England's Case Against Home Rule Part 11

[60] _Ibid_., clause 7.

[61] As to the disallowance of Colonial bills, see pp. 202-5, _ante_.

[62] See the Government of Ireland Bill, clause 25, sub-clause (_a), (b_) and (_c_).

[63] Government of Ireland Bill, clause 24.

[64] Government of Ireland Bill, clauses 37, 39. On the whole question as to the mode in which the Gladstonian Const.i.tution, or in other words the Government of Ireland Bill, is intended to be altered, readers are specially referred to the terms of the Bill itself. The whole matter is involved in so much controversy that one can hardly make any statement about it which an opponent will not question. The parts of the Bill to be studied are clauses 37 and 39.

[65] See Government of Ireland Bill, clause 39.

[66] I am quite aware that the account I have given of the proposed Gladstonian Const.i.tution is likely not to be accepted as correct by some of the supporters of the Government of Ireland Bill. That measure by designating both what I have termed the British Parliament and the Imperial Parliament by the one name Imperial Parliament, conceals in my judgment the extent of the alteration which the Bill contemplates. For the sake of clearness of thought I must request my readers to distinguish carefully four different bodies:--

1. The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

This is the actually existing Parliament const.i.tuted by the Act of Union with Ireland.

2. The British Parliament; that is, the Parliament of the United Kingdom with the Irish representatives removed from it. This body is called under the Government of Ireland Bill the Imperial Parliament. It is a distinctly different body from the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Whether it does or does not inherit the legal powers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom is a separate question afterwards to be considered. All that I now insist upon is that it is a different body.

3. The Irish Parliament, a body admittedly const.i.tuted or to be const.i.tuted under the Government of Ireland Bill, and therein called the Irish Legislature.

4. The Imperial Parliament, a body in effect consisting of the British Parliament with the addition of the Irish representatives, or in other words of the British Parliament combined with the Irish Parliament. This body is convoked, as I have pointed out, only for the special purpose of altering the Gladstonian Const.i.tution. It is termed in the Government of Ireland Bill the Imperial Parliament.

What I am most anxious my readers should note is that the bodies 2 and 4 are each termed in the Bill the Imperial Parliament, and thereby not only confused together, but as far as possible each identified with the existing Parliament of the United Kingdom, with which neither really corresponds. The British Parliament differs from the Parliament of the United Kingdom certainly in const.i.tution, if not also in authority.

The so-called Imperial Parliament nearly corresponds with the Parliament of the United Kingdom in const.i.tution, but differs from it in function and authority.

[67] In reference to the legal effect of the Government of Ireland Bill on the sovereignty of Parliament, see on the one side the speeches of Sir Henry James of 13th May, 1886, '_The Times_ Parliamentary Debates,'

p. 468; of Mr. Finlay, 21st May, 1886, '_The Times_ Parliamentary Debates,' p. 614; and an article by Sir William Anson on the Government of Ireland Bill and the Sovereignty of Parliament in the _Law Quarterly Review_ for October, 1886. See on the other side Mr. Gladstone's speeches in Parliament of 8th April, 1886, '_The Times_ Parliamentary Debates,' p. 125; of 13th April, 1886, _ibid._ 255; of 10th May, 1886, _ibid._ 404; and of 7th June, 1886, _ibid._ p. 861; of Mr. Parnell of 7th June, _ibid._ p. 847; and 'The Government of Ireland Bill,' being a speech delivered by Mr. James Bryce, M.P., on 17th May, 1886, and published as a pamphlet. My disagreement with Mr. Bryce's conclusions makes me anxious to express my great admiration for his speech, which is by far the best statement I have read of the view undoubtedly held by Mr. Gladstone and his followers, that the Bill did not affect the sovereignty of Parliament. The reader should notice that the question throughout between the late Government and its opponents was as to the effect of the Bill on the sovereignty of what I have called the "British Parliament," _i.e._ the body, by whatever name it be called, which consists of the representatives of England and Scotland only, and does not include representatives of Ireland.

[68] As to the sovereignty of Parliament, see Dicey, 'Law of the Const.i.tution,' pp. 35-79.

[69] Government of Ireland Bill, clause 39.

[70] I do not, of course, deny for a moment that an Act could be so drawn as to give Ireland an Irish Parliament, to remove the Irish members from the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and at the same time to reserve to the residue of the United Parliament, or Rump, the full sovereignty now possessed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. What I do insist upon is, that it is open to question whether the Government of Ireland Bill was so drawn as to achieve these results. Nor is the question unimportant. The fundamental ambiguity of the Bill obviously arose from the fact that its authors, whilst wis.h.i.+ng to promise in appearance to Ireland that the new Irish const.i.tution should not be changed by a body in which Ireland had no representatives, also wished to soothe the apprehensions of England by tacitly reserving to the British Parliament the power of altering or repealing the Irish const.i.tution without recalling the representatives of Ireland. The consequence is that the Bill proclaims in so many words that its provisions shall be altered in one way only, but by implication, as its authors suppose, provides that its provisions may be altered in another and quite different way. If this is the intended effect of the Bill it ought to have been made patent on its face. In const.i.tutional matters, as indeed in all the serious concerns of life, ambiguity and uncertainty of expression is the source both of misunderstanding and of danger.

The question of the sovereignty of the British Parliament might, it should be noted, arise in another and more perplexing form, which received, unless I am mistaken, no attention during the debates on the Irish Government Bill. Admit for the sake of argument that the British Parliament can legislate for Ireland; is it equally certain that the Imperial Parliament (i.e. the British Parliament with the addition of Irish representatives) cannot claim to legislate for England or for the whole British Empire? No doubt the Gladstonian Const.i.tution proposes that the Imperial Parliament should be convened only for a limited definite purpose; but is it certain that the Imperial Parliament, which would in its const.i.tuent parts be in effect the reunited Parliament of the United Kingdom, might not when convened claim to rea.s.sume sovereign power? The addition of a hundred Irish members might turn a minority in the British Parliament into a majority in the Imperial Parliament; can we feel sure that the English minority in the British Parliament would resist the temptation to exalt the authority of a body in which they would be supreme? The enquiry sounds to Englishmen a strange one; but the annals of foreign const.i.tutions suggest that an a.s.sembly which, though convoked for a particular purpose, is able from any point of view to consider itself sovereign is with difficulty restrained from a.s.serting supreme power. From this side the Gladstonian Const.i.tution might prove a menace to the supremacy of the British Parliament.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONCLUSION.

[Sidenote: Survey of argument.]

Let us here review and summarise our argument. The demand for Home Rule is a demand for a change in the Const.i.tution so fundamental as to amount to a legal and pacific revolution; such a demand requires for its support cogent, we may almost say conclusive, reasons.

The positive arguments in favour of Home Rule are not easy to grasp.

Their strength lies in their correspondence with the prevailing opinions of the day. But though public opinion under any form of government, and especially under the system of what is called popular government, deserves great consideration, still the value of a prevailing belief or conviction cannot be determined without examining the elements which have gone to its production. The state of opinion which favours Home Rule is found to result from various and even self-contradictory feelings, some of which belong to the highest and some to the lowest parts of human nature; humanity and a sense of justice are in this instance curiously combined with indolence and impatience. The arguments again for Home Rule rest upon one dubious a.s.sumption and one undoubted fact. The dubious a.s.sumption is that the root of Irish discontent is the outraged feeling of nationality. The undoubted fact is that in Ireland, on all matters either directly or even remotely connected with the tenure of land, the law of the Courts is opposed to the customs, to the moral sentiment, we may say to the law of the people; hence the Queen's tribunals are weak because they are not supported by that popular a.s.sent whence judges derive half their authority; the tribunals of the League are strong because their decisions commend themselves to the traditional feeling of the people.

But the doubtful hypothesis and the undoubted fact, though one or other of them lies at the basis of all the strongest arguments in favour of Home Rule, each invalidate almost as much as they support the contention that an Irish Parliament will prove the specific for the diseases (due in the first instance to the original vice of the connection between England and Ireland) under which Irish society now suffers. If the pa.s.sion of nationality is the cause of the malady, then the proposed cure is useless, for Home Rule will not turn the people of Ireland into a nation. If a vicious system of land tenure is the cause of lawlessness, then the restoration or re-creation of an Irish Parliament is needless, for the Parliament of the United Kingdom can reform, and ought to reform, the land system of Ireland, and ought to be able to carry through a final settlement of agrarian disputes with less injustice to individuals than could any Parliament sitting at Dublin.

Reasoning, however, which fails to establish the expediency of creating an Irish Parliament may prove, and in fact does amply prove, that the task of maintaining peace order and freedom in Ireland is at the present juncture a matter of supreme difficulty. Any possible course, moreover, open to English statesmans.h.i.+p involves gigantic inconvenience, not to say tremendous perils. A man involved practically in the conduct of public affairs may easily bring himself to believe that the policy which he recommends is not only the best possible under the circ.u.mstances, but is also open to no serious objection. Outsiders, who in this matter are better because more impartial judges than the ablest of politicians, know that this is not so. We have nothing before us but a choice of difficulties or of evils. Every course is open to valid criticism.

The maintenance of the Union must necessarily turn out as severe a task as ever taxed a nation's energies, for to maintain the Treaty of Union with any good effect means that while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every fair demand from Ireland, must strenuously and without either fear or favour a.s.sert the equal rights of landlords and tenants, of Protestants and Catholics, and must at the same time put down every outrage and reform every abuse.

To carry out by peaceful means the political separation of countries which for good and for evil have for centuries been bound together by position and by history, is an operation so critical that in the judgment of statesmen it involves dangers too vast for serious contemplation.

How, lastly, to devise a scheme of Home Rule which, while giving to Ireland as much of legislative independence as may satisfy her wants or wishes, shall leave to England as much supremacy as may be necessary for the prosperity of the United Kingdom, or for the continued existence of the British Empire, is a problem which jurists would find it hard to solve as a matter of speculative science, and which politicians may not without reason hold to admit of no practical solution.

Yet Maintenance of the Union, Separation, Home Rule, are names which designate the only paths open to us. To one of these three courses we are absolutely tied down. Each path is arduous. To complain about the nature of things is childish. The course of wisdom is obvious. We must all of us look facts in the face. "Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be. Why then should we desire to be deceived?"[71] We must calmly compare the advantages of the three steep roads which lie open to the nation, and then on the strength of this comparison determine the course which the nation is bound to follow by motives of expediency and of justice.

Such a comparison we have already inst.i.tuted:[72] its results to any reader who a.s.sents to my train of reasoning must be obvious.

The maintenance of the Union involves at the outset a strenuous and most regrettable conflict with the will of the majority of the Irish people.

It necessitates at once the strict enforcement of law, combined with the resolute effort to strip law of all injustice. It may require large pecuniary sacrifices, and it certainly will require a constancy in just purpose which is supposed, and not without reason, to be specially difficult to a democracy. The difficulties on the other hand which meet us are not unprecedented, though some of them have a.s.sumed a new form.

We have some advantages unknown to our forefathers: we can, more easily than they could, remodel the practices of the Const.i.tution, modify the rules of party government, or, incredible as it may seem to members of Parliament, touch with profane hands the venerable procedure of the House of Commons. The English democracy, further, just because it is a democracy, may, like the democracy of America, enforce with unflinching firmness laws which, representing the deliberate will of the people, are supported by the vast majority of the citizens of the United Kingdom.

The English democracy, because it is a democracy, may also with a good conscience destroy the remnants of feudal inst.i.tutions, and all systems of land tenure found unsuitable to the wants of the Irish people. Nor, though the crisis be difficult, are there features lacking in the tendencies of the modern world which in the United Kingdom as in the United States and in the Swiss Confederacy favour every effort to uphold the political unity of the State. Whatever be the difficulties (and they are many) of maintaining the Union, not in form only but in reality, the policy is favoured no less by the current of English history, than by the tendencies of modern civilization. It preserves that unity of the State which is essential to the authority of England and to the maintenance of the Empire. It provides, as matters now stand, the only means of giving legal protection to a large body of loyal British subjects. It is the refusal not only to abdicate legitimate power, but (what is of far more consequence) to renounce the fulfilment of imperative duties. Nor does Union imply uniformity. Unity of Government--equality of rights--diversity of inst.i.tutions,--these are the watchwords for all Unionists. To attain these objects may be beyond our power, and the limit to power is the limit to responsibility. Still, whatever may be the difficulties, or even the disadvantages, of maintaining the Union, it undoubtedly has in its favour not only all the recommendations which must belong to a policy of rational conservatism, but also these two decisive advantages--that it does sustain the strength of the United Kingdom, and that it does not call for any dereliction of duty.

Separation, or in other words the national independence of Ireland, is an idea which has not entered into the practical consideration of Englishmen. The evils which it threatens are patent: it at the same moment diminishes the means of Great Britain and increases the calls upon her resources. It lowers the fame of the country, and plants by the side of England a foreign, it may be a hostile, neighbour; it involves the desertion of loyal fellow-citizens who have trusted in the good faith of England. Yet, on the other hand, the material losses and perhaps the dangers involved in the independence of Ireland are liable to exaggeration. Great Britain might find in her complete freedom of action and in restored unity of national sentiment elements of power which might balance the obvious damage resulting from Separation; she might also find it possible to make for the protection of Loyalists terms more efficacious than any guarantees contained in the articles of a statutory const.i.tution. If, further, the spirit of nationality has the vivifying power ascribed to it by its votaries, then Ireland might gain from it blessings which cannot be conferred by any scheme of merely Parliamentary independence, since no form of Home Rule can transform Ireland into a nation.

For Home Rule it may be pleaded that it offers two obvious advantages: it satisfies the immediate wish of millions of Irishmen, and it facilitates the adaptation of Irish inst.i.tutions to Irish wants. These advantageous results are the best that can be hoped for from Home Rule.

They are real, and to underrate them is folly; the moral gain indeed of meeting the wishes of the body of the Irish people is so incalculable, that did Home Rule involve no intolerable evils a rational man might think it wise to venture on the experiment. Home Rule, it may be suggested, has the further gain of lessening English responsibility for the government of Ireland. What it really might effect is to lighten England's sense of responsibility for misrule in Ireland. But this, so far from being a blessing, would in truth be one of the greatest of evils. The distinguished author of the Gladstonian Const.i.tution denies in his recent pamphlet that the Government of Ireland Bill would, if pa.s.sed, repeal the Act of Union. To follow the reasoning by which this denial is made good is beyond my powers. But there is one aspect in which the statement, paradoxical though it be, that the Union is not dissolved by the existence of an Irish Parliament, has a most serious meaning, which ought to command hearty and general a.s.sent. Under the Gladstonian Const.i.tution, as under any form of Home Rule, the Government of the United Kingdom must still remain in the last resort responsible for the administration of justice throughout the whole realm. Admit for the sake of argument that the Act of Union, though affected in every section, is not repealed, then a.s.suredly if men be wrongfully deprived of their property, if they be denied their lawful freedom, if they suffer unlawful injury to life or limb in any part of the United Kingdom, the responsibility for seeing that right be done falls on the executive, and in the last resort on the Parliament, of the United Kingdom. The delegated authority of a subordinate legislature will not free the princ.i.p.al from the liability inherent in the delegation of power; and if Home Rule in Ireland fosters, as it must foster, the notion that the United Kingdom is not as a whole responsible for misdeeds done in Ireland, this is one of the worst results of the proposed const.i.tutional change.

But putting this matter aside, an examination into the various forms which Home Rule may a.s.sume leads to the conclusion that whatever be its hypothetical benefits it threatens more than countervailing loss to England. There is no need to do more than refer in most general terms to evils which have already been set forth in detail. Home Rule under two of its three possible forms dislocates and weakens the whole English Const.i.tution. Under its least objectionable form--that of Colonial independence--it brings upon England many of the perils which would follow upon the national independence of Ireland; it involves, if the experiment is to have a fair chance of success, large pecuniary sacrifice, and it does not present a reasonable hope of creating real harmony of feeling between Great Britain and Ireland. Home Rule, lastly, under whatever form, whilst not freeing England from moral responsibility for protecting the rights of every British subject, does virtually give up the attempt to ensure to these rights more than a nominal existence, and thus gives up the endeavour to enforce legal and equal justice between man and man. It must also be considered that an examination into the different forms of Home Rule, while it shows that no scheme of legislative independence for Ireland offers any promise of finality, also suggests that the form of Home Rule least injurious to England is the form which gives Ireland most independence. The inference from these facts cannot be missed. Home Rule is the half-way house to Separation. Grant it, and in a short time Irish independence will become the wish of England. If any thorough-paced Home Ruler admit this conclusion, and suggest that Home Rule is a desirable transition towards Separation, the answer is that Home Rule is such a transition, but a.s.suredly that such a transition is not to be desired. If one country is destined to become independent of another it is better for each not to experience the disappointment and the heartburning which accompany a period of unwilling connection.

This is the result of the comparison we have inst.i.tuted between the three possible courses open to England. If the comparison be just the conclusion to which its leads is obvious. The maintenance of the Union is at this moment to England a matter of duty even more than of interest. If the time should come when the effort to maintain the unity of the State is too great for the power of Great Britain, or the only means by which it is found maintainable are measures clearly repugnant to the humanity or the justice or the democratic principles of the English people,--if it should turn out that after every effort to enforce just laws by just methods our justice itself, from whatever cause, remains hateful to the ma.s.s of the Irish people,--then it will be clear that the Union must for the sake of England, no less than of Ireland, come to an end. The alternative policy will then be not Home Rule but Separation. We shall save the unity at the expense of lessening the territory of the State; we shall escape self-reproach because having reached the limit of our powers we shall also have filled up the measure of our obligations. But if (as there is every reason to suppose) agrarian misery is the source of Irish discontent, and agrarian misery springs in part from bad administration, and in part from the law governing the tenure of land; if, in general terms, the undoubted ills of Ireland are curable by justice, even though justice proceed from the Parliament of the United Kingdom--an a.s.sembly, be it noted, in which the voice of Ireland is freely heard--then there is no need to indulge in speculations, always dangerous, upon a possible remedy which may never be necessary, and which, while the inhabitants of England and Ireland are still fellow-citizens of one State, it is painful even to contemplate. On the whole, then, it appears that whatever changes or calamities the future may have in store, the maintenance of the Union is at this day the one sound policy for England to pursue. It is sound because it is expedient; it is sound because it is just.

[Sidenote: Character of England's case]

This is the case of England against Home Rule; it is a case which, however feebly stated--and I may well have failed to state it with force--is founded on argument. It is a case which makes and need make no appeal to rhetoric; it is a case which indeed, like all sound views of national policy, is grounded on the interest of the greater number of the citizens of the State, but it is a case not grounded on any mere pride of power, a case not based on any disregard of justice, a case which above all involves no unfriendliness to Irishmen, and no a.s.sumption, either tacit or express, that there has fallen to Irishmen a greater amount of either original or acquired sin than falls to other human beings, it is a case which does not a.s.sume that real or supposed differences of race are a legitimate ground for inequality of rights.

Any one, indeed, after having to the best of his power tried to state what can be said with fairness on one side of a question such as that now at issue between the majority and the minority of the citizens of the United Kingdom, may well call to mind the conclusion of the n.o.blest statement ever made by genius of a case involving momentous national interests:--

"It would be presumption in me to do more than to make a case. Many things occur. But as they, like all political measures, depend on dispositions, tempers, means, and external circ.u.mstances for all their effect, not being well a.s.sured of these, I do not know how to let loose any speculations of mine on the subject. The evil is stated in my opinion as it exists. The remedy must be where power, wisdom, and information, I hope, are more united with good intentions than they can be with me. I have done with this subject, I believe for ever. It has given me many anxious moments for the two last years. If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hope, will forward it; and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate."[73]

The sentiment of these words is one of eternal application. Still at this great crisis in the fortunes of our country, when every course is involved in undeniable perplexity, and surrounded by admitted danger, there are two principles to which we may confidently appeal; for it is by habitual adherence to them that England has grown to greatness. These two principles are the maintenance of the supremacy of the whole State, and the use of that supremacy for the purpose of securing to every citizen, whether rich or poor, the rights of liberty and of property conferred upon him by law. To maintain that any policy, however plausible, by which these principles are violated, must undermine the moral basis of the Const.i.tution, and must therefore lead the nation to calamity and to disgrace, is at any rate to plead a cause which rests upon a firm foundation of plain morality. The case may be ill-stated, the arguments by which it is defended may admit of reply, but it is a case which a just man may put forward without shame, and a humane man may support without compunction.

FOOTNOTES:

[71] Butler's Sermons; vii., p. 136, ed. 1726.

[72] See Chapters V., VI., & VII., _ante._

[73] Burke's Works, vol. vii., pp. 84, 85.