies neither Ireland nor England.

It does not satisfy Ireland.

Ulster, Protestant Ireland, and indeed, speaking generally, all men of property in Ireland, whether Protestant or Catholic, detest Home Rule. They hate the new constitution, they protest against the new constitution, they assert that they will to the utmost of their ability resist the introduction and impede the working of the new constitution. Their abhorrence of Home Rule may be groundless, their threats may be baseless; their power to give effect to their menaces may have no existence. All that I now contend is that the strongest, and the most energetic, part of Irish society is in fact and in truth bitterly opposed, not only to the details, but to the fundamental principle, of the new polity. It avails nothing to urge that the Protestants and the educated Catholics are in a minority. This plea shows that in Parliament they can be outvoted; it does not show that they will, or can, be pacified by a policy which runs counter to their traditions, their interests, and their sentiment. You cannot vote men into content, you cannot coerce them into satisfaction. Let us look facts in the face. The measure which is supposed to gratify Ireland satisfies at most a majority of Irishmen. This may be enough for a Parliamentary tactician, it is not enough for a far-seeing statesman or a man of plain common sense. When we are told a minority are filled with discontent, we must ask who constitute the minority. When we find that the minority consists of men of all descriptions and of all creeds, that they represent the education, the respectability, the worth, and the wealth of Ireland, we must be filled with alarm. Wealth, no doubt, is no certain sign of virtue, any more than poverty can be identified with vice; a rich man may be a scoundrel, and a poor man may be an honour to the human race, but the world would be much worse constituted than it is, if the possession of a competence were not connected with honesty, energy, adherence to duty, and every other civic virtue. When it is said or admitted by Gladstonians that the propertied classes of Ireland are against Home Rule we know what this means; it means that the energy of Ireland is against Home Rule, that the honesty of Ireland is against Home Rule, that the learning of Ireland is against Home Rule, that all that makes a nation great is against Home Rule, and that the Irishmen most entitled to our respect and honour implore us not to force upon them the curse of Home Rule. This is no trifle. Let us at any rate have done with phrases; let us admit that the satisfaction of Ireland means merely the satisfaction of a class, though it may be the most numerous class of Irishmen, and that it also means the bitter discontent of the one class of Irishmen who are specially loyal to Great Britain. If we are closing one feud we are assuredly opening another feud which it may at least be as hard to heal.

But is it true that even the Home Rulers of Ireland are satisfied? Their representatives indeed accept the new constitution. Their acceptance may well, as far as intention goes, be honest. Mr. Davitt, I dare say, when he sentimentalises in the House of Commons about his affection for the English democracy, is nearly, though not quite, as sincere as when he used to express passionate hatred of England.[99] But acquiescence is one thing, satisfaction is another. There is every reason why the Irish members should acquiesce in the new constitution. They obtain much, and they gain the means of getting more. Quite possibly they feel grateful. But their gratitude is not the gratitude of Ireland, and gratitude is hardly a sentiment possible, or indeed becoming, to a nation.

England saved Portugal and Spain from the domination of France. Do we find that Portuguese and Spaniards gladly subordinate their interests to the welfare of England? France delivered Italy from thraldom to Austria; French blood paid the price of Italian freedom. Yet France is detested from one end of Italy to the other, whilst Italians rejoice in the alliance with Austria. In all this there is nothing unreasonable and nothing to blame. Policy is not sentimentality, and the relations of peoples cannot be regulated in the same manner as the relations of individuals. Thirty, twenty, ten, five years hence all the sentiment of the year 1893 will have vanished. Irish content and satisfaction must, if it is to exist at all, rest on a far more solid basis than the hopes, the words, the pledges, or the intentions of Mr. M'Carthy, Mr. Sexton, or Mr. Davitt. Note that their satisfaction is even now of a limited kind. It absolutely depends on the new constitution being worked exactly in the way which they desire. The use of the veto, legislation for Ireland by the Imperial Parliament, any conflict between the wish of England and the wish, I do not say of Ireland, but of the Irish Nationalists, must from the nature of things put an end to all gratitude or content. But we may go further than this: the new constitution contains elements of discord. It denies to Ireland the rights of a nation; it does not concede to her the full privileges of colonial independence. No genuine Nationalist can really acquiesce in the prohibition of Ireland's arming even in self-defence. Where, again, is the Nationalist who is prepared to say that he will not if the Bill is passed demand that every conspirator and every dynamiter, who is suffering for the cause of Ireland, shall be released from prison? Is it credible that the Land Leaguers have forgotten what is due to the wounded soldiers of their cause? Are they prepared to forget the imperative claims of evicted tenants or imprisoned zealots?[100] I cannot believe it.

But if they are so base as to forget what is due to their friends and victims, what trust could England place in the permanence of any sentiment expressed by such men with however much temporary fervour and however much apparent honesty? If, as I am convinced, the Irish leaders are not prepared to betray the fanatics or ruffians who have trusted and served them, then with what content does England look on the prospect of a general amnesty for criminals or of lavish rewards for breach of contract and the defiance of law?

But in truth the new constitution provides for the general discontent, not of one class of Irishmen, but of the whole Irish people.

Home Rule is at bottom federalism, and the successful working of a federal government depends on the observation by its founders of two principles. The first is that no one State should be so much more powerful than the rest as to be capable of vying in strength with the whole, or even with many of them combined.[101] The second is that the federal power should never if possible come into direct conflict with the authority of any State. Each of these well-known principles has, partly from necessity and partly from want of skill, been violated by the constructors of the spurious federation which is to be miscalled the United Kingdom. The confederacy will consist of two States; the one, England, to use popular but highly significant language, in wealth, in population, and in prestige immensely outweighs the other, Ireland. And by an error less excusable because it might have been avoided, the power of the central government will be brought into direct conflict with the authority of the Irish State. Read the Bill as it should be read by any one who wishes to understand the working of the new constitution, and throughout substitute 'England' for the term 'United Kingdom.' Note then what must be the operation of the constitution in the eyes of an Irishman. The federal power is the power of England. An English Viceroy instructed by an English Ministry will veto Bills passed by an Irish Parliament and approved by the Irish people. An English court will annul Irish Acts; English revenue officers will collect Irish customs, and every penny of the Irish customs will pass into the English Exchequer. An English army commanded by English officers, acting under the orders of English ministers, will be quartered up and down Ireland, and, in the last resort, English soldiers will be employed to wring money from the Irish Exchequer for the rigorous payment of debts due from Ireland to England. Will any Irishman of spirit bear this? Will not Irishmen of all creeds and parties come to hate the constitution which subjects Ireland to English rule when England shall have in truth been turned into an alien power?

The new constitution does not in any case satisfy England.

That England is opposed to Home Rule is admitted on all hands; that England has good reason to oppose the new form of Home Rule with very special bitterness is apparent to every Unionist, and must soon become apparent to any candid man, whether Gladstonian or Unionist, who carefully studies the provisions of the new constitution, and meditates on the effect of retaining Irish representatives in the Parliament at Westminster. For my present purpose there is no need to establish that English discontent is reasonable; enough to note its existence.

A consideration must be here noticed which as the controversy over Home Rule goes on will come into more and more prominence. We are engaged in rearranging new terms of union between England and Ireland; this is the real effect of the Home Rule Bill; but for such a rearrangement Great Britain and Ireland must in fairness, no less than in logic, be treated as independent parties. Whether you make a Union or remodel a Union between two countries the satisfaction of both parties to the treaty is essential. Till England is satisfied the new constitution lacks moral sanction. That the Act of Union could not have been carried without, at any rate, the technical assent both of Great Britain and Ireland is admitted, and yet the moral validity of the Treaty of Union is, whether rightly or not, after the lapse of ninety-three years assailed, on the ground that the assent of Ireland was obtained by fraud and undue influence. But if the separate assent of both parties was required for the making of the treaty, so the free assent of both must be required for its revision, and the politicians who force on Great Britain the terms of a political partnership which Great Britain rejects, repeat in 1893 and in an aggravated form the error or crime of 1800.[102]

Secondly. The new constitution rests on an unsound foundation.

It is a topsy-turvy constitution, it aims at giving weakness supremacy over strength.

The main, though not the sole, object of a well-constituted polity is to place political power (whilst guarding against its abuse) in the hands of the men, or body of men, who from the nature of things, i.e. by wealth, education, position, numbers, or otherwise, form the most powerful portion of a given state. The varying forms of the English Constitution have, on the whole, possessed the immense merit of giving at each period of our history political authority into the hands of the class, or classes, who made up the true strength of the nation. Right has in a rough way been combined with might. Wherever this is not the case, and genuine power is not endowed with political authority, there exists a sure cause of revolution; for sooner or later the natural forces of any society must assert their predominance. No institution will stand which does not correspond with the nature of things. Vain were all the efforts of party interest or of philanthropic enthusiasm to give to the Blacks political predominance in the Southern States. Votes, ballot boxes, laws, federal arms, all were in vain. By methods which no man will justify, but which no power could resist, the Whites have re-acquired political authority. The nature of things could not be made obedient to the dogmas of democratic equality. Now the gravest flaw of the new constitution, the disease from which it is certain to perish, is that, in opposition to the forces which ultimately must determine the destiny of the United Kingdom, it renders the strong elements of the community subordinate to the weak.

In Ireland Dublin is made supreme over Belfast, the South is made not the equal, but in effect the master of the North; ignorance is given dominion over education, poverty is allowed to dispose of wealth. If Ireland were an independent state, or even a self-governed British colony, things would right themselves. But the politicians who are to rule in Dublin will not depend upon their own resources or be checked by a sense of their own feebleness. They will be constitutionally and legally entitled to the support of the British army; they will constitute the worst form of government of which the world has had experience, a government which relying for its existence on the aid of an external power finds in its very feebleness support for tyranny. Murmurs are already heard of armed resistance. These mutterings, we are told, are nothing but bluster. It is at any rate that sort of "bluster" at which the justice and humanity of a loyal Englishman must take alarm. I have not yet learnt to look without horror on the possibility of civil war, nor to picture to myself without emotion the situation of brave men compelled by the British army to obey rulers whose moral claim to allegiance they justly deny and whose power unaided by British arms they contemn. Civil warfare created by English policy and despotism maintained by English arms must surely be to any Englishman objects of equal abhorrence.

But in England no less than in Ireland our new constitution gives artificial power to weakness. At Westminster the Irish members, be they 80 or 103, will have no legitimate place. Mr. Gladstone on this point is, for aught I know, at one with the Unionists. In 1886 he without scruple, and therefore no doubt without any sense of injustice, expelled the representatives of Ireland from the British Parliament. In 1893 he brings them back to Westminster. But his words betray his hesitation. He expects, may we not say he hopes, that they will remain in Ireland and on their occasional visits to London have the good sense and good taste not to interfere in British affairs. Few are the persons who share these anticipations. If they are to be realised they must be embodied in the constitution; the Premier might at this moment without shame, and without regret, revert to the better policy of 1886. On his present policy we all know that his expectations will not be fulfilled. The voluntary absence of the Irish members from Westminster is as vain a dream as the fancy that Ireland under Home Rule may suffer from a plethora of money. To Westminster the Irish members will come. If they do not come of their own accord they will be fetched by allies who need their help. At Westminster they will hold the balance of parties, and will while the constitution lasts rule the destiny of England with a sole regard at best to the immediate interest of Ireland, at worst to the interests of an Irish faction. To Ireland will be given power without responsibility, to England will belong responsibility without power. Nor will the unnatural subjection of a great, a flourishing, a wealthy, and a proud country to a weaker and poorer neighbour be rendered the more bearable by the knowledge that the ill-starred supremacy of Ireland means, in England, the equally unnatural and equally ominous predominance of an English faction, which, since it needs Irish aid, does not command England's confidence. Radicals or revolutionists will in the long run have bitter cause to regret an arrangement which identifies their political triumph with England's humiliation.

Thirdly. The new constitution is based on a play of words which conceals two contradictory interpretations of its character.[103]

The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament means to Irish Home Rulers and to most Gladstonians that Ireland shall possess colonial independence.[104] It means to Unionists and to many electors who can hardly be called either Unionists or Gladstonians, that the British Parliament, or, in other words, England, shall retain the real, effective, and even habitual control of Irish affairs. In the one sense it means only that Ireland shall remain part of the British Empire, in the other that Ireland shall still be part of the United Kingdom. And, what is of great importance, the mass of Englishmen waver between these two interpretations of Imperial supremacy. When they think of Home Rule as satisfying Ireland, they hold that it gives Irishmen everything which they can possibly ask. When they think of Home Rule as not dismembering the United Kingdom, they fancy that it leaves to the British Parliament all the real authority which Parliament can possibly require.

This difference of interpretation lays the foundation of misunderstanding, but it does far more harm than this. It must keep Irish Nationalists alarmed, and not without reason, for the permanence of the independence which they may have obtained. A change of feeling or a change of party may cause the Imperial Parliament to assert its reserved authority. England keeps her pledges.[105] Yes, but here it is not a mere question of good faith. When two contractors each from the beginning put bona fide a different interpretation upon their contract, neither of them is chargeable with dishonesty for acting in accordance with his own view of the agreement. The spirit of Unionism and the spirit of Separation will survive the creation of the new constitution. Under one form or another Unionists will be opposed to Federalists and it is more than possible, should the Bill pass, that the division of English parties may turn upon their reading of the Irish Government Act, 1893.

The possibility, again, that the Parliament at Westminster may assert its reserved authority, if it raises the fears of Irishman, may excite the hopes of English politicians. If at any time the supremacy of Ireland becomes unbearable to British national sentiment, or if the condition of Ireland menaces or is thought to menace English interests, the new constitution places in the hands of a British majority a ready-made weapon for the restoration of British power. The result might be attained without the necessity for passing any Act of Parliament, or of repealing a single section of the Irish Government Act, 1893. A strong Viceroy might be sent to Ireland; he might be instructed not to convoke the Irish Parliament at all; or, having convoked, at once to prorogue it. He might thereupon form any Ministry he chose out of the members of the Irish Privy Council. The Imperial Parliament would at once resume its present position and could pass laws for Ireland. This might be called revolution or reaction. For my argument it matters not two straws by what name this policy be designated. The scheme sketched out is not a policy which I recommend. My contention is not that it will be expedient—this is a matter depending upon circumstances which no man can foresee—but that it will be strictly and absolutely legal.

The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, combined with the presence of the Irish members at Westminster, will thus by a curious fatality turn out a source at once of permanent disquietude to Ireland and of immediate, if not of permanent, weakness to England.

Our New Constitution is not made to last Home Rule does not close a controversy; it opens a revolution.

No one in truth expects that the new constitution will stand. Its very builders hesitate when they speak of its permanence,[106] and are grateful for the generous credulity of a friend who believes in its finality. Nor is it hard to conjecture (and in such a matter nothing but conjecture is possible) what are the forces or tendencies which threaten its destruction.

If Ireland is discontented Irishmen will demand either the extension of federalism or separation. In every federal government the tendency of the States is to diminish as far as possible the authority of the federal power. But this tendency will be specially strong in the grotesque Anglo-Irish federation, since the federal power will be nothing but the predominance of England. The mode of weakening the federal authority is only too obvious. 'The more there is of the more,' says a profound Spanish proverb, 'the less there is of the less.' The more the number of separate States in the confederacy, the less will be the weight of England, and the greater the relative authority of Ireland. Let England, Scotland, and Wales become separate States, let the Channel Islands and Man, and, if possible, some colonies, be added to the federation, and as the greatness of England dwindles so the independence of Ireland will grow.

Some seven years ago Sir Gavan Duffy predicted that before ten years had elapsed there would be a federation of the Empire.[107] Like other prophets he may have antedated the fulfilment of his prediction, but his dictum is the forecast of an experienced politician—it points to a pressing danger. Home Rule for Ireland menaces the dissolution of the United Kingdom, and the unity of the United Kingdom is the necessary condition for maintaining the existence of the British Empire. Home Rule is the first stage to federalism.

But Irish discontent, should it not find satisfaction in a movement for federalism, will naturally take the form of the demand for colonial or for national independence. You cannot play with the spirit of political nationality. The semi-independence of Ireland from England, combined with the undue influence of Ireland in English politics, is certain to produce both unreasonable and reasonable grounds for still further loosening the tie which binds together the two islands. The cry 'Ireland a nation' is one of which no Irishman need be ashamed, and to which North and South alike, irritated by the vexations of a makeshift constitution, are, as I have already insisted, likely enough to rally.

Nor is it certain that Irish Federalists or Irish Nationalists will not obtain allies in England. The politicians who are content with a light heart to destroy the work of Pitt may, for aught I know, with equal levity, annul the Union with Scotland and undo the work of Somers, or by severing Wales from the rest of England render futile the achievement of the greatest of the Plantagenets. Enthusiasts for 'Home Rule all round' would appear to regard their capacity for destroying the United Kingdom as a proof of their ability to build up a new fabric of Imperial power, and to fulfil their vain dreams of a federated Empire. Sensible men may doubt whether a turn for revolutionary destruction is any evidence that politicians possess the rare gift of constructive statesmanship. And should the working of the new constitution confirm these doubts, persons of prudence will begin to perceive that Irish independence is for both England and Ireland a less evil than the extension of federalism.

The natural expression however of English discontent or disappointment is reactionary opposition. Reaction, or the attempt of one party in a state to reverse a fundamental policy deliberately adopted by the nation, is one of the worst among the offspring of revolution, and is almost, though not entirely, unknown to the history of England. Yet there is more than one reason why if the Home Rule Bill be carried, reaction should make its ill-omened appearance in the field of English public life. The policy of Home Rule, even should it be for the moment successful, lacks the moral sanctions which have compelled English statesmen to accept accomplished facts. The methods of agitation in its favour have outraged the moral sense of the community. Mr. Gladstone's victory is the victory of Mr. Parnell, and the triumph of Parnellism is the triumph of conspiracy, and of conspiracy rendered the more base because it was masked under the appearance of a constitutional movement. Neither the numbers nor the composition of the ministerial majority are impressive. The tactics of silence, evasion, and ambiguity may aid in gaining a parliamentary victory, but deprive the victory of that respect for the victors on the part of the vanquished which, in civil contests at any rate, alone secures permanent peace. But the pleas and justifications for reaction are rarely its causes. If Englishmen attempt to bring about the legal destruction of the new constitution, their action will be produced by a sense of the false position assigned to England. No device of statesmanship can stand which is condemned by the nature of things. The predominance of England in the affairs of the United Kingdom is secured by sanctions which in the long run can neither be defied nor set aside; the constitution which does not recognise this predominance is doomed to ruin. That its overthrow would be just no one dare predict; the future is as uncertain as it is dark. A main reason why a wise man must deprecate the weak surrender by Englishmen of rightful power is the dread that, if in a moment of irritation they reassert their strength, they may exhibit neither their good faith nor their justice.

FOOTNOTES:

[95] J. M'Carthy, April 10, 1893, Times Parliamentary Debates, p. 354. No part of these quotations is italicised in the report.

[96] J. M'Carthy.

[97] Mr. Sexton.

[98] Mr. Gladstone, April 21, 1893, Times Parliamentary Debates, p. 565.

[99] At Bodyke, June 2, 1887, Mr. M. Davitt said:—'Our people, however, who so leave Ireland are not lost in the Irish cause, for they will join the ranks of the Ireland of retribution beyond the Atlantic; and when the day shall again come that we have a right to manage our own affairs, the sun may some day shine down upon England when we here in Ireland will have the opportunity of having vengeance upon the enemy for its crimes in Ireland.'—Freeman's Journal, June 3, 1887. See 'Notes on the Bill,' published by the Irish Unionist Alliance, p. 368. These expressions were used after the union of hearts.

[100] 'But all these matters are, as it were, minor details. They all sink into comparative insignificance before the one great demand—and I almost apologise for mentioning them—because I want you to concentrate your attention on the one great demand which we make, and the one unalterable statement we intend to adhere to, that whether guilty or innocent, these men, according to their lights and their consciences, were trying to serve Ireland; that any of them who were guilty were driven into this course by the misgovernment of Ireland, and the oppression of Ireland by an outside power, and that if we are asked to settle this Irish question, if we are asked to let peace reign where discord and hatred reign at present, there must be no victims—that if there is to be peace there must also be amnesty. I don't discuss the question of guilt or innocence. For the sake of argument I will say that there are some men in jail who are guilty. They must come out as well as the innocent, because their guilt is due to misgovernment in the past.'—Mr. Pierce Mahony, Irish Independent, April 5. See 'Notes on the Bill,' p. 423.

'There is no use in deceiving ourselves upon this matter; we would be fools if we thought that in the next few weeks, or within the next few months, we would succeed in getting our brethren out of prison. I don't believe we will; ... but I am convinced of this, that there is not a man amongst them who will ever be called upon to serve anything like the remainder of his sentence. I am convinced that in a short time—and the extent of its duration depends upon other circumstances—every one of these men will be restored to liberty if only we conduct this agitation with determination, with resolution, and I would say above all with moderation and with wisdom.'—Mr. John Redmond, M.P., Dublin Irish Independent, April 5. See 'Notes on the Bill,' p. 424.

[101] See Mill, Representative Government, 1st ed. p. 300.

[102] Of course I do not for a moment dispute the legal right of Parliament to repeal all or any of the articles of the Treaty of Union with Ireland. I am writing now not upon the law, but upon the ethics of the constitution. My contention is, that, as things stand, the undoubted assent of Great Britain (or even perhaps of England, in the narrower sense) is morally requisite for the repeal or at any rate for the remodelling of the Treaty of Union. Note that Ireland would stand morally and logically in a stronger position if demanding Separation than when demanding a revision of the Act of Union. An example shows my meaning. A, B, and C form a partnership. A is by far the richest, and C by far the poorest of the firm. C finds the terms of partnership onerous. He may have a moral right to retire, but certainly he cannot have a moral, and would hardly under any system of law have a legal, right to say, 'I do not want to leave the firm, but I insist that the terms of partnership be remodelled wholly in my favour.' Nor again is it conceivable that B and C by uniting together could in fairness claim to impose upon A disadvantages the burden of which he had never intended to accept.

[103] See pp. 22-31, ante.

[104] 'But who proposed that Ireland should be anything else than an integral part of the United Kingdom (Ministerial cheers), or rather of the Empire?' (Opposition cheers).—Mr. Sexton, April 20, 1893, Times Parliamentary Debates, p. 522. The confusion of ideas and the hesitation implied in Mr. Sexton's expressions are noteworthy.

[105] England adhered with absolute fidelity to her renunciation of the right to legislate for Ireland. Whatever were the other flaws in the Treaty of Union, it was no violation either of 22 Geo. III. c. 63, or of 23 Geo. III. c. 28. The worst features of the method by which the Act of Union was carried would have been avoided had the English Parliament resumed the right to legislate for Ireland. The Treaty of Union depends on Acts both of the British and of the Irish Legislature. This is elementary but has escaped the attention of Mr. Sexton (see Times Parliamentary Debates, Feb. 13, 1893, p. 319), whose investigations into the history of his country are apparently recent.

[106] "The plan that was to be proposed was to be such as, at least in the judgment of its promoters, presented the necessary characteristics—I will not say of finality, because it is a discredited word—but of a real and continuing settlement."—Mr. Gladstone, Feb. 13, 1893, Times Parliamentary Debates, p. 303.

[107] See Mr. Gladstone's Irish Constitution, Contemporary Review, May, 1886, p. 616.



CHAPTER IV

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'etat 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?