|
|
THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE
BY
ERSKINE CHILDERS
AUTHOR OF
"THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS," "WAR AND THE ARME BLANCHE," "GERMAN INFLUENCE
ON BRITISH CAVALRY"; EDITOR OF VOL. V. OF THE _TIMES_ "HISTORY OF THE
WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA," ETC.
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1911
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGES
INTRODUCTION vii-xvi
I. THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA 1-20
II. REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND 21-41
III. GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT 42-59
IV. THE UNION 60-71
V. CANADA AND IRELAND 72-104
VI. AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND 105-119
VII. SOUTH AFRICA AND IRELAND 120-143
VIII. THE ANALOGY 144-149
IX. IRELAND TO-DAY 150-187
X. THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE 188-229
I. The Elements of the Problem 188-197
II. Federal or Colonial Home Rule 198-203
III. The Exclusion or Retention of Irish Members
at Westminster 203-213
IV. Irish Powers and their Bearing on Exclusion 213-229
XI. UNION FINANCE 230-257
I. Before the Union 230-231
II. From the Union to the Financial Relations
Commission of 1894-1896 232-239
III. The Financial Relations Commission of 1894-1896 239-257
XII. THE PRESENT FINANCIAL SITUATION 258-279
I. Anglo-Irish Finance To-day 258-264
II. Irish Expenditure 264-274
III. Irish Revenue 274-279
XIII. FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE 280-306
I. The Essence of Home Rule 280-281
II. The Deficit 281-286
III. Further Contribution to Imperial Services 286
IV. Ireland's Share of the National Debt 286
V. Ireland's Share of Imperial Miscellaneous Revenue 287
VI. Irish Control of Customs and Excise 287-294
VII. Federal Finance 294-300
VIII. Alternative Schemes of Home Rule Finance 300-306
XIV. LAND PURCHASE FINANCE 307-321
I. Land Purchase Loans 307-319
II. Minor Loans to Ireland 319-321
XV. THE IRISH CONSTITUTION 322-338
CONCLUSION 339-341
APPENDIX 342-347
INDEX 348-354
INTRODUCTION
My purpose in this volume is to advocate a definite scheme of
self-government for Ireland. That task necessarily involves an
historical as well as a constructive argument. It would be truer,
perhaps, to say that the greater part of the constructive case for Home
Rule must necessarily be historical. To postulate a vague acceptance of
the principle of Home Rule, and to proceed at once to the details of the
Irish Constitution, would be a waste of time and labour. It is
impossible even to attempt to plan the framework of a Home Rule Bill
without a tolerably close knowledge not only of Anglo-Irish relations,
but of the Imperial history of which they form a part. The Act will
succeed exactly in so far as it gives effect to the lessons of
experience. It will fail at every point where those lessons are
neglected. Constitutions which do not faithfully reflect the experience
of the sovereign power which accords them, and of the peoples which have
to live under them, are at the best perilous experiments liable to
defeat the end of their framers.
I shall enter into history only so far as it is relevant to the
constitutional problem, using the comparative method, and confining
myself almost exclusively to the British Empire past and present. For
the purposes of the Irish controversy it is unnecessary to travel
farther. In one degree or another every one of the vexed questions which
make up the Irish problem has arisen again and again within the circle
of the English-speaking races. As a nation we have a body of experience
applicable to the case of Ireland incomparably greater than that
possessed by any other race in the world. If, from timidity, prejudice,
or sheer neglect, we fail to use it, we shall earn the heavy censure
reserved for those who sin against the light.
For the comparative sketch I shall attempt, materials in the shape of
facts established beyond all controversy are abundant. Colonial history,
thanks to colonial freedom, is almost wholly free from the distorting
influence of political passion. South African history alone will need
revision in the light of recent events. When, under the alchemy of free
national institutions, Ireland has undergone the same transformation as
South Africa, her unhappy history will be chronicled afresh with a
juster sense of perspective and a juster apportionment of responsibility
for the calamities which have befallen her. And yet, if we consider the
field for partisan bias which Irish history presents, the amount of
ground common to writers of all shades of political opinion is now
astonishingly large. The result, I think, is due mainly to the good
influence of that eminent historian and Unionist politician, the late
Professor Lecky. Indeed, an advocate of Home Rule, nervously suspicious
of tainted material, could afford to rely solely on his "History of
Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," "Leaders of Public Opinion in
Ireland," and "Clerical Influences,"[1] which are Nationalist textbooks,
and, for quite recent events, on "A Consideration of Ireland in the
Nineteenth Century," by Mr. G. Locker-Lampson, the present Unionist
Member for Salisbury. A strange circumstance; but Ireland, like all
countries where political development has been forcibly arrested from
without, is a land of unending paradox. It is only one of innumerable
anomalies that Irish Nationalists should use Unionist histories as
propaganda for Nationalism; that the majority of Irish Unionists should
insist on ignoring all historical traditions save those which in any
normal country would long ago have been consigned by general consent to
oblivion and the institutions they embody overthrown; and that Unionist
writers such as those I have mentioned should be able to reconcile their
history and their politics only by a pessimism with regard to the
tendencies of human nature in general, or of Irish nature in particular,
with which their own historical teaching, founded on a true perception
of cause and effect, appears to be in direct contradiction.
The truth is that the question is one of the construction, not of the
verification, of facts; of prophecy for the future, rather than of bare
affirmation or negation. No one can presume to determine such a question
without a knowledge of how human beings have been accustomed to act
under similar circumstances. Illumination of that sort Irish history and
the contemporary Irish problem incontestably need. The modern case for
the Union rests mainly on the abnormality of Ireland, and that is
precisely why it is such a formidable case to meet. For Ireland in many
ways is painfully abnormal. The most cursory study of her institutions
and social, economic, and political life demonstrate that fact. The
Unionist, fixing his eyes on some of the secondary peculiarities, and
ignoring their fundamental cause, demonstrates it with ease, and by a
habit of mind which yields only with infinite slowness to the growth of
political enlightenment, passes instinctively to the deduction that
Irish abnormalities render Ireland unfit for self-government. In other
words, he prescribes for the disease a persistent application of the
very treatment which has engendered it. Whatever the result, there is a
plausible answer. If Ireland is disorderly and retrograde, how can she
deserve freedom? If she is peaceful, and shows symptoms of economic
recuperation, clearly she does not need or even want it. In other words,
if all that is healthy in the patient battles desperately and not in
vain, first against irritant poison, and then against soporific drugs,
this healthy struggle for self-preservation is attributed not to native
vitality, but to the bracing regimen of coercive government.
This train of argument, so far from being confined to Ireland, is as old
as the human race itself. Of all human passions, that for political
domination is the last to yield to reason. Men are naturally inclined to
attribute admitted social evils to every cause--religion, climate, race,
congenital defects of character, the inscrutable decrees of Divine
Providence--rather than to the form of political institutions; in other
words, to the organic structure of the community, and to rest the
security of an Empire on any other foundation than that of the liberty
of its component parts. If, in one case, their own experience proves
them wrong, they will go to the strangest lengths of perversity in
misreading their own experience, and they will seek every imaginable
pretext for distinguishing the case from its predecessor. Underlying all
is a nervous terror of the abuse of freedom founded on the assumption
that men will continue to act when free exactly as they acted under the
demoralizing influence of coercion. The British Empire has grown, and
continues to grow, in spite of this deeply rooted political doctrine.
Ireland is peculiar only in that her proximity to the seat of power has
exposed her for centuries to an application of the doctrine in its most
extreme form and without any hope of escape through the merciful
accidents to which more fortunate communities owe their emancipation.
Canada owes her position in the Empire, and the Empire itself exists in
its present form to-day, owing to the accident that the transcendantly
important principle of responsible government advocated by Lord Durham
as a remedy for the anarchy and stagnation in which he found both the
British and the French Provinces of Canada in 1838, did not require
Imperial legislation, and was established without the Parliamentary or
electoral sanction of Great Britain. Lord Durham was derided as a
visionary, and abused as unpatriotic for the assertion of this simple
principle. Far in advance of his time as he was, he himself shrank from
the full application of his own lofty ideal, and consequently made one
great, though under the circumstances not a capital, mistake in his
diagnosis, and it was to that mistake only that Parliament gave
legislative effect in 1840. By one of the most melancholy ironies in all
history Ireland was the source of his error, so that the Union of the
Canadas, dissolved as a failure by the Canadians themselves in 1867, was
actually based on the success of the Anglo-Irish Union in repressing a
dangerous nationality. Did the proof of the error in Canada induce
Englishmen to question the soundness of the precedent on which the error
was based? On the contrary, the lesson passed unnoticed, and the Irish
precedent has survived to darken thought, to retard democratic progress,
and to pervert domestic and Imperial policy to this very day. It even
had the truly extraordinary retrospective effect of obliterating from
the minds of many eminent statesmen the significance of the Canadian
parallel; for it is only six years ago that a Secretary of State for the
Colonies penned a despatch recommending for the Transvaal a form of
government similar to that which actually produced the Canadian
disorders of 1837, and supporting it by an argument whose effect was not
merely to resuscitate what time had proved to be false in Durham's
doctrine, but to discard what time had proved to be true. As for
Ireland herself, I know no more curious illustration of the strong
tendency, even on the part of the most fair-minded men, to place that
country outside the pale of social or political science, and of the
extreme reluctance to judge its inhabitants by the elementary standards
of human conduct, than the book to which I referred above--Mr.
Locker-Lampson's "A Consideration of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century."
For what he admits to be the ruinous results of British Government in
the past, the author in the last few pages of a lengthy volume has no
better cure to suggest than a continuance of British government, and he
defends this course by a terse enumeration of the very phenomena which
in Durham's opinion rendered the grant of Home Rule to Canada
imperative, concluding with a paragraph which, with the substitution of
"Canada" for "Ireland," constitutes an admirably condensed epitome of
the arguments used both by politicians at home, and the minorities in
Canada, in favour of Durham's error and against the truth he
established.
Mr. Lecky represents a somewhat different school of thought, and reached
his Unionism by reasoning more profound and consistent, but, on the
other hand, wholly destructive of the Imperial theory as held by the
modern school of Imperialists. His fear and distrust of democracy in all
its forms and in all lands[2] was such that he naturally dreaded Irish
Nationalism, which is a form of democratic revolt suppressed so long and
by such harsh methods as to exhibit features easily open to criticism.
But the gist of his argument would have applied just as well to the
political evolution of the self-governing Colonies. Indeed, if he had
lived to see the last Imperial Conference, the pessimism of so clear a
thinker would assuredly have given way before the astounding contrast
between those countries in which his political philosophy had been
abjured, and the only white country in the Empire where by sheer force
it had been maintained intact.
If my only object in writing were to contribute something toward the
dissipation of the fears and doubts which render it so hard to carry any
measure, however small, of Home Rule for Ireland, I should hope for
little success. Practical men, with a practical decision to make, rarely
look outside the immediate facts before them. Extremists, in a case like
that of Ireland, are reluctant to take account of what Lord Morley
calls "the fundamental probabilities of civil society." Sir Edward
Carson would be more than human if he were to be influenced by a
demonstration that the case he makes against Home Rule is the same as
that made by the minority leaders, not only in the French, but in the
British Province of Canada. Most of the minority to which he appeals
would now regard as an ill-timed paradox the view that the very vigour
of their opposition to Home Rule is a better omen for the success of
Home Rule than that kind of sapless Nationalism, astonishingly rare in
Ireland under the circumstances, which is inclined to yield to the
insidious temptation of setting the "eleemosynary benefits"--to use Mr.
Walter Long's phrase[3]--derived from the British connection above the
need for self-help and self-reliance. The real paradox is that any
Irishmen, Unionist or Nationalist, should tolerate advisers who, however
sincere and patriotic, avowedly regard Ireland as the parasite of Great
Britain; who appeal to the lower nature of her people; to the fears of
one section and the cupidity of both; advising Unionists to rely on
British power and all Irishmen on British alms. A day will come when the
humiliation will be seen in its true light. Even now, I do venture to
appeal to that small but powerful group of moderate Irish Unionists who,
so far from fearing revenge or soliciting charity, spend their whole
lives in the noble aim of uniting Irishmen of all creeds on a basis of
common endeavour for their own economic and spiritual salvation; who
find their work checked in a thousand ways by the perpetual maintenance
of a seemingly barren and sentimental agitation; who distrust both the
parties to this agitation; but who are reluctant to accept the view
that, without the satisfaction of the national claim, and without the
national responsibility thereby conferred, their own aims can never be
fully attained. I should be happy indeed if I could do even a little
towards persuading some of these men that they mistake cause and effect;
misinterpret what they resent; misjudge where they distrust, and in
standing aloof from the battle for legislative autonomy, unconsciously
concede a point--disinterested, constructive optimists as they are--to
the interested and destructive pessimism which, from Clare's savage
insults to Mr. Walter Long's contemptuous patronage, has always lain at
the root of British policy towards Ireland.
In the meantime, for those who like or dislike it, Home Rule is
imminent. We are face to face no longer with a highly speculative, but
with a vividly practical problem, raising legislative and administrative
questions of enormous practical importance, and next year we shall be
dealing with this problem in an atmosphere of genuine reality totally
unlike that of 1886, when Home Rule was a startling novelty to the
British electorate, or of 1893, when the shadow of impending defeat
clouded debate and weakened counsel. It would be pleasant to think that
the time which has elapsed, besides greatly mitigating anti-Irish
prejudice, had been used for scientific study and dispassionate
discussion of the problem of Home Rule. Unfortunately, after eighteen
years the problem remains almost exactly where it was. There are no
detailed proposals of an authoritative character in existence. No
concrete scheme was submitted to the country in the recent elections.
None is before the country now. The reason, of course, is that the Irish
question is still an acute party question, not merely in Ireland, but in
Great Britain. Party passion invariably discourages patient constructive
thought, and all legislation associated with it suffers in consequence.
Tactical considerations, sometimes altogether irrelevant to the special
issue, have to be considered. In the case of Home Rule, when the balance
of parties is positively determined by the Irish vote, the difficulty
reaches its climax. It is idle to blame individuals. We should blame the
Union. So long as one island democracy claims to determine the destinies
of another island democracy, of whose special needs and circumstances it
is admittedly ignorant, so long will both islands suffer.
This ignorance is not disputed. No Irish Unionist claims that Great
Britain should govern Ireland on the ground that the British electorate,
or even British statesmen, understand Irish questions. On the contrary,
in Ireland, at any rate, their ignorance is a matter for satirical
comment with all parties. What he complains of is, that the British
electorate is beginning to carry its ignorance to the point of believing
that the Irish electorate is competent to decide Irish questions, and
in educating the British electorate he has hitherto devoted himself
exclusively to the eradication of this error. The financial results of
the Union are such that he is now being cajoled into adding, "It is your
money, not your wisdom, that we want." Once more, an odd state of
affairs, and some day we shall all marvel in retrospect that the Union
was so long sustained by a separatist argument, reinforced in latter
days by such an inconsistent and unconscionable claim.
In the meantime, if only the present situation can be turned to
advantage, this crowning paradox is the most hopeful element in the
whole of a tangled question. It is not only that the British elector is
likely to revolt at once against the slur upon his intelligence and the
drain upon his purse, but that Irish Unionism, once convinced of the
tenacity and sincerity of that revolt, is likely to undergo a dramatic
and beneficent transformation. If they are to have Home Rule, Irish
Unionists--even those who now most heartily detest it--will want the
best possible scheme of Home Rule, and the best possible scheme is not
likely to be the half measure which, from no fault of the statesman
responsible for it, tactical difficulties may make inevitable. If the
vital energy now poured into sheer uncompromising opposition to the
principles of Home Rule could be transmuted into intellectual and moral
effort after the best form of Home Rule, I believe that the result would
be a drastic scheme.
Compromise enters more or less into the settlement of all burning
political questions. That is inevitable under the party system; but of
all questions under the sun, Home Rule questions are the least
susceptible of compromise so engendered. The subject, in reality, is not
suitable for settlement at Westminster. This is a matter of experience,
not of assertion. Within the present bounds of the Empire no lasting
Constitution has ever been framed for a subordinate State to the
moulding of which Parliament, in the character of a party assembly,
contributed an active share. Constitutions which promote prosperity and
loyalty have actually or virtually been framed by those who were to live
under them. If circumstances make it impossible to adopt this course for
Ireland, let us nevertheless remember that all the friction and enmity
between the Mother Country and subordinate States have arisen, not from
the absence, but from the inadequacy of self-governing powers. Checks
and restrictions, so far from benefiting Great Britain or the Colonies,
have damaged both in different degrees, the Colonies suffering most
because these checks and restrictions produce in the country submitted
to them peculiar mischiefs which exist neither under a despotic regime
nor an unnatural Legislative Union, fruitful of evil as both those
systems are. The damage is not evanescent, but is apt to bite deep into
national character and to survive the abolition of the institutions
which caused it. The Anglo-Irish Union was created and has ever since
been justified by a systematic defamation of Irish character. If it is
at length resolved to bury the slander and trust Ireland, in the name of
justice and reason let the trust be complete and the institutions given
her such as to permit full play to her best instincts and tendencies,
not such as to deflect them into wrong paths. Let us be scrupulously
careful to avoid mistakes which might lead to a fresh campaign of
defamation like that waged against Canada, as well as Ireland, between
1830 and 1840.
The position, I take it, is that most Irish Unionists still count,
rightly or wrongly, on defeating Home Rule, not only in the first
Parliamentary battle, but by exciting public opinion during the long
period of subsequent delay which the Parliament Bill permits. Not until
Home Rule is a moral certainty, and perhaps not even then, do the
extremists intend to consider the Irish Constitution in a practical
spirit. Surely this is a perilous policy. Surely it must be so regarded
by the moderate men--and there are many--who, if Home Rule comes, intend
to throw their abilities into making it a success, and who will be
indispensable to Ireland at a moment of supreme national importance.
Irretrievable mistakes may be made by too long a gamble with the chances
of political warfare. Whatever the scheme produced, the extremists will
have to oppose it tooth and nail. If the measure is big, sound, and
generous, it will be necessary to attack its best features with the
greatest vigour; to rely on beating up vague, anti-separatist sentiment
in Great Britain; to represent Irish Protestants as a timid race forced
to shelter behind British bayonets; in short, to use all the arguments
which, if Irish Unionists were compelled to frame a Constitution
themselves, they would scorn to employ, and which, if grafted on the Act
in the form of amendments, they themselves in after-years might
bitterly regret. Conversely, if the measure is a limited one, it will be
necessary to commend its worst features; to extol its eleemosynary side
and all the infractions of liberty which in actual practice they would
find intolerably irksome. Whatever happens, things will be said which
are not meant, and passions aroused which will be difficult to allay on
the eve of a crisis when Ireland will need the harmonious co-operation
of all her ablest sons.
If, behind the calculation of a victory within the next two years, there
lies the presentiment of an eventual defeat, let not the thought be
encouraged that a better form of Home Rule is likely to come from a Tory
than from a Liberal Government. Many Irish Unionists regard the prospect
of continued submission to a Liberal, or what they consider a
semi-Socialist, Government as the one consideration which would
reconcile them to Home Rule. No one can complain of that. But they make
a fatal mistake in denying Liberals credit for understanding questions
of Home Rule better than Tories. That, again, is a matter of proved
experience. Compare the abortive Transvaal Constitution of 1905 with the
reality of 1906, and measure the probable consequences of the former by
the actual results of the latter. Let them remember, too, that every
year which passes aggravates the financial difficulties which imperil
the future of Ireland.
The best hope of securing a final settlement of the Irish question in
the immediate future lies in promoting open discussion on the details of
the Home Rule scheme, and of drawing into that discussion all Irishmen
and Englishmen who realize the profound importance of the issue. This
book is offered as a small contribution to the controversy.
For help in writing it I am deeply indebted to many friends on both
sides of the Irish Channel, in Ireland to officials and private persons,
who have generously placed their experience at my disposal; while in
England I owe particular thanks to the Committee of which I had the
honour to be a member, which sat during the summer of this year under
the chairmanship of Mr. Basil Williams, and which published the series
of essays called "Home Rule Problems."
E.C.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The two latter works were written by Mr. Lecky in his Nationalist
youth the first and greater work after he had become a Unionist. They
form a connected whole, however, and are not inconsistent with one
another.
[2] See "Democracy and Liberty."
[3] "Did the people of Ireland understand that the destruction of the
Union, so lightly advocated by Lord Haldane, must result in the
cessation of those largely eleemosynary benefits to which the progress
of Ireland is due, her 'dissatisfaction' would be unmistakably directed
towards her false advisers?"--Letter to the _Belfast Telegraph_, October
7, 1911, criticizing Lord Haldane's preface to "Home Rule Problems."
ERRATA
Since this book went to press the Treasury has issued a revised version
of Return No. 220, 1911 [Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland, and
Ireland)], cancelling the Return issued in July, and correcting an error
made in it. It now appears that the "true" Excise revenue attributable
to Ireland from _spirits_ in 1910-11 (with deductions made by the
Treasury from the sum actually collected in Ireland) should be
L3,575,000, instead of L3,734,000, and that the total "true" Irish
revenue in that year was, therefore, L11,506,500, instead of
L11,665,500. In other words, Irish revenue for 1910-11 was
over-estimated in the Return now cancelled by L159,000.
The error does not affect the Author's argument as expounded in Chapters
XII. and XIII.; but it necessitates the correction of a number of
figures given by him, especially in Chapter XII., the principal change
being that the deficit in Irish revenue, as calculated on the mean of
the two years 1909-10 and 1910-11, should actually be L1,392,000,
instead of L1,312,500.
The full list of corrections is as follows:
Page 259, line 9, _for_ "L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000."
Page 260, table, third column, line 6, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_
"L9,952 500"; last line, _for_ "L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000."
Page 261, table, last column, last line but one, _for_ "L321,000,"
_read_ "L162,000"; last line (total), _for_ "L329,780,970," _read_
"L329,621,970."
Page 262, line 7, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_ "L9,952,500"; line 10,
_for_ "L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000."
Page 275. table, last column, line 2, _for_ "L3,734,000," _read_
"L3,575,000"; line 7, _for_ "L10,371,000," _read_ "L10,212,000"; line
14, _for_ "L11,665,500," _read_, "L11,506,500"; in text, last line but
one of page, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_ "L9,952,500."
Page 276, line 5, _for_ "L500,000," _read_, "L340,000"; table, last
column, line 2, _for_ "L3,316,000," _read_ "L3,236,500"; line 3, _for_
"L6,182,000," _read_ "L6,102,500"; line 9, _for_ "L8,737,500," _read_
"L8,658,000"; last line, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_ "L9,952,500."
Page 277, line 2, _for_ "L1,672,500," _read_ "L1,752,000"; line 7, _for_
"L1,312,500," _read_ "L1,392,000"; line 8, _for_ "L10,032,000," _read_
"L9,952,500"; line 12, _for_ "L1,672,500," _read_ "L1,752,000";
footnote, line 1, _for_ "L1,793,000," _read_ "L1,952,000."
Page 279, line 8, _for_ "70.75," _read_ "70.48."
Page 282, sixth line from bottom, _for_ "L1,312,500," _read_
"L1,392,000."
* * * * *
Page 246, line 8 and footnote, and page 295, lines 21-31: A temporary
measure has been passed (Surplus Revenue Act, 1910), under which the
Surplus Commonwealth Revenue is returned to the States on a basis of L1
5s. per head of the population of each State.
* * * * *
Page 288, line 2, _omit_ "like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands."
These islands have distinct local tariffs, but they cannot be said to be
wholly under local control.
THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE
CHAPTER I
THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA
I.
Ireland was the oldest and the nearest of the Colonies. We are apt to
forget that she was ever colonized, and that for a long period, although
styled a Kingdom, she was kept in a position of commercial and political
dependence inferior to that of any Colony. Constitutional theory still
blinds a number of people to the fact that in actual practice Ireland is
still governed in many respects as a Colony, but on principles which in
all other white communities of the British Empire are extinct. Like all
Colonies, she has a Governor or Lord-Lieutenant of her own, an Executive
of her own, and a complete system of separate Government Departments,
but her people, unlike the inhabitants of a self-governing Colony,
exercise no control over the administration. She possesses no
Legislature of her own, although in theory she is supposed to possess
sufficient legislative control over Irish affairs through representation
in the Imperial Parliament. In practice, however, this control has
always been, and still remains, illusory, just as it would certainly
have proved illusory if conferred upon any Colony. It can be exercised
only by cumbrous, circuitous, and often profoundly unhealthy methods;
and over a wide range of matters it cannot by any method whatsoever be
exercised at all.
To look behind mere technicalities to the spirit of government, Ireland
resembles one of that class of Crown Colonies of which Jamaica and Malta
are examples, where the inhabitants exercise no control over
administration, and only partial control over legislation.[4]
Why is this?
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, always frank and fearless in his political
judgments, gave the best answer in 1893, when opposing the first reading
of the second of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills. "Does anybody doubt,"
he said, "that if Ireland were a thousand miles away from England she
would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" Now this
was not a barren geographical truism, which might by way of hypothesis
be applied in identical terms to any fraction of the United
Kingdom--say, for example, to that part of England lying south of the
Thames. Mr. Chamberlain never made any attempt to deny--no one with the
smallest knowledge of history could have denied--that Ireland, though
only sixty miles away from England, was less like England than any of
the self-governing Colonies then attached to the Crown, possessing
distinct national characteristics which entitled her, in theory at any
rate, to demand, not merely colonial, but national autonomy. On the
contrary, Mr. Chamberlain went out of his way to argue, with all the
force and fire of an accomplished debater, that the Bill was a highly
dangerous measure precisely because, while granting Ireland a measure of
autonomy, it denied her some of the elementary powers, not only of
colonial, but of national States; for instance, the full control over
taxation, which all self-governing Colonies possessed, and the control
over foreign policy, which is a national attribute. The complementary
step in his argument was that, although nominally withheld by statute,
these fuller powers would be forcibly usurped by the future Irish
Government through the leverage offered by a subordinate Legislature and
Executive, and that, once grasped, they would be used to the injury of
Great Britain and the minority in Ireland. Ireland ("a fearful danger")
might arm, ally herself with France, and, while submitting the
Protestant minority to cruel persecution, would retain enough national
unity to smite Britain hip and thigh, and so avenge the wrong of ages.
Even to the most ardent Unionist the case thus presented must, in the
year 1911, present a doubtful aspect. The British _entente_ with France,
and the absence of the smallest ascertainable sympathy between Ireland
and Germany, he will dismiss, perhaps, as points of minor importance,
but he will detect at once in the argument an antagonism, natural enough
in 1893, between national and colonial attributes, and he will remember,
with inner misgivings, that his own party has taken an especially active
part during the last ten years in furthering the claim of the
self-governing Colonies to the status of nationhood as an essential step
in the furtherance of Imperial unity. The word "nation," therefore, as
applied to Ireland, has lost some of its virtue as a deterrent to Home
Rule. Even the word "Colony" is becoming harmless; for every year that
has passed since 1893 has made it more abundantly clear that colonial
freedom means colonial friendship; and, after all, friendship is more
important than legal ties. In one remarkable case, that of the conquered
Dutch Republic in South Africa, a flood of searching light has been
thrown on the significance of those phrases "nation" and "Colony."
There, as in Ireland, and originally in Canada, "national" included
racial characteristics, and colonial autonomy signified national
autonomy in a more accurate sense than in Australia or Newfoundland. But
we know now that it does not signify either a racial tyranny within
those nations, or a racial antipathy to the Mother Country; but, on the
contrary, a reconciliation of races within and friendship without.
Would Mr. Chamberlain recast his argument now? Unhappily, we shall not
know. But it does seem to me that recent history and his own temperament
would force him to do so. As in his abandonment of Free Trade, it was a
strong and sincere Imperialist instinct that eventually transformed him
from the advocate of provincial Home Rule into the relentless enemy of
Home Rule in any shape. Take the Imperial argument, shaken to its
foundations by subsequent events, from the case he stated in 1893, and
what remains? Two pleas only--first, the abnormality of Irishmen;
second, Ireland's proximity to England. The first expresses the old
traditional view that Ireland is outside the pale of all human analogy;
the exception to all rules; her innate depravity and perversity such
that she would abuse power where others respect it, derive enmity where
others derive friendship, and willingly ruin herself by internal
dissension and extravagant ambitions in order, if possible, at the same
time to ruin England. Unconnected, however loosely, with the high
Imperial argument, I do not believe that this plea could have been used
with sincerity by Mr. Chamberlain even in 1893. He was a democrat,
devoted to the cause of enfranchising and trusting the people; and this
plea was, after all, only the same anti-democratic argument applied to
Ireland, and tipped with racial venom, which had been used for
generations by most Tories and many Whigs against any extension of
popular power. Lord Randolph Churchill, the Tory democrat, in his
dispassionate moments, always scouted it, resting his case against Home
Rule on different grounds. It was strange enough to see the argument
used by the Radical author of all the classic denunciations of class
ascendancy and the classic eulogies of the sense, forbearance and
generosity of free electorates. It was all the stranger in that Mr.
Chamberlain himself a few years before had committed himself to a scheme
|
