Home Rule Part 4

Such have been the great Acts of Parliament which have created a changed situation in Ireland. But the crown is still wanting to the work. Those who travel in Ireland and make any close inquiry into the work of these Acts must feel that there is a great gap unfilled. It is a gap at the top. All these new roads of reform are well and truly laid--but they all lead nowhere.

Take one startling fact. Two Commissions of late years have considered the great and glaring need of Ireland in the want of swift, cheap, and convenient transport both for persons and goods. One of these Commissions was on Ca.n.a.ls, and the other on Railways. Both decided in favour of national control. But as there is no national authority which anyone trusts, both reports have been stillborn.[34]

It was probably some such facts that led, as far back as August, 1903, to the uprising among the more moderate Unionist Irishmen of a remarkable movement which is still affecting Ireland. This movement took shape in a body; called the Irish Reform a.s.sociation, presided over, like the Land Conference, by that remarkable Irish peer Lord Dunraven. That Conference put forward a set of proposals which are now historical, and which have since, in varying forms, inspired the movement for what is popularly known as "Devolution."[35]

Mild as are the proposals of this new party, they do not differ in principle from the proposals of the Home Rulers.

These proposals obtained the backing of a large section of the Unionist Party. They undoubtedly had the sympathy of Sir Anthony MacDonnell. It is difficult to say, at the present moment, what precise part was played by Mr. George Wyndham, then still the Irish Chief Secretary. But the eloquent fact remains that the ultimate triumph of the Ulster Unionists over the Devolution Party of 1903 was marked by his resignation. There would seem to be no substantial doubt that in 1903 there arose in the Unionist Party the same division in regard to Home Rule as arose in 1885, when Lord Carnarvon, the Tory Viceroy, met Mr.

Parnell. For the moment the better spirits seriously contemplated removing once and for all the bitterness of the Irish grievance. There was a return of that feeling in the autumn of 1910, when, for the moment, at a period still known politically as the "age of reason,"

most of the Unionist Press admitted how much good reason and common-sense there was on the side of Home Rule. On each of these occasions the same result has occurred. At the critical moment the extreme faction of the Ulster Unionists has intervened and driven back the Tory Party to its fatal enslavement.

But the great fact which produced these movements still remains as valid and potent as ever. It is that, whatever improvements you introduce into the Irish machine, it can never work properly until the central motive power is a self-governing authority.

So deeply have the better Unionists been committed to that view in the past, in 1885, 1903, and 1910, that they are now shaping a new argument to face the situation of 1912. This argument is simple. It is that the new prosperity of Ireland is not a help, but a bar to Home Rule.

"If Ireland can prosper so well without Home Rule," so runs this line of reasoning, "why give her Home Rule at all?"

This is indeed a strange and cruel argument. We all know the people who used to say Home Rule was impossible because Ireland was disturbed.

They are now occupied in saying that she must be denied Home Rule because she is so peaceful.

But now it appears that this ingenious dilemma is to be applied to her material condition also. As with order, so with finance. In the old days Ireland was refused Home Rule because she was too poor. How could she get on without England? She would be bankrupt. But now that she is better off she is to be refused it because she is too prosperous!

Is it not quite obvious that these are arguments after judgment? That the people who use them are merely seeking excuses for refusing Home Rule altogether and at all seasons?

The British people, essentially a just and serious people, will not listen to these last desperate pleas, the coward fugitives of a routed case.

They will rather believe that all these material improvements in the condition of Ireland only make the need for Home Rule stronger and more urgent. They will realise that Ireland requires not a material, but a moral cure to give her the full value of the new reforms. Her need is to be removed once and for all from the cla.s.s of dependent communities.

She wants the great tonic cure of self-reliance and self-responsibility.

For it is as true to-day as it was when Mr. Gladstone spoke these wise and searching words in April, 1886[36]:--

"The fault of the administration of Ireland is simply this: that its spring and source of action, and what is called its motor muscle, is English and not Irish. Without providing a domestic Legislature for Ireland, without having an Irish Parliament, I want to know how you will bring about this wonderful, superhuman, and, I believe, in this condition, impossible result, that your administrative system shall be Irish and not English?"

The greatest need is still this--to make the "motor-muscle" Irish.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] The Report of the Congested Districts Commission was issued in 1908.

[29] See 19th Report (1911), Cd. 5712. The Act of 1909 more than doubled the area and population, bringing the area to 4,000,000 acres, and the population to 600,000. The former endowment was 86,000.

[30] Comprising the whole of the counties of Donegal, Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, and parts of the counties of Clare and Cork.

[31] The members of this admirable Board are Mr. Birrell, Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. O'Donnell, Dr. Mangan, Sir Horace Plunkett, Sir David Harrel, and six others.

[32] For the governing clauses of that Act see Appendix E.

[33] May not the Insurance Act do the same? It is very likely.

[34] See Appendix J.

[35] Private Bill legislation to be settled in Dublin. Irish internal expenditure to be handed to a financial council half elected and half nominated. An Irish a.s.sembly to be created with a small power of initiative.

[36] April 8th.--Second Reading Speech on 1886 Home Rule Bill.

THE HOME RULE PLAN

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BILLS AND THE BILL OF 1912.

"Without union of hearts identification is extinction, is dishonour, is conquest--not identification."

GRATTAN.

"It would be a misery to me if I had forgotten or omitted, in these my closing years, any measure possible for me to take towards upholding and promoting the cause, not of one Party or another, of one nation or another, but of all Parties and of all nations inhabiting these islands; and to these nations, viewing them as I do with all their vast opportunities, under a living union for power and for progress, I say, let me entreat you to let the dead bury the dead, and to cast behind you every recollection of bygone evils, and to cherish, to love, and sustain one another through all the vicissitudes of human affairs in the times that are to come."

Mr. GLADSTONE (First reading of 1893 Bill, 13th February).

CHAPTER IV.

THE HOME RULE PLAN

The Home Rule Bill of 1912 is now before the country, both in the clear and simple statement of the Prime Minister and in the test of the Bill itself[37]. The Bill has already pa.s.sed through the fire of one Parliamentary debate, and secured one great majority of 94 in the House of Commons.

What are the general outlines of this great measure? Its central proposal is the creation of an Irish Parliament, responsible for the administration of Irish affairs. That Parliament is to consist of a Senate and a House of Commons, numbering respectively 40 and 164, guided by an Irish Executive, chosen in the same manner as the British Imperial Cabinet. Ireland, in other words, is to be governed by responsible Parliamentary chiefs, commanding a majority in the Irish House of Commons. In this honest recognition of facts and terms we have an advance on the vagueness of former proposals. Otherwise, both this Parliament and this Executive are to have the same liberty and are to be restrained by almost precisely the same checks and safeguards, in regard both to religious rights and Imperial sovereignty, as those which existed in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. Ireland is to retain at Westminster a representation of forty-two members.

What is to happen if the two Irish Chambers differ? According to the Bill, the Senate is to be nominated, at first by the Imperial Government, and afterwards by the Irish Parliament, and the members are to sit by rotation for eight years. The Irish House of Commons, on the other hand, is to be elected by the same const.i.tuencies as at present, and the membership is to be distributed in proportion to the population--an arrangement which will give Ulster fifty-nine representatives.[38] It is clear that under those conditions a powerful Irish Government remaining in office beyond a certain period would have command of both Houses, as indeed happens at present under similar conditions both in Canada and New Zealand.[39] But if one Party should hold power for a prolonged period, and then give place to another, the new Government will find itself, as Mr. Borden finds himself in Canada at present, restrained from precipitate change by an Upper House nominated by his predecessors.

What would happen in that case? To settle that problem, the Home Rule Bill contains a clause[40] adopting the provisions of the South Africa Act, enabling both Houses to hold a joint sitting, in which the majority will prevail. As long as that provision holds, it matters very little whether the Upper Chamber is nominated or is elected, as some propose, by proportional representation. In either case, the Irish House of Commons will be the real governing body, as indeed it must be if the Irish Executive is to be properly responsible, and the new Irish Const.i.tution to work smoothly.

So much for the general provisions of the present Bill. The details as to safe-guards and exclusions will be found in the full text of the Bill contained in Appendix A, and I shall leave the question of finance to the chapter specifically devoted to that subject.

Let us turn now to the chief arguments against the measure as set forth in the recent debate, and as expressed with ability and power in a pamphlet ent.i.tled "Against Home Rule," to which practically all the chief leaders of the Unionist cause contribute articles[41]. Apart from the Ulster case, dealt with in a previous chapter, the main argument seems to be that the English people have not been sufficiently consulted. "It is all so sudden," said the elderly lady when she received a proposal from an elderly suitor who had been delaying his pa.s.sion for a score or so of years. The same painful outcry comes from the Unionist Party twenty-seven years after the first beginning of the discussions of Home Rule in this country.

One can imagine, indeed, that a foreign visitor, coming to this land in ignorance of the past of English politics, would suppose that the Home Rule controversy had now arisen for the first time. Attending Unionist meetings, he would hear an immense amount of eloquence devoted to the wrongs of the English people in being rushed into a premature decision, and being asked to give judgment without proper trial. The Home Rulers would be represented to him as men of rash and precipitate temper, who wanted to bring about in a few months a change which would affect the United Kingdom for centuries. And finally he would hear men thanking G.o.d that there existed a House of Lords which, in spite of the machinations of the Home Rulers, could still give the British public two more years to ruminate over the question of Home Rule.