What about the Conservative party? Lord Salisbury's Newport speech was avowedly the programme of his Cabinet. It was the Conservative answer to Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian manifesto. He dealt with the Irish question in guarded language; but it was language which plainly showed that he recognized, not less clearly than the Liberal leaders, the crucial change which the a.s.similation of the Irish franchise to that of Great Britain had wrought in Irish policy. His keen eye saw at once the important bearing which that enfranchis.e.m.e.nt had on the traditional policy of coercion: "You had pa.s.sed an Act of Parliament, giving in unexampled abundance, and with unexampled freedom, supreme power to the great ma.s.s of the Irish people--supreme power as regards their own locality.... To my mind the renewal of exceptional legislation against a population whom you had treated legislatively to this marked confidence was so gross in its inconsistency that you could not possibly hope, during the few remaining months that were at your disposal before the present Parliament expired, to renew any legislation which expressed on one side a distrust of what on the other side your former legislation had so strongly emphasized. The only result of your doing it would have been, not that you would have pa.s.sed the Act, but that you would have promoted by the very inconsistency of the position that you were occupying--by the untenable character of the arguments that you were advancing--you would have produced so intense an exasperation amongst the Irish people, that you would have caused ten times more evil, ten times more resistance to law than your Crimes Act, even if it had been renewed, would possibly have been able to check." Lord Salisbury went on to say that "the effect of the Crimes Act had been very much exaggerated," and that "boycotting is of that character which legislation has very great difficulty in reaching." "Boycotting does not operate through outrage. Boycotting is the act of a large majority of a community resolving to do a number of things which are themselves legal, and which are only illegal by the intention with which they are done."

Next to Lord Salisbury the most prominent member of the Conservative party at that date was Lord Randolph Churchill. On the 3rd of January, 1885, when it was rumoured that Mr. Gladstone's Government, then in office, intended to renew a few of the clauses of the Crimes Act, Lord Randolph Churchill made a speech at Bow against any such policy. The following quotation will suffice as a specimen of his opinion: "It comes to this, that the policy of the Government in Ireland is to declare on the one hand, by the pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill, that the Irish people are perfectly capable of exercising for the advantage of the Empire the highest rights and privileges of citizenship; and by the proposal to renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously declare, on the other hand, that the Irish people are perfectly incapable of performing for the advantage of society the lowest and most ordinary duties of citizenship.... All I can say is that, if such an incoherent, such a ridiculous, such a dangerously ridiculous combination of acts can be called a policy, then, thank G.o.d, the Conservative party have no policy."

Within a few months of the delivery of that speech a Conservative Government was in office, with Lord Randolph Churchill as its leader in the House of Commons; and one of the first acts of the new leader was to separate himself ostentatiously from the Irish policy of Lord Spencer and from the policy of coercion in general. Lord Randolph Churchill, as the organ of the Government in the House of Commons, repudiated in scornful language any atom of sympathy with the policy pursued by Lord Spencer in Ireland; and Lord Carnarvon, the new Viceroy, declared that "the era of coercion" was past, and that the Conservative Government intended to govern Ireland by the ordinary law. Lord Carnarvon, in addition, and very much to his credit, sought and obtained an interview with Mr. Parnell, and discussed with him, in sympathetic language, the question of Home Rule. In his own explanation of this interview Lord Carnarvon admitted that he desired to see established in Ireland some form of self-government which would satisfy "the national sentiment."

It is idle, therefore, to a.s.sert that the question of Home Rule for Ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the country as a surprise by Mr. Gladstone in the beginning of 1886. The question was brought prominently before the public in the General Election of 1885 as one that must be faced in the new Parliament. All parties were committed to that policy, and the only difference was as to the character and limits of the measure of self-government to be granted to Ireland; whether it was to be large enough to satisfy "the national sentiment," as Lord Carnarvon, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Gladstone, and others desired; or whether it was to consist only of a system of county boards under the control of a reformed Dublin Castle. There was a general agreement that the grant to Ireland of electoral equality with England necessitated equality of political treatment, and that, above all things, there was to be no renewal of the stale policy of Coercion until the Irish people had got an opportunity of proving or disproving their fitness for self-government, unless, indeed, there should happen to be a recrudescence of crime which would render exceptional legislation necessary. The election of 1886 turned almost entirely on the question of Irish government, and it is not too much to say that Conservatives and Liberal Unionists vied with Home Rulers in repudiating a return to the policy of coercion until the effect of some kind of self-government had been tried. Of course, there were the usual plat.i.tudes about the necessity of maintaining law and order; but there was a _consensus_ of profession that coercion should not be resorted to unless there was a fresh outbreak of crime and disorder in Ireland.

Such were the professions of the opponents of Home Rule in 1885 and in 1886. They have now been in office for eighteen months, and what do we behold? They have pa.s.sed a perpetual Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the question of any kind of self-government has been relegated to an uncertain future. In his recent speech at Birmingham (Sept. 29), Mr.

Chamberlain has declared that the question is not ripe for solution, and that the question of disestablishment, in Wales, Scotland, and England successively, as well as the questions of Local Option, local government for Great Britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take precedence of it. That means the postponement of the reform of Irish Government to the Greek Kalends. What justification can be made for this change of front? No valid justification has been offered. So far from there having been any increase of crime in the interval, there has been a very marked decrease. When the Coercion Bill received the royal a.s.sent last August, Ireland was more free from crime than it had been for many years past. Nothing had happened to account for the return to the policy of coercion in violation of the promise to try the experiment of conciliation. The National League was in full vigour in 1885-1886, when the policy of coercion was abandoned; boycotting was just as prevalent, and outrages were much more numerous.

Under these circ.u.mstances it is the opponents of Home Rule, not its advocates, who owe an explanation to the public. They defeated Mr.

Gladstone's Bill, but promised a Bill of their own. Where is their Bill?

We hear nothing of it. They have made a complete change of front. They now tell us that the grievance of Ireland is entirely economic, and that the true solution of the Irish question is the abolition of dual ownership in land combined with a firm administration of the existing law. England and Scotland are to have a large measure of local government next year; but Ireland is to wait till a more convenient season. A more complete reversal of the policy proclaimed last summer by the so-called Unionists cannot be imagined.

Still, however, the "Unionists" hope to be able some day to offer some form of self-government to Ireland. For party purposes they are wise in postponing that day to the latest possible period, for its advent will probably dissolve the union of the "Unionists." Lord Salisbury, Lord Hartington, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Chamberlain cannot agree upon any scheme which all can accept without a public recantation of previous professions. Mr. Bright is opposed to Home Rule "in any shape or form."

Mr. Chamberlain, on the other hand, is in favour of a great National Council, on Mr. b.u.t.t's lines or on the lines of the Canadian plan; either of which would give the National Council control over education and the maintenance of law and order. Latterly, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain has advocated a separate treatment for Ulster. But the first act of an Ulster Provincial a.s.sembly would probably be to declare the union of that Province with the rest of Ireland. Ulster, be it remembered, returns a majority of Nationalists to the Imperial Parliament. To exclude Ulster from any share in the settlement offered to the other three Provinces would therefore be impracticable; and Mr. Bright has lately expressed his opinion emphatically in that sense. In any case, Lord Hartington could be no party to any scheme so advanced as Mr.

Chamberlain's. For although he declared, in his Belfast speech, that "complete self-government" was the goal of his policy for Ireland, he was careful to explain that "the extension of Irish management over Irish affairs must be a growth from small beginnings." But this "growth from small beginnings" would be, in Lord Salisbury's opinion, a very dangerous and mischievous policy. The establishment of self-government in Ireland, as distinct from what is commonly known as Home Rule, he p.r.o.nounced in his Newport speech to be "a very difficult question;" and in the following pa.s.sage he placed his finger upon the kernel of the difficulty:--"A local authority is more exposed to the temptation, and has more of the facility for enabling a majority to be unjust to the minority, than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and extends its jurisdiction over a wide area. That is one of the weaknesses of local authorities. In a large central authority the wisdom of several parts of the country will correct the folly or the mistakes of one. In a local authority that correction to a much greater extent is wanting; and it would be impossible to leave that out of sight in the extension of any such local authority to Ireland."

This seems to me a much wiser and more statesmanlike view than a system of elective boards scattered broadcast over Ireland. A mult.i.tude of local boards all over Ireland, without a recognized central authority to control them, would inevitably become facile instruments in the hands of the emissaries of disorder and sedition. And, even apart from any such sinister influences, they would be almost certain to yield to the temptation of being oppressive, extravagant, and corrupt, if there were no executive power to command their confidence and enforce obedience.

Without the previous creation of some authority of that kind it would be sheer madness to offer Ireland the fatal boon of local self-government.

It would enormously increase without conciliating the power of the Nationalists, and would make the administration of Ireland by const.i.tutional means simply impossible. The policy of the Liberal Unionists is thus much too large or much too small. It is too small to conciliate, and therefore too large to be given with safety. All these proposed concessions are liable to one insuperable objection; they would each and all enable the Irish to extort Home Rule, but under circ.u.mstances which would rob it of its grace and repel grat.i.tude. Mill has some admirable observations bearing on this subject, and I venture to quote the following pa.s.sage: "The greatest imperfection of popular local inst.i.tutions, and the chief cause of the failure which so often attends them, is the low calibre of the men by whom they are almost always carried on. That these should be of a very miscellaneous character is, indeed, part of the usefulness of the inst.i.tution; it is that circ.u.mstance chiefly which renders it a school of political capacity and general intelligence. But a school supposes teachers as well as scholars; the utility of the instruction greatly depends on its bringing inferior minds into contact with superior, a contact which in the ordinary course of life is altogether exceptional, and the want of which contributes more than anything else to keep the generality of mankind on one level of contented ignorance.... It is quite hopeless to induce persons of a high cla.s.s, either socially or intellectually, to take a share of local administration in a corner by piecemeal as members of a Paving Board or a Drainage Commission."[17]

Mr. Mill goes on to argue that it is essential to the safe working of any scheme of local self-government that it should be under the control of a central authority in harmony with public opinion.

When the "Unionists" begin, if they ever do begin, seriously to deliberate on the question of self-government for Ireland, they will find that they have only two practicable alternatives--the maintenance of the present system, or some scheme of Home Rule on the lines of Mr.

Gladstone's much misunderstood Bill. And the ablest men among the "Unionists" are beginning to perceive this. The _Spectator_ has in a recent article implored Mr. Chamberlain to desist from any further proposal in favour of self-government for Ireland, because the inevitable result would be to split up the Unionist party; and Mr.

Chamberlain, as we have seen, has accepted the advice. Another very able and very logical opponent of Home Rule has candidly avowed that the only alternative to Home Rule is the perpetuation of "things as they are." Ireland, he thinks, "possesses none of the conditions necessary for local self-government." His own view, therefore, is "that in Ireland, as in France, an honest, centralized administration of impartial officials, and not local self-government, would best meet the real wants of the people."

"The name of 'Self-government' has a natural fascination for Englishmen; but a policy which cannot satisfy the wishes of Home Rulers, which may--it is likely enough--be of no benefit to the Irish people, which will certainly weaken the Government in its contest with lawlessness and oppression, is not a policy which obviously commends itself to English good sense."[18]

Well may this distinguished "Supporter of things as they are" declare: "The maintenance of the Union [on such terms] must necessarily turn out as severe a task as ever taxed a nation's energies; for to maintain the Union with any good effect, means that, while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every fair demand from Ireland; must strenuously, and without fear or favour, a.s.sert the equal rights of landlords and tenants, of Protestants and Catholics; and must, at the same time, put down every outrage and reform every abuse."

What hope is there of this? Our only guide to the probabilities of the future is our experience of the past And what has that been in Ireland?

In every year since the Legislative Union there have been mult.i.tudes of men in England as upright, as enlightened, as well-intentioned towards Ireland, as Professor Dicey, and with better opportunities of translating their thoughts into acts. Yet what has been the result? _Si monumenlum requiris circ.u.mspice_. Behold Ireland at this moment, and examine every year of its history since the Union. Do the annals of any const.i.tutional Government in the world present so portentous a monument of Parliamentary failure, so vivid an example of a moral and material ruin "paved with good intentions"? Therein lies the pathos of it. Not from malice, not from cruelty, not from wanton injustice, not even from callous indifference to suffering and wrong, does our misgovernment of Ireland come. If the evil had its root in deliberate wrong-doing on the part of England it would probably have been cured long ago. But each generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rect.i.tude, has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish problem. The generation which pa.s.sed the Act of Union, oblivious of British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had become of the prosperity and contentment which the promoters of the Union had promised to Ireland. The next generation made vicarious penance, and preferred the enactment of Catholic emanc.i.p.ation to the alternative of civil war; and then wondered in its turn that Ireland still remained unpacified. Then came a terrible famine, followed by evictions on a scale so vast and cruel that the late Sir Robert Peel declared that no parallel could be found for such a tale of inhumanity in "the records of any country, civilized or barbarous." Another generation, pluming itself on its enlightened views and kind intentions, pa.s.sed the Enc.u.mbered Estates Act, which delivered the Irish tenants over to the tender mercies of speculators and money-lenders; and then Parliament for a time closed its eyes and ears, and relied upon force alone to keep Ireland quiet. It rejected every suggestion of reform in the Land laws; and a great Minister, himself an Irish landlord, dismissed the whole subject in the flippant epigram that "tenant-right was landlord-wrong." Since then the Irish Church has been disestablished, and two Land Acts have been pa.s.sed; yet we seem to be as far as ever from the pacification of Ireland. Surely it is time to inquire whether the evil is not inherent in our system of governing Ireland, and whether there is any other cure than that which De Beaumont suggested, namely, the destruction of the system. It is probable that there is not in all London a more humane or a more kind-hearted man than Lord Salisbury. Yet Lord Salisbury's Government will do some harsh and inequitable things in Ireland this winter, just as Liberal Governments have done during their term of office. The fault is not in the men, but in the system which they have to administer. I see no reason to doubt that Sir M. Hicks-Beach did the best he could under the circ.u.mstances; but, unfortunately, bad is the best. In a conversation which I had with Dr. Dollinger while he was in full communion with his Church, I ventured to ask him whether he thought that a new Pope, of Liberal ideas, force of character, and commanding ability, would make any great difference in the Papal system. "No," he replied, "the Curial system is the growth of centuries, and there can be no change of any consequence while it lasts.

Many a Pope has begun with brave projects of reform; but the struggle has been brief, and the end has been invariably the same: the Pope has been forced to succ.u.mb. His _entourage_ has been too much for him. He has found himself enclosed in a system which was too strong for him, wheel within wheel; and while the system lasts the most enlightened ideas and the best intentions are in the long run unavailing." This criticism applies, _mutatis mutandis_, to what may be called the Curial system of Dublin Castle. It is a species of political Ultramontanism, exercising supreme power behind the screen of an official infallibility on which there is practically no check, since Parliament has never hitherto refused to grant it any power which it demanded for enforcing its decrees.

There is, moreover, another consideration which must convince any dispa.s.sionate mind which ponders it, that the British Parliament is incompetent to manage Irish affairs, and must become increasingly incompetent year by year. In ordinary circ.u.mstances Parliament sits about twenty-seven weeks out of the fifty-two. Five out of the twenty-seven may safely be subtracted for holidays, debates on the Address, and other debates apart from ordinary business. That leaves twenty-two weeks, and out of these two nights a week are at the disposal of the Government and three at the disposal of private members; leaving in all forty-four days for the Government and sixty-six for private members. Into those forty-four nights Government must compress all its yearly programme of legislation for the whole of the British Empire, from the settlement of some petty dispute about land in the Hebrides, to some question of high policy in Egypt, India, or other portions of the Queen's world-wide empire; and all this amidst endless distractions, enforced attendance through dreary debates and vapid talk, and a running fire of cross-examination from any volunteer questioner out of the six hundred odd members who sit outside the Government circle. The consequence is, that Parliament is getting less able every year to overtake the ma.s.s of business which comes before it. Each year contributes its quota of inevitable arrears to the acc.u.mulated ma.s.s of previous Sessions, and the process will go on multiplying in increasing ratio as the complex and multiform needs of modern life increase. The large addition recently made to the electorate of the United Kingdom is already forcing a crop of fresh subjects on the attention of Parliament, as well as presenting old ones from new points of view. Plans of devolution and Grand Committees will fail to cope with this evil. To overcome it we need some organic change in our present Parliamentary system, some form of decentralization, which shall leave the Imperial Parliament supreme over all subordinate bodies, yet relegate to the historic and geographical divisions of the United Kingdom the management severally of their own local affairs.

I should have better hope from governing Ireland (if it were possible) as we govern India, than from the present Unionist method of leaving "things as they are." A Viceroy surrounded by a Council of trained officials, and in semi-independence of Parliament, would have settled the Irish question, land and all, long ago. But imagine India governed on the model of Ireland: the Viceroy and the most important member of his Government changing with every change of Administration at Westminster;[19] his Council and the official cla.s.s in general consisting almost exclusively of native Mussulmans, deeply prejudiced by religious and traditional enmity against the great ma.s.s of the population; himself generally subordinate to his Chief Secretary, and exposed to the daily criticism of an ignorant Parliament and to the determined hostility of eighty-six Hindoos, holding seats in Parliament as the representatives of the vast majority of the people of India, and resenting bitterly the domination of the hereditary oppressors of their race. How long could the Government of India be carried on under such conditions?

Viewing it all round, then, it must be admitted that the problem of governing Ireland while leaving things as they are is a sufficiently formidable one. Read the remarkable admissions which the facts have forced from intelligent opponents of Home Rule like Mr. Dicey, and add to them all the other evils which are rooted in our existing system of Irish government, and then consider what hope there is, under "things as they are," of "sedulously doing justice to every demand from Ireland,"

"strenuously, and without fear or favour, a.s.serting the equal rights of landlords and tenants, Protestants and Catholics," "putting down every outrage, and reforming every abuse;" and all the "while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen" for a fundamental change in a political arrangement that has for centuries produced all the mischief which the so-called Unionist party are forced to admit, and much more besides, while it has at the same time frustrated every serious endeavour to bring about the better state of things which they expect from--what? From "things as they are!" As well expect grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles. While the tree remains the same, no amount of weeding, or pruning, or manuring, or change of culture, will make it bring forth different fruit. Mr. Dicey, among others, has demolished what Lord Beaconsfield used to call the "bit-by-bit"

reformers of Irish Government--those who would administer h.o.m.oeopathic doses of local self-government, but always under protest that the supply was to stop short of what would satisfy the hunger of the patient. But a continuance of "things as they are," gilded with a thin tissue of benevolent hopes and aspirations, is scarcely a more promising remedy for the ills of Ireland. Is it not time to try some new treatment--one which has been tried in similar cases, and always with success? One only policy has never been tried in Ireland--honest Home Rule.

Certainly, if Home Rule is to be refused till all the prophets of evil are refuted, Ireland must go without Home Rule for ever. "If the sky fall, we shall catch larks." But he would be a foolish bird-catcher who waited for that contingency. And not less foolish is the statesman who sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has been mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild prediction falsified by the event; for that would ensure his never moving at all. _Sedet aeternumque sedebit_. A proper enough att.i.tude, perhaps, on the part of an eristic philosopher speculating on politics in the silent shade of academic groves, but hardly suitable for a practical politician who has to take action on one of the most burning questions of our time. Human affairs are not governed by mathematical reasoning. You cannot demonstrate the precise results of any legislative measure beforehand as you can demonstrate the course of a planet in the solar system.

"Probability," as Bishop Butler says, "is the guide of life;" and an older philosopher than Butler has warned us that to demand demonstrative proof in the sphere of contingent matter is the same kind of absurdity as to demand probable reasoning in mathematics. You cannot confute a prophet before the event; you can only disbelieve him. The advocates of Home Rule believe that their policy would in general have an exactly contrary effect to that predicted by their opponents. In truth, every act of legislation is, before experience, amenable to such destructive criticism as these critics urge against Home Rule. I have not a doubt that they could have made out an unanswerable "case" against the Great Charter at Runnymede; and they would find it easy to prove on _a priori_ grounds that the British Const.i.tution is one of the most absurd, mischievous, and unworkable instruments that ever issued from human brains or from the evolution of events. By their method of reasoning the Great Charter and other fundamental portions of the Const.i.tution ought to have brought the Government of the British Empire to a deadlock long ago. Every suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, every Act of Attainder, every statute for summary trial and conviction before justices of the peace, is a violation of the fundamental article of the Const.i.tution, which requires that no man shall be imprisoned or otherwise punished except after lawful trial by his peers.[20] Consider also the magazines of explosive materials which lie hidden in the const.i.tutional prerogatives of the Crown, if they could only be ignited by the match of an ingenious theorist. The Crown, as Lord Sherbrooke once somewhat irreverently expressed it, "can turn every cobbler in the land into a peer," and could thus put an end, as the Duke of Wellington declared, to "the Const.i.tution of this country."[21] "The Crown is not bound by Act of Parliament unless named therein by special and particular words."[22]

The Crown can make peace or war without consulting Parliament, can by secret treaty saddle the nation with the most perilous obligations, and give away all such portions of the empire as do not rest on Statute. The prerogative of mercy, too, would enable an eccentric Sovereign, aided by an obsequious Minister, to open the jails and let all the convicted criminals in the land loose upon society.[22] But criticism which proves too much in effect proves nothing.

In short, every stage in the progress of const.i.tutional reform has, in matter of fact, been marked by similar predictions falsified by results, and the prophets who condemn Home Rule have no better credentials; indeed, much worse, for they proclaim the miserable failure of "things as they are," whereas their predecessors were in their day satisfied with things as they were.[23]

It is, high time, therefore, to call upon the opponents of Home Rule to tell us plainly where they stand. They claim a mandate from the country for their policy. They neither asked nor received a mandate to support the system of Government which prevailed in Ireland at the last election, and still less the policy of coercion which they have subst.i.tuted for that system. Do they mean to go back or forward? They cannot stand still. They have already discovered that one act of repression leads to another, and they will find ere long that they have no alternative except Home Rule or the suppression of Parliamentary Government in Ireland. Men may talk lightly of the ease with which eighty-six Irish members may be kept in order in Parliament. They forget that the Irish people are behind the Irish members. How is Ireland to be governed on Parliamentary principles if the voice of her representatives is to be forcibly silenced or disregarded? Could even Yorkshire or Lancashire be governed permanently in that way? Let it be observed that we have now reached this pa.s.s, namely, that the opponents of Home Rule are opposed to the Irish members, not on any particular form of self-government for Ireland, but on any form; in other words, they resist the all but unanimous demand of Ireland for what "Unionists" of all parties declared a year ago to be a reasonable demand. No candidate at the last election ventured to ask the suffrages of any const.i.tuency as "a supporter of things as they are." Yet that is practically the att.i.tude now a.s.sumed by the Ministerial party, both Conservatives and Liberal Unionists. It is an att.i.tude of which the country is getting weary, as the bye-elections have shown. But the "Unionists," it must be admitted, are in a sore dilemma. Their strength, such as it is, lies in doing nothing for the reform of Irish Government. Their bond of union consists of nothing else but opposition to Mr. Gladstone's policy. They dare not attempt to formulate any policy of their own, knowing well that they would go to pieces in the process. Their hope and speculation is that something may happen to remove Mr. Gladstone from the political arena before the next dissolution. But, after all, Mr. Gladstone did not create the Irish difficulty. It preceded him and will survive him, unless it is settled to the satisfaction of the Irish people before his departure. And the difficulty of the final settlement will increase with every year of delay. Nor will the difficulty be confined to Ireland. The Irish question is already reacting upon kindred, though not identical, problems in England and Scotland, and the longer it is kept open, so much the worse will it be for what are generally regarded as Conservative interests. It is not the Moderate Liberals or Conservatives who are gaining ground by the prolongation of the controversy, and the disappearance of Mr. Gladstone from the scene would have the effect of removing from the forces of extreme Radicalism a conservative influence, which his political opponents will discover when it is too late to restore it. Their regret will then be as unavailing as the lament of William of Deloraine over his fallen foe--

"I'd give the lands of Deloraine Dark Musgrave were alive again."

The Irish landlords have already begun to realize the mistake they made when they rejected Mr. Gladstone's policy of Home Rule and Land Purchase. It is the old story of the Sibyl's books. No British Government will ever again offer such terms to the Irish landlords as they refused to accept from Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand, Home Rule is inevitable. Can any reflective person really suppose that the democracy of Great Britain will consent to refuse to share with the Irish people the boon of self-government which will be offered to themselves next year? Any attempt to exclude the Irish from the benefits of such a scheme, after all the promises of the last general election, would almost certainly wreck the government; for const.i.tuencies have ways and means of impressing their wills on their representatives in Parliament even without a dissolution. If, on the other hand, Ireland should be included in a general scheme of local Government, the question of who shall control the police will arise. In Great Britain the police, of course, will be under local control. To refuse this to Ireland would be to offer a boon with a stigma attached to it. The Irish members agreed to let the control of the constabulary remain, under Mr.

Gladstone's scheme, for some years in the hands of the British Government; but they would not agree to this while Dublin Castle ruled the country. Moreover, the formidable difficulty suggested by Lord Salisbury and Mr. John Stuart Mill (see pp. 115, 116) would appear the moment men began seriously to consider the question of local government for Ireland. The government of Dublin Castle would have to go, but something would have to be put in its place; and when that point has been reached it will probably be seen that nothing much better or safer can be found than some plan on the main lines of Mr. Gladstone's Bill.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: Speech at Manchester, May 7, 1886, by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, who was a member of the Cabinet to which Mr. Chamberlain's scheme was submitted.]

[Footnote 16: _Hansard_, vol. 220, pp. 708, 715.]

[Footnote 17: _Considerations on Representative Government_, p. 281.]

[Footnote 18: Dicey's _England's Case against Home Rule_, pp. 25-31, and Letter in _Spectator_ of September 17th, 1887.]

[Footnote 19: From the beginning of 1880 till now there have been six Viceroys and ten Chief Secretaries in Dublin--namely, Duke of Marlborough, Earls Cowper and Spencer, Earls of Carnarvon and Aberdeen, and the Marquis of Londonderry; Mr. Lowther, Mr. Forster, Lord F.

Cavendish, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Campbell Bannerman, Sir W. Hart d.y.k.e, Mr.

W.H. Smith, Mr. J. Morley, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, and Mr. A. Balfour. A fine example, truly, of stable government and continuous policy!]

[Footnote 20: Creasy's _Imperial and Colonial Const.i.tutions of the Britannic Empire,_ p. 155.]

[Footnote 21: May's _Const. Hist._, i. 313.]

[Footnote 22: Blackstone's _Commentaries_, by Stephen, ii. 491, 492, 497, 507.]

[Footnote 23: We need not go far afield for ill.u.s.trations. A few samples will suffice. "It was natural," says Mill (_Rep. Gov._, p. 311), "to feel strong doubts before trial had been made how such a provision [as the Supreme Court of the United States] would work; whether the tribunal would have the courage to exercise its const.i.tutional power; if it did, whether it would exercise it wisely, and whether the Government would consent peaceably to its decision. The discussions on the American Const.i.tution, before its final adoption, give evidence that these natural apprehensions were strongly felt; but they are now entirely quieted, since, during the two generations and more which have subsequently elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify them, though there have at times been disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became the badges of parties respecting the limits of the authority of the Federal and State Governments." The Austrian opponents of Home Rule in Hungary predicted that it would lead straight to separation. The opponents of the Canadian Const.i.tution prophesied that Canada would in a few years be annexed to the United States; and Home Rule in Australia was believed by able statesmen to involve independence at an early date.

Mr. Dicey himself tells us "that the wisest thinkers of the eighteenth century (including Burke) held that the independence of the American Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain. There were apparently solid reasons for this belief: experience has proved it to be without foundation." The various changes in our own Const.i.tution, and even in our Criminal Code, were believed by "men of light and leading"

at the time to portend national ruin. All the judges in the land, all the bankers, and the professions generally, pet.i.tioned against alteration in the law which sent children of ten to the gallows for the theft of a pocket-handkerchief. The great Lord Ellenborough declared in the House of Lords that "the learned judges were unanimously agreed"

that any mitigation in that law would imperil "the public security." "My Lords," he exclaimed, "if we suffer this Bill to pa.s.s we shall not know where we stand; we shall not know whether we are on our heads or on our feet." Mr. Perceval, when leader of the House of Commons in 1807, declared that "he could not conceive a time or change of circ.u.mstances which would render further concessions to the Catholics consistent with the safety of the State." (_Croker Papers_, i. 12.) Croker was a very astute man; but here is his forecast of the Reform Act of 1832: "No kings, no lords, no inequalities in the social system; all will be levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers and small farmers: this, perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly by confiscations and persecutions." "There can be no longer any doubt that the Reform Bill is a stepping-stone in England to a Republic, and in Ireland to separation." Croker met the Queen in 1832, considered her very good-looking, but thought it not unlikely that "she may live to be plain Miss Guelph." Even Sir Robert Peel wrote: "If I am to be believed, I foresee revolution as the consequence of this Bill;" and he "felt that it had ceased to be an object of ambition to any man of equable and consistent mind to enter into the service of the Crown." And as late as 1839, so robust a character as Sir James Graham thought the world was coming to an end because the young Queen gave her confidence to a Whig Minister. "I begin to share all your apprehensions and forebodings," he writes to Croker, "with regard to the probable issue of the present struggle. The Crown in alliance with Democracy baffles every calculation on the balance of power in our mixed form of Government. Aristocracy and Church cannot contend against Queen and people mixed; they must yield in the first instance, when the Crown, unprotected, will meet its fate, and the accustomed round of anarchy and despotism will run its course." And he prays that he may "lie cold before that dreadful day." (_Ibid._, ii.

113, 140, 176, 181, 356.) Free Trade created a similar panic. "Good G.o.d!" Croker exclaimed, "what a chaos of anarchy and misery do I foresee in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing an _average_ duty of 8_s._ into a _fixed_ duty of 8_s._, the fact being that the fixed duty means _no duty at all_; and _no duty at all_ will be the overthrow of the existing social and political system of our country!" (_Ibid._, iii. 13.) And what have become of Mr. Lowe's gloomy vaticinations as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate Reform Bill of 1866, followed as it was by a much more democratic measure?]

A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE.

BY E.L. G.o.dKIN.

Mr. Dicey in his _Case against Home Rule_ does me the honour to refer to an article which I wrote a year ago on "American Home Rule,"[24]

expressing in one place "disagreement in the general conclusion to which the article is intended to lead," and in another "inability to follow the inference" which he supposes me to draw "against all attempts to enforce an unpopular law." Now the object of that article, I may be permitted to explain, was twofold. I desired, in the first place, to combat the notion which, it seemed to me, if I might judge from a great many of the speeches and articles on the Irish question, was widely diffused even among thoughtful Englishmen that the manner in which the Irish have expressed their discontent--that is, through outrage and disorder--was indicative of incapacity for self-government, and even imposed upon the Englishmen the duty, in the interest of morality (I think it was the _Spectator_ who took this view), and as a disciplinary measure, of refusing to such a people the privilege of managing their own affairs. I tried to show by several noted examples occurring in this country that prolonged displays of lawlessness, and violence, and even cruelty, such as the anti-rent movement in the State of New York, the Ku-Klux outrages in the South, and the persecution of Miss Prudence Crandall in Connecticut, were not inconsistent with the possession of marked political capacity. I suggested that it was hardly adult politics to take such things into consideration in pa.s.sing on the expediency of conceding local self-government to a subject community. There was to me something almost childish in the arguments drawn from Irish lawlessness in the discussion of Home Rule, and in the moral importance attached by some Englishmen to the refusal to such wicked men as the Irish of the things they most desire. It is only in kindergartens, I said, that rulers are able to do equal and exact justice, and see that the naughty are brought to grief and the good made comfortable. Statesmen occupy themselves with the more serious business of curing discontent. They concern themselves but little, if at all, with the question whether it might not be manifested by less objectionable methods.

The Irish methods of manifesting it, I endeavoured to show, were not exceptional, and did not prove either inability to make laws or unwillingness to obey them. I ill.u.s.trated this by examples drawn from the United States. I might, had I had more time and s.p.a.ce, have made these examples still more numerous and striking. I might have given very good reasons for believing that, were Ireland a state in the American Union, there probably would not have been any rent paid in the island within the last fifty years, and that the armed resistance of the tenants would have had the open or secret sympathy of the great bulk of the American people. In truth, the importance of Irish crime as a political symptom is grossly exaggerated by English writers. I venture to a.s.sert that more murders unconnected with robbery are committed in the State of Kentucky in one year than in Ireland in ten, and the condition of some other Southern and Western States is nearly as bad.

All good Americans lament this and are ashamed of it, but it never enters into the heads of even the most lugubrious American moralists that Kentucky or any other State should be disfranchised and remanded to the condition of a Territory, because the offences against the person committed in it are so numerous, and the punishment of them, owing to popular sympathy or apathy, so difficult.

There are a great many Englishmen who think that when they show that Grattan's Parliament was a venal and somewhat disorderly body, which occasionally indulged in mixed metaphor, they have proved the impossibility of giving Ireland a Parliament now. But then, as they are obliged to admit, Walpole's Parliament was very corrupt, and no one would say that for that reason it would have been wise to suspend const.i.tutional government in England in the eighteenth century. It is only through the pernicious habit of thinking of Irishmen as exceptions to all political rules that Grattan's Parliament is considered likely, had it lasted, to have come down to our time unreformed and unimproved.