Handbook of Home Rule Part 11

The British Colonial Governments thus present an absolute gradation of rule; beginning with absolute despotism and ending with almost absolute legal independence, except in so far as a veto on legislation and the presence of a Governor named by the Crown mark the dependence of the colony on the mother country.

It is to be remembered, moreover, that the colonies which have received this complete local freedom are the great colonies of the earth--nations themselves possessing territories as large or larger than any European State--namely, Canada, the Cape, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania. And this change from dependence to freedom has been effected with the good-will both of the mother country and the colony, and without it being imputed to the colonists, when desiring a larger measure of self-government, that they were separatists, anarchists, or revolutionists.

Such are the general principles of colonial government, but one colony requires special mention, from the circ.u.mstance of its Const.i.tution having been put forward as a model for Ireland; this is the Dominion of Canada. The Government of Canada is, in effect, a subordinate federal union; that is to say, it possesses a central Legislature, having the largest possible powers of local self-government consistent with the supremacy of the empire, with seven inferior provincial Governments, exercising powers greater than those of an English county, but not so great as those of an American State. The advantage of such a form of government is that, without weakening the supremacy of the empire or of the central local power, it admits of considerable diversities being made in the details of provincial government, where local peculiarities and antecedents render it undesirable to make a more complete a.s.similation of the Governments of the various provinces.

Materials have now been collected which will enable the reader to judge of the expediency or inexpediency of the course taken by Mr. Gladstone's Government in dealing with Ireland. Three alternatives were open to them--

1. To let matters alone.

2. To pa.s.s a Coercion Bill.

3. To change the government of Ireland, and at the same time to pa.s.s a Land Bill.

The two last measures are combined under the head of one alternative, as it will be shown in the sequel that no effective Land Bill can be pa.s.sed without granting Home Rule in Ireland.

Now, the short answer to the first alternative is, that no party in the State--Conservative, Whig, Radical, Unionist, Home Ruler, Parnellite--thought it possible to leave things alone. That something must be done was universally admitted.

The second alternative has found favour with the present Government, and certainly is a better example of the triumph of hope over experience, than even the proverbial second marriage.

Eighty-six years have elapsed since the Union. During the first thirty-two years only eleven years, and during the last fifty-four years only two years have been free from special repressive legislation; yet the agitation for repeal of the Union, and general discontent, are more violent in 1887 than in any one of the eighty-six previous years. In the name of common-sense, is there any reason for supposing that the Coercion Bill of 1887 will have a better or more enduring effect than its numerous predecessors? The _prima facie_ case is at all events in favour of the contention that, when so many trials of a certain remedy have failed, it would be better not to try the same remedy again, but to have recourse to some other medicine. What, then, was the position of Mr. Gladstone's Government at the close of the election of 1885? What were the considerations presented to them as supreme supervisors and guardians of the British Empire? They found that vast colonial empire tranquil and loyal beyond previous expectation--the greater colonies satisfied with their existing position; the lesser expecting that as they grew up to manhood they would be treated as men, and emanc.i.p.ated from childish restraints. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were contented with their st.u.r.dy dependent independence, loyal to the backbone. One member only stood aloof, sulky and dissatisfied, and though in law integrally united with the dominant community, practically was dissociated from it by forming within Parliament (the controlling body of the whole) a separate section, of which the whole aim was to fetter the action of the entire supreme body in order to bring to an external severance the practical disunion which existed between that member and Great Britain. This member--Ireland--as compared with other parts of the empire, was small and insignificant; measured against Great Britain, its population was five millions to thirty-one millions, and its estimated capital was only one twenty-fourth part of the capital of the United Kingdom. Measured against Australia, its trade with Great Britain was almost insignificant. Its importance arose from the force of public opinion in Great Britain, which deemed England pledged to protect the party in Ireland which desired the Union to be maintained, and from the power of obstructing English legislation through the medium of the Irish contingent, willing and ready on every occasion to intervene in English debates. The first step to be taken obviously was to find out what the great majority of Irish members wanted. The answer was, that they would be contented to quit the British Parliament on having a Parliament established on College Green, with full powers of local government, and that they would accept on behalf of their country a certain fixed annual sum to be paid to the Imperial Exchequer, on condition that such sum should not be increased without the consent of the Irish representatives. Here there were two great points gained without any sacrifice of principle. Ireland could not be said to be taxed without representation when her representatives agreed to a certain fixed sum to be paid till altered with their consent; while at the same time all risk of obstruction to English legislation by Irish means was removed by the proposal that the Irish representatives should exercise local powers in Dublin instead of imperial powers at Westminster.

On the basis of the above arrangement the Bill of Mr. Gladstone was founded. Absolute local autonomy was conferred on Ireland; the a.s.sent of the Irish members to quit the Imperial Parliament was accepted; and the Bill provided that after a certain day the representative Irish peers should cease to sit in the House of Lords, and the Irish members vacate their places in the House of Commons. Provisions were then made for the absorption in the Irish Legislative Body of both the Irish representative peers and Irish members.

The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament was maintained by an express provision excepting from any interference on the part of Irish Legislature all imperial powers, and declaring any enactment void which infringed that provision; further, an enactment was inserted for the purpose of securing to the English Legislature in the last resource the absolute power to make any law for the government of Ireland, and therefore to repeal, or suspend, the Irish Const.i.tution.

Technically these reservations of supremacy to the English Legislature were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of const.i.tutional law that a sovereign Legislature, such as the Queen and two Houses of Parliament in England, cannot bind their successors, and consequently can repeal or alter any law, however fundamental, and annul any restrictions on alteration, however strongly expressed. Practically they were never likely to be called into operation, as it is the custom of Parliament to adhere, under all but the most extraordinary and unforeseen circ.u.mstances, to any compact made by Act of Parliament between itself and any subordinate legislative body. The Irish Legislature was subjected to the same controlling power which has for centuries been applied to prevent any excess of jurisdiction in our Colonial Legislatures, by a direction that an appeal as to the const.i.tutionality of any laws which they might pa.s.s should lie to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This supremacy of the imperial judicial power over the action of the Colonial Legislatures was a system which the founders of the American Const.i.tution copied in the establishment of their supreme Court, and thereby secured for that legislative system a stability which has defied the a.s.saults of faction and the strain of civil war.

The Executive Government of Ireland was continued in her Majesty, and was to be carried on by the Lord Lieutenant on her behalf, by the aid of such officers and such Council as her Majesty might from time to time see fit. The initiative power of recommending taxation was also vested in the Queen, and delegated to the Lord Lieutenant. These clauses are co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local powers on the Irish Legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers to the Imperial Legislature. The Governor is an imperial officer, and will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny, and to veto any Bill which may be injurious to those interests. On the other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided by the advice of the Irish Executive Council. The system is self-acting.

The Governor, for local purposes, must have a Council which is in harmony with the Legislative Body. If the Governor and a Council, supported by the Legislative Body, do not agree, the Governor must give way, unless he can, by dismissing his Council, and dissolving the Legislative Body, obtain both a Council and a Legislative Body which will support his views. As respects imperial questions, the case is different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and in the last resort a determination of the Executive Council, backed by the Legislative Body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act of rebellion on the part of the Irish people, and be dealt with accordingly.

In acceding to the claims of the National Party for Home Rule in Ireland another question had to be considered: the demands of the English garrison, as it is called--or, in plain words, of the cla.s.s of Irish landlords--for protection. They urged that to grant Home Rule in Ireland would be to hand them over to their enemies, their tenants, and to lead to an immediate, or to all events a proximate, confiscation of their properties. Without admitting the truth of these apprehensions to the full extent, or indeed to any great extent, it was undoubtedly felt by the framers of the Home Rule Bill that a moral obligation rested on the Imperial Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a question so fraught with danger, so involved in difficulty, to be determined by the Irish Government on its first entry on official existence. Hence the Land Bill, the scheme of which was to frame a system under which the tenants, by being made owners of the soil, should become interested as a cla.s.s in the maintenance of social order, while the landlords should be enabled to rid themselves on fair terms of their estates, in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the responsibilities of ownership. Of the land scheme brought into Parliament in 1886, it need only here be said that it proposed to lend the Irish Government 3 per cent. stock at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, the Irish Government undertaking to purchase, from any Irish landlord desirous of selling, his estate at (as a general rule) twenty years'

purchase on the net rental. The money thus disbursed by the Irish Government was repaid to them by an annuity, payable by the tenant for forty-nine years, of 4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times the gross rental; the result being that, were the Bill pa.s.sed into law, the tenant would become immediate owner of the land, subject to the payment of an annuity considerably less than the previous rent--that the Irish Government would make a considerable profit on the transaction, inasmuch as it would receive from the tenant interest calculated on the basis of the _gross_ rental, whilst it would pay to the English Government interest calculated on the basis of the _net_ rental--and that the English Government would sustain no loss if the interest were duly received by them.

The effect of such a plan appears almost magical: Ireland is transformed at one stroke from a nation of landlords into a nation of peasant proprietors--apparently without loss to any one, and with gain to everybody concerned, except the British Government, who neither gain nor lose in the matter. The practicability, however, of such a scheme depends altogether on the security against loss afforded to the British tax-payer, for he is industrious and heavily burdened, and cannot be expected to a.s.sent to any plan which will land him in any appreciable loss. Here it is that the plan of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill differs from all other previous plans. Act after Act has been pa.s.sed enabling the tenant to borrow money from the British Government on the security of the holding, for the purpose of enabling him to purchase the fee-simple.

In such transactions the British Government becomes the mortgagee, and can only recover its money, if default is made in payment, by ejecting the tenant and becoming the landlord. In proportion, then, as any existing purchase Act succeeds, in the same proportion the risk of the British taxpayer increases. He is ever placed in the most invidious of all lights; instead of posing as the generous benefactor who holds forth his hand to rescue the landlord and tenant from an intolerable position, he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the still more hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant of his holding, is seeking to introduce another man into property which really belongs to the ejected tenant. Such a position may be endurable when the number of purchasing tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform in Ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable difference in the relations of landlord and tenant; still more, if it become general. Now, what is the remedy of such a state of things?

Surely to interpose the Irish Government between the Irish debtor and his English creditor, and to provide that the Irish revenues in bulk, not the individual holdings of each tenant, shall be the security for the English creditor. This was the scheme embodied in the Land Act of 1886. The punctual payment of all money due from the Government of Ireland to the Government of Great Britain was to have been secured by the continuance in the hands of the British Government of the Excise and Customs duties, and by the appointment of an Imperial Receiver-General, a.s.sisted by subordinate officers, and protected by an Imperial Court.

This officer would have received not only all the imperial taxes, but also the local taxes; and it would have been his duty to satisfy the claims of the British Government before he allowed any sum to pa.s.s into the Irish Exchequer. In effect, the British Government, in relation to the levying of imperial taxes, would have stood in the same relation to Ireland as Congress does to the United States in respect to the levying of federal taxes. The fiscal unity of Great Britain and Ireland would have been in this way secured, and the British Government protected against any loss of interest for the large sums to be expended in carrying into effect in Ireland any agrarian reform worthy of the name.

The Irish Bills of 1886, as above represented, had at least three recommendations:

1. They created a state of things in Ireland under which it was possible to make a complete agrarian reform without exposing the English Exchequer to any appreciable risk.

2. They enabled the Irish to govern themselves as respects local matters, while preserving intact the supremacy of the British Parliament and the integrity of the Empire.

3. They enabled the British Parliament to govern the British Empire without any obstructive Irish interference.

To the first of these propositions no attempt at an answer has been made. The Land Bill was never considered on its merits; indeed, was never practically discussed, but was at once swept into oblivion by the wave which overwhelmed the Home Rule Bill.

The contention against the second proposition was concerned in proving that the supremacy of the British Parliament was not maintained: the practical answer to this objection has been given above. Pushed to its utmost, it could only amount to proof that an amendment ought to have been introduced in Committee, declaring, in words better selected than those introduced for that purpose in the Bill, that nothing in the Act should affect the supremacy of the British Parliament. In short, the whole discussion here necessarily resolved itself into a mere verbal squabble as to the construction of a clause in a Bill not yet in Committee, and had no bottom or substance.

It was also urged that the concession of self-government to Ireland was but another mode of handing over the Loyalist party--or, as it is sometimes called, the English garrison--to the tender mercies of the Parnellites. The reply to this would seem to be, that as respects property the Land Bill effectually prevented any interference of the Irish Parliament with the land; nay, more, enabled any Irishman desirous of turning his land into money to do so on the most advantageous terms that ever had been--and with a falling market it may be confidently prophesied ever can be--offered to the Irish landlord; while as respect life and liberty, were it possible that they should be endangered, it was the duty of the imperial officer, the Lord Lieutenant, to take means for the preservation of peace and good order; and behind him, to enforce his behests, stand the strong battalions who, to our sorrow be it spoken, have so often been called upon to put down disturbance and anarchy in Ireland.

Competing plans have been put forward, with more or less detail, for governing Ireland. The suggestion that Ireland should be governed as a _Crown_ colony need only be mentioned to be rejected. It means in effect, that Ireland should sink from the rank of an equal or independent member of the British Empire to the grade of the most dependent of her colonies, and should be governed despotically by English officials, without representation in the English Parliament or any machinery of local self-government. Another proposal has been to give four provincial Governments to Ireland, limiting their powers to local rating, education, and legislation in respect of matters which form the subjects of private Bill legislation at present; in fact, to place them somewhat on the footing of the provinces of Canada, while reserving to the English Parliament the powers vested in the Dominion of Canada. Such a scheme would seem adapted to whet the appet.i.te of the Irish for nationality, without supplying them with any portion of the real article. It would supply no basis on which a system of agrarian reform could be founded, as it would be impossible to leave the determination of a local question, which is a unit in its dangers and its difficulties, to four different Legislatures; above all, the hinge on which the question turns--the sufficiency of the security for the British taxpayer--could not be afforded by provincial resources. Indeed, no alternative for the Land Bill of 1886 has been suggested which does not err in one of the following points: either it pledges English credit on insufficient security, or it requires the landowners to accept Irish debentures or some form of Irish paper money at par; in other words, it makes English taxes a fund for relieving Irish landlords, or else it compels the Irish landowner, if he sells at all, to sell at an inadequate price. Before parting with Canada, it may be worth while noticing that another, and more feasible, alternative is to imitate more closely the Canadian Const.i.tution, and to vest the central or Dominion powers in a central Legislature in Dublin, parcelling out the provincial powers, as they have been called, amongst several provincial Legislatures. This scheme might be made available as a means of protecting Ulster from the supposed danger of undue interference from the Central Government, and for making, possibly, other diversities in the local administration of various parts of Ireland in order to meet special local exigencies.

A leading writer among the dissentient Liberals has intimated that one of two forms of representative colonial government might be imposed on Ireland--either the form in which the executive is conducted by colonial officials, or the form of the great irresponsible colonies. The first of these forms is open to the objection, that it perpetuates those struggles between English executive measures and Irish opinion which has made Ireland for centuries ungovernable, and led to the establishment of the union and destruction of Irish independence in 1800; the second proposal would destroy the fiscal unity of the empire--leave the agrarian feud unextinguished, and aggravate the objections which have been urged against the Home Rule Bill of 1886. A question still remains, in relation to the _form_ of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, which would not have deserved attention but for the prominence given to it in some of the discussions upon the subject. The Bill of 1886 provides "that the Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland," but subjects their power to numerous exceptions and restrictions. The Act establishing the Dominion of Canada enumerates various matters in respect of which the Legislature of Canada is to have exclusive power, but prefaces the enumeration with a clause "that the Dominion Legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Canada in relation to all matters not within the jurisdiction of the provincial Legislatures, although such matters may not be specially mentioned." In effect, therefore, the difference between the Irish Bill and the Canadian Act is one of expression and not of substance, and, although the Bill is more accurate in its form, it would scarcely be worth while to insist on legislating by exception instead of by enumeration if, by the subst.i.tution of the latter form for the former, any material opposition would be conciliated.

What, then, are the conclusions intended to be drawn from the foregoing premises?

1. That coercion is played out, and can no longer be regarded as a remedy for the evils of Irish misrule.

2. That some alternative must be found, and that the only alternative within the range of practical politics is some form of Home Rule.

3. That there is no reason for thinking that the grant of Home Rule to Ireland--a member only, and not one of the most important members, of the British Empire--will in any way dismember, or even in the slightest degree risk the dismemberment of the Empire.

4. That Home Rule presupposes and admits the supremacy of the British Parliament.

5. That theory is in favour of Home Rule, as the nationality of Ireland is distinct, and justifies a desire for local independence; while the establishment of Home Rule is a necessary condition to the effectual removal of agrarian disturbances in Ireland.

6. That precedent is in favour of granting Home Rule to Ireland--_e.g._ the success of the new Const.i.tution in Austria-Hungary, and the happy effects resulting from the establishment of the Dominion of Canada.

7. That the particular form of Home Rule granted is comparatively immaterial.

8. That the Home Rule Bill of 1886 may readily be amended in such a manner as to satisfy all real and unpartisan objectors.

9. That the Land Bill of 1886 is the best that has ever been devised, having regard to the advantages offered to the new Irish Government, the landlord, and the tenant.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 60: Reprinted by permission, with certain omissions, from the _Contemporary Review_, August, 1887.]

[Footnote 61: "Home Rule and Imperial Unity:" _Contemporary Review_, March, 1887.]

[Footnote 62: Mill on _Representative Government_, p. 310.]

[Footnote 63: See _Statesman's Year-Book_: Switzerland and Germany.]

[Footnote 64: Heeren's _Political System of Europe_, p. 152.]

[Footnote 65: _Memoirs of Count Beust_, vol. i., Introduction, p.

xliii.]

[Footnote 66: _Statesman's Year-Book._]

[Footnote 67: The Emperor of Austria is the head of the empire, with the t.i.tle of King in Hungary. Austria-Hungary is treated as a federal, not as an imperial union, on the ground that Austria was never rightfully a dominant community over Hungary.]

[Footnote 68: _Representative Government_, p. 295.]