Against Home Rule (1912) Part 12

3. _Home Rule would involve the entire denominationalising, in the interests of the Roman Catholic Church, of Irish education in all its branches._ To secure this result has long been the great educational aim of the Irish hierarchy. How they have succeeded as regards higher education Mr. Birrell's Irish Universities Act (1908) gives abundant evidence. The National University of Ireland, created by that Act, which on paper was represented to Nonconformists in England as having a const.i.tution free from religious tests, is now, according to the recent boast of Cardinal Logue, thoroughly Roman Catholic, in spite of all paper safeguards to the contrary. Persistent attempts have been made to sectarianise the Irish primary National School system, founded seventy years ago, and which now receives an annual State endowment of 1,621,921, with the object of safeguarding the faith of the children of minorities, on the principle of united secular and separate religious instruction. That system worked so satisfactorily through many decades that Lord O'Hagan, the eminent first Roman Catholic Lord Chancellor of Ireland, declared that under it, up till his time, no case whatever of proselytism to any Church had occurred. But gradually a sectarian system of education under the Roman Catholic Church was developed through the teaching order of Christian Brothers, whose schools are now to be found all over Ireland, and which in many places now supplant the non-sectarian schools of the National Board. The strongest efforts were made to bring these sectarian schools into the system of the National Board, and thus ent.i.tle them to a share of the State annual endowment.

There is no greater peril to the religious faith of Protestant minorities in the border counties of Ulster and elsewhere in Ireland than the sectarianising of primary schools by Roman Catholics. A few years ago a Protestant member of a public service was transferred upon promotion from Belfast to a Roman Catholic district, in which his boys had no available school but that of the Christian Brothers, and his girls none but that of the local convent. I shall never forget the expression of that man's face or the pathos in his voice while he pressed me to help him to obtain a transfer to a Protestant district, as otherwise he feared his children would be lost to the faith of their fathers. Given a Parliament in Dublin, the management of education would be so conducted as gradually to extinguish Protestant minorities in the border counties of Ulster and in the other provinces of Ireland. It is here that a chief danger to Protestantism lies.

4. _Home Rule will seriously injure Ulster's material prosperity--industrial, commercial, agricultural._ The root of the evil will lie in the want of credit of an Irish Exchequer in the money markets of the world. The best financial authorities agree that if Ireland should be left to her own resources, there would be, on the present basis of taxation, and after providing for a fair Irish contribution towards Imperial defence, an annual deficit in the Irish Exchequer of 3,000,000 to 4,000,000. An Irish Government in such circ.u.mstances--consols themselves being now some 23 under par--could not borrow money at any reasonable rate of interest. Ever; if the British taxpayer were compelled to provide for the deficiency, either by an annual grant or by payment of a divorce penalty of 15,000,000 to 20,000,000, or by both, a prudent investor would fear that the annual dole might at any moment be withdrawn should, for instance, John Bull become irritated by the action of a Dublin Parliament, say, in declaring enlisting in His Majesty's forces a criminal act; or that the capital gift would soon be frittered away in the interests of agitators and their friends. He would simply refuse to invest in Irish stock.

Now, a fundamental condition of commercial and industrial well-being is financial confidence. If the Public Exchequer of a country lacks confidence, it is a truism to say that consequently commercial confidence must be gravely impaired. The magnates of Lombard Street and Wall Street would view their Irish clients with unpleasant reserve.

Irish bankers would in turn restrict advances to their customers, and these again would limit the credit of those with whom they transacted business. Curtailment of industrial enterprise, the shutting down of many manufacturing concerns, with consequent depreciation of buildings and plant, as well as increase of unemployment, would follow. Already, since the present Home Rule crisis has become acute, the handwriting on the wall has been made evident in the depreciation of leading Irish stocks to the extent of 15 to 20 per cent. Every one in trade would suffer from the diminution of purchasing power, capital would shrink, income and wages decrease, and the incentives to emigration, which is already depriving our population of some of its most hopeful elements, would be dangerously increased.

All these tendencies would be stimulated by the social disorganisation which would certainly follow Home Rule. Unionist Ulster, from the Ulster Convention of 1892, to the Craigavon demonstration of 1911, has been consistent in her loyal determination that no Parliament but the Imperial Parliament shall control her destinies. It is an ignorant mistake to say that she is weakening in this resolve. The steadily increasing Unionist majorities in contested Ulster seats at both elections in 1910 conclusively prove that she is more staunch than ever in her Unionist faith. She would certainly resist the decrees of a Dublin Parliament and refuse to pay its taxes. The result of its pa.s.sive resistance would be civil disorder, which would certainly gravely injure her industrial welfare, especially that of her artisan and working population. But Ulstermen ask, What is industrial prosperity without freedom? And if, in defence of freedom, they should suffer disaster, the responsibility would lie with their fellow-citizens in Great Britain who would impose a hostile yoke upon them.

Under Home Rule, agricultural Ulster would also suffer. Very many Ulster farmers are now occupying owners. But a large number have not yet succeeded in purchasing, and these eagerly desire the privilege of doing so. Mr. Birrell's 1909 Act has already practically strangled further land purchase in Ireland, and if he intends that its completion should be the work of a Home Rule Parliament, the Ulster tenants ask where would the 75,000,000 to 100,000,000 necessary to accomplish the process, come from?[66] They know that the procuring of such a sum from an Irish Government would be hopeless, for they are aware that Englishmen have better judgment than to allow their Parliament to lend further money to a country over which they had relinquished direct Parliamentary authority, and whose Exchequer would be bankrupt. Home Rule would thus permanently relegate the agricultural population, not only of Ulster, but of Ireland generally, into two cla.s.ses living side by side with each other--one consisting of occupying owners, the other of rent-payers without hope of owners.h.i.+p. The evil results in discontent, friction, deterioration of agricultural methods and lessened production would inflict serious injury on Ulster prosperity.

Again, Home Rule would involve Ulster industry and commerce in excessive taxation. No one who is aware of the pa.s.sionate desire amongst Irish agitators and their friends for lucrative jobs, of the efforts that would be made to subsidise industries with Government funds, of the determination of the clergy to have their monastic, Christian Brothers', monastic and convent schools largely supported by the State, and of the impossibility, in view of the social disorder all over Ireland that would follow Home Rule, of reducing further the police force or the Judiciary, entertains any doubt that retrenchment in Irish expenditure would be impossible. On the contrary, Irish taxation would increase, and as recent legislation has placed upon Irish farmers imposts greater than they think they can bear, the additional revenue would be sought for mainly from the industrial North. But with business disorganised, incomes decreased and unemployment increased, the yield of taxation would be much reduced, and the rate must therefore be made higher. All this would fortify Ulster in her determined refusal to pay Home Rule taxation, and the bankruptcy of the Dublin Exchequer would be complete.

It is from having regard to considerations such as I have outlined, and of the validity of which she is profoundly convinced, that Ulster has registered the historic Convention declaration, "We will not have Home Rule." Her position is plain and intelligible. She demands no separation from her Nationalist countrymen. On the contrary, she wishes, under the protection of the Legislative Union, to live side by side with them in peaceful industry and neighbourly fellows.h.i.+p, with the desire that they and we may in common partake of the benefits conferred on Ireland by generous Imperial legislation and repay it by sympathetic and energetic contribution to the service of the Empire.

But if Home Rule legislation should be pa.s.sed contrary to Ulster's earnest and patriotic pleading, then she claims--not a separate Parliament for herself, but that she may remain as she is in the unimpaired enjoyment of her position as an integral portion of the United Kingdom and with unaltered representation in Imperial Parliament.

She wishes to continue as an Irish Lancas.h.i.+re, or an Irish Lanarks.h.i.+re.

In this relations.h.i.+p to Great Britain she is confident she will best preserve, not only her own interests, but also those of her fellow loyalists, Roman Catholic as well as Protestants, whose lot is cast in the other provinces and whose welfare will always be her responsible and earnest concern.

But if this demand--based on loyalty to the King and Const.i.tution, and founded on the elementary right of British citizens to the unimpaired protection of Imperial Parliament--be refused, then the only alternative is the Ulster Provincial Government, which will be organised to come into operation on the day that a Home Rule Bill should receive the Royal a.s.sent; and under that Provisional Government we shall continue to support our King, and to render the same services' to the United Kingdom and to the Empire as have characterised the history of Ulster during the past three hundred years.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 66: See Mr. Wyndham's article, p. 249.]

IX

THE SOUTHERN MINORITIES

BY RICHARD BAGWELL, M.A.

At the present moment no county or borough in the three southern provinces of Ireland returns a Unionist member. There are substantial minorities in many places, but very few in which there would be any chance of a successful contest. The University of Dublin sends two conspicuous Unionists to Parliament, who represent not only a const.i.tuency of graduates, but the vast majority of educated and thinking people. The bearing of the question on religious interests will be dealt with by others, but it may be said here that the Protestant community is Unionist. The exceptions are few, and are much more than counter-balanced by the Roman Catholic opponents of Home Rule, who for obvious reasons are less outspoken, but are quite as anxious to avert the threatened revolution.

The great bone of contention has always been the land, the cause of various wars and of ceaseless civil disputes. Parnell saw and said that purely political Nationalism was weak by itself, and he took up the land question to get leverage. For many years it has been evident that the only feasible solution was to convert occupiers into owners, and a very long step was made by the Purchase Act of 1903. Progress has now been arrested, for the Act of 1909 does not work. The vendors or expropriated owners, whichever is the more correct term, are expected to take a lower price and to be paid in depreciated paper. The minorities to be most immediately affected by legislation consist of landlords who are unable, though willing, to sell, and of tenants who are unable but very anxious to buy. The present deadlock is disastrous, for many tenants think they ought not to pay more than their neighbours, and demand reductions of rent without considering that the owner has received no part of his capital and dares not destroy the basis on which he hopes to be ultimately paid. It has been an essential part of the purchase policy that the instalment due by the occupier to recoup the State advance should be less than the rent. This has been made possible by the magic of British credit, and if that is withheld the confusion in Ireland will be worse than ever. The Exchequer has lost little or nothing, and even at much greater cost it would be the cheapest money that England ever spent. More than half the tenanted land has now pa.s.sed to the occupiers, and it would be the most cruel injustice to leave the remaining landlords without power either to sell their property or to collect rents judicially fixed and refixed. They would fare badly with an Irish legislature and an Irish executive. They are, for the most part, poor but loyal men, and have exercised a great civilising influence. Are they to be deserted and ruined to keep an English party in place by the votes of men who have never pretended to be anything but England's enemies?

Irish Unionists laugh at the idea of a local Parliament being kept subordinate. It will have the power of making laws for everything Irish, that is, for everything that immediately concerns those that live in Ireland. There will be ceaseless efforts to enlarge its sphere of action, and if Irish members continue to sit at Westminster they will be as troublesome as ever there. If there are to be no Irish members Ireland will be a separate nation. Even candid Home Rulers confess that statutory safeguards would be of none effect. Hedged in by British bayonets the Lord Lieutenant may exercise his veto, but upon whose advice will he do it? If on that of an Irish Ministry the minority will have no protection at all, and does any one suppose it possible to go back to the practice of the seventeenth century, when all Irish Bills were settled in the English Privy Council, and could not be altered in a Dublin Parliament? Orators declaim about our lost legislature, but they take good care not to say what it was. In the penultimate decade of the eighteenth century the trammels were taken off, and a Union was soon found necessary. During the short interval of Independence there were two French invasions and a b.l.o.o.d.y rebellion. Protestant ascendency, though used as a catchword, is a thing long past. Roman Catholic ascendency would be a very real thing under Home Rule. The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament alone makes both the one and the other impossible.

If a legislature is established it must be given the means of enforcing its laws. We do not know what the present Government propose to do with the Irish police, but whatever the law says in practice, they will be under the local executive. Unpopular people will not be protected, and many of them will be driven out of the country. Parliamentary Home Rulers draw rosy pictures of the future Arcadia; but they will not be able to fulfil their own prophecies. Apart from the agrarian question, there is the party of revolutionists in Ireland whose headquarters are in America. They have furnished the means for agitation, and will look for their reward. The Fenian party has less power in the United States than it used to have, but there will be congenial work to do in Ireland.

A violent faction can be kept in order where there is a strong government, but in a Home Rule Ireland it would not be strong for any such purpose. Appeals to cupidity and envy would find hearers, and there could be no effective resistance. The French Jacobins were a minority but they swept all before them. In the end better counsels might prevail, but the mischief done would be great, and much of it irreparable.

The justice dealt out by the superior courts in Ireland is as good as it is anywhere. A judge in the last resort has the whole force of the State behind him, and no one dreams of resistance. With an Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive this would hardly be the case. The judges would still be lawyers, but their power would be greatly impaired. In Ireland popular feeling is always against creditors, and it would be very hard indeed either to execute a writ of ejectment or a seizure of goods. If the sanction of the law is weakened, public respect for it is lessened, and the result will be a general relaxation of the bonds which draw society together. There is nothing in the antecedents of the Home Rule Party to make one suppose that it contains the materials of a good and impartial government.

Home Rule politicians are talkative and pertinacious. As members of Parliament they are of course listened to, while Unionists outside Ulster make little noise; it is, therefore, constantly said that they acquiesce in the inevitable change. Unrepresented men cannot easily make themselves heard, but they have done what they could. An enormous meeting has been held in Dublin, and the building, which contains some 7000, was filled in a quarter of an hour. There has since been a large gathering of young men who wish to remain full citizens of the Empire in which they were born, and others are to follow. In rural districts it is almost impossible to collect people in winter. Days are short and distances are long. Unionist farmers cannot forget the outrages that prevailed some years ago, and are not yet unknown. In the native land of boycotting and cattle-driving it is not surprising that they do not wish to be conspicuous. The difficulty extends to the towns, in many of which it would be almost impossible to hire a room for Unionist purposes.

Hotel keepers object to risking their business and their windows, for a mob is easily excited to riot on patriotic grounds. Shopkeepers also have to be cautious in a country which has been wittily described as a land of liberty where no one can do as he likes, but where every one must do exactly what everybody else likes. In the summer people can meet in the open air, and there will, no doubt, be abundant protests from Southern Unionists. There will then be something definite to talk about.

It is often said that the County Councils have done well, and that therefore there is no danger in an Irish Parliament, but the two things are different in kind. County or District Councils, or Boards of Guardians, are const.i.tuted by Acts of the Imperial Parliament to administer Acts of the same, and are subject to constant supervision by the Local Government Board, and to the peremptory action of the King's Bench. A Parliament is by nature supreme within its sphere of action, and its constant effort would be to enlarge that field. The men who aim at independence would have the easy part to play, for no one in or out of Ulster, former Unionist or confirmed Nationalist, would have any interest in opposing them. In the meantime local councils have taught us what is likely to happen. Minorities are virtually excluded from them and from paid places in their gift. Of Protestants holding local office the great majority are survivals from the old Grand Jury system.

Political discussions are frequent, but they are all among Nationalists.

Intolerance of independent opinion and impatience of criticism are everywhere noticeable, and the Corporation of Dublin does not show a good example. It is intolerance of this kind rather than any approach to religious persecution that Protestants suffer from in the present and fear for the future.

Men who have something to lose dread the idea of Home Rule, including farmers who have bought their holdings, but as yet this has not been allowed time to work. There is a long way between not caring to support a Nationalist and voting for a Unionist. The chief employers of labour are mostly for the Union, but few are in a position to help the Unionist cause effectively, for they have to deal with strike makers and possible boycotters. When Labour troubles come, Nationalist politicians try to make out that they are caused by English agitators, and that there would be none under Home Rule. The probability is all the other way. There could be nothing in the existence of an Irish Parliament to prevent English Socialists from crossing the Channel, and some Labour leaders in England are Irish. We have heard a great deal lately about the union of the two democracies, and that is the point where they would unite.

Pa.s.sing from labour to land, which is after all the great interest of Southern and Western Ireland, the danger is even greater. With the loss of British credit it would be almost impossible to carry out the plan of occupying owners.h.i.+p without the grossest injustice, and the mischief would not stop there. An Irish Government would be poor, but would be expected to do all and more than all that the united government has done. At first the gap might be stopped by extravagant super-income tax, by half-compensated seizures of demesne land, and by penalising the owners of ground rents and town property. Confiscation is not a permanent source of wealth, for it soon kills the goose that laid the golden egg. Then the turn of the large farmer would come.

Most Unionists, and many who call themselves Home Rulers, are satisfied with the form of government they now have. The country has prospered wonderfully, and it will continue to prosper if the land purchase system is carried out to the end in a liberal spirit. The worst danger comes from the check given to the process by the present Ministry. But the national feelings of Ireland must not be ignored. Her far-back history, bad in itself, but represented worse by unscrupulous writers, makes it necessary to maintain an impartial power above the warring elements. In a pastoral country people have much time on their hands, and are apt to spend it in brooding over bygone wrongs. But over the past not Jove himself hath power, and it is for the future that we are responsible.

From Wellington onwards Ireland has given many great soldiers to the British Army, and it is the cla.s.ses from which they spring that it is now proposed to abandon. Under Home Rule the flag would be a foreign emblem, useless to protect the weak in Ireland, and perhaps available to oppress them. England would have cast off her friends and gained none in exchange. Nothing will conciliate the revolutionary faction in Ireland, and there is every reason to think that it would become the strongest.

Modern Ireland is the creation of English policy, and many wrong things were formerly done, but for a long time amends have been making. If England, from weariness or for the sake of Party advantage, abandons her supporters, they will have no successors. Ireland will be more troublesome than ever, and the crime will receive its fitting punishment.

X

HOME RULE AND NAVAL DEFENCE

BY ADMIRAL LORD CHARLES BERESFORD, M.P.

Ireland under Home Rule must, in the event of war, be regarded as a potentially hostile country.

In this statement resides the dominant factor of the situation viewed from the naval and military point of view. It is not a.s.serted that the government of Ireland would be disloyal; but it is a.s.serted that the authorities charged with the defence of his Majesty's dominions cannot afford to take risks when the safety of the country is at stake. That such risks must exist under the circ.u.mstances indicated, is obvious to all those who have studied the speeches of the leaders of the Irish Nationalist party, in which they have unequivocally declared their intention to rid Ireland of English rule, and in which they extol as heroes such men as Theobald Wolfe Tone, who intrigued with France against England in order to achieve Irish independence, and who took his own life rather than receive the just reward of his deeds. That some among the Irish Nationalist leaders have recently professed their devotion to the British Empire cannot be regarded by serious persons as a relevant consideration. The demand for Home Rule is in fact a demand for separation from the United Kingdom or it is nothing. Naval officers are accustomed to deal with facts rather than with words.

In the great sea-wars of the past, Ireland has always been regarded by the enemy as providing the base for a flank attack upon England. Had King Louis XIV. rightly used his opportunities, the army of King William would have been cut off from its base in England, and would have been destroyed by reinforcements arriving from France to a.s.sist King James II. There is no more concise presentment of the case than the account of it given by Admiral Mahan in "The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783."

"The Irish Sea, separating the British Islands, rather resembles an estuary than an actual division; but history has shown the danger from it to the United Kingdom. In the days of Louis XIV., when the French navy nearly equalled the combined English and Dutch, the gravest complications existed in Ireland, which pa.s.sed almost wholly under the control of the natives and the French.

Nevertheless, the Irish Sea was rather a danger to the English--a weak point in their communications--than an advantage to the French. The latter did not venture their s.h.i.+ps-of-the-line in its narrow waters, and expeditions intending to land were directed upon the ocean ports in the south and west. At the supreme moment the great French fleet was sent upon the south coast of England, where it decisively defeated the allies, and at the same time twenty-five frigates were sent to St. George's Channel, against the English communications. In the midst of a hostile people the English army in Ireland was seriously imperilled, but was saved by the battle of the Boyne and the flight of James II. _This movement against the enemy's communications was strictly strategic, and would be just as dangerous to England now as in 1690_[67]....

"There can be little doubt that an effective co-operation of the French fleet in the summer of 1689 would have broken down all opposition to James in Ireland, by isolating that country from England, with corresponding injury to William's power....

"The battle of the Boyne, which from its peculiar religious colouring has obtained a somewhat fact.i.tious celebrity, may be taken as the date at which the English crown was firmly fixed on William's head. Yet it would be more accurate to say that the success of William, and with it the success of Europe, against Louis XIV. in the war of the League of Augsburg, was due to the mistakes and failure of the French naval campaign in 1690; though in that campaign was won the most conspicuous single success the French have ever gained at sea over the English."

Every great naval power has gone to school to Admiral Mahan; and this country can hardly expect again to profit by those mistakes in strategy which the gifted American writer has so lucidly exposed.

Ireland, lying on the western flank of Great Britain, commands on the south the approaches to the Channel, on the west the North Atlantic; and on the east the Irish Sea, all sea-roads by which millions of pounds'

worth of supplies are brought to England. On every coast Ireland has excellent harbours. There are Lough Sw.i.l.l.y on the north, Blacksod Bay on the west, Bantry Bay, Cork Harbour and Waterford Harbour on the south, Kingstown Harbour and Belfast Lough on the east--to name but these--besides numerous lesser inlets which can serve as shelter for small craft and destroyers. It should here be noted that Belfast Harbour, owing to the enterprise of the Harbour Board, now possesses a channel and dock capable of accommodating a s.h.i.+p of the Dreadnought type[68].

There is no necessity to presuppose an actively hostile Ireland; but an Ireland ruled by a disloyal faction would easily afford shelter to the wars.h.i.+ps of the enemy in her ports, whence they could draw supplies, where they could execute small repairs, and could coal from colliers despatched there for the purpose or captured. Thus lodged, a fleet or a squadron would command the main trade routes to England; and might inflict immense damage in a short time. Intelligence of its position could be prevented from reaching England by the simple method of destroying wireless stations and cutting cables.

These considerations would necessarily impose upon the Navy the task of detaching a squadron of watching cruisers charged with the duty of keeping guard about the whole of Ireland.

Is the Admiralty prepared to discharge this office in the event of war?

If not, there falls to be considered the further danger of the invasion of Ireland. That such a peril is not imaginary, is proved by the fact that Ireland has been invaded in the past.

The attempt of Hoche and Grouchy to land in Bantry Bay in 1796 failed ignominiously; and the next expedition designed to invade Ireland was defeated at Camperdown. But in 1798, the year of the Great Rebellion in Ireland, three French frigates evaded the British cruisers, and on August 22 dropped anchor in Killala Bay. General of Brigade, Jean Joseph Amable Humbert, landed with his second in command, General Sarazin, several rebel Irish leaders, 1700 men and 82 officers.

On August 27 Humbert defeated the British troops at Castlebar "Races."