Chapter IX: Part 9

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 _primâ 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 emancipated from childish restraints. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were contented with their sturdy 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 assent 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 Constitution.

Technically these reservations of supremacy to the English Legislature were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of constitutional 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 circumstances, 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 constitutionality of any laws which they might pass 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 Constitution copied in the establishment of their supreme Court, and thereby secured for that legislative system a stability which has defied the assaults 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 class 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 class 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 passed 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 assent 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 passed 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, assisted 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 pass 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 appetite 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 Constitution, 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 substitution 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 Constitution 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 title 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.]

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE IRISH QUESTION[69]

BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P.

For half a century or more no question of English domestic politics has excited so much interest outside England as that question of resettling her relations with Ireland, which was fought over in the last Parliament, and still confronts the Parliament that has lately been elected. Apart from its dramatic interest, apart from its influence on the fortune of parties, and its effect on the imperial position of Great Britain, it involves so many large principles of statesmanship, and raises so many delicate points of constitutional law, as to deserve the study of philosophical thinkers no less than of practical politicians in every free country.

The circumstances which led to the introduction of the Government of Ireland Bill, in April, 1886, are familiar to Americans as well as Englishmen. Ever since the crowns and parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland were united, in A.D. 1800, there has been in Ireland a party which protested against that union as fraudulently obtained and inexpedient in itself. For many years this party, led by Daniel O'Connell, maintained an agitation for Repeal. After his death a more extreme section, which sought the complete independence of Ireland, raised the insurrection of 1848, and subsequently, under the guidance of other hands, formed the Fenian conspiracy, whose projected insurrection was nipped in the bud in 1867, though the conspiracy continued to menace the Government and the tranquillity of the island. In 1872 the Home Rule party was formed, demanding, not the Repeal of the Union, but the creation of an Irish Legislature, and the agitation, conducted in Parliament in a more systematic and persistent way than heretofore, took also a legitimate constitutional form. To this demand English and Scotch opinion was at first almost unanimously opposed. At the General Election of 1880, which, however, turned mainly on the foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government, not more than three or four members were returned by constituencies in Great Britain who professed to consider Home Rule as even an open question. All through the Parliament, which sat from 1880 till 1885, the Nationalist party, led by Mr. Parnell, and including at first less than half, ultimately about half, of the Irish members, was in constant and generally bitter opposition to the Government of Mr. Gladstone. But during these five years a steady, although silent and often unconscious, process of change was passing in the minds of English and Scotch members, especially Liberal members, due to their growing sense of the mistakes which Parliament committed in handling Irish questions, and of the hopelessness of the efforts which the Executive was making to pacify the country on the old methods. The adoption of a Home Rule policy by one of the great English parties was, therefore, not so sudden a change as it seemed. The process had been going on for years, though in its earlier stages it was so gradual and so unwelcome as to be faintly felt and reluctantly admitted by the minds that were undergoing it. In the spring of 1886 the question could be no longer evaded or postponed. It was necessary to choose between one of two courses; the refusal of the demand for self-government, coupled with the introduction of a severe Coercion Bill, or the concession of it by the introduction of a Home Rule Bill. There were some few who suggested, as a third course, the granting of a limited measure of local institutions, such as county boards; but most people felt, as did Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, that this plan would have had most of the dangers and few of the advantages of either of the two others.

How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into the House of Commons on April 8th, amid circumstances of curiosity and excitement unparalleled since 1832; how, after debates of almost unprecedented length, it was defeated in June, by a majority of thirty; how the policy it embodied was brought before the country at the General Election, and failed to win approval--all this is too well known to need recapitulation here. But the causes of the disaster have not been well understood, for it is only now--now, when the smoke of the battle has cleared away from the field--that these causes have begun to stand revealed in their true proportions.

Besides some circumstances attending the production of the Bill, to which I shall refer presently, and which told heavily against it, there were three feelings which worked upon men's minds, disposing them to reject it.

The first of these was dislike and fear of the Irish Nationalist members. In the previous House of Commons this party had been uniformly and bitterly hostile to the Liberal Government. Measures intended for the good of Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been ungraciously received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no thanks were due--inadequate concessions, which must be made the starting-point for fresh demands. Obstruction had been freely practised to defeat not only bills restraining the liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other measures. Some few members of the Irish party had systematically sought to delay all English and Scotch legislation, and, in fact, to bring the work of Parliament to a dead stop. Much violent language had been used, even where the provocation was slight. The outbreaks of crime which had repeatedly occurred in Ireland had been, not, indeed, defended, but so often passed over in silence by Nationalist speakers, that English opinion was inclined to hold them practically responsible for disorders which, so it was thought, they had neither wished nor tried to prevent. (I am, of course, expressing no opinion as to the justice of this view, nor as to the excuses to be made for the Parliamentary tactics of the Irish party, but merely stating how their conduct struck many Englishmen.) There could be no doubt as to the hostility which they, still less as to that which their fellow-countrymen in the United States, had expressed toward England, for they had openly wished success to Russia while war seemed impending with her, and the so-called Mahdi of the Soudan was vociferously cheered at many a Nationalist meeting. At the Election of 1885 they had done their utmost to defeat Liberal candidates in every English and Scotch constituency where there existed a body of Irish voters, and had thrown some twenty seats or more into the hands of the Tories. Now, to many Englishmen, the proposal to create an Irish Parliament seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand over to these Irish members the government of Ireland, with all the opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would contain different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr. Parnell's nominees. Neither of these arguments could overcome the suspicious antipathy which many Englishmen felt, nor dissolve the association in their minds between the Nationalist leaders and the forces of disorder. The Parnellites (thus they reasoned) are bad men; what they seek is therefore likely to be bad, and whether bad in itself or not, they will make a bad use of it. In such reasonings there was more of sentiment and prejudice than of reason, but sentiment and prejudice are proverbially harder than arguments to expel from minds where they have made a lodgment.

The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial grounds for alarm. As everybody knows, she is not, either in religion or in blood, or in feelings and ideas, a homogeneous country. Three-fourths of the people are Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant fourth subdivided into bodies not fond of one another, who have little community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish colony in Ulster, many English families have settled here and there through the country. They have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and many of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since they came, still look on themselves as rather English than Irish. The last fifty years, whose wonderful changes have in most parts of the world tended to unite and weld into one compact body the inhabitants of each part of the earth's surface, connecting them by the ties of commerce, and of a far easier and swifter intercourse than was formerly possible, have in Ireland worked in the opposite direction. It has become more and more the habit of the richer class in Ireland to go to England for its enjoyment, and to feel itself socially rather English than Irish. Thus the chasm between the immigrants and the aborigines has grown deeper. The upper class has not that Irish patriotism which it showed in the days of the National Irish Parliament (1782-1800), and while there is thus less of a common national feeling to draw rich and poor together, the strife of landlords and tenants has continued, irritating the minds of both parties, and gathering them into two hostile camps. As everybody knows, the Nationalist agitation has been intimately associated with the Land agitation--has, in fact, found a strong motive-force in the desire of the tenants to have their rents reduced, and themselves secured against eviction. Now, many people in England assumed that an Irish Parliament would be under the control of the tenants and the humbler class generally, and would therefore be hostile to the landlords. They went farther, and made the much bolder assumption that as such a Parliament would be chosen by electors, most of whom were Roman Catholics, it would be under the control of the Catholic priesthood, and hostile to Protestants. Thus they supposed that the grant of self-government to Ireland would mean the abandonment of the upper and wealthier class, the landlords and the Protestants, to the tender mercies of their enemies. Such abandonment, it was proclaimed on a thousand platforms, would be disgraceful in itself, dishonouring to England, a betrayal of the very men who had stood by her in the past, and were prepared to stand by her in the future, if only she would stand by them. It was, of course, replied by the defenders of the Home Rule Bill, that what the so-called English party in Ireland really stood by was their own ascendency over the Irish masses--an oppressive ascendency, which had caused most of the disorders of the country. As to religion, there were many Protestants besides Mr. Parnell himself among the Nationalist leaders. There was no ill-feeling (except in Ulster) between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ireland. There was no reason to expect that either the Catholic hierarchy or the priesthood generally would be supreme in an Irish Parliament, and much reason to expect the contrary. As regards Ulster, where, no doubt, there were special difficulties, due to the bitter antagonism of the Orangemen (not of the Protestants generally) and Catholics, Mr. Gladstone had undertaken to consider any special provisions which could be suggested as proper to meet those difficulties. These replies, however, made little impression. They were pronounced, and pronounced all the more confidently the more ignorant of Ireland the speaker was, to be too hypothetical. To many Englishmen the case seemed to be one of two hostile factions contending in Ireland for the last sixty years, and that the gift of self-government might enable one of them to tyrannize over the other. True, that party was the majority, and, according to the principles of democratic government, therefore entitled to prevail. But it is one thing to admit a principle and another to consent to its application. The minority had the sympathy of the upper classes in England, because the minority contained the landlords. It had the sympathy of a part of the middle class, because it contained the Protestants. And of those Englishmen who were impartial as between the Irish factions, there were some who held that England must in any case remain responsible for the internal peace and the just government of Ireland, and could not grant powers whose possession might tempt the one party to injustice, and the other to resist injustice by violence.

There was another anticipation, another forecast of evils to follow, which told most of all upon English opinion. This was the notion that Home Rule was only a stage in the road to the complete separation of the two islands. The argument was conceived as follows: "The motive passions of the Irish agitation have all along been hatred toward England and a desire to make Ireland a nation, holding her independent place among the nations of the world. This design was proclaimed by the Young Irelanders of 1848 and by the Fenian rebels of 1866; it has been avowed, in intervals of candour, by the present Nationalists themselves. The grant of an Irish Parliament will stimulate rather than appease this thirst for separate national existence. The nearer complete independence seems, the more will it be desired. Hatred to England will still be an active force, because the amount of control which England retains will irritate Irish pride, as well as limit Irish action; while all the misfortunes which may befall the new Irish Government will be blamed, not on its own imprudence, but on the English connection. And as the motives for seeking separation will remain, so the prospect of obtaining it will seem better. Agitation will have a better vantage-ground in an Irish Parliament than it formerly had among the Irish members of a British Legislature; and if actual resistance to the Queen's authority should be attempted, it will be attempted under conditions more favourable than the present, because the rebels will have in their hands the machinery of Irish Government, large financial resources, and a _prima facie_ title to represent the will of the Irish people. As against a rebellious party in Ireland, England has now two advantages--an advantage of theory, an advantage of fact. The advantage of theory is that she does not admit Ireland to be a distinct nation, but maintains that in the United Kingdom there is but one nation, whereof some inhabit Great Britain and some Ireland. The advantage of fact is that, through her control of the constabulary, the magistrates, the courts of justice, and, in fine, the whole administrative system of Ireland, she can easily quell insurrectionary movements. By creating an Irish Parliament and Government she would strip herself of both these advantages."

I need hardly say that I do not admit the fairness of this statement of the case, because some of the premises are untrue, and because it misrepresents the nature of the Irish Government which Mr. Gladstone's Bill would have created. But I am trying to state the case as it was sedulously and skilfully presented to Englishmen. And it told all the more upon English waverers, because the considerations above mentioned seemed, if well founded, to destroy and cut away the chief ground on which Home Rule had been advocated, viz. that it would relieve England from the constant pressure of Irish discontent and agitation, and bring about a time of tranquillity, permitting good feeling to grow up between the peoples. If Home Rule was, after all, to be nothing more than a half-way house to independence, an Irish Parliament only a means of extorting a more complete emancipation from imperial control, was it not much better to keep things as they were, and go on enduring evils, the worst of which were known already? Hence the advocates of the Bill denied not the weight of the argument, but its applicability. Separation, they urged, is impossible, for it is contrary to the nature of things, which indicates that the two islands must go together. It is not desired by the Irish people, for it would injure them far more than it could possibly injure England, since Ireland finds in England the only market for her produce, the only source whence capital flows to her. A small revolutionary party has, no doubt, conspired to obtain it. But the only sympathy they received was due to the fact that the legitimate demand of Ireland for a recognition of her national feeling and for the management of her own local affairs was contemptuously ignored by England. The concession of that demand will banish the notion even from those minds which now entertain it, whereas its continued refusal may perpetuate that alienation of feeling which is at the bottom of all the mischief, the one force that makes for separation.

It is no part of my present purpose to examine these arguments and counter arguments, but only to show what were the grounds on which a majority of the English voters refused to pronounce in favour of the Home Rule Bill. The reader will have observed that the issues raised were not only numerous, but full of difficulty. They were issues of fact, involving a knowledge both of the past history of Ireland and of her present state. They were also issues of inference, for even supposing the broad facts to be ascertained, these facts were susceptible of different interpretations, and men might, and did, honestly draw opposite conclusions from them. A more obscure and complicated problem, or rather group of problems, has seldom been presented to a nation for its decision. But the nation did not possess the requisite knowledge. Closely connected as Ireland seems to be with England, long as the Irish question has been a main trouble in English politics, the English and Scottish people know amazingly little about Ireland. Even in the upper class, you meet with comparatively few persons who have set foot on Irish soil, and, of course, far fewer who have ever examined the condition of the island and the sources of her discontent. Irish history, which is, no doubt, dismal reading, is a blank page to the English. In January, 1886, one found scarce any politicians who had ever heard of the Irish Parliament of 1782. And in that year, 1886, an Englishman anxious to discover the real state of the country did not know where to go for information. What appeared in the English newspapers, or, rather, in the one English newspaper which keeps a standing "own correspondent" in Dublin, was (as it still is) a grossly and almost avowedly partisan report, in which opinions are skilfully mixed with so-called facts, selected, consciously or unconsciously, to support the writer's view. The Nationalist press is, of course, not less strongly partisan on its own side, so that not merely an average Englishman, but even the editor of an English newspaper, who desires to ascertain the true state of matters and place it before his English readers, has had, until within the last few months, when events in Ireland began to be fully reported in Great Britain, no better means at his disposal for understanding Ireland than for understanding Bulgaria. I do not dwell upon this ignorance as an argument for Home Rule, though, of course, it is often so used. I merely wish to explain the bewilderment in which Englishmen found themselves when required to settle by their votes a question of immense difficulty. Many, on both sides, simply followed their party banners. Tories voted for Lord Salisbury; thorough-going admirers of Mr. Gladstone voted for Mr. Gladstone. But there was on the Liberal side a great mass who were utterly perplexed by the position. Contradictory statements of fact, as well as contradictory arguments, were flung at their heads in distracting profusion. They felt themselves unable to determine what was true and who was right. But one thing seemed clear to them. The policy of Home Rule was a new policy. They had been accustomed to censure and oppose it. Only nine months before, the Irish Nationalists had emphasized their hostility to the Liberal party by doing their utmost to defeat Liberal candidates in English constituencies. Hence, when it was proclaimed that Home Rule was the true remedy which the Liberal party must accept, they were startled and discomposed.

Now, the English are not a nimble-minded people. They cannot, to use a familiar metaphor, turn round in their own length. Their momentum is such as to carry them on for some distance in the direction wherein they have been moving, even after the order to stop has been given. They need time to appreciate, digest, and comprehend a new proposition. Timid they are not, nor, perhaps, exceptionally cautious, but they do not like to be hurried, and insist on looking at a proposition for a good while before they come to a decision regarding it. It is one of the qualities which make them a great people. As has been observed, this proposition was novel, was most serious, and raised questions which they felt that their knowledge was insufficient to determine. Accordingly, a certain section of the Liberal party refused to accept it. A great number, probably the majority, of these doubtful men abstained from voting. Others voted against the Home Rule Liberal candidates, not necessarily because they condemned the policy, but because, as they were not satisfied that it was right, they deemed delay a less evil than the committal of the nation to a new departure, which might prove irrevocable.

It must not, however, be supposed that it was only hesitation which drove many Liberals into the host arrayed against the Irish Government Bill. I have already said that among the leaders there were some, and those men of great influence, who condemned its principles. This was true also of a considerable, though a relatively smaller, section of the rank and file. And it was only what might have been expected. The proposal to undo much of the work done in 1800, to alter fundamentally the system which had for eighty-six years regulated the relations of the two islands, by setting up a Parliament in Ireland, was a proposal which not only had not formed a part of the accepted creed of the Liberal party, but fell outside party lines altogether. It might, no doubt, be argued, as was actually done, and as those who understand the history of the Liberal party have more and more come to see, that Liberal principles recommended it, since they involve faith in the people, and faith in the curative tendency of local self-government. But this was by no means axiomatic. Taking the whole complicated facts of the case, and taking Liberalism as it had been practically understood in England, a man might in July, 1886, deem himself a good Liberal and yet think that the true interests of both peoples would be best served by maintaining the existing Parliamentary system. Similarly, there was nothing in Toryism or Tory principles to prevent a fair-minded and patriotic Tory from approving the Home Rule scheme. It was a return to the older institutions of the monarchy, and not inconsistent with any of the doctrines which the Tory party had been accustomed to uphold. The question, in short, was one of those which cut across ordinary party lines, creating new divisions among politicians; and there might have been and ought to have been Liberal Home Rulers and Tory Home Rulers, Liberal opponents of Home Rule and Tory opponents of Home Rule.

But here comes in a feature, a natural but none the less a regrettable feature, of the English party system. As the object of the party in opposition is to turn out the party in power and seat itself in their place, every Opposition regards with the strongest prejudice the measures proposed by a ruling Ministry. Cases sometimes occur where these measures are so obviously necessary, or so evidently approved by the nation, that the Opposition accepts them. But in general it scans them with a hostile eye. Human nature is human nature; and when the defeat of Government can be secured by defeating a Government Bill, the temptation to the Opposition to secure it is irresistible. Now, the Tory party is far more cohesive than the Liberal party, far more obedient to its leaders, far less disposed to break into sections, each of which thinks and acts for itself. Accordingly, that division of opinion in the Tory party which might have been expected, and which would have occurred if those who composed the Tory party had been merely so many reflecting men, and not members of a closely compacted political organization, did not occur. Liberals were divided, as such a question would naturally divide them. Tories were not divided; they threw their whole strength against the Bill. I am far from suggesting that they did so against their consciences. Whatever may be said as to two or three of the leaders, whose previous language and conduct seemed to indicate that they would themselves, had the election of 1885 gone differently, have been inclined to a Home Rule policy, many of the Tory chiefs, as well as the great mass of the party, honestly disapproved Mr. Gladstone's measure. But their party motives and party affiliations gave it no chance of an impartial verdict at their hands. They went into the jury-box with an invincible prepossession against the scheme of their opponents. When all these difficulties are duly considered, and especially when regard is had to those which I have last enumerated, the suddenness with which the new policy was launched, and the fact that as coming from one party it was sure beforehand of the hostility of the other, no surprise can be felt at its fate. Those who, in England, now look back over the spring and summer of 1886 are rather surprised that it should come so near succeeding. To have been rejected by a majority of only thirty in Parliament, and of little over ten per cent. of the total number of electors who voted at the general election, is a defeat far less severe than any one who knew England would have predicted.

That the decision of the country is regarded by nobody as a final decision goes without saying. It was not regarded as final, even in the first weeks after it was given. This was not because the majority was comparatively small, for a smaller majority the other way would have been conclusive. It is because the country had not time enough for full consideration and deliberate judgment. The Bill was brought in on April 14th, the elections began on July 1st; no one can say what might have been the result of a long discussion, during which the first feelings of alarm (for alarm there was) might have worn off. And the decision is without finality, also, because the decision of the country was merely against the particular plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and not in favour of any alternative plan for dealing with Ireland, most certainly not for the coercive method which has since been adopted. One particular solution of the Irish problem was refused. The problem still stands confronting us, and when other modes of solving it have been in turn rejected, the country may come back to this mode.

We may now turn from the past to the future. Yet the account which has been given of the feelings and ideas arrayed against the Bill does not wholly belong to the past. They are the feelings to which the opponents of any plan of self-government for Ireland still appeal, and which will have to be removed or softened down before it can be accepted by the English. In particular, the probability of separation, and the supposed dangers to the Protestants and the landlords from an Irish Parliament, will continue to form the themes of controversy so long as the question remains unsettled.

What are the prospects of its settlement? What is the position which it now occupies? How has it affected the current politics of England?

It broke up the Liberal party in Parliament. The vast numerical majority of that party in the country supported, and still supports, Mr. Gladstone and the policy of Irish self-government. But the dissentient minority includes many men of influence, and constitutes in the House of Commons a body of about seventy members, who hold the balance between parties. For the present they are leagued with the Tory Ministry to resist Home Rule, and their support insures a parliamentary majority to that Ministry. But it is, of course, necessary for them to rally to Lord Salisbury, not only on Irish questions, but on all questions; for, under our English system, a Ministry defeated on any serious issue is bound to resign, or dissolve Parliament. Now, to maintain an alliance for a special purpose, between members of opposite parties, is a hard matter. Agreement about Ireland does not, of itself, help men to agree about foreign policy, or bimetallism, or free trade, or changes in land laws, or ecclesiastical affairs. When these and other grave questions come up in Parliament, the Tory Ministry and their Liberal allies must, on every occasion, negotiate a species of concordat, whereby the liberty of both is fettered. One party may wish to resist innovation, the other to yield to it, or even to anticipate it. Each is obliged to forego something in order to humour the other; neither has the pleasure or the credit of taking a bold line on its own responsibility. There is, no doubt, less difference between the respective tenets of the great English parties than there was twenty years ago, when Mr. Disraeli had not yet completed the education of one party, and economic laws were still revered by the other. But, besides its tenets, each party has its tendencies, its sympathies, its moral atmosphere; and these differ so widely as to make the co-operation of Tories and Liberals constrained and cumbrous. Moreover, there are the men to be considered, the leaders on each side, whose jealousies, rivalries, suspicions, personal incompatibilities, neither old habits of joint action nor corporate party feeling exist to soften. On the whole, therefore, it is unlikely that the league of these two parties, united for one question only, and that a question which will pass into new phases, can be durable. Either the league will dissolve, or the smaller party will be absorbed into the larger. In England, as in America, third parties rarely last. The attraction of the larger mass is irresistible, and when the crisis which created a split or generated a new group has passed, or the opinion the new group advocates has been either generally discredited or generally adopted, the small party melts away, its older members disappearing from public life, its younger ones finding their career in the ranks of one of the two great standing armies of politics. If the dissentient, or anti-Home Rule, Liberal party lives till the next general election, it cannot live longer, for at that election it will be ground to powder between the upper and nether millstones of the regular Liberals and the regular Tories.