A Leap in the Dark Part 8

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

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

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

[107] See Mr. Gladstone's Irish Const.i.tution, _Contemporary Review_, May, 1886, p. 616.

CHAPTER IV

PLEAS FOR THE NEW CONSt.i.tUTION

Gladstonians when pressed with the manifest objections to which the new const.i.tution is open rely for its defence either upon general considerations intended to show that the criticisms on the new const.i.tution are in themselves futile, or upon certain more or less specific arguments, of which the main object is to establish that the policy of Home Rule is either necessary or at least free from danger, and that, therefore, this policy and the new const.i.tution in which it is to be embodied deserve a trial.

My object in this chapter is to examine with fairness the value both of these general considerations and of these specific arguments.

The general considerations are based upon the alleged prophetic character of the criticisms on the new const.i.tution or upon the anomalies to be found in the existing English const.i.tution.

Ministerialists try to invalidate strictures on the Home Rule Bill, such as those set forth in the foregoing pages, by the a.s.sertion that the objections are mere prophecy and therefore not worth attention.

This line of defence may, as against Home Rulers, be disposed of at once by an _argumentum ad hominem_. No politicians have made freer use of prediction. Every Gladstonian speech is in effect a statement that is a prophecy of the benefits which Home Rule will confer on the United Kingdom. Gladstonian antic.i.p.ations no doubt are prophecies of future blessings; but whoever foretells the future is equally a prophet, whether he announces the end of the world or foretells the dawn of a millennium. And history affords no presumption in favour of the prophet who prophesies smooth things. The prognostics of a pessimist may be as much belied by the event as the hopes of an optimist. But for one prophet to decry the predictions of another simply as prophecies is a downright absurdity. Even among rival soothsayers some regard must be had to fairness and common sense; when Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, smote Micaiah on the cheek, he struck him not on the ground that he prophesied but that his gloomy predictions were false. Zedekiah was an imposter, he was not a fool, and after all Micaiah, who prophesied evil and not good, turned out the true prophet.

But an _argumentum ad hominem_ is never a satisfactory form of reasoning, and it is worth while considering for a moment what is the value of prophecy or foresight in politics. Candour compels the admission that antic.i.p.ations of the future are at best most uncertain.

Cobden and Bright foretold that Free Trade would benefit England; they also foretold that the civilised world would, influenced by England's example, reject protective tariffs. Neither antic.i.p.ation was unreasonable, but the one was justified whilst the other was confuted by events. All that can be said is that on such antic.i.p.ations, untrustworthy though they may be, the conduct no less of public than of private life depends. Criticism on anything that is new and untried, whether it be a new-built bridge or a new-made const.i.tution, is of necessity predictive. But there is an essential difference between foresight and guessing. The prevision of a philosophic statesman is grounded on the knowledge of the past and on the a.n.a.lysis of existing tendencies. It deals with principles. Such, for example, was the foresight of Burke when he dogmatically foretold that the French Const.i.tution of 1791 could not stand.[108] Guessing is at best based on acute observation of the current events of the day, that is of things which are in their nature uncertain. On January 29, 1848, Tocqueville a.n.a.lysed the condition of French society, and in the Chamber of Deputies foretold the approach of revolution.

On February 21, 1848, Girardin said that the monarchy of July would not last three days longer. February 24 verified the insight and foresight of the statesman, and proved that the journalist was an acute observer.

The difference is worth consideration. Tocqueville's prophecy would in all probability have been substantially realised had Louis Philippe shown as much energy in 1848 as in 1832, and had the Orleanist dynasty reigned till after his death. Girardin's guess would not have been even a happy hit if one of a thousand accidents had averted the catastrophe of February 24. The worth of the arguments against or for the new const.i.tution depends upon the extent to which they are based upon a mastery of general principles and upon a sound a.n.a.lysis of the conditions of the time, and in these conditions are included the character of the English and of the Irish people. But to object to criticisms simply as prophecies is to reject foresight and to forbid politicians who are creating a const.i.tution for the future to consider what will be its future working.

Another Gladstonian argument is that because the English const.i.tution itself is full of paradoxes, peculiarities, and anomalies, therefore the contradictions or anomalies which are patent in the new const.i.tution (such for example as the retention of the Irish members at Westminster) are of no importance.

The fact a.s.serted is past dispute. Our inst.i.tutions are based upon fictions. The Prime Minister, the real head of the English Executive, is an official unknown to the law. The Queen, who is the only const.i.tutional head of the Executive, is not the real head of the Government. The Crown possesses a veto on all legislation and never exercises it; the House of Lords might, if the House pleased, reject year by year every Bill sent up to it by the House of Commons; yet such a course of action is never actually pursued and could not be dreamt of except by a madman. There is no advantage in exemplifying further a condition of things which must be known to every person who has the slightest acquaintance with either the law, or the custom, of the const.i.tution. But the inference which Gladstonian apologists draw from the existence of anomalies is, in the strict sense of the word, preposterous. On the face of the matter it is a strange way of reasoning to say that because the const.i.tution is filled with odd arrangements which no man can justify in theory, you therefore, when designing a new const.i.tution, should take no care to make your arrangements consistent and harmonious. But the Gladstonian error goes a good deal deeper than is at first sight apparent. The anomalies or the fictions of the const.i.tution are in reality adaptations, often awkward enough in themselves, of some old inst.i.tution, and are preserved because, though they look strange, they are found to work well. Thus the King of England was at one time the actual sovereign of the State, or at any rate the most important member of the sovereign power, and the Ministers were in reality, what they are still in name, the King's servants. The powers of the Crown have been greatly diminished, and have been transferred in effect to the Houses of Parliament, or rather to the House of Commons, and the Ministers taken from the Houses are in fact, though not in name, servants of Parliament. This arrangement leaves an undefined and undefinable amount of authority to the Crown. It is not an arrangement which any man would have planned beforehand; but it is kept up, not because it is an anomaly, but because it has, as a matter of experience, turned out convenient. What even plausible argument can thence be drawn to show that a new const.i.tutional arrangement, on the face of it awkward and inconvenient, will for some unknown reason turn out workable and beneficial? He who reasons thus, if reasoning it can be called, might as well argue that because an old shoe which has gradually been worn to the form of the foot is comfortable, therefore a shoemaker need not care to make a new shoe fit.

These two general replies to strictures on the new const.i.tution are in themselves of no worth whatever. They deserve examination for two reasons only. They are, in various shapes, put forward by politicians of eminence, they exhibit further in a clear form a defect which mars a good deal of Gladstonian reasoning. Ministerialists seem to think that arguments good for the purpose of conservatism are available for the purpose of innovation. This is an error. A conservative reasoner may urge the uncertainty of all prevision, or the fact that the actual const.i.tution, though theoretically absurd or imperfect, works well, as reasons of some weight, though not of overwhelming weight, for leaving things as they are, but it must puzzle any sensible man to see how either the uncertainty of prevision or the fair working of existing inst.i.tutions can be twisted into reasons for taking a political leap in the dark.

Let us dismiss then objections which as they are fatal to all criticism are in reality ineffective against any criticism of our new const.i.tution. When this is done it will be found that the Gladstonian pleas in favour of Home Rule, for such are in reality their apologies for the new const.i.tution, may be brought under two heads. They are intended to show, first, that the concession of parliamentary independence to Ireland is a necessity, and, secondly, that at worst it involves no danger.[109]

A. _Necessity for Home Rule_. That the concession of Home Rule to Ireland is a necessity, forms the implied, if not always the a.s.serted, foundation of the case in favour of Gladstonian policy.

Ireland, it is argued, has for generations been discontented and disloyal. Every sort of remedy has been tried. The rule of the ordinary law, coercion, Protestant supremacy, Catholic relief, the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, the maintenance of the English land tenure and English landlordism, the introduction of a new system of land tenure unknown to any other country in the world and more favourable to tenants than the land law of any other State in Europe, the removal of every grievance which could be made patent to the Imperial Parliament, every plan or experiment which could approve itself to the judgment of English politicians has been tried, and no scheme, however plausible, has ended in success. Concession has proved as useless as severity, and the existence in the Statute Book of a permanent Coercion Act is a standing proof of failure. He who a.s.serts that Irish disloyalty or discontent has not declined understates the case. It has increased. Grattan was a statesman of a more exalted type than O'Connell, and Grattan was more zealous for connection with England than was the Roman Catholic tribune. And though in Grattan's time the grievances of Ireland were in every man's judgment far more intolerable than, even on the showing of Home Rulers, are the wrongs which Ireland now endures, the Ireland of Grattan was loyal to England. O'Connell was a n.o.bler leader than Parnell, and it would be absurd to suppose that any Parnellite or Anti-Parnellite exerted a tenth of O'Connell's influence.

Yet Parnell and Parnell's followers have achieved a feat which the hero of Catholic emanc.i.p.ation could never accomplish; O'Connell never obtained for Repeal more than half the votes of Ireland's parliamentary representatives; Parnell and his followers have rallied the vast majority of Irish members in support of Home Rule. Meanwhile year by year the government of England is weakened, and (though the argument comes awkwardly from the mouth of English const.i.tutionalists who are allies and friends of conspirators and boycotters) the morality of English public life has been undermined, by the presence at Westminster of Irish members who, regarding the English Parliament as an alien power, weaken its action, despise its traditions, and degrade its character. One remedy for Irish miseries and for English dangers has not been tried. No English statesman before Mr. Gladstone (it is urged) has offered to Ireland the one thing which Ireland desires--the boon or right of parliamentary independence. Be the desire for Home Rule reasonable or not, it is Home Rule for which Ireland longs. Ireland feels herself a nation. Satisfy then Ireland's wish, meet the feeling of nationality, and Ireland will be at rest. This experiment must at least be tried; its perils must be risked. The present situation is intolerable, the concession of Home Rule to Ireland is a necessity.

This, to the best of my apprehension, is the Gladstonian argument. My aim has certainly been to state it fairly and in its full force.

Is the argument valid? Is the plea of necessity made out? The answer may be given without hesitation. It is not. The allegations on which the whole train of reasoning rests are tainted by exaggeration or misapprehension, and the allegations, even if taken as true, do not establish the required inference; the premises are unsound, and the premises do not support the conclusion.

The premises are unsound.

The Gladstonians are far too much of parliamentary formalists. Their imagination and their reason are impressed by the strength in the House of Commons of the Irish party. The eighty votes from Ireland daunt them.

But wise men must look behind votes at facts. The eighty Irish Home Rulers are, it is true, no light matter, even when allowance is made for the way in which corruption and intimidation vitiate the vote of Ireland. But their voice is not the voice of the Irish people; it is at most the mutter or the clamour of a predominant Irish faction. It is the voice of Ireland in the same sense in which a century ago the shouts or yells of the Jacobin Club were the voice of France. To any one who looks behind the forms of the const.i.tution to the realities of life, the voice of Irish wealth, of Irish intelligence, and of Irish loyalty is at least as important as the voice of Irish sedition or discontent. The eighty votes must in any case be reckoned morally at not more than sixty, for to this number they would be reduced by any fair and democratic scheme of representation. No one can be less tempted than myself to make light of Irish turbulence and Irish misery. But it must not be exaggerated.

The discontent of 1893 is nothing to the rebellion, sedition, or disloyalty of 1782, of 1798, of 1829, or of 1848. If Irishmen of one cla.s.s are discontented, Irishmen of another cla.s.s are contented, prosperous, and loyal. The protest of Irish Protestants--the grandsons of the men who detested the Union--against the dissolution of the Union, is the reward and triumph of Pitt's policy of Union. The eighty Irish members ask for Home Rule, but the tenant farmers of Ireland ask not for Home Rule but for the ownership of the land; and the Irish tenant farmers will and may under a Unionist Government become owners of their land, and, what is no slight matter, may become owners by honest means.

Vain for Mr. M'Carthy[110] to a.s.sert that Irish farmers would not have accepted even from Mr. Parnell the most favourable of land laws in exchange for Home Rule. Mr. M'Carthy believes what he says, but it is impossible for any student of Irish history or of Irish politics to believe Mr. M'Carthy. Facts are too strong for him. Mr. Lalor showed a prevision denied to our amiable novelist. Gustave de Beaumont understood political philosophy better than the lively recorder of the superficial aspects of recent English history. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt, and the whole line of witnesses before the Special Commission, tell a different tale. The very name of the _Land_ League is significant. Home Rule was a mere theme for academic discussion in the mouth of Mr. b.u.t.t. Repeal itself never touched the strongest pa.s.sions of Irish nature, though advocated by the most eloquent and popular of Irish orators. Not an independent Parliament, but independent ownership of land, has always been the desire of Irish cultivators. It was a cry for the land which gave force to the demand for Home Rule; and an Irish agitator, if his strength fails, renews it by touching the earth. But why confine our observation to Ireland? We here come upon the pa.s.sions, not of Irish nature, but of human nature. There is not a landowner in France who does not care tenfold more for the security of his land than for the form of the government. If peasants trembled for their property the Republic would fall to-morrow. This is no mere conjecture; the peasantry were Jacobins as long as the Jacobins gave them the land, they were Imperialists whilst Napoleon was their security against a restoration which to them meant confiscation of land purchased or seized during the Revolution. The country population of France heard with indifference of the fall of Louis Philippe, and possibly approved the proclamation of the second Republic. But the communism of 1848 roused every landowner against Paris. The peasant proprietors filled the benches of the National a.s.sembly with Conservatives or Reactionists who would save them from plunder; fear became for once the cause of courage, and dread of loss of property sent thousands of peasant proprietors to Paris, that they might crush by force of arms the socialist insurrection of June.

Perjury, fraud, and cruelty disgraced the _coup d'etat_ of 1851. But, as Liberals now see, the second Empire, hateful though it was to every man who loved freedom or cared for integrity, did not owe the permanence of its power to cunning or to violence. It was the dread of the Red Spectre which drove the landowners of France into Imperialism; they may have liked parliamentary liberty, it was a pleasant luxury, but they loved their land and property, it was their life-blood, and by Socialism their land and property was they believed menaced.

As to the Coercion Act, no sensible man, be he Radical or Tory, need trouble himself. The Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887, is neither a disgrace to England nor an injury to Ireland. Its permanence, which is the cause of its mildness, is its merit. Well would it have been had the Act been extended to the whole United Kingdom. Local laws are open to some of the same objections as temporary laws. The enactment contains some improvements in our criminal procedure. There is no more idle superst.i.tion than the belief that criminal procedure does not, like other human arrangements, require change. If incendiarism should become an element in the conduct of trade disputes, if dynamite is to be recognised as a legitimate arm in political conflicts, the criminal law of the United Kingdom will, we may be sure, need and receive several alterations and improvements.

By far the strongest portion of the Gladstonian argument is the stress that can be laid on the demoralisation of Parliament, produced partly, though not wholly, by the Irish vote. This is a consideration which, as far as it goes, tells in favour of Home Rule. It is, however, a consideration of which the Gladstonian apologist for the new const.i.tution of 1893 [can] make no use. His reasoning of necessity stands thus:

The presence of 80 Irish members at Westminster has demoralised Parliament, therefore we must above all things retain 80 or possibly 103 Irish members at Westminster. He is placed in a hopeless dilemma; he dare not draw the only conclusion to which his argument points, namely, that the Irish members must be excluded from the Parliament at Westminster. By a strange fatality, the policy of 1823 retrospectively condemns the policy of 1886, whilst the very strongest argument in favour of the policy of 1886 condemns the policy of 1893.

The premises, were they sound, do not support the conclusion.

There exists undoubtedly such a thing in politics as necessity.

When England acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, or when France surrendered Metz and Strasburg, no one could talk of imprudence of impolicy. The will of Englishmen and of Frenchmen was coerced by the force of events. When all Protestant Ireland was in arms, when the whole Irish nation demanded parliamentary independence, when England had been defeated in America, when France and Spain were allied against her, then the acceptance of Grattan's declaration of right was in truth a necessity. When Wellington became the supporter of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation because he would not face civil war, when famine was at our gates and Peel repealed the corn laws--then again politicians could plead the excuse of necessity. In these and like crises the wisest men and the bravest men are forced to recognise the logic of facts; and necessity rather than prudence dictates the course of statesmanship. But no such crisis has now arisen. England and Ireland were as safe under the government of Lord Salisbury as under the government of Mr.

Gladstone--perhaps safer. No one except an extremely excited and very rhetorical politician will venture to a.s.sert that, if Lord Salisbury instead of Mr. Gladstone had last summer gained a majority of forty, any man or woman throughout the United Kingdom would have trembled for the safety of the country. The sky is far less dark than on that fearful day eleven years back[111] when England stood aghast at the a.s.sa.s.sinations of the Phoenix Park. Irish discontent is an immense evil, of which every just man must deplore the existence; its removal would be the greatest benefit which statesmanship could by any possibility confer upon England. But the immediate dealing with it in a particular way is not a necessity. Were the Home Rule Bill, and every Home Rule Bill, rejected by Parliament, the United Kingdom would be as safe as it has been at any time for the last ninety years and more.

In plain truth we have all of us forgotten the meaning of necessity.

Gladstonians have come honestly to confuse the needs of a party with the necessities of the country. This is a delusion that at all times and in all lands affects great political connections which, having once rendered high services to the nation, have outlived the valid reasons for their existence. The Republicans saved the United States from disruption. Hence in 1888, when Secession was an historical memory, many of the most to be respected among Americans believed that the rule of an honest Democrat was a worse evil than the rule of a corrupt Republican.

Thousands of Frenchmen, amidst the moral bankruptcy of Republican politicians, still hold that, because Republicans years ago saved France from ruin, even reconciled Conservatives cannot in the year 1893 be placed in office without danger to the commonwealth. So it is abroad; so it has been in England. In 1760 the best and wisest of English statesmen deemed it impossible that England should be rightly governed by any politicians but the representatives of the Revolution Families. In 1829 honest citizens trembled at the thought of power pa.s.sing into the hands of the Whigs; for the Tories had ruled for nearly sixty years, and the Tories had preserved England from revolution and invasion. So at this moment to many well-meaning Liberals the long predominance of the Liberal party makes the possibility of a Cabinet containing politicians who may in any sense be called Tories seem a monstrous calamity, which it is a necessity to avert. Vain to point out that Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour are such Tories as Eldon would have called Jacobins and Lord Melbourne Radicals, and that, they are allied with the best and most trustworthy of living Liberal leaders. Their is no arguing with sentiment; it is necessary to keep the Gladstonian Liberals in office, and the const.i.tution must be sacrificed in order that Lord Salisbury may not resume the Premiership. But there is a deeper cause than all this for our strange ideas of necessity. Habitual ease and unvarying prosperity have for a moment lowered the national spirit. Englishmen confuse inconveniences with dangers; they have forgotten what real peril is; they cannot understand the calmness with which, not a century ago, their fathers resisted at once insurrection in Ireland and the most powerful foreign enemy who has ever challenged the power of England, and this too at a time when the population of Great Britain was not above nine millions and the people of Ireland numbered more than four millions, when France was the leading military power of the world, and Ireland might at any moment receive the aid of a French army led by one of the best French generals. The men of 1798 or 1800 would mock at our ideas of necessity. Ireland has not an eighth of the population of the United Kingdom; our Home Rulers are not Ireland; they are a very different thing--the Irish populace. Let us yield everything which ought to be yielded to justice; let us obey the dictates of expediency, which is only justice looked at from another side; let us concede much to generosity; but in the name of common sense, of honesty, and of manliness, let us hear no more of necessity. Once in an age necessity may be the defence of statesmanship forced to confess its own blindness, but it is far more often the plea of tyranny, of ambition, of cowardice, or despair.

B. _No danger in Home Rule_. The arguments which are employed to show that the policy of Home Rule and the new const.i.tution which embodies it involve no danger for England are in the main drawn from the 'Safeguards' or Restrictions contained in the Bill--from the alleged precedent of Grattan's Const.i.tution--from the success of Home Rule in other parts of the world--and, generally, from the expediency of trustfulness.

i. _The Safeguards_. The Restrictions on the power of the Irish Parliament are, it is a.s.serted, sufficient and more than sufficient to rea.s.sure Unionists, and an intimation is sometimes added that, if further security is wanted, further safeguards may be provided.

This ground of confidence may be briefly dismissed; its answer is in effect supplied by the foregoing pages.

On the action of the Irish Executive the Restrictions place, and from the nature of things can place, no restraint whatever, and yet both England and the Irish Loyalists have far more reason to dread the abuse of executive than of legislative authority. On the legal action of the Irish Parliament the Restrictions do place a certain restraint, but the Restrictions are, as already shown, not in reality enforceable. They are for good purposes a nullity; they are effective, if at all, almost wholly for evil; they exhibit the radical and fatal inconsistency of Gladstonian policy. The policy of Home Rule is a policy of absolute and unrestricted trust; the safeguards are based on distrust. There is something to be said for generous confidence, and something also for distrustful prudence; there is nothing to be said for ineffective suspicion.

ii. _Grattan's Const.i.tution_. From the a.s.serted harmony between England and Ireland from 1782 to 1800 under Grattan's Const.i.tution, the inference is drawn that there is no reason to fear discord between England and Ireland under the Gladstonian const.i.tution of 1893.

The fallacy underlying the appeal to this precedent has been, to use words of Mr. Lecky, 'so frequently exposed that I can only wonder at its repet.i.tion.'[112] Under Grattan's Const.i.tution the Irish Executive was appointed, not by the Irish Parliament, but by the English Ministry; the Irish Parliament consisted solely of Protestants; it represented the miscalled 'English garrison,' and was in sympathy with the governing cla.s.ses of England. With all this to promote harmony, the concord between the governing powers in England and in Ireland was dubious. The rejection of England's proposals as to trade, and the exaction of the Renunciation Act, betray a condition of opinion which at any moment might have produced open discord. When at last the parliamentary independence of Ireland had led up to a savage rebellion, suppressed I fear with savage severity, English statesmen knew that an independent Irish Parliament threatened the existence of England. I may be allowed, even by Gladstonians, to place the genius and patriotism of Pitt on at least a level with the genius and patriotism of the present Premier. I may be allowed to doubt whether Mr. Gladstone's studies, however profound, in the history of Ireland, can, in 1893, render his acquaintance with the circ.u.mstances and the dangers of 1800 equal to the knowledge of the Minister who, in 1800, carried the Act of Union. And Pitt then held that the Union with Ireland was necessary for the preservation of England. If moreover Grattan's Const.i.tution be a precedent for our guidance, let us see to what the precedent points. The leading principles or features of Grattan's Const.i.tution are well known.

They are the absolute sovereignty of the Irish Parliament, and its independence of and equality with the Parliament of Great Britain; the renunciation by the British Parliament of any claim whatever to legislate for Ireland, and of any jurisdiction on the part of any British court to entertain appeals from Ireland; and, lastly, the absence of all representation of Ireland in the Parliament at Westminster. Each of these principles or features is denied or reversed by our new Gladstonian const.i.tution. The Irish Parliament is to be, not a sovereign legislature, but a subordinate legislature created by statute, and a legislature of such restricted and inferior authority as to be unworthy of the name of a parliament. The Imperial Parliament, with its vast majority of British members, a.s.serts its absolute supremacy in Ireland, and the right at its discretion to legislate for Ireland on any matter whatever; in Ireland there is to be founded an Imperial or British Court appointed by the Imperial Ministry, having jurisdiction on all matters affecting Imperial rights, and the final Court of Appeal from every tribunal in Ireland is to be the British Privy Council. Add to this that Irish members are to sit in the Parliament of Westminster as the 'outward and visible sign' of the Imperial Parliament's supremacy. But if every principle of Grattan's Const.i.tution be contradicted by the Gladstonian const.i.tution, if every principle which Grattan detested is a principle which Mr. Gladstone a.s.serts, with what show of reason can the success, uncertain though it be, of the Const.i.tution of 1782 be pleaded as evidence of the probable success of the Gladstonian const.i.tution of 1893? That two arrangements are unlike is to ordinary minds no proof that they will have similar results; a parliamentary majority of forty-two may repeal the Act of Union, but it cannot repeal the laws of logic.[113]

iii. _Success of Home Rule_. All over the world, we are told, Home Rule has succeeded; there are, under the government of the British Crown, at least twenty countries enjoying Home Rule, and their local independence causes no inconvenience to the United Kingdom or to the British Empire.

It follows therefore that Home Rule in Ireland will be a success and will in no way disturb the peace or prosperity of the United Kingdom.

The sole difficulty in meeting this argument is the extreme vagueness of its princ.i.p.al term. The words 'Home Rule' are in their signification so vague, at any rate as employed by Ministerialists, that they cover governments of totally different descriptions. Hungary, Norway, a State of the American Union, a Province of the Canadian Dominion, the Dominion itself, Man, Jersey, and Guernsey, every English colony with representative inst.i.tutions, are each described, by one Gladstonian reasoner or another, as happy and prosperous under Home Rule. But there is no one who will deny that the dissimilarities between the governments existing in each of the countries referred to are at least as striking as are their similarities; that the contrast, for example, between the relation of Hungary to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the relation of New York to the United States is at least as obvious as its likeness.

The a.n.a.logy, moreover, between Home Rule in any of these countries and Home Rule in Ireland is at best distant and shadowy.[114]

The crisis is too serious to permit us to waste words in examining the curiosities of the Home Rule controversy. Of Hungary, and its relation to the Empire of which it forms part, nothing at all will here be said.

There is nothing in that relation a.n.a.logous to Irish Home Rule. Nor need we trouble ourselves with the 'Home Rule' of Rhodes, of Samos, or of the Lebanon. Of these and any other States, if such there be, which enjoy 'Home Rule' under the supremacy of the Sultan, all that need be said is that it is satisfactory to learn on the authority of Mr. Gladstone that any part whatever of the Turkish Empire is well governed and happy. If any one can seriously suppose that the prosperity of Man and the Channel Islands, which reap all the benefits and bear none of the burdens of connection with Great Britain, and moreover have at no time been discontented, affords any reason for supposing that the secular miseries and discontent of Ireland will be cured by a system of government totally different from that which prevails either in Man, or Guernsey, or in Jersey, let him refer to these interesting islands.[115]

For myself I shall leave them out of account. Of the cordial relations between Sweden and Norway we hear nothing; the goodwill generated by a system of Home Rule is bringing these countries to the brink of civil war.[116]

There are two a.n.a.logous cases or precedents on which serious reasoners rely in support of a policy of Home Rule for Ireland. The success of federal government in other countries, and especially in the United States, and the success of colonial independence throughout the British Empire, are adduced as presumptions that Home Rule would knit together Great Britain and Ireland, or, as the cant of the day goes, transform a paper union into a union of hearts. If New York be loyal to the United States, if New Zealand be loyal to the British Crown, why should not Ireland, when endowed with local independence resembling the independence of an American State or of a self-governing British colony, be a loyal member of the United Kingdom?[117]